Table of Contents

19: Non-spatial Setting
20: Number Systems
21: Negation
22: Reflexive and Reciprocal Constructions
23: Pivots, Passives,and Antipassives
24: Causatives
25: Applicatives
26: Comparative Constructions
27: Questions
28: Language and the World: explanations now and needed
Appendix

About the Author

R. M. W. Dixon is Adjunct Professor at the Cairns Institute, James Cook University. His pioneering fieldwork on Australian Aboriginal languages began in the 1960s and led, among many other works, to grammars of Dyirbal and Yidiñ, culminating in Australian Languages: Their nature and development (CUP 2002). His other books include A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian (U Chicago Press 1988), Ergativity (CUP, 1994), The Rise and Fall of Languages (CUP 1997), The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia (OUP 2004), which was winner of the 2004-5 Leonard Bloomfield Prize, A Semantic Approach to English Grammar (OUP 2005), I am a Linguist (Brill 2011), and the first two volumes of Basic Linguistic Theory (OUP 2010).

Reviews

There can be little doubt that Basic Linguistic Theory is a valuable addition to the linguistic literature, both as a broadly conceived typological study and as an inspiring guide to grammar writers ... BLT covers the principal parts of grammar and probably more extensively so than any other single book of its kind.
*Steffen Haurholm-Larsen, Studies in Language*

These books are monumental and destined to become classics, equatable to the two volumes entitled Language by Sapir (1921) and Bloomfield (1933), and to Givón's Syntax, volumes 1 (1984) and 2 (1990) but in each case surpassing them in scope, detail, rigor, and coherence. Dixon presents a complete, fully articulated, and cohesive explication of grammar, with extensive elaboration on every major grammatical structure found in the world's languages, as well as many minor ones.... This is a masterwork ... a lasting reference for grammar writers, typologists, grammatical theorists, and all those fascinated by the complexities of linguistic systems and grammatical analysis.
*Carol Genetti,Language*