The majority of the fifteen chapters included in this volume are revised and expanded versions of talks originally presented at the Sixth International Columbia School Conference held at Rutgers University in October 1999. This conference was notable for attempting to bring about not only an exchange of ideas between various sign-based linguists -- Columbia School, Guillaumean, and others -- but also, and perhaps more importantly, a dialogue between sign-based linguists and representatives of Cognitive linguistics.1 Significantly, one of the plenary speakers was Ronald W. Langacker who, together with George Lakoff, founded the movement in linguistics which has come to be known as Cognitive Grammar.
This volume is the product of a Columbia School Linguistics Conference held at Rutgers University in October 1999, where the plenary speaker was Ronald W. Langacker, a founder of Cognitive Linguistics.The goal of the book is to promote two kinds of dialogue. First, dialogue between Cognitive Grammar and the particular sign-based approach to language known as the Columbia School.
While they share certain basic assumptions, the "maximalist" CG and the "minimalist" CS differ both theoretically and methodologically. Given that philosophers from Mill to Kuhn to Feyerabend have stressed the importance to any discipline of'dialogue between opposing views, the dialogue begun here cannot fail to bear fruit. The second kind ofdialogue is that among several sign-based approaches themselves and also between them and two competitors:grammaticalization theory and generic functionalism.Topics range from phonology to discourse. Analytical problems are taken from a wide range of languages including English, German, Guarani, Hebrew, Hualapai,Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mandarin, Polish,Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Urdu, and Yaqui.
List of contributors
Introduction
Robert S. Kirsner
Part I: Cognitive Grammar
1. Form, meaning, and behavior
Ronald W. Langacker
2. Cataphoric pronouns as mental space designators
Michael B. Smith
Part II: Theoretical issues in classical sign-based linguistics
3. Monosemy, homonymy and polysemy
Wallis Reid
4. On the relationship between form and grammatical
meaning in the linguistic sign
Mark J. Elson
5. Revisiting the gap between meaning and message
Joseph Davis
Part III: Analyses on the level of the classic linguistic sign
6. The givenness of background
Zhuo ling
7. The relevance of relevance in linguistic analysis
Bob de longe
8. A sign-based analysis of English pronouns in conjoined expressions
Nancy Stern
9. Semantic oppositions in the Hebrew verb system
Noah Oron and Yishai Tobin
10. Grammaticization of'to'and'away'
Kumiko Ichihashi-Nakayama
Part IV" Below and above the level of the sign
11. Interaction of physiology and communication in the make-up
and distribution of stops in Lucknow Urdu
Shabana Hameed
12. Between phonology and lexicon
Yishai Tobin
13. Length of the extra-information phrase as a predictor of word order
Ricardo Otheguy, Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller, and Eulalia Canals
14. Word-order variation in spoken Spanish in constructions
with a verb, a direct object, and an adverb
Francisco Ocampo
15. Estrategias discursivas como parametros para el analisis lingtiistico
Angelita Martinez
Index of names
Index of subjects