Grammatical Roles and Relations

Frank Palmer’s new book is a typological survey of grammatical roles, such as Agent, Patient, Beneficiary, and grammatical relations, such as Subject, Direct Object and Indirect Object, which are familiar concepts in traditional grammars. It describes the devices, such as the Passive, that alter or switch the identities between such roles and relations. A great wealth of examples is used to show that the grammatical systems of the familiar European languages are far from typical of many of the world\'s languages, for which we need to use such terms as ‘Ergative’ and ‘Antipassive’. Professor Palmer provides an elegant and consistent framework within which grammatical roles and relations may be discussed, combining a great clarity of discussion with evidence from an enormous number of the world\'s languages.

• Frank Palmer is one of the best-known authors on the linguistics list, both in Europe and the US • This survey uses data from a huge range of the world\'s languages, and is the most comprehensive of its kind • Very clear and readable introduction to the field of syntactic typology (Palmer is known for the clarity of his exposition)

1. Introduction; 2. Roles and relations; 3. Accusative, ergative and agentive systems; 4. Syntactic relations; 5. Passive; 6. Passive: related and problematic issues; 7. Antipassive; 8. Topic and inverse systems; 9. Causatives; Glossary of terms; References and citations index; Language index; General index.

‘A valuable source of information and examples...amply illustrated with examples of languages ... a comprehensive and systematic presentation’. International Review of Applied Linguistics