The science of numbers: does language help or hinder?

On the status of external evidence in the theories of cognitive linguistics: compatibility problems or signs of stagnation in the field? Or: why do some linguists behave like Fodor’s input systems?

One of the more recent developments on the Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) landscape lies in critical applications of Cognitive Linguistics (e.g. Chilton 2004; Koller 2004; Hart 2010, 2011a, 2014a; Hart and Lukes 2007). Critical Linguistic CDS (CL-CDS) is characterised by a shift in focus to the interpretation-stage of analysis (O’Halloran 2003; Hart 2010). That is, CL-CDS addresses the cognitive-semiotic processes involved in understanding discourse and the fundamental role that these processes play in the construction of knowledge and the legitimation of action. Cognitive Linguistic approaches to CDS thus typically present detailed semantic analyses of language usages. In particular, CL-CDS emphasises the conceptual nature of meaning construction and is concerned with modelling the conceptual structures and processes which, invoked by text in the course of discourse, constitute an ideologised understanding of the situations and events being described. Cognitive Linguistics itself is not a specific theory but a paradigm within linguistics comprised of several related theories. Accordingly, Cognitive Linguistics makes available to CDS a set of alternative ‘tools’ as different theories may be operationalised as methodologies in critical analyses of discourse. Theories in Cognitive Linguistics, however, share a common set of assumptions about the nature of language. These assumptions are naturally shared by Cognitive Linguistic studies in CDS and thus provide the common thread and theoretical backdrop that defines a more general Cognitive Linguistic school of CDS (cf. Hart 2011b, 2015b). In this chapter, then, I begin, in Section 2, by introducing the Cognitive Linguistic perspective, reviewing the common aims and commitments of Cognitive Linguistic approaches. In section 3, I introduce some of the methods employed in Cog Linguistic approaches. And finally in Section 4, I provide an example analysis using data sourced from three online newspaper articles reporting on the 2014 Million Mask March in London.

Grounding Meaning in Everyday Experience in the World: An Embodied Construction Grammar Analysis of Italian Caused-Motion Constructions

Cognitive linguistics is on its way to becoming a cognitive science, but a number of problems remain. The 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. The 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.

There is an interesting logical/semantic issue with some mathematical languages and theories. In the language of (pure) complex analysis, the two square roots of −1 are indiscernible: anything true of one of them is true of the other. So how does the singular term ‘i’ manage to pick out a unique object? This is perhaps the most prominent example of the phenomenon, but there are some others. The issue is related to matters concerning the use of definite descriptions and singular pronouns, such as donkey anaphora and the problem of indistinguishable participants. Taking a cue from some work in linguistics and the philosophy of language, I suggest thatifunctions like a parameter in natural deduction systems. This may require some rethinking of the role of singular terms, at least in mathematical languages.

This chapter situates LCCM Theory in the larger cognitive linguistics enterprise of which it is a part. It begins by introducing cognitive linguistics, and by briefly reviewing its primary commitments and guiding assumptions. It argues that LCCM Theory represents a cognitive semantic theory, and also a cognitive theory of grammar. The chapter also considers the way in which LCCM Theory serves to build on antecedent theories in cognitive linguistics.

The Ten Lectures by Alan Cienki consider what it means to apply theoretical approaches from cognitive linguistics to the dynamic phenomena of speech and gesture. Taking the usage-based commitment seriously with audio-visual data raises new theoretical questions for cognitive linguistics.

In the late twentieth century any given model of translation was constrained by the code model of communication and by the theory of linguistics upon which it was based. Whereas the code model supplied the notion of equivalence as the standard by which a translation was evaluated, the linguistic theory supplied what was regarded as the minimal unit of translation. Accordingly, as linguistic theories were formulated to account for increasingly larger units of text, translation models were redesigned so that the notion of equivalence mirrored the size of these linguistic units. Ultimately, the notion of equivalence became so broad that attempts to achieve it were regarded as illusionary. The result was a Kuhnian revolution of sorts, with two claimants: relevance theory and cognitive linguistics. The remainder of the paper highlights how recent insights of cognitive linguistics are important in the translation praxis.

This article provides an overview of the relationship between studies of syntactic variation in dialects of English and theoretical accounts of language structure. In the first section of the article, we provide a discussion of the place of syntactic variation within various subdisciplines of linguistic enquiry: we address issues such as I- and E-language, the place of Standard English in linguistic theory, and interfaces between traditional dialectology, variationist sociolinguistics, and theoretical linguistics. These interfaces suggest the need for a clarification of the nature and status of the (morpho)syntactic variable, which we provide in section 3; and in section 4, we examine the way in which (morpho)syntactic variation is treated within a number of theoretical models – for instance, Principles and Parameters theory, HPSG, OT, and cognitive linguistics (including Word Grammar and Construction Grammar) – all of which feature in the other articles in this special issue.

This book illustrates the ways that cognitive linguistics, a relatively new paradigm in language studies, can illuminate and facilitate language research and teaching. The first part of the book introduces the basics of cognitive linguistic theory in a way that is geared toward second language teachers and researchers. The second part of the book provides experimental evidence of the usefulness of applying cognitive linguistics to the teaching of English. Included is a thorough review of the existing literature on cognitive linguistic applications to teaching and cognitive linguistic-based experiments. Three chapters report original experiments which focus on teaching modals, prepositions and syntactic constructions, elements of English that learners tend to find challenging. A chapter on “future directions” reports on an innovative analysis of English conditionals. Pedagogical aids such as diagrams and sample exercises round out this pioneering and innovative text.

200 years of industrial capitalism, and 500 years of colonialism, have caused the worst human and environmental crisis in the history of human kind. Rapid and unprecedented depletion of natura resources, global warming, the exploitation of human beings, the global economic crises, and the military might needed to enforce the free flow of capital, al these call for a common, emancipatory articulation of local struggles. However, the creation of a larger empowering discourse requires the formation of a cognitive mapping whereby different local struggles can identify and map the structural source of their oppression. In this paper I argue that recent approaches to globalisation from the perspective of complexity theory and recent developments in cognitive linguistics and poetics, can help to construct a cognitive mapping of contemporary postcolonial poetry that enables us to scrutinise the impact of global capitalism on the loca context. Complexity theory and cognitive theories regard language as rooted in human perception of a complex and dynamic environment. Cognitive mapping articulates the reader's bodily experience to the writer's embodied conceptualisations of the effects of global capitalism on their land. In this way modernity can be redefined in more democratic terms that incorporate the voice of the marginalised and the oppressed.

Theory and data in cognitive linguistics

In this study, binary oppositions are referred to be mechanisms for producing cultural notions that are indicated by lexical antonyms and represent both the Kazakh and English population's worldview and the language's conception of the universe. On the basis of an analysis of the materials and important cultural concepts from both countries, a sampling of binary oppositions was created. The findings of the comparative study allowed for the definition of key components of Kazakh and English ethnic cultures,which serve as basic components in the self-identification of both countries and aid in the reconstruction of their worldview. The purpose of this work is to identify the features of the national expression of the concepts of wealth and poverty in the Kazakh and English languages. To achieve the goal, the following tasks were set: 1.study of the concept of "proverbs" in the system of Linguistics, their role in creating a linguistic picture of the world. 2.selection, analysis and comparison of Kazakh and English proverbs and sayings. 3.identification of general and various features of the concepts of wealth and poverty in national characteristics, identification of the main features in the values and ideals of the Kazakh and English peoples in relationto these concepts.Research methods depend on the goals and objectives of the work. The work required the use of methods of sampling, comparison and descriptive analysis. The theoretical significance of the work is to identify the features of the national expression of the concepts of wealth and poverty in the Kazakh and English languages within the framework of the theory of cognitive linguistics. The practical significance of the work is that the results of the study can be used in teaching English in courses such as lexicology, phraseology, comparative typology, cognitive linguistics.

Jackendoff's Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution attempts to reconnect generative linguistics to the rest of cognitive science. However, by minimally acknowledging decades of work in cognitive linguistics, treating dynamical systems approaches somewhat dismissively, and clinging to certain fundamental dogma while revising others, he clearly risks satisfying no one by almost pleasing everyone.

Recent work in cognitive linguistics has hired the term coercion which was formerly associated with computational linguistics to apply to a number of instances in the study of natural language in which there is an incongruity between the semantics of a syntactic frame and the semantics of lexical items found in it. Some of these instances illustrate areas which could well be described as extensions of aspectual boundaries in which the harmony between lexical and grammatical aspect has been penetrated; others illustrate mismatch in nominal phrases, in which the usual parameters that apply have been violated. The purpose of the present chapter is to analyse three individual cases as they have been presented in recent accounts, and to investigate whether such cases could be explained either by pragmatic factors such as metonymic inferencing, or by considering them in the light of their diachronic development. It will then be questioned whether or not a unique phenomenon of coercion can be justified in the context of natural language at all.