Table of Contents
Preface
Part one: The ineffability of meaning
1. Unweaving a mystery
The common-place view of meaning
And the word is…meaning
2. The alchemist, the crucible, and the
ineffability of meaning
Language as a window on the mind
The body in the mind
Meaning is The Holy Grail
Meaning in mind, meaning in
language
Part two: Meaning in mind
3. Patterns in language, patterns in the
mind
Patterns in language
Patterns in the mind
All about events
Computers behaving badly, and
reluctant lovers
Foundations of meaning
Meaning in mind
4. Time is our fruit fly
It’s only Tuesday
A clock in the brain
The many faces of time
Time is our fruit fly
Time in hand (and ear)
So where does this leave us?
The mystery of time
5. Concepts body forth
The ghost in the machine
The language of the body
Concepts body forth
Minds without bodies
Laying the ghost to rest
6. The concept-making engine (or how to build a baby)
How to build a baby
The anatomy of an image-schema
The rationalist’s retort
Born to see structure in the world
The concept-making engine
Primary scenes of experience
7. The act of creation
A cognitive iceberg
The act of creation
Reducing complexity to human scale
The power of blending
The mystery of creativity
Part three: Meaning in language
8. Webs of words
Words are changelings
Webs of words
Does conceptual metaphor change
word meanings?
The illusion of semantic unity
The encyclopaedic nature of
meaning
The private life of words
9. Meaning in the mix
A design feature for human
meaning-making
The meaning of grammar
Parametric concepts
Meaning in the mix
The anatomy of language
Constructions in the mind
To return to the beginning
10. The cooperative species
On the way to deeper matters
Intelligence, tools and other minds
The cooperative species
Crossing the symbolic threshold
Towards abstract symbolic
reference
11. The crucible of language
The long and winding road
Becoming human
What happened?
How old is language?
The birth of grammar
The emergence of grammatical
complexity
The crucible of language and the
rise of meaning
Epilogue: The golden triangle
From the barbed, childish taunt on the school playground, to the eloquent sophistry of a lawyer prising open a legal loophole in a court of law, meaning arises each time we use language to communicate with one another. How we use language - to convey ideas, make requests, ask a favour, express anger, love, dismay - is of the utmost importance; indeed, linguistic meaning can be a matter of life and death. And yet, until relatively recently, the communicative value of language was relegated to all but the margins of scientific enquiry.
In The Crucible of Language Vyvyan Evans explains what we know, and what we do, when we communicate using language; he shows how linguistic meaning arises, where it comes from, and the way language enables us to convey the meanings that can move us to tears, bore us to death, or make us dizzy with delight. Meaning is, he argues, one of the final frontiers in the mapping of the human mind.
Published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Also published in Turkish.
Time to rethink what makes humans special. Review in the New Scientist.
Essay based on the book in The Conversation: "How a joke can help us unlock the mystery of meaning in language"
The Crucible of Language was named a 2016 Book of the Year by Cambridge University Press.
