BTAN1005MA Trends in Linguistic Studies
Introduction to Cognitive Grammar
2014-15, spring term
Thursday, 14.00 – 15.40, Room 55
Consulting hours: Thursday, 13.00 – 14.00
Instructor: Pelyvás, Péter
or by appointment
The main purpose of this course, which relies on some background knowledge of the type given in
AN1003MA (Terms and Concepts...) is to acquaint you with the basic principles and procedures
of the most powerful alternative to generative grammar – Langacker’s version of holistic cognitive
grammar.
This is a usage-based theory built on the assumptions that language, as a medium of human
conceptualization and communication, is best described as an integral (non-autonomous) part of
the human conceptual system, that grammatical functions (e.g. subject and object) can be defined
in terms of psychological factors (e.g. attention). and that different grammatical forms
(traditionally seen as transformationally related or unrelated) come about as a result of different
but related conceptualizations.
In the course we will discuss
● general differences in the basic assumptions of generative and cognitive grammar
● some of the essential tenets of cognitive grammar
● the cognitive treatment of certain grammatical phenomena familiar from generative grammar. In this
part it will offer direct comparisons of generative and cognitive solutions to some problems already
discussed in AN1003MA.
Grading will be based on
● attendance and participation
(20%)
● an exam
(40%)
21st May
● a research paper
(40%)
15th June (strict)
Deatails of the exam and the research paper will be discussed in class.
Detailed schedule for the course
It is essential that you study the assigned reading before coming to class. You will probably not
understand everything, and we will probably not need everything in most cases.
Weeks 1 and 2
(19 and 26 February)
Generative vs. cognitive grammar
● Competence vs. performance, autonomy, compositionality vs. motivation
Reader, Radden, Raising & Transparency -- Part 1
Weeks 3, 4 and 5
(5, 12 and 19 March)
Basics of cognitive grammar
●Different forms come from different conceptualizations: Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs) –
objective truth vs. speaker’s reality
Reader
●Some linguistically interesting relationships of meaning and form (sneeze, the billiard ball model
[to be discussed later], Raising, ICMs in literature
Pelyvás 2013
● Psychological background, motivation (vs. compositionality),
●Scope, prominence, perspective as factors in the construction of syntactic structures. ICMs.
Radden, Raising & Transparency -- Part 1
Weeks 6 and 7
(26 March, 2 April)
Creativity in language:
` ● Metaphor, metonymy, conceptual integration (blending).
Fake guns... http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/Fake/fakeguns.htm
Weeks 8, 10, 11
(9, 23, 30 April) – (16 April is Consultation Week)
Clause str. in cognitive grammar
● Basics
Grammar and Conceptualization
● A cognitive alternative to Raising/Exceptional Case Marking: Raising and transparency
Raising & Transparency -- Part 2
● Langacker’s ‘billiard ball’ model
Radden, Pelyvás 201x
Weeks 12 and 13
(7, 14 May)
The subjective scene: Modality
● English modal auxiliaries: conceptual structures, senses, metaphorical extensions
Pelyvás 2000, 2013
Week 14
(21 May)
● Exam
List of readings
Fake Guns
Coulson, S. & Fauconnier, G. 1999. Fake Guns and Stone Lions: Conceptual Blending and Privative
Adjectives. In B. Fox, D. Jurafsky, & L. Michaelis (Eds.) Cognition and Function in Language. Palo Alto, CA:
CSLI.
Grammar and Conceptualization
Langacker, R.W. 1999. Grammar and Conceptualization. Mouton de Gruyter. Berlin and New York.
(This is also a good general introduction to Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar—after you have gone through
Radden marked for Weeks 1 and 2.)
Pelyvás 2000
Pelyvás, Péter: Metaphorical extension of may and must into the epistemic domain. In: Barcelona, Antonio (ed.)
Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. 233-250.
Pelyvás 2013
Pelyvás, Péter: Presence and Absence in Language and Linguistics: A Cognitive Study of the English
Modals, In: Nóra Séllei, Katarina Labudova (eds.) Presences and Absences - Transdisciplinary Essays.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. pp. 5-21.
Radden
Radden, Günter. 2008. The Cognitive Approach to Language. In: Andor, J., Hollósy, B., Laczkó, T., Pelyvás,
P. (eds.) When grammar minds language and literature. Festschrift for Prof. Béla Korponay on the occasion of
his 80th birthday. Debrecen: Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen, 2008.
Raising and Transparency:
Langacker, Ronald W. 1995. “Raising and Transparency”. Language 71 (1): 1-62.
Reader:
A Reader in Cognitive Grammar for Students of English. Compiled by Péter Pelyvás. Ms. Debrecen, 1995. (This
also contains Langacker’s Raising and Transparency in a scanned format.)