In labouring through the massive tome ‘Cognitive Linguistics – An Introduction by Vyvyan Evans & Melanie Green (Edinburgh University Press, 2006)’ I stumbled across the following passage:
“Expansibility and contractibility are properties of the regions designated by mass nouns. For example, ‘sand’ can designate an entire desert or a single grain of sand and water can designate a whole sea or a single drop of water. It follows that any subpart of the region designated by a mass noun is still an instance of that category: a grain of sand is still ‘sand’. It is clear, then that the property of expansibility and contractibility is interwoven with homogencity and the absence of bounding. The same is not true for typical count nouns. If we contract a BICYCLE to its smallest subpart, we might get a cog or a spring or a screw: this is not still a bicycle. If we expand BICYCLE, we don’t get more BICYCLE, because a bicycle has inherent boundaries. Instead we get more bicycles”
I associated this “absence of bounding” or otherwise not with language teaching, which was why I was struggling to digest the 800 or so pages of this ‘introduction’ in the first place. Instead I thought of Flann O’Brien’s ‘The Third Policeman’ and the Sergeant’s reflections on the topic of atomics:
“Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. these diminutive gentlemen are called atoms”.
This, it turns out also has implications vis ã vis the BICYCLE in so much that:
“people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles”.
My next challenge is how I can work these concepts into my next lesson of intermediate level English!
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There are certain novels, like Robert Musil’s ‘The Man Without Qualities’, that I find too daunting to even attempt and others, such as Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under The Volcano’ that I have tried but failed to complete.
How do you read books? If this sounds like a stupid question, I’ll explain why I ask.
