The status of categories in the linguistic theory: Introduction

What is it about?

This is an introduction to the volume "How categorical are categories?". The volume is divided into three parts: PART I “Linguistic Categories – Nouns and Verbs” PART II “Linguistic Categories – Nouns and Adjectives” PART III “Problematic Categories – Numerals and Clitics” PART I addresses an important question of whether the traditional distinctions between grammatical categories noun and verb are discrete or scalar. The central question discussed in PART II of the volume is whether the categories noun and adjective can be distinguished in a categorical way. PART III of the volume addresses two different linguistic elements that are notoriously difficult to categorize: the lexical category of numerals and the morphosyntactic category of clitics.

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Why is it important?

Establishing the status of linguistic categories, both lexical and functional, is foundational in all linguistic discussions in such fields as language typology, modern theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. This volume is an attempt to bring these three fields of study, theoretical linguistics, typology and psycho-/neurolinguistics together with a hope that such an interdisciplinary approach, i. e., looking at categories from different perspectives, will offer new insights into important questions leading to our better understanding of the crucial issue of categorization.