Animacy and Reference
Animacy and Reference

Author: Mutsumi Yamamoto

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1999-09-15

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 9027298769

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The concept of ‘animacy’ concerns the fundamental and cognitive question of the extent to which we recognize and express living things as saliently human-like or animal-like. In Animacy and Reference Mutsumi Yamamoto pursues two main objectives: First, to establish a conceptual framework of animacy, and secondly, to explain how the concept of animacy can be reflected in the use of referential expressions. Unlike previous studies on the subject focussing on grammatical manifestations, Animacy and Reference sheds light upon the conceptual properties of animacy itself and its reflection in referential processes. For the research of this study the author focussed on languages that show completely different tendencies. As a result, English and Japanese ‘parallel corpora’ are analysed yielding salient observations and opening intriguing discussions.

Language, Corpora and Cognition
Language, Corpora and Cognition

Author: Piotr Pęzik

Publisher: Lodz Studies in Language

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783631663363

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This book focuses on matching theoretical predictions about language and cognition against empirical language data. The contributions use corpus linguistics methodology for their analysis. The contributors evaluate a variety of themes from combining syntax, semantics, discourse, terminology, to cognitive linguistics with the techniques and quantitative methods related to linguistic data processing.

Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics
Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics

Author: Stefan Th. Gries

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-08-22

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 3110197707

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Cognitive Linguistics, the branch of linguistics that tries to "make one's account of human language accord with what is generally known about the mind and the brain," has become one of the most flourishing fields of contemporary linguistics. The chapters address many classic topics of Cognitive Linguistics. These topics include studies on the semantics of specific words (including polysemy and synonymy) as well as semantic characteristics of particular syntactic patterns / constructions (including constructional synonymy and the schematicity of constructions), the analysis of causatives, transitivity, and image-schematic aspects of posture verbs. The key characteristic of this volume is that all papers adopt the methodological perspective of Corpus Linguistics, the rapidly evolving branch of linguistics based on the computerized analysis of language used in authentic settings. Thus, the contributions do not only all provide various new insights in their respective fields, they also introduce new data as well as new corpus-based and quantitative methods of analysis. On the basis of their findings, the authors discuss both theoretical implications going well beyond the singular topics of the studies and show how the discipline of Cognitive Linguistics can benefit from the rigorous analysis of naturally-occurring language. The languages which are investigated are English, German, Dutch, and Russian, and the data come from a variety of different corpora. As such, the present volume will be of interest to a wide range of scholars with many different foci and interests and should pave the way for further integration of usage-based techniques of analysis within this exciting paradigm.

Corpus, Cognition and Causative Constructions
Corpus, Cognition and Causative Constructions

Author: Gaëtanelle Gilquin

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2010-03-24

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9027288496

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English causative constructions with cause, get, have and make are often mistakenly presented as (quasi-)synonymous and more or less interchangeable. This book demonstrates the value of corpus linguistics in identifying the syntactic, semantic, lexical and stylistic features that are distinctive for each of these constructions. It also underlines the usefulness of providing corpus studies with a solid theoretical foundation by showing how corpus linguistics can be fruitfully combined with cognitive linguistics, which is used both as a starting point for the analysis (top-down approach) and as a framework within which to interpret the corpus results (bottom-up approach). From a methodological point of view, the study illustrates the complementarity of corpus and elicitation data, and offers tools and methods that could be used to investigate other syntactic structures. Finally, the book also has a pedagogical dimension in that it examines how the research findings can be applied to foreign language teaching.

The Mental Corpus
The Mental Corpus

Author: John R. Taylor

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-05-03

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0199290806

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John Taylor argues that an individual's knowledge of a language is a repository of memories. Similarities between items lead to generalizations then used to generate new expressions. He makes a compelling contribution to understanding language and the operations of the mind. The book will appeal to linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists.

Language, Usage and Cognition
Language, Usage and Cognition

Author: Joan Bybee

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1139487027

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Language demonstrates structure while also showing considerable variation at all levels: languages differ from one another while still being shaped by the same principles; utterances within a language differ from one another while exhibiting the same structural patterns; languages change over time, but in fairly regular ways. This book focuses on the dynamic processes that create languages and give them their structure and variance. It outlines a theory of language that addresses the nature of grammar, taking into account its variance and gradience, and seeks explanation in terms of the recurrent processes that operate in language use. The evidence is based on the study of large corpora of spoken and written language, what we know about how languages change, as well as the results of experiments with language users. The result is an integrated theory of language use and language change which has implications for cognitive processing and language evolution.

English mediopassive constructions
English mediopassive constructions

Author: Marianne Hundt

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9401203784

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This book provides the first empirical study of the history and spread of mediopassive constructions. It investigates the productivity of the pattern, the spread of the construction in Modern English, and looks into text type-specific preferences for the construction. On a more abstract level, it combines the corpus-based description of mediopassive constructions with cognitive linguistic models, drawing largely on notions such as ‘prototype’, ‘family resemblances’, ‘patch’ and ‘construction’. The theoretical modelling is largely based on data from real texts. These come from publicly available machine-readable corpora, text-databases and a single-register ‘corpus’ (American mail-order catalogues). The study combines the corpus-based approach with cognitive theories and is therefore of interest to both empirical and theoretical linguists.

Methods in Cognitive Linguistics
Methods in Cognitive Linguistics

Author: Monica Gonzalez-Marquez

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 9789027223715

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Methods in Cognitive Linguistics is an introduction to empirical methodology for language researchers. Intended as a handbook to exploring the empirical dimension of the theoretical questions raised by Cognitive Linguistics, the volume presents guidelines for employing methods from a variety of intersecting disciplines, laying out different ways of gathering empirical evidence. The book is divided into five sections. Methods and Motivations provides the reader with the preliminary background in scientific methodology and statistics. The sections on Corpus and Discourse Analysis, and Sign Language and Gesture describe different ways of investigating usage data. Behavioral Research describes methods for exploring mental representation, simulation semantics, child language development, and the relationships between space and language, and eye movements and cognition. Lastly, Neural Approaches introduces the reader to ERP research and to the computational modeling of language.

Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition
Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Author: Peter Robinson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-03-29

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1135604193

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This cutting-edge volume describes the implications of Cognitive Linguistics for the study of second language acquisition (SLA). The first two sections identify theoretical and empirical strands of Cognitive Linguistics, presenting them as a coherent whole. The third section discusses the relevance of Cognitive Linguistics to SLA and defines a research agenda linking these fields with implications for language instruction. Its comprehensive range and tutorial-style chapters make this handbook a valuable resource for students and researchers alike.