acerca da linguística cognitiva [inglês]__

7/30/2019 Acerca da lingustica cognitiva [ingls]__

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Acerca da lingustica cognitiva

Historical Background

by Suzanne KemmerCognitive Linguistics grew out of the work of a number ofresearchers active in the 1970s who were interested in therelation of language and mind, and who did not follow theprevailing tendency to explain linguistic patterns by means ofappeals to structural properties internal to and specific tolanguage. Rather than attempting to segregate syntax fromthe rest of language in a 'syntactic component' governed by aset of principles and elements specific to that component, theline of research followed instead was to examine the relationof language structure to things outside language: cognitiveprinciples and mechanisms not specific to language, includingprinciples of human categorization; pragmatic andinteractional principles; and functional principles in general,such as iconicity and economy.

The most influential linguists working along these lines and

focusing centrally on cognitive principles and organizationwere Wallace Chafe, Charles Fillmore, George Lakoff, RonaldLangacker, and Leonard Talmy. Each of these linguists begandeveloping their own approach to language description andlinguistic theory, centered on a particular set of phenomenaand concerns. One of the important assumptions shared by allof these scholars is that meaning is so central to languagethat it must be a primary focus of study. Linguistic structuresserve the function of expressing meanings and hence the

mappings between meaning and form are a prime subject oflinguistic analysis. Linguistic forms, in this view, are closelylinked to the semantic structures they are designed toexpress. Semantic structures of all meaningful linguistic unitscan and should be investigated.

These views were in direct opposition to the ideas developingat the time within Chomskyan linguistics, in which meaningwas 'interpretive' and peripheral to the study of language.

The central object of interest in language was syntax. Thestructures of language were in this view not driven by


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meaning, but instead were governed by principles essentiallyindependent of meaning. Thus, the semantics associated withmorphosyntactic structures did not require investigation; thefocus was on language-internal structural principles as

explanatory constructs.

Functional linguistics also began to develop as a field in the1970s, in the work of linguists such as Joan Bybee, BernardComrie, John Haiman, Paul Hopper, Sandra Thompson, andTom Givon. The principal focus of functional linguistics is onexplanatory principles that derive from language as acommunicative system, whether or not these directly relate tothe structure of the mind. Functional linguistics developed

into discourse-functional linguistics and functional-typologicallinguistics, with slightly different foci, but broadly similar inaims to Cognitive Linguistics. At the same time, a historicallinguistics along functional principles emerged, leading towork on principles of grammaticalization (grammaticization)by researchers such as Elizabeth Traugott and Bernd Heine.All of these theoretical currents hold that language is beststudied and described with reference to its cognitive,experiential, and social contexts, which go far beyond thelinguistic system proper.

Other linguists developing their own frameworks for linguisticdescription in a cognitive direction in the 1970s were SydneyLamb (Stratificational Linguistics, laterNeurocognitiveLinguistics) and Dick Hudson (Word Grammar).

Much work in child language acquisition in the 1970s wasinfluenced by Piaget and by the cognitive revolution inPsychology, so that the field of language acquisition had a

strong functional/cognitive strand through this period thatpersists to the present. Work by Dan Slobin, Eve Clark,Elizabeth Bates and Melissa Bowerman laid the groundworkfor present day cognitivist work.

Also during the 1970s, Chomsky made the strong claim ofinnateness of the linguistic capacity leading to a great debatein the field of acquisition that still reverberates today. His ideaof acquisition as a 'logical problem' rather than an empirical

problem, and view of it as a matter of minor parameter-setting operations on an innate set of rules, were rejected by
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functionally and cognitively oriented researchers and ingeneral by those studying acquisition empirically, who sawthe problem as one of learning, not fundamentally differentfrom other kinds of learning.

By the late 1980s, the kinds of linguistic theory developmentbeing done in particular by Fillmore, Lakoff, Langacker, andTalmy, although appearing radically different in thedescriptive mechanisms proposed, could be seen to be relatedin fundamental ways. Fillmore's ideas had developed intoFrame Semantics and, in collaboration withothers,Construction Grammar(Fillmore et al. 1988).

Lakoff was well-known for his work on metaphor andmetonymy (Lakoff 1981 and Lakoff 1987). Langacker's ideashad evolved into an explicit theory known first as SpaceGrammar and then Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1988).Talmy had published a number of increasingly influentialpapers on linguistic imaging systems (Talmy 1985a,b and1988).

Also by this time, Gilles Fauconnier had developed a theory ofMental Spaces, influenced by the views of Oswald Ducrot.

This theory was later developed in collaboration with MarkTurner into a theory of Conceptual Blending, which meshes ininteresting ways with both Langacker's Cognitive Grammarand Lakoff's theory of Metaphor.

The 1980s also saw the development of connectionist modelsof language processing, such as those developed by JeffElman and Brian MacWhinney, in which the focus was onmodeling learning, specifically language acquisition, using

connectionist networks. This work tied naturally in to theacquisition problem, and with the research program ofElizabeth Bates who had demonstrated the learned nature ofchildren's linguistic knowledge, and its grounding in cognitiveand social development. Gradually, a coherent conceptualframework emerged which exposed the flaws of linguisticnativism and placed experiential learning at the center in theunderstanding of how children acquire language. Thisconception was the foundation for the research program of

Michael Tomasello, who in the 1990s began to take the lead
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in the study of acquisition in its social, cognitive, and culturalcontexts.

Through the 1980s the work of Lakoff and Langacker, in

particular, began to gain adherents. During this decaderesearchers in Poland, Belgium, Germany, and Japan beganto explore linguistic problems from a cognitive standpoint,with explicit reference to the work of Lakoff and Langacker.1987 saw the publication of Lakoff's infuential book Women,Fire and Dangerous Things, and, at almost the same time,Langacker's 1987 Foundations of Cognitive GrammarVol. 1,which had been circulating chapter by chapter since 1984.

The next publication milestone was the collection Topics inCognitive Linguistics, ed. by Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, publishedby Mouton in 1988. This substantial volume contains anumber seminal papers by Langacker, Talmy, and otherswhich made it widely influential, and indeed of influencecontinuing to this day.

In 1989, the first conference on Cognitive Linguistics wasorganized in Duisburg, Germany, by Rene Dirven. At thatconference, it was decided to found a new organization, the

International Cognitive Linguistic Association, which wouldhold biennial conferences to bring together researchersworking in cognitive linguistics. The Duisburg conference wasretroactively declared the first International CognitiveLinguistics Conference (seeICLA Organization History).

The journal Cognitive Linguistics was also conceived in themid 1980s, and its first issue appeared in 1990 under theimprint of Mouton de Gruyter, with Dirk Geeraerts as editor.

At the Duisburg conference, Rene Dirven proposed a newbook series, Cognitive Linguistics Research, as anotherpublication venue for the developing field. The first CLRvolume, a collection of articles by Ronald Langacker, broughttogether under the title Concept, Image and Symbol, cameout in 1990. The following year, Volume 2 ofLangacker's Foundations of Cognitive Grammarappeared.

During the 1990s Cognitive Linguistics became widelyrecognized as an important field of specialization within
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Linguistics, spawning numerous conferences in addition to thebiennial ICLC meetings. The work of Lakoff, Langacker, andTalmy formed the leading strands of the theory, butconnections with related theories such as Construction

Grammar were made by many working cognitive linguists,who tended to adopt representational eclecticism whilemaintaining basic tenets of cognitivism. Korea, Hungary,Thailand, Croatia, and other countries began to host cognitivelinguistic research and activities. The breadth of researchcould be seen in the journalCognitive Linguistics which hadbecome the official journal of the ICLA. Arie Verhagen tookover as editor, leading the journal into its second phase.

By the mid-1990s, Cognitive Linguistics as a field wascharacterized by a defining set of intellectual pursuitspracticed by its adherents, summarized in the Handbook ofPragmatics under the entry for Cognitive Linguistics(Geeraerts 1995: 111-112):

Because cognitive linguistics sees language as embedded in theoverall cognitive capacities of man, topics of special interest forcognitive linguistics include: the structural characteristics of naturallanguage categorization (such as prototypicality, systematic

polysemy, cognitive models, mental imagery and metaphor); thefunctional principles of linguistic organization (such as iconicity andnaturalness); the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics(as explored by cognitive grammar and construction grammar); theexperiential and pragmatic background of language-in-use; and therelationship between language and thought, including questionsabout relativism and conceptual universals.

In this summary, the strong connections between CognitiveLinguistics and the research areas of functional linguistics,

linguistic description, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, anddiscourse studies can be seen.

For many cognitive linguists, the main interest in CL lies in itsprovision of a better-grounded approach to and set oftheoretical assumptions for syntactic and semantic theorythan generative linguistics provides. For others, however, animportant appeal is the opportunity to link the study oflanguage and the mind to the study of the brain.


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In the 2000s regional and language-topical CognitiveLinguistics Associations, affiliated to ICLA, began to emerge.Spain, Finland, and a Slavic-language CLA were formed, andthen Poland, Russia and Germany became the sites of newly

affiliated CLAs. These were followed by Korea, France, Japan,North America, the U.K., Sweden (which soon expanded to aScandinavian association), and, most recently, China andBelgium. Some of these associations existed prior toaffiliation, while others were formed specifically as regionalaffiliates.

A review journal, theAnnual Review of CognitiveLinguistics began its run in 2003, and other new journals

followed suit. Cognitive Linguistics, after being edited by DirkGeeraerts and then Arie Verhagen, was taken on by editorAdele Goldberg in 2003, followed by the current editor EwaDabrowska who took the helm in 2006. Throughout, thejournal has continued to increase its reputation andprominence in Linguistics.

Cognitive linguistics conferences continue to be organized inmany countries, to the extent that it is difficult to keep trackof them all. The ICLC was held for the first time in Asia,specifically in Seoul, Korea in July 2005. Asia has a now verysignificant membership base. In 2005 the Governing Boardvoted to take the conference to China, and a definite venuefor the 2011 conference was approved in 2007: Xi'an, China.

The ICLA continues to foster the development of CognitiveLinguistics as a worldwide discipline, and to enhance itsconnection with its natural neighbor disciplines of Psychology,Anthropology, Sociology, and of course Cognitive Science.

References

Geeraerts, Dirk. 1995. Cognitive Linguistics. In J.Verschueren, J.-O. stman and J. Blommaert, eds.,Handbookof Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 111-116.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press.


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Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors we Liveby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. 1998. Philosophy in the

Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to WesternThought. New York: Basic Books.

Lamb, Sydney M. 1971. The Crooked Path of Progress inCognitive Linguistics. Georgetown University MonographSeries on Languages and Linguistics 24:99-123.

Lamb, Sydney M. 1999. Pathways of the Brain. TheNeurocognitive Basis of Language. Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of CognitiveGrammarVol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1990. Concept, Image, and Symbol.The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive

GrammarVol. 2: Descriptive Application. Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press.

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