What is language for summary
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C1P20
2025-11-24
48
What is language for summary
We began this chapter by stating that cognitive linguists, like other linguists, attempt to describe and account for linguistic systematicity, structure and function. However, for cognitive linguists, language reflects patterns of thought; therefore, to study language is to study patterns of conceptualisation. In order to explore these ideas in more detail we looked first at the functions of language. Language provides a means of encoding and transmitting ideas: it has a symbolic function and an interactive function. Language encodes and externalises our thoughts by using symbols. Linguistic symbols consist of form-meaning pairings termed symbolic assemblies. The meaningassociated with a linguistic symbol relates to a mental representation termed a concept. Concepts derive from percepts; the range of perceptual information deriving from the world is integrated into a mental image. The meanings encoded by linguistic symbols refer to our projected reality: a mental representation of reality as construed by the human mind. While our conceptualisations are unlimited in scope, language merely provides prompts for the construction of conceptualisations. Language also serves an interactive function; we use it to communicate. Language allows us to perform speech acts, or to exhibit expressivity and affect. Language can also be used to create scenes or contexts; hence, language has the ability to invoke experiential frames.
Secondly, we examined the evidence for a linguistic system, introducing the notion of a conventional linguistic unit, which may be a morpheme, a word, a string of words or a sentence. We introduced the notion of idiomatic meaningwhich is available in certain contexts and which can be associated with constructions. This contrasts with literal meaning, which may be derived by unifying smaller constructions like individual words. Word order constitutes part of an individual’s knowledge of particular constructions, a point illustrated by ungrammatical sentences. We also related linguistic structure to the systematic structure of thought. Conceptual domains reflected in language contain and organise related ideas and experiences.
Next, we outlined the task of the cognitive linguist: to form hypotheses about the nature of language and about the conceptual system that it reflects. These hypotheses must achieve descriptive adequacy by describing linguistic facts in a systematic and rigorous manner. Linguists try to uncover, describe and model linguistic systems, motivated by the drive to understand human cognition. Linguistics is therefore one of the cognitive sciences. Cognitive linguists carry out this task by examining linguistic data and by relying on native speaker intuitions and converging evidence. As an example of con verging evidence, we explored the linguistic reflex of the distinction made in psychology between figure and ground.
Finally, we looked at what it means to know a language, and introduced an important distinction between kinds of linguistic knowledge: the cognitive representation provided by language can be divided into lexical and grammatical subsystems. The lexical subsystem contains open-class elements which perform a content function. The grammatical subsystem contains closed-class elements, which perform a structuring function providing schematic meaning.
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