Eve E. Sweetser
Professor

semantics, syntax, historical linguistics, Celtic languages, speech act theory, metaphor theory, semantic change, grammaticalization, grammatical meaning, gesture

Groups: Language & Cognition, Syntax & Semantics, Language & Historical Context

Contact information

Email: sweetser@berkeley.edu

Personal statement

Ph.D., Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, 1984. Her primary research interests include historical linguistics, semantics and meaning changes, the semantics of grammatical constructions, cognitive linguistics, metaphor and iconicity, subjectivity and viewpoint, the relationship between language and gesture, and the Celtic language family. Her 1990 book, FROM ETYMOLOGY TO PRAGMATICS (Cambridge University Press), explores generalizations about synchronic and diachronic patterns of meaning in the areas of model verbs and conjunctions. Her 2005 book, Mental Spaces in Grammar: Conditional Constructions, was coauthored with Barbara Dancygier, and examines the syntax and semantics of a wide range of English conditional constructions, using a Mental Spaces model of semantics. She teaches in (and has directed) both UCB’s undergraduate Cognitive Science Program and the undergraduate Celtic Studies Program. She has published articles on topics including modality, polysemy, metaphor, conditional constructions, grammatical meaning, performativity, gesture, and Medieval Welsh poetics.

Selected publications

1996.  Changes in figures and changes in grounds: A note on change predicates, mental spaces, and scalar norms.  Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 3:3 (Sept. 1996 - Special Issue on Cognitive Linguistics), pp. 75-86.  (Japanese journal title: Ninchi Kagaku - Tokushu: Ninchi Gengogaku)

1997.  Role and individual readings of change predicates.  In Language and  Conceptualization, eds. J. Nuyts and E. Pederson.  Oxford University  Press.

1997.  (COAUTHORED with Barbara Dancygier)  Then in conditional     sentences.  Cognitive Linguistics 8:2, 109-136.

1998.  Regular metaphoricity in gesture: bodily-based models of speech interaction.  In Actes du 16e Congrès International des Linguistes (CD-    ROM), Elsevier.

1999. Compositionality and blending: semantic composition in a cognitively realistic framework.  In Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope and Methodology, eds. Gisela Redeker and Theo Janssen.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  pp. 129-162.

2000  (COAUTHORED with Barbara Dancygier)  Constructions with if, since and because: Causality, epistemic stance, and clause order.  In Cause, condition, concession, contrast, eds.  Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Bernd Kortmann.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  pp. 111-142.

2001. Blended spaces and performativity. Cognitive Linguistics 11:3/4, 305-333.

2004 “The suburbs of your good pleasure”: Cognition, culture and the bases of metaphoric structure.  In G. Bradshaw, T. Bishop and M. Turner (eds.), The Shakespearean International Yearbook, vol. 4: Shakespeare studies today.  Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing.  24-55.

2004 (COAUTHORED with Fey Parrill) What we mean by meaning: Conceptual integration in gesture analysis and transcription. Gesture 4:2, 197-219.

2005.  Figurative harmony: Convergences and tensions among metaphors and metonyms for the heroic society in Early Welsh poetry.  In Joseph Falaky Nagy and Leslie Ellen Jones (eds.), Heroic Poets and Poetic Heroes in Celtic Tradition (Celtic Studies Association of North American Yearbook, vols. 3-4). Dublin: Four Courts Press. 344-358.

2005.  Whose rhyme is whose reason?: Sound and sense in Cyrano de Bergerac.  Language and literature 15(1): 29-54.

2006.  (COAUTHORED with Rafael E. Nuñez) Aymara, where the future is behind you: convergent evidence from language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial realizations of time.  Cognitive Science 30, 410-450.

2006.  Looking at space to study mental spaces: Co-speech gesture as a crucial data source.  In  Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Irene Mittleberg, Seana Coulson and Michael Spivey (eds.), Methods in Cognitive Linguistics.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 203-226.

2006 (in press) Putting the “same” meaning together from different pieces.  In S. Marmaridou and K. Nikiforidou (eds.), Reviewing Linguistic Thought: Perspectives into the 21st Century.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

2006.  Negative spaces: Levels of negation and kinds of spaces.  In Stéphanie Bonnefille & Sébastien Salbayre (eds.), Proceedings of the conference "Negation: Form, figure of speech, conceptualization". Publication du groupe de recherches anglo-américaines de l'Université de Tours. Tours: Publications universitaires François Rabelais.

2006  Personal and interpersonal gesture spaces: Functional contrasts in language and gesture.  In A. Tyler, Y. Kim, and M. Takada (Eds.), Language in the Context of Use: Cognitive and Discourse Approaches to Language and Language Learning.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

2005.  Coauthored with Barbara Dancygier. Mental Spaces in Grammar: Conditional Constructions.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.