Leonard Talmy
Leonard Talmy is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and was Director of the Center for Cognitive Science for 14 years in the university. Over his career, he taught and researched in Hamburg, Rome, and Moscow (the latter two as a Fulbright Fellow) as well as at Stanford, Georgetown and University of California, Berkeley.
His broader research interests cover cognitive linguistics, the properties of conceptual organization, and cognitive theory. His more specific interests within linguistics centre on natural-language semantics, including: typologies and universals of semantic structure; the relationship between semantic structure and formal linguistic structures. Additional specializations are in American Indian and Yiddish linguistics.
He is the author of a two-volume set with MIT Press (2000): Toward a Cognitive Semantics -- volume 1: Concept Structuring Systems; volume 2: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Previously published articles include ‘The Relation of Grammar to Cognition’, ‘Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition’, ‘How Language Structures Space’, ‘Fictive Motion in Language and Ception’, ‘Lexicalization Patterns’, ‘The Representation of Spatial Structure in Spoken and Signed Languages: a Neural Model’, and ‘Recombinance in the Evolution of Language’.
He was the recipient of the Gutenberg Research Award for 2012 from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, for outstanding contributions to research in the area of linguistics. In 2011, he was honored as one of the three "Founding Fathers" of cognitive linguistics at the 10th Biannual Conference of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. He was elected a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in its 2002 inaugural selection of Fellows (and had been a founding member of the Society). He is included in Outstanding People of the 20th Century and in International Who's Who of Intellectuals, thirteenth edition.
His broader research interests cover cognitive linguistics, the properties of conceptual organization, and cognitive theory. His more specific interests within linguistics centre on natural-language semantics, including: typologies and universals of semantic structure; the relationship between semantic structure and formal linguistic structures. Additional specializations are in American Indian and Yiddish linguistics.
He is the author of a two-volume set with MIT Press (2000): Toward a Cognitive Semantics -- volume 1: Concept Structuring Systems; volume 2: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Previously published articles include ‘The Relation of Grammar to Cognition’, ‘Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition’, ‘How Language Structures Space’, ‘Fictive Motion in Language and Ception’, ‘Lexicalization Patterns’, ‘The Representation of Spatial Structure in Spoken and Signed Languages: a Neural Model’, and ‘Recombinance in the Evolution of Language’.
He was the recipient of the Gutenberg Research Award for 2012 from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, for outstanding contributions to research in the area of linguistics. In 2011, he was honored as one of the three "Founding Fathers" of cognitive linguistics at the 10th Biannual Conference of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. He was elected a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in its 2002 inaugural selection of Fellows (and had been a founding member of the Society). He is included in Outstanding People of the 20th Century and in International Who's Who of Intellectuals, thirteenth edition.