Overview

This book provides a fresh and original approach to the 'ethnosyntax' concept - the proposition that the grammar of a language is intimately linked to the culture of its speakers. It focuses on three related questions: how far culture accounts for linguistic variation; how culture and grammar are connected; and to what extent one may constitute the other. It looks, for example, at the ways in which grammatical (including semantic) resources may be constrained by social values, and at the possible sociocultural significance of grammatical devices. The chapters add up to an important and timely contribution to the renewed debate among linguists and anthropologists on the relationship between grammar, culture, and cognition. The authors represent a wide range of research traditions, some of which have not until now explicitly addressed the grammar and culture issue. They consider the subject in the context of a wide range of cultures in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The clarity and accessibility of their writing, together with Dr Enfield's introduction to the field, make this not only a work or original value and impeccable scholarship, but an excellent modern textbook on a subject of enduring fascination in linguistics and anthropology.

Full Product Details

Author:   N. J. Enfield (, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.30cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 24.20cm
Weight:   0.615kg
ISBN:  

9780199249060

ISBN 10:   0199249067
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   04 July 2002
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

Part I: Ethnosyntax: Theory and Scope 1: N. J. Enfield: Ethnosyntax: Introduction 2: Anthony V. N. Diller and Wilaiwan Khanittanan: Syntactic Enquiry as a Cultural Activity 3: Cliff Goddard: Ethnosyntax, Ethnopragmatics, Sign-Functions, and Culture 4: John Newman: Culture, Cognition, and the Grammar of 'Give' Clauses Part II: Culture, Semantics, and Grammar 5: Wallace Chafe: Masculine and Feminine in the Northern Iroquoian Languages 6: Andrew Pawley: Using He and She for Inanimate Referents in English: Questions of Grammar and World View 7: Ronald W. Langacker: A Study in Unified Diversity: English and Mixtec Locatives 8: Anna Wierzbicka: Enlgish Causative Constructions in an Ethnosyntactic Perspective: Focusing on 'LET' Part III: Culture, Pragmatics, and Grammaticalisation 9: Kate Burridge: Changes within Pennsylvania German Grammar as Enactments of Anabaptist World View 10: N. J. Enfield: Cultural Logic and Syntactic Productivity: Associated Posture Constructions in Lao 11: Alan Rumsey: Aspects of Ku Waru Ethnosyntax and Social Life 12: Jane Simpson: From Common Ground to Syntactic Construction: Associated Path in Warlpiri

Reviews

an interesting collection ... timely ... a good collection from which teachers can draw readings from students towards methodological ends, as a means of getting them to think more clearly about cultural and cognitive connections within language, and to apply their observations to other bodies of data. The Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute

Author Information

N. J. Enfield is a staff member in the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. His work in semantic and grammatical description, contact and areal linguistics, gesture, and linguistic anthropology is based upon ongoing fieldwork in mainland Southeast Asia.

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