A Cognitive Grammar Perspective on Word Classes

Cognitive grammar has adopted a different approach to word classes from that of traditional grammar or structural linguistics. It considers word classes as schematic symbolic structures, pairings of meaning and form. Besides, it defines such major word classes as nouns and verbs in terms of their conceptual contents. This radical approach is a logical outcome of its theoretical orientation, achieving maximum economy in linguistic theory and maximum naturalness in linguistic description. Taking general cognitive abilities into consideration, cognitive grammar provides a revealing and convincing account of the conceptual basis of word classes. This approach can be of great value for an exploration of the issue of word classes in such non-inflectional languages as Chinese.