Topology and Verb Classes

Feature Column Archive

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References

V. I. Arnol'd, Catastrophe Theory, Springer-Verlag, New York 1984

Beth Levin, English Verb Classes and Alternations: a Preliminary Investigation, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1993

Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, William Morrow & Co., New York 1994. The quote is on p. 232. Pinker attributes the trope to Noam Chomsky, but I have not been able to track it down in Chomsky's published works.

Tim Poston and Ian Stewart, Catastrophe Theory and its Applications Pitman, London 1978

René Thom, Topologie et linguistique in A. Haefliger and R. Narasimhan, eds., Essays on Topology and Related Topics, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1970. Thom's essay is on pp. 226-248.

René Thom, Stabilité Structurelle et Morphogénèse, W. A. Benjamin, Inc., Reading, Massachusetts, 1972. The catastrophes are treated in some detail. See especially Chapter 13, Appendix 2: Une interprétation topologique des fonctions grammaticales.

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• 1. Natural languages, human thought and topology

• 2. Thom's axioms

• 3. The simple minimum: ``I am.''

• 4. The fold: ``The day begins.''

• 5. The cusp: ``The fish swallows the bug,'' etc.

• 6. The swallowtail: ``The bird lays an egg, swallows it and dies.''

• 7. Derivatives of the swallowtail: ``She repulses his advances,'' etc.

• References