Book review

Cognitive Linguistics

Evans, Vyvyan and Melanie Green 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (in Canada and USA), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (in Europe and the rest of the world)

Reviewed by Natalya I. Stolova, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Colgate University

The last decade witnessed the publication of a great number of introductory books on cognitive linguistics written in English (e.g., Ungerer and Schmid 1996, Lee 2001, Croft and Cruse 2004, Dirven and Verspoor (eds.) 2004), as well as in other languages (e.g., Schwarz 1992, Cuenca and Hilferty 1999, Gaeta and Luraghi (eds.) 2003, Maslova 2004). The volume authored by Evans and Green successfully situates itself within this tradition.

The authors stress that rather than constituting a specific theory, cognitive linguistics represents a collection of approaches that share a set of common guiding principles. Part I (Chapters 1-4) offers an outline of the assumptions and commitments situated at the core of the cognitive linguistics enterprise. Chapter 1 sketches the task of cognitive linguists which consists in 'form[ing] hypotheses about the nature of language and about the conceptual system that it reflects' (21). In Chapter 2 the reader finds a discussion of the two key commitments of cognitive linguistics: the Generalization Commitment, i.e., 'a commitment to the characterization of general principles that are responsible for all aspects of human language' (27), and the Cognitive Commitment, i.e., 'a commitment to providing a characterization of general principles for language that accords with what is known about the mind and brain from other disciplines' (27-28). In Chapter 3 the authors present a treatment of linguistic universals and cross-linguistic variation, concluding that 'cognitive linguistics is consistent with a weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' (102). Chapter 4 discusses the usage-based perspective on language that has been adopted by linguists working within the cognitive framework. The authors address three phenomena and the respective theories that have been applied to their analysis: knowledge of language (Ronald Langacker's Cognitive Grammar), language change (William Croft's Utterance Selection Theory), and language acquisition (Michael Tomasello's usage-based model).

As was mentioned earlier, cognitive linguistics is not a uniform framework but rather a combination of approaches that share common principles. The two main approaches adopted by cognitive linguists are cognitive semantics (discussed in Part II, Chapters 5-13) and cognitive approaches to grammar (overviewed in Part III, Chapters 14-22). Cognitive semantics, defined as 'the study of the relationship between experience, embodied cognition and language' (50) is comprised of several lines of investigation. Chapter 5 outlines the central guiding principles of cognitive semantics while Chapters 6-13 discuss the theories that reflect these principles. The list of the theories addressed (with their exponents listed in parenthesis) is as following: the theory of image schemas (Mark Johnson), the conceptual structuring system approach (Leonard Talmy), the theory of Frame Semantics (Charles Fillmore), the theory of domains (Ronald Langacker), the theory of idealized cognitive models (George Lakoff), Conceptual Metaphor Theory (George Lakoff, Mark Johnson), conceptual metonymy research (Antonio Barcelona, Zoltán Kövecses, Günter Radden), cognitive lexical semantics (Claudia Brugman, George Lakoff), the Principled Polysemy framework (Vyvyan Evans, Andrea Tyler), Mental Spaces Theory (Gilles Fauconnier), and Conceptual Blending Theory (Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner). Chapter 13 concludes Part II by comparing and contrasting cognitive semantics with other modern approaches to meaning, namely formal semantics and Relevance Theory.

Part III (Chapters 14-22) focuses on cognitive approaches to grammar defined as 'the study of the symbolic linguistic units that comprise language' (50). Like cognitive semantics, cognitive approaches to grammar form a collection of approaches unified by shared guiding principles. Chapter 14 presents two guiding principles of cognitive approaches to grammar as well as definitions of key grammatical terms associated with them. Chapter 15 offers an overview of Leonard Talmy's Conceptual Structuring System and Ronald Langacker's Cognitive Grammar. Chapters 16, 17, and 18 explore Cognitive Grammar in more detail by looking at Langacker's approach to word classes, at his account of grammatical constructions, and at the Cognitive Grammar analysis of the English verb string.

Chapters 19 and 20 continue the subject of constructions by exploring the empirical motivation for a constructional approach to grammar and by surveying the generative theory of Construction Grammar proposed by Kay and Fillmore, as well as three cognitively oriented constructional approaches: Adele Goldberg's model, Radical Construction Grammar developed by William Croft, and Embodied Construction Grammar proposed by Benjamin Bergen and Nancy Chang. Chapter 21 shifts the book's focus from a synchronic to a diachronic perspective and from English examples to non-English ones as it focuses on three theories of grammaticalization: metaphorical extension models, Invited Inferencing Theory, and the subjectification approach. Chapter 22 concludes Part III by comparing the cognitive approach to grammar with the generative one.

In Part IV (Chapter 23) the authors offer an assessment of the achievements and the remaining challenges of the cognitive linguistics enterprise. The volume closes with an Appendix of tables and figures, a bibliography, and an index. Each chapter except the last one is supplemented with an annotated list of further readings and a series of exercises. Evans and Green also suggest three reading sequences that allow for three different types of courses: 'Introduction to cognitive linguistics', 'Cognitive semantics' and 'Cognitive approaches to grammar'.

Overall, the book offers a thorough, well-organized, clearly-written and engaging overview of cognitive linguistics which makes it suitable to serve as a textbook or as a reference tool.

References

Croft, William and D. A. Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cuenca, Maria Josep and Joseph Hilferty. 1999. Introducción a la lingüística cognitiva. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.

Gaeta Livio and Sivia Luraghi (eds.) 2003. Introduzione alla linguistica cognitiva. Roma: Carocci.

Dirven, René, and Marjolijn H. Verspoor (eds.) 2004. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. 2nd ed. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Versions of the 1st English edition (1998) appeared in Dutch (1999), Italian (1999), Spanish (2000), Polish (2001), and French (2002).

Lee, David. 2001. Cognitive Linguistics: an Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Maslova, Valentina A. 2004. Vvedenie v kognitivnuiu lingvistiku: Uchebnoe Posobie. Moscow: Flinta / Nauka.

Schwarz, Monika. 1992. Einführung in die Kognitive Linguistik. Tübingen: Francke.

Ungerer, Friedrich and Hans-Jörg Schmid. 1996. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. London/New York: Longman. (2nd edition is forthcoming in November 2006).

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