Cognitive Grammar

Abstract Cognitive Grammar is a radical alternative to the formalist theories that have dominated linguistic theory during the last half century. Instead of an objectivist semantics based on truth conditions or logical deduction, it adopts a conceptualist semantics based on human experience, our capacity to construe situations in alternate ways, and processes of imagination and mental construction. A conceptualist semantics makes possible an account of grammar which views it as being inherently meaningful (rather than an autonomous formal system). Grammar forms a continuum with lexicon, residing in assemblies of symbolic structures, i.e. pairings of conceptual structures and symbolizing phonological…