Cognitive Grammar

Cognitive linguistics is the joint product of largely independent research programs begun in the late 1970s and early 1980s by scholars who shared the general goal of making grammatical and semantic theory responsible to the facts of usage and the flexibility of the human conceptual capacity. But what kind of product is it? To those outside the immediate spheres of influence of its major proponents (George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, Gilles Fauconnier, Leonard Talmy, among others), it might appear to be nothing more than an inventory of disparate constructs (prototype-based categories, semantic frames, mental spaces, metaphorical mappings) or even a set of case studies of linguistic idiosyncrasies. It doesn’t seem to DO anything, or at least it does not provide a uniform grammatical or semantic formalism. Instead, cognitive linguistics is a worldview, in which words, rather than denoting things in the world, are points of entry into conceptual networks (Langacker 1987, 1991), and syntactic patterns, rather than merely grouping symbols together, are cognitive and even motor routines of varying degrees of entrenchment and internal complexity (Bybee 2001).

2006

2007

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.

International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technologies (IJPSAT) , 2020

The following article is devoted to the research of issues in a new direction in Linguistics, Cognitive grammar and its prosperity. The author gives own suggestion on cognitive functions of language means and ways of their realization, providing the table to express the ideas in detail.

This chapter offers an overview of Ronald Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (CG), with special reference to the relation between CG and constructionist approaches. It explains that although CG was developed prior to constructionist approaches, it shares many assumptions with them. CG views language as being grounded in embodied human experience and language-independent cognitive processes, and it assumes grammar to be inherently meaningful, and that language consists of form-meaning pairings or assemblies of symbolic structures. The chapter also addresses the relation between lexemes and constructions and discusses semantic and grammatical roles in CG.

Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is not only a scientific approach to the study of language, but undoubtedly one of the most rapidly expanding schools in linguistics nowadays. As a dynamic and attractive framework within theoretical and descriptive linguistics, it proves to be one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project of cognitive science. Part of its seductiveness arises from the fact that CL aims at an integrated model of language and thought, at the building of a sharp theory of linguistic meaning that reflects the human construal of external reality, taking into account the way in which human beings experience reality, both culturally and psychologically (27). In its description of natural language, CL attempts to bridge "the distance between the social and the psychological, between the community and the individual, between the system and the application of the system, between the code and the actual use of the code" (26).

Cognitive linguistics is one of the fastest growing and influential perspectives on the nature of language, the mind, and their relationship with sociophysical (embodied) experience. It is a broad theoretical and methodological enterprise, rather than a single, closely articulated theory. Its primary commitments are outlined. These are the Cognitive Commitment-a commitment to providing a characterization of language that accords with what is known about the mind and brain from other disciplines-and the Generalization Commitment-which represents a dedication to characterizing general principles that apply to all aspects of human language. The article also outlines the assumptions and worldview which arises from these commitments, as represented in the work of leading cognitive linguists.