• Maillat Didier

• Maillat Didier

One of the most impressive feasts in a natural language like English is to be found in its ability to describe and translate the cognitive complexity of spatial configurations into a linear string of words. It is also a rather puzzling fact of the English language that we use idiomatic expressions like 'to be in love' or 'to be on top of things' when really we are neither in nor on anything. How does English capture complex notions like distance, directions, spatial relations; and to what extent does it differ from other languages? How do you talk about and conceptualise sizes? Why do we spatialise non-spatial domains, as when we talk of 'the past being behind us'? Why is it that your memory of a speeding car can be affected by the wording used in a question? Can we explain why gender seem to have a spatial dimension too? In this course, it will soon become clear that the study of space in language touches upon some of the most central issues of human language and cognition.

• Understanding of the theoretical concepts
• Application of crosslinguistic comparison to capture the specificities of English
• Ability to use linguistic evidence in order to understand conceptual and cognitive processes
• Theoretical and methodological tools used to analyse the English language

A bibliography and a list of assigned readings will be made available in the first week of the semester.