Volume 18, Issue 4

Cognitive Grammar postulates two modes of cognitive processing for the structuring of complex scenes, summary scanning and sequential scanning. Generally speaking, the theory is committed to basing grammatical concepts upon more general cognitive principles. In the case of summary and sequential scanning, independent evidence is lacking, but Langacker argues that the distinction should nonetheless be accepted as it buys us considerable theory-internal explanatory power. For example, dynamic prepositions, to-infinitives and participles (e.g., into, to enter, entered ) are distinguished from finite and bare verbs in terms of summary vs. sequential scanning. In this paper, we try to show that various theory-internal and theory-external arguments do not seem to support the two scanning modes. In particular, we offer a detailed examination of causatives (e.g., get, make ) and argue that their complementation patterns are difficult to reconcile with differences in scanning. We conclude that the status of, and need for, summary and sequential scanning in (Cognitive) grammar is doubtful, especially if grammar is approached from the viewpoint of the language learner/user. It follows also that the parcelling of some form-function mappings may prove less clear-cut than previously assumed.

The concepts mismatch, type-shifting, and coercion are central to much recent work on cognitive linguistics. In a number of papers, Michaelis has investigated entity and event coercion (Michaelis 2003a, b, 2004 a, b). I address her question “what conditions favor the diachronic development of shift constructions” (Michaelis 2004a: 8) from the perspective of grammaticalization, with particular reference to the development of partitive constructions like a bit of apple into degree modifier constructions like a bit of a hypocrite . I show why these are different constructions, and conclude that the most important factors have to do with matching quantitative implicatures to already extant quantifying degree modifiers with NP heads, and with the strategies for expressing how much “pragmatic slack” (Lasersohn 1999) is available in computing denotations.

Brigitte Nerlich, Zazie Todd, Vimala Herman, and David D. Clarke (eds.), Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and Language . (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 142.) Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003, xii+422 pp., ISBN 3-11-017616-5. (Yoshikata Shibuya) Hubert Cuyckens, René Dirven, and John R. Taylor (eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics . (Cognitive Linguistics Research 23.) Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. xiii+504 pp., ISBN 3-11-017709-9. (Cory D. Wright)