Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and second language acquisition (review)

Cognitive Linguistics is a rapidly growing and relatively new approach to the study of language and its relation to cognition. It encompasses a variety of theories such as Cognitive Grammar, Construction Grammar, Radical Construction Grammar, and usage-based theories of grammar, among others. It challenges mainstream linguistic theory (Chomskyan Generative Grammar) and deals with not only traditional linguistic fields such as syntax, semantics, and phonology but also subfields of linguistics from acquisition to typology. The present book provides a cognitive linguistic approach to yet another subfield of linguistics, second language acquisition. This book consists of three parts with 19 individual papers including an introduction and conclusion, followed by author and subject indices.

In Part I, in “An introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, second language acquisition, and language instruction” (pp. 3–24), Nick C. Ellis and Peter Robinson overview Cognitive Linguistics in general and give the goals of the book: to summarize cognitive linguistic perspectives on language, language use, and child language acquisition and the development of a Cognitive Linguistics of second language acquisition and second language pedagogy. They also summarize the chapters in the present book.

Part II comprises nine articles devoted to present cognitive linguistic approaches to the study of language and cognition. In “Aspects of attention in language” (pp. 27–38), Leonard Talmy investigates the effects of attention or salience on language. He argues that the linguistic expression, content, and context of the expression have differing degrees of attention. He shows that linguistic factors (morphological, phonological, and syntactic factors, properties of the referent and the referent’s relation to its representation, and properties of temporal progression) affect attention in language. Although these factors are universal, the extensiveness of some factors differs across languages and between first and second language acquisition. In “Prototypes in Cognitive Linguistics” (pp. 39–65), John R. Taylor explores the effects of studies on prototypes and categorization on the emergence of Cognitive Linguistics. He also shows these effects on studies of lexical semantics, phonology, syntax, and constructions.

In “Cognitive Grammar as a basis for language instruction” (pp. 66–88), Ronald W. Langacker argues that, compared to other theories of grammar, his theory of Cognitive Grammar can offer a more promising ground for language pedagogy. This is because Cognitive Grammar focuses on meaning: Cognitive Grammar proposes meaningfulness of grammar such that every grammatical category (noun, verb, subject, object, and so on) can be semantically characterized. Also, Cognitive Grammar is usage-based, and thus focuses on the actual learning process. In “Word Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics, and second language learning and teaching” (pp. 89–113), Richard Hudson introduces his theory of Word Grammar and its relation to second language acquisition and language pedagogy. He argues that, like memory, language (vocabulary and grammar) is a network. The language network can be learnable and teachable through generalization, induction, motivation, and attention.

In “Spatial language learning and the functional geometric framework” (pp. 114–138), Kenny R. Coventry and Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes examine spatial language, in which languages differ from each other quite unexpectedly. Their theory of a functional geometric framework that can account for this diversity considers three types of information in construing spatial language: geometric relations, dynamic-kinematic routines, and context, which are already available in prelinguistic infants. Comparing English and Spanish, the authors argue that these three types of information also interact during second language acquisition. In “Language without grammar” (pp. 139–167), William O’Grady argues that syntactic mechanisms are identical to the language processing mechanism, left-to-right in real time. From this perspective, he then examines phrase structure, pronoun interpretation, agreement, inversion, and first and second language acquisition by focusing on English. In “Children’s first language acquisition from a usage-based perspective” (pp. 168–196), Elena Lieven and Michael Tomasello examine first language acquisition and argue that children learn their first language from particular utterances in particular contexts, indicating that frequency, consistency, and complexity of linguistic forms affect language learning. The authors support their...