One of the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics, which sets it apart from most other linguistic theories, is the conviction that language is a dynamic system that emerges from language use. Such a usage-based view on language attributes a central role to the notion of frequency. Fre-quency plays a crucial role in the emergence, processing, and change of virtually every type of language structure.
The first volume is concerned with a variety of more general questions that arise once a usage-based perspective is taken more seriously. Given the different papers, we divided this volume in four different parts plus one general introduction.
Basic Linguistic Theory provides a fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis.
Volume 3 introduces and examines key grammatical topics, each from a cross-linguistic perspective. The subjects include number systems, negation, reflexives and reciprocals, passives, causatives, comparative constructions, and questions. The final chapter discusses the relation between linguistic explanation and the culture and world-view of the linguist and speakers of the language he or she is describing.
The editor and authors in this volume make a convincing case for focusing on advanced foreign language instruction. Importantly, they invite consideration of this focus as an opportunity to re-examine conventional definitions of the target of instruction. In so doing, readers also learn more about the theories highlighted in this volume, and their capacity to enhance our understanding of advancedness and its development within an educational context. This book thus mediates between linguistic and language learning theories and educational practice, modelling the very best of what applied linguistics has to offer.
The chapters in this volume address current topics in the morphology, syntax, and semantics of nominalizations, drawing on a range of typologically and geographically diverse languages. Nominalizations represent a long-standing puzzle to linguists: How is a noun, such as destruction, related to the verb destroy? The semantic parallel between the deverbal nominalization and its related verb suggests that there is a close connection between the two. This volume contributes to the ongoing debates on how to capture this connection and how to account for the apparent mixed categorical status of nominalizations.
