Eve Sweetser
Professor

(semantics, syntax, historical linguistics, Celtic languages, speech act theory, metaphor theory, semantic change, grammaticalization, gesture)

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. She currently directs UCB’s undergraduate Cognitive Science Program and also teaches in the Celtic Studies Program. She has published articles on topics including modality, polysemy, metaphor, conditional constructions, gesture, and Medieval Welsh poetics, and has a forthcoming book on English conditional constructions co-authored with Barbara Dancygier.

Selected Publications:

  • "English Metaphors for Language: motivations, conventions, and creativity." In Poetics Today, Winter 1992.

  • "Metaphor, Mythology, and Everyday Language." In Journal of Pragmatics, Volume 25. 1996.

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

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

  • "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, 1999.

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

  • "Blended spaces and performativity." Cognitive Linguistics 11:3/4, 2000.