The conceptual basis of grammar
In this chapter we consider the conceptual basis of grammar. The sense in which we use the term ‘grammar’ here refers to the closed-class or grammatical subsystem: grammatical words and morphemes, and grammatical categories and functions. To claim that grammar has a conceptual basis is to claim that grammar is meaningful. As we observed in the previous chapter, one way of defining ‘grammar’ is on the basis of the qualitative distinction in meaning between open-class and closed-class elements. In this chapter, therefore, we are primarily concerned with the semantics of the closed-class elements. The reason for this emphasis is that, in recognition of the distinction between closed and open classes, linguists have traditionally defined the closed-class elements of language in terms of structure, function and distribution rather than in semantic terms. In contrast, the cognitive model assumes the grammatical sub system can be semantically characterised along the same lines as the open-class subsystem. This view entails a continuum between open- and closed-classes within the inventory that represents knowledge of language in the mind of the speaker, rather than two sharply distinct knowledge systems. Of course, to claim that closed-class elements are meaningful is not to claim that they are conventionally associated with rich meaning in the way that open-class elements are. Recall the distinction that was introduced in the previous chapter between content meaning and schematic meaning (which is also known as structural meaning). In this chapter, we begin to explore the kind of meaning that cognitive linguists associate with closed-class elements.
We begin the chapter by briefly setting this area of investigation within the context of the broader cognitive linguistics enterprise, as developed in earlier parts of the book (section 15.1). We then proceed to examine the conceptual basis of closed-class elements exploring the theoretical frameworks proposed by Leonard Talmy and Ronald Langacker. Both these researchers have been centrally concerned with the conceptual basis of grammar and with providing a description of how closed-class elements are meaningful. We begin by revisiting the ‘Conceptual Structuring System Model’ proposed by Talmy (2000), which we introduced in Chapter 6 (section 15.2). We explore Talmy’s thesis that the closed-class linguistic system reflects conceptual structure which, as we saw in Part II, reflects embodied experience. Talmy explores this thesis by examining how SPACE and TIME are configured by the grammatical subsystem, and by looking at how grammar encodes perspective, attention and force-dynamics. According to Talmy, the central function of the closed-class system is to encode these aspects of embodied experience, a view that entails that grammar has a conceptual basis and is therefore meaningful. We then turn to Langacker’s theory of Cognitive Grammar, which complements Talmy’s model in a number of ways (section 15.3). For example, Langacker argues that lexical classes like nouns and verbs reflect conceptually instantiated categories (which he calls THING and PROCESS) that derive ultimately from embodied experience. Finally, we re-examine the related issues of categorisation and polysemy from the perspective of the grammatical subsystem (section 15.4). We explore how closed-class elements reflect categorisation as a fundamental property of human cognition and how, like the open-classes categories, the closed-classes categories also display polysemy. Much of the discussion in this chapter will be familiar from Part II of this book, but we address these issues here with specific reference to how conceptual structure and organisation is encoded by the grammatical subsystem.
