The Noun Phrase and the Generative Lexicon

Book excerpt: This paper presents a semantico-syntactic description of the noun phrase from a new perspective, that of the generative lexicon. The analysis proposed by the author highlights the advantages that this theory offers for refining the description of the noun phrase. The study demonstrates the way in which certain semantic structures within the head-noun or the dependents (as identified by the generative lexicon) explain certain phrase formations or constrain their scope. From this point of view, the paper delves into the way in which the semantics of the words within a noun phrase influence the syntax of the whole noun phrase. The result is a bold, well-defined and highly useful proposal for a comprehensive grammar of the noun phrase from a lexicalist-generativist perspective that could be extended to other phrases or syntactic configurations. The book will be a useful tool for linguists, researchers, teachers and students in philology who are interested in semantics. The usefulness of this field of investigation resides in the fact that it does not apply to a single language, but it can be applied to all existing languages.