The subject area of cognitive linguistics: a brief overview

The subject area of cognitive linguistics: a brief overview
Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought and practical activity. The research area of cognitive linguistics is the relationship between natural language, the mind, and socio-physical experience. This branch of linguistics was founded in the 1970s (Fillmore, 1975; Lakoff & Thompson, 1975; Rosch, 1975) and arose from dissatisfaction with the results demonstrated by formal approaches to language, which dominated linguistics and philosophy at the time. Despite the fact that the origins of this linguistic movement were, in part, philosophical in nature, cognitive linguistics was nevertheless strongly influenced by the scientific concepts and scientific investigations of other cognitive sciences (as they emerged during the 1960s and 1970s), especially cognitive psychology.
This influence is best reflected in works devoted to social categorization, especially in the works of Charles Fillmore in the 1970s (for example, Fillmore, 1975) and George Lakoff in the 1980s (for example, 1987). Earlier traditions (such as Gestalt psychology) are also significant, as was demonstrated by Leonard Talmy (2000) and Ronald Langacker (1987). On top of all this, theories about the neural basis of language and human cognitive ability had a lasting influence on the character and content of cognitive linguistic theories, from early works devoted to how the structure of the eye constrains the color terminology system (Kay and McDaniel, 1978) to recent works under the heading "Neural Theory of Language" (Lakoff, 2005). In recent years, cognitive linguistic theories have become sufficiently sophisticated and detailed to begin making predictions that are suitable for testing using a wide range of converging methods from the field of cognitive science.
Early research was dominant in the 1970s and the early 1980s thanks to a relatively small number of scholars who, primarily (though not exclusively), carried out their academic work on the west coast of the United States. During the 1980s, cognitive linguistic research began to take root in northern continental Europe, especially in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
By the early 1990s there was a growing number of studies in the field of cognitive linguistics throughout Europe and North America. A fairly large group of researchers also emerged who lived in different countries and who called themselves 'cognitive linguists'. After a conference held in Duisburg (Germany) in 1989, the International Cognitive Linguistics Association was founded, and a year later the journal "Cognitive Linguistics" was established. In the words of one of the pioneers in the field of cognitive linguistics, Ronald Langacker (1991b, p. xv), this event 'marked the birth of cognitive linguistics as a firmly grounded, self-conscious intellectual movement'.
'Movement' or 'subject area' are the words that most accurately describe the essence of cognitive linguistics, since it does not represent a clearly formulated theory. Instead, cognitive linguistics is an approach in which a common set of core commitments and guiding principles has been adopted, leading to the emergence of a diverse range of complementary, partially overlapping (and sometimes competing) theories.
The aim of this article is to trace some of the main assumptions and convictions that make cognitive linguistics a distinct and worthwhile subject area of science. We will also attempt to briefly review the major areas of research and theory-building that characterize cognitive linguistics, areas that make it one of the most vibrant, exciting, and promising philosophical directions of scientific thought and practice in contemporary cognitive science.
The two key commitments of cognitive linguistics

The subject area of cognitive linguistics is characterized by two fundamental commitments (Lakoff, 1990). Both underlie the scientific orientation and approach that have been adopted by practicing cognitive linguists, as well as the hypotheses and methodologies taken up by the two main directions of the subject area of cognitive science: cognitive semantics and cognitive approaches to grammar (a discussion of these issues will be presented below).
The Generalization Commitment.
The first key concept is the Generalization Commitment (Lakoff, 1990). It represents
a certain orientation toward characterizing the general principles that apply to all aspects of natural language. This goal is a particular special case of the standard commitment in science, and is used to seek the broadest generalizations possible. In contrast to the approach used in cognitive linguistics, other approaches to the study of language often divide the language faculty into distinct areas, such as phonology (sound), semantics (the meaning of words and sentences), pragmatics (meaning in the context of conversation), morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), and so on. As a consequence, there are no sufficient grounds for generalizing across these aspects of language or for investigating their interrelations. This is especially a characteristic property of formal linguistics.

Formal linguistics attempts to model language by establishing explicit mechanical devices or methods that act upon theoretical basic elements in order to reproduce all possible grammatical sentences of a given language. Within such approaches, attempts are usually made to construct precise formulations by adopting a formalism inspired by computer science, mathematics, and logic. Formal linguistics found its embodiment, first of all, in the works of Noam Chomsky (for example, his works of 1965, 1981, 1995) and in the paradigm of generative grammar, as well as in the tradition known as formal semantics, inspired by the philosopher of language Richard Montague (1970, 1973; see Cann, 1993, for an overview).
Within formal linguistics it is argued that areas such as phonology, semantics, and syntax concern substantially different kinds of structuring principles
based on different kinds of basic elements. For example, the syntactic 'module' is an area in the human mind that is responsible for structuring (assembling) words into sentences, whereas the phonological 'module' concerns the assembly of sounds into patterns permitted by the rules of any given language, and of natural language in general. This modular view of the mind reinforces the idea that dividing research in the field of modern linguistics into distinct branches of science is entirely justified, not only on the basis of practicality, but also because the components of language are completely distinct and, from the point of view of organization, incommensurable with one another.
Cognitive linguists acknowledge that treating areas such as syntax, semantics, and phonology as distinct can be quite useful. However, taking into account the Generalization Commitment, cognitive linguists do not proceed from the axiom that the 'modules' or 'subsystems' of language are organized in sufficiently contradictory ways, or that, in reality, completely separate modules exist. Thus, the Generalization Commitment represents a commitment to investigating how the various aspects of linguistic knowledge emerge from a single set of human cognitive abilities, on the basis of which they are revealed, rather than from the assumption that linguistic knowledge is generated in hidden modules of the mind.
The Generalization Commitment has fairly concrete consequences for research in the field of language. First, cognitive linguistic research focuses on what is common across different linguistic aspects, striving to reuse effective methods and explanations in relation to these aspects. For example, just as the lexical meaning of a word contains a prototypical component, there are good and not-so-good examples of the referents of these words, related in some particular way - thus, various studies have applied the same principles to the organization of morphology (for example, Taylor, 2003), syntax (for example, Goldberg, 1995), and phonology (for example, Jaeger & Ohala, 1984). Generalizing effective explanations and interpretations across certain areas of language is not merely good scientific practice - it is also the way in which the functioning of biology is grounded; the repeated use of already existing structures for new purposes, both on the scale of evolution and on the scale of development.
Second, cognitive linguistic approaches often take as their basis a 'vertical' rather than a 'horizontal' approach to the study of language. Language can be regarded as a structure consisting of a number of clearly expressed layers of organization - the sound structure, the set of words composed of these sounds, the syntactic structures that these words make up, and so on. If we build these layers one on top of another, given that they unfold over an extended period of time (like the layers of a cake), then modular approaches in this case are horizontal, in the sense that one layer is considered and studied from within - just like a horizontal slice of cake. Vertical approaches provide a richer view of language by considering precisely the vertical part of language, which includes phonology, morphology, syntax, and, of course, a healthy portion of semantics at the very top. The vertical part of language is always more complex to some degree than the horizontal one - it is more variable and structured - but at the same time it provides possible explanations that are simply not available from the horizontal, modular point of view.