Harold in Clifton Park, N.Y., wrote recently to ask me about the grammar of the sentences “I couldn’t care less” and “I could care less.” Until then, I thought there were just two kinds of people in ...

Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought that originally began to emerge in the 1970s due to dissatisfaction with formal approaches to language. As I explain in my book, ...

The meaning of language is represented in regions of the cerebral cortex collectively known as the ‘semantic system’. However, little of the semantic system has been mapped comprehensively, and the ...

An amble through the neighborhoods of North Berkeley often turns into an introspection and a treasure hunt. On one such stroll, I and my fellow amblers stumbled across an empty, upturned flower pot, ...