Ten Lectures on the Basics of Cognitive Grammar
Ten Lectures on the Basics of Cognitive Grammar

Author: Ronald Langacker

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-07-31

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 9004347453

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These lectures provide a basic introduction to the linguistic theory known as Cognitive Grammar. It is argued that a conceptualist semantics, well motivated in its own terms, provides the basis for a symbolic view of grammar. Consisting in the structuring and symbolization of conceptual content, grammar is inherently meaningful, and basic grammatical notions have conceptual characterizations. An account is given of grammatical categories, markings, and constructions. A number of central topics are examined in detail, including subjects, possessives, locatives, voice, and impersonals.

Ten Lectures on the Elaboration of Cognitive Grammar
Ten Lectures on the Elaboration of Cognitive Grammar

Author: Ronald Langacker

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-07-31

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 900434747X

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This book reviews the basic claims and descriptive constructs of Cognitive Grammar, outlines major themes in its ongoing development, and applies these notions to central problems in grammatical analysis. The initial review covers conceptual semantics, the conceptual characterization of grammatical categories, grammatical constructions, and the architecture of a unified theory of language structure. Main themes in the framework’s development include the dynamicity of language structure, grammar as the implementation of semantic functions, systems of opposing elements to serve those functions, and organization in strata representing successive elaborations of a baseline structure. The descriptive application of these notions centers on nominal and clausal structure, with special emphasis on nominal grounding.

Suppletion in Verb Paradigms
Suppletion in Verb Paradigms

Author: Ljuba N. Veselinova

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9027229791

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This book examines stem change in verb paradigms, as in English go 'go.PRESENT' vs. went 'go.PAST', a phenomenon referred to as suppletion in current linguistic theory. The work is based on a broad sample of 193 languages, and examines this long neglected phenomenon from a typological perspective. In addition to identifying types of suppletion which occur cross-linguistically, the study brings to light areal patterns of the occurrence of suppletive forms in verb paradigms. Several hypotheses as regards the diachronic development of suppletive forms are presented as well. The author also seeks to explore the methodological issues of evaluating the frequency of linguistic features in large language samples by introducing a method of weighting languages according to their genetic relatedness. All figures obtained in this way are compared to the proportions yielded by more familiar counting methods, and the results and implications of the different procedures are compared and discussed throughout.