Leonard Talmy

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Leonard Talmy is an American linguist . He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University at Buffalo . He is a student of Dan Slobin and created space and process semantics with others.

Live and act

Leonard Talmy studied at the University of California, Berkeley , where he earned a BA in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1972. His research area is cognitive linguistics , especially the typology and universals of the semantics of natural languages. He has focused his research on, among other things, American Indian languages and Yiddish .

On the foundations that were developed by Dan Slobin, Talmy founded a typological distinction of languages ​​with regard to the lexicalization of movement events or states. For Talmy (2000) the following terms can be used to describe the basic concepts of locomotion scenes:

  • Figure , which is expressed as a subject
  • Ground or the reference object
  • Motion or the motion event
  • Path , which is followed in the course of the movement
  • Men or fashion

Talmy took over the terms for figure and ground from Gestalt psychology , figure-ground-perception . The dichotomy of figure and background is an important syntactic principle for Talmy .

Verb-framed-languages Satellite-framed-languages
French language Spanish language German language English language
Il entra en courant . Entró corriendo . He ran in . He ran in .
Elle traversa la rivière à la nage . Atravesó el río a nado . They carried swam the river. She swam across the river.
Descendez du train on the gauche. Bajen del tren a la izquierda. Get off the train on the left . Step out of the train to the left.
Il ouvrit la porte d'un coup de pied . Abrió la puerta de una patada . He pushed the door with his foot on . He kicked the door open .
J ' allume la lumière. Prendo la luz. I 'm the light on . I turn the light on .
J ' éteins la lumière. Apago la luz. I 'm the light of . I turn the light off .

Talmy distinguishes between two types of languages: " satellite-framed " (such as the German and English languages ) and "verb-framed languages" (such as the Spanish and French languages ), for which he coined the aforementioned terminology in the 1980s . Such a satellite would be in English z. B. "into" (with "He ran into the house."), An example of a verbal description would be "Il est entré à la maison en courant" in French. Here, an indication - "en courant" - describes and emphasizes the way of movement (running).

Works (selection)

  • Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. 1: Concept structuring systems. Vol. 2: Typology and process in concept structuring. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2000, ISBN 0-262-70097-2
  • The Attention System of Language.
  • Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. Berkeley Working Papers in Linguistics, (1991), pp. 480-519.
  • Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition. COGNITIVE SCIENCE 12, 49-100 (1968) [1]

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Wildgen: What is cognitive linguistics? Development and current trends. Lecture series "Interdisciplinary Linguistics" November 9, 2005
  2. ↑ Christa Dürscheid : Syntax: Basics and Theories. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 3-525-26546-8 , p. 186
  3. ↑ Till Wörfel: How people move. Language and space between grammar and cognition. Linguistics in the Castle, IV. Workshop 'Raum', 18.-20. June 2010  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www2.hu-berlin.de  
  4. ↑ Raphael Berthele: Ort Und Weg = Verbal References to Objects in Space in Varieties of German, Rhaeto-Romanic, and French. Vol. 16 of Linguistics, Impulse & Tendencies, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 3-1101-8879-1 , p. 25 f.
personal data
SURNAME Talmy, Leonard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American linguist, professor of linguistics and philosophy
DATE OF BIRTH around 1941