LINGUIST List 10.792

Thu May 20 1999

Books: Caucasian

Editor for this issue: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar <aristarlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. LINCOM EUROPA, Person, Klasse, Kongruenz - OstKaukasischen

PERSON, KLASSE, KONGRUENZ - 
FRAGMENTE EINER KATEGORIALTYPOLOGIE DES EINFACHEN SATZES IN DEN
OSTKAUKASISCHEN SPRACHEN

Wolfgang Schulze, Ludwig-Maximilian-Universitaet M\252nchen

The series "Person, Klasse, Kongruenz - Fragmente einer
Kategorialtypologie des einfachen Satzes in den ostkaukasischen
Sprachen" will be published in seven volumes. The series is devoted to
the morphosyntax, morphosemantics, and pragmatics of the 'simple
sentence' in the about 30 autochthonous East Caucasian languages. Based
on a comprehensive description of the relevant paradigmatic
architectures (characterized in technical terms by modest to strong,
mainly suffixing agglutination with tendencies towards fusional and
polysynthetic procedures) the explanation of these architectures
together with their co-paradigmatization will be approached with the
help of a language and grammar theoretical frame work that is labeled
"Grammar of Scenes and Scenarios" (GSS).

GSS hypothesizes that 'simple sentence' structures - themselves the most
basic type of linguistic-communicatively oriented processing of event
images - represent the kernel of prototypically organized language
systems. Because of this hypothesis the description and explanation of
those structures gain specific importance. 
GSS tries to explain the grammar of a language on the basis of the
cognitive and (cognition based) communicative behavior of an individual
integrated in a collective. This behavior is dominated by massive
hypotheses about the self-attachment to a collective; it represents a
strongly ritualized but construing interaction of the individual and
environmental stimuli which corresponds to the habitus of a collective
and which takes place in form of the tacit (poiematic) and/or articulate
(pragmatic) activation of an acquired (and traditional) knowledge system
as an communicative reaction on event images.

Linguistic behavior represents the individual reaction to a collective
communicative and cognitive standard which itself is predominantly
historical in nature. Hence GSS argues that language as a 'metaphysical'
phenomenon owns strong anachronistic features; it follows that
functional and semantic aspects of language architecture are mainly to
be explained with the help of a diachronic perspective (though the
potential to adopt newly established communicative and cognitive
routines plays an important role in this respect, too). 
The theoretical frame work underlying GSS can be described as a strong
diachronic model that owes much to holistic cognitivism, constructivism,
and pragmatism. Modularity is only accepted as a secondary
'construction' of users about their language. Rather it is the
structural coupling of adequate network components that has to be
described as primary: This coupling results in language as a complex
'cognitive event' - as an emergent activity of this polycentric
complex. 

According to GSS the linguistic reaction to event images heavily depends
on the cognitive and communicative defaults of such events. It is
assumed that there is a (in parts strongly metaphorized) correlation
between the cognitive and communicative architecture of linguistically
oriented event imaging (Scenes - or (textually coupled) Scenarios) and
their grammaticalization that is based on the Operating System of a
given language. The architectures of scenes (and cenarios) represent
strongly ritualized systems that are metaphorized from space and time
experience and the embodiment of environmental experience. These systems
are characterized by parameters of figure-ground relations and their
location in the deictic, communicative, and pragmatic space and time and
by further strategies of modality. Their linguistic instantiation as
operating systems that control the dynamic organization of linguistic
paradigms establishes the typological parameters relevant for the
explanation of the architecture of 'simple sentences'. Their
diversification in terms of different and prototypically organized
grammatical systems is mainly explained as the particularization of
universal techniques of categorization within the organization of scenes
and scenarios that is conditioned by history and transmitted by
collective experience.

The series "Person, Klasse, Kongruenz" (PKK) aims at the explanation of
East Caucasian techniques to grammaticalize scenes and scenarios with
the help of a 'Categorial Typology'. One objective is to establish a
typological oriented description of the underlying, prototypically
organized operating systems. In addition to the description of the
synchronic architectures in a formal and functional perspective the
diachronic aspect plays a major role that serves as a basis for the
explanation of the system internal dynamics. In this respect, the series
PKK can also be regarded as a try to reconstruct the operating system of
both Proto-East Caucasian and the intermediate proto-languages.
The second major objective is to depict the system transcendent
conditions of East Caucasian operating systems both synchronically and
diachronically with respect to the general assumptions of GSS. The
results also serve to evaluate the deductive claims of the language and
grammar theory that underlies GSS.

On the one hand, the series PKK sees itself as the sketch of a
'constructive' model of language. Hence it is directed at an audience
that is interested in problems of language and grammar theory as well as
in typological argumentation. On the other hand, the empirics of PKK
addresses an audience that is specifically interested in the
architecture of the autochthonous East Caucasian language and in its
embedding in the frame work of a General Typology.[written in German]

ISBN 3 89586 184 7 (Part 1). 
Ca. 360 pp. USD 96.25 / DM 128.00 / \163 58.20. 

ISBN 3 89586 552 4 (Part 2).
Ca. 280 pp. USD 60 / DM 88.00 / \163 32. 

Info: LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany; 
FAX : +49 89 3148909; 
LINCOM.EUROPAt-online.de; 
http://home.t-online.de/home/LINCOM.EUROPA

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1999 Contributors