Cognitive Linguistics in Action: From Theory to Application and Back (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

418 Pages·2010·2.41 MB·English

by  Elzbieta Tabakowska

Cognitive Linguistics in Action
Applications of Cognitive Linguistics
14
Editors
Gitte Kristiansen
Francisco J.Ruiz de Mendoza Iba´n˜ez
Honorary editor
Rene´ Dirven
De Gruyter Mouton
Cognitive Linguistics in Action
From Theory to Application and Back
Edited by
Elz˙bieta Tabakowska
Michał Choin´ski
Łukasz Wiraszka
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-020581-7
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022609-6
ISSN 1861-4078
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Cognitivelinguisticsinaction:fromtheorytoapplicationandback/
editedbyElz˙bietaTabakowska,MichałChoin´ski,ŁukaszWiraszka.
p.cm.(cid:2)Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-3-11-020581-7(alk.paper)
1. Cognitive grammar. 2. Language and languages (cid:2) Study and
teaching. I. Tabakowska, Elz˙bieta. II. Choin´ski, Michał, 1983(cid:2)
III.Wiraszka,Łukasz,1982(cid:2)
P165.C644 2010
371.3315(cid:2)dc22
2010032908
BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek
TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie;
detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternetathttp://dnb.d-nb.de.
(cid:2)2010WalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,Berlin/NewYork
Typesetting:RoyalStandard,HongKong
Printing:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen
(cid:3)Printedonacid-freepaper
PrintedinGermany
www.degruyter.com
Table of Contents
Introduction
Theory informing applications, applications informing theory. . . . . 1
Elz˙bieta Tabakowska, Michał Choin´ski and Łukasz Wiraszka
Part I. From loop to cycle
Looking back at thirty years of Cognitive Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Rene´ Dirven and Francisco Jose´ Ruiz de Mendoza Iba´n˜ez
Recontextualizing Grammar: Underlying trends in thirty years of
Cognitive Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Dirk Geeraerts
How theory informs application and how application informs
theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Laura Janda
Part II. The context for prototypes
Whynot? Prototypes andblockingofsu‰x shiftinRussian verbs. . . 123
Tore Nesset
Prototype-based taxonomy of idiomatic expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Esa Penttila¨
Part III. Contexts for Cognitive Grammar
Control and the mind/body duality: Knowing vs. e¤ecting . . . . . . . 163
Ronald W. Langacker
A discourse perspective to nominal reference-point constructions. . . 209
Peter Willemse
Lexicalizing indirect path: Focus on Finnish motion verbs . . . . . . . 241
Jari Sivonen
A cognitive approach to parenthetical speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Jaakko Leino
Part IV. The pragmatic context
Using RST to analyze subjectivity in text and talk . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Kirsten Vis, Wilbert Spooren and Jose´ Sanders
vi Tableofcontents
Typologymeetswitnessnarrativesandmemory:Theoryandpractice
entwined in Cognitive Linguistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Luna Filipovic´
Part V. The social and cultural contexts for CMT and CI
Cross-cultural variation in idiomatic expression: Insights from
Cognitive Metaphor Theory and implication for Translation
Studies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Diane Ponterotto
Mundane Transcendence? Conceptualizations offaith in prosperity
theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Małgorzata Pasicka
Fromgod is a father togod is a friend: Conceptual integration in
metaphors for God in Christian discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Aleksander Gomola
Subject index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Introduction: Theory informing applications,
applications informing theory
Elz˙bieta Tabakowska, Michał Choin´ski and
Łukasz Wiraszka
The present volume brings together a selection of papers delivered during
the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, which was held
in Krako´w (Poland), from July 15 to July 20, 2007. This was, indeed, a
jubilee year for Cognitive Linguistics: thirty years after various strands of
linguistics focusing upon the relation between language and mind began
to develop their theoretical frameworks in a cognitive direction, build-
ing up – during the 1980s – uniform cognitive foundations for linguistic
description, and twenty years after the appearance of the first two
milestones: Lako¤’s Women, Fire and Dangerous Things and Langacker’s
Foundations of Cognitive Grammar.
Eighteen years after the first conference, organized by Rene´ Dirven in
Duisburg in 1989, the event in Poland was attended by over five hundred
scholars from 42 countries. The conference was organized by the Polish
Cognitive Linguistics Association in cooperation with the Jagiellonian
University of Krako´w. Its leading theme, Cognitive Linguistics in Action:
FromTheorytoApplicationandBack,gavethetitletothepresentvolume.
During the five days of the Conference the participants presented
results of their research devoted to a wide array of linguistic phenomena
of interest to Cognitive Linguistics. Despite the great variety of scholarly
interests and the problems addressed, all the researchers – whether the six
plenary speakers (Laura Janda, Leonard Talmy, Ronald W. Langacker,
Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Iba´n˜ez, Chris Sinha and Dirk Geeraerts),
the hundreds of speakers in general and theme sessions, or the forty
authors of poster presentations – shared at least one common objective:
to illustrate, as Laura Janda puts it in her chapter below, ‘‘how theory
informs application and how application informs theory.’’
Traditionally, jubilee was a year of celebration and forgiveness. The
present volume was conceived as part of the celebration, bearing testi-
mony to the event and its key theme. But at the same time the editors
feel obliged to ask their readers’ forgiveness: because of space limitation,
the book could not encompass all the quality papers, lectures and presen-
2 Elz˙bietaTabakowska,MichałChoin´skiandŁukaszWiraszka
tations o¤ered as contributions to the 10th ICLC. A choice had to be
made so as to present the readers with a more or less coherent volume,
which would at the same time provide a varied and stimulating reading.
As a result, it was decided to shift the focus towards such aspects of the
relation between theory and application in Cognitive Linguistics that
have not been comprehensively dealt with in other recent publications.
Therefore the articles o¤ered here do not specifically address such topics
as second/foreign language learning and pedagogy (Pu¨tz, Niemeier, and
Dirven2001;BoersandLinstromberg2008),languageacquisition(Toma-
sello 2003; Da˛browska 2004), sign language (Emmorey 2002; Janzen
2005), nonverbal communication (McNeill 1992, 2000, 2005) or com-
putational and corpus-based linguistics (Gries and Stefanowitsch 2006;
Stefanowitsch and Gries 2006).
Naturally,individualpapersinthebookaddressawidearrayoftopics,
dealing with various fields of application, as defined in the introduction to
the first volume in the ACL series (Kristiansen, Achard, Dirven and Ruiz
de Mendoza Iba´n˜ez 2006). Some – more general in scope – indicate new
directions and open new perspectives, others – originally presented at the
Conference as section papers dealing with finer-grained issues – demon-
strate ways in which application of the theory to new data and using new
methodologies lead to refinement, further development or modification of
the theoretical framework. All provide illustration for the recent ‘‘empirical
turn’’ in Cognitive Linguistics, which is marked by the consideration and
descriptionoflargeamountsofauthenticdata,facilitatedduetoincreased
use of electronic corpora, as well as by the increasingly interdisciplinary
approach. The ill-famed ‘‘linguistic artifacts’’, which linguists of various
persuasions often used to create to illustrate and support their hypotheses
about what language is and how it works, are being replaced by large lin-
guistic corpora, setting new standards for empirical research. The impact
that the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics has been making
on the neighbouring fields of study is evident; it is often reflected by the
very titles of books written within new ‘‘interdisciplinary disciplines’’,
where the adjective cognitive comes to implicate significant modifications
that a given field has been undergoing, following the adaptation of CL
theoretical models, methodologies and principles of practical application.
ThuswehavewitnessedtheemergenceofCognitiveSociolinguistics(Kris-
tiansen and Dirven 2008), Cognitive Poetics (Stockwell 2002; Gavins and
Steen 2003; Broˆne and Vandaele 2009), Cognitive Stylistics (Semino and
Culpeper 2002) and Cognitive Translation Theory (Tabakowska 1993;
Gutt 2000). Cognitive principles of categorization as reflected in linguistic
Introduction:Theoryinformingapplications,applicationsinformingtheory 3
labels put on entities and categories, as well as the cognitive model of
grammar of the natural language, are now used, and developed, in fields
seemingly very remote from that of linguistics proper, such as archaeology,
cultural anthropology or theology. Many further vistas lie open.
By bringing up a collection of papers which point out these new direc-
tions the editors hope to provide scholars working in the field of linguis-
tics,aswellasinotherfieldswithinthehumanities,withasurveyofrecent
trends which constitute the ‘‘empirical turn’’ in the Cognitive Linguistics
of today.
The contributions in the first section of the volume, written by eminent
scholars, whose position within the field of Cognitive Linguistics has been
firmlyestablished,touchuponissuesofcontinuingrelevancetothediscipline
and introduce thematic areas covered in the next four sections. There, the
contributions come mainly from young scholars, whose research illustrates
various ways leading to the implementation of the cycle through di¤erent
forms of contextualization, either presenting descriptive analyses that lead
totheoreticaladjustmentsandamendments,orwideningthefieldofpossi-
ble applications, e.g. to include theological or metaphysical discourse.
Part I of the volume (‘‘From loop to cycle’’) begins with a comprehen-
sive survey by Rene´ Dirven and Francisco Jose´ Ruiz de Mendoza Iba´n˜ez,
who review relevant developments that took place over the thirty years of
the history of Cognitive Linguistics, putting special emphasis on the rela-
tion of grammar to cognition and presenting the distinctive features of
CL,in particular thenon-modular conceptionof languageand conceptual
prominence in grammar. The authors discuss the notion of embodiment,
showingthephilosophicalgroundingofembodiedrealisminphenomenol-
ogy, and demonstrate the role of categorization in the emergence of the
lexicon-grammar continuum, focusing upon the crucial notions of con-
strual, perspective, and compositionality. In the contrastive sections of
the chapter, Dirven and Mendoza Iba´n˜ez elaborate on the areas of
overlap and contrast between Cognitive Grammar and the various ver-
sions of construction grammars. In the second part of their survey, they
critically review the issue of polysemy, arguing for a solution based on
complementing qualitativeandquantitativeanalyticaltechniques.Finally,
they discuss blending as a pervasive cognitive phenomenon and a psycho-
logicallyplausibleexplanationfor non-compositionalaspectsofgrammar,
pragmatics and discourse.
In Dirk Geeraerts’ chapter, historical trends in the history of Cognitive
Linguistics are also a central issue. Arguing for ‘‘recontextualization’’ in