Publications

Publication details [#1831]

Amberber, Mengistu. 2007. The Language of Memory in a Crosslinguistic Perspective (Human Cognitive Processing 21). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. xi, 277 pp.

Abstract

This book offers, for the first time, a detailed comparative study of how speakers of different languages express memory reports. While there is a robust body of psycholinguistic research that bears on how memory and language are related, there is no comparative study of how speakers themselves conceptualize memory as reflected in their use of language to talk about memory. This book addresses a key question: how do speakers of different languages talk about the experience of having prior experiences coming to mind (‘remembering’) or failing to come to mind (‘forgetting’)? A complex array of answers is provided through detailed grammatical and semantic investigation of different languages, including English, German, Polish, Russian and also a number of non-Indo-European languages, Amharic, Cree, Dalabon, Korean, and Mandarin. In addition, the book calls for a broader interdisciplinary engagement by urging that cognitive semantics be integrated with other sciences of memory. (Publisher Book Description) Table of contents This is a provisional table of contents, and subject to changes. 1. Introduction: The language of memory Mengistu Amberber 2. Is "remember" a universal human concept? "Memory" and culture Anna Wierzbicka 3. Language, memory, and concepts of memory: Semantic diversity and scientific psychology John Sutton 5. The conceptualisation of remembering and forgetting in Russian Anna Zalizniak 6. A Lexicographic portrait of forgetting Cliff Goddard 7. 'Memorisation', learning and cultural cognition: The notion of bèi ('auditory memorisation') in the written Chinese tradition Zhengdao Ye 8. A corpus-based analysis of German (sich) erinnern Andrea C. Schalley and Sandra Kuhn 9. "Do you remember where you put the key?": The Korean model of remembering Kjung-Joo Yoon 10. The language of memory in East Cree Marie-Odile Junker 11. Remember, remind, and forget in Amharic Mengistu Amberber