Review by Choice Review
Seuren's most recent contribution to the field of linguistics sets out to lay the foundations for a research program that conceives of grammar as consisting in a semantically rich natural logic mediating propositional thoughts and systems responsible for the production of utterances. Seuren (Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands) devotes much of the book to clearing out space in the existing marketplace of ideas in order to make room for the research program envisaged here. In the early chapters he argues pace Whorf that language plays a more marginal role in structuring thought, one that does not affect central conceptual thinking and, pace linguistic relativism, that a general theory of language favors the sort of universalist methodology being proposed. The middle chapters are devoted to a preliminary sketch of the proposed program of research introducing the central idea of a natural logic modeled on, but distinct from, traditional logic and set theory. In the last chapters Seuren argues that the formalist project sketched in the previous chapters affords better explanations of the linguistic data that have challenged other theoretical frameworks, including Chomsky's hierarchy of production systems, Gricean pragmatics, and possible world semantics. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and above. A. L. Morton Saint Xavier University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
