Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar () von Sabine De Knop

Honorary editor: René Dirven

The series Applications of Cognitive Linguistics (ACL) welcomes book proposals from any domain where the theoretical insights developed in Cognitive Linguistics (CL) have been (or could be) fruitfully applied. In the past thirty-five years, the CL movement has articulated a rich and satisfying view of language around a small number of foundational principles. The first one argues that language faculties do not constitute a separate module of cognition, but emerge as specialized uses of more general cognitive abilities. The second principle emphasises the symbolic function of language. The grammar of individual languages (including the lexicon, morphology, and syntax) can be exclusively described as a structured inventory of conventionalized symbolic units. The third principle states that meaning is equated with conceptualization. It is subjective, anthropomorphic, and crucially incorporates humans' experience with their bodies and the world around them. Finally, CL's Usage-Based conception anchors the meaning of linguistic expressions in the rich soil of their social usage. Consequently, usage-related issues such as frequency and entrenchment contribute to their semantic import. Taken together, these principles provide researchers in different academic fields with a powerful theoretical framework for the investigation of linguistic issues in the specific context of their particular disciplines. The primary focus of ACL is to serve as a high level forum for the result of these investigations.

In the last 25 years foreign language teaching has been able to increase its efficiency through an orientation towards authentic language materials, pragmatic language functions and interactive learning methods. However, so far foreign language teaching has lacked a sufficiently strong theoretical framework to support the teaching of language in all its aspects. Arguably, such a linguistic theory has to be usage-based and cognition-oriented. Since cognitive linguistics - and especially cognitive grammar - is concerned with conceptual issues against the larger background of human cognition and because it is based on actual language use, it becomes a powerful tool for dealing adequately with the main issues of a pedagogical grammar. A pedagogical grammar aims at providing all the essential linguistic patterns considered relevant by theoretical and descriptive linguistics for the preparation of teaching materials and their exploitation in foreign language instruction.

The volume contains thirteen contributions organized into three parts. In Part 1 Langacker, Taylor and Broccias introduce the basic grammar concepts, rules and models that are available in cognitive linguistics and which are directly relevant to the construction of a pedagogical grammar. Meunier, on the other hand, describes how such a grammar could benefit from corpus linguistics. Part 2 looks at some cognitive tools and conceptual errors with contributions by Danesi and Maldonado and also reconsiders contrastive analysis in the papers by Ruiz de Mendoza and Valenzuela& Rojo. Part 3, finally, discusses language-specific constraints on a number of linguistic phenomena such as the construal of motion events (papers by Cadierno and De Knop& Dirven), distinctions in the tense-aspect system (papers by Niemeier& Reif and Schmiedtová& Flecken), and voice (Chen& Oller).

Sabine De Knop, Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels, Belgium;Teun De Rycker, Lessius Hogeschool, Antwerpen, Belgium.