What can we learn about the human mind by studying language? The predominant approaches in American linguistics use theoretical assumptions about the formal nature of grammar to answer this question. But these studies are restricted to unapplied models of language, not how language functions in actual speech situations and as a result, their power to reveal the workings of the human mind is limited.
This book overcomes those limitations by examining data on naturally occurring language usage, not simplified theoretical examples. The cognitive and functional arguments made here start from...

Cognitive linguistics is purported to be a usage-based approach, yet only recently has research in some of its subfields turned to spontaneous spoken (versus written) language data. The collection of Alan Cienki's Ten Lectures on Spoken Language and Gesture from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics considers what it means to apply different approaches from within this field to the dynamic, multimodal combination of speech and gesture. The lectures encompass such main paradigms as blending and mental space theory, conceptual metaphor and metonymy, construction and cognitive...