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Ideal and real paradigms: language users, reference works and corpora Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Neil Bermel, Luděk Knittl, Martin Alldrick, Alexandre Nikolaev
This article approaches defective and overabundant paradigm cells as an opportunity and pitfall for usage-based linguistics. Through reference to two production tasks involving native speakers of Czech, we show how definitions of these two categories are problematized when multiple forms per context are entrenched, or when pre-emption seems to occur in the absence of entrenchment: in other words, pre-emption
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Preferences in the use of overabundance: predictors of lexical bias in Estonian Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Mari Aigro, Virve-Anneli Vihman
This study of morphological overabundance focuses on the (non-)synonymy of parallel forms in Estonian illative case (‘into’) and the type of entrenchment behind it. We focus on the lexical level, testing whether the form preferred for a lexeme depends on semantic or morphophonological factors, or both. Using multifactorial regression analyses, we compare three corpus datasets: lexemes biased toward
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Baseless derivation: the behavioural reality of derivational paradigms Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Maria Copot, Olivier Bonami
Standard accounts of derivational morphology assume that it is incremental: some words are formed on the basis of others, and each derivational family has a base from which all of the other words are derived. The importance of the base has been questioned by paradigmatic approaches to morphology, which posit that word systems are about multidirectional relationships between words and paradigm cells
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Moving Figures and Grounds in music description Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2024-01-23 Phillip Wadley, Thora Tenbrink, Alan Wallington
This paper is a systematic investigation of motion expressions in programmatic music description. To address issues with defining the Source MOTION and the Target MUSIC, we utilize Gestalt models (Figure-Ground and Source-Path-Goal) while also critically examining the ontological complexity of the Target MUSIC. We also investigate music motion descriptions considering the role of the describer’s perspective
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Allostructions and stancetaking: a corpus study of the German discourse management constructions Wo/wenn wir gerade/schon dabei sind Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Melitta Gillmann
The paper reconciles the sociolinguistic concept of stance and stancetaking and Construction Grammar (CxG); it shows that overlapping allostructions may differ in terms of the stances they convey. Drawing on a corpus study of Wikipedia Talk pages, the paper presents a case study of German discourse management markers such as wo wir gerade dabei sind ‘speaking of which’ or wenn wir schon dabei sind
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When life is no longer a journey: the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the metaphorical conceptualization of life among Hungarian adults – a representative survey Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Réka Benczes, István Benczes, Bence Ságvári, Lilla Petronella Szabó
There is ample research on how metaphors of life vary both cross-culturally and within culture, with age emerging as possibly the most significant variable with regard to the latter dimension. However, no representative research has yet been carried on whether variation can also occur across time. Our paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by exploring whether a major crisis, such as the
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The boundary-crossing constraint revisited: movement verbs across varieties of Spanish Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-12-21 Rosalía Calle Bocanegra
Talmy divided the world’s languages according to how they express movement. Spanish, a verb-framed language, purportedly constrains the use of motion verbs expressing the manner of movement (such as roll) to contexts in which no spatial boundary is crossed. Previous research suggests that this constraint sometimes does not apply. We report the first large-scale investigation of the constraint and its
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Typological shift of Mandarin Chinese in terms of motion verb lexicalization pattern Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-12-06 Liu Linjun, He Yingxin
Given the controversies over Mandarin Chinese in terms of Talmy’s bipartite language typology, this paper presents an exhaustive study of Chinese motion verbs collected from two authoritative dictionaries, namely, The Ancient Chinese Dictionary (2nd Edition) and The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (7th Edition). An analysis of 662 motion verbs in ancient Chinese and 693 motion verbs in modern Chinese
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Investigating the psychological reality of argument structure constructions and N1 of N2 constructions: a comparison between L1 and L2 speakers of English Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Yingying Liu, Kevin McManus
This study examined L1 and L2 English speakers’ sensitivity to constructional meaning by investigating their categorization of Noun1 of Noun2 constructions (e.g., results of studies) and argument structure constructions (e.g., Tom cut the bread). Participants were 40 L1 English speakers and 44 intermediate proficiency Chinese-speaking learners of L2 English, who completed two online sorting experiments
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Semantic micro-dynamics as a reflex of occurrence frequency: a semantic networks approach Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Andreas Baumann, Klaus Hofmann, Anna Marakasova, Julia Neidhardt, Tanja Wissik
This article correlates fine-grained semantic variability and change with measures of occurrence frequency to investigate whether a word’s degree of semantic change is sensitive to how often it is used. We show that this sensitivity can be detected within a short time span (i.e., 20 years), basing our analysis on a large corpus of German allowing for a high temporal resolution (i.e., per month). We
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The next station: chunking of değİl ‘not’ collocations in Turkish Sign Language Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-10-18 Bahtiyar Makaroğlu
More recently, grammaticalization theorists have become increasingly aware of the role of collocations in grammatical development. One of these roles is to define phonetic reductions and fusion in frequent collocations as constructionalization. Based on frequency of occurrences, the present study explores the implications of high-frequency collocations in Turkish Sign Language for grammaticalization
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Running across the mind or across the park: does speech about physical and metaphorical motion go hand in hand? Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Wojciech Lewandowski, Şeyda Özçalışkan
Expression of physical motion (e.g., man runs by) shows systematic variability not only between language types (i.e., inter-typological) but also within a language type (i.e., intra-typological). In this study, we asked whether the patterns of variability extend to metaphorical motion events (e.g., time runs by). Our analysis of randomly selected 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical
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The language of sound: events and meaning multitasking of words Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-10-07 Jenny Hartman, Carita Paradis
The focus of much sensory language research has been on vocabulary and codability, not how language is used in communication of sensory perceptions. We make a case for discourse-oriented research about sensory language as an alternative to the prevailing vocabulary orientation. To consider the language of sound in authentic textual data, we presented participants with 20 everyday sounds of unknown
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Updating constructions: additive effects of prior and current experience during sentence production Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Malathi Thothathiri, Natalia Levshina
While much earlier work has indicated that prior verb bias from lifelong language experience influences language processing, recent findings highlight the fact that verb biases induced during lab-based exposure sessions also influence processing. We investigated the nature of updating, i.e., how prior and current experience might interact in guiding subsequent sentence production. Participants underwent
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Cross-modal iconicity and indexicality in the production of lexical sensory and emotional signs in Finnish Sign Language Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Jarkko Keränen
In the present study, cross-modal (i.e., across sensory modalities such as smell and sound) iconicity (i.e., resemblance) and indexicality (i.e., contiguity) in lexical sensory and emotional signs in Finnish Sign Language will be considered from an articulatory perspective (i.e., the production of signs). Such cross-modal iconicity has not been extensively studied previously, so here, with the help
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The complexity principle and the morphosyntactic alternation between case affixes and postpositions in Estonian Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Jane Klavan, Ole Schützler
This paper investigates three morphosyntactic alternations in Estonian – those between the exterior locative cases allative, adessive and ablative and the corresponding postpositions peale ‘onto’, peal ‘on’ and pealt ‘off’. Based on the Complexity Principle (e.g., Rohdenburg, Günter. 2002. Processing complexity and the variable use of prepositions in English. In Hubert Cuyckens & Günter Radden (eds
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An assessment of the fourth law of Kuryłowicz: does prototypicality of meaning affect language change? Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Isabeau De Smet
According to the (in)famous fourth law of Kuryłowicz (K4), when a morphological doublet arises in a language, the newer form becomes associated with the prototypical, basic meaning, while the old form takes a secondary meaning. This paper takes a first attempt at a more thorough inquiry of K4 to assess whether prototypicality of meaning has an effect on morphological change. Three studies on historical
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Perspective-taking and intersubjectivity in oral narratives of people with a schizophrenia diagnosis: a cognitive linguistic viewpoint analysis Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-05-24 S. Linde van Schuppen, Kobie van Krieken, Simon A. Claassen, José Sanders
Disruptions in theory of mind faculties and the ability to relate to an intersubjective reality are widely thought to be crucial to schizophrenic symptomology. This paper applies a cognitive linguistic framework to analyze spontaneous perspective-taking in two corpora of stories told by people with a schizophrenia diagnosis. We elicited natural narrative language use through life story interviews and
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Chinese synthetic verbs: a further challenge to manner/result complementarity on the basis of lexical root meaning analysis Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-04-21 Tianyu Li
This paper introduces Chinese synthetic verbs and analyses their contributions to debates in manner/result complementarity studies and cognitive typology studies. Chinese synthetic verbs simultaneously express manner information and path/result information, but encode them into separate root slots under Beavers and Koontz-Garboden’s (2012. Manner and result in the roots of verbal meaning. Linguistic
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A chained metonymic approach to ίdὸ ‘eye’ constructional metonymies in Hausa Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-04-10 Mustapha Bala Tsakuwa, Xu Wen, Ibrahim Lamido
Unlike previous studies which generally seem to focus more on Hausa metaphorical expressions, this study investigates a wide range of uses of ίdὸ ‘eye’ in its constructional metonymy patterns in the language by exploring corpus data that contain over 300 eye-related expressions. We observe that some constructional metonymies maintain a set of fixed words and syntax in activating conceptual shifts and
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The associative system of early-learned Hebrew verbs and body parts: a comparative study with American English Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-04-02 Josita Maouene, Nitya Sethuraman, Sigal Uziel-Karl, Shohei Hidaka
This paper compares the associative system of early-learned verbs and body parts in Hebrew with previously published data on American English (Maouene, Josita, Shohei Hidaka & Linda B. Smith. 2008. Body parts and early-learned verbs. Cognitive Science 32(7). 1200–1216). Following the methodology of the former study, 51 Hebrew-speaking college students gave the first body part that came to mind for
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ABB, a salient prototype of collocate–ideophone constructions in Mandarin Chinese Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Thomas Van Hoey
ABB words in Chinese, e.g., hēi-qīqī ‘pitch black’, have been studied for a long time. Most traditional studies analyze these words through derivational rules involving empty suffixes. However, this is problematic, as they are better seen as compounds involving a prosaic A and an ideophonic BB part. By treating ABB as a schema sanctioned by collocate–ideophonic constructions, it is possible to investigate
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A network of allostructions: quantified subject constructions in Russian Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Tore Nesset, Laura A. Janda
This article contributes to Construction Grammar, historical linguistics, and Russian linguistics through an in-depth corpus study of predicate agreement in constructions with quantified subjects. Statistical analysis of approximately 39,000 corpus examples indicates that these constructions constitute a network of constructions (“allostructions”) with various preferences for singular or plural agreement
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What makes a complement false? Looking at the effects of verbal semantics and perspective in Mandarin children’s interpretation of complement-clause constructions and their false-belief understanding Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2023-02-13 Silke Brandt, Honglan Li, Angel Chan
Research focusing on Anglo-European languages indicates that children’s acquisition of the subordinate structure of complement-clause constructions and the semantics of mental verbs facilitates their understanding of false belief, and that the two linguistic factors interact. Complement-clause constructions support false-belief development, but only when used with realis mental verbs like ‘think’ in
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Exposure and emergence in usage-based grammar: computational experiments in 35 languages Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Jonathan Dunn
This paper uses computational experiments to explore the role of exposure in the emergence of construction grammars. While usage-based grammars are hypothesized to depend on a learner’s exposure to actual language use, the mechanisms of such exposure have only been studied in a few constructions in isolation. This paper experiments with (i) the growth rate of the constructicon, (ii) the convergence
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Speed and space: semantic asymmetries in motion descriptions in Estonian Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Piia Taremaa, Anetta Kopecka
In this study, we investigate the expression of speed—one of the principal dimensions of manner—in relation to the expression of space in Estonian, a satellite-framed and morphology-rich language. Our multivariate and extensive corpus analysis is informed by asymmetries attested in languages with regard to expressing space (the goal-over-source bias) and speed (the fast-over-slow bias) where we attempt
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Force dynamics as the path to the Spanish subjunctive Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Francisco Javier García Yanes
The causative construction poses a challenge to all mainstream approaches to Spanish mood. Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel. 2014. A cognitive account of mood in complements of causative predicates in Spanish. Hispania 97(4), 651–665, elaborating on his previous approach (Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel. 1998. Presupposition and old information in the use of the subjunctive mood in Spanish. Hispania 81(4), 941–948)
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Assessing the complexity of lectal competence: the register-specificity of the dative alternation after give Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-09-22 Alexandra Engel, Jason Grafmiller, Laura Rosseel, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Recent evidence suggests that probabilistic grammars may be modulated by communication mode and genre. Accordingly, the question arises how complex language users’ lectal competence is, where complexity is proportional to the extent to which choice-making processes depend on the situation of language use. Do probabilistic constraints vary when we talk to a friend compared to when we give a speech?
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Indonesian basic olfactory terms: more negative types but more positive tokens Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Poppy Siahaan
The present study investigates the semantics of a dozen basic smell terms in Indonesian using data from a large corpus of written register. Examining how these smell terms lexicalize some odors but not others raises questions that are central to our understanding of the language of olfaction. How are smell terms structured? What does the structure of smell terms tell us about human behavior? By applying
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Bilingual processing of verbal and constructional information in English dative constructions: effects of cross-linguistic influence Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Hyunwoo Kim, Yunchuan Chen, Xueyan Liu
This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic influence in L2 learners’ integration of a verb and a construction during online English sentence processing. In a self-paced reading task, L1-English speakers and Chinese-L1 learners of English read the English double-object and prepositional dative constructions with verbs whose Chinese translation equivalents are either compatible or incompatible
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Explaining uncertainty and defectivity of inflectional paradigms Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-08-11 Alexandre Nikolaev, Neil Bermel
The current study investigates how native speakers of a morphologically complex language (Finnish) handle uncertainty related to linguistic forms that have gaps in their inflectional paradigms. We analyze their strategies of dealing with paradigmatic defectivity and how these strategies are motivated by subjective contemporaneousness, frequency, acceptability, and other lexical and structural characteristics
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Individual corpus data predict variation in judgments: testing the usage-based nature of mental representations in a language transfer setting Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Marie Barking, Ad Backus, Maria Mos
This study puts the usage-based assumption that our linguistic knowledge is based on usage to the test. To do so, we explore individual variation in speakers’ language use as established based on corpus data – both in terms of frequency of use (as a proxy for entrenchment) and productivity of use (as a proxy for schematization) – and link this variation to the same participants’ responses in an experimental
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Infinitives of affect and intersubjectivity: on the indexical interpretation of the Finnish independent infinitives Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-07-18 Laura Visapää
This article presents an analysis of the structure and use of the Finnish independent infinitives. Although typological studies have shown that syntactically independent non-finite constructions are widespread in many languages, the understanding of their semantic and intersubjective motivation is still in its early stages. The current paper aims to enrich the understanding of independent non-finite
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Linguistic synesthesia is metaphorical: a lexical-conceptual account Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-06-24 Qingqing Zhao, Kathleen Ahrens, Chu-Ren Huang
This study seeks to clarify the nature of linguistic synesthesia using a lexical-conceptual account. Based on a lexical analysis of Mandarin synesthetic usages, we find that (1) linguistic synesthesia maps the metaphorical meaning between two domains; and (2) linguistic synesthetic mappings and conceptual metaphoric mappings have similar behaviors when sense modalities are treated as conceptual domains
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Phonotactically probable word shapes represent attractors in the cultural evolution of sound patterns Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-04-29 Theresa Matzinger, Nikolaus Ritt
Words are processed more easily when they have canonical phonotactic shapes, i.e., shapes that are frequent both in the lexicon and in usage. We explore whether this cognitively grounded constraint or preference implies testable predictions about the implementation of sound change. Specifically, we hypothesise that words with canonical shapes favour, or ‘select for’, sound changes that (re-)produce
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Metonymy and argument alternations in French communication frames Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-04-27 James Law
This study describes metonymic argument alternations, in which a constructional slot can be filled by any of a set of semantic roles that index one another, and provides a diachronic corpus analysis of two such alternations in French. In the Reveal secret frame and other communication frames, the Medium can indexically replace the Speaker and the Topic can indexically replace the Information. A regression
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Changes in the midst of a construction network: a diachronic construction grammar approach to complex prepositions denoting internal location Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-04-18 Guillaume Desagulier
Linguists have debated whether complex prepositions deserve a constituent status, but none have proposed a dynamic model that can both predict what construal a given pattern imposes and account for the emergence of non-spatial readings. This paper reframes the debate on constituency as a justification of the constructional status of complex prepositional patterns from a historical perspective. It focuses
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LOOKing for multi-word expressions in American Sign Language Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-03-05 Lynn Hou
Usage-based linguistics postulates that multi-word expressions constitute a substantial part of language structure and use, and are formed through repeated chunking and stored as exemplar wholes. They are also re-used to produce new sequences by means of schematization. While there is extensive research on multi-word expressions in many spoken languages, little is known about the status of multi-word
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Putting the argument back into argument structure constructions Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Laurence Romain
This paper shows that low-level generalisations in argument structure constructions are crucial to understanding the concept of alternation: low-level generalisations inform and constrain more schematic generalisations and thus constructional meaning. On the basis of an analysis of the causative alternation in English, and more specifically of the theme (i.e., the entity undergoing the event denoted
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Frontmatter Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01
Article Frontmatter was published on February 1, 2022 in the journal Cognitive Linguistics (volume 33, issue 1).
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Introduction to the Special Issue Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 John Newman, Dagmar Divjak
Article Introduction to the Special Issue was published on February 1, 2022 in the journal Cognitive Linguistics (volume 33, issue 1).
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Ambiguity avoidance as a factor in the rise of the English dative alternation Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Eva Zehentner
This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation ( We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them ). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss
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Individual differences in word senses Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Rachel E. Ramsey
Individual differences and polysemy have rich literatures in cognitive linguistics, but little is said about the prospect of individual differences in polysemy. This article reports an investigation that sought to establish whether people vary in the senses of a polysemous word that they find meaningful, and to develop a novel methodology to study polysemy. The methodology combined established tools:
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The emergence of Information Structure in child speech: the acquisition of c’est-clefts in French Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Morgane Jourdain
Constructions marking information structure in French have been widely documented within the constructionist framework. C’est ‘it is’ clefts have been demonstrated to express the focus of the sentence. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children are able to acquire clefts, and how they develop information structure categories. The aim of this study is to investigate the acquisition of clefts in French
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Improvisations in the embodied interactions of a non-speaking autistic child and his mother: practices for creating intersubjective understanding Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Rachel S. Y. Chen
The human capacity for intersubjective engagement is present, even when one is limited in speaking, pointing, and coordinating gaze. This paper examines the everyday social interactions of two differently-disposed actors—a non-speaking autistic child and his speaking, neurotypical mother—who participate in shared attention through dialogic turn-taking. In the collaborative pursuit of activities, the
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From ‘clubs’ to ‘clocks’: lexical semantic extensions in Dene languages Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Conor Snoek
This study examines the semantics of a root form underlying a wide range of Dene lexical expressions. The root evolved from a simple nominal denoting “club” to expressions lexicalizing the movement of stick-like objects and the rotation of helicopter blades. These semantic extensions arise through source-in-target and target-in-source metonymies. Drawing on Cognitive Linguistics, especially the theory
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English modal enclitic constructions: a diachronic, usage-based study of ’d and ’ll Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Robert Daugs
English modal enclitics ( ’d and ’ll ) are typically conceived of as colloquial pronunciation variants that are semantically identical to their respective full forms ( would and will ). Although this conception has already been challenged by Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2014. From contraction to construction? The recent life of ’ll. In Marianne Hundt (ed.), Late modern English syntax , 77–89. Cambridge: Cambridge
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What makes the past perfect and the future progressive? Experiential coordinates for a learnable, context-based model of tense and aspect Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Laurence Romain, Adnane Ez-zizi, Petar Milin, Dagmar Divjak
We examined how language supports the expression of temporality within sentence boundaries in English, which has a rich inventory of grammatical means to express temporality. Using a computational model that mimics how humans learn from exposure we explored what the use of different tense and aspect (TA) combinations reveals about the interaction between our experience of time and the cognitive demands
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Exerting control: the grammatical meaning of facial displays in signed languages Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-11-16 Sara Siyavoshi, Sherman Wilcox
Signed languages employ finely articulated facial and head displays to express grammatical meanings such as mood and modality, complex propositions (conditionals, causal relations, complementation), information structure (topic, focus), assertions, content and yes/no questions, imperatives, and miratives. In this paper we examine two facial displays: an upper face display in which the eyebrows are
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The intrinsic frame of reference and the Dhivehi ‘FIBO’ system Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-11-03 Jonathon Lum
While geocentric and relative frames of reference have figured prominently in the literature on spatial language and cognition, the intrinsic frame of reference has received less attention, though various subtypes of the intrinsic frame have been proposed. This paper presents a revised classification of the intrinsic frame, distinguishing between three subtypes: a ‘direct’ subtype, an ‘object-centered’
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The linguistic dimensions of concrete and abstract concepts: lexical category, morphological structure, countability, and etymology Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-10-26 Francesca Strik Lievers, Marianna Bolognesi, Bodo Winter
The distinction between abstract and concrete concepts is fundamental to cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. This distinction is commonly operationalized through concreteness ratings based on the aggregated judgments of many people. What is often overlooked in experimental studies using this operationalization is that ratings are attributed to words, not to concepts directly. In this paper
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Articulatory features of phonemes pattern to iconic meanings: evidence from cross-linguistic ideophones Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-10-23 Arthur Lewis Thompson, Thomas Van Hoey, Youngah Do
Iconic words are supposed to exhibit imitative relationships between their linguistic forms and their referents. Many studies have worked to pinpoint sound-to-meaning correspondences for ideophones from different languages. The correspondence patterns show similarities across languages, but what makes such language-specific correspondences universal, as iconicity claims to be, remains unclear. This
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A cognitive account of subjectivity put to the test: using an insertion task to investigate Mandarin result connectives Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-10-21 Hongling Xiao, Roeland W. N. M. van Hout, Ted J. M. Sanders, Wilbert P. M. S. Spooren
This article aims to further test the cognitive claims of the so-called subjectivity account of causal events and their linguistic markers, causal connectives. We took Mandarin Chinese, a language that is typologically completely different from the usual western languages, as a case to provide evidence for this subjectivity account. Complementary to the commonly used corpora analyses, we employed crowdsourcing
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What can cognitive linguistics tell us about language-image relations? A multidimensional approach to intersemiotic convergence in multimodal texts Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-10-10 Christopher Hart, Javier Marmol Queralto
In contrast to symbol-manipulation approaches, Cognitive Linguistics offers a modal rather than an amodal account of meaning in language. From this perspective, the meanings attached to linguistic expressions, in the form of conceptualisations, have various properties in common with visual forms of representation. This makes Cognitive Linguistics a potentially useful framework for identifying and analysing
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Incorporating the multi-level nature of the constructicon into hypothesis testing Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-09-15 Dirk Pijpops, Dirk Speelman, Freek Van de Velde, Stefan Grondelaers
Construction grammar organizes its basic elements of description, its constructions, into networks that range from concrete, lexically-filled constructions to fully schematic ones, with several levels of partially schematic constructions in between. However, only few corpus studies with a constructionist background take this multi-level nature fully into account. In this paper, we argue that understanding
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Patterns of semantic variation differ across body parts: evidence from the Japonic languages Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-09-02 John L. A. Huisman, Roeland van Hout, Asifa Majid
The human body is central to myriad metaphors, so studying the conceptualisation of the body itself is critical if we are to understand its broader use. One essential but understudied issue is whether languages differ in which body parts they single out for naming. This paper takes a multi-method approach to investigate body part nomenclature within a single language family. Using both a naming task
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Analogy as driving force of language change: a usage-based approach to wo and da clauses in 17th and 18th century German Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-07-08 Melitta Gillmann
This paper presents a case study conducted on 17th and 18th century German corpora, confirming that both attraction and differentiation are important mechanisms of change, which interact with socio-symbolic properties of constructions. The paper looks at the frequencies and semantics of wo ‘where’ clauses at the beginning of the New High German period, which are compared to the frequencies and semantics
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Using structural priming to test links between constructions: English caused-motion and resultative sentences inhibit each other Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-04-23 Tobias Ungerer
Cognitive-linguistic theories commonly model speakers’ grammatical knowledge as a network of constructions related by a variety of associative links. The present study proposes that structural priming can provide psycholinguistic evidence of such links, and crucially, that the method can be extended to non-alternating constructions (i.e., constructions that differ in both form and meaning). In a comprehension
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Frontmatter Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-05-01
Article Frontmatter was published on May 1, 2021 in the journal Cognitive Linguistics (volume 32, issue 2).
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The heart’s downward path to happiness: cross-cultural diversity in spatial metaphors of affect Cognitive Linguistics (IF 1.796) Pub Date : 2021-05-01 Ewelina Wnuk, Yuma Ito
Spatial metaphors of affect display remarkable consistencies across languages in mapping sensorimotor experiences onto emotional states, reflecting a great degree of similarity in how our bodies register affect. At the same time, however, affect is complex and there is more than a single possible mapping from vertical spatial concepts to affective states. Here we consider a previously unreported case