Language From a Cognitive Perspective

This book is a collection of papers on language processing, usage, and grammar, written to commemorate the career of Thomas Wasow on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Wasow has been professor

Comprehension is the ultimate aim of reading and listening. How do children develop the ability to comprehend written and spoken language, and what can be done to help those who are having difficultie

This original volume examines the interface between attentional and linguistic processes in humans from the perspectives of psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It systematically explores how auto

Cognitive Development from a Strategy Perspective recognises the outstanding scientific legacy of Robert S. Siegler as a pioneer of modern research on cognitive development throughout the lifespan. Th

This book presents a selection of empirical papers dealing with second and multiple language acquisition, in which qualitative research methodology is employed. Each of the studies reported in individ

Cognitive Development from a Strategy Perspective recognises the outstanding scientific legacy of Robert S. Siegler as a pioneer of modern research on cognitive development throughout the lifespan. Th

This book analyses an intercultural project undertaken by French and English 14-year-olds based on an exchange of materials created by the pupils and focused on the topic of law and order. The project

Information structure and the organization of oral texts have been rarely studied crosslinguistically. This book contains studies of the grammatical organization of information in languages from diffe

Using language and thought to fix events in time is one of the most complex computational feats that humans perform. In the first book-length taxonomy of temporal frames of reference, Vyvyan Evans provides an overview of the role of space in structuring human representations of time. Challenging the assumption that time is straightforwardly structured in terms of space, he shows that while space is important for temporal representation, time is nevertheless separate and distinguishable from it. Evans argues for three distinct temporal frames of reference in language and cognition and evaluates the nature of temporal reference from a cross-linguistic perspective. His central thesis is that the hallmark of temporal reference is transience, a property unique to the domain of time. This important study has implications not only for the relationship between space and time, but also for that between language and figurative thought, and the nature of linguistically-mediated meaning constructi

Practice as a necessity for learning a second language has been a tacit assumption among language teachers for quite some time; however, the concept has not been widely considered from a theoretical p

How do we read stories? How do they engage our minds and create meaning? Are they a mental construct, a linguistic one or a cultural one? What is the difference between real stories and fictional ones? This book addresses such questions by describing the conceptual and linguistic underpinnings of narrative interpretation. Barbara Dancygier discusses literary texts as linguistic artifacts, describing the processes which drive the emergence of literary meaning. If a text means something to someone, she argues, there have to be linguistic phenomena that make it possible. Drawing on blending theory and construction grammar, the book focuses its linguistic lens on the concepts of the narrator and the story, and defines narrative viewpoint in a new way. The examples come from a wide spectrum of texts, primarily novels and drama, by authors such as William Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Jan Potocki and Mikhail Bulgakov.

What makes us talk about viewpoint and perspective in linguistic analyses and in literary texts, as well as in landscape art? Is this shared vocabulary marking real connections between the disparate phenomena? This volume argues that human cognition is not only rooted in the human body, but also inherently 'viewpointed' as a result; consequently, so are language and communication. Dancygier and Sweetser bring together researchers who do not typically meet on common ground: analysts of narrative and literary style, linguists examining the uses of grammatical forms in signed and spoken languages, and analysts of gesture accompanying speech. Using models developed within cognitive linguistics, the book uncovers surprising functional similarities across various communicative forms, arguing for specific cognitive underpinnings of such correlations. What emerges is a new understanding of the role and structure of viewpoint and a groundbreaking methodology for investigating communicative choi

The Ten Lectures by Alan Cienki consider what it means to apply theoretical approaches from cognitive linguistics to the dynamic phenomena of speech and gesture. Taking the usage-based commitment seri

To investigate the role of the first-language conceptual system in learning a second-language vocabulary, Xia focuses on two prominent patterns of concept categorizations depicted in the theory of pro

This book is the first to summarize the voluminous literature on the development of cognitive, codification, language, and expressive/affective (CCCE) skills from a clinical standpoint. Emphasizing th

Malawi's recent education statistics show that a high percentage of pupils do not achieve their study goals and subsequently drop out of school. This study examines the underlying reasons, yet the mai

This book explores how complex systems theory can contribute to the understanding of classroom language learner motivation through an extended examination of the dynamic conditions operating in a fore

This book explores how complex systems theory can contribute to the understanding of classroom language learner motivation through an extended examination of one particular, situated research project.

This book offers an intellectually fierce defence of Libertarian Free Will seen from a neuroscientific and biological perspective. Tse argues that causation in living systems is dominated by non-linea

Cognitive Complications examines fundamental issues in the theory of knowledge from the perspective of philosophical pragmatism. Rescher seeks to show how a pragmatic, user-oriented approach to knowle

More than 2000 years ago Greek philosophers were pondering the puzzling dichotomy between our physical bodies and our seemingly non-physical minds. Yet even today, it remains puzzling how our mind con

This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes - whereby lexical words eventually become markers of grammatical categories - converge and differ across various types of language. W

The last 25 years have witnessed an explosion of research at the intersection of typical language development and child language disorders. A pioneer in bringing these fields of study together is Robi

Chapman's ability to understand children's language development in a broader context has enriched the work of many clinicians and researchers, and here she supplies papers with an interactionist persp

Processability theory (PT) is a universal, cognitive linguistic theory of second language acquisition. Citing a lack of research into the applicability of PT to typologically head-last, SOV (subject-o