BTAN1005MA Trends in Linguistic StudiesSpring term,2016-17
Introduction to Cognitive Grammar Thursday, 14.00 – 15.40, Room 55
Instructor: Pelyvás Péter Consulting hours: Thursday, 13.00 – 14.00
orby appointment
The main purpose of this course, which relies on some background knowledge of the theory of grammar and generative grammar (GB), 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 descriptive problems.
Grading will be based on
● attendance and participation(30%)
● an exam(30%)25th May
● a research paper (40%)26th 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 1and 2(23 February, 2 March)
Generative vs. cognitive grammar
● Competence vs. performance, autonomy, compositionality vs. motivation
Reader, Radden, Raising & Transparency -- Part 1
Weeks 3, 4 and 5(9, 16 and 23 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 in detail later], Raising [to be discussed in detail later], ICMs in literature
Langacker 1999, 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 6,7, 9(30 March, 6 and 20 April) – (13April is Consultation Week)
Creativity in language:
`● Metaphor, metonymy, conceptual integration (blending).
Fake guns...
Weeks 10, 11, 12(27 April, 4,11 May)
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
Langacker 1999, Radden, Pelyvás 2013
Week 13(18 May)
Summary, consultation
Week 14(25 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 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”. Language71 (1): 1-62.
Reader:
A Reader in Cognitive Grammarfor Students of English. Compiled by Péter Pelyvás. Ms. Debrecen, 1995. (This also contains Langacker’s Raising and Transparency in a scanned format.)