What can wordplay--as understood in the broadest sense--teach us about language, its functions, characteristics, structure, and workings? Using Lewis Carroll's Alice as a starting point, Yanguello takes the reader on a vivid and unconventional voyage into the world(s) of language, charting the major themes of linguistics along the way. This is an entertaining and original introduction to the nature of language that will appeal to students and teachers alike.

An invaluable source of information on the personalities and organizations of the literary world.

An exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. In Imaginary Languages, Marina Yaguello explores the history and practice of inventing languages, from religious speaking in tongues to politically utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. She looks for imagined languages that are autonomous systems, complete unto themselves and meant for communal use; imaginary, and therefore unlike both natural languages and historically attested languages; and products of an individual effort to lay hold of language. Inventors of languages, Yaguello writes, are madly in love: they love an object that belongs to them only to the extent that they also share it with a community. Yaguello investigates the sources of imaginary languages, in myths, dreams, and utopias. She takes readers on a tour of languages invented in literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including that in More’s Utopia, Leibniz’s “algebra of thought,” and Bulwer-Lytton’s linguistic fiction. She examines the linguistic fantasies (or madness) of Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr and Swiss medium Hélène Smith; and considers the quest for the true philosophical language. Yaguello finds two abiding (and somewhat contradictory) forces: the diversity of linguistic experience, which stands opposed to unifying endeavors, and, on the other hand, features shared by all languages (natural or not) and their users, which justifies the universalist hypothesis. Recent years have seen something of a boom in invented languages, whether artificial languages meant to facilitate international communication or imagined languages constructed as part of science fiction worlds. In Imaginary Languages (an updated and expanded version of the earlier Les Fous du langage, published in English as Lunatic Lovers of Language), Yaguello shows that the invention of language is above all a passionate, dizzying labor of love.

Examines the creation of imaginary languages in history and fiction as an expression of the search for an original and primitive or universal language. The author's other works include "Les Mots et les Femmes" (1978) and "Alice au pays du Language" (1981).

Cet ouvrage aborde une dizaine de problèmes de syntaxe anglaise par le biais d'exercices commentés. L'auteur adopte une démarche exploratrice. Partant d'un corpus de phrases unies par une relation d'homonymie syntaxique, chaque exercice propose une série de manipulations destinées à dégager des propriétés divergentes, tant distributionnelles que transformationnelles. Plutôt que de fournir des réponses toutes faites, l'auteur cherche avant tout à guider l'étudiant dans la découverte des problèmes de syntaxe et l'apprentissage de leur formulation, condition nécessaire pour pouvoir éventuellement les résoudre. Les exercices sont précédés d'une " boîte à outils " dans laquelle sont définis tous les concepts utilisés. Ne s'inféodant à aucune école, l'ouvrage s'appuie sur ce qu'on peut considérer comme le dénominateur commun de la linguistique moderne : les notions de structure sous-jacente, de grammaticalité, de transformation, de paraphrase. Il ne suppose pas de connaissances théoriques préalables et se prête aussi bien au travail individuel qu'à l'exploitation en travaux dirigés.

This text is designed for undergraduate and graduate students interested in contemporary English, especially those whose primary area of interest is English as a second language. Focus is placed exclusively on English data, providing an empirical explication of the structure of the language.