Publications

Publication details [#19395]

Fónagy, Ivan. 2001. Languages Within Language: An evolutive approach. (Foundations of Semiotics 13). John Benjamins. xiv + 828 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English
ISBN
90 272 3283 0

Annotation

There is little hope of reconstructing by means of comparative or typological studies a "lingua adamica" essentially different from present-day languages. The distant preverbal past is however still present in live speech. Phonetic, syntactic and semantic rule transgressions, far from being products of a deficient output, are governed by a universal iconic apparatus, a sort of ‘anti-grammar’ or ‘proto-grammar’ which enables the speaker and the poet to express preconscious and subconscious mental contents that could not be conveyed by means of the grammar of any language. Secondary messages, generated by the proto-grammar are integrated into the primary grammatical message. The two messages whose structural and semantic divergence represents a chronological distance of hundreds of thousands of years, constitute a dialectic unity which characterize natural languages. The evolutive approach offers a different, perhaps better understanding of questions related to dynamic synchrony, vocal and verbal style, poetic language, language change.