Re: Sawilan Constructions

Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Ed Heil wrote:
>
> > Well, read _Foundations of Cognitive Grammar,_ Vol. I & II, and then
> > tell me if you still think it's a notational variant.
>
> Perhaps - but I first want to finish Palmers _Grammatical Relations_,
> Nichols _Diversity in Time and Space_, and LaPollas _Syntax_ is coming
> from Amazon, as is part II of Holms Pidgin. And I think I had quite
> enough after reading the paper - it's really not my cup of tea. I
> think I need my fix of interlinear examples ;-).
Well, then I sent you to the wrong place, since the paper is just an
outline of how the whole thing works and a comparison to other
theories, not an example of its *use.*

> When I was very young I was interested in Functional Grammar, even to
> the point of actually buying a book on it, and the FG claims are not much
> different from the CG claims - but it hasn't been a lot of use to me,
> and I wonder whether my experiences with CG would be different.
They might not be.  But I'm very interested in the *how* of language
use -- what is actually happening in our heads when we use language --
and not just in writing grammars.  (Yes, I know, it is the duty of all
young linguists to go out and record dying languages, and so on, but
I'm not a young linguist, I'm a person who is interested in how
language works.)  CG and related theories feed those needs far better
than anything else I've seen.

> > Or wait till I go back to school and become a *real* linguist
> > someday, and see whether in the process I realize that Cog. Gram. is
> > just a notational variant (since I've already read FOCG; that would
> > save you the trouble).
> >
>
> Now that's a deal - or when you find a grammar of an obscure language
> written using the CG framework, you can alert me, and I'll try to obtain
> and read it.
OK.  I don't think any complete grammars have been written in it yet,
but there are quite a number of papers which use the theory to attempt
to explicate phenomena that are intractable to explain in other
theories.

> > As for Sawila, all the Sawila that exists is in my Chanan Linguistics
> > paper and the poem "Sila Samu I."  However, Rob Nierse (whom I believe
> > you know) has taken an interest in expanding the language, and to that
> > end I have sent him all the information I have on it and the rules by
> > which I constructed words for it.   Perhaps he will take it new
> > places!
> >
>
> Yes, Rob had told me he had become active again, thanks to Sawila. His
> Duzgur was really a very nice language. Perhaps it would be a nice
> exercise to write another, more standard grammar of Sawila on the basis
> of the available evidence, contrast the two?
I'm not quite sure what a "more standard grammar" would look like,
but you're welcome to give it a shot.

> I really hope I haven't offended you, by the way - by being not very
> enthousiastic about CG, or the paper you pointed out to me (for which
> I'm grateful, since I wouldn't have seen it otherwise).
Only to the degree that a somewhat irrational enthusiast is always a
bit offended to find that normal people don't share his irrational
enthusiasm.  So you couldn't help it. :)

If I can trouble you with another short paper, this one fairly meaty
-- but again, it is not really a linguistics paper, it is more of a
cognitive science paper with serious linguistics applications.

It is an attempt to explicate the (fairly subtle & powerful)
mechanism which underlies the blending of words and constructions, and
claims that it is a general (not specifically linguistic), and
little-known and investigated cognitive phenomenon.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rohrer/turner.htm

Since writing this paper Turner and Fauconnier have gone on to do a
lot more work, some specifically linguistic, some not, on this
"blended space" phenomenon.  I referred to it in my master's thesis.

The brilliant paper that I may write some day will discuss blended
spaces in literary influence, using the story of Polyphemus as written
by Homer, Theocritus, and Ovid...

I quite seriously believe that the space-blending mechanism,
operating over an inventory of constructions, is exactly what is
behind human language.

Ed Heil edheil@postmark.net
1999 World Champion
On the Edge Collectible Card Game