Dagmar Divjak - Böcker

Cognitive linguists are bound by the cognitive commitment, which is the commitment to providing a characterization of the general principles governing all aspects of human language, in a way that is informed by, and accords with, what is known about the brain and mind from other disciplines. But what do we know about aspects of cognition that are relevant for theories of language? Which insights can help us build cognitive reality into our descriptive practice and move linguistic theorizing forward? This unique study integrates research findings from across the cognitive sciences to generate insights that challenge the way in which frequency has been interpreted in usage-based linguistics. It answers the fundamental questions of why frequency of experience has the effect it has on language development, structure and representation, and what role psychological and neurological explorations of core cognitive processes can play in developing a cognitively more accurate theoretical account of language.

Cognitive linguists are bound by the cognitive commitment, which is the commitment to providing a characterization of the general principles governing all aspects of human language, in a way that is informed by, and accords with, what is known about the brain and mind from other disciplines. But what do we know about aspects of cognition that are relevant for theories of language? Which insights can help us build cognitive reality into our descriptive practice and move linguistic theorizing forward? This unique study integrates research findings from across the cognitive sciences to generate insights that challenge the way in which frequency has been interpreted in usage-based linguistics. It answers the fundamental questions of why frequency of experience has the effect it has on language development, structure and representation, and what role psychological and neurological explorations of core cognitive processes can play in developing a cognitively more accurate theoretical account of language.

The volume presents an overview of recent cognitive linguistic research on Slavic languages. Slavic languages, with their rich inflectional morphology in both the nominal and the verbal system, provide an important testing ground for a linguistic theory that seeks to motivate linguistic structure. Therefore, the volume touches upon a wide range of phenomena: it addresses issues related to the semantics of grammatical case, tense, aspect, voice and word order, it looks into grammaticalization and language change and discusses sound symbolism. At the same time, the analyses presented address a variety of theoretically important issues. Take for example the role of virtual entities in language or that of iconic motivation in grammar, the importance of metaphor for grammaticalization or that of subjectification for motivating synchronic polysemy and diachronic language change, as well as the myriad of patterns available to encode events in a non-canonical way or to convey the speaker's epistemic stance with respect to the communicated content. In addition, the analyses are couched in a variety of cognitive linguistic frameworks, such as cognitive grammar, mental space theory, construction grammar, frame semantics, grammaticalization theory, as well as prototype semantics. All in all, the analyses presented in this volume enrich the understanding of established aspects of the cognitive model of language and may serve as catalysts for their further development and refinement, making the volume a worthwhile read for Slavic and cognitive linguists alike.

Given that we lack sensory-motor experience for abstract concepts, how do we find out what they mean? How far can we get by tracking frequency distributions in input? The volume tackles the question of what language has to offer the language learner in his/her quest for meaning, and explicitly addresses how semantic knowledge may be distributed along the continuum from "grammar" to "lexicon". Focus is on the synonymy of constructions and lexemes, a meaning relation that has been largely ignored in Western linguistics. Frequency in all its guises plays a major part in this book. Approaching meaning from a usage-based perspective, a radically distributional approach to quantifying meaning is proposed that encompasses both the constructional and lexical level. Statistical data analysis, relatively new in the field of linguistics, yields a cognitively realistic, clustered model that encourages re-evaluating existing accounts of near-synonymy. Theoretical concepts spanning a range of cognitive linguistic frameworks, i.e. Cognitive Grammar, Radical Construction Grammar and Prototype Theory, account for the complexity of the data and lead to a re-appraisal of traditional semantic theory.Built on a solid empirical foundation, this network account of synonymy at the constructional and lexical level enriches our understanding of established aspects of the cognitive model of language, serving as catalyst for their further development and refinement. The theoretically informed combination of descriptive accuracy and methodological innovation makes the book a worthwhile read for cognitive linguists and psycholinguists alike.

The volume contains a collection of studies on how the analysis of corpus and psycholinguistic data reveal how linguistic knowledge is affected by the frequency of linguistic elements/stimuli. The studies explore a wide range of phenomena , from phonological reduction processes and palatalization to morphological productivity, diachronic change, adjective preposition constructions, auxiliary omission, and multi-word units. The languages studied are Spanish and artificial languages, Russian, Dutch, and English. The sister volume focuses on language representation.

The volume explores the relationship between well-studied aspects of language (constructional alternations, lexical contrasts and extensions and multi-word expressions) in a variety of languages (Dutch, English, Russian and Spanish) and their representation in cognition as mediated by frequency counts in both text and experiment. The state-of-the-art data collection (ranging from questionnaires to eye-tracking) and analysis (from simple chi-squared to random effects regression) techniques allow to draw theoretical conclusions from (mis)matches between different types of empirical data. The sister volume focuses on language learning and processing.

Cognitive Linguistics is an approach to language study based on the assumptions that our linguistic abilities are firmly rooted in our cognitive abilities, that meaning is essentially conceptualization, and that grammar is shaped by usage. The Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides state-of-the-art overviews of the numerous subfields of cognitive linguistics written by leading international experts which will be useful for established researchers and novices alike. It is an interdisciplinary project with contributions from linguists, psycholinguists, psychologists, and computer scientists which will emphasise the most recent developments in the field, in particular, the shift towards more empirically-based research. In this way, it will, we hope, help to shape the field, encouraging methodologically more rigorous research which incorporates insights from all the cognitive sciences. Editor Ewa Dąbrowska was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship 2018.

Cognitive foundations of language introduces the reader to the abilities and processes in which research in Cognitive Linguistics is grounded. The book looks at key concepts, such as embodiment, salience, entrenchment, construal, categorization, and collaborative communication, and discusses their genesis and implications for cognitive linguistic research.

The chapters provide comprehensive surveys of the major subfields of Cognitive Linguistics. Apart from phonology, construction grammar and lexical semantics, the areas of language use, language acquisition and literary discourse are comprehensively presented.

The key topics discussed in this book illustrate the breadth of cognitive linguistic research and include semantic typology, space, fictive motion, argument structure constructions, and prototype effects in grammar. New themes such as individual differences, emergence, and default non-salient interpretations also receive coverage.