Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Volume 1: Concept Structuring Systems (Language, Speech, and Communication)

In this two-volume set, Talmy approaches the question of how language organizes conceptual material both at a general level and by analyzing a crucial set of particular conceptual domains: space and time, motion and location, causation and force interaction, and attention and viewpoint.

One of a two-volume set defining the field of cognitive semantics. Leonard Talmy approaches the question of how language organizes conceptual material both at a general level and by analyzing a crucial set of particular conceptual domains: space and time, motion and location, causation and force interaction, and attention and viewpoint. Talmy maintains that these are among the most fundamental parameters by which language structures conception. By combining these conceptual domains into an integrated whole, Talmy shows, we advance our understanding of the overall conceptual and semantic structure of natural language. Volume one examines the fundamental systems by which language shapes concepts.

Leonard Talmy is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Director Emeritus of the Center for Cognitive Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is the author of Toward a Cognitive Semantics, volume 1, Concept Structuring Systems, and volume 2, Typology and Process in Concept Structuring (MIT Press).