De la grammaire générative à la linguistique cognitive : retour sur un basculement théorique

Abstract

This paper describes the birth of this theoretical conglomerate known as cognitive linguistics. In today's parlance, " cognitive linguistics" refers to a movement that was born in the United Sates in the 1970s and progressively took shape in the work of linguists who wished to break away from syntaxcentered tranformational grammar. This split was to a large extent prepared by the movement of generative semantics, which had steered a number of linguists in a more semantically oriented direction. Generative semantics is given its due in the first part of the paper, in which I analyze the motivations of this movement, and the ways in which it may have prepared the ground for cognitive linguistics. The second part recounts how topics and positions characteristic of cognitive linguistics have emerged and gained momentum. Four central themes are given special emphasis : the notion of conceptual metaphor, the revival of localist ideas, questions related to prototype theory and categorization, and, finally, the concept of frame. In conclusion, it is pointed out that cognitive linguistics gained its unity by weaving together themes and theoretical views of various origins around an empiricist core. de la grammaire générative à la linguiStique Cognitive : retour Sur un baSCulement théorique