By Ronald W. Langacker
This e-book fills a protracted status want for a easy advent to Cognitive Grammar that's present, authoritative, finished, and approachable. It provides a synthesis that attracts jointly and refines the descriptive and theoretical notions built during this framework over the process 3 many years. In a unified demeanour, it incorporates either the conceptual and the social-interactive foundation of linguistic constitution, in addition to the necessity for either sensible rationalization and specific structural description. beginning with the basics, crucial facets of the idea are systematically laid out with concrete illustrations and cautious dialogue in their cause. one of the themes surveyed are conceptual semantics, grammatical sessions, grammatical structures, the lexicon-grammar continuum characterised as assemblies of symbolic buildings (form-meaning pairings), and the usage-based account of productiveness, regulations, and well-formedness. The theory's relevant declare - that grammar is inherently significant - is thereby proven to be possible. The framework is additional elucidated via program to nominal constitution, clause constitution, and complicated sentences. those are tested in vast standpoint, with exemplification from English and various different languages. in keeping with the theory's common ideas, they're mentioned not just by way of their structural characterization, but in addition their conceptual worth and sensible motivation. different concerns explored contain discourse, the temporal size of language constitution, and what grammar finds approximately cognitive techniques and the development of our psychological world.
