Language and its structures
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About the Book
This book examines linguistic structures from the perspective of Cognitive Grammar. This first chapter provides a general perspective: language structures are entrenched patterns of behavior (i.e. habits) that allow humans to communicate. Those patterns overlap massively and sanction (i.e. legitimize) the more specific structures that actually get spoken (or written or otherwise used for communication). This only works because patterns so closely similar as to be effectively the same have been established by usage in the minds of those we communicate with. Very little in a language had to be that way (and so language is not predictable), but very often it makes sense for it to be that way (it is reasonable, motivated, non-arbitrary). The chapter includes an introduction and the table of contents for the whole book as it currently exists.
About the Author
Table of Contents
Front matter: Preface, Table of Contents, Abbreviations and conventions
Part I: General considerations (comprises Chapters 1-6)
Chapter 1: The nature of language
1.1 Humans communicate by means of language
1.2 The nature of the symbolic linkage
1.3 (The grammar of) a language
1.3.1 Units
1.3.2 Linguistic units
1.3.3 Conventional linguistic units
1.3.4 Gradual parameters
1.3.5 An inventory of conventional linguistic units
1.3.6 A structured inventory
1.4 The panorama of symbolic structures
1.4.1 Bipolar vs. unipolar complexity
1.4.2 Predominance of lexical structures vs. grammatical patterns
1.4.3 Rigidity vs. flexibility
1.4.4 (Again) Gradual parameters
1.5 A preview: the sanction of complex structures
1.6 Drawings in representation of meanings
1.7 Summary
Forthcoming chapters (1-8 are largely written)
2. Basic mechanisms and structures
3. Schematicity and categorization
4. Basic semantic structures
5. Basic phonological structures
6. Lexical structures: Roots
Part II: Bases of syntax
7. Valence
8. Semi-lexical and schematic constructions
Part III: Panorama of constructions
9. Morphology
10-14 TBA
Appendices:
I. Aspects of the structure of Nahuatl
II. Glossaries of technical terms, signs and conventions, abbreviations, etc.
References
About the Publisher
This book is published on Leanpub by Pike Center
Pike Center for Integrative Scholarship is an initiative of SIL International that builds capacity for language development through scholarship. SIL works alongside ethnolinguistic communities as they discover how language development addresses the challenging areas of their daily lives—social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual.
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