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Review of Jong-Bok Kim Form and Function Mapping in English Syntax: A Construction Grammar Perspective Routledge

Autor: Stefan Müller

Stichwörter: Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), Sign-Based Construction Grammar, Syntax, Morphologie, Englisch

Müller, Stefan. 2026. Review of Jong-Bok Kim Form and Function Mapping in English Syntax: A Construction Grammar Perspective Routledge. 404 pages

This document is unusually long for a review. That is because it grew out of assessments I prepared for two different publishers. Many of the points I raised in earlier assessments were simply ignored by the author. He just switched publishers and resubmitted the manuscript without addressing the list of shortcomings. With the third publisher (Routledge), he succeeded in getting the book published. Newly added is an appendix on the theory, as is common practice, for example, in the works of Ivan Sag. I also discussed this appendix in the review. The review consists of an initial general section, in which formal problems are discussed, and then goes through the individual chapters. In summary, it must be said that not a single one of the proposed analyses works. It is unclear why the author published this book, given that methodological shortcomings and formal errors were pointed out to him several times during the past years.

Outline

  1. Introduction
  2. Typographical quality of the manuscript
  3. General issues with the book and research methodology
    1. Mix of different approaches to semantics
    2. Two analyses of NPs
    3. Minimal pairs
    4. Corpus data with optional parts
    5. Corpus data without source
  4. Formal issues
    1. Sort-resolvedness
    2. Unification
    3. Implications
    4. Lexical rules
      1. Inheritance and lexical rules
      2. Identical information in input and output
    5. Figures with impossible structures
    6. Sloppiness in formulation
    7. Lack of understanding of semantics
      1. Expressions, variables, denotation
      2. Active and passive
  5. Foundational issues
    1. Part of speech and grammatical functions
    2. Argument realization principle
      1. Mix of realizational approach and lexical rules
    3. Capturing generalizations and the Argument Realization Principle
    4. Heads and empty elements
    5. Occam’s Razor as fundamental principle in science
      1. mod as list-valued feature
      2. The pos feature
  6. The chapters in detail
    1. Chapter 1: Theoretical foundations
      1. Argument structure constructions
    2. Chapter 2: Mapping relations between form and function
    3. Chapter 3: Simple and complex NP constructions
    4. Chapter 4: Particle verbs
    5. Chapter 5: VP ellipsis and fronting
    6. Chapter 6: Free relative clause constructions
      1. Standard free relative clauses
      2. Transparent free relatives
    7. Chapter 7: Extraposition constructions
    8. Chapter 8: Cleft Constructions
    9. Chapter 9: Locative inversion
    10. Chapter 10: Comparative correlative construction
    11. Chapter 11: Conclusion and prospects
  7. New mistakes
  8. Review of the Appendix added for the Routledge publication

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