Talk:Cognitive linguistics

Expansion

This page is remarkably short on content and largely lists peoples names, and says nothing about cognitive linguistics other than to list important terms.

If you feel a change is needed, feel free to make it yourself! Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone (yourself included) can edit any article by following the Edit this page link. You don't even need to log in, although there are several reasons why you might want to. Wikipedia convention is to be bold and not be afraid of making mistakes. If you're not sure how editing works, have a look at How to edit a page, or try out the Sandbox to test your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. — mark ✎ 21:03, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Linguist names in the list of subdisciplines

There is currently a minor edit conflict going on with regard to the inclusion of linguist names in the list of subdisciplines. I have removed the names again after their readdition by an anonymous editor and added a See also section with a link to List of cognitive scientists. However, since the list of linguists on that page is rather small, I think that the larger list of names removed from this article should be moved to a more comprehensive List of cognitive linguists. Mike Dillon 15:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Dominance

Sympathetic as I am towards CL, I can't agree with the contention that it is "the currently dominant school of linguistics". I doubt whtether cognitive linguists would themselves subscribe to such a statement.

This last comment is by Ariosto (PL), 08.03.2006.

I agree, and have changed it. — mark ✎ 09:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Definition

Isn't the definition of CL wrong? Clearly, CL is not about "interpreting language's universal concepts that lie in its underlying form" but about the human mental capacity for learning. The prior is actually an activity of formal linguistics. What am I missing here? MrsCaptcha (talk) 09:40, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

This entire page is due for a complete rewrite, which I'm planning on undertaking in a month or two. Feel free to make any changes you see fit to make. Charles Lowe (talk) 22:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I will begin with some changes myself, Charles Lowe. MrsCaptcha (talk) 17:27, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Introduction

I changed the wording of the first sentence a bit, but it is still near impenetrable. The intro in general needs a rewrite to make it understandable. Wikikrax (talk) 12:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Lead section rewrite

I have plenty of background in linguistics, but none of it formal, so I don't really know the schools of thought as the adherents would define themselves. Nevertheless, the previous lead accomplished nothing for me. I mainly wade into heavier edits where an existing lead thwarts an attempt to quickly summarize the cleavages in a field for my own notes, which the previous lead managed to do, because it was way, way, way too insular in its chosen descriptive frame. I probably sacrificed some nuance (adherents would call this "correctness") in my heathen savagery. But I did win, for my own purposes, a clear "you are here" narrative thread, and my private notes are happy now. I suppose this is akin to writing "you are here" about the Catholic Church without first defining transubstantiation. I know, I know. By this approach, heathens forever. But, I ask you, can't we at least delay transubstantiation until after the coat check? — MaxEnt 18:01, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

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Propaganda alert

Unfortunately, this article is fundamentally false as it stands. The confusion comes from the fact that there is a broader field of cognitive linguistics, and an approach called Cognitive Linguistics that has been suggested is not what it claims to be (Bert Peeters 2001: Does Cognitive Linguistics live up to its name?), although that of course depends on the specific claim (which will be more difficult to extract). I think the reasonable proposition comes from Schwarz-Friesel (2012) "On the status of external evidence in the theories of cognitive linguistics", suggesting that there are at least three approaches associated with cognitive linguistics. Currently, Wikipedia should probably adopt the view that these are all representative. In the long run, it might be that the Chomskyan and the Lakoffian-Langackerian version need to be dropped, or at least submitted to criticism based on the fact that their relationship with brain science is tenuous, at best. Admittedly, that does raise the question whether cognitive linguistics should or should not be associated with neurobiology in the first place... claims have certainly been made. Weidorje (talk) 15:39, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Peeters 2001

Peeters. suggests that Lakoff and Langacker picked the name 'Cognitive Linguistics' for their new framework to undermine the reputation of Chomsky's generative grammar as a cognitive science. Here are some excerpts:

"Schwarz (1992) did use the label cognitive linguistics to refer to the wider field of “approaches to natural language as a mental phenomenon” (Geeraerts 1995: 112). This includes not only Cognitive Linguistics, but also approaches such as those taken by Noam Chomsky and by Manfred Bierwisch. Schwarz’s example has been followed by, e.g., Taylor (1995) and Newmeyer (1999). Geeraerts (1995) provides a brilliant summary of how Cognitive Linguistics and generative grammar differ in their commitment to cognition. ... Those who are twitching should recall that the Cognitive Linguistics movement as we know it today was born out of polemical opposition to Chomskyan linguistics. ... Just over two decades ago, it was Lakoff, not Lamb, who was taken to task by Chomsky (1979: 150) for “working on ‘cognitive grammar’, which integrates language with nonlinguistic systems”. Chomsky (1979) is the English version of a text originally published in French in 1977, two years after the term cognitive grammar had first surfaced in Lakoff’s writings (cf. Lakoff and Thompson 1975). Chomsky, for one, did not “see any theory in prospect there”. This flippant remark raises the interesting question of the (hidden) impact which the man from MIT may have had on the Lakoff Langacker agreement to use a common label for their work (in replacement for Langacker’s term space grammar, which was still in use in the early eighties). In other words, did Chomsky’s criticism backfire? Did Lakoff read Chomsky (1979), and did he think that cognitive grammar was too beautiful a term not to be made use of by Langacker and himself (against Chomsky)? Whatever the case may be, it is quite ironical that Lamb (1999) felt unable to freely use the term he too had proposed (cf. Lamb 1971), earlier than Lakoff (or Chomsky) ... what had been, until the end of the eighties, a collocation like any other one, gained the status of a proper name, an ideological label rather than a purely descriptive one ... It became the name adopted by one particular group of people, led by Lakoff and Langacker, to refer to the sort of work they were undertaking."

References