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Cognitive approaches to grammar Cristiano Broccias Abstract

المؤلف:  Cristiano Broccias

المصدر:  Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives

الجزء والصفحة:  P81-C1

2026-11-08

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Cognitive approaches to grammar

Abstract

We offer a short description and critical appraisal of four cognitive approaches to grammar, Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, Goldberg’s Construction Grammar, Croft’s Radical Construction Grammar and Fauconnier and Turner’s Blending Theory. It first points out that the term “grammar” is polysemous, having both a narrow/traditional/descriptive sense (grammar as syntax plus morphology) and a broad/generative/cognitive sense (grammar as a theory of language). Both interpretations are taken into account. In a narrow sense, we try to evaluate how the four models define word classes and syntactic functions and how they handle specific constructions such as change constructions and noun phrases. In a broad sense, this contribution argues that Cognitive Grammar remains the most innovative and comprehensive cognitive theory of grammar and that the other models can, to some extent, be regarded as notational variants. They highlight different (though related) facets of the shared conceptualization of language as a taxonomic and diffuse network, i.e. of language as a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units where much is a matter of degree.