The Traditional , Structural And Cognitive Approach To Linguistics (original) (raw)

Cognitive Linguistics: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Since its conception, Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language has been enjoying ever increasing success worldwide. With quantitative growth has come qualitative diversification, and within a now heterogeneous field, different – and at times opposing – views on theoretical and methodological matters have emerged. The historical " prototype " of Cognitive Linguistics may be described as predominantly of mentalist persuasion, based on introspection, specialized in analysing language from a synchronic point of view, focused on West-European data (English in particular), and showing limited interest in the social and multimodal aspects of communication. Over the past years, many promising extensions from this prototype have emerged. The contributions selected for the Special Issue take stock of these extensions along the cognitive, social and methodological axes that expand the cognitive linguistic object of inquiry across time, space and modality.

Five generations of applied linguistics

A number of discussions in recent years have kept alive the debate on the definition of applied linguistics. The range of the debate covers both ends of the spectrum of applied linguistic work: the philosophical and the practical. This paper attempts to put a response to such (re-)considerations into an interpretative framework, and considers the conception of the discipline as it has evolved over five generations of applied linguistics. The argument of the paper is that different historical understandings of applied linguistic work point to the relativity of the discipline, and prevent its practitioners from entertaining the belief that, because they are doing 'applied science', their designed solution to a language problem will be sufficient.

Beyond expression: A systematic study of the foundations of linguistics

2009

If no specific science is philosophically neutral, linguistics must self consciously strive to clarify its theoretical, philosophical foundations by developing a systematic methodological framework that provides for various elementary and complex linguistic concepts. This study sets out to elaborate such a systematic methodology by looking first at the expressive character of language and the different material lingual spheres in which language is used. Thereafter various elementary systematic concepts that express the modal coherence between the lingual aspect and the other aspects of experience are surveyed. Amongst others, the elementary linguistic concepts of lingual system, position, constancy, operation, development, intention, identity and form are reinterpreted in a new theoretical perspective. Attention is also given to language in its social context, as well as to the notions of discourse, text and acceptability, in order to lay the foundations of a systematic theory.

Linguistics and philosophy (2016 pre-print)

Final version available in: K. Allan (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp. 516-531, 2016

Philosophy and the study of language are intimately connected, to the extent that it is impossible to say from which point in human intellectual history the study of meaning in natural language can be regarded as an independent enterprise. Natural language syntax, semantics and pragmatics are now considered to be sub-disciplines of theoretical linguistics, surrounded by the acolytes in the domains of language acquisition, language disorders, language processing (psycholinguistics and neuroscience of language), all using empirical, including experimental, methods in addition to rationalistic inquiry. However, philosophical problems associated with the structure of language as well as with meaning in language and in discourse still remain, and arguably will always remain, the backbone of syntax and semantics, and a trigger for progress in theorizing. It is impossible to summarise the impressively rich tradition of thinking about language in the history of philosophy. One would have to start with Presocratics in the 6 th and 7 th centuries BCE in Ancient Greece (see e.g. Curd 2012) and cover two and a half millennia of intensive questioning and argumentation over the relations between language, reality, truth, and the human mind. Or, one could try to delve into the history before the Greeks, then move through the landmarks of Plato, Aristotle, and the later Stoics into the current era (see e.g. . In this brief introduction we shall focus on much later debates, starting from the period when discussions about topics that are currently in the focus of debates originated, that is late 19 th century, marked by Frege's insights into an ideal language for describing knowledge and the origin of modern logic that is now used as a metalanguage for theorizing about meaning in natural human languages. From formal approaches within analytical philosophy I shall move to the 'language-as-use' paradigm of the ordinarylanguage philosophy, followed by the more recent debates on meaning as it is to be understood for the purpose of formal representation and linguistic theory. In the process, I shall address some of the core areas that philosophers of language have been drawn to such as reference and referring or propositional attitude reports. Next, I move to the topic of the role of intentions and inferences, and finish with a brief attempt to place 'linguistics and philosophy' on the map of language sciences and research on language in the 21 st century.

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).

LINGUISTICS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

This paper looks at some of the underlying reasons which might explain the uncertainty surrounding applied linguistics as an academic enquiry. The opening section traces the emergence of the field through its professional associations and publications and identifies second and foreign language (L2) teaching as its primary activity. The succeeding section examines the extent to which L2 pedagogy, as a branch of applied linguistics, is conceived within a theoretical linguistic framework and how this might have changed during a historical period that gave rise to Chomskyan linguistics and the notion of communicative competence. The concluding remarks offer explanations to account for the persistence of linguistic parameters to define applied linguistics.