Gilles Fauconnier & Eve Sweetser (eds.),Space, worlds, and grammar.
Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 355 Pp.
Masayoshi Shibatani & Sandra Thompson (eds.),Grammatical constructions:
their form and meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+345.
Several years ago a volume of articles appeared called The view from Building
20 (Hale & Keyser 1993). As suggested by the title, the contributions
reflected trends guiding the theoretical paradigm pre-eminently associated
with MIT. After reading this collection, a colleague quipped that she
wondered how well the view from Building 20 accorded with the broad
research world beyond it. In this connection, the two books under review
represent perspectives on language analysis which encourage one to pause
and consider the present theoretical landscape in linguistics, and, less
directly, the role of linguistics within modern cognitive science. Among their
other merits, both books provide a rich and useful illustration of some of the
perspectives on language analysis outside of Building 20. In doing so, they
also help to define a more interesting research landscape than that usually
characterized as an opposition between ‘formalists’ versus ‘cognitive/functionalists’.