Linguistic Supertypes

by Durst-andersen, Per

• ISBN13: 9783110253139
• ISBN10: 3110253135
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-28
• Publisher: Mouton De Gruyter

Summary

By integrating ideas of Peirce, Bühler, Bakhtin, Piaget and Jakobson, in this book the author defines three linguistic supertypes each operating with either the situation in reality, the speaker's experience of it or his condensed information to the hearer. The theory is built step by step on the basis of a detailed examination of individual languages and their relationship to perception and cognition, their representation of situations and their use in oral and written discourse. The theory offers a completely new understanding of language and its role in perception, cognition and communication.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Language and beyond
Language and situations	p. 3
Preliminary remarks	p. 3
Previous approaches to situation and verb typology	p. 3
The present approach	p. 5
Aspectual types	p. 14
Syntactic types	p. 20
Summary	p. 27
Language and perception	p. 29
Preliminary remarks	p. 29
ôNewö linguistic data	p. 31
Naming strategies and lexicalization patterns	p. 39
Descriptions of activities based on postures	p. 44
Descriptions of actions involving a location	p. 48
Framing strategies and the ordering of linguistic elements	p. 53
Results from eye-tracking studies and brain scan tests	p. 61
Language and cognition	p. 66
Preliminary remarks	p. 66
Introducing the event vs. process distinction	p. 67
The mental model of events and its instruction	p. 68
Linguistic evidence for the three psychological dimensions	p. 74
Firstness, secondness and thirdness	p. 77
The mental model of processes and its instruction	p. 78
Background knowledge of actions	p. 81
From assimilation to accommodation in the human mind	p. 87
Concluding remarks	p. 91
Grammar and communication
Grammar and pragmatics	p. 95
Introduction	p. 95
Grammar in communication	p. 96
Product and consumer communication	p. 102
The layered structure of imperatives	p. 110
Towards a deeper understanding of indirect speech acts	p. 115
The imperative frame analysis	p. 119
Conclusions	p. 125
Grammar and semiotics	p. 126
Preliminary remarks	p. 126
Introduction	p. 127
The simple sign of nouns and verbs	p. 130
The simple sign as an image-idea pair	p. 133
Arbitrariness and motivatedness of the simple sign	p. 144
The complex sign as a dynamic unit - an index	p. 147
The semiotic function of grammar	p. 154
Discussing icons, indexes and symbols	p. 160
Conclusions	p. 163
Language inside out
From types to supertypes	p. 167
The various typological trichotomies	p. 167
Introducing the three linguistic supertypes	p. 174
Supertypes and related issues	p. 179
The basic voice of language	p. 184
Introduction	p. 184
Reality-oriented languages	p. 185
Speaker-oriented languages	p. 200
Hearer-oriented languages	p. 206
Concluding remarks	p. 214
Linguistic expansion	p. 216
Introductory remarks	p. 216
The expanding function of Russian aspect	p. 216
The expanding function of Bulgarian mood	p. 223
The expanding function of Danish tense	p. 227
Recapitulating and concluding	p. 232
The principal and secondary voice of language	p. 236
Introduction	p. 236
The principal and secondary voice of Russian	p. 238
The principal and secondary voice of Bulgarian	p. 245
The principal and secondary voice of Danish	p. 251
Conclusions	p. 260
Focusing summary	p. 261
References	p. 267
Definition list	p. 295
Index	p. 307
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