Meaning and interpretation: The semiotic similarities and differences between Cognitive Grammar and European structural linguistics
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Klaas Willems
Abstract
The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the cognitive paradigm have traditionally been discussed against the background of generative grammar, its immediate predecessor. A significantly less researched yet no less interesting relationship is the one between the cognitive and structuralist paradigm. This article focuses on the in part converging, in part diverging semiotic assumptions underlying European structural linguistics and Cognitive Grammar. A comparison of important concepts of both theories (isomorphism, the sign concept, compositionality, and case marking) shows that, although Cognitive Grammar arrives at a more realistic understanding of how language works in discourse, the theory fails to offer a coherent theory of the linguistic sign.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Meaning and interpretation: The semiotic similarities and differences between Cognitive Grammar and European structural linguistics
- Can Saussure's orangery manuscripts shed new light on biosemiotics?
- A choice of emblemes and other devices
- Symbolism in handwriting
- A sociosemiotic interpretation of linguistic modality in legal settings
- Tracking the distribution of individual semantic features in gesture across spoken discourse: New perspectives in multi-modal interaction
- Competitive cities and human scales: The semiotics of urban excess
- Justice unmasked: A semiotic analysis of Justitia
- The subversive agent: Anatomy of personal ideological change
- On theatrical semiosphere of postdramatic theatrical event: Rethinking the semiotic epistemology in performance analysis today
- Poinsot and semiotics
