by Ronald Langacker
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Product Description
This is the second volume of a two-volume work that introduces a new and fundamentally different conception of language structure and linguistic investigation. The central claim of cognitive grammar is that grammar forms a continuum with lexicon and is fully describable in terms of symbolic units (i.e. form-meaning pairings). In contrast to current orthodoxy, the author argues that grammar is not autonomous with respect to semantics, but rather reduces to patterns for the structuring and symbolization of conceptual content.
This volume suggests how to use the theoretical tools presented in Volume I, applying cognitive grammar to a broad array of representative grammatical phenomena, primarily (but by no means exclusively) drawn from English.
Reviews
“The amount of data and the wealth of analyses presented is impressive. . . . Langacker has again succeeded in producing a very stimulating and coherent piece of work. And the material analyses offered deserve much more careful attention and reflection than is possible within the limits of a review.”
—Canadian Journal of Linguistics
“Finding ways to talk about language as a cognitive process intricately interwoven with conceptual behavior seems to be the unifying concern of cognitive linguistics in general, and Langacker’s work is of major significance in this respect. It has not been possible in this short review to do justice to the enormous complexity of the theoretical enterprise presented in Foundations of Cognitive Grammar nor the detail of analytical procedures and findings.”
—Australian Journal of Linguistics
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Average Customer Review:
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Already a classic on linguistic Theory, 2005-02-12
This book is what I can call the most important book I have ever read on linguistics for three good reason:
1. When I was studying linguistics all my background was on generative linguistics, and I was educated to disregard any approach to language that uses a conceptual bias or a "semantical explanation" of syntactic problems. This book gave me solid seasons to belief that semantics is the main aspect of human language and that you can be serious and elegant explaining syntax without falling into an extreme formal reductionism.
2. Every explanation here rests over an explicit cognitive ability. There are no movements, transformations, extreme principles (a la "Goverment and Binding" or Minimalist fashion). There is just what anyone can recognize as a cognitive way to picture reality. So, concepts like profile, domain, foreground, background, temporal sacaning, conceptual region, etc, sound, at first very cryptical. But after a few moments, you are boud to say: "Yes, that's It. It's so simple and clear that I feel ashamed I couldn't have seen it earlier!".
3. Finally, the consecuences of a theory of grammar in wich natural cognition is deeply involved makes us think again about the human nature. That is, we are not specialized beings divided into perfectly isolated complex mental modules, but we are holistic creatures experiencing and comparing in a very flexible, creative way. And under that way of thinking, Ronald Langacker has developed one of the more compelling and insightful grammatical theories on modern linguistics.
I recomend this book for those who are looking for an alternative way to mainstream linguistics. Today, almost 20 years after the first time this book and his brother were first published, Cognitive Linguistics is a serious enterprise that can not be fully ackowledged without this masterpiece.
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