Motivation in Language

This volume contributes to the now one-century old question, ‘Is the link between forms and meanings in language essentially arbitrary, as Saussure put it, or is it on the contrary also considerably motivated?’ The greater part of the papers (Sections 1–3) analyze linguistic phenomena in which not arbitrary, but cognitively motivated links between form and meaning play a role. As such, the contributions in Section 1 examine selected aspects of motivation in the continuum between lexicon and grammar; the contributions in Section 2 study the factors underlying the range of (semantic) variants that attach to a particular lexical item; and papers in Section 3 look at motivating factors in linguistic items situated in and conceptualizing the socio-cultural domain. A smaller set of papers in Section 4 point to the role which learner motivation and attitudinal motivation may play in applied linguistics domains.

Mario Brdar, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University, Croatia, in Jezikoslovye Vol. 8:2 (2007):
[...] there is no doubt that the volume under review constitutes a major addition to the study of non-arbitrary aspects of linguistic phenomena and that it will be of interest not only for cognitive linguists but also for a wider audience of functional and typological linguists. It is well worth reading, and re-reading, because it offers a unique insight into the multifacted nature of the phenomenon of motivation.