239827 Introduction to Applied Linguistics (S) (WiSe 2012/2013)

Course Description

The course provides an overview of linguistic resources that language users both native and learners use to represent thought. Specifically, we will examine how these representations are grounded in fundamental principles of human cognition. To this end, we will review approaches in cognitive linguistics as well as generative linguistics and their implications and applications in the field of applied linguistics. We will evaluate the relevance of these approaches by looking closely at their technical applications in the field of language learning. Following cognitive theoreticians we will examine how language users depend on their knowledge of concepts and domains denoted by words to make correct judgements and inferences pertaining to meaning and to enable them to appropriately categorise words and concepts as well as the relationships these entertain with each other.

Requirements for participation, required level

Prerequisites :

Introduction to General Linguistics and knowledge of learning theories attributed to Skinner, Piaget, Vigotsky.

Bibliography

Recommended Texts

Blakemore, Diane. 1988. ‘So’ as a constraint on relevance. In R. Kempson (ed.) Mental representations: the interface between language and reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, N. 1980. Rules and representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Chomsky, N. 1988. Language and problems of knowledge. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
Croft, William & D. Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fillmore, Charles. 1977. Scenes-and-frames semantics. In A. Zambolli (ed.), Linguistic Structure Processing. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, pp. 55 – 82.
Fillmore, Charles. 1982. Frame semantics. In The Linguistic Society of Korea (eds), Linguistics in the morning calm. Hanshin: Seoul, pp. 111-137.
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure.
Kay, Paul & Charles J. Fillmore. 1999. Grammatical constructions and linguistic generalizations: The What’s X doing Y? construction. Language 75/1: 1-33.
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, Robert. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical Descriptions (I) and Practical Applications (II). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rosch, E. 1975. Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 104, 192-233.
Taylor, John. 2002. Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University.
Tyler, A. & V. Evans 2001. Reconsidering prepositional polysemy networks: the case of over. Language, 77(4), 724-765. Reprinted in B. Nerlich, L. Todd, V. Herman and D.D. Clarke (Eds.) (2003), Polysemy: Flexible patterns of meaning in mind and language ( pp. 95-160). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.