Language, Usage and Cognition

Outlines a theory of language use and language change, focusing on the processes that give languages their structure and variance.

Joan Bybee (Author)

9780521616836, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 April 2010

264 pages, 8 b/w illus. 33 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.43 kg

'… this is a very insightful and informative book which provides a good overview of Bybee's impressive investigations and which always integrates diachronic perspective.' Damaris Nübling, Language and Dialogue

Language demonstrates structure while also showing considerable variation at all levels: languages differ from one another while still being shaped by the same principles; utterances within a language differ from one another while exhibiting the same structural patterns; languages change over time, but in fairly regular ways. This book focuses on the dynamic processes that create languages and give them their structure and variance. It outlines a theory of language that addresses the nature of grammar, taking into account its variance and gradience, and seeks explanation in terms of the recurrent processes that operate in language use. The evidence is based on the study of large corpora of spoken and written language, what we know about how languages change, as well as the results of experiments with language users. The result is an integrated theory of language use and language change which has implications for cognitive processing and language evolution.

1. A usage-based perspective on language
2. Rich memory for language: exemplar representation
3. Chunking and degrees of autonomy
4. Analogy and similarity
5. Categorization and the distribution of constructions in corpora
6. Where do constructions come from? Synchrony and diachrony in a usage-based theory
7. Grammatical change: reanalysis or the gradual creation of new constructions?
8. Gradient constituency and gradual reanalysis
9. Conventionalization and the local vs. the general: modern English can
10. Exemplars and grammatical meaning: the specific and the general
11. Language as a complex adaptive system: the interaction of cognition, culture and use.

Subject Areas: Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF], Psycholinguistics [CFD]