Functional Cognitive Linguistics Research Articles

Teaching of English Writing from the Perspective of Embodied-cognitive Linguistics, Meta-cognitive Strategy and Corrective Feedback

Cognitive linguistics has always been an important branch of linguistics, and during 20th century, linguistics experienced three revolutions: Saussure’s structuralism revolution, Chomsky’s TG revolution, and cognitive functional linguistics’ revolution to Joe’s revolution. Time to 21st century, Wang Yin, a famous professor in China, put forward an important and revolutionary point about linguistics based on the research of cognitive linguistics and philosophy. He proposed a new concept, Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics, with repairing cognitive linguistics. In addition, writing has always been the focus and difficulty of most Chinese students to study and how to promote their writing is the essential question for teachers to think deeply. Except Embodied-Cognitive Linguistics, this research will also take the point of Meta-cognitive Strategy and corrective feedback theory and then take some suggestions on how to teach writing.

O cloze como indicador do desenvolvimento linguístico e da representação emergente do português brasileiro

Estudos com análise da produção escrita de surdos crianças e adultos mostram evidências que compõem aqui um complexo quadro de ideias e hipóteses sobre a representação do PB emergente nessa população. Nossas investigações, fundamentadas em pressupostos sociocognitivistas da Linguística Cognitivo-Funcional (BYBEE, 2016; GOLDBERG, 2006; 2019; TOMASELLO, 2003), têm indicado que o componente morfossintático acumula grande parte das divergências materializadas em textos desses aprendizes. Embora divergências no uso de L2 sejam esperadas, chama atenção a pouca diferença na reorganização do conhecimento linguístico que se espera mutável ao longo de anos de escolarização e de contato com o PB escrito. As investigações centradas na produção têm recebido maior atenção dos estudos nas áreas da linguística e da educação de surdos. A habilidade de leitura, no entanto, não parece receber a mesma atenção. Questão que se levanta é se a atividade leitora também seria comprometida pelas divergentes combinações de itens lexicais e gramaticais, que parecem integrar o conhecimento linguístico desses aprendizes, a julgar por seus textos produzidos com muitas divergências morfossintáticas que comprometem os sentidos. O objetivo deste artigo é oferecer evidências sobre o desenvolvimento linguístico de aprendizes surdos universitários, que permitam caracterizar a representação cognitiva de construções nominais. Como resultado da análise de dois instrumentos em formato de Cloze adaptado, aplicados a 24 participantes, este artigo apresenta uma tipologia de esquemas nominais que parece integrar um sistema de competidores (SOARES, 2018). Esperamos que nossos resultados possam contribuir para uma didática aquisicional para surdos, com melhor aproveitamento do input escrito.

O QUE BRASILEIROS DIZEM ACERCA DE USOS DE CONSTRUÇÕES COM VERBO-SUPORTE?

Focalizamos padrões construcionais com verbo-suporte DAR, enquanto operador de verbalização de elementos não-verbais do tipo (um(a)) X-[a/i]da, (um(a)) X-[a/i]dinha, (um(a)) X-adela e (um(a)) X-(z)inh[o/a], tal como em dar uma escapadinha e dar uma olhadela. Baseamo-nos em pressupostos da Linguística Funcional-Cognitiva e da Gramática de Construções. Utilizamos dados retirados de situações reais de comunicação, do acervo online do jornal O Globo (1925 a 2015), para lidar com o problema da avaliação subjetiva. A metodologia é a de pesquisa experimental baseada em usos observados nesses textos. Os objetivos consistem em observar quais valores são associados por brasileiros a usos dessas construções e descrever características formais e funcionais desses predicadores complexos considerando também a ótica do usuário sobre eles. Resultados apontam que essas construções põem em evidência não só aspectualidade, mas, principalmente, o valor modal, e tais valores são reconhecidos pelos informantes.

A construção de intensificação com lexemas de cor no português brasileiro

Este artigo expõe os resultados da pesquisa sobre a configuração formal-funcional do subesquema Xcor de SN da construção intensificadora Xcor de Y (como em roxo/verde de raiva ou vermelho de vergonha) no português brasileiro. Acreditamos que essa construção seja suscitada pelo fato de nosso corpo, mais especificamente, nosso rosto sofrer alterações de cor devido a alguma emoção ou sensação, como quando ficamos pálidos (de susto), vermelhos (de vergonha, de paixão) etc. Essa mudança na coloração facial é algo tão recorrente que, por associação com o atributo intensidade de cor, pode motivar não só construções como a estudada nesta pesquisa, mas muitas outras, levando-nos a defender que a emoção revelada por meio de cores (geralmente na face) é um fator que contribui para a elaboração simbólica presente na relação entre lexemas de cor a (sub)esquemas como os aqui descritos. Assim, sob a perspectiva da Linguística Funcional-Cognitiva, que busca analisar a língua com base em aspectos socioculturais e pragmáticos, situações comunicativas, conhecimentos internalizados e operações cognitivas, e da Gramática de Construções, para a qual a língua é uma rede de nós/pareamentos forma-função/significado, analisamos como se desencadearam tais construções e como sistemática e variavelmente se configuram, com base em Traugott e Trousdale (2013), Machado Vieira (2016) e Wiedemer e Machado Vieira (2018). Os dados analisados são do Corpus do Português, e o método utilizado foi a análise de frequências. Nossos resultados iniciais mostram que: essa construção intensifica, sobretudo, aspectos negativos; a alternância das cores permite a sua classificação como aloconstruções; e essa construção faz parte da rede construcional de intensificadores do português brasileiro.

Az egyház mint egykori birtokos a magyar helynevekben

Hungarian place names reflecting former ecclesiastical possession. Summary of a habilitation dissertation
 The dissertation discusses the linguistic and onomastic features of a culturally motivated name type, i.e. place names reflecting (former) ecclesiastical possession. With the advent and spread of Christianity in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, buildings and estates belonging to the Church were erected and named accordingly. Many such place names have been preserved to the present day and new ones could also emerge based on analogy. The first chapter of the thesis describes how the changes in the geographical landscape influenced the contemporary linguistic landscape and, eventually, the place naming patterns of the language. Chapter Two focuses on the historical background: how the church system and the institutions of the monastic orders were established in Medieval Hungary and sustained in later centuries. Chapter Three enumerates the sources from which the relevant place names were gathered and explains the setup of the database that served as a basis of the analysis. Chapter Four provides a comprehensive description of the collected name forms with respect to lexical, morphological, syntactic, motivational and denotative features, according to the classical periods in the history of the Hungarian language. Chapter Five discovers the trends in the development of the name forms concerning time, space and use. The dissertation adopts the viewpoint and ideas popularized in place name studies by functional cognitive linguistics.

Los verbos «llamarse» y «apellidarse»: una caracterización histórica y cognitiva

El propósito de este artículo es presentar una caracterización sintáctica y semántica de los verbos llamarse y apellidarse efectuada desde los presupuestos de la lingüística cognitivo-funcional. Nuestro objetivo es poner de manifiesto cómo funcionan estos verbos en español, cuáles son sus peculiaridades conceptuales (peculiaridades muy notables en el contexto de las lenguas europeas) y cuáles son las posibles razones -históricas y lingüísticas- por las que estas formas verbales pronominales y no otras se utilizan en español para expresar el nombre propio y el apellido. El trabajo ofrece reflexiones originales acerca de estos verbos e hipótesis novedosas sobre la relación entre los verbos de habla, la reflexividad, la representación de uno mismo y la fuerza ilocutiva del lenguaje. This article has as its purpose to offer a syntactic and semantic profile of the verbs llamarse and apellidarse carried out from the postulates of cognitive-functional linguistics. It i sour intention to: (a) show how these verbs work in Spanish; (b) identify their conceptual peculiarities (which are quite remarkable within the context of European languages); and (c) explain the possible -historical and linguistic- reasons why these pronominal verbs, and not others, are used to express the Christian name and the surname in Spanish. This work provides original and the illocutionary force of language.

Desafios teóricos e empíricos na Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso

A Linguística Funcional Centrada no Uso representa uma união relativamente recente entre duas correntes teóricas: a Linguística Funcional norte-americana e a Linguística Cognitiva, em especial, a Gramática de Construções, com base em Traugott e Trousdale (2013) e Hilpert (2014). Neste texto, trazemos reflexões de ordem teórica e analítica para alguns dos desafios empíricos com que temos lidado nas pesquisas em andamento no âmbito do Grupo de Estudos Discurso & Gramática, quais sejam: 1) a adaptação do modelo da Construcionalização e das Mudanças Construcionais para pesquisas de cunho sincrônico; 2) o lugar da variação na abordagem construcional da gramática; 3) a necessidade de um refinamento teórico para a descrição das mudanças em diferentes níveis hierárquicos; 4) a aparente imprecisão na descrição do eixo funcional na hierarquia construcional, em que significado, sentido e função têm sido tratados, normalmente, como termos intercambiáveis. Trata-se – acreditamos – de uma discussão necessária para um modelo de gramática que pretende descrever a totalidade do conhecimento linguístico do falante.

As microconstruções auxiliares aspectuais com “deixar” no Português do Brasil sob perspectiva construcional

Objetivamos investigar, à luz da Linguística Cognitivo-Funcional (BYBEE, 2016 [2010]; KUTEVA, 2004) e com base em um de seus eixos, especificamente a abordagem construcional da mudança linguística (TRAUGOTT; TROUSDALE, 2013), as microconstruções aspectuais instanciadas pelo verbo “deixar”, [deixar + prep + V2], no Português brasileiro. Defendemos a hipótese de que tais microconstruções emergem na rede linguística a partir da construcionalização gramatical via analogização ao esquema auxiliar [V1+prep+V2]. Para análise, utilizamos o Corpus do Português (DAVIS; FERREIRA, 2006, 2016) e delineamos parâmetros, fundamentados em Heine (1993) e Ilari e Basso (2008), a fim de averiguar e aferir o grau de esquematicidade, produtividade e composicionalidade das microconstruções auxiliares sob análise.

Formal Diction, Intertextuality, Narrative and the Complexity of Greek Epic Diction

This article attempts to reconcile, at root, longstanding tensions between intertextuality, narrative function, context-sensitive semantics and formal, repetitive structure in oral and orally derived archaic epic hexameter diction. Calling upon a revised methodological model, drawn from the natural and exact sciences and the study of stochastic, non-deterministic and non-reversible process and, more directly, from the study of complex adaptive systems in contemporary cognitive functional linguistics, the article argues for the inherent evolutionary interdependence – rather than conflict – between context and pattern and between exception and rule, in essence between dynamic, intertextual continuity and change. The article considers selected examples with an emphasis on early Greek epic and in the Epic Cycle.

The Complexity of Epic Diction

Abstract This article offers a revised interpretation of the relationship between form and meaning in Greek epic hexameter diction, binding our understanding of traditional language and idiolects as well as patterns and their exception within a single, systematic approach. The article draws on methodological (and underlying philosophical) principles embedded in contemporary cognitive functional linguistics, usage-based grammar, and the study of language as a complex adaptive system (which emerges from the study of complexity in the sciences). Fundamental to work within these fields in recent decades is the rejection of paradigmatic linguistic approaches (such as traditional Greek and Latin grammar, Saussure and his emphasis on langue, Chomskyan transformations) and the polarities of form and content paradigmatic analysis often assumes. Usage-based linguistics place emphasis on signification and symbolic functions, communicative exchange, and contingent historical evolutionary processes as the primary realities of language and language formation. Grammar is regarded, not as an underlying universal structure, but as an epiphenomenal linguistic symptom. The study of complexity in linguistics expands such perspectives to provide a deep, scientific argument that binds rule-based usage and unpredictable exceptions and anomalies within a single, integrated system. Key elements of these perspectives can be extrapolated already from Milman Parry’s early observations on analogy—even as the full implications of these observations could not have been understood within the historical framework of Parry’s methodology. Various examples from the Iliad and the Odyssey, especially the usage of the formula ton d’ apameibomenos, illustrates the argument for the complexity of epic diction.

Converging on a theory of language through multiple methods.

Assuming that linguistic representation has been studied only by linguists using grammaticality judgments, Branigan & Pickering (B&P) present structural priming as a novel alternative. We show that their assumptions are incorrect for cognitive-functional linguistics, exposing converging perspectives on form/meaning pairings between generativists and cognitive-functional linguists that we hope will spark the cross-disciplinary discussion necessary to produce a cognitively plausible model of linguistic representation.

Tijd om de syntactische boom om te hakken

Abstract Time to fell the syntactic tree. Long-distance dependencies without transformations or filler gaps Long-distance dependencies belong to the most controversial challenges in linguistics. These patterns seem to contain constituents that have left their original position in a sentence and that have landed in a different place. A typical example is the relative clause the person I have talked to yesterday, in which the direct object (the person) is not situated in an argument position following the verb, but instead is located at the beginning of the utterance. Upon closer inspection, however, all problems related to long-distance dependencies can be reduced to the limits of phrase structural analyses. A phrase structure tree is a rigid data structure in which information is shared between local nodes. These analyses therefore need to resort to more complex formal machinery in order to overcome this locality constraint, such as using transformations or positing filler-gap constructions. However, there exists a more intuitive alternative within the tradition of cognitive-functional linguistics in which long-distance dependencies do not require special treatment. Instead, these patterns are simply the side effect of how grammatical constructions combine with each other in order to satisfy the communicative needs of language users. Through a computational implementation in Fluid Construction Grammar, this article demonstrates that it is perfectly feasible to formalize this alternative in a model that is capable of both formulating and comprehending utterances.

Usage-based cognitive-functional linguistics: From theory to method and back again

Usage-based cognitive-functional linguistics: From theory to method and back again

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.

A connectionist approach to functional-cognitive linguistics: Spanish pronominal clitics and verb endings in relational-network terms

espanolLos sistemas de cliticos pronominales y desinencias verbales del espanol han sido ampliamente abordados en la linguistica funcionalista y cognitivista. Sin embargo, rara vez se los ha modelizado conjuntamente desde una perspectiva reticular. A su vez, el unico antecedente en la literatura presenta diversas limitaciones. En este articulo se recurre a la teoria de redes relacionales para esbozar un modelo superador de los principales aspectos semanticos, morfologicos y morfotacticos de ambos sistemas. Especificamente, se distingue entre varios tipos de relaciones cognitivas que operan en diferentes niveles, a saber: (i) las relaciones entre las categorias semanticas pertinentes y sus rasgos asociados son disyuntivas, de modo que involucran nodos ‘o’ descendentes; (ii) mientras que los significados explicitos (independientes del contexto) implican nodos ‘o’ descendentes individuales, los mensajes implicitos (dependientes del contexto) involucran relaciones disyuntivas complejas en las que un nodo ‘o’ ascendente se conecta con un nodo ‘o’ descendente; (iii) las relaciones que representan patrones morfotacticos constituyen conjunciones secuenciales, de modo que suponen nodos ‘y’ ordenados; y (iv) las relaciones establecidas entre una constelacion de rasgos semanticos y la representacion morfologica que la realiza en un contexto de uso determinado son conjunciones simultaneas, o sea que involucran nodos ‘y’ no ordenados. El modelo supone la primera caracterizacion basada en redes relacionales de las conexiones cognitivas que sustentan a los sistemas de cliticos pronominales y desinencias verbales del espanol EnglishThe Spanish pronominal clitic and verb-ending systems have been widely treated in the functional and cognitive linguistics literature. However, they have rarely been jointly modeled from a network-based perspective. Moreover, the only previous attempt to characterize the systems’ architecture in network terms presents a number of limitations. This paper presents a preliminary relational-network-based model of the main semantic, morphological, and morphotactic aspects of both systems. An explicit distinction is introduced among several types of cognitive relationships operating at different levels of the systems, as follows: (i) the relationships between the relevant semantic categories and their associated features are disjunctive, thus involving downward ‘or’ nodes; (ii) whereas explicit, context-independent meanings involve simple downward ‘or’ nodes, implicit, context-dependent messages call for complex disjunctive relationships in which an upward ‘or’ node is then connected to downward ‘or’ node; (iii) the relationships representing morphotactic patterns are sequential conjunctions, thus involving ordered ‘and’ nodes; and (iv) the relationships established between a constellation of semantic features and the morphological representation realizing it in a specific context of use are simultaneous conjunctions, thus involving unordered ‘and’ nodes. The model constitutes the first relational-network account of the cognitive relationships holding together the Spanish pronominal clitic and verbending systems

CONSTRUÇÕES PARENTÉTICAS EPISTÊMICAS EM PERSPECTIVA CONSTRUCIONAL

Investigo, neste artigo, construções parentéticas epistêmicas originadas de um esquema construcional formado por oração matriz com predicador adjetival e oração encaixada em posição argumental de sujeito. Assumindo os pressupostos teórico-metodológicos da Linguística Cognitivo-Funcional (CROFT, 2001; TRAUGOTT, 2008) e com base em dados de língua falada e escrita do português brasileiro contemporâneo, mostro que construções matrizes com predicadores adjetivais epistêmicos, ao se gramaticalizarem, passam a funcionar como construções parentéticas epistêmicas asseverativas focalizadoras. A identificação de níveis de esquematicidade das construções em análise ao mesmo tempo em que permite inferir um processo diacrônico de mudança de padrões construcionais lança pistas para a constituição de um quadro explanatório mais amplo acerca da formação e do funcionamento de construções parentéticas epistêmicas.

THE FUNCTIONAL/COGNITIVE PRINCIPLE OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN TEXTS: DISCOURSE PRESSURES AND SYNTACTIC DEVICES FOR ENGLISH AS L2 LEARNERS

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a study carried out to investigate the degree of perception of the thematic structure of the clause (theme and rheme) and the informational structure of a text (given and new elements) by Brazilian learners of English, undergraduate students from a Federal University in Brazil. The theoretical background relies on the principles of functional-cognitive linguistics, relative to how discourse impacts linguistic choices ( HALLIDAY 1985 CHAFE 1995 ). The corpus of this research consisted of a series of exercises that were administered to undergraduate students, English majors. The findings shed light to the fact that learners are still unaware of most processes involving grammar arrangements and the discourse flow, as they are not also very conscious of how grammar can impact the communicative intent of a written text.

Iconicity of cohesion in Persian causative constructions

This paper tries to show that Persian causative constructions are not only iconic in nature but also employ iconicity of cohesion in their syntactic structures productively. It starts with a description of iconicity and specifically focuses on the notion of conceptual distance as discussed by Haiman (1983). It then briefly reviews the formal typology of causative constructions (i. e., lexical, morphological, and periphrastic) and summarizes the ideas proposed by Comrie (1989), Dixon (2000), Shibatani (1976), and Talmy (2003) to come up with a list of, and a table for, the semantic properties of causative constructions (i. e., directness, coercion, control, manipulation, separability, and clause structure). The paper then presents tangible evidence and examples from Persian to claim that the linguistic distance observed between [Vcause] and [Veffect] in different types of Persian causative constructions mirrors the conceptual distance between them, and concludes that the iconic nature of causative constructions in Persian can be explained on the basis of the principle of iconicity of cohesion. It lends support to the universality of the principles of functional-cognitive linguistics and shows that iconicity theory still has a high potential for explaining form-meaning relations in different syntactic structures.

From cognitive-functional linguistics to dialogic syntax

AbstractDialogic syntax investigates the linguistic, cognitive, and interactional processes involved when language users reproduce selected aspects of a prior utterance, and when recipients respond to the parallelisms and resonances that result, drawing inferences for situated meaning. The phenomenon typically arises when a language user constructs an utterance modeled in part on the utterance of a prior speaker or author. The result is resonance, defined as the catalytic activation of affinities across utterances. This paper presents the concept of dialogic syntax and outlines some directions of current research on dialogic resonance, as represented in this Special Issue.

Second Language Acquisition Research and Japanese Language Teaching: A Functionalist Approach

This article examines the mechanism of grammar acquisition in a second language and explores how linguistic categories can be acquired effectively. Currently, the mainstream second language teaching approach is the communicative approach. As far as the acquisition of linguistic categories is concerned, however, the communicative approach is based on a ‘learning by doing’ model, which assumes that learners will acquire linguistic categories through exposure to language input and interaction. Therefore, insights into how individual grammatical items should be taught are still quite limited, and thus investigation concerning effective methods of teaching linguistic categories based on second language acquisition research is sorely needed. Here, I examine two linguistic domains (tense-aspect and relative clauses) for which the acquisition process has been researched and understood to some degree both in Japanese and other languages. I will also consider how acquisition can be facilitated, in particular from a functional-cognitive linguistics perspective.