Mental Spaces in Grammar
Mental Spaces in Grammar
Eve Sweetser, University of California, Berkeley
Conditional constructions have long fascinated linguists, grammarians and philosophers. In this pioneering new study, Barbara Dancygier and Eve Sweetser offer a new descriptive framework for the study of conditionality, broadening the range of richly described conditional constructions. They explore theoretical issues such as the mental-space-building processes underlying conditional thinking and the form-meaning relationship involved in expressing conditionality. Using a broad range of attested English conditional constructions, the book examines inter-constructional relationships. Within the framework of Mental Spaces Theory, shared parameters of meaning are shown to be relevant to conditional constructions generally, as well as related temporal and causal constructions. This significant contribution to the field will be welcomed by a wide range of researchers in theoretical and cognitive linguistics.
Reviews & endorsements
"The book is welcome and long-awaited...[Mental Spaces in Grammar] gives a uniquely comprehensive account of the richness of the field and the cognitive dimensions that are involved. The authors (p. 27) describe the book as 'a tour of English conditional constructions' -- a promise that they live up to with flying colours."
-Peter Harder, University of Copenhagen, Functions of Language
Product details
March 2009Paperback
9780521103244
316 pages
229 × 152 × 18 mm
0.47kg
20 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Conditional constructions, mental spaces and semantic compositionality
- 2. Prediction, alternativity and epistemic stance
- 3. Tense, epistemic distance and embedded spaces
- 4. Future and present forms in conditional constructions
- 5. Non-alternatives and alternatives: mental spaces in different domains
- 6. Then and even if: mental-space deixis and referential uniqueness
- 7. Clause order and space building: if, because, unless and except if
- 8. Uniqueness and negative stance: only if and if only
- 9. Coordinate constructions and conditional meaning
- 10. The door-scraper in the Wild Wood: conditional constructions and frame-based space building
- References
- Indexes.
