Book review

Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings

Dirk Geeraerts (ed.) 2006. Cognitive Linguistics : Basic Readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Reviewed by Thomas Verjans (Université Paris 4-Sorbonne)

The aim of this book is to bundle twelve foundational articles of the field of Cognitive Linguistics in order to make them readily available to linguists, and particularly to students. The book contains an introduction, twelve chapters, each of which illustrates a fundamental concept, and an epilogue in which Dirk Geeraerts indicates trajectories for further reading.

In the introduction, A rough guide to cognitive linguistics, Dirk Geeraerts takes the reader by the hand for an initial overview of the Cognitive Linguistics 'archipelago'. Geeraerts defines Cognitive Linguistics (as opposed to 'uncapitalized cognitive linguistic' and other semantic approaches) as a discipline in which 'the foundational point is simply that language is all about meaning' (3). He further explicates how meaning is conceptualized through 'the perspectival, dynamic, non-autonomous, experiential nature of natural language' (18). These four characteristics correspond to a series of concepts around which the book is organized. As those concepts build upon one another, the articles of the book add up to a progressive and pedagogical introduction to Cognitive Linguistics.

The perspectival nature of grammar, which views grammar as a way of shaping our perceptions of the outside world, is illustrated by two of the most foundational papers, which concern Cognitive Grammar and grammatical construal.

In the first one, Introduction to 'concept, image, and symbol', Ronald W. Langacker introduces his linguistic theory, which 'assumes that language is neither self-contained nor describable without essential reference to cognitive processing' (29). He expresses the set of necessary assumptions to understand not only his own theory, but also a lot of research undertaken within this theoretical framework. He shows how meaning is viewed as conceptualization and presents some of the principal concepts - like base and profile, trajectory and landmark, scope of predication, salience - with which he construes grammar as imagery, constituted by symbolic units.

In the second article, The relation of grammar to cognition, Leonard Talmy has the aim 'of determining the semantic and cognitive properties and functions of the structural components of language' (70). At first, he examines grammatically specified notions, contrasting them with lexically-specified ones. The former contribute to the structure of cognitive representation, whereas the latter contribute to its content. Then, he studies the systematic relations between grammatically specified notions, such as their capacity for nesting. Finally, he examines the assumption of a correspondence between grammatically specified structuring on the one hand and structuring of other cognitive domains on the other.

The second characteristic of meaning ties three articles together that illustrate the dynamicity of grammar, that is to say the flexibility of meaning and its changing nature. The three papers explore the ambiguity of polysemy, using different models such as radial networks, prototypes, and schematic networks.

First, the article Cognitive topology and lexical networks by Claudia Brugman and George Lakoff presents a descriptive model for systematic polysemy. Two major claims are made. On the one hand, the theoretical claim (…) is that a polysemous lexical item is a radial category of senses' (109), with a central member and a network of links with other members, these ultimate being variants of the former or on a variant. Moreover, 'natural image-schema transformations play a central role in forming the radial categories of senses' (133). On the other hand, they show how an 'oriented cognitive topology, which characterizes structures oriented relative to the human body '(110) fares better than a feature-based model to describe polysemous lexical items such as over.

In Prospects and problems of prototype theory, Dirk Geeraerts discusses the methodological assets of this theory by contrasting it with axiomatic and featural approaches, and how these fail to achieve descriptive adequacy, explanatory depth and an account of productivity. But problems of the prototype approach are not ignored either. Geeraerts analyzes 'the sources of the confusion by making clear that prototypicality is itself (…) a prototypical concept' (146). Subsequently, he shows that 'the prototype-theoretical movement as well is a prototypicality structured approach to semantics' (155) in which hybrid theories combine 'classical discreteness with typically prototypical phenomena' (158).

In the article Ambiguity, polysemy, and vagueness, David Tuggy defines ambiguity as the separation of different meanings and vagueness as the unity of different meanings. These two are viewed as the end points of a continuum, where polysemy is to be found halfway between the ambiguity and vagueness. Distinctions between ambiguous, polysemous, and vague lexical elements are due to the relative degree of saliency of the schema and its subcases.

The four following papers illustrate the non-autonomy of grammar, or the reflection of human experience in meaning. The topics covered are conceptual metaphor, image schemas, metonymy, and mental spaces.

George Lakoff's article The contemporary theory of metaphor, introduces what is known as Conceptual Metaphor Theory. After dismissing false assumptions of the traditional literal-figurative distinction, Lakoff defines metaphor as a general cognitive mechanism involving the interaction between different domains of experience. As is well-known by now, this mechanism shows itself in conventional language as well as in poetic language.

R. W. Gibbs and H. L. Colston discuss the cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations. They explore the foundational notion of image schemas, generally defined 'as dynamic analog representations of spatial relations and movement in space' (240), and the transformations that link them. Moreover, they show how experimental psycho-linguistic methods can be used to study image-schematic reasoning in ordinary cognitive processes.

In The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies, William Croft uses Langacker's model to describe metonymy as a process of meaning extension. Elaborating on a distinction made by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), he views metaphor as 'a mapping between two domains that are not part of the same matrix' and metonymy as a mapping 'only within a domain matrix' (280).

In Conceptual integration networks, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner explain mental mappings from one domain to another. A theory of blending is developed on the basis of mental spaces and their integration. In analogy to Lakoff and Johnson's source and target domain, Fauconnier and Turner posit source input and target input spaces. These spaces are partially connected, as elements within these spaces are mapped onto one another. The blend is another space resulting of a projection from the input spaces by three distinct operations - composition, completion and elaboration. The blended space contains its own emergent structure, which has properties that are not predictable from either of the input spaces. Fauconnier and Turner conclude that 'blending is a basic cognitive operation' (363) that can explain how mappings from one domain to another are accomplished.

The fourth characteristic of meaning, the experiential grounding of grammar covers the last three topics of the book, namely Frame Semantics, Construction Grammar, and Usage-based Linguistics.

With Frame Semantics, a specific approach to natural language semantics has been put forward by Charles J. Fillmore. In his own words, this approach is 'a research program in empirical semantics and a descriptive framework for presenting the results of such research' (373). Fillmore's research concerns the process of understanding a word and the relation between words and encyclopedic knowledge. Defining the frame as 'a system of categories structured in accordance with some motivating context' (381), he argues that understanding a word is conditioned by the encyclopedic knowledge that relates to that word, that is to say the actual experience the speaker has had with its referents.

In The inherent semantics of argument structure: The case of the English ditransitive construction, Adele E. Goldberg illustrates her version of Construction Grammar. In accordance with Fillmore, she argues that syntactic constructions themselves carry meaning. This claim allows her to explain why some verbs convey very different meanings in different syntactic contexts without having to assume a large number of word senses.

Michael Tomasello's contribution First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition demonstrates not only how the acquisition of constructions happens in the context of construction-specific lexical items, but also how the use of spoken-language corpora can be fruitfully applied to cognitive linguistic studies.

In the epilogue, Trajectories for further reading, Dirk Geeraerts provides a few explanatory remarks for each chapter and a foundational bibliography, which allows the reader to explore the subject of Cognitive Linguistics even further.

Since this book is a collection of articles that have become classics, a final assessment concerns not so much the content itself, but rather the 'emergent' structure of the book. The collection brings order into the vast field of cognitive research and highlights the foundational assumptions held in Cognitive Linguistics, which is particularly helpful for students and researchers from other disciplines. Also, various perspectives are opened up for further research in this field as well as with other cognitive disciplines. As a result, the book attains its goal of furnishing 'a roadmap and a travel book to Cognitive Linguistics' (1).

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