Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2010

The formalist definition of relative clauses as a clearly distinct construction with two syntactically linked clauses has been recently questioned by cross-linguistic evidence. It is here further undermined by a discussion of constructions in Modern Greek, which although deviating from the structural definition conform nonetheless to a semantic-pragmatic one. Above all, acquisition data is presented as independent support for a unified approach to relatives, which can be based on conceptual integration. Syntactically underspecified relatives are shown to appear as early as syntactically-driven ones, with those based on more transparent semantic linking of clauses preceding those based on pragmatic linking. This suggests early handling of the metonymic nature of grammar but also a growing cognitive ability for more indeterminate grammatical relationships.

Discourse coherence can be approached as one of the variables that allow both the writer and the reader to cope with the meaning of texts. It will be hypothesised that this is possible because coherence integrates both cognitive and textual aspects. In fact, most of contemporary linguistic and pragmatic theories have laid emphasis on the need to go beyond the sentence and enter into the realms of text and discourse so as to grasp meaning. Hence, meaning results from an ongoing process of negotiation among language users. An important consequence of this is the need to approach discourse formation and comprehension as a cognitive process, which in turn entails that the notion of coherence, as the key defining trait of discourse and of texture, must also be cognitively grounded. It is for this reason that a cognitive approach to interpersonal communication, like the one supplied by relevance theory, appears to be in a position to provide suitable proposals for the explanation of the production, processing and interpretation of discourse. This paper will therefore aim to examine critically the proposals on coherence contributed in the framework of relevance theory and assess them in relation with other discourse and cognitive approaches. Its main underlying contention is that these proposals are best understood as complementary rather than mutually excluding.

So-called mixed metaphors have not received much attention in cognitive linguistic research, despite acknowledgments to the fact that the combination of metaphors is in fact pervasive. This paper makes the case that mixed metaphors present a unique test case for existing theories of metaphor, in particular Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Blending Theory, since these theories make different predictions with regard to the comprehension of mixed metaphors. It will be argued that mixed metaphors selectively combine aspects of semantically conflicting source domains into one figurative meaning. The argument will be made through a two-tiered empirical study that uses quantitative corpus data as well as experimental evidence.

This paper provides a corpus linguistic analysis of verbs included in English path-, road- and way-sentences. My claim is that many of the differences between metaphorical and non-metaphorical patterns including these terms are related to a qualitative difference between real and imagined journeys. Both non-metaphorical and metaphorical instances go back to our experiences with real-world paths, roads and ways. Path and road-sentences are connected with motion along the specific artifacts that these terms refer to. Way-sentences refer to motion through space. Differences between prototypical and un-prototypical paths, roads and ways, however, and a close connection between prototypical instances and metaphorical meaning, result in differences between non-metaphorical and metaphorical patterns. The findings explain why the source domain verbs in metaphorical path- and road-sentences are more restricted than the verbs in the non-metaphorical sentences. They show why metaphorical ways, but hardly ever metaphorical paths and roads, are paved.

In the NSM approach to semantic analysis, semantic molecules are a well-defined set of non-primitive lexical meanings in a given language that function as intermediate-level units in the structure of complex meanings in that language. After reviewing existing work on the molecules concept (including the notion of levels of nesting), the paper advances a provisional list of about 180 productive semantic molecules for English, suggesting that a small minority of these (about 25) may be universal. It then turns close attention to a set of potentially universal level-one molecules from the “environmental” domain (‘sky’, ‘ground’, ‘sun’, ‘day’, ‘night’ ‘water’ and ‘fire’), proposing a set of original semantic explications for them. Finally, the paper considers the theoretical implications of the molecule theory for our understanding of semantic complexity, cross-linguistic variation in the structure of the lexicon, and the translatability of semantic explications.

This article attempts to give a critical review of Javier Herrero Ruiz’s Understanding Tropes. At a Crossroads between Pragmatics and Cognition. It evaluates the book in view of the available literature dealing with the trend towards empiricism adopted by Cognitive Linguistics. It also focuses on the main hypothesis put forward, i.e., tropes such as irony, paradox, oxymoron, overstatement, understatement, euphemism, and dysphemism can be considered idealised cognitive models, and discusses the main contributions and arguments of the book, especially his idea that these idealised cognitive models are all constructed around the creation of contrast. A few concerns are also raised, mainly regarding corpus methodology. While these may have a negative impact on the reader, they are not severe enough to discredit the rigour with which the book was conceived.