This is the first book to present an account of literary meaning and effects drawing on our best understanding of mind and language in the form of a Cognitive Grammar. The contributors provide exemplary analyses of a range of literature from science fiction, dystopia, absurdism and graphic novels to the poetry of Wordsworth, Hopkins, Sassoon, Balassi, and Dylan Thomas, as well as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Barrett Browning, Whitman, Owen and others. The application of Cognitive Grammar allows the discussion of meaning, translation, ambience, action, reflection, multimodality, empathy, experience and literariness itself to be conducted in newly valid ways. With a Foreword by the creator of Cognitive Grammar, Ronald Langacker, and an Afterword by the cognitive scientist Todd Oakley, the book represents the latest advance in literary linguistics, cognitive poetics and literary critical practice.

Cognitive English Grammar is designed to be used as a textbook in courses of English and general linguistics. It introduces the reader to cognitive linguistic theory and shows that Cognitive Grammar helps us to gain a better understanding of the grammar of English. The notions of motivation and meaningfulness are central to the approach adopted in the book. In four major parts comprising 12 chapters, Cognitive English Grammar integrates recent cognitive approaches into one coherent model, allowing the analysis of the most central constructions of English. Part I presents the cognitive framework: conceptual and linguistic categories, their combination in situations, the cognitive operations applied to them, and the organisation of conceptual structures into linguistic constructions. Part II deals with the category of ‘things’ and their linguistic structuring as nouns and noun phrases. It shows how things are grounded in reality by means of reference, quantified by set and scalar quantifiers, and qualified by modifiers. Part III describes situations as temporal units of various layers: internally, as types of situations; and externally, as located relative to the time of speech and grounded in reality or potentiality. Part IV looks at situations as relational units and their structuring as sentences. Its two chapters are devoted to event schemas and space and metaphorical extensions of space.Cognitive English Grammar offers a wealth of linguistic data and explanations. The didactic quality is guaranteed by the frequent use of definitions and examples, a glossary of the terms used, overviews and chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and study questions. For the Key to Study Questions click here.

Providing an engaging, accessible and practically-focused introduction to cognitive grammar, this book demonstrates how central cognitive grammar principles can be used in stylistic analyses. Assuming no prior knowledge, it leads students through the basics of cognitive grammar, outlining its place within the field of cognitive linguistics as a whole, providing clear explanations of key principles and concepts, and explaining how these can be used to support the study of a range of literary and non-literary texts. Thoroughly updated throughout to encompass emerging trends in the field, this second edition features: - Increased exploration of a range of topics, including specificity and definiteness, scanning, perfective and imperfective verbs, action chains, and subjective and objective construal - A brand new chapter on extended projects in cognitive grammar - Additional activities, including on a wider range of literary texts - Further solutions to modelled answers - Updated examples, references, and further reading recommendations Presenting cognitive grammar as a powerful alternative to more traditional grammatical models to enable the analysis of texts, the book's primary focus is on the practical application of cognitive grammar to examples of language in context and on its potential for specifically literary and non-literary material. It offers a clear and facilitating approach to allow students to describe language features carefully and to explore how these descriptions can be developed into full and rich analyses.

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.

Tailored to students, this abridged version of Cognitive Grammar positions Langacker's authoritative work as an accessible, attractive cornerstone of cognitive linguistics as the field continues to evolve.

The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides a comprehensive introduction and essential reference work to cognitive linguistics. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives and approaches, covering all the key areas of cognitive linguistics and drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in pragmatics, discourse analysis, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neuroscience, language pedagogy, and translation studies. The forty-three chapters, written by international specialists in the field, cover four major areas: • Basic theories and hypotheses, including cognitive semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, frame semantics, natural semantic metalanguage, and word grammar; • Central topics, including embodiment, image schemas, categorization, metaphor and metonymy, construal, iconicity, motivation, constructionalization, intersubjectivity, grounding, multimodality, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive poetics, humor, and linguistic synaesthesia, among others; • Interfaces between cognitive linguistics and other areas of linguistic study, including cultural linguistics, linguistic typology, figurative language, signed languages, gesture, language acquisition and pedagogy, translation studies, and digital lexicography; • New directions in cognitive linguistics, demonstrating the relevance of the approach to social, diachronic, neuroscientific, biological, ecological, multimodal, and quantitative studies. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers working in this area.

This volume presents new developments in cognitive grammar and explores its descriptive and explanatory potential with respect to a wide range of language phenomena. These include the formation and use of locationals, causative constructions, adjectival and nominal expressions of oriented space, morphological layering, tense and aspect, and extended uses of verbal predicates. There is also a section on the affinities between cognitive grammar an early linguistic theories, both ancient and modern.