LINGUIST List 13.39

Wed Jan 9 2002

Books: Philosophy of Language/Semantics

Editor for this issue: Richard John Harvey <richardlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Christine Sosa, Philosophy of Lang/Semantics: ARISTOTE ET LE LEXIQUE DE L'ESPACE

CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of:

ARISTOTE ET LE LEXIQUE DE L'ESPACE: RENCONTRES ENTRE LA PHYSIQUE 
GRECQUE ET LA LINGUISTIQUE COGNITIVE: Claude Vandeloise (Louisiana 
State University); paper ISBN: 1-57586-250-6, $30.00, 325 pages, text 
in French. CSLI Publications 2001. 
http://cslipublications.stanford.edu, email: pubscsli.stanford.edu.

To order this book, contact CSLI Publications at 
pubscsli.stanford.edu or order online at 
http://cslipublications.stanford.edu. (click on �ditions CSLI or use 
the search feature to locate the book, then order).

Book description (in English):
With the present monograph, Aristote et le Lexique de l'Espace,
Vandeloise both continues his exploration of this vital question and
also initiates a broader, more basic investigation of thought and
meaning in the spatial domain. This innovative work is novel in its
conception and elegant in its execution. Three main concerns are
productively brought together in a mutually revelatory fashion:
besides French locatives, these include the tacit naive physics
presupposed by the meanings of linguistic elements, as well as the
building blocks and intrinsic organization of our conceptualizations
in the physical realm. Perhaps surprisingly, and certainly
provocatively, it is in the physics of Aristotle and his commentators
that Vandeloise sees a correspondence between a representation of the
physical world and the conceptual system underlying the linguistic
description of space.


Book description (in French):
Ce livre �tudie le vocabulaire spatial dans la Physique d'Aristote et 
dans les Commentaires qu'elle a suscit�s jusqu'au sixi�me si�cle 
apr�s J.C. chez Porphyre, Simplicius et Philopon. La physique na�ve 
d�velopp�e dans leur oeuvre �claire l'�tude des termes spatiaux dans 
les langues modernes. Aristote se r�v�le ainsi le premier lexicologue 
de l'espace.

La premi�re partie du livre est une longue exp�rience mentale qui 
conduit d'un monde aussi �l�mentaire que celui de Parm�nide � un 
monde suffisamment sophistiqu� pour n�cessiter l'usage de tout le 
vocabulaire spatial du fran�ais. A chaque �tape, l'enrichissement du 
monde est mis en parall�le avec celui du vocabulaire. Dans la seconde 
partie, les r�sultats de cette exp�rience sont mis � profit dans 
trois analyses s�mantiques d�taill�es consacr�es au nom place, � la 
pr�position dans et au verbe toucher.