שפה ומשמעות: סיפור הולדתה ופריחתה של תורת המשמעים (Language and meaning: The birth and growth of cognitive semantics) (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: שפה ומשמעות: סיפור הולדתה ופריחתה של תורת המשמעים (Language and meaning: The birth and growth of cognitive semantics) Rivka Bliboim שפה ומשמעות: סיפור הולדתה ופריחתה של תורת המשמעים (Language and meaning: The birth and growth of cognitive semantics). By Tamar Sovran. Pp. 209. Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 2006. Paper. Online: http://www.kotar.co.il/KotarApp/Viewer.aspx?nBookID=96624633. "Only one who understands a subject thoroughly is able to convey it with a simple and clear style." This was a guideline for me, given by my first teacher Professor Uzi Ornan. Indeed, this book is characterized by its clarity and reader friendliness. The book invites the reader on a highly enjoyable journey to cognitive semantics. The book's main asset is its organization of concepts, notions, ideas, and terms of various linguistic trends. Linguists and educated readers who might stray among the abundance of linguistic theories and ideas, among the many thinkers, and among the recent developments [End Page 422] and branching of each theory will not do so here. In an exploding world of scientific knowledge, it is impossible to master every discipline deeply and widely. Normally a scholar knows "a lot about a little"—that is everything he should know in his domain of knowledge and masters the relevant theories to his research. This book enables one to know at least "a little about a lot." The author states that the book intends to close the knowledge gap caused by the rapid expansion of linguistic theories. Sovran provides an interested reader with a map that enables her to find her way, to navigate, and even to deepen his acquaintance with linguistic theories if he chooses to do so. The book not only organizes the main trends in linguistics and their prominent proponents, it also innovates. It discusses formal linguistics, generative linguistics, and especially various new directions in cognitive linguistics. Moreover, this book portrays the interface between linguistics and neighboring disciplines: philosophy and logic, sociology, psychology, and neurology. All these contributed to modern linguistics and were nourished by it. Sovran chose to write the book in Hebrew so it can address Hebrew language scholars and philologists as well as other interested readers. By doing so, she narrows the existing gap between "Hebrew Language" and "Linguistics"—two disciplines that usually have separate research agendas. Employing the very metaphor that Sovran uses, we see a possibility for reconciling the two disciplines and having them draw upon each other. The first section of the book deals with problems in the field of the theory of meaning. The author discusses the contributions of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Descartes, and the rationalist and empiricist approaches represented by Locke and Hume. She also mentions here the structuralist De Saussure and Frege, the mathematician and father of philosophy of language. Sovran shows how Chomsky was influenced by his predecessors and discusses the theory of speech acts and its main theorists, Austin and Searle and the important contribution of Grice. In the second chapter of this section, traditional grammar and its main interest in phonology and morphology is discussed and the generative turn created by Chomsky and the central and autonomic place syntax has played in his theory. Jackendoff, Chomsky's critic-successor and his theory of conceptual semantics, is mentioned here as well as a discussion of the emergence of cognitive semantics. Here we see the important role of Jakobson and the Prague school as well as generative semantic and the pioneering semantic work of Leech and Lyons. Sovran also summarizes the state of research in Israel, the first semantic books written in Hebrew, some prominent scholars such as Nir and Sarfatti, and the special contribution of Rubinstein. The second section contains many topics, among them formal logic theory, the truth value of sentences, possible worlds, comparative investigation [End Page 423] of different languages, language games, language as a game, and the influence of structuralism on the study of meaning. Frege was the first to distinguish between sense and reference. Russell, his successor introduced into the philosophy of language mathematical and logical modes of thinking. Here, Sovran discusses her main field of interest. She presents the concept of semantic fields, shows how the lexicon is organized, and discusses the influence of diachronic linguistics on synchronic linguistics. Kadari was...