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Human Cognitive Processing
The book series <em>Human Cognitive Processing: Cognitive Foundations of Language Structure and Use</em> is a forum for interdisciplinary research on the grammatical structure, semantic organization, and communicative function of language(s), and their anchoring in human cognitive faculties. Accordingly, the series will publish works addressing the nature of cognitive systems and processes involved in speaking and understanding natural language(s) – including their connections to general knowledge, behavior, and perception – and the relation between language and thought.<p>The series is open to any type of theoretical and methodological approach to the above questions and to research from any discipline concerned with them, including but not restricted to cognitively oriented branches of linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, artificial intelligence and computer science, and neuroscience. Publications in the series may be monographs or thematic collective volumes, in the English language.</p>
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Language Learning, Discourse and Cognition
Editor(s): Lucy Pickering and Vyvyan EvansPublication Date December 2018More LessLanguage Learning, Discourse and Cognition: Studies in the tradition of Andrea Tyler comprises a collection of original empirically and theoretically motivated studies at the nexus of discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics and second language learning. The thematic relationships between these subfields and links between the studies are laid out in introductory and concluding chapters. This edited volume is intended for both researchers and graduate students in linguistics and second language learning and teaching.
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The Language of Memory in a Crosslinguistic Perspective
Editor(s): Mengistu AmberberPublication Date November 2007More LessThis book offers, for the first time, a detailed comparative study of how speakers of different languages express memory concepts. While there is a robust body of psycholinguistic research that bears on how memory and language are related, there is no comparative study of how speakers themselves conceptualize memory as reflected in their use of language to talk about memory. This book addresses a key question: how do speakers of different languages talk about the experience of having prior experiences coming to mind (‘remembering’) or failing to come to mind (‘forgetting’)? A complex array of answers is provided through detailed grammatical and semantic investigation of different languages, including English, German, Polish, Russian and also a number of non-Indo-European languages, Amharic, Cree, Dalabon, Korean, and Mandarin. In addition, the book calls for a broader interdisciplinary engagement by urging that cognitive semantics be integrated with other sciences of memory.
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Linguistic Attractors
Author(s): David L. CooperPublication Date June 1999More LessThe interdisciplinary linguistic attractor model portrays language processing as linked sequences of fractal sets, and examines the changing dynamics of such sets for individuals as well as the speech community they comprise. Its motivation stems from human anatomic constraints and several artificial neural network approaches. It uses general computation theory to: (1) demonstrate the capacity of Cantor-like fractal sets to perform as Turing Machines; (2) better distinguish between models that simply match outputs (emulation) and models that match both outputs and internal dynamics (simulation); and (3) relate language processing to essential computation steps executed in parallel. Measure and information theory highlight the key variables driving linguistic dynamics, while catastrophe and game theory help predict the possible topologies of language change.It introduces techniques to isolate and measure attractors, and to interpret their stability and relative content within a system. Important results include the capability to distinguish the sequence of related sound changes, and to make point-to-point comparisons of different texts using common metrics. Other techniques allow quantifiable ambiguity landscapes illustrating the forces that propel different languages in different directions.
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The Meaning of Particle / Prefix Constructions in German
Author(s): Robert B. DewellPublication Date September 2011More LessThis is really two books in one: a valuable reference resource, and a groundbreaking case study that represents a new approach to constructional semantics. It presents a detailed descriptive survey, using extensive examples collected from the Internet, of German verb constructions in which the expressions durch (‘through’), über (‘over’), unter (‘under’), and um (‘around’) occur either as inseparable verb prefixes or as separable verb particles. Based on that evidence, the author argues that the prefixed verb constructions and particle verb constructions themselves have meaning, and that this meaning involves subjective construal processes rather than objective information. The constructions prompt us to distribute focal attention according to patterns that can be articulated in terms of Talmy’s notion of “perspectival modes”. Among the other topics that play an important role in the analysis are incremental themes, reflexive trajectors, fictive motion, “multi-directional paths”, and “accusative landmarks”.
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Mental Models across Languages
Author(s): Pawel SickingerPublication Date December 2018More LessThis book presents a study that triangulates the meanings of expressions across English, German and Japanese via their perception-based conceptual representations. In an online experiment, native speakers of the three languages were asked to design visual representations of expressions referring to baldness phenomena. These sets of visualizations are used to determine conceptual overlap or distance between expressions in the three languages, resulting in lexical-conceptual 'maps' for MALE BALDNESS. The study is discussed against the background of an embodied, perceptual symbol-based understanding of linguistic meaning. A section of the book further applies this perspective to the issue of translation, developing a process model of translation based on the concept of cognitive equivalence.
The book presents a novel approach to lexical semantics from a cognitive linguistic perspective, tested through a methodologically innovative experiment. It is a compelling read to scholars in cognitive semantics, contrastive semantics, embodied cognition and cognitive translation studies.
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Metaphor in Use
Editor(s): Fiona MacArthur, José Luis Oncins-Martínez, Manuel Sánchez-García and Ana M. Piquer-PírizPublication Date October 2012More LessMetaphor is a fascinating phenomenon, but it is also complex and multi-faceted, varying in how it is manifested in different modes of expression, languages, cultures, or time-scales. How then can we reliably identify metaphors in different contexts? How does the language or culture of speakers and hearers affect the way metaphors are produced or interpreted? Are the methods employed to explore metaphors in one context applicable in others? The sixteen chapters that make up this volume offer not only detailed studies of the situated use of metaphor in language, gesture, and visuals around the world – providing important insights into the different factors that produce variation – but also careful explication and discussion of the methodological issues that arise when researchers approach metaphor in diverse ‘real world’ contexts. The book constitutes an important contribution to applied metaphor studies, and will prove an invaluable resource for the novice and experienced metaphor researcher alike.
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Metaphors for Learning
Editor(s): Erich A. BerendtPublication Date March 2008More LessIn Contemporary Metaphor Theory (CMT) research has predominantly focused on the English language with few studies of others and even less systematic comparative work. This volume focuses on the discourse domain of LEARNING (formal, technical and informal aspects) and brings together a variety of language perspectives, some specifically comparative, on aspects of learning from historical transformations in metaphoric language use through contemporary social values and classroom discourse to planning for the future in educational policy to see how conceptual metaphoric patterns and conventional metaphors with related figurative language impact on social values and culturally conditioned perspectives in learning. Most papers reflect Lakoffian conceptual metaphoric research including critical evaluation of analytical issues. Languages included are Arabic, Chinese, English, Hungarian, Japanese, Malay, Polish, Russian and the South African language area. Most papers utilize extensive data including such genre as technical writing, essays, conversational interaction, newspaper corpus and proverbs.
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Methods in Cognitive Linguistics
Editor(s): Monica Gonzalez-Marquez, Irene Mittelberg, Seana Coulson and Michael J. SpiveyPublication Date June 2007More LessMethods 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.
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Metonymy and Metaphor in Grammar
Editor(s): Klaus-Uwe Panther, Linda L. Thornburg and Antonio BarcelonaPublication Date July 2009More LessFigurative language has been regarded traditionally as situated outside the realm of grammar. However, with the advent of Cognitive Linguistics, metonymy and metaphor are now recognized as being not only ornamental rhetorical tropes but fundamental figures of thought that shape, to a considerable extent, the conceptual structure of languages. The present volume goes even beyond this insight to propose that grammar itself is metonymical in nature (Langacker) and that conceptual metonymy and metaphor leave their imprints on lexicogrammatical structure. This thesis is developed and substantiated for a wide array of languages and lexicogrammatical phenomena, such as word class meaning and word formation, case and aspect, proper names and noun phrases, predicate and clause constructions, and other metonymically and metaphorically motivated grammatical meanings and forms. The volume should be of interest to scholars and students in cognitive and functional linguistics, in particular, conceptual metonymy and metaphor theory, cognitive typology, and pragmatics.
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Metonymy in Language and Thought
Editor(s): Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter RaddenPublication Date September 1999More LessMetonymy in Language and Thought gives a state-of-the-art account of metonymic research. The contributions have different disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds in linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology and literary studies. However, they share the assumption that metonymy is a cognitive phenomenon, a “figure of thought,” underlying much of our ordinary conceptualization that may be even more fundamental than metaphor. The use of metonymy in language is a reflection of this conceptual status. The framework within which metonymy is understood in this volume is that of scenes, frames, scenarios, domains or idealized cognitive models.
The chapters are revised papers given at the Metonymy Workshop held in Hamburg, 1996.
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Motion and Space across Languages
Editor(s): Iraide Ibarretxe-AntuñanoPublication Date August 2017More LessThis volume offers a unique combination of interdisciplinary research and a comprehensive overview of motion and space studies from a semantic typological perspective. The chapters present cutting-edge research covering central topics such as the status of semantic components in motion event descriptions and their role in typological variation, the function of linguistic multimodal structures for the codification of motion, the diachronic evolution of motion expressions and its effects on motion typologies, the correspondences between physical and non-physical (fictive, metaphorical) motion, and the impact of contexts and genres on the characterization and interpretation of motion events. These issues are examined from a theoretical and applied linguistic perspective (L1–L2 acquisition, translation/interpreting). The analyses make use of diachronic and synchronic data collected by a range of methods (elicitation, experimentation, and corpus research) in more than fifteen languages. All in all, this book will be of great value to scholars and students interested in the expression of motion and space across languages.
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Motivation in Grammar and the Lexicon
Editor(s): Klaus-Uwe Panther and Günter RaddenPublication Date June 2011More LessLanguage structure and use are largely shaped by cognitive processes such as categorizing, framing, inferencing, associative (metonymic), and analogical (metaphorical) thinking, and – mediated through cognition – by bodily experience, emotion, perception, action, social/communicative interaction, culture, and the internal ecology of the linguistic system itself. The contributors to the present volume demonstrate how these language-independent factors motivate grammar and the lexicon in a variety of languages such as English, German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Croatian, Japanese, and Korean. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars in cognitive and functional linguistics.
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Multilingual Cognition and Language Use
Editor(s): Luna Filipović and Martin PützPublication Date June 2014More LessThis volume provides a multifaceted view of certain key themes in multilingualism research today and offers future directions for this research area in the context of the multilingual development of individuals and societies. The selection of studied languages is eclectic (e.g. Amondawa, Cantonese, Bulgarian, Dene, Dutch, Eipo, Frisian, German, Mandarin Chinese, Māori, Russian, Spanish, and Yukatek, among others), they are typologically diverse, and they are contrasted from a variety of perspectives, such as cognitive development, aging, acquisition, grammatical and lexical processing, and memory. This collection also illustrates novel insights into the linguistic relativity debate that multilingual studies can offer, such as new and revealing perspectives on some well-known topics (e.g. colour categorisation or language transfer). The critical and comprehensive discussions of theoretical and methodological considerations presented in this volume are fundamental for numerous current, future, empirical and interdisciplinary studies of linguistic diversity, linguistic typology, and multilingual processing.
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Multiple Analogies in Science and Philosophy
Author(s): Cameron ShelleyPublication Date July 2003More LessA multiple analogy is a structured comparison in which several sources are likened to a target. In Multiple analogies in science and philosophy, Shelley provides a thorough account of the cognitive representations and processes that participate in multiple analogy formation. Through analysis of real examples taken from the fields of evolutionary biology, archaeology, and Plato's Republic, Shelley argues that multiple analogies are not simply concatenated single analogies but are instead the general form of analogical inference, of which single analogies are a special case. The result is a truly general cognitive model of analogical inference.Shelley also shows how a cognitive account of multiple analogies addresses important philosophical issues such as the confidence that one may have in an analogical explanation, and the role of analogy in science and philosophy.
This book lucidly demonstrates that important questions regarding analogical inference cannot be answered adequately by consideration of single analogies alone.
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Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description
Editor(s): Laure Sarda and Benjamin FagardPublication Date July 2022More LessThe idea of this book on "Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description" comes from the observation that, over the last 30 years, much attention has been devoted to the manner/path divide in relation to the distinction between Verb-Framed and Satellite-Framed languages. This mainstream focus has left aside other aspects of motion event descriptions. The chapters of this volume take an in-depth look at three less-studied aspects of motion expression. The first part of the book focuses on directional deixis, especially in relation to associated motion and visual motion. The second part explores variations in Source-Goal asymmetries. The third part investigates different types of motion event constructions, e.g., with various types of co-events. Many languages are taken into consideration throughout the 11 chapters, which gives the volume a clear typological dimension. This book is intended for students and academics interested in motion, spatial semantics, typological variation and cognitive linguistics.
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New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics
Editor(s): Vyvyan Evans and Stéphanie PourcelPublication Date June 2009More LessNearly three decades since the publication of the seminal Metaphors We Live By, Cognitive Linguistics is now a mature theoretical and empirical enterprise, with a voluminous associated literature. It is arguably the most rapidly expanding ‘school’ in modern linguistics, and one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project known as cognitive science. As such, Cognitive Linguistics is increasingly attracting a broad readership both within linguistics as well as from neighbouring disciplines including other cognitive and social sciences, and from disciplines within the humanities. This volume contains over 20 papers by leading experts in cognitive linguistics which survey the state of the art and new directions in cognitive linguistics. The volume is divided into 5 sections covering all the traditional areas of study in cognitive linguistics, as well as newer areas, including applications and extensions. Sections include: Approaches to semantics; Approaches to metaphor and blending; Approaches to grammar; Language, embodiment and cognition; Extensions and applications of cognitive linguistics.
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Pattern and Process
Author(s): Michael FortescuePublication Date May 2001More LessThe purpose of this book is to illustrate the relevance to linguistics today of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. Although largely ignored by linguists, Whitehead has in fact much to say as regards the cognitive processes underpinning language pattern. His theory of symbolism conceives of language as the ‘systematization of expression’, and relates meaning to feeling (in the broadest sense). The Whiteheadian perspective allows a synthesis of the psychological and the social approaches to language that does not fall into one or another fashionable form of reductionism. The volume represents a first application of Whitehead’s thinking to a broad range of linguistic phenomena, ranging from speech act theory to the production and comprehension of texts, from language acquisition to historical change and the evolution of language. It is argued that Whitehead’s holistic philosophy is uniquely suited to the view of language as an emergent phenomenon — regardless of whether one’s approach to cognition is via the ‘nativist’ or the ‘functionalist’ route.
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Perspective and Perspectivation in Discourse
Editor(s): Carl Friedrich Graumann and Werner KallmeyerPublication Date November 2002More Less‘Perspective’ and ‘viewpoint’ are widely used in everyday talk as well as in the specialist languages of the social, cognitive, and literary sciences. Taken from the field of visual perception and representation, these concepts have acquired a general meaning and significance, as characteristics of human cognitive processing. Since, however, this field is shared by an increasing body of disciplines, perspective terms have also acquired specific and technical meanings. A striking example is the newly introduced use of ‘perspectivation’ in discourse analysis.
This volume on ‘perspective and perspectivation’ — the first of its kind — will help to fill the gap between the common understanding of perspective and the specifics of its structure and dynamics as they have been elaborated in the human sciences, mainly in psychology and linguistics. The focus is on the structure of perspectivity in cognition and language, and the dynamics of setting and taking perspectives in social interaction and in the construction and understanding of texts. Both topics are presented here in an interdisciplinary way by a group of linguists and psychologists.
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Perspectives on Abstract Concepts
Editor(s): Marianna Bolognesi and Gerard J. SteenPublication Date June 2019More LessHuman language is the most powerful communication system that evolution has produced. Within this system, we can talk about things we can physically see, such as cats and tables, but also about more abstract entities, such as theories and feelings. But how are these abstract concepts grounded in human cognition and represented in the mind? How are they constructed in language? And how are they used in natural communication settings?
This book addresses these questions through a collection of studies that relate to various theoretical frameworks, ranging from Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Words as Social Tools. Contributors investigate how abstract concepts are grounded in the mind, represented in language, and used in verbal discourse. This richness is matched by a range of methods used throughout the volume, from neuroimaging to computational modeling, and from behavioral experiments to corpus analyses.
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Phraseological Substitutions in Newspaper Headlines
Author(s): Sylvia JakiPublication Date July 2014More LessThe major purpose of newspaper headlines is to trigger the reader’s interest. A popular way to achieve this goal is the use of phraseological modifications. Based on previous findings from various linguistic disciplines, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach to shed light on the reception of substitutions like More than Meats the Eye. It develops an empirical methodology for investigating the complex cognitive processes involved, using a large sample of authentic examples for illustration. Along these lines, this volume not only shows what associations readers make when they encounter a lexical substitution and what factors facilitate the recognition of the canonical form. It also addresses the question of how meaning is constructed in terms of Conceptual Integration Theory and establishes an experimentally supported model of interpretation. This multifaceted perspective renders Phraseological Substitutions in Newspaper Headlines: "More than Meats the Eye" relevant to scholars and advanced students from a wide range of linguistic areas, such as phraseology, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and humour research, but also to interested journalists.
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