Publishing Partner: Cambridge University Press CUP Extra Publisher Login
amazon logo
More Info


New from Cambridge University Press!

ad

From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod


Write better papers faster with Questia!

Book Information

   
Sun Image

Title: Kaleidoscopic Grammar
Subtitle: Investigation into the Nature of Binarism
Written By: Junichi Toyota
Description:

Please Note: This is a new version of a previously announced text.

This monograph deals with binary features in the evolution of human civilisation and cognition, with a particular focus on language. Our life is surrounded by various pairs of binary features, and this is termed binarism in this work. Binarism is pervasive, ranging from nature (biological) to culture (anthropological and archaeological) and, without a doubt, to language. Binarim serves as a good base for further development, and as a system becomes more complex, binarism is broken and more complex systems involving third or fourth options emerge. In the case of language, the earliest human language, as argued here, consisted only of nouns; however, these nouns had a distinction between active and inactive nouns. The active nouns referred to action or productivity, which later turned into verbs and inactive nouns stayed as nouns. It was during this period that language became equipped with a base to develop further with a distinction between noun and verb. This is the onset of various changes towards the complexity of modern languages, essentially, kaleidoscopic grammar. Various changes in language stem from binarism, and as languages evolve, the pairs such as noun v. verb are broken and a grammatical system in general becomes more complex. The importance of binarism is not restricted to language and it is a powerful tool in evolution at different levels. The pervasiveness of binarism is a specific feature that should not be overlooked in evolution as a whole.

Publication Year: 2010
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Review: Become a Reviewer
BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
Syntax
History of Linguistics
Cognitive Science

Versions:
Format: Hardback
ISBN-13: 9781443814461
Pages: 199
Prices: U.K. £ 34.99