Cognitive Linguistics Reading List
January 28, 2011 10:57 AM   Subscribe

Can you help me create an Independent Reading list on cognitive linguistics?

I've discovered a love for cognitive linguistics three quarters of the way through my linguistic education at a university which is having none of that. The faculty here is very, very Chomskyian. The only professor mildly sympathetic to this school of thought has offered to do an Independent Reading course with me next fall so I can explore the field further before going on to graduate school. Problem is, I have to create the reading list and have no idea where to start. I've read The Way We Think by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier. Other than that, I'm at a loss for reading that will get me well-informed and keep me interested.

What are you recommendations for must-reads in cognitive linguistics? Bonus points for cross-overs with artificial intelligence!
(Extra bonus points for articles/books by Stanford professors)


Thank you!
posted by shesdeadimalive to Education (6 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm a linguistics groupie. What exactly do you mean by cognitive linguistics? Taken generally, it could describe a huge variety of areas, much too much to cover in a semester-long independent reading course. There's also the question of how accessible you want your reading: popular science written by prominent researchers? books on "introductory X for undergraduates"? review papers?

I suggest narrowing your interest and finding a collection of articles on the topic. For example, for psycholinguistics, consider the Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics, perhaps coupled with a textbook, such as Harley's Psychology of Language.
posted by Nomyte at 11:09 AM on January 28, 2011


The Largely Mythological Husband (Ph.D. in linguistics, research scientist in human-computer interaction) suggests that some of the basics in the field include work by William Croft, Ron Lagacker (The Cognitive Basis of Grammar from De Gruyter), Nicholas Ruwet (Syntax and Human Experience), Leonard Talmy, Adele Goldberg (Constructions), and Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff. Also, there is (or used to be) a journal called Cognitive Linguistics published by De Gruyter.

He warns that these are mostly older works from his own grad-school days. For newer work, he thinks that the International Cognitive Linguistics Association website is a good place to start. And there are some recent articles in Language about construction grammar that he thinks might be worth your checking out.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:14 AM on January 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


A good place to start would be the collection of "classic" readings edited by Dirk Geeraerts: Cognitive Linguistics: Basic readings.

Another important name is John Taylor, he has written a lot on metaphor and metonymy. I recommend his book Linguistic Categorization.
posted by nomis at 1:51 PM on January 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language, by Jerome A. Feldman, was my favorite of all my textbooks from 2 years of cognitive ling classes, and I'd consider it, The Way We Think, and the Lakoff book I'm going to suggest below to be a great jumping-off point for more in-depth study.

Lakoff, you may know, is a pretty good antidote to Chomsky. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things has already been suggested, but it's very Intro, very broad, and kind of old. A better book, for a more modern and more in-depth look at Lakoff's (and others') cognitive linguistics work, is Philosophy in the Flesh. It's still suitable for beginners, but it goes into a lot of concrete detail about the way we use language in our everyday lives. Where Mathematics Comes From is a good one, too, and obviously even more specific.

You might also want to check out some of Paul Kay's papers on color perception and language.
posted by rhiannonstone at 2:18 PM on January 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Bonus points for cross-overs with artificial intelligence!

Are you interested in lexical semantics at all? You might check out the reading list for this class on word meaning — there's some stuff in there about computational modeling of word meaning that hooks in really nicely to what people like Lakoff have said on the subject. (Disclaimer: tooting my own program's horn; the class is taught by a prof in my department, though most of the papers on the list are by people at other schools.) Anyway, it could be worth skimming through some of those papers and seeing if any of it strikes your fancy.

Even if you weren't looking for connections to AI, Murphy's stuff on concepts and Fillmore's stuff on frame semantics would probably be worth reading sooner or later. But probably you should start with some of the bigger names (Lakoff and/or Johnson, Langacker, Kay) and work your way in from there. If you show up at grad school talking about cognitive linguistics, everyone will assume you've read Women, Fire and Dangerous Things and nobody will mind much if you haven't dug into some of this other stuff yet.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:00 PM on January 28, 2011 [2 favorites]


Nthing Lakoff. Also, Steven Pinker.
posted by squasher at 10:39 PM on January 28, 2011


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