I'm sure I've made this recommendation before, but I'll make it again:
If you are interested in explorations of the richness of meaning in
language, and the relation between language structure and communicative
imperatives, I'd recommend reading Ronald Langacker's work (the
collection of shorter pieces entitled 'Concept, Image, and Symbol' is a
good start) and also the work of Wallace Chafe, particularly 'Discourse,
Consciousness, and Time' as well as other scholars of discourse such as
Paul Hopper or Sandra Thompson. Work on metaphor and categorization in
language is also quite fascinating; there I'd recommend George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson's 'Metaphors we live by' (an easy book for the general
reader) and parts of George Lakoff's 'Women, Fire, and Dangerous
Things'. There is, I'm sure, more recent work that I'm not as current on.
Just the titles give a hint of the richness of what's inside the books!
This is high theory, but there is not a simple way to approach human
language if you really want to dig deep. The work of these scholars
proposes all kinds of reasons for why 'the rules are as they are'. These
aren't 'formal' theories, that is, theories that propose abstract
formulae for representing syntactic structures; rather, they attempt to
tie facts about language to cognitive psychology, human thought and
consciousness. Langacker has an interesting piece called 'Nouns and
Verbs' on the semantic differences and parallels between the two
classes. He draws parallels, for instance, between the count/mass
distinction in nouns and perfect/progressive distinction in verbs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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