Cognitive Linguistics Investigations

The total body of papers presented in this volume captures research across a variety of languages and language groups, to show how particular elements of linguistic description draw on otherwise separate aspects (or fields) of linguistic investigation. As such, this volume captures a diversity of research interest from the field of cognitive linguistics. These areas include: lexical semantics, cognitive grammar, metaphor, prototypes, pragmatics, narrative and discourse, computational and translation models; and are considered within the contexts of: language change, child language acquisition, language and culture, grammatical features and word order and gesture. Despite possible differences in philosophical approach to the role of language in cognitive tasks, these papers are similar in a fundamental way: they all share a commitment to the view that human categorization involves mental concepts that have fuzzy boundaries and are culturally and situation-based.

"This volume makes accessible a substantial range of recent research in Cognitive Grammar. Building from fundamentals, it brings fresh insight to the analysis of varied grammatical phenomena. Topics considered in depth include constructions, grounding, clause strucutre, and complex sentences. The book is of interest to anyone concerned with the conceptual basis of meaning and linguistic structure." --Book Jacket.

The volume presents an up-to-date collection of methodologically sensitive contributions providing mainly enthusiastic, at times also critical support for the cognitive-linguistic enterprise. The book is important for the advancement of cognitive linguistics because the contributions demonstrate the seriousness of its ambitions to develop into a set of testable linguistic approaches. For the same reason, the volume is a contribution to our understanding of language in general, since it puts a promising modern approach on firmer ground. Assets of the book include the wide range of linguistic phenomena studied (individual concepts, fundamental semantic problems like vagueness and polysemy, grammatical issues incl. gender and tense, collocations, constructions and speech acts) and the scope of applied perspectives including lexicographical, computational, developmental and critical discourse ones. The languages investigated are English, German, Dutch, Polish and Italian. Common to the contributions is the desire to bring together observed patterns of linguistic usage with concepts and models established in cognitive linguistics. In addition, all contributions have an empirical basis and emphasize the need to rely on a sound methodology. The linguistic phenomena investigated span the range from the lexico-conceptual and collocational level to constructions, grammatical categories and functions. Two complementary perspectives of language and cognition are represented in the volume: In one group, the established methods of psycholinguistic experimentation, quantitative corpus analysis and computational simulation are exploited to demonstrate the viability and to increase the plausibility of cognitive-linguistic thinking. The second group tests well-known cognitive-linguistic approaches like Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models and Construction Grammar against authentic data demonstrating their applicability and explanatory potential. Both groups include contributions reaching beyond the scope of traditional cognitive-linguistic topics, e.g. by taking a critical stance of reductionist cognitive thinking. The volume is of interest to cognitive linguists, psycholinguists, theoretical linguists, lexicologists, and lexicographers.

Does temporal language depend on spatial language? This widespread view is intuitively appealing since spatial and temporal expressions are often similar or identical. Also, metaphors consistently express temporal phenomena in terms of spatial language, pointing to a close semantic and conceptual relationship. But what about the application of the two kinds of linguistic expressions in natural discourse? The book draws together findings on terms that describe the relation of objects or events to each other (such as in front / behind, before / after, etc.), highlighting the relationship between cognition and language usage. Using the method of cognitively motivated discourse analysis, novel empirical results are presented to complement earlier findings. The detailed investigation of a selected range of terms that appear to be parallel in space and time highlights both similarities and fundamental differences in their application. As a result, a new picture emerges: The concepts of space and time are represented in language usage in various systematic ways, reflecting how we understand the world - and at the same time reflecting how our concepts of space and time differ fundamentally. The volume contributes to a debate that has been of interest for cognitive linguists for several decades, concerning the understanding of transfer processes between two conceptually intertwined domains. The specific contribution of this work consists of addressing the novel question of how such processes come into play in the actual application of relevant expressions in natural discourse. By adopting established approaches from Discourse Analysis for issues that are deeply rooted in interdisciplinary research in Cognitive Science, insights are drawn together from two hitherto largely unrelated fields of research to approach the topic from an original perspective, leading to a deeper understanding of the relationship between the domains of space and time and their expression in language.

While cognitive linguistics has become established as a comprehensive research paradigm over the last three decades, it has so far hardly contributed to investigations into processes of lexical creation as traditionally captured in research on word formation. In light of this, the volume at hand is the first one to take a step ahead towards illuminating diverse aspects of word formation from cognitive perspectives. The book combines contributions to the 2nd International Cognitive Linguistics Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association with a selection of invited papers by scholars working on issues of word formation and cognitive linguistics. This selection is guided by pluralism in both methodology and topics. Thus, some contributions are of a primarily theoretical nature discussing, for example, recombinance as a model of word formation and a taxonomy of word formation processes as construction types. Several articles address interface issues such as word formation and phrasal constructions, word formation and inflection, as well as phonology and word formational patterns. The majority of the studies focuses on individual types of word formation (compounding, affixation, and conversion), and they contribute to reframing our understanding of these processes. With a focus on mostly Germanic languages (Afrikaans, Dutch, English, German, Luxembourgish, and Norwegian), data-driven analyses include corpus linguistic investigations, elicited data, psycholinguistic experiments, and computational linguistic applications. A few contributions follow a mainly introspective path of reasoning based on the discussion of selected examples as in the analysis of creative compounds. Overall, the volume provides a rich array of topics emerging under the umbrella of cognitive linguistic thought and established patterns and processes of word formation. The various studies add to a yet marginal body of research in cognitive word formation and, thus, advance our awareness about the benefits of applying cognitive linguistic thoughts for investigating processes of lexical creation.

Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition aims to bring cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology closer together, calling for further investigations of language and culture from cognitively-informed perspectives against the backdrop of the current trend of linguistic anthropology.

The papers compiled in the present volume aim at investigating the many fruitful manners in which cognitive linguistics can expand further on cognitive translation studies. Some papers (e.g. Halverson, Muñoz-Martín, Martín de León) take a theoretical stand, since the epistemological and ontological bases of both areas (cognitive linguistics and translation studies) should be known before specific contributions of cognitive linguistic to translation are tackled. Several works in the volume attempt to illustrate how some of the notions imported from cognitive linguistics may contribute to enrich our understanding of the translation process in a general translation problem such as metaphor (e.g. Samaniego), the relationship between form and meaning (e.g. Tabakowska, Rojo and Valenzuela) or cultural aspects (e.g. Bernárdez, Sharifian/Jamarani). Others use translation as an empirical field to test some of the basic assumptions of cognitive linguistics such as frames (e.g. Boas), metonymy (e.g. Brdar/Brdar-Szabó), and lexicalisation patterns (e.g. Ibarretxe-Antuñano/Filipovi?). Finally, another set of papers (e.g. Feist, Hatzidaki) opens up new lines of investigation for experimental research, a very promising area still underdeveloped.

Methods in Cognitive Linguistics is an introduction to empirical methodology for language researchers. Intended as a handbook to exploring the empirical dimension of the theoretical questions raised by Cognitive Linguistics, the volume presents guidelines for employing methods from a variety of intersecting disciplines, laying out different ways of gathering empirical evidence. The book is divided into five sections. Methods and Motivations provides the reader with the preliminary background in scientific methodology and statistics. The sections on Corpus and Discourse Analysis, and Sign Language and Gesture describe different ways of investigating usage data. Behavioral Research describes methods for exploring mental representation, simulation semantics, child language development, and the relationships between space and language, and eye movements and cognition. Lastly, Neural Approaches introduces the reader to ERP research and to the computational modeling of language.