Cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the school of thought within linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms. Cognitive linguistics takes an opposing position to the historically prominent position of Noam Chomsky and others in the field of generative grammar. Cognitive linguistics is closely associated with semantics. In its approach to semantics, it is distinct from psycholinguistics, which draws upon empirical findings from cognitive psychology, rather than underlying concepts, to explain the mental processes that underlie the acquisition, storage, production and understanding of speech and writing. Cognitive linguistics broadly breaks down into three main areas of study: cognitive semantics, cognitive approaches to grammar and cognitive phonology.
All linguistics, of course, is cognitive. The school of thought within linguistics taking up the mantle of 'cognitive linguistics' is characterized by adherence to three central positions.[citation needed] First, it denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind; second, it understands grammar in terms of conceptualization; and third, it claims that knowledge of language arises out of language use.[1]
In addition, cognitive linguistics argues that language is both embodied and situated in a specific environment.[citation needed] This can be considered a moderate offshoot of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesisinasmuch as language and cognition mutually influence one another and are both embedded in the experiences and environments of its users.
Three central positions
Cognitive linguists deny that the mind has any module for language-acquisition that is unique and autonomous. This stands in contrast to the stance adopted by Noam Chomsky and others in the field of generative grammar. Although cognitive linguists do not necessarily deny that part of the human linguistic ability is innate, they deny that it is separate from the rest of cognition. They thus reject a body of opinion in cognitive science suggesting that there is evidence for the modularity of language. Departing from the tradition of truth-conditional semantics, cognitive linguists view meaning in terms of conceptualization. Instead of viewing meaning in terms of models of the world, they view it in terms of mental spaces.
They argue that knowledge of linguistic phenomena — i.e., phonemes, morphemes, and syntax — is essentially conceptual in nature. However, they assert that the storage and retrieval of linguistic data is not significantly different from the storage and retrieval of other knowledge, and that use of language in understanding employs similar cognitive abilities to those used in other non-linguistic tasks.
Embodied and situated
Areas of study
Cognitive linguistics is divided into three main areas of study:
- Cognitive semantics, dealing mainly with lexical semantics, separating semantics (meaning) into meaning-construction and knowledge representation.
- Cognitive approaches to grammar, dealing mainly with syntax, morphology and other traditionally more grammar-oriented areas.
- Cognitive phonology, dealing with classification of various correspondences between morphemes and phonetic sequences.
Aspects of cognition that are of interest to cognitive linguists include:
- Construction grammar and cognitive grammar.
- Conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending.
- Image schemas and force dynamics.
- Conceptual organization: Categorization, Metonymy, Frame semantics, and Iconicity.
- Construal and Subjectivity.
- Gesture and sign language.
- Linguistic relativity.
- Cultural linguistics.
Related work that interfaces with many of the above themes:
- Computational models of metaphor and language acquisition.
- Dynamical models of language acquisition
- Conceptual semantics, pursued by generative linguist Ray Jackendoff, is related because of its active psychological realism and the incorporation of prototype structure and images.
Cognitive linguistics, more than generative linguistics, seeks to mesh together these findings into a coherent whole. A further complication arises because the terminology of cognitive linguistics is not entirely stable, both because it is a relatively new field and because it interfaces with a number of other disciplines.
Insights and developments from cognitive linguistics are becoming accepted ways of analysing literary texts, too. Cognitive Poetics, as it has become known, has become an important part of modern stylistics.
Controversy
There is significant peer review and debate within the field of linguistics regarding cognitive linguistics. Critics of cognitive linguistics have argued that most of the evidence from the cognitive view comes from the research in pragmatics and semantics, and research in metaphor and preposition choice. They suggest that cognitive linguists should provide cognitive re-analyses of topics in syntax and phonology that are understood in terms of autonomous knowledge (Gibbs 1996).
There is also controversy and debate within the field concerning the representation and status of idioms in grammar and the actual mental grammar of speakers. On one hand it is asserted that idiom variation needs to be explained with regard to general and autonomous syntactic rules. Another view says such idioms do not constitute semantic units and can be processed compositionally (Langlotz 2006).
See also
References
Notes
- ^ Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 1.
General references
- Evans, Vyvyan & Melanie Green (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Evans, Vyvyan (2007). A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Gibbs (1996) in Casad ED. Cognitive Linguistics in the Redwoods: The Expansion of a New Paradigm in Linguistics (Cognitive Linguistic Research) Mouton De Gruyter (June 1996) ISBN 9783110143584.
- Langlotz, Andreas. 2006. Idiomatic Creativity: A Cognitive-linguistic Model of Idiom-representation And Idiom Variation in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Further reading
- Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Palgrave-MacMillan. ISBN 1403932921
- Croft, W. & D. A. Cruse (2004) Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Evans, Vyvyan & Melanie Green (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Evans, Vyvyan (2007). A Glossary of Cognitive Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Evans, Vyvyan, Benjamin K. Bergen and Jörg Zinken (Eds.) (2007). The Cognitive Linguistics Reader. London: Equinox Publishing Co.
- Evans, Vyvyan, Benjamin Bergen and Jörg Zinken (2007). "The Cognitive Linguistics Enterprise: An Overview". In Vyvyan Evans, Benjamin Bergen and Jörg Zinken (Eds.). The Cognitive Linguistics Reader[listed above].
- Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in Thought and Language.
- Fauconnier, Gilles has written a brief, manifesto-like introduction to Cognitive linguistics, which compares it to mainstream, Chomsky-inspired linguistics. See "Introduction to Methods and Generalizations" in T. Janssen and G. Redeker (Eds) (1999). Scope and Foundations of Cognitive Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton De Gruyter. Cognitive Linguistics Research Series. (on-line version)
- Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner (2003). The Way We Think. New York: Basic Books.
- Geeraerts, D. & H. Cuyckens, eds. (2007). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978 0 19 514378 2.
- Geeraerts, D., ed. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Gibbs Jr., Raymond W. and Herbert L. Colston (1995). "The cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations". Cognitive Linguistics (includes Cognitive Linguistic Bibliography). Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 347–378, ISSN (Online) 1613-3641, ISSN (Print) 0936-5907.
- Goossens, Louis (Oct. 2009). Metaphtonymy: the interaction of metaphor and metonymy in expressions for linguistic action. Cognitive Linguistics (includes Cognitive Linguistic Bibliography). Volume 1, Issue 3, Pages 323–342, ISSN (Online) 1613-3641, ISSN (Print) 0936-5907, DOI: 10.1515/cogl.1990.1.3.323
- Grady, Oakley, and Coulson (1999). "Blending and Metaphor". In Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics, Steen and Gibbs (eds.). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (online version)
- Jackendoff, Ray (1996). "Conceptual semantics and Cognitive linguistics". In Cognitive Linguistics 7-1, pp. 93-129. Online Version.
- Kristiansen et al., eds. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Lakoff, George (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0 226 46804 6.
- Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
- Lee, D.A. (2001). Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction (1st ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
- Rohrer, T. (2007). "Embodiment and Experientialism". In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics [listed above].
- Schmid, H. J. et al. (1996). An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. New York, Longman.
- Silverman, Daniel (2011). "Usage-based Phonology", in Bert Botma, Nancy C. Kula, and Kuniya Nasukawa, eds., Continuum Companion to Phonology. Continuum.
- Taylor, J. R. (2002). Cognitive Grammar. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard University Press.
- Wolf, et al. (2006), The Cognitive Linguistics Bibliography, Mouton De Gruyter, Berlin.
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