Grammar from the Human Perspective: Case, Space and Person in Finnish



Publication date: 2006
Number of pages: 280
Format: PDF
Size: 1,6 MB

The papers of this book investigate how grammar codes the subjective viewpoint of human language users, that is, how grammar reflects human conceptualization. One of the basic tenets of Cognitive Grammar is that between a linguistic expression and its extralinguistic referent there must be human conceptualization — we interpret the extralinguistic entity or situation in a particular way when we choose a linguistic expression with which to refer to it. As Langacker puts it, “Our concern is with conceptualizations evoked as the meanings of linguistic expressions, in which case the primary conceptualizers are the speaker and the addressee[...]