Development Of Cognitive Linguistics Research Articles

Cognitive Linguistics and interactional discourse: time to enter into dialogue

abstractUsage-based theories hold that the sole resource for language users’ linguistic systems is language use (Barlow & Kemmer, 2000; Langacker, 1988; Tomasello, 1999, 2003). Researchers working in the usage-based paradigm, which is often equated with cognitive-functional linguistics (e.g., Ibbotson, 2013, Tomasello, 2003), seem to widely agree that the primary setting for language use is interaction, with spontaneous face-to-face interaction playing a primordial role (e.g., Bybee, 2010; Clark, 1996; Geeraerts & Cuyckens, 2007; Langacker, 2008; Oakley & Hougaard, 2008; Zlatev, 2014). It should, then, follow that usage-based models of language are not only compatible with evidence from communication research but also that they are intrinsically grounded in authentic, multi-party language use in all its diversity and complexities. This should be a logical consequence, as a usage-based understanding of language processing and human sense-making cannot be separated from the study of interaction. However, the overwhelming majority of the literature in Cognitive Linguistics (CL) does not deal with the analysis of dialogic data or with issues of interactional conceptualization. It is our firm belief that this is at odds with the interactional foundation of the usage-based hypothesis. Furthermore, we are convinced that an ‘interactional turn’ is not only essential to the credibility and further development of Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language and cognition as such. Rather, CL-inspired perspectives on interactional language use may provide insights that other, non-cognitive approaches to discourse and interaction are bound to overlook. To that aim, this special issue brings together four contributions that involve the analysis of interactional discourse phenomena by drawing on tools and methods from the broad field of Cognitive Linguistics.

Exploration as a mediator of the relation between the attainment of motor milestones and the development of spatial cognition and spatial language.

The embodied-cognition approach views cognition and language as grounded in daily sensorimotor child-environment interactions. Therefore, the attainment of motor milestones is expected to play a role in cognitive-linguistic development. Early attainment of unsupported sitting and independent walking indeed predict better spatial cognition and language at later ages. However, evidence linking these milestones with the development of spatial language and evidence regarding factors that might mediate this relation are scarce. The current study examined whether exploration of spatial-relational object properties (e.g., the possibility of containing or stacking) and exploration of the space through self-locomotion mediate the effect of, respectively, age of sitting and age of walking on spatial cognition and spatial language. Thus, we hypothesized that an earlier age of sitting and walking predicts, respectively, higher levels of spatial-relational object exploration and exploration through self-locomotion, which in turn, predict better spatial cognition and spatial language at later ages. Fifty-nine Dutch children took part in a longitudinal study. A combination of tests, observations, and parental reports was used to measure motor development, exploratory behavior (age 20 months), spatial memory (age 24 months), spatial processing (age 32 months), and spatial language (age 36 months). Results show that attainment of sitting predicted spatial memory and spatial language, but spatial-relational object exploration did not mediate these effects. Attainment of independent walking predicted spatial processing and spatial language, and exploration through self-locomotion (partially) mediated these relations. These findings extend previous work and provide partial support for the hypotheses about the mediating role of exploration.

Differential susceptibility to effects of maternal sensitivity? A study of candidate plasticity genes-CORRIGENDUM.

Development and Psychopathology 27 (2015), 725–746 # Cambridge University Press 2014 doi:10.1017/S0954579414000844 Differential susceptibility to effects of maternal sensitivity? A study of candidate plasticity genes JAY BELSKY, a DANIEL A. NEWMAN, b KEITH F. WIDAMAN, a PHIL RODKIN, b MICHAEL PLUESS, c R. CHRIS FRALEY, b DANIEL BERRY, b JONATHAN L. HELM, a AND GLENN I. ROISMAN d a University of California, Davis; b University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; c Kings College London; and d University of Minnesota Abstract Here we tested whether there was genetic moderation of effects of early maternal sensitivity on social–emotional and cognitive–linguistic development from early childhood onward and whether any detected Gene Environment interaction effects proved consistent with differential-susceptibility or diathesis–stress models of PersonEnvironment interaction (N ¼ 695). Two new approaches for evaluating models were employed with 12 candidate genes. Whereas maternal sensitivity proved to be a consistent predictor of child functioning across the primary-school years, candidate genes did not show many main effects, nor did they tend to interact with maternal sensitivity/insensitivity. These findings suggest that the developmental benefits of early sensitive mothering and the costs of insensitive mothering look more similar than different across genetically different children in the current sample. Although acknowledgement of this result is important, it is equally important that the generally null GeneEnvironment results reported here not be overgeneralized to other samples, other predictors, other outcomes, and other candidate genes. The differential-susceptibility hypothesis, which stipulates that some individuals are more susceptible than others to both positive and negative environmental effects, perhaps most especially parenting, has received substantial attention and empirical support in recent years (Belsky, Bakermans- Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007; Belsky & Pluess, 2013; Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2011; Pluess & Belsky, 2009, 2010), including in research on Gene Environment (G E) interaction (Ba- kermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2011; Belsky et al., 2009; Belsky & Pluess, 2009; Berry, Deater-Deckard, McCartney, Wang, & Petrill, 2013). Here we test the specific proposition that a set of 12 candidate “plasticity genes,” se- lected principally on the basis of prior reviews of relevant research (Belsky et al., 2009; Belsky & Pluess, 2009), will moderate the effects of maternal sensitivity on children’s social–emotional and cognitive–linguistic development in a manner consistent with the differential-susceptibility hypothe- sis. Toward this end, we employ two new statistical methods, applying them to longitudinal data collected from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN], 2005), in response to questions raised about the adequacy and appro- priateness of existing statistical criteria for evaluating differen- tial susceptibility (Belsky, Pluess, & Widaman, 2013; Roisman et al., 2012; Widaman et al., 2012). The application of appro- priate analytic criteria for differential susceptibility is necessary to minimize Type 1 errors and failures to replicate that have fru- strated previous work on candidate genes and broad phenotypes of human cognition, personality, and social behavior (Charney & English, 2012; Deary, 2012; Wacker, Mueller, Hennig, & Stemmler, 2012). Theories of Socialization and Maternal Sensitivity Extraction and genotyping for the NICHD SECCYD was performed at the Genome Core Facility in the Huck Institutes for Life Sciences at Penn State University under the direction of Deborah S. Grove, Director for Genetic Analysis. Genotyping was principally supported by a Research Board grant from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (to P.R. and G.I.R.). This work was also supported by NSF Grant BCS-0720538 (to G.I.R. and R.C.F.) and by NICHD Grant R01 HD064687 to Rand Conger, which are gratefully acknowledged. Finally, we dedicate this work to the memory of our friend and coauthor Phil Rodkin. In addition to his major contributions to this manuscript, Phil fully embodied the collaborative and collegial spirit that ultimately birthed this contribution to the literature. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Jay Belsky, Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, 1331 Hart Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616; E-mail: jbelsky@ucdavis.edu. A central assumption of many developmental perspectives on socialization, whether based, for example, on theories of at- tachment (Ainsworth, 1973; Sroufe, 2000), social learning (Patterson, 1986), or evolution (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991), is that parenting matters when it comes to how children develop. Although a myriad of parenting constructs are mea- sured in socialization research, including, for example, author- itative parenting (Baumrind, 1967, 1991), coercive parenting (Patterson, 1986), and mutually responsive relationships (Ko- chanska, 2002), the focus in the present report is on sensitive parenting, a construct emphasized in attachment theory. Ac-

Differential susceptibility to effects of maternal sensitivity? A study of candidate plasticity genes.

Here we tested whether there was genetic moderation of effects of early maternal sensitivity on social-emotional and cognitive-linguistic development from early childhood onward and whether any detected Gene × Environment interaction effects proved consistent with differential-susceptibility or diathesis-stress models of Person × Environment interaction (N = 695). Two new approaches for evaluating models were employed with 12 candidate genes. Whereas maternal sensitivity proved to be a consistent predictor of child functioning across the primary-school years, candidate genes did not show many main effects, nor did they tend to interact with maternal sensitivity/insensitivity. These findings suggest that the developmental benefits of early sensitive mothering and the costs of insensitive mothering look more similar than different across genetically different children in the current sample. Although acknowledgement of this result is important, it is equally important that the generally null Gene × Environment results reported here not be overgeneralized to other samples, other predictors, other outcomes, and other candidate genes.

Semantics Embodied: Cognitive Linguistics and Searle’s Account of Linguistic Intentionality

Semantics Embodied: Cognitive Linguistics and Searle’s Account of Linguistic Intentionality

Depression Diagnoses and Fundamental Frequency-Based Acoustic Cues in Maternal Infant-Directed Speech

F0-based acoustic measures were extracted from a brief, sentence-final target word spoken during structured play interactions between mothers and their 3- to 14-month-old infants and were analyzed based on demographic variables and DSM-IV Axis-I clinical diagnoses and their common modifiers. F0 range (ΔF0) was negatively correlated with infant age and number of children. ΔF0 was significantly smaller in clinically depressed mothers and mothers diagnosed with depression in partial remission, relative to nondepressed mothers, mothers diagnosed with depression in full remission, and those diagnosed with depressive disorder not otherwise specified. ΔF0 was significantly lower in mothers experiencing their first major depressive episode relative to mothers with recurrent depression. Deficits in ΔF0 were specific to diagnosed clinical depression, and were not well predicted by elevated self-report scores only or by diagnosed anxiety disorders. Mothers with higher ΔF0 had infants with reportedly larger productive vocabularies, but depression was unrelated to vocabulary development. Implications for cognitive-linguistic development are discussed.

EFFECTS OF FOCUS-ON-FORM(S) INSTRUCTION ON IRANIAN INTERMEDIATE L2 LEARNERS' METAPHORICAL COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance and the ubiquity of metaphors in language. Their effect has been instrumental in making significant headway into the pedagogical practice and design of teaching materials. The current study was carried out to explore the efficacy of focus-on-form (FonF) and focus-on-forms (FonFs) instructions on learning metaphorical language by Iranian intermediate learners of English. First, 60 participants who were homogeneous in terms of language proficiency and metaphorical competence were assigned to 3 groups, 2 being the experimental groups and 1 the control group. One of the experimental groups was exposed to the explicit teaching of metaphors (i.e. FonFs) included in 20 reading passages. The second group was taught the target metaphorical expressions through implicit instruction (i.e. FonF). And, the control group went through the usual classroom instruction; they took the same pretest and posttest as the 2 experimental groups did. To analyze the data, a three-way ANOVA and analysis of covariance were utilized. The findings revealed that the FonFstaught group gained better results on the posttest. The results seem to indicate a positive correlation between the FonFs and metaphorical competence. It could be claimed that it is possible to enhance L2 learners’ metaphorical competence through the FonFs instruction of metaphors.

Seeds of Change and Emancipation: Towards a Cognitive Mapping of Globilisation in Literature

200 years of industrial capitalism, and 500 years of colonialism, have caused the worst human and environmental crisis in the history of human kind. Rapid and unprecedented depletion of natura resources, global warming, the exploitation of human beings, the global economic crises, and the military might needed to enforce the free flow of capital, al these call for a common, emancipatory articulation of local struggles. However, the creation of a larger empowering discourse requires the formation of a cognitive mapping whereby different local struggles can identify and map the structural source of their oppression. In this paper I argue that recent approaches to globalisation from the perspective of complexity theory and recent developments in cognitive linguistics and poetics, can help to construct a cognitive mapping of contemporary postcolonial poetry that enables us to scrutinise the impact of global capitalism on the loca context. Complexity theory and cognitive theories regard language as rooted in human perception of a complex and dynamic environment. Cognitive mapping articulates the reader's bodily experience to the writer's embodied conceptualisations of the effects of global capitalism on their land. In this way modernity can be redefined in more democratic terms that incorporate the voice of the marginalised and the oppressed.

The Image Iconicity in the Chinese Language

Abstract The nature of arbitrariness and iconicity has been a heated topic for debate among the Chinese linguists and semioticians in the past 20 years. Due to the fact that modern Chinese linguistic scholarship has been strongly influenced by Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (2001 ) , the dominant view in China was once marked by arbitrariness. Yet, with the development of cognitive linguistics, today the scale has tilted toward iconicity. Since most of the papers in favour of arbitrariness have focused on Saussure's view of seeing sign as a dualistic relation between "signifier" and "signified", that is, "sound-image" and "concept" ,and have not objected much to the role of iconicity at the syntactic level and the textual level, this paper, to save space and time, will not deal with sequence iconicity, distance iconicity, quantity iconicity, space iconicity, temporal iconicity, markedness iconicity, etc., and will confine itself to the image iconicity, that is, sound iconicity and graph iconicity. In doing so, I will start with a brief review of concepts and views held by the Chinese philosophers and etymologists, past and present.

Input, cognitive-linguistic development, and rate of acquisition

Input, cognitive-linguistic development, and rate of acquisition

Metaphoric Competence, Second Language Learning, and Communicative Language Ability

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance as well as the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Despite this, the ability of second language learners to use metaphors is often still not seen as a core ability. In this paper, we take a model of communicative competence that has been widely influential in both language teaching and language testing, namely Bachman (1990), and argue, giving a range of examples of language use and learner difficulty, that metaphoric competence has in fact an important role to play in all areas of communicative competence. In other words, it can contribute centrally to grammatical competence, textual competence, illocutionary competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Metaphor is thus highly relevant to second language learning, teaching and testing, from the earliest to the most advanced stages of learning.

Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought (review)

Reviewed by: Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought ed. by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow Marilyn Shatz Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought. Ed. by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. 528. ISBN 0262571633. $38. The question of whether and how language influences thought is a venerable one, going back more than 150 years. A spate of recent research projects, conferences, and edited volumes (e.g. Bowerman & Levinson 2001) speaks to renewed interest in the issue that was perhaps most famously voiced by the oft-quoted and often misquoted Benjamin Whorf, who considered both strong (language determines the way we perceive and organize the world) and weak (language exerts a superficial influence) answers to the question. Why the renewed interest, one might ask, when numerous writers with considerable prestige (e.g. Pinker 1994) have labeled much of the research on this issue, at least the earlier work, ‘banal’? The conclusion a reader of Language in mind reaches is that a full understanding of the nature of humans, their development, and the ways they act requires investigation into the influences of language on thinking and speaking in the context of membership in a human society. Language in mind is the latest volume on the topic of language’s influences on thought, and it is an especially useful one. Not only does it offer summaries of recent research on the issue, but rather than presenting a single perspective, it offers a range of theoretical stances and arguments concerning the relative influences of language on thought. The resulting volume might have ended up a hodge-podge, but it does not. Because the editors include an introductory chapter and organize the remaining chapters into four sections, and because chapter authors refer to and respond to each other’s arguments, the reader can get a reasonably comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art experimental research, an understanding of the theoretical meta-theories grounding such research, and an awareness of the unresolved issues awaiting future efforts at more insight. In the introductory chapter, the editors recognize the lack of precision troubling the general question of language’s influence on thought, and they propose three distinctions to help clarify the possible kinds of relations: language as lens, language as tool kit, and language as category maker. The first refers to a relatively strong view propounding a deep influence for language on the very way we perceive the world, with such an influence carried largely by the grammatical structure of the language. The second, focusing more on lexical differences among languages, offers a view of language as an enhancer or expander of cognitive abilities, and the third deals specifically with the idea that a language’s semantics guides the categories children acquire during cognitive-linguistic development. Within each of these distinctions, of course, there are still more questions that can be asked. For example, when children form categories, does language [End Page 174] primarily function to select from and narrow prelinguistic information, or do the categories truly emerge from linguistic experience? If the former, do adults still have flexible potential, however overlaid with language, or is the influence of language irreversible? Connecting across the distinctions are other questions, for example, how do the findings on linguistic influences on category development affect the issues of language as lens or as tool kit? Across the chapters, many such important questions are addressed, if not resolved. While recognizing such connections, the editors use their distinctions, along with a section on position statements, to organize the sixteen chapters in the book. Interdisciplinary representation and crosslinguistic perspectives add to the volume’s currency. Among the more than two dozen authors who contributed to the volume are cognitive and developmental psychologists, psycholinguists, and anthropologists, many of the best-known researchers in the field of language and thought among them. Crosslinguistic data regularly form the basis for discussion, with a wide variety of languages such as Korean, Mandarin, Tzeltal, Yucatec Maya, and English represented. Indeed, the importance of and need for crosslinguistic research to address language-thought issues are recognized throughout the book. Despite the represented range...

Family income and its relation to preschool children's adjustment for families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care.

The current study examines relations of mean-level estimates, linear changes, and instability in income and family processes to child outcomes and addresses whether income, through its impact on family functioning, matters more for children living in poverty. Temporal changes and instability in family processes, but not income, predicted children's adjustment. Cross-sectional mediational analyses indicated that for families living at the poverty threshold, family processes fully mediated the effect of average income over the study period on social behavior but only partially mediated its effect on cognitive-linguistic development. The strength of these associations diminished as average income exceeded the poverty threshold. That is, income had a greater impact on the family functioning and development of poor children than of nonpoor children.

An Introduction to Language (review)

Reviewed by: An introduction to language by Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams Adam Głaz An introduction to language. 7th edn. By Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. Boston: Thomson/Heinle, 2003. Pp. xx, 620. ISBN 015508481X. $60.95. No doubt the seventh edition of this already classic introductory textbook to linguistics will be welcomed with the enthusiasm it deserves. Largely a continuation of the work of the late Victoria Fromkin, the new edition has been revised, reorganized, and updated by Robert Rodman and Nina Hyams to reflect current progress in linguistic research and to make it more accessible to language students. The contents are divided into twelve chapters grouped into four parts: ‘The nature of human language’ (1–65), ‘Grammatical aspects of language’ (67–337), ‘The psychology of language’ (339–441), and ‘Language and society’ (443–572). Pedagogues will certainly appreciate the grouping: Such organization of the material makes it easier for the teacher to construct and follow a syllabus for a two-semester course. The more specific topics include, among others, general properties of language; language universals; animal systems of communication; the relationship between language and the brain; language origin; the morphological, syntactic, phonetic, and phonological aspects of language structure; the problems of semantics and pragmatics; language acquisition; bilingualism; teaching methods; teaching language to chimpanzees; computational linguistics; regional and social diversification of language; language change; and major types of writing systems. This quick enumeration does not, however, reflect the wealth of information and the depth of insight offered on many of these topics; although an introductory text, it surpasses many other publications in this category in both aspects. While the majority of examples are taken from English, each chapter is followed by exercises based on data drawn from a variety of sources and languages. Sections summarizing the contents of each chapter facilitate quick review of the material. Lists of references for further study will be appreciated both by the teacher and by the more ambitious student. A glossary and an index at the end of the volume make it easier to navigate its contents. For the amusement of the student, the book contains several dozen well-chosen cartoons, each of which illustrates a point made in the text. Mottos that precede almost every section add to the volume’s educational and entertainment value. A clear layout and careful editing make the book a pleasure to work with. Although this introductory textbook does not follow a particular theoretical approach to language, some linguistic theories seem to be favored over others. For example, the chapter on syntax draws heavily from the transformational-generative tradition, whereas recent developments in cognitive linguistics are virtually absent even from the discussion of semantics, an area where concepts such as prototypes or schemas are particularly useful. Despite drawbacks like these, however, the book is a remarkable achievement. Its earlier editions have already introduced thousands of students worldwide to the world of language study, and the seventh edition will certainly serve the purpose even better. Adam Głaz Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Discourse plasticity in children after stroke: age at injury and lesion effects

Studies of children with stroke indicate remarkable recovery of language after some initial delay. However, complex language abilities as measured by discourse (connected language) may be required to detect the full impact of stroke on subsequent cognitive-linguistic development. This study examined discourse ability in children with stroke as compared with orthopedic controls, age-at-injury, and lesion effects. Discourse between two groups of children was compared [stroke (n = 17) vs orthopedic control (n = 17)]. The stroke group was subdivided into early age at stroke (<1 year) and late age at stroke (>1 year). The discourse samples were analyzed along two dimensions: language and information structure. Results revealed that the stroke group performed at significantly lower levels than the orthopedic control group across discourse measures. The most important finding was a poorer outcome for early age at stroke as compared with later age at stroke. These findings alter the widespread belief of optimistic language outcomes after childhood stroke. Interestingly, no site or size-of-lesion effects, common to adult stroke, were identified. These findings identify poor long-term outcome with early brain insults at stages far removed from the onset of injury. The implication is that childhood stroke management should be revised to provide protracted follow-up and treatment.

Relating the adolescent mother—child relationship to preschool outcomes

Two domains of potential risk in relation to the cognitive-linguistic outcomes of preschool children of adolescent mothers were investigated: (1) interactive features of the mother—child relationship and (2) aspects of the demographic context of parenting. Sixty-nine adolescent mothers and their children participated in evaluations when the children were 13, 20, 30, and 44 months old. Results indicated that the cognitive-linguistic development of children of adolescent mothers was affected by both the mother—child relationship and cumulative index of demographic risk. Specifically, positive maternal affect, mother—child verbal reciprocity, mother—child interactive fit, and cumulative demographic risk all contributed to explaining difficulties in preschool cognitive and linguistic functioning in children of adolescent mothers.

Language acquisition and communicative behavior in autism: toward an understanding of the "whole" of it.

Deviant language characteristics, deficits in social interaction, and ritualistic and compulsive behaviors are now considered to be among the definitive characteristics of the autistic syndrome. There have been few attempts to bring a sense of cohesion to the varied communicative symptomatology evident in autism, because much of the research literature has been product oriented rather than process oriented, and has focused on language structure rather than function. Therefore, behaviors such as immediate echolalia, delayed echolalia, and interactive rituals are often viewed as isolated, deviant phenomena, rather than as phenomena related to predominant cognitive processing modes and cognitive-linguistic development in autism. This discussion reviews symptomatology of autistic communication in reference to "gestalt" versus "analytic" modes of cognitive processing, language acquisition, and language use. Based on research on language behavior of normal and autistic children, specific issues are considered, including a reconsideration of echolalic behaviors, patterns of social interaction, and patterns of cognitive-linguistic development in autism.

A Linguistic and Cognitive Perspective on Retardation

The idea of critical readiness periods for both language learning and cognitive development was reviewed and related to mental subnormalities. A basic model of a synthesized theory of language and cognition was presented, and a theoretical "Basal Person" was constructed to illustrate a new perspective on retardation. The general conclusions reached were that (a) the basal person represents the lowest normal level of cognitive linguistic development, and (b) retardation can be defined in terms of impeded or disrupted development during critical readiness periods.