Handouts - Ten Lectures on Grammar in the Mind

This series of lectures presents a synthesis of cognitive linguistic theory and research on first and second language acquisition, language processing, individual differences in linguistic knowledge, and on the role of multi-word chunks and low-level schemas in language production and comprehension. It highlights the tension between “linguists’ grammars”, which are strongly influenced by principles such as economy and elegance, and “speakers’ grammars”, which are often messy, less than fully general, and sometimes inconsistent, and argues that cognitive linguistics is an empirical science which combines study of real usage events and experiments which rigorously test specific hypotheses.

本系列讲座对认知语言学理论及相关研究进行了系统综述，研究范畴涵盖第一与第二语言习得、语言加工、语言知识的个体差异，以及多词语块与低级图式在语言产出与理解中的作用。本系列讲座着重剖析了受简约原则与优雅原则等核心理念深刻影响的「语言学家的语法体系」，与往往杂乱无章、缺乏完全普适性且有时存在自相矛盾之处的「使用者的语法体系」之间的内在张力，并提出核心论点：认知语言学作为一门实证科学，需兼顾真实语言使用事件的考察与对特定假设开展严格检验的实验研究。