Cognitive Foundations of Grammar

by Bernd Heine

Overview

The main function of language is to convey meaning. The question of why language is structured the way it is, Heine here argues, has therefore to be answered first of all with reference to this function. Linguistic explanations in terms of other exponents of language structure, e.g. of syntax, are likely to highlight peripheral or epi-phenomenal rather than central characteristics of language structure. This book uses basic findings on grammaticalization processes to describe the role of cognitive forces in shaping grammar. It provides students with an introductory treatment of a field of linguistics that has developed recently and is rapidly expanding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195356205
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/27/1997
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Bernd heine is Professor of African Studies (Afrikanistik) and Director of the Institute for African Studies at the University of Cologne in Germany. He has published thirty books, including Possession: Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization (1997), The Mukogodo Maasai: An Ethnobotanical Survey (co-author, 1994), Auxiliaries: Cognitive Forces and Grammaticalization (Oxford, 1993), and Grammaticalization: A Conceptual Framework (co-author, 1991).

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	xiii
1.	Modalities and Intensional Languages	3
Appendix 1A	Discussion	24
Appendix 1B	Smullyan on Modality and Description	36
2.	Iterated Deontic Modalities	39
3.	Essentialism in Modal Logic	45
4.	Essential Attribution	53
Appendix 4A	Strict Implication, Deducibility, and the Deduction Theorem	71
5.	Quantification and Ontology	75
6.	Classes, Collections, Assortments, and Individuals	89
7.	Does the Principle of Substitutivity Rest on a Mistake?	101
8.	Nominalism and the Substitutional Quantifier	111
9.	Moral Dilemmas and Consistency	125
10.	Rationality and Believing the Impossible	143
11.	Spinoza and the Ontological Proof	163
12.	On Some Post-1920s Views of Russell on Particularity, Identity, and Individuation	177
13.	Possibilia and Possible Worlds	189
14.	A Backward Look at Quine's Animadversions on Modalities	215
15.	Some Revisionary Proposals about Belief and Believing	233
	Index	257