Concept, Image, and Symbol

This research monograph develops and illustrates an innovative theory of linguistic structure, called "cognitive grammar", and applies it to representative phenomena in English and other languages. Cognitive grammar views language as an intergral fact of cognition and claims that grammatical structure cannot be understood or revealingly described independently of semantic considerations. It argues that grammar forms a continuum with the lexicon and is reducible to symbolic relationships (i.e. form-meaning pairings), and consequently that all valid grammatical constructs have some kind of conceptual import.