Cognitive Grammar
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C4P114
2025-12-10
68
Cognitive Grammar
In this section, we present an overview of Cognitive Grammar, the model of language developed by Ronald Langacker. The purpose of this section is to illustrate what a usage-based model of language looks like, rather than to provide a detailed overview of the theory. We return to the details of Langacker’s theory in Part III of the book.
Langacker’s model is called ‘Cognitive Grammar’ because it represents an attempt to understand language not as an outcome of a specialised language module, but as the result of general cognitive mechanisms and processes. According to this view, language follows the same general principles as other aspects of the human cognitive system. In this respect, Cognitive Grammar upholds the generalisation commitment (Chapter 2). It is also important to point out that the term ‘grammar’ is not used here in its narrow sense, where it refers to a specific subpart of language relating to syntactic and/or morpho logical knowledge. Instead, the term ‘grammar’ is used in the broad sense, where it refers to the language system as a whole, incorporating sound, meaning and morphosyntax.
We begin with a brief sketch of the central assumptions of Cognitive Grammar. This approach rejects the modular view adopted by formal models, according to which language is a system of ‘words and rules’ consisting of a lexicon, a syntactic component containing rules of combination that operate over lexical units, and other components governing sound and sentence meaning. Instead, Cognitive Grammar takes a symbolic or constructional view of language, according to which there is no distinction between syntax and lexicon. Instead, the grammar consists of an inventory of units that are form-meaning pairings: morphemes, words and grammatical constructions. These units, which Langacker calls symbolic assemblies, unite properties of sound, meaning and grammar within a single representation.
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