The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure

This handbook explores the nature of events and how we use language to describe them, drawing on insights from morphology, syntax, semantics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. It provides accessible introductions to major topics and debates in event structure research, covering metaphysical issues, the relationship between event structure and grammar, crosslinguistic case studies, and links to cognitive science and artificial intelligence. The book is interdisciplinary, appealing to researchers and students from various fields.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 736 pages
Publication date: 14 July 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press

This comprehensive handbook delves into the intricate study of the nature of events and the linguistic mechanisms employed to describe them. Over the past six decades, research in event structure has emerged as a highly successful field of lexical semantics, drawing upon insights from diverse disciplines such as morphology, syntax, lexical and compositional semantics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. This volume offers accessible introductions to key topics and ongoing debates in event structure research, exploring the fundamental aspects of events, their perception, reasoning, and their role in the organization of grammar and discourse.

The chapters in this book are organized into four distinct parts. The first part addresses metaphysical issues related to events, delving into questions about their existence, properties, and relationships. The second part explores the intricate relationship between event structure and grammar, examining how events are encoded and interpreted within linguistic frameworks. The third part presents a series of crosslinguistic case studies, shedding light on the diverse ways in which events are described across different languages and cultures. The fourth part explores the broader connections between event structure and cognitive science and artificial intelligence, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of this field.

With its strong interdisciplinary approach, this handbook appeals to a wide range of researchers and students, including advanced undergraduates and scholars in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science. It provides a rich resource for those seeking to understand the complexities of event structure and its implications for language comprehension, production, and interpretation. By integrating insights from multiple fields, this handbook offers a comprehensive and multifaceted perspective on the study of events and their linguistic representation.

Weight: 1248g
Dimension: 172 x 245 x 45 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192845221