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Distributed for Center for the Study of Language and Information

Conceptual and Discourse Factors in Linguistic Structure

What can we learn about the human mind by studying language? The predominant approaches in American linguistics use theoretical assumptions about the formal nature of grammar to answer this question. But these studies are restricted to unapplied models of language, not how language functions in actual speech situations—and as a result, their power to reveal the workings of the human mind is limited.

This book overcomes those limitations by examining data on naturally occurring language usage, not simplified theoretical examples. The cognitive and functional arguments made here start from psychologically realistic principles and arrive at perspectives of linguistics that unveil mechanisms of the mind—based on how language is actually used.

Moving within a cognitive and functional framework, this volume focuses on the motivations for linguistic patterning in human social and cognitive experience, and on the dynamic properties of language construal, use, and development. Among the main research avenues represented are first language acquisition, metaphor, language processing and discourse, and conceptual structure and grammar.

286 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2001

Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language

Cognitive Science: Language

Language and Linguistics: Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics


Table of Contents

Contributors
Preface
The Syntax of French Raising Verbs
[I]Michel Achard[I]
A Cognitive Linguistics Approach to the Layperson’s Understanding of Thermal Phenomena
Tamer G. Amin
Voilà [I]voilà[I]: Extensions of Deictic Constructions in French
[I]Benjamin K. Bergen and Madelaine C. Plauché[I]
Perspective, Deixis and Voice: Developmental Reflections
[I]Nancy Budwig[I]
Semantic Influences on Attributions of Causality in Interpersonal Events
[I]Roberta Corrigan[I]
The Cognitive Basis of Visual Evidentials
[I]Ferdinand De Haan[I]
The Processing of Fixed Expressions During Sentence Comprehension
[I]Dieter Hillert and David Swinney[I]
Constructional Grounding: On the Relation Between Deictic and Existential [I]there[I]-Constructions in Acquisition
[I]Christopher Johnson[I]
What WH Means
[I]Ronald W. Langacker[I]
Deixis and the FRONT/BACK Opposition in Temporal Metaphors
[I]Kevin Ezra Moore[I]
Linking Early Linguistic and Conceptual Capacities: The Role of Theory of Mind
[I]Anna Papafragou[I]
Copula and Time-Stability
[I]Regina Pustet[I]
Prosodic Integration in Spanish Complement Constructions
[I]Ivo Sanchez[I]
Some Aspects of Path-Like Iconicity in German Separable Verb Constructions
[I]Michael B. Smith[I]
Access Path Expressions in Thai
[I]Kiyoko Takahashi[I]
Switch Reference and Zero Anaphora: Emergent Reference Discourse Processing
[I]Liang Tao[I]
Index

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