Historical Cognitive Linguistics

This volume addresses aspects of language change using the semantics-based theory of Cognitive Linguistics, and primarily focuses on the lexicon and metaphor, the semantics of syntax, and language evolution. The papers that make up the collection consider current approaches to questions of the mental organization of meaning and its expression, and point toward future research.

This textbook serves a dual purpose. It is, first, a comprehensive introduction to historical linguistics, intended for both undergraduate and graduate students who have taken, at the least, an introductory course in linguistics. Secondly, unlike many such textbooks, this one is based in the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics, a semantics-based theory which emphasizes the relationship between cognition and language. Descriptions and explanations touch on cognitive, social, and physiological aspects of language as it changes across time. Examples come principally from Germanic (English, German, Yiddish) and Romance (French and Spanish), but with some exploration of aspects of the history of other languages as well. Each chapter concludes with exercises based on material in the chapter and also with suggestions for extensions of the content to wider issues in diachronic linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides a comprehensive introduction and essential reference work to cognitive linguistics. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives and approaches, covering all the key areas of cognitive linguistics and drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in pragmatics, discourse analysis, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neuroscience, language pedagogy, and translation studies. The forty-three chapters, written by international specialists in the field, cover four major areas: • Basic theories and hypotheses, including cognitive semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, frame semantics, natural semantic metalanguage, and word grammar; • Central topics, including embodiment, image schemas, categorization, metaphor and metonymy, construal, iconicity, motivation, constructionalization, intersubjectivity, grounding, multimodality, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive poetics, humor, and linguistic synaesthesia, among others; • Interfaces between cognitive linguistics and other areas of linguistic study, including cultural linguistics, linguistic typology, figurative language, signed languages, gesture, language acquisition and pedagogy, translation studies, and digital lexicography; • New directions in cognitive linguistics, demonstrating the relevance of the approach to social, diachronic, neuroscientific, biological, ecological, multimodal, and quantitative studies. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers working in this area.

Contains revised papers from a September 1996 symposium which provided a forum for synchronically and diachronically oriented scholars to exchange ideas and for American and European cognitive linguists to confront representatives of different directions in European structural semantics. Papers are in sections on theories and models, descriptive categories, and case studies, and examine areas such as cognitive and structural semantics, diachronic prototype semantics, synecdoche as a cognitive and communicative strategy, and intensifiers as targets and sources of semantic change.

With 49 chapters written by experts in the field, this reference volume authoritatively covers cognitive linguistics, from basic concepts and models to practical applications.

The works included under this volume highlight the diachronic potential of such an approach. And they do it diversely. Some of the contributions are panchronic in nature, that is, they try the analysis of some English linguistic construtions by providing us with a complete picture of their historical evolution.

This book is the first introduction to the new field called cognitive history. The last decades have seen a noticeable increase in cognitive science studies that have changed the understanding of human thinking. Its relevance for historical research cannot be overlooked any more. Cognitive history could be explained as the study of how humans in history used their cognitive abilities in order to understand the world around them and to orient themselves in it, but also how the world outside their bodies affected their way of thinking. In focus for this book is the relationship between history and cognition, the human mind’s interaction with the environment in time and space. It especially discusses certain cognitive abilities in interaction with the environment, which can be studied in historical sources, namely: evolution, language, rationality, spatiality, and materiality. Cognitive history can give us a deeper understanding of how – and not only what – people thought, and about the interaction between the human mind and the surrounding world.

A general introduction to the area of theoretical linguistics known as cognitive linguistics, this textbook provides up-to-date coverage of all areas of the field, including recent developments within cognitive semantics (such as Primary Metaphor Theory, Conceptual Blending Theory, and Principled Polysemy), and cognitive approaches to grammar (such as Radical Construction Grammar and Embodied Construction Grammar). The authors offer clear, critical evaluations of competing formal approaches within theoretical linguistics. For example, cognitive linguistics is compared to Generative Grammar and Relevance Theory. In the selection of material and in the presentations, the authors have aimed for a balanced perspective. Part II, Cognitive Semantics, and Part III, Cognitive Approaches to Grammar, have been created to be read independently. The authors have kept in mind that different instructors and readers will need to use the book in different ways tailored to their own goals. The coverage is suitable for a number of courses. While all topics are presented in terms accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students of linguistics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and modern languages, this work is sufficiently comprehensive and detailed to serve as a reference work for scholars who wish to gain a better understanding of cognitive linguistics.