تسجيل الدخول

تسجيل

Cognitive Grammar: constructions

المؤلف:  Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green

المصدر:  Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction

الجزء والصفحة:  C17-P581

2026-02-21

418

Cognitive Grammar: constructions

In this chapter, we set out the Cognitive Grammar account of grammatical constructions and find out how the relationships between the component parts of complex words, phrases and clauses are accounted for. We begin by focusing on the nature of grammatical constructions at the phrase level (section 17.1) and at the word level (section 17.2). We explore the nature of the units that comprise grammatical constructions and the nature of the relationships between them. In traditional terms, this relates to the relationships between heads and dependents. As we will see, in Cognitive Grammar the head of a construction is described as the profile determinant, and the relations between the components of a construction are described in terms of con ceptual autonomy and dependence, both of which are accounted for in semantic terms. The nature of agreement is also discussed. We will then see how autonomy and dependence give rise to clauses, and how valence, transitivity, grammatical functions and case are accounted for in Cognitive Grammar (section 17.3). In this section, we also look at marked coding, where the properties of passive constructions are analysed from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. In some respects, we take a rather traditional approach here, beginning with a discussion of the smaller grammatical units (words and phrases) before proceeding to discuss the more complex grammatical units (clauses). As we will see, there are sound reasons for approaching the Cognitive Grammar model in this way, because the properties of complex grammatical constructions are viewed in Cognitive Grammar as emerging from the proper ties of their components. However, in accounting for constituency (the internal structure of complex constructions), Cognitive Grammar emphasises not ‘structure building’ but the semantic relationships between the component parts of a complex structure.