Kris Heylen

Usage-based approaches in Cognitive Linguistics: A technical state of the art

Abstract This paper presents a technical state of the art in usage-based linguistics as defined in the context of Cognitive Linguistics. Starting from actual case studies rather than theoretical assumptions, methodological issues concerning the usage-based approach are addressed, with specific reference to the use of corpus materials. The specific methodological identity of usage-based linguistics is described in terms of data gathering strategies and the status of empirical data in linguistic research. From a delineation of corpus research in contrast with introspection, survey research, and experimentation, two criteria emerge as essential for a genuine corpus-oriented usage-based linguistics, viz. the use of quantitative techniques and the systematic operationalization of research hypotheses. It is suggested that paying closer attention to these methodological issues is a prerequisite for the further development of the usage-based approach in Cognitive Linguistics.

Change of Paradigms - New Paradoxes: Recontextualizing Language and Linguistics

In Paradigm and Paradox, Dirk Geeraerts formulated many of the basic tenets that were to form what Cognitive Linguistics is today. Change of Paradigms - New Paradoxes links back to this seminal work, exploring which of the original theories and ideas still stand strong, which new questions have arisen and which ensuing new paradoxes need to be addressed. It thus reveals how Cognitive Linguistics has developed and diversified over the past decades.

Corpus studies in contrastive linguistics

1. Introduction 2. Developments in Corpus-based Contrastive Linguistics (by Marzo, Stefania) 3. Articles 4. Believe-type raising-to-object and raising-to-subject verbs in English and Dutch: A contrastive investigation in diachronic construction grammar (by Noel, Dirk) 5. Contingency hedges in Dutch, French and English: A corpus-based contrastive analysis of the language-internal and -external properties of English depend, French dependre and Dutch afhangen, liggen and zien (by Defrancq, Bart) 6. Cultural differences in academic discourse: Evidence from first-person verb use in the methods sections of medical research articles (by Williams, Ian A.) 7. Cognitive verbs in context: A contrastive analysis of English and French argumentative discourse (by Fetzer, Anita) 8. Mood and modality in finite noun complement clauses: A French-English contrastive study (by Kante, Issa) 9. Choice of strategies in realizations of epistemic possibility in English and Lithuanian: A corpus-based study (by Usoniene, Aurelia)