On constructing a research model for historical cognitive linguistics (HCL): Some theoretical considerations

Abstract

This paper examines how historical cognitive linguistics can benefit methodologically through the application of the notion of language as a complex adaptive system. The idea that languages are complex adaptive systems (CAS) was introduced initially in computational evolutionary linguistics, a discipline that was and remains inspired by biological, systems theoretical approaches to the evolution of life. Here the way that the CAS approach serves to replace older historical linguistic notions of languages as organisms and languages as species is explained as well as how the CAS approach can be generalized to encompass linguistic domains. Specifically, an overview of the CAS approach and its implementation in linguistics is provided with an emphasis on stigmergic, embodied, usage-based and socio-culturally situated language studies in particular.Scientific revolutions are, in fact, metaphoric revolutions, and theoretical models should be seen as metaphoric redescriptions of the domain of phenomena. (Arbid and Hesse 1986: 156) Languages meander like great rivers leaving oxbow traces over forgotten beds, to be seen only from the air or by scholars. Language is like some infinitely inter-fertile family of species spreading or mysteriously declining over time, shamelessly and endlessly hybridizing, changing its own rules as it goes. Words are used as signs, as stand-ins, arbitrary and temporary, even as language reflects (and informs) the shifting values of the peoples whose minds it inhabits and glides through. We have faith in 'meaning' like we might believe in wolverines -putting trust in the occasional reports of others, or on the authority of once seeing a pelt. But it is sometimes worth tracking this trickster back.

Miten yksi keho muuttui moneksi

“…Monet kirjoittajat vaikuttavat lähestyvän aihetta yhdestä näkökulmasta kuten siitä, montako tavua sanassa voi olla (Fenk-Ozlon & Fenk 2008). Paljon suosiota on kyllä saanut näkemys kielestä kompleksisena adaptiivisenä järjestelmänä (Mufwene 2017), joka on lanseerattu myös historialliseen kognitiiviseen kielitieteeseen (Frank & Gontier 2010). Olisi kuitenkin edelleen tilaa kehittää metodeja, joilla Hänen kirjansa suorastaan pursuaa välähdyksiä siitä, mitä tämä voisi olla.…”

Looking at Europe through a Basque lens: Ethnolinguistic considerations of two worldviews

“…Given the formation of Arana-Goiri, it is not surprising that in laying out the ground for Basque identity he drew on the same conceptual frames that were current in his time not only in Spain but also in the rest of Europe. The late 19 th century was a period in which nation-state identities were being carved out and were typically expressed through the unity of "blood and soil" with the bridging component being language, the variety of the language spoken usually by the elite of the emerging nation-state in question (Frank and Gontier 2010). As a result of this background, Arana-Goiri ended up constructing what is viewed today as a xenophobic ideology that centered on the notion of the purity of the Basque race, the latter being based on his belief that Basques were genetically different, unrelated to Spaniards or for that matter, other races (Frank 2002(Frank , 2008b.…”

Cultural Linguistics as an investigative framework for paremiology: comparing time in English and Persian

“…With respect to ‘conceptual metaphor’, Lakoff and Johnson () postulate that it is a cognitive system which helps us understand a conceptual domain be recourse to another one. Such tools exist at both micro and macro levels of cultural cognition (Frank and Gontier ) and will be referred to as cultural metaphor (Sharifian ). However, it is not always the case that every expression containing cultural metaphors involves mapping from one domain of knowledge into another.…”