Walter HIRTLE, Language in the Mind. An Introduction to Guillaume's Theory, Montréal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007, 288 p.
ISBN 0773532633
RÉSUMÉ
The work of Gustave Guillaume (1883-1960) has had an importantinfluence on French linguistics. But his theory of psychomechanics,which views language as systematic and semiotic, is not well known inthe English-speaking world. Language in the Mind is the first detailedstudy of Guillaumian linguistics in English.
Guillaume sees the word as the link between language as potential andas actual discourse. Meaning is both the representation of thespeaker's momentary experience and the determining factor in the theword's use in discourse. Walter Hirtle illustrates Guillaume's generalprinciples with examples drawn from contemporary English grammar anduses comparisons with other approaches, especially cognitivelinguistics, to situate Guillaume's distinctive view of language asessentially a mental phenomenon.
TABLE DES MATIÈRES
Preface ix
1 Introduction 3
2 Language and the Ability to Speak 18
3 Words, Words, Words 30
4 Meaning: Representing Experience 51
5 A System for Representing 66
6 The Method of Analysis in Psychosystematics 85
7 The Substantive: A System of Subsystems 106
8 The Substantive and the System of the Parts of Speech 120
9 Some and Any 140
10 The System of the Verb 155
11 Auxiliaries: How Do They Help? 174
12 The Proof of the Pudding 189
13 The Noun Phrase 201
14 Concord, Discord, and the Incidence of Verb to Subject 213
15 Thought and Language 225
16 Conclusion 237
Glossary 243
BIOGRAPHIE
Hirtle is the former director of the Fonds Gustave Guillaume, anarchive of 60,000 manuscript pages of the theorist's work, which ishoused at Laval University, the principal centre for the study ofpsychomechanics.