The Cognitive Science of Linguistics: How Language Works

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Word meanings. 3. Word forms: units. 4. Composition. 5. Sentences. 6. Grammatical categories. 7. Derivations. Appendices. Glossary. Bibliography.

"Most linguistics texts draw their examples from an unconstrained set of languages. This has the disadvantage that students are left with little sense of how the different aspects of each language fit together. It also invites the kind of errors that may crop up when linguists rely on examples from a wide variety of other linguists. Over the past decade, cognitive linguistics has grown to be one of the most broadly appealing and dynamic frameworks for the study of natural language. Essentially, this book focuses on the meaning side of language: linguistic form is analysed as an expression of meaning. And meaning itself is not something that exists in isolation, but it is integrated with the full spectrum of human experience: the fact that we are embodied beings just as much as the fact that we are cultural beings." (jacket)