Language and its structures
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About the Book
This book examines linguistic structures from the perspective of Cognitive Grammar. This first chapter provides a general perspective: language structures are entrenched patterns of behavior (i.e. habits) that allow humans to communicate. Those patterns overlap massively and sanction (i.e. legitimize) the more specific structures that actually get spoken (or written or otherwise used for communication). This only works because patterns so closely similar as to be effectively the same have been established by usage in the minds of those we communicate with. Very little in a language had to be that way (and so language is not predictable), but very often it makes sense for it to be that way (it is reasonable, motivated, non-arbitrary). The chapter includes an introduction and the table of contents for the whole book as it currently exists.
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Pike Center for Integrative Scholarship is an initiative of SIL International that builds capacity for language development through scholarship. SIL works alongside ethnolinguistic communities as they discover how language development addresses the challenging areas of their daily lives—social, cultural, political, economic and spiritual.
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