Cognitive Linguistics

Introduction

Describe a car
★ box-like shape, wheels, doors, windows,
engine, brakes, seat…
★ comfortable, fast, social status…
★ personal affairs connected with cars, e.g.
car accident
What does this example tell us?
 This example tells us that the description of a car
goes beyond the objective description, but
provides a richer, more natural view of its meaning,
and includes the use of metaphor. This approach
to language is closely related to human
experience of the world and the way to perceive
the world. This new approach to language is called
cognitive linguistics.
 cognitive linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics is the study of
language based on human bodily
experience of the world and the way they
perceive and conceptualize the world.
 Background:
Cognitive linguistics is a newly established
approach to the study of language that
emerged in the 1970s as a reaction against
the dominant generative paradigm which
pursues an autonomous view of language and
has been increasingly active since 1980s.
 three major hypotheses of cognitive
linguistics:
 1) Language is not an autonomous;

 2) Grammar is conceptualization;

 3) Knowledge of language emerges

from language use.
 It originally emerged in the 1970s (Fillmore, 1975;
Lakoff & Thompson, 1975; Rosch, 1975) and arose out of
dissatisfaction with formal approaches to language which
were dominant, at that time, in the disciplines of linguistics
and philosophy. \

 While its origins were, in part, philosophical in nature,

cognitive linguistics has always been strongly influenced
by theories and findings from the other cognitive sciences
as they emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly
cognitive psychology.

 Nowhere is this clearer than in work relating to human

categorization, particularly as adopted by Charles Fillmore
in the 1970s (e.g., Fillmore, 1975) and George Lakoff in
the 1980s (e.g., Lakoff, 1987)..
Also of importance have been earlier traditions such as
Gestalt psychology, as applied notably by Leonard Talmy
(e.g., 2000) and Ronald Langacker (e.g., 1987).

Finally, the neural underpinnings of language and

cognition have had longstanding influence on the character
and content of cognitive linguistic theories, from early work
on how visual biology constrains colour term systems (Kay
& McDaniel, 1978) to more recent work under the rubric of
the Neural Theory of Language (Gallese & Lakoff, 2005).

In recent years, cognitive linguistic theories have become

sufficiently sophisticated and detailed to begin making
predictions that are testable using the broad range of
converging methods from the cognitive sciences
 COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AS AN “ENTERPRISE”
 Cognitive linguistics is best described as a ‘movement’ or an
‘enterprise’, precisely because it does not constitute a single closely-
articulated theory.

 Instead, it is an approach that has adopted a common set of core

commitments and guiding principles, which have led to a diverse range of
complementary, overlapping (and sometimes competing)
theories.

 The purpose of this course is to trace some of the major assumptions

and commitments that make cognitive linguistics a distinct and worthwhile
enterprise.

 Attempts will be made to briefly survey the major areas of research and
theory construction which characterize cognitive linguistics, areas which
make it one of the most lively, exciting and promising schools of thought
and practice in modern cognitive science.
 What is this course about?
• It’s an introduction to Cognitive Linguistics.
• Cognitive Linguistics = the study of language in
terms of cognitive processes such as
– categorization, schematization, analogy, ...
• You will find out about
– the assumptions and goals of Cognitive Linguistics,
– its main research themes,
– how the field has developed since its inception.
 plan for this week
1. What is Cognitive Linguistics?
2. three central projects in Cognitive Linguistics
– the study of conceptual metaphor
– Construction Grammar
– Usage-based linguistics
... and how they developed over the years
3. conclusions and outlook
What is Cognitive Linguistics?
• shared assumptions:
– knowledge of language is the primary object of
study
– a key aim of linguistics is to explain why some
sentences are grammatical while others are not
• In the mirror John saw himself.
• * In the mirror himself saw John.
• rejection of generative assumptions:
– children are not endowed with a ‘universal
grammar’
– the ‘grammar and dictionary’ view of linguistic
knowledge is rejected
– knowledge of language emerges from language
use
• Cognitive Linguistics
– attempts to describe what speakers know when
they know a language
• words, constructions, ...
– attempts to relate that knowledge to general
cognitive processes
• categorization, schema formation, analogy, ...
– attempts to explain how that knowledge comes
into being through language use
• Psycholinguistics: • Cognitive linguistics:
– How does the human – What does language tell us
mind handle language? about the mind?
– language processing, – language structures,
production, acquisition language representation
– not tied to a single – conceived as a theory of
theory of language language
– on-line data: reaction – off-line data: linguistic
times, eye movements, examples, grammaticality
brain imaging, etc. judgments, corpus data
• Psycholinguistics: • Cognitive linguistics:
– divide and conquer – a theory of everything
• word recognition • how language is
• parsing represented in the
• sentence comprehension mind, how it is learned
and used, how it
• anaphora resolution changes, the universe,
• ... and all the rest
• Functional linguistics
– Basic assumption: Language is the way it is
because it is used for communication.
– Form follows function.
– ≠ formal approaches: The structures of language
are determined by formal principles that are
independent of functional pressures.
• This is the report that I filed before reading.
• * I filed the report before reading.
• Yes, cognitive linguistics is known for work on
metaphor, and meaning in general.
• But, it is much more than that!
Three central projects
1. Conceptual Metaphor
Lakoff & Johnson 1980
 definition of metaphor
“The essence of metaphor is understanding one
kind of thing in terms of another.”
(Lakoff and Johnson 1980)
 arguments
She attacked every weak point in my argument.
Your claims are indefensible.
You’re going to get a lot of flak for those suggestions.
They had to surrender to the force of our arguments.

• Being in an argument is viewed (and talked about)

in terms of fighting a war.
• the ‘ARGUMENT IS WAR’ metaphor
___domain of WAR ___domain of ARGUMENTS
mappings
Fighting parties Participants
in an argument

Attacking Raising objections

Maintaining
Defending one’s opinion

Surrendering Giving up your

opinion

source ___domain target ___domain

 diseases

• Since 1998 the virus has invaded southern and central

Europe, killing over 1.8 million animals so far.
• We are losing the fight against tuberculosis.
• He has been battling his disease with homeopathic
medication.
• The spread of the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) is dealing a heavy blow to commercial activities in
Taiwan.

• DISEASES ARE ENEMIES

___domain of WAR ___domain of DISEASE

Enemy / Invader Germs, viruses

Attacking / invading Infection

Fighting Trying to heal

Ammunition Medication

Victory Recovery
 scientific disciplines
• She has published widely in the field of cognitive psychology.
• My dissertation straddles the line between linguistics and
philosophy.
• This article goes beyond the traditional boundaries of particle
physics.
• This finding has opened up entirely new areas of research.

• SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES ARE AREAS

___domain of SPACE ___domain of SCIENCE

Area Discipline
Being in a Working on
borderline region two disciplines
Moving across Changing disciplines
boundaries

Discovery of Scientific
new territory discovery
 source domains and target domains
• Common source domains • target domains
– space (a central idea) importance
– force (a strong candidate) competition
– manipulation (turn this to your advantage) social relations
– vision (a clear explanation) logic

– taste (a bitter disappointment) emotions

• >> direct, bodily experience >> abstract ideas

 conceptual metaphor

• is based on our capacity to think of (and then talk

about) one kind of thing in terms of another
• involves a mapping of concepts from one
semantic ___domain onto another ___domain
• helps us understand (or: “get a grip on”) complex
phenomena, unfamiliar topics, or any other less
well structured semantic ___domain
 the ‘literal meaning first’ hypothesis

That is not true, she is a human...

He MUST mean something else…
He probably means that Sally is in some
way LIKE a block of ice,
repellant, unpleasant to interact with,
unresponsive, etc.

Sally is a block of ice.

John Searle
 Does sympathy feel warm?

• She gave me the cold shoulder.

• We received a warm welcome.
• I gradually warmed up to them.
• She gave me an icy stare.
 Sympathy feels warm, exclusion feels cold.
(Zhong and Leonardelli 2008)

• Two groups of subjects were asked to perform a

number of tasks, among them
– Group A had to imagine a scene of social inclusion
– Group B had to imagine a scene of social exclusion
• After all the tasks, the experimenter asked each
subject to estimate the room temperature “at
the request of lab maintenance staff”.
• Significant difference between the two groups,
exclusion group giving lower estimates.
• Target ___domain activates the source ___domain.
 Exclusion feels cold, part II
(Zhong and Leonardelli 2008)

• Participants were literally subjected to social

inclusion/exclusion.
• computer game in which “three players were
connecting on-line”, tossing a ball
• Exclusion group received the ball twice initially, but
not once during the rest of the game.
• test after the task:
– Desirability ratings for cold and hot drinks and food items
• Exclusion group found hot food and drinks
significantly more desirable than the inclusion group.
 Why is this important?

• Metaphorical target domains can activate their respective

source domains.
• Metaphors are not just language, they are deeply
engrained patterns of association in thought.
• Specifically: Exclusion feels cold, creates a need for
physical warmth.
• Knowledge of social interaction is hence embodied, i.e.
connected to bodily experience.
 Warmth makes you feel sympathy
(Williams and Bargh 2008)

• Holding a warm cup of coffee makes you feel

more sympathy for others:
– “before the experiment”, subjects were casually
asked to hold the experimenter’s drink during an
elevator ride
– two groups: hot coffee, cold soda
– both groups were then asked to complete a
personality assessment questionnaire
– the same person was rated as more friendly,
intelligent, etc. by the coffee group
• Source ___domain activates the target ___domain.
Warmth makes you feel sympathy, part II
(Williams and Bargh 2008)

• Holding a hot therapeutic pad makes you more

generous towards others:
– subjects were asked to evaluate an icy/hot therapeutic
pad “for market research”
– two groups: hot, icy (experimenter blind)
– Both groups were offered two types of reward:
• ice cream for themselves
• ice cream “gift certificate for a friend”
– The ‘hot’ group chose gift certificates significantly
more often.
• Some examples of conceptual metaphor
e.g. LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Look how far we’ve come.
It’s been a long, bumpy road.
We can’t turn back now.
We’re at a crossroads.
We may have to go our separate ways.
We’re spinning our wheels.
Our relationship is off the track.
The marriage is on the rocks.
We may have to bail out of this relationship.
• What is striking about these examples is that they
represent ordinary everyday ways of talking about
relationships:
• There is nothing stylized or overtly poetic about
these expressions.
• Moreover, for the most part, they do not make use
of the linguistic formula A is B, which is typical of
resemblance metaphors.
• However, these expressions are clearly non-literal: a
relationship cannot literally spin its wheels, nor
stand at the crossroads.
• Observe that the expressions in the above
example have something in common:
• In addition to describing experiences of
relationships, they also rely upon expressions
that relate to the conceptual ___domain
JOURNEYS.
• Indeed, our ability to describe relationships
in terms of journeys appears to be highly
productive.
• From a cognitive point of view, the crucial
aspects of a metaphor are not only the
properties inherent in the individual
categories, but their role in the structure of
an entire “cognitive model”.
• What is transferred, then, by a metaphor is:
• a. the structure,
• b. the internal relations or the logic of a
cognitive model.
• There is a conventional link at the conceptual
level between the ___domain of LOVE
RELATIONSHIPS and the ___domain of
JOURNEYS.
• LOVE, which is the target (the ___domain being
described), is conventionally structured in
terms of JOURNEYS, which is the source (the
___domain in terms of which the target is
described).
• This association is called a conceptual
metaphor.
• What makes it a metaphor is the
conventional association of one ___domain with
another.
• What makes it conceptual (rather than
purely linguistic) is the idea that the
motivation for the metaphor resides at the
level of conceptual domains.
• In other words, we not only speak in
metaphorical terms, but also think in
metaphorical terms.
• From this perspective, linguistic expressions that
are metaphorical in nature are simply reflections of
an underlying conceptual association.
• There are a number of distinct roles that populate
the source and target domains.
• e.g., JOURNEYS include TRAVELLERS, a MEANS OF
TRANSPORT, a ROUTE followed, OBSTACLES along
the route and so on. Similarly, the target ___domain
LOVE RELATIONSHIP includes LOVERS, EVENTS in
the relationship and so on.
• The metaphor works by mapping roles from
the source onto the target:
• LOVERS become TRAVELLERS (We’re at a
crossroads), who travel by a particular
MEANS OF TRANSPORT (We’re spinning our
wheels), proceeding along a particular ROUTE
(Our relationship went off course), impeded
by obstacles (Our marriage is on the rocks).
• As these examples demonstrate, a metaphorical
link between two domains consists of a number of
distinct correspondences or mappings. These
mappings are illustrated in Table 10.2.
• From a cognitive perspective a metaphor is a
mapping of the structure of a source model onto a
target model.
 Table 2 Mappings for LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Source: JOURNEY Mappings Target: LOVE
TRAVELLERS → LOVERS
VEHICLE → LOVE RELATIONSHIP
JOURNEY → EVENTS IN THE RELATIONSHIP

DISTANCE COVERED → PROGRESS MADE

OBSTACLES DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED
ENCOUNTERED →
DECISIONS ABOUT CHOICES ABOUT WHAT TO DO
DIRECTION →
DESTINATION OF THE GOALS OF THE RELATIONSHIP
JOURNEY →
conceptual metaphor: conclusions
• The study of conceptual metaphor started on the
basis of off-line linguistic evidence:
– The deadline is getting closer and closer.
– Let us put this disagreement behind us.
• >> Abstract ideas (target domains) are understood in
terms of direct bodily experience (source domains).
• >> Abstract human thought is embodied.
• By now, a substantial body of psychological evidence
lends support to this view.
Bergen 2012
Two key commitments of cognitive linguistics
The cognitive linguistics enterprise is characterized by
two fundamental commitments (Lakoff, 1990).

• The Generalization Commitment

• The Cognitive Commitment

These underlie both the orientation and approach

adopted by practising cognitive linguists, and the
assumptions and methodologies employed in the two
main branches of the cognitive linguistics enterprise:
cognitive semantics, and cognitive approaches to
grammar
The Generalization Commitment (Lakoff, 1990)
 It represents a dedication to characterizing general principles that
apply to all aspects of human language.

 This goal is just a special subcase of the standard commitment in

science to seek the broadest generalizations possible.

 In contrast to the cognitive linguistics approach, other approaches to

the study of language often separate the language faculty into distinct
areas such as phonology (sound), semantics (word and sentence
meaning), pragmatics (meaning in discourse context), morphology
(word structure), syntax (sentence structure), and so on.

 As a consequence, there is often little basis for generalization

across these aspects of language, or for study of their interrelations.
This is particularly true of formal linguistics.
 Within formal linguistics it is usually argued that areas such as
phonology, semantics and syntax concern significantly different
kinds of structuring principles operating over different kinds of
primitives.

 For instance, a syntax ‘module’ is an area in the mind

concerned with structuring words into sentences, whereas a
phonology ‘module’ is concerned with structuring sounds into
patterns permitted by the rules of any given language, and by
human language in general.

This modular view of mind reinforces the idea that modern

linguistics is justified in separating the study of language into
distinct sub-disciplines, not only on grounds of practicality, but
because the components of language are wholly distinct, and, in
terms of organization, incommensurable.
o Cognitive linguists acknowledge that it may often be useful
to treat areas such as syntax, semantics and phonology as
being notionally distinct.

o However, given the Generalization Commitment, cognitive

linguists do not start with the assumption that the ‘modules’
or ‘subsystems’ of language are organized in significantly
divergent ways, or indeed that wholly distinct modules even
exist.

o Thus, the Generalization Commitment represents a

commitment to openly investigating how the various aspects
of linguistic knowledge emerge from a common set of human
cognitive abilities upon which they draw, rather than
assuming that they are produced in encapsulated modules of
the mind.
The Generalization Commitment has concrete
consequences for studies of language.

 First, cognitive linguistic studies focus on what is common

among aspects of language, seeking to re-use successful
methods and explanations across these aspects.

 For instance, just as word meaning displays prototype

effects – there are better and worse examples of referents of
given words, related in particular ways – so various studies
have applied the same principles to the organization of
morphology (e.g., Taylor, 2003), syntax (e.g., Goldberg,
1995), and phonology (e.g., Jaeger & Ohala, 1984).
Second, cognitive linguistic approaches often take a ‘vertical’, rather
than a ‘horizontal’ approach to the study of language.

 Language can be seen as composed of a set of distinct layers of

organization – the sound structure, the set of words composed by
these sounds, the syntactic structures these words are constitutive of,
and so on.

 If we array these layers one on top of the next as they unroll over
time (like layers of a cake), then modular approaches are horizontal, in
the sense that they take one layer and study it internally – just as a
horizontal slice of cake.

Vertical approaches get a richer view of language by taking a vertical

slice of language, which includes phonology, morphology, syntax, and
of course a healthy dollop of semantics on top.
Cognitive linguistics practice can be
roughly divided into two main areas of
research:
cognitive semantics and
cognitive (approaches to) grammar.
 Cognitive semantics is concerned with
investigating the relationship between
experience, the conceptual system, and the
semantic structure encoded by language.

In specific terms, scholars working in

cognitive semantics investigate knowledge
representation (conceptual structure), and
meaning construction (conceptualization).
 Cognitive semanticists have employed
language as the lens through which these
cognitive phenomena can be investigated.

Consequently, research in cognitive

semantics tends to be interested in modelling
the human mind as much as it is concerned
with investigating linguistic semantics.
• A cognitive approach to grammar is concerned
with modelling the language system (the mental
‘grammar’), rather than the nature of mind per se.

• However, it does so by taking as its starting point

the conclusions of work in cognitive semantics.

• This follows as meaning is central to cognitive

approaches to grammar.
It is critical to note that although the study of
cognitive semantics and cognitive approaches to
grammar are occasionally separate in practice,
this by no means implies that their domains of
enquiry are anything but tightly linked –most
work in cognitive linguistics finds it necessary
to investigate both lexical semantics and
grammatical organization jointly.
 As with research in cognitive semantics, cognitive
approaches to grammar have also typically adopted
one of two foci.
Scholars such as Ronald Langacker (e.g., 1987,
1991a, 1991b, 1999) have emphasized the study of
the cognitive principles that give rise to linguistic
organization.

In his theory of Cognitive Grammar, Langacker has

attempted to delineate the principles that structure a
grammar, and to relate these to aspects of general
cognition.
 The second avenue of investigation, pursued by
researchers (Fillmore et al., 1988; Kay & Fillmore, 1998),
(Lakoff & Thompson,1975; Lakoff, 1987) Goldberg (1995,
2003) and more recently Bergen and Chang (2005) and
Croft (2002), aims to provide a more descriptively and
formally detailed account of the linguistic units that
comprise a particular language.

These researchers attempt to provide a broad-ranging

inventory of the units of language, from morphemes to
words, idioms, and phrasal patterns, and seek accounts of
their structure, compositional possibilities, and relations.
 Researchers who have pursued this line of
investigation are developing a set of theories that
are collectively known as construction grammars.

 This general approach takes its name from

the view in cognitive linguistics that the basic
unit of language is a form-meaning pairing known
as a symbolic assembly, or a construction
(particularly in construction grammar accounts,
see, e.g., Goldberg, 1995, for discussion).
2. Construction Grammar
What do speakers know when they
know a language?
 What speakers have to know:
• must know words
– dog, submarine, probably, you, should, etc.
– what they mean, how they sound
• must know that there are different kinds of words
– red is an adjective, tasty is an adjective as well, lobster is a noun, etc.
• must know how to put words together
– red can be combined with ball
– many cannot be combined with milk
– John saw Mary is ok, John Mary saw is not, but It’s John Mary saw is ok
• must be able to put the right endings on words
– John walk-s, two dog-s
• must be able to understand newly coined words
– festive-ness, under-whelm
• must know that sometimes more is meant than is said
– General Motors were able to increase production in the second quarter.
– I don’t know if that is a good idea.
• must know idiomatic expressions
– I'm all ears, let’s take a break, we really hit it off, …
The dictionary-and-grammar model
The totality of our knowledge of language is captured
by a network of constructions: a ‘construct-i-con.’

Goldberg 2003: 219

[…] the network of constructions captures our

grammatical knowledge of language in toto, i.e.
it’s constructions all the way down.

Goldberg 2006: 18
 Constructions
• words: cat, philosophy, sparkling, run, ...
• collocations: I don’t know, you bet, see you, ...
• semi-fixed phrases: keep V-ing, could you please VP
• syntactic patterns: SUBJ BE V-ed, SUBJ V OBJ1 OBJ2
• abstract phrase structures: PREP DET NOUN

• Speakers’ knowledge of language = an associative

network that connects all of these constructions
Idiomatic expressions are everywhere
• In winter you can look out of the window and
tell it's 2°C outside. How? Because the
crocuses are coming into bloom. Crocuses are
plants that nature has provided with a
biological thermometer. It's very accurate,
reacting to temperature differences of as little
as 0.5°C. As the weather gets warmer the
flowers open. But when the temperature
drops, they close again.
Idiomatic expressions are everywhere
• In winter you can look out of the window and
tell it's 2°C outside. How? Because the
crocuses are coming into bloom. Crocuses are
plants that nature has provided with a
biological thermometer. It's very accurate,
reacting to temperature differences of as little
as 0.5°C. As the weather gets warmer the
flowers open. But when the temperature
drops, they close again.
Idiomatic expressions are everywhere
• In winter you can look out of the window and
tell it's 2°C outside. How? Because the
crocuses are coming into bloom. Crocuses are
plants that nature has provided with a
biological thermometer. It's very accurate,
reacting to temperature differences of as little
as 0.5°C. As the weather gets warmer the
flowers open. But when the temperature
drops, they close again.
Idiomatic expressions are everywhere
• In winter you can look out of the window and
tell it's 2°C outside. How? Because the
crocuses are coming into bloom. Crocuses are
plants that nature has provided with a
biological thermometer. It's very accurate,
reacting to temperature differences of as little
as 0.5°C. As the weather gets warmer the
flowers open. But when the temperature
drops, they close again.
Idiomatic expressions are everywhere
• In winter you can look out of the window and
tell it's 2°C outside. How? Because the
crocuses are coming into bloom. Crocuses are
plants that nature has provided with a
biological thermometer. It's very accurate,
reacting to temperature differences of as little
as 0.5°C. As the weather gets warmer the
flowers open. But when the temperature
drops, they close again.
motivating Construction Grammar
• “It appears to us that the machinery needed
for describing the so-called minor or
peripheral constructions of the sort which has
occupied us here will have to be powerful
enough to be generalized to more familiar
structures, in particular those represented by
individual phrase structure rules.”
• Fillmore et al. (1988)
 motivating Construction Grammar
• if it is the case that
– idiomatic expressions are all over the place,
– idiomatic expressions are more than fixed strings,
– and idiomatic expressions are highly productive,
• … then ‘the appendix to the grammar’ can in fact be
extended to comprise all patterns that exist in a given
language.
• The machinery that is necessary to account for the
‘periphery’ of grammar is powerful enough to account
for its ‘core’ as well.
• Instead of dictionary plus grammar: a construct-i-con
Goldberg 1995
 argument structure
• also called valency

yawn send
 valency defined
• The set of participants is called the verb’s valency.
– devour has a valency of two (transitive)
– hand has a valency of three (ditransitive)
– exist has a valency of one (intransitive)
• The participants are called the arguments of the
verb.
 traditional idea of valency
• It’s in the lexicon!
• Each verb is listed in the mental
lexicon.
• In the entry it is specifies with what
syntactic contexts the verb can
occur.
– SWEEP
• intransitive
• transitive
• transitive plus resultant state adjective
• transitive plus path
 problems with lexically specified
valency
• speakers use verbs ‘creatively’, in syntactic
contexts in which they have not heard a verb
before:
– John played the piano to pieces.
– He pulled himself free, one leg at a time.
– No matter how carefully you lick a spoon clean, some
goo will cling to it.
• Are there entries such as the following?
– ‘play: acting on an object in a violent manner that
triggers a change of state in that object’
 alternative explanation
• The syntactic context dictates a certain
interpretation of the verb.
• coercion
– If a lexical item is semantically incompatible with
its morphosyntactic context, the meaning of the
lexical item conforms to the meaning of the
structure in which it is embedded.
• John plays the piano.
• John plays the piano to pieces.
 coercion at work
• intransitive verbs: run, sneeze, worry

• resultative uses:
– John ran his feet sore.
– Fred sneezed his cat soaking wet.
– Bob’s mother worried herself sick.
 coercion at work
• David has whiffled my borogoves completely
vorpal again!

• You do not know what the words mean.

• You do know that
– David did something to the borogoves that is
called ‘whiffling’.
– As a result, the borogoves became ‘vorpal’.
 How do you understand novel
denominal verbs?
• to coffee
– Don’t forget to coffee the scientists every two hours.
– Where should we coffee?
– I coffeed myself into a frenzy.
• The constructional view:
– If the lexical meaning of a word is unclear, the construction in
which it is embedded should provide a meaning via the principle
of coercion.
• The ‘common-sense’ hypothesis:
– There are lexical items in the context that evoke a specific
interpretation of the novel denominal verb.
– I coffeed myself into a frenzy >> coffee, frenzy, I did something
to myself, ...
 inference task
(Kaschak & Glenberg 2000)

• Subjects see two stimuli sentences

– Stimulus sentence A
– Stimulus sentence B

• Subjects see a test sentence

– Test sentence
• Subjects match the test sentence with one of
the stimuli sentence.
– Which of the stimuli sentence allows you to infer that
the test sentence happened?
• Lyn crutched Tom the apple so he wouldn’t
starve.

• Lyn crutched the apple so Tom wouldn’t

starve.

stimulus sentences
• Lyn acted on the apple.

test sentence
• Lyn crutched Tom the apple so he wouldn’t
starve.

• Lyn crutched the apple so Tom wouldn’t

starve.

stimulus sentences
• Tom got the apple.

test sentence
 inference task results
(Kaschak & Glenberg 2000)
percentage of chosen ditransitives

0 20 40 60 80 100

Tom got the apple, ‘throw’

Lyn acted on the apple, ‘throw’

Tom got the apple, ‘crutch’

Lyn acted on the apple, ‘crutch’

 Construction Grammar: conclusions
• Dictionary and Grammar model:
– a large lexicon with words, a set of grammatical
rules
• CxG:
– a large, hierarchically structured inventory of
constructions, a construct-i-con
– constructions: symbolic units, everything from
words to highly abstract syntactic patterns
 evidence for these assumptions
• idioms galore: ordinary language contains many
idiomatic expressions with non-compositional
meanings (by and large, all of a sudden)
• coercion effects: constructions override lexical
meanings (John played the piano to pieces.)
• idiosyncratic constraints: morphological and
syntactic patterns are subject to semantic and
pragmatic constraints (*coming into leaves)
• experimental evidence: speakers activate
constructions in sentence comprehension
 Google: Hilpert YouTube grammar

Hilpert 2014
3. Usage-based Linguistics
 Usage-based linguistics
• Speakers build up knowledge of language through
experience with language.
• This process does not rely on any language-
specific mechanisms, all that is needed are
___domain-general cognitive skills:
– categorization
– analogy
– schema formation
– chunking
– gestalt perception
– memory
– ...
Langacker 1987, 1991
 Langacker’s project: a cognitive grammar

• All linguistic structures are meaningful (= CxG).

– subject, noun, preposition, relative clause, progressive
aspect, infinitive, past tense, finiteness, modal auxiliary, ...
• The meanings of these structures can be fully
described in cognitive terms.

to walk

the preposition into

the present progressive a walk
the empirical turn in usage-based linguistics

• Today, usage-based linguistics is mostly

associated with empirical studies that
document how frequency of use shapes
knowledge of grammar.

Bybee 2010
 highly predictable words are reduced

• I’d like a gin and tonic, please.

• I’d like a gin and a cucumber sandwich, please.

• This effect is observed not only at the level of

word strings, but also at the level of
constructions.
• Words are reduced when they occur in a
construction for which they are highly typical.
 reading task
(Gahl and Garnsey 2004)
• The director suggested the scene should be filmed at
night.
• The director suggested the scene between Kim and
Mike.

• The confident engineer maintained the machinery of

the whole upper deck.
• The confident engineer maintained the machinery
would be hard to destroy.
 reading task
(Gahl and Garnsey 2004)
• The director suggested the scene should be filmed at
night. THAT-less complement clause construction
• The director suggested the scene between Kim and
Mike.

• The confident engineer maintained the machinery of

the whole upper deck.
• The confident engineer maintained the machinery would
be hard to destroy.
 reading task
(Gahl and Garnsey 2004)
• The director suggested the scene should be filmed at
night.
• The director suggested the scene between Kim and
Mike.

• The confident engineer maintained the machinery of

the whole upper deck. transitive construction
• The confident engineer maintained the machinery
would be hard to destroy.
 reading task
(Gahl and Garnsey 2004)
• Constructional bias of the verb significantly
correlates with reduced pronunciation.
– argue, believe, claim, conclude, confess, or decide are
pronounced shorter when they occur with a
complement clause
– accept, advocate, confirm, or emphasize are reduced
when occurring with a direct object
• The reduction effect cannot be explained through
the routinization of word strings, the actual
words can vary, it is the structure that matters.
What is Cognitive Linguistics?
Three central projects
 Trends
• In all three projects, there is a clear trend towards
empirical methods:
– corpus linguistics
– psycholinguistic experimentation
• Cognitive Linguistics aims to connect with other areas of
research within linguistics and elsewhere:
– variationist sociolinguistics
– grammaticalization research
– typology
– psychology (exemplar theory, embodied cognition)
– computer science (fluid construction grammar)