Eve Sweetser
Encyclopedia
Eve Sweetser is a professor of linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley
. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Berkeley in 1984, and has been a member of the Berkeley faculty since that time. She has served as Director of Berkeley's undergraduate Cognitive Science Program and is currently Director of the Celtic Studies Program.
Sweetser has published articles on topics including modality, polysemy, metaphor, conditional constructions, grammatical meaning, performativity, gesture, and Medieval Welsh poetics. Some of her more accessible work focuses on gesture
, but her other research interests include historical linguistics
, semantics
, metaphor
and iconicity
, subjectivity
and viewpoint, and the Celtic
language family.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Berkeley in 1984, and has been a member of the Berkeley faculty since that time. She has served as Director of Berkeley's undergraduate Cognitive Science Program and is currently Director of the Celtic Studies Program.
Sweetser has published articles on topics including modality, polysemy, metaphor, conditional constructions, grammatical meaning, performativity, gesture, and Medieval Welsh poetics. Some of her more accessible work focuses on gesture
Gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body...
, but her other research interests include historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
, semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
, metaphor
Conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...
and iconicity
Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
, subjectivity
Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
and viewpoint, and the Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
language family.
Partial bibliography
- (1990)From etymology to pragmatics : metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure Eve Sweetser. Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press.
- (1991) From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Eve E. Sweetser. CambridgeCambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
: Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, reprint edition. ISBN 0-521-42442-9. - (1996a)Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar. Gilles FauconnierGilles FauconnierGilles Fauconnier is a French linguist, researcher in cognitive science, and author, currently working in the U.S.. He is a professor at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Cognitive Science....
& Eve Sweetser, editors. Chicago & LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
: The University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago PressThe University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
. ISBN 0-226-23924-1 (paperback). - (1996b) 'Changes in figures and changes in grounds: A note on change predicates, mental spaces, and scalar norms.' Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 3:3 (Sept. 1996 - Special Issue on Cognitive Linguistics), pp. 75–86. (Japanese journal title: Ninchi Kagaku - Tokushu: Ninchi Gengogaku)
- (1997a) A Celtic florilegium : studies in memory of Brendan O Hehir edited by Kathryn A. Klar, Eve E. Sweetser, and Claire Thomas.
- (1997b)Lexical and syntactical constructions and the construction of meaning edited by Marjolijn Verspoor, Kee Dong Lee, Eve Sweetser.
- (2005)Mental spaces in grammar : conditional constructions Barbara Dancygier and Eve Sweetser.
- (2006a)With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time Rafael E. Núñez, Eve Sweetser. Cognitive Science 30: 1–49.
- (2006b) 'Looking at space to study mental spaces: Co-speech gesture as a crucial data source in cognitive linguistics.' In Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Irene Mittleberg, Seana Coulson and Michael Spivey (eds.), Methods in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 203-226.
- (2006c) 'Putting the “same” meaning together from different pieces.' In S. Marmaridou and K. Nikiforidou (eds.), Reviewing Linguistic Thought: Perspectives into the 21st Century. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- (2006d) 'Negative spaces: Levels of negation and kinds of spaces.' In Stéphanie Bonnefille & Sébastien Salbayre (eds.), Proceedings of the conference "Negation: Form, figure of speech, conceptualization". Publication du groupe de recherches anglo-américaines de l'Université de Tours. Tours: Publications universitaires François Rabelais.
- (2006e) Personal and interpersonal gesture spaces: Functional contrasts in language and gesture. In A. Tyler, Y. Kim, and M. Takada (Eds.), Language in the Context of Use: Cognitive and Discourse Approaches to Language and Language Learning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- (2008)Style and Patterns of Blending . Sweetser, Eve. Style and Patterns of Blending(October 19, 2008). 9th Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language (CSDL9). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1293687
- (2009a) Myriam Bouveret and Eve Sweetser. 'Multi-frame semantics, metaphoric extensions and grammar.' BLS 35.
- (2009b) Karen Sullivan and Eve Sweetser. 2009. Is "Generic is Specific" a Metaphor?" in Fey Parrill, Vera Tobin and Mark Turner (eds.), Meaning, Form and Body. (Selected papers from the 2008 CSDL meeting). Stanford CA: CSLI Publications.
- (2009c) 'What does it mean to compare Language and Gesture? Modalities and Contrasts.' In Jiansheng Guo et al. (eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Studies in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin. New York: Psychology Press. 357-366.