This volume presents a synthesis of research in cognitive linguistics and the psychology of language. It highlights the tension between “linguists’ grammars”, which are influenced by considerations of economy and elegance, and “speakers’ grammars”, which are messy and less than fully general.

The book offers a basic introduction to the theory of Cognitive Grammar, which claims that meaning resides in conceptualization, and that grammar is inherently meaningful, residing in the structuring and symbolization of conceptual content.

In this book, Martin Hilpert lays out how Construction Grammar can be applied to the study of language change. In a series of ten lectures on Diachronic Construction Grammar, the book presents the theoretical foundations, open questions, and methodological approaches that inform the constructional analysis of diachronic processes in language. The lectures address issues such as constructional networks, competition between constructions, shifts in collocational preferences, and differentiation and attraction in constructional change. The book features analyses that utilize modern corpus-linguistic methodologies and that draw on current theoretical discussions in usage-based linguistics. It is relevant for researchers and students in cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, and historical linguistics.

In this interdisciplinary collection of lectures, Chris Sinha presents a uniquely cultural, developmental and evolutionary approach to cognitive linguistics. Topics range from language in children’s play, through cultural conceptualizations of time, to philosophical and linguistic relativism.

Conceiving of language and cognition as biological phenomena, these lectures provide and illustrate a coherent, integrated theoretical framework for studying essentially any aspect of language systems, language use, language change, and language evolution.

This book reviews the basic claims and descriptive constructs of Cognitive Grammar, outlines major themes in its ongoing development, and applies these notions to central problems in grammatical analysis. The initial review covers conceptual semantics, the conceptual characterization of grammatical categories, grammatical constructions, and the architecture of a unified theory of language structure. Main themes in the framework's development include the dynamicity of language structure, grammar as the implementation of semantic functions, systems of opposing elements to serve those functions, and organization in strata representing successive elaborations of a baseline structure. The descriptive application of these notions centers on nominal and clausal structure, with special emphasis on nominal grounding.

The book offers a basic introduction to the theory of Cognitive Grammar, which claims that meaning resides in conceptualization, and that grammar is inherently meaningful, residing in the structuring and symbolization of conceptual content.