Volume 24, Issue 3

Based on linguistic and behavioural evidence, representations for time appear to be structured in terms of space (e.g., Casasanto and Boroditsky 2008; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999). This finding has led to a recent move to apply the theoretical construct of frames of reference (FoRs) from the domain of space to time, leading to sophisticated taxonomies for temporal frames of reference (e.g., Bender et al. 2010; Tenbrink 2011; Zinken 2010). The present paper argues that while space is important for modelling temporal reference, this is not the whole story. I argue that the experience types that in part underlie temporal representations are inherently temporal, rather than spatial in nature. They consist of a range of experience types, the hallmark of FoRs in the domain of time being transience (Galton 2011), a construct worked out in some detail. The present paper proposes three distinct types of temporal frames of reference (t-FoRs), anchored to three distinct types of transience. These proposals are argued to complement and enhance existing proposals for t-FoRs, rather than replacing them.

Within cognitive linguistics, the notion of domain is central. In the literature, the notion of domain has been interpreted in an all-encompassing way, which has led to conceptual confusion. The article proposes to distinguish between a more psychologically oriented description of domains based on dimensional structures, on the one hand; and meronomic relations, on the other. It is shown how Langacker's notion of a configurational domain can be analyzed as higher-level dimensional structures. An added benefit of the distinction between dimensional domains and meronomic relations is that it generates a natural account of the difference between metaphors and metonymies.

We investigated whether children (3- and 4-year-olds) and adults can use the active passive alternation – essentially a choice of subject – in a way that is consistent with the eye-gaze of the speaker. Previous work suggests the function of the subject position can be grounded in attentional mechanisms (Tomlin 1995, 1997). Eye-gaze is one powerful source of directing attention that we know adults and young children are sensitive to; furthermore, we know adults are more likely to look at the subject of their sentence than any other character (Gleitman et al. 2007; Griffin and Bock 2000). We demonstrate that older children and adults are able to use speaker-gaze to choose a felicitous subject when describing a scene with both agent-focused and patient focused cues. Integrating attentional and grammatical information in this way allows children to limit the degrees of freedom on what the function of certain linguistic constructions might be.

This paper investigates the distribution of reflexive and nonreflexive pronouns in the prepositional phrase, concluding that multiple semantic factors play a role in the appearance of one pronoun over the other. The distributional trends in English are explained by referencing the crucial role space plays in grammar, and the resulting implications for Binding Theory (Chomsky 1995) are discussed. The motivating forces for the corpus distribution are based on perceived directionality and location of the denoted event with respect to the body of the event's protagonist. The patterns found in the corpus data are attributed to a range of factors that play a role in the semantic specifications and associations of the pronouns themselves. First, it is argued that the high rate of reflexive pronouns in events that are metaphorically located in the body is due to the reflexive pronoun's close semantic association with the concept of self, a metaphorical body-internal entity. Second, it is argued that the reflexive pronoun is used to signal either an event which is performed on the body (in the referent's peri-personal space) or directed toward the body. Cases of these types are explained by a schematic, semantic parallelism between syntactically complex reflexive events and syntactically simple reflexive events. In both cases, the reflexive pronoun signals a contrastive element. In syntactically complex cases, the PP examples (e.g. John pushed the box toward himself ), and syntactically simple cases, those with basic clause structure (e.g. John kicked himself ), the reflexive is used to signal that the direction of the event is counter to the direction of expectation, thus explaining why certain reflexive events (e.g. bathe, or pull something toward you) do not have to, and most often, do not occur with the reflexive pronoun.

Collostructional analysis is a corpus-based quantitative method of measuring the mutual attraction of lexemes and constructions (cf. Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003) which has gained considerable popularity among corpus linguists and especially cognitive linguists with a statistical bent. For many less statistically minded linguists, it has proven rather difficult to evaluate the theoretical background assumptions and cognitive underpinnings of collostructional analysis and to compare them to alternative ways of modelling lexicogrammatical attraction phenomena. This paper aims to spell out these premises and foundations in terms comprehensible to a wider audience. It begins with a concise survey of how collostructional analysis works and then reports on a number of practical, theoretical and statistical issues of which both practitioners of the method and those who try to appreciate results of its application should be aware. With these issues in mind we then discuss alternative ways of calculating and interpreting lexicogrammatical attraction. The advantages and disadvantages of the different methods are discussed, also against the background of the results of studies that have tried to evaluate the measures by means of external evidence from psycholinguistic experiments. Finally, cognitive underpinnings of lexicogrammatical associations and implications for the different approaches are discussed. It is argued that at present we lack adequate knowledge about the ways in which discourse frequencies affect entrenchment. We conclude that the complexities of the relation between corpus frequencies and degrees of entrenchment are still rather poorly understood, and make suggestions for future work.