ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows the cognitive functional view of language and the cognitive and communicative processes on which it depends is obviously very different from that of generative grammar and other formalistic approaches. The most fundamental tenet of generative grammar is that there is a level of linguistic description, namely, syntax, that is independent of all other levels of linguistic description including semantics and independent of all other aspects of cognition as well. The overall function of language is communication in the sense that language evolved for purposes of communication phylogenetically, and it is learned for purposes of communication ontogenetically. Functions are embodied in structures. At the simplest level of analysis, all of the structures of a language are composed of some combination of four types of symbolic elements: words, markers on words, word order, and intonation.
