Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope, and Methodology (review)

The volume contains seven articles: six are revised versions of most of the plenary lectures delivered at the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (Amsterdam 1997), and one is an invited contribution. As the title suggests, the articles are concerned with theoretical and methodological questions relating to cognitive linguistics (CL); however, they frequently receive support from actual analyses of language data or from applications of proposed constructs. Although no such division is made formally, the editors indicate in the ‘Introduction’ (1–12) that the first four contributions deal with the scope of interest and the methodology of CL whereas the remaining three address relevant ontological and epistemological issues.

First, Ronald Langacker (13–59) presents an overview of CL in terms of its relationship to linguistics as such and functionalist linguistics in particular. While discussing justification for accepting a linguistic analysis, he proposes and subsequently illustrates the principle of ‘converging evidence’. Next, William Croft (61–93) finds parallelisms between typology and CL in terms of ‘a radical construction grammar’, i.e. viewing constructions, rather than categories or relations between them, as basic grammatical entities. He further recognizes a complex interplay between syntactic structure, semantic structure, and experience. A dynamic nature of meaning is also espoused by Gilles Fauconnier (95–127) in his discussion of conceptual integration (blending) and the notions of economy, operational uniformity, and cognitive generalizations as areas where the integrity of language and cognition is especially conspicuous. The concepts of blending and mental spaces are further elaborated by Eve Sweetser (129–62), who employs them along with active zones and frames in an account of compositionality as a major phenomenon in linguistic semantics.

The first of the papers with a more philosophical orientation is Dirk Geeraerts’s (163–94) presentation of a debate, indeed in the form of a philosophical dialogue, between advocates of idealist and empiricist tendencies in CL. The debate is set against a broader background of Wilhelm Dilthey’s question of a legitimate interpretation of natural language expressions. Next, Peter Harder (195–222) ponders the ontology of language units. By drawing examples from economics, biology, and social facts, he suggests that various levels of language are best seen as ‘partially autonomous’. The volume ends with Chris Sinha’s (223–55) rejection of viewing meanings as mental objects. instead, the author proposes to treat them as motivated ‘mappings’ from conceptualization to expression, with social interaction playing a major part.

On the whole, the publication must be valued for its thematic coherence. After twenty years or so of the presence of CL on the linguistic scene, the time has come to address its philosophical and methodological foundations in more depth. The articles collected in the volume seem to indicate that, indeed, CL is a mature linguistic enterprise, capable of corroborating the inseparability of language and cognition and accounting for linguistic phenomena in terms of general cognitive processing. At the turn of the millenium, the ideas discussed may also be seen as possible future directions of the discipline’s development, set by some of the leading scholars in the field.