Chapter 10. Interlanguage 40 years on: Three themes from here (original) (raw)

Cognitive Linguistics (Review)

Cognitive linguistics is the joint product of largely independent research programs begun in the late 1970s and early 1980s by scholars who shared the general goal of making grammatical and semantic theory responsible to the facts of usage and the flexibility of the human conceptual capacity. But what kind of product is it? To those outside the immediate spheres of influence of its major proponents (George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, Gilles Fauconnier, Leonard Talmy, among others), it might appear to be nothing more than an inventory of disparate constructs (prototype-based categories, semantic frames, mental spaces, metaphorical mappings) or even a set of case studies of linguistic idiosyncrasies. It doesn’t seem to DO anything, or at least it does not provide a uniform grammatical or semantic formalism. Instead, cognitive linguistics is a worldview, in which words, rather than denoting things in the world, are points of entry into conceptual networks (Langacker 1987, 1991), and syntactic patterns, rather than merely grouping symbols together, are cognitive and even motor routines of varying degrees of entrenchment and internal complexity (Bybee 2001).

Review of Michel Kefer/Johan van der Auwera, eds. (1992) Meaning and Grammar. Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Journal of Pragmatics, 1994

The majority of this collection of 17 contributions originates in papers presented at a symposium on language universals held in Antwerp in 1988. This is what gives the volume coherence and where its strengths lie, viz. in the often original, partly even exemplary explorations of as yet uncharted territories in typological research. The volume offers fresh looks at the whys and hows of the study of language universals, at the nature of universals and their explanations, and at some syntactic, semantic and pragmatic theories and what they can contribute to a better understanding of individual linguistic phenomena if viewed from a cross-linguistic perspective. The dominant approach in the volume is a functional one (functional typology, Dik-style Functional Grammar), while the generative-comparative approach is mostly reacted to critically, if at all. This, however, should not be misunderstood as reflecting a generally hostile attitude of the (overwhelmingly European) contributors to this volume towards generative theorizing. Quite to the contrary, as Georg Bossong immediately makes clear in his opening reflections (pp. 3-16) on the Verb-Noun distinction in theories of parts of speech in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early 19th century. The lesson to be learnt from the "dialectic alternation of periods oriented towards language and of periods oriented towards languages" (p. 3) is that empirical research of (the limits of) typological diversity, on the one hand, and more theory-based postulation of properties of the human language faculty, on the other hand, can only be fruitful if they are viewed as necessarily cross-fertilizing research endeavours serving the same ultimate goal. The carefully edited and produced volume is organized into three parts (Part I 'General considerations', Part II 'Syntactic categories and constructions', Part III 'Morphemes and lexical items'), followed by indexes of quoted authors, mentioned languages, and dealt-with subjects. In this review, however, the individual contributions will be discussed independently of their arrangement in the volume. The truly typological studies represent the backbone of this book, both from the point of view of their number and size and their quality. Roughly, they fall into two groups: (i) studies based on the analysis of a wide range of languages illustrating in an exemplary way functional-typological methodology and rationalizing; (ii) less ambitious studies which, on the basis of observations on just a few languages, out

On the Role of Cognitive Grammar in Modern Linguistics

International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technologies (IJPSAT) , 2020

The following article is devoted to the research of issues in a new direction in Linguistics, Cognitive grammar and its prosperity. The author gives own suggestion on cognitive functions of language means and ways of their realization, providing the table to express the ideas in detail.

Review of Geeraerts, Dirk ed. 2006. Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings

Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is not only a scientific approach to the study of language, but undoubtedly one of the most rapidly expanding schools in linguistics nowadays. As a dynamic and attractive framework within theoretical and descriptive linguistics, it proves to be one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project of cognitive science. Part of its seductiveness arises from the fact that CL aims at an integrated model of language and thought, at the building of a sharp theory of linguistic meaning that reflects the human construal of external reality, taking into account the way in which human beings experience reality, both culturally and psychologically (27). In its description of natural language, CL attempts to bridge "the distance between the social and the psychological, between the community and the individual, between the system and the application of the system, between the code and the actual use of the code" (26).

Studies in linguistics and cognition

2012

Contents: Barbara Eizaga Rebollar/Jose Maria Garcia Nunez/ Maria Angelez Zarco Tejada: Preface - Maria Tadea Diaz Hormigo/Carmen Varo Varo: Neology and Cognition - Gerard Fernandez Smith/Marta Sanchez-Saus Laserna/Luis Escoriza Morera: Studies on Lexical Availability: The Current Situation and Some Future Prospects - Maria Luisa Mora Millan: Adverbs in the Internet Lexicon: New Modes of Signification - Maria Angeles Zarco Tejada: `Holding' Metaphorical Meaning from a Computational Linguistics Approach: The Verb Hold and its Counterparts in Spanish - Jose Maria Garcia Nunez: Attitude Verbs and Nominalization - Carmen Noya Gallardo: Cleft Sentences: Semantic Properties and Communicative Meanings - Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez/Alicia Galera Masegosa: Metaphoric and Metonymic Complexes in Phrasal Verb Interpretation: Metaphoric Chains - Barbara Eizaga Rebollar: Meaning Adjustment Processes in Idiom Variants - Jose Luis Guijarro Morales: Beauty and Art in Science - Ana Isabel ...