COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS-AN

INTRODUCTION
Selected by PHAN, THE HUNG, Ph.D.
2022
 What does it mean to know a language?

• Cognitive linguists, like other linguists, study

language for its own sake; they attempt to
describe and account for its systematicity, its
structure, the functions it serves and how these
functions are realized by the language system
• Cognitive linguists study language stems from the
assumption that language reflects patterns of
thought
• To study language from this perspective is to study
patterns of conceptualization.
 (cont.)

• Language offers a window into cognitive

function, providing insights into the nature,
structure and organization of thoughts and ideas.
• The most important way in which cognitive
linguistics differs from other approaches to the
study of language, then, is that language is
assumed to reflect certain fundamental
properties and design features of the human
mind
 1.1 What is language for
• Language allows quick and effective expression,
and provides a well developed means of encoding
and transmitting complex and subtle ideas.
• In fact, these notions of encoding and
transmitting turn out to be important, as they
relate to two key functions associated with
language, the symbolic function and the
interactive function
 1.1.1 The symbolic function of language
• One crucial function of language is to express thoughts and
ideas language encodes and externalizes our thoughts. The
way language does this is by using symbols
• These might be meaningful subparts of words (for example,
dis- as in distaste), whole words (for example, cat, run,
tomorrow), or ‘strings’ of words (for example, He couldn’t
write a pop jingle let alone a whole musical).
• These symbols consist of forms, which may be spoken,
written or signed, and meanings with which the forms are
conventionally paired.
• In fact, a symbol is better referred to as a symbolic assembly,
as it consists of two parts that are conventionally associated
(Langacker, 1987). In other words, this symbolic assembly is a
form-meaning pairing
 Levels of representation

PERCEPT(ION) CONCEPT(ION) LINGUISTIC MEANING

The world “OUT THERE” FORM

1.1.2 The interactive function of language
• In our everyday social encounters, language
serves an interactive function
in order to ‘get our ideas across’, in other words
to communicate.
Explain:
a. I now pronounce you man and wife.
b. Shut the door on your way out!
Another way in which language fulfils the
interactive function relates to the notion of
expressivity
 (cont.)
• a. the eminent linguist
• b. the blonde bombshell
(3a) focuses on the profession of the individual and her relative
standing in that profession
(3b) focuses on her physical appearance.
*Language also plays a role in how we affect other people in the
world, and how we make others feel by our choice of words
a. Shut up!
b. I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you, but . .
*Language use can invoke frames that summon rich knowledge
structures, which serve to call up and fill in background knowledge.
a. How do you do?
b. Once upon a time . . .
 1.2 The systematic structure of language
1.2 Cấu trúc hệ thống của ngôn ngữ

1.2.1 Evidence for a system

• A symbolic assembly is a conventional linguistic unit,
a piece of language that speakers recognize and
‘agree’ about in terms of what it means and how it is
used.
+ He kicked the bucket  an idiomatic meaning in
English.
+ He kicked the mop. The bucket was kicked by him.
This example shows that, in addition to meaning,
constructions (form-meaning pairings) have particular
formal grammatical patterns associated with them
 (cont.)

• A: Waiter, what is this fly doing in my soup?

B: I think that’s the breaststroke, sir!
these two very different meanings are
conventionally associated with exactly the same
words arranged in the same sequence.
The humorous effect of the waiter’s reply rests on
the fact that he has chosen to respond to the
‘wrong’ interpretation. While the diner is
employing the ‘what’s X doing Y’ construction, the
waiter prefers to respond to the interrogative
construction.
 1.2.2 The systematic structure of thought
• a. Christmas is fast approaching.
• b. The number of shares we own has gone up.
• c. Those two have a very close friendship.
 (a): TIME: MOTION
 (b) QUANTIY: VERTICAL ELEVATION
(c) AFFECTION: PHYSICAL PROXIMITY
A conceptual domain is a body of knowledge
within our conceptual system that contains and
organizes related ideas and experiences.
 1.3 What do linguists do?
1.3.1 What?
*Linguists try to uncover the systems behind language, to describe these
systems and to model them.
*Linguistic models consist of theories about language.
*Linguists can approach the study of language from various perspectives.
*Linguists may choose to concentrate on exploring the systems within
and between sound, meaning and grammar, or to focus on more applied
areas, such as the evolution of language, the acquisition of language by
children, language disorders, the questions of how and why language
changes over time, or the relationship between language, culture and
society.
+For cognitive linguists, the emphasis is upon relating the systematicity
exhibited by language directly to the way the mind is patterned and
structured, and in particular to conceptual structure and organization
+It follows that there is a close relationship between cognitive linguistics
and aspects of cognitive psychology
 (cont.)

1.3.2 Why?
*Linguists are motivated to explore the issues we
outlined above by the drive to understand human
cognition, or how the human mind works
*Linguistics is therefore one of the cognitive
sciences, alongside philosophy, psychology,
neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
*Cognitive linguists view language as a system that
directly reflects conceptual organization.
 1.3.3 How?

• It is ordinary language, spoken every day by

ordinary people, that makes up the ‘raw data’
that linguists use to build their theories.
• Linguists describe language, and on the basis
of its properties, formulate hypotheses about
how language is represented in the mind.
 1.3.4 Speaker intuitions
• Native speakers of any given human language will
have strong intuitions about what combinations of
sounds or words are possible in their language,
and which interpretations can be paired with
which combinations
Ex: (Explain?)
• He kicked the bucket.
• He kicked the mop
• The bucket was kicked by him.
 1.3.5 Converging evidence
• A model must not only explain linguistic
knowledge, but must also be consistent with what
cognitive scientists know about other areas of
cognition, reflecting the view that linguistic
structure and organization are a relatively
imprecise but nevertheless indicative reflection of
cognitive structure and organization
• a. The cat is on the chair.
• b. ?The chair is under the cat.
 Table 1.1 Properties of the lexical and grammatical subsystems

Lexical subsystem Grammatical subsystem

Open-class words/morphemes Closed-class words/morphemes

Content function Structuring function

Larger set; constantly changing Smaller set; more resistant to
change

Prompts for ‘rich’ concepts, e.g. Prompts for schematic concepts,

people, things, places, properties, e.g. number, time reference, old
etc. vs. new, statement vs. question,
etc.
 The nature of cognitive linguistics: Assumptions and commitments

• George Lakoff (1990),one of the pioneering figures

in cognitive linguistics, argued that the cognitive
linguistics enterprise is characterized by two key
commitments.
• (1) the ‘Generalization Commitment’: a
commitment to the characterization of general
principles that are responsible for all aspects of
human language,
• (2) the Cognitive Commitment: a commitment to
providing a characterization of general principles
for language that
 2.1.1 The ‘Generalisation Commitment’
• In modern linguistics, the study of language is often
separated 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.
• This is particularly true of formal approaches:
approaches to modelling language that posit explicit
mechanical devices or procedures operating on
theoretical primitives in order to produce the complete
set of linguistic possibilities in a given language the
Generative Grammar approach developed by Noam
Chomsky
 (cont.)
• However, given the ‘Generalization Commitment’,
cognitive linguists disagree that the ‘modules’ or
‘subsystems’ of language are organized in
significantly divergent ways, or indeed that distinct
modules or subsystems even exist.
• They consider the properties of three areas of
language in order to give an idea of how
apparently distinct language components can be
seen to share fundamental organizational features.
• The three areas we will look at are (1)
categorization,(2) polysemy and (3) metaphor
 (1) Categorization
• An important recent finding in cognitive
psychology is that categorization is not criterial.
This means that it is not an ‘all-or-nothing’ affair
 (cont.)

• Although the category members (in Slide 21) may

be rated as being more or less representative of
the category CUP, each of the members appears to
resemble others in a variety of ways, despite the
fact that there may not be a single way in which
all the members resemble each other
• Categories that exhibit degrees of centrality, with
some members being more or less like other
members of a category rather than sharing a single
defining trait, are said to exhibit family
resemblance.
 Example

• Polysemy
• Polysemy is the phenomenon where a single
linguistic unit exhibits multiple distinct yet related
meanings. Traditionally, this term is restricted to
the area of word meaning (lexical semantics)
• Polysemy in the lexicon: OVER:
• a. The picture is over the sofa. ABOVE
• b. The picture is over the hole. COVERING
• c. The ball is over the wall. ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE-
OF
• d. The government handed over power. TRANSFER
• e. She has a strange power over me. CONTROL
 (cont.)
• Polysemy in morphology: agentive –er suffix
• a. teacher
• b. villager
• c. toaster
• d. best-seller
 2.1.2 The ‘Cognitive Commitment’
• Linguistic structure should reflect what is known about
human cognition from other disciplines, particularly
the other cognitive sciences (philosophy, psychology
artificial intelligence and neuroscience).
• In other words, it follows from the ‘Cognitive
Commitment’ that language and linguistic organization
should reflect general cognitive principles rather than
cognitive principles that are specific to language.
• Three lines of evidence that, according to cognitive
linguists, substantiate the view that linguistic
organization reflects more general cognitive function.
 Attention: profiling in language

• A very general cognitive ability that human beings

have is attention, together with the ability to shift
attention from one aspect of a scene to another.
• The range of grammatical constructions it has at
its disposal, each of which serves to profile
different aspects of a given scene.
• a. The boy kicks over the vase.
• b. The vase is kicked over.
• c. The vase smashes into bits.
• d. The vase is in bits.
 2.2 The embodied mind
• Embodiment: a central idea in cognitive linguistics
• Since the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes
developed the view that mind and body are distinct entities –
the principle of mind/body dualism
• Generative Grammar (Chomsky)
it is possible to study language as a formal or computational
system, without taking into account the nature of human
bodies or human experience.
In contrast, cognitive linguistics is not rationalist in this sense,
but instead takes its inspiration from traditions in psychology
and philosophy that emphasize the importance of human
experience, the centrality of the human body, and human-
specific cognitive structure and organization, all of which
affect the nature of our experience
 2.2.1 Embodied experience
• Embodiment affects the nature of experience is in the realm of color
• Having a different range of color channels affects our experience of
color in terms of the range of colors accessible to us along the color
spectrum.
• 2.2.2 Embodied cognition
• the human mind must bear the imprint of embodied experience.
• In his now classic 1987 book, The Body in the Mind, Mark Johnson
proposes that one way in which embodied experience manifests itself
at the cognitive level is in terms of image schemas  human pre-
conceptual experience: experience of the world directly mediated
and structured by the human body.
• a. George is in love.
• b. Lily is in trouble.
• c. The government is in a deep crisis
• CONTAINER
 2.3 Cognitive semantics and cognitive
approaches to grammar
• Cognitive linguistics can be broadly divided into
two main areas: cognitive semantics and
cognitive (approaches to) grammar
• Unlike formal approaches to linguistics, which
often emphazise the role of grammar, cognitive
linguistics emphazises the role of meaning
• A model of meaning (a cognitive semantics) has to
be delineated before an adequate cognitive
model of grammar can be developed
 The study of meaning and grammar in
cognitive linguistics
*
Cognitive linguistics
The study of language in a way that is
compatible with what is known about the
human mind, treating language as
reflecting and revealing the mind

Cognitive approaches to
Cognitive semantics
grammar
The study of the relationship
The study of the symbolic
between experience, embodied
linguistic units that comprise
cognition and language
language
 Cognitive semantics
• What is cognitive semantics?
• the four guiding principles within cognitive
semantics as follows:
1. Conceptual structure is embodied.
2. Semantic structure is conceptual structure.
3. Meaning representation is encyclopaedic.
4. Meaning-construction is conceptualization
 What is cognitive semantics?

• Cognitive semantics began in the 1970s as a reaction

against the objectivist world-view assumed by the
Anglo-American tradition in philosophy and the
related approach, truth-conditional semantics,
developed within formal linguistics.
• In contrast to this view, cognitive semantics sees
linguistic meaning as a manifestation of conceptual
structure: the nature and organization of mental
representation in all its richness and diversity, and this
is what makes it a distinctive approach to linguistic
meaning
• There are a number of principles that collectively
 5.1 Guiding principles

1. Conceptual structure is embodied (the ‘embodied

cognition thesis’).
2. Semantic structure is conceptual structure.
3. Meaning representation is encyclopaedic.
4. Meaning construction is conceptualization.
 5.1.1 Conceptual structure is embodied

• A fundamental concern for cognitive semanticists is

the nature of the relationship between conceptual
structure and the external world of sensory
experience
• Cognitive semanticists set out to explore the nature
of human interaction with and awareness of the
external world, and to build a theory of conceptual
structure that is consonant with the ways in which
we experience the world.
• The nature of conceptual organization on the basis
of interaction with the physical world is the
embodied cognition thesis
 Image schema

• Imagine a man in a locked room. A room has the

structural properties associated with a bounded
landmark: it has enclosed sides, an interior, a
boundary and an exterior. As a consequence of
these properties, the bounded landmark has the
additional functional property of containment: the
man is unable to leave the room
• The concept associated with containment is an
instance of what cognitive linguists call an image
schema
 CONTAINER

• While the concept CONTAINER is grounded in the

directly embodied experience of interacting with
bounded landmarks, image schematic conceptual
structure can also give rise to more abstract kinds
of meaning
• a. He’s in love.
• b. We’re out of trouble now.
• c. He’s coming out of the coma.
• d. I’m slowly getting into shape.
• e. He entered a state of euphoria.
• f. He fell into a depression.
• the metaphorical projection of the
CONTAINER image schema onto the abstract
conceptual domain of STATES, to which
concepts like LOVE, TROUBLE and HEALTH
belong
•  the conceptual metaphor STATES ARE
CONTAINERS.
5.1.2 Semantic structure is conceptual structure

• This principle asserts that language refers to

concepts in the mind of the speaker rather than to
objects in the external world.
• In other words, semantic structure (the meanings
conventionally associated with words and other
linguistic units) can be equated with concepts.
linguistic concepts or lexical concepts: the
conventional form that conceptual structure requires
in order to be encoded in language.
Consider:
• William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. [active]
• Romeo and Juliet was written by William Shakespeare.
[passive]
active and passive constructions are conventionally associated
with a functional distinction, namely the point of view we are
adopting with respect to the subject of the sentence
Cognitive linguists: the active and passive structures are
themselves meaningful:
*in active sentences we are focusing on the active participant
in an event by placing this unit at the front of the construction.
*In passive sentences, we are focusing on the participant that
undergoes the action
5.1.3 Meaning representation is encyclopaedic

• Words do not represent neatly packaged bundles of

meaning (the dictionary view), but serve as ‘points of access’
to vast repositories of knowledge relating to a particular
concept or conceptual domain (e.g.Langacker 1987).
• Ex: the concept BACHELOR
‘Watch out Jane, your husband’s a right bachelor!’
 John is safe. : a range of meanings
 John is happy: a range of meanings
 a. The child is safe.
b. The beach is safe.
c. The shovel is safe.
 5.1.4 Meaning construction is conceptualization

• The fourth principle associated with cognitive

semantics is that language itself does not encode
meaning
• Meaning is constructed at the conceptual level:
meaning construction is equated with
conceptualization, a dynamic process whereby
linguistic units serve as prompts for an array of
conceptual operations and the recruitment of
background knowledge
• The dynamic quality of meaning construction has been
most extensively modelled by Gilles Fauconnier (e.g.
1994,1997),who emphazises the role of mappings: local
connections between distinct mental spaces,
conceptual ‘packets’ of information, which are built
up during the ‘on-line’ process of meaning
construction.
• Ex: In France, Bill Clinton wouldn’t have been harmed by
his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Conceptual Blending Theory: to set up one mental
space, a ‘reality space’, in which Clinton is the US
President, Lewinsky is his intern, they have an affair, they
 Table 5.1 The guiding principles of cognitive semantics

Conceptual structure is embodied The nature of conceptual organization

arises from bodily experience

Semantic structure is conceptual Semantic structure (the meanings

structure conventionally associated with words and
other linguistic units) is equated with
concepts

Meaning representation is Words (and other linguistic units) are

encyclopaedic treated as ‘points of access’ to vast
repositories of knowledge relating to a
particular concept

Meaning construction is Meaning construction is equated with

conceptualization conceptualization, a dynamic process
whereby linguistic units serve as prompts
for an array of conceptual operations and
the recruitment of background knowledge
 Embodiment and conceptual structure

• more detail two of the central principles of

cognitive semantics
• (1) the thesis that conceptual structure derives
from embodiment, also known as the embodied
cognition thesis; and
• (2) the thesis that semantic structure reflects
conceptual structure.
• (More in the textbook)
 Metaphor and metonymy
• Conceptual Metaphor Theory
• This framework was first proposed by George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson in their 1980 book Metaphors We Live By and has been
developed in a number of subsequent publications.
• Conceptual Metaphor Theory was one of the earliest theoretical
frame works identified as part of the cognitive semantics enterprise
and provided much of the early theoretical impetus for the cognitive
approach.
• The basic premise of Conceptual Metaphor Theory is that metaphor
is not simply a stylistic feature of language, but that thought itself is
fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
• According to this view, conceptual structure is organized according to
cross- domain mappings or correspondences between conceptual
domains. Some of these mappings are due to pre-conceptual
embodied experiences while others build on these experiences in
 Consider!
• She got a really high mark in the test
QUANTITY in terms of VERTICAL ELEVATION
 the conceptual domain QUANTITY is
conventionally structured and therefore
understood in terms of the conceptual domain
VERTICAL ELEVATION.
Metaphorical versus non-metaphorical language use
• Achilles is brave.  literal
• Achilles is a lion.  metaphor
• Explain!
a. Christmas is approaching.
b. We’re moving towards Christmas.
c. Christmas is not very far away.
Metaphor or literal???
• a. You make my blood boil.
• b. He was red with anger.
• c. She’s just letting off steam.
• d. Don’t fly off the handle.
• e. Try to get a grip on yourself.
 ARGUMENT in terms of WAR
• a. Your claims are indefensible.
• b. He attacked every weak point in my argument.
• c. His criticisms were right on target.
• d. I demolished his argument.
• e. I’ve never won an argument with him.
• f. You disagree? Okay, shoot!
• g. If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
• h. He shot down all of my arguments
• ARGUMENT in terms of WAR.
 9.2 What is metaphor?
• A is B, as in Achilles is a lion
Metaphor: implicit comparison, perceived
resemblance
Resemblance metaphors based on physical
resemblance have been called image metaphors
(one subset of resemblance-based metaphors)
*Achilles is as brave as a lion.
*Achilles is brave, like a lion.
Simile: the comparison is overtly signalled by the
use of as or like
 Consider!

• My wife whose hair is a brush fire.

• Whose thoughts are summer lightning.
• Whose waist is an hourglass.
• Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the
teeth of a tiger.
• Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the
fragrance of a star of the first magnitude.
• Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white
mice over snow.
• Resemblance metaphors have received considerable attention
within conceptual metaphor theory, particularly within the
approach now known as Cognitive Poetics
• a. Look how far we’ve come.
• b. We’re at a crossroads.
• c. We’ll just have to go our separate ways.
• d. We can’t turn back now.
• e. I don’t think this relationship is going anywhere.
• f. Where are we?
• g. We’re stuck.
• h. It’s been a long, bumpy road.
• i. This relationship is a dead-end street.
• j. We’re just spinning our wheels.
• k. Our marriage is on the rocks.
 Table 9.1 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 ENCOUNTERED → DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED
DECISIONS ABOUT DIRECTION → CHOICES ABOUT WHAT TO DO
DESTINATION OF THE JOURNEY → GOALS OF THE RELATIONSHIP
• QUANTITY IS VERTICAL ELEVATION:
• a. The price of shares is going up.
• b. She got a high score in her exam.
 9.3 Conceptual Metaphor Theory

9.3.1 The unidirectionality of metaphor

Metaphors map structure from a source domain to a target
domain but not vice versa
Ex: LOVE in terms of JOURNEYS
*PEOPLE ARE MACHINES
a. John always gets the highest scores in maths; he’s a
human calculator.
b. He’s so efficient; he’s just a machine!
c. He’s had a nervous breakdown.
*MACHINES ARE PEOPLE
d. I think my computer hates me; it keeps deleting my data.
e. b. This car has a will of its own!
• Kövecses (2002) found that the most common source domains
for metaphorical mappings include domains relating to:
• the HUMAN BODY (the heart of the problem),
• ANIMALS (a sly fox),
• PLANTS (the fruit of her labor),
• FOOD (he cooked up a story)
• FORCES (don’t push me!).
• The most common target domains included conceptual
categories:
• EMOTION (she was deeply moved),
• MORALITY (she resisted the temptation),
• THOUGHT (I see your point),
• HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS(they built a strong marriage)
• TIME(time flies).
• Consider the conceptual domain TIME, an abstract
domain par excellence. Time is primarily
conceptualized in terms of SPACE, and MOTION
through space, as illustrated by the examples:
• a. Christmas is coming.
• b. The relationship lasted a long time.
• c. The time for a decision has come.
• d. We’re approaching my favorite time of the year.
 9.3.3 Metaphorical entailments

• In addition to the individual mappings that conceptual

metaphors bring with them, they also provide
additional, sometimes quite detailed knowledge
• In this way, metaphoric mappings carry entailments or
rich inferences
• AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY
• a. We will proceed in a step-by-step fashion.
• b. We have covered a lot of ground.
PARTICIPANTS in the argument correspond to
TRAVELLERS, the ARGUMENT itself corresponds to a
JOURNEY and the PROGRESS of the argument
corresponds to the ROUTE taken
• In the source domain JOURNEY, travellers can get
lost, they can stray from the path, they can fail to
reach their destination, and so on.
• The association between source and target gives
rise to the entailment (the rich inference) that
these events can also occur in the target domain
ARGUMENT
• a. I got lost in the argument.
• b. We digressed from the main point.
• c. He failed to reach the conclusion.
• d. I couldn’t follow the argument
 9.3.4 Metaphor systems
• Conceptual metaphors interact with each other and can give rise to
relatively complex metaphor systems
• These systems are collections of more schematic metaphorical
mappings that structure a range of more specific metaphors like LIFE IS
A JOURNEY
a. STATES ARE LOCATIONS
 He’s at a crossroads in his life.
b. CHANGE IS MOTION
He went from his forties to his fifties without a hint of a mid-life crisis.
c. CAUSES ARE FORCES
He got a head start in life.
d. PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS
I can’t ever seem to get to where I want to be in life.
e. MEANS ARE PATHS
 9.3.5 Metaphors and image schemas

• Lakoff and Johnson both argued that image schemas

could serve as source domains for metaphoric
mapping
• image schemas appear to be knowledge structures that
emerge directly from pre-conceptual embodied
experience
• For example, our image-schematic concept
COUNTERFORCE arises from the experience of being
unable to proceed because some opposing force is
resisting our attempt to move forward
 abstract thought and reasoning, facilitated by
metaphor, are seen as having an image-schematic and
 9.5 What is metonymy?
• In addition to metaphor, there is a related conceptual
mechanism that is also central to human thought and
language: conceptual metonymy
• Metonymy, like metaphor, was conceptual in nature
• Like metaphor, metonymy is a conceptual phenomenon,
but one that has quite a distinct basis
Ex: The ham sandwich has wandering hands
(uttered by one waitress to another in a café) two entities
are associated so that one entity (the item the customer
ordered) stands for the other (the customer).
• Metonymies are represented by the formula ‘B for
A’, where ‘B’is the vehicle and ‘A’ is the target, e.g.
PLACE FOR INSTITUTION. This contrasts with the ‘A
is B’ formula that represents conceptual metaphor
Ex: Buckingham Palace denied the rumors.
Buckingham Palace is the vehicle (PLACE) which
stands for the BRITISH MONARCHY, the target
(INSTITUTION):
 More examples
PRODUCER FOR PRODUCT
• a. I’ve just bought a new Citröen.
• b. Pass me the Shakespeare on the top shelf.
• c. She likes eating Burger King.
PLACE FOR EVENT
a. Iraq nearly cost Tony Blair the premiership.
b. American public opinion fears another Vietnam.
c. Let’s hope that Beijing will be as successful an Olympics as
Athens
PLACE FOR INSTITUTION
d. Downing street refused comment.
e. Paris and Washington are having a spat.
f. Europe has upped the stakes in the trade war with the United
• PART FOR WHOLE
• a. My wheels are parked out the back.
• b. Lend me a hand.
• c. She’s not just a pretty face.
• WHOLE FOR PART
• a. England beat Australia in the 2003 rugby World
Cup final.
• b. The European Union has just passed new human
rights legislation.
• c. My car has developed a mechanical fault
 Cognitive approaches to grammar
• Distinct cognitive approaches to grammar
• 1. The ‘Conceptual Structuring System Model’
• 2. Cognitive Grammar
• 3. Constructional approaches to grammar
• 4. Cognitive theories of grammaticalization
1. The ‘Conceptual Structuring System Model’
• This model views grammatical units as inherently
meaningful
• This model is distinguished by its emphasis on the
qualitative distinction between grammatical (closed-
class) and lexical (open-class) elements.
• These two forms of linguistic expression represent two
distinct conceptual subsystems, which encode
qualitatively distinct aspects of the human conceptual
system: the lexical subsystem and the grammatical
subsystem
• The ‘conceptual structuring system’ is another name
 2. Cognitive Grammar

• Cognitive Grammar is the theoretical framework

developed by Ronald Langacker
• Like Talmy, Langacker argues that grammatical or
closed-class units are inherently meaningful
• Langacker argues that both types of unit belong
within a single ‘structured inventory of
conventionalized linguistic units’ which represents
knowledge of language in the mind of the speaker
• (See more at the next PPT)
• THANK YOU!