Studies in Linguistics and Cognition

2013

It is proposed to examine, in brief, the relationship between linguistics and cognition. With Chomsky's mentalist approach linguistics became a study of cognition, and a member of the cognitive sciences. The field of cognitive linguistics has arisen in part to formalize this relationship between linguistics and cognition. It represents a revolt against some of the established norms of linguistics, as practiced around the last two or three decades of the twentieth century, and also a logical culmination represented as adoption and application of the thinking prevalent in the cognitive sciences to the study of language. Cognitive linguistics is a relatively new filed, but it has dedicated adherents and an expanding base. The concerns emergent of the association between linguistics and cognition are worthwhile of pursuit by a wide range of cognitive scientists. A review of the perspectives on linguistics and cognition is presented here.

Functions of Language, 2009

In D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens (eds.) Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 1266-1294., 2012

This article sheds light on the history of the sciences of mind within which the development of cognitive linguistics can be situated. It shows that it is the modern inheritor of an older tradition, antedating the behaviorist ascendancy in mid-twentieth century psychology which preceded classical cognitive science. This tradition, centered in psychology but drawing heavily on biology, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, was a kind of cognitive science avant la lettre. It is a measure of the poverty of behaviorism that psychology was compelled to concede disciplinary leadership in classical cognitive science to formalist linguistics and computer science. This article also considers conceptual foundations in psychology, including rule versus schema, the role of imagery in language comprehension and in cognition, consciousness and metacognition, self and autobiographic memory, meaning, embodiment, linguistic schemas and metaphor, and representation and symbolization.

For the purpose of this chapter, 'cognitive linguistics' refers to the movement initiated in the 1980s by, amongst others, Lakoff and Langacker. The chapter surveys the implications for the study of language of the predominately empiricist stance adopted by cognitive linguists in contrast to the rationalism of the Chomskyan approach. After a summary of the contributions of Lakoff and Langacker, the chapter addresses two recent trends in cognitive linguistic researchthe focus on constructions and the role of corpus-based data in assessing the usage-basis of linguistic knowledge.

Cognitive linguistics has emerged in the last twenty-five years as a powerful approach to the study of language, conceptual systems, human cognition, and general meaning construction.

Journal for Research Scholars and Professionals of English Language Teaching, 2021

The present paper is an attempt to simplify and comprehend what Cognitive Linguistics deals. It helps the learners, students of linguistics and teachers of ELT understand the characteristics and phenomena of Cognitive Linguistics, providing a succinct overview of Cognitive Linguistics. It is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics and a cluster of overlapping approaches to the study of language as a mental phenomenon. Linguistics basically focuses on the sounds, words, grammar rules and rules of a language consisting of phonology (the sound system), morphology (the structure of words), syntax (the arrangement of words into sentences) and semantics (meanings). Cognitive linguistics is an integrated model-a collection of comprehensive investigations of a wide range of cognitive and linguistic phenomena.

Cognitive linguistics is on its way to becoming a cognitive science, but a number of problems remain. e relationship between cognitive linguistics and the core cognitive sciences (psychology and neurology) must be clarified: cognitive linguists can selectively import models and methods from these disciplines as a foundation for their linguistic theories, they can export their own models to these disciplines for empirical testing and integration, or they can transform linguistics into a core cognitive science in its own right. e latter requires a number of changes to the models and practices of cognitive linguistics: it must refocus on its linguistic heritage, adopt a more scientific outlook, gain a higher degree of methodological awareness and restrict its models to linguistic constructs and hypotheses that can be operationalized and falsified.