The Cognitive Linguistics Reader - Vyvyan Evans

Cognitive Linguistics is the most swiftly growing school in modern linguistics. Theorists and practitioners in this discipline of linguistics work collaboratively to create a scientific, objectively verifiable approach to the study of language, integrating the theories and applications of general linguistics, philosophy, neurosciences and computer sciences. The cognitive approach to the study of language were originally grounded in philosophical thinking about how the brain functions vis-à-vis language processing and language learning, but more recent work highlights the significance of accumulating evidence from a wide-ranging empirical and methodological data base. The Cognitive Linguistics Reader encompasses significant writings by eminent scholars in the fields of cognitive linguistics accumulated over the last four decades, including both the classic seminal works and contemporary reflections and additions of cognitive linguistics to the different fields of linguistics. The essays and articles - selected to characterize a full-fledged range, scope and diversity of the Cognitive Linguistics sciences and applications - are clustered by theme into sections with each section discretely presented. The book opens with a comprehensive summary of Cognitive Linguistics intended for the beginner readership and closes with thorough additional readings to guide the reader through the thriving literature of this field. The Cognitive Linguistics Reader is both a perfect overview introducing the full gamut of Cognitive Linguistics and a complete, integrated reference book, bringing together the most significant work in the different fields of linguistics and other related sub-fields such as language acquisition and language pedagogy.