A Cognitive Approach to Grammatical Distance in Language Use

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to examine a relation between grammatical distance and cognitive distance in language use. To find out structural regularities or patterns whereby grammatical distance reflects cognitive distance, this study explores how language users organize or categorize grammatical entities or sequences on the basis of their cognition of specific knowledge, or experience of language use, and thus examines particular types of grammatical structures or variations, such as indirect object alternation, non-temporal uses of simple past tense, discourse functions of this and that, information structure in separable phrasal verbs, and structural variations of relative clauses. The observation on certain patterns of language use reveals that both structural variation and regularity tend to be strategically exploited for the purpose of maximizing cognitive effects and facilitating information processing, and thus the choice of a particular type of grammatical construction reflects pragmatic strategies in a cognitive-oriented way in which the use of a recurring structural pattern is optimally matched to language users’ cognitive capacity or ability.