Category: Cognitive Linguistics

Embodiment and Cognitive Science

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr

Introduction

Embodiment in the field of cognitive science refers to understanding the role of an agent’s own body in its everyday, situated cognition. For example, how do our bodies influence the ways we think and speak? Consider the following narrative written by a 23-year-old woman, Sandra, who was asked to describe a recent, important life event. Sandra began her narrative by noting that she was engaged to be married to an older man who worked in the computer industry in northern California. Quite recently, Sandra’s fiancé asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement and this request evoked many feelings that Sandra struggled to deal with.

UNDERSTANDING FIGURATIVE AND LITERAL LANGUAGE: THE GRADED SALIENCE HYPOTHESIS

Rachel Giora

Linguistics

Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv 69978

Israel

ABSTRACT

In this study I test the prevalent claims among contemporary psycholinguists that understanding metaphor does not involve a special process, and that it is essentially identical to understanding literal language. Particularly, I examine the claims that figurative language does not involve processing the surface literal meaning (e.g., Gibbs, 1984), and that its comprehension is not processing-intensive, because it does not involve a trigger (e.g., Keysar, 1989). A critique, review and reinterpretation of a number of contemporary researches on literal and figurative language reveal that figurative and literal language use are governed by a general principle of salience: Salient meanings (e.g., conventional, frequent, familiar, enhanced by prior context) are processed first. Thus, for example, when the most salient meaning is intended (as in e.g., the figurative meaning of conventional idioms), it is accessed directly, without having to process the less salient (literal) meaning first (Gibbs, 1980).

High-level metonymy and linguistic structure[1]

Francisco Jos?Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez

Olga Isabel Díez Velasco

University of La Rioja

0. Introduction

Ever since George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) published their seminal work Metaphors We Live By, many cognitive linguists have devoted much of their research to exploring metaphorical systems in different languages. Metonymy, however, has received comparatively little attention. During the eighties and the nineties work on metonymy has mainly focused on setting up definitional and typological criteria (Croft, 1993; Dirven, 1993; Langacker, 1993; Kövecses and Radden, 1998, 1999), studying the metonymic grounding of metaphor (Barcelona, 2000; Radden, 2000), its role in conceptual interaction (Goossens, 1995; Ruiz de Mendoza, 1997a; Díez, 2000; Turner and Fauconnier, 2000) and in inferencing (Gibbs, 1994; Thornburg and Panther, 1997; Panther and Thornburg, 1998, 1999; Ruiz de Mendoza, 1999a; Pérez and Ruiz de Mendoza, 2001). Most of this research, however, has been concerned with the

【摘要】俚语是一种特殊的语言形式，是美国语言不可缺少的重要组成部分，它反映了文化影响语言的内在作用，还具有其他词汇层所无或不全具备的独特风格，是一种极富文化涵义的词汇，是美国文化的特殊载体。文章通过探讨美国俚语的构成形式、语意功能以及社会文化理据三个方面来进一步分析美国俚语的文化特征。

【关键词】美国俚语;语言特征;文化特征

NEURAL SUBSTRATES OF METAPHOR

Rachel Giora and Argyris K. Stringaris

The interest in how the brain processes METAPHORS traces its origins back to a tradition which regarded figurative language as POETIC and hence the opposite of literal language. Despite its ubiquity (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), the underlying assumption has been that this difference should be reflected both in behavioral (Grice 1975; Searle 1979) and brain mechanisms. In this chapter we examine this and other long-standing assumptions, suggesting that the interactions of linguistics with empirical, neuropsychological, and neuroscientific research have drawn a far more complex and, arguably, fascinating picture, not only about metaphor but also about the brain.

Is Metaphor Really So Different?

Does Cognitive Linguistics live up to its name?

Bert Peeters

There can be no doubt that structural linguistics, which flourished half a century ago on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, lived up to its name: it was structural because it considered languages to be self-contained entities that had either to be shaped into a rigorous structure, or actually possessed a structure which was real and merely waiting to be discovered. There can be no doubt either that transformational grammar, which in its heydays pushed structuralism into quasi-total oblivion, lived up to its name: it was transformational because it posited several successive strata or structures in sentence generation which were linked by means of transformations of all sorts. On the contemporary scene, there can be no doubt that functional linguistics lives up to its name: it attaches a great deal of importance to the way in which languages function and to the functions of language. The question that will be raised in the next few pages is the following: does Cognitive Linguistics, as we know it today, live up to its name?

English Constructions

Adele E. Goldberg and Devin Casenhiser

Princeton University

Abstract

Constructions have been defined variously in the literature, but the traditional use of the term corresponds to a conventional pairing of form with (semantic or discourse) function. This article provides examples of uncontroversial instances of constructions, clarifies some of the debates surrounding the term currently, and also briefly explores a broad based range of constructionist theories that have converged on the basic idea that traditional constructions play a central theoretical role in language.

1. A brief history of “constructions”

Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language

Adele E. Goldberg

Summary A new theoretical approach to language has emerged in the past 10-15 years that allows linguistic observations about form-meaning pairings—constructions–to be stated directly. Constructionist approaches aim to account for the full range of facts about language, without assuming that a particular subset of the data is part of a privileged “core”. Researchers argue that unusual constructions shed light on more general issues, and serve to illuminate what is required for a complete account of language.

Keywords: language, linguistics, constructions, grammar, learning, generalizations

Cognitive English Grammar

Günter Radden and René Dirven

University of Hamburg / Gerhard Mercator University Duisburg

Cognitive English Grammar is designed to be used as a textbook in courses of English and general linguistics. It introduces the reader to cognitive linguistic theory and shows that Cognitive Grammar helps us to gain a better understanding of the grammar of English. The notions of motivation and meaningfulness are central to the approach adopted in the book. In four major parts comprising 12 chapters, Cognitive English Grammar

In T. Janssen and G. Redeker (Eds). Scope and Foundations of Cognitive Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton De Gruyter.

Gilles Fauconnier

I. MEANING, LANGUAGE, COGNITION

Linguists agree on one thing – that language is diabolically hard to study. They do not always agree, however, on the how’s, the why’s, and the what for’s: how one should go about studying it and how speakers manage to do what they do; why it is so hard and why exactly we bother to study it; what language is for, and what linguistics is for. A mainstream view that has been popular in the last thirty years (but not necessarily before that) offers the following answers.