Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association - Volume 21, Issue 2, 2023

Abstract

An onomasiological competition between lexical units, in which they compete to name a certain object (phenomenon, process, event, etc.), rarely attracts the attention of linguists, mainly due to an interdisciplinary nature of such research and the lack of a developed methodology for that. In this article, the author presents a case study of the onomasiological competition between constructions of otkryvat' butylku (‘to open a bottle’) and otkuporivat' butylku (‘to uncork a bottle’) during the 19th and 20th centuries and reveals sociocultural factors influencing the course and result of this competition. Based on this analysis, a few sociocultural scenarios that should be taken into consideration in research of various types of onomasiological competition are presented.

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the meanings of Chinese neng (modal verb) bu (negative word) neng (modal verb) + VP construction and explores the meaning motivations behind them. The present paper employs the method of collostructional analysis, R software and BLCU Corpus Center1 (BCC) are used to process the linguistic data. It is found that the prototypical meaning of the target construction is “let something (not) happen or let someone (not) do something” with the sense of negotiation and interaction and its extensional meanings include “getting an expected result”, “continuation”, “obtaining”, “specific actions containing causation, motion, communication, vision, life, and mental activities”. The meaning motivations of the construction lie in the force experience of human from his/her interaction with the outside world, and in the semantic interaction of its constituent words neng and bu.

Abstract

Crosslinguistic studies on motion events have revealed that S-languages demonstrate finer-grained lexical categories than V-languages in representing motion manners/gaits. But these studies were restricted to the semantic domain of motion events and confined to a limited number of S- or V- languages. In this paper, we further investigate whether the association between lexical diversity and language typology is manifest in a similar way in the semantic domain of separation events by focusing on Mandarin, Russian and Korean. Our results suggest that: (1) Separation expressions support the diversity-typology correlation proved in motion expressions because the two S-languages Mandarin and Russian demonstrate richer lexical diversity than the V-language Korean; (2) It is further pointed out that apart from language typology, lexical diversity is influenced by multiple factors including lexical resources, conceptual salience, event construal, and event type; (3) Though typologically different, these three languages, in their lexical naming of separation events, are constrained by the biomechanical structure and follow the principle of prototypicality. Overall, this study opens up a new crosslinguistic perspective by showing how lexical diversity is typologically and linguistically driven.

Abstract

Utilizing the framework of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), this paper presents a corpus-based multi-level comparative study of the economy is human metaphor in English and Chinese economic media discourse. While the results indicate a considerable sharing of their respective conceptual structures of “human body”, “human condition” and “human relationship”, they do reveal some differences in terms of their preference and the associated metaphorical expressions. The similarities detected can possibly be attributed to the similar body, physiological function and social attributes all human beings share, which then work as the source for drawing inferences about the economy. The differences however are also likely to be derived from the different saliences of human experience which characterize the English and Chinese social-cultural contexts. Another possible explanation for these differing culturally-sourced linguistic metaphors may well be media language and its idiosyncratic stylistic features.

Abstract

The present longitudinal study investigates how the entailments of war metaphors evolve in different stages of COVID-19 containment in China using data from three documentaries made by Xinhua News Agency. A social semiotic model of multimodal metaphor analysis is adopted to analyze the military metaphors systematically in terms of semantic choice, multimodal realization, and context. The war framing is found as the pivotal rhetoric to conceptualize China’s response toward COVID-19 but distinctive features are attributed over time with a focus shifting from the “inevitability” in the initial stage to societal reactions in the later stage. In addition, socio-cultural factors embodied in multimodality not only efficiently guide the public to reason about the situation but also socialize the population to self-disciplining for the sake of everyone’s interest.

Abstract

When spatializing time, individuals can either say that they walk towards the future as though time is a stationary landscape (called ego-moving perspective), or that the future time moves towards them (called time-moving perspective). A substantial body of experimental research has shown that people’s adoption of these two temporal perspectives may be malleable, influenced by a broad set of factors. In the current research, we examined the novel possibility that the mere crowdedness of the environment can influence people’s abstract thinking about time. We contended that exposure to the crowd may be linked to increased anxiety, which can in turn lead to a greater preference for the time-moving perspective in the resolution of temporal ambiguity. Two experiments found that social crowding, whether induced via a visualization task or through an assignment to a crowded workstation, was sufficient to alter participants’ perspectives on the movement of events in time. Further, we found that anxiety mediated the relationship between crowdedness and temporal reasoning. Taken together, these results offer unique insights into the cognitive consequences of social crowding and provide a more complete understanding of how people adduce temporal relationship.

Abstract

The present study examines two cognitive linguistics approaches to foreign language teaching. One draws on the conventionality of language use that a variety of expressions can be understood as instances of more general patterns, e.g., kick them out and eat it up as verb-object-particle, whereas the other centers on linguistic creativeness such as novel combinations or associations, e.g., chest down the ball. Noting that English verb-particle constructions (VPCs) exemplify both linguistic conventionality and creativeness, two types of instruction have been developed–namely, top-down instruction and bottom-up instruction. The top-down instruction presents VPCs as instances of conventional argument structures such as motion and resultative constructions (Goldberg, 2015), whereas the bottom-up instruction focuses on creative compositions of literal and metaphorical meanings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The two types of instruction were provided for Korean EFL learners, and their knowledge of VPCs was measured by a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a four-week delayed posttest. Results of the immediate posttest showed that both types of instruction were effective in improving the learners’ knowledge of literal and figurative VPCs. In the delayed posttest, significantly greater retention was observed for the construction-based top-down instruction. This finding highlights the importance of argument structures as super-constructions in teaching VPCs to EFL learners.

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the semantic value of the German spatial preposition jenseits (‘beyond’). It is argued that our conceptualization of the spatial-physical world and how we interact with objects in our environment transforms a prepositions’ primary meaning into domains of meaning that are tied to time or social interactions. While the study of the semantic structure of English prepositions has received attention, German prepositions, particularly less frequently used ones such as hinter (‘behind’) or jenseits, present a gap in research. It is attempted to show that the different senses of jenseits form a semantic network in which meaning extensions of the spatial, primary sense of jenseits are motivated by varying construal patterns imposed upon an observed scene. The description of the semantic structure of jenseits also draws on previous studies on its English counterpart, beyond (Boers, 1996; Lindstromberg, 2010). Based on the sample collected for the purpose of this study, this paper analyzes 1000 occurrences of the preposition jenseits in the DWDS-subcorpus Die Zeit. The analysis shows that a high frequency of the occurrences found in the sample constitute non-spatial meanings of jenseits and thus encode a configuration between objects in more abstract domains. Furthermore, the notion of metaphorical mapping is used to explain the conceptualization and metaphorical transfer of spatial jenseits to abstract domains of human experience.

Abstract

In Cognitive Linguistics, the noun-participle compound is a grammatical category with instances of different degrees of membership. The purpose of this study is to explore the categorization processes and schematic networks in noun-participle compounding. Working with the data of noun-participle compounds from COHA, we identified three types of participles: deverbal, denominal and ambicategorical. Two schemas [Nj-Vk-ed]A and [Nj-Nk-ed]A are established as generalizations of compounds of deverbal (e.g. man-made) and denominal participles (e.g. life-sized). Compounds of ambicategorical participles (e.g. snow-covered), are sanctioned by two schemas simultaneously, which give rise to ambiguous morphological readings. This study confirms the labor division between mother-daughter links and sister links in a schema network. The higher-level generalization is encoded by paradigmatically-related sister schemas, with the sister relations built on the shared structure links and a bi-directional conversion of the stem of ppl (i.e., noun-to-verb or verb-to-noun). The sister schemas as a paradigm is a more parsimonious generalization of the compounds, than the posited mother schema.

Abstract

This article reports an interview with Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., which was held on March 2, 2023, with follow-up e-mail exchanges. Robert Van Valin is the primary developer of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), a syntactic theory whose principles and commitments intersect with those of Cognitive Linguistics (CL). The article discusses RRG vis-à-vis CL and other approaches to the study of language. It aims to raise awareness about the shared principles of RRG and CL, to enhance cross-fertilization between the two approaches and ultimately inspire new research directions in linguistic theory. The paper is organized into three main parts: (i) background information on the birth and development of RRG, (ii) general principles and commitments of RRG and CL, and (iii) specific issues in the study of language.

This article reviews Unpacking creativity. The power of figurative communication in advertising978-1-108-47353-8£ 85.00

This article reviews Introduction to cognitive pragmatics