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Events can be perceived from different perspectives. Langacker, Ronald W. (1990. Subjectification. Cognitive Linguistics 1. 5–38) typologically categorised the perspectives in event construal as subjective construal and objective construal based on how egocentric a perspective is. Compared with Western languages, such as English, Japanese is argued to be a language that favours subjective construal. However, little empirical work has tested this assumption directly. We investigated whether Japanese and English construe events from different perspectives by focusing on the linguistic encodings of event roles "agent" and "patient". Our findings show that when selecting event roles as sentence subjects, Japanese speakers prioritised animacy over agency whereas English speakers emphasised agency (while also considering animacy). This can be attributed to the different preferences of the two languages for the degree of egocentricity in event construal. Furthermore, we explored how L1-based conceptualisation of event roles influences the linguistic expressions of event roles in L2. Our results demonstrate that Japanese learners of English had difficulty reconceptualising event roles in L2 English. This study adds a piece of quantitative evidence to the cognitive linguistics theory on subjective construal in Japanese and questions the universality of the agent-first hypothesis in the Thematic Hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics reexamines the notions of uniformity and variability within morphological systems from a cognitive linguistic standpoint. It challenges traditional perspectives that regard morphological variability as mere deviations from the norm, suggesting instead that such variability is systematic and shaped by external influences including language acquisition and processing constraints. The contributions in this issue promote a shift from isolated analysis to a holistic view of paradigms, classes, and systems, advocating for a framework where morphological structures are seen as integral to communicative and functional aspects of language. By accounting for the broad adaptive dynamics of language systems, the complex interplay between uniformity and variability is revealed as an inherent aspect of language usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual search studies have shown that East Asians rely more on information gathered through their extrafoveal (i.e., peripheral) vision than do Western Caucasians, who tend to rely more on information gathered using their foveal (i.e., central) vision. However, the reasons for this remain unclear. Cognitive linguists suggest that the difference is attributable linguistic variation, while cultural psychologists contend it is due to cultural factors. The current study used eye-tracking data collected during a visual search task to compare these explanations by leveraging a semantic difference against a cultural difference to determine which view best explained strategies used on the task. The task was administered to Chinese, American, and Japanese participants with a primary focus on the Chinese participants' behaviors since the semantic difference aligned the Chinese participants with the Americans, while their cultural affiliation aligned them with the Japanese participants. The results indicated that the Chinese group aligned more closely with the American group on most measures, suggesting that semantic differences were more important than cultural affiliation on this particular task. However, there were some results that could not be accounted for by the semantic differences, suggesting that linguistic and cultural factors might affect visual search strategies concurrently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

5.3.3 Character name-size subset There were no remarkably different distributions of phonemes or tones between large animal names and small animal names according to the I size i dataset (all I p- i values >0.05). Comparing the pattern of gender-sound association in fictional character names in children's books with that found by [113] in real human Chinese names showed that, in both studies, female names contained more nasals and fricatives than occlusives. 5.3.2 Character name-gender subset The iconic association between phonemes and gender was demonstrated by using nasal and fricative consonants in human character names (Figure 5). Human names showed preference in using rising tones compared to animal and monster names. 5.3.4 Character name-personality traits subset Positive and negative personality of characters influenced phoneme and tone choices in their names (Figure 6). [Extracted from the article]

However, Fortescue, working on the origins of classificatory verbs in Wakashan argued that they evolved from other verbs: 'Arguably, then, some classificatory roots developed in the Wakashan languages from earlier ordinary verbs undergoing either collocation restrictions or semantic widening and generalization' ([12]: 280). The verb theme is in the momentaneous aspectual derivation and the verb root is in the imperfective. 5.1 Stage 1: From nominal to verb stem There are many root forms in Dene languages that can occur both as nouns and as verbs, taking distinctive affixes in each case. Keywords: cognitive cultural models; Dene languages; historical linguisitcs; metonymy; semantic change EN cognitive cultural models Dene languages historical linguisitcs metonymy semantic change 193 220 28 02/14/22 20220201 NES 220201 1 Introduction The Dene languages form a large and geographically extended family indigenous to the North American west. As such, the semantic extensions of the root described here can be seen as strengthening the hypothesis that classificatory verbs emerged from other verb forms ([12]). [Extracted from the article]

Keywords: alternations; argument structure constructions; construction grammar; distributional semantics; vector space models EN alternations argument structure constructions construction grammar distributional semantics vector space models 35 64 30 02/14/22 20220201 NES 220201 1 Introduction In a paper exploring the competing motivations behind the organisation of argument structure constructions, John Du Bois concludes that "Grammars code best what speakers do most" ([3]: 363); that is, language follows speakers' experiences and perception of the world. The argument presented in [6] reconciles the verb-centred and the construction-centred approaches, as it is quite plausible that speakers are aware both of a verb's possible distribution across various argument structure constructions and of generalisations at (a) more abstract level(s). In another vein, [20] focuses on verb senses rather than simply verb lemmas in her analysis of periphrastic causative constructions and finds that different verb senses are attracted to different constructions. According to [21], argument structure constructions contribute meaning to the verb they occur with, and verbs profile a certain aspect of the basic event denoted by the construction. These clusters sometimes signal different verb senses (cf. I break i and I tear i ) or show that even when the verb meaning remains constant across most uses of the verb, certain kinds of themes are restricted to one construction (cf. I crease, crinkle i and I wrinkle i ). [Extracted from the article]

Signed languages employ finely articulated facial and head displays to express grammatical meanings such as mood and modality, complex propositions (conditionals, causal relations, complementation), information structure (topic, focus), assertions, content and yes/no questions, imperatives, and miratives. In this paper we examine two facial displays: an upper face display in which the eyebrows are pulled together called brow furrow, and a lower face display in which the corners of the mouth are turned down into a distinctive configuration that resembles a frown or upside-down U-shape. Our analysis employs Cognitive Grammar, specifically the control cycle and its manifestation in effective control and epistemic control. Our claim is that effective and epistemic control are associated with embodied actions. Prototypical physical effective control requires effortful activity and the forceful exertion of energy and is commonly correlated with upper face activity, often called the "face of effort." The lower face display has been shown to be associated with epistemic indetermination, uncertainty, doubt, obviousness, and skepticism. We demonstrate that the control cycle unifies the diverse grammatical functions expressed by each facial display within a language, and that they express similar functions across a wide range of signed languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to symbol-manipulation approaches, Cognitive Linguistics offers a modal rather than an amodal account of meaning in language. From this perspective, the meanings attached to linguistic expressions, in the form of conceptualisations, have various properties in common with visual forms of representation. This makes Cognitive Linguistics a potentially useful framework for identifying and analysing language-image relations in multimodal texts. In this paper, we investigate language-image relations with a specific focus on intersemiotic convergence. Analogous with research on gesture, we extend the notion of co-text images and argue that images and language usages which are proximal to one another in a multimodal text can be expected to exhibit the same or consistent construals of the target scene. We outline some of the dimensions of conceptualisation along which intersemiotic convergence may be enacted in texts, including event-structure, viewpoint, distribution of attention and metaphor. We take as illustrative data photographs and their captions in online news texts covering a range of topics including immigration, political protests, and inter-state conflict. Our analysis suggests the utility of Cognitive Linguistics in allowing new potential sites of intersemiotic convergence to be identified and in proffering an account of language-image relations that is based in language cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes symmetric NPN constructions (e.g., day to day, face to face, step by step) qualitatively and quantitatively by examining data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, Mark. 2008–. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 570 million words, 1990–present. http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/). The constructions' frequency and productivity, as well as their semantics and extension potential (i.e., modification, complementation) is investigated (e.g., by conducting collostructional analysis). In terms of theoretical modeling, the paper takes a Usage-based, Cognitive Construction Grammar approach (UCCxG) and sketches the constructional network of this constructional family, postulating various constructional templates on different levels of specificity – among others – the existence of the following subtypes [CNsg,timeiafter CNsg,timei]Cx (e.g., day after day, night after night), [CNsg,measurementiby CNsg,measurementi]Cx (e.g., inch by inch, step by step) or [CNsg,bodypartito CNsg,bodyparti]Cx (e.g., skin to skin, shoulder to shoulder). We show how these templates are vertically and horizontally connected to each other. Ultimately, we argue that in a usage-based model which strives for cognitive plausibility it is not always feasible to postulate the entrenchment of an abstract overarching schema (i.e., a 'mothernode') like [CNi P CNi]Cx or even [N P N]Cx high up in the network. It is unlikely that speakers abstract such a general schema in a bottom-up acquisition process for this family. Rather, the NPN group is a constructional family characterized by many sister ties and by the absence of mother nodes from which information can be inherited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se constructions designate a set of polysemous constructions along a transitivity continuum marked by the clitic se that perform various functions: reflexive/reciprocal, middle, anticausative, passive, and impersonal. A counterpart of these constructions without the clitic – the null se construction – is also attested. Based on an extensive usage-feature and profile-based analysis, and using multivariate statistical methods, we analyze, considering Cognitive Grammar, the conceptual, structural, and lectal factors that determine the choice between overt and null se constructions. The results of the study show that the null constructions are far more frequent in Brazilian (BP) than in European Portuguese (EP). In BP, the focus on the moment of change is a crucial factor for the overt/null variation in reflexive/reciprocal, middle, anticausative, and impersonal constructions. If the moment of the change of state is profiled, the overt se construction is usually produced. If the moment of change is not profiled, the null se construction is preferred. External factors also play a role in the variation. Register is an important predictor for the observed variation of the anticausative construction, and the only predictor for the overt/null variation in the case of the passive construction. In EP, the null se variant is mainly limited to anticausative constructions. In all cases of null constructions, there is a shift to an absolute construal, which has an impact on the way that the transitivity continuum is conceptualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most native speakers of Spanish are intuitively able to construct correct structures with the marker 'se'. On the other hand, non-native speakers, even those at advanced proficiency levels, have difficulties producing most constructions with 'se'. This is hardly surprising as the marker 'se', one of the most common words in Spanish, can convey highly pragmatic nuances with a variety of functions that are still much debated among linguists. This study analyses some of the most used functions of the marker in the oral production of 18 Peninsular Spanish speakers from a multimodal Cognitive Grammar approach, identifying how gestures might be employed by speakers to create or clarify meaning. Our results confirm that gestures are used differently depending on the function of the marker. Middle voices where 'se' marks high levels of subject involvement and/or energy co-occur with related gestures, while middle voices or impersonal structures, where the involvement and/or energy is low, co-occur more often with unrelated gestures, if any. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of modality in Iranian Sign Language (ZEI) from a cognitive perspective, aimed at analyzing two linguistic channels: facial and manual. While facial markers and their grammatical functions have been studied in some sign languages, we have few detailed analyses of the facial channel in comparison with the manual channel in conveying modal concepts. This study focuses on the interaction between manual and facial markers. A description of manual modal signs is offered. Three facial markers and their modality values are also examined: squinted eyes, brow furrow, and downward movement of lip corners (horseshoe mouth). In addition to offering this first descriptive analysis of modality in ZEI, this paper also applies the Cognitive Grammar model of modality, the Control Cycle, and the Reality Model, classifying modals into two kinds, effective and epistemic. It is suggested that effective control, including effective modality, tends to be expressed on the hands, while facial markers play an important role in marking epistemic assessment, one manifestation of which is epistemic modality. ZEI, like some other sign languages, exhibits an asymmetry between the number of manual signs and facial markers expressing epistemic modality: while the face can be active in the expression of effective modality, it is commonly the only means of expressing epistemic modality. By positing an epistemic core in effective modality, Cognitive Grammar provides a theoretical basis for these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounding refers to expressions that establish a connection between the ground and the content evoked by a nominal or finite clause. In this paper we report on two grammatical implementations of nominal grounding in Argentine Sign Language: pointing and placing. For pointing constructions, we also examine distal-proximal pointing and directive force. We introduce the concept of placing, in which a sign is produced at a specific meaningful location in space. Two types of placing are discussed: Placing-for-Creating, in which a new meaningful location is created, and Placing-by-Recruiting, which recruits an existing meaningful location. We suggest that our analysis of pointing and placing provides an account of nominal grounding unified by general cognitive principles as described within the theory of Cognitive Grammar. Pointing is known to occur in all signed languages studied to date. Although previously undocumented, we suggest that placing is also common to many, perhaps all, signed languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study uses principles from Cognitive Grammar to better account for the symbolic integration of gesture and speech. Drawing on data collected from language use, we examine the use of two attention-directing strategies that are expressed through gesture, beats and pointing. It has been claimed that beats convey no semantic information. We propose that beat gestures are symbolic structures. It has also been noted that beats are often overlaid on other gestures. To date, however, no detailed explanation has been offered to account for the conceptual and phonological integration of beats with other co-expressed gestures. In this paper, we explore the integration of beats and pointing gestures as complex gestural expressions. We find that simple beat gestures, as well as beat gestures co-expressed with pointing gestures, are used to direct attention to meanings in speech that are associated with salient components of stancetaking acts. Our account further reveals a symbolic motivation for the apparent "superimposing" of beats onto pointing gestures. By closely examining actual usage events, we take an initial step toward demonstrating how the symbolic elements of both beats and points are integrated in multimodal constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two most common constructions with the French preposition depuis 'since, for' represent alternate temporal conceptualizations of events. The temporal point (TP) construction situates events with respect to a starting point in the past from which mental scanning tracks to the present. The temporal duration (TD) construction situates events by reference to their duration. Adoption of the Cognitive Grammar framework leads to the insight that all other depuis constructions are variations of the TP construction, while the TD construction is distinct in its construal of situations. This corpus study gives an account of how the TD construction developed as an extension of the TP construction starting in the fourteenth century, as well as a pragmatic analysis of the contexts that favor use of the TD construction in modern French. The findings show that the TD construction is nearly always used to emphasize duration for some communicative purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops an analysis of event/result nominals and gerundives from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. By reviewing the previous research, we first point out that these phenomena are much more flexible than the extant research claims. Moreover, widely accepted generalizations concerning the phenomena are, at best, only partially true. We demonstrate that the said flexibility is ascribed to two different types of construals: [1] mass-like construal accompanied by reification and [2] zone-activation or metonymic shift. Event nominals arise, without respect to the types of the nominal affixes, when the relationship profiled by a verb takes an internal perspective. Result nominals arise through zone activation or metonymic shift in addition to the reification of the verbal base. Several grounding strategies apply to both event and result nominals, thereby yielding different realizations of instances such as (in)definite and possessive. We show that our analysis can be systematically extended to gerundives, which permit limited grounding methods. We also demonstrate that V-to-N converted event nominals are accounted for unproblematically in our analysis because the rise of event nominals does not rely on the nominalizing affixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miller's (1956, The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review 63(2). 81-97) working memory (WM) capacity of around seven items, plus or minus two, was never found by usage-based linguists to be a recurrent pattern in language. Thus, it has not figured prominently in cognitive models of grammar. Upon reflection, this is somewhat unusual, since WM has been considered a fundamental cognitive domain for information processing in psychology, so one might have reasonably expected properties such as capacity constraints to be reflected in language use and structures derived from use. This paper proposes that Miller's (1956) number has not been particularly productive in usage-based linguistics because it turns out to have been an overestimate. A revised WM capacity has now superseded it within cognitive science, a 'magic number four plus or minus one' (Cowan 2001, The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(1). 87-185). This paper suggests, drawing on evidence from spoken language corpora and multiple languages, that a range of linguistic structures and patterns align with this revised capacity estimate, unlike Miller's (1956), ranging from phrasal verbs, idioms, n-grams, the lengths of intonation units and some abstract grammatical properties of phrasal categories and clause structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent groundbreaking work in cognitive linguistics has revealed the semantic complexity of motion metaphors of time and of temporal frames of reference. In most approaches the focus has been on the clause-level metaphorical meaning of expressions, such as Moving Ego ( We are approaching the end of the year) and Moving Time (both Ego-centered, as in The end of the year is approaching and field-based, as in Boxing Day follows Christmas Day). The detailed grammatical structure of these metaphorical expressions, on the other hand, has received less attention. Such details include both elements that contribute to the metaphorical meaning and those that have a non-metaphorical temporal function, e. g., tense and (central features of) aspect. I propose a model for the analysis of metaphorical expressions, building on earlier work in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the framework of Cognitive Grammar (CG). I approach the grammatical structure of metaphorical expressions by analyzing the interplay between veridical and metaphorical systems of expressing temporal relations. I argue that these systems relate to two relevant conceptualizations of time. Veridical time (VT) is the non-metaphorical conceptualization of time, where the processual profile of the clause-level metaphorical expression resides. A metaphorical path (MP) is the metaphorical conceptualization of time as a path occupied by the metaphorical motion. A motion metaphor of time tracks the mover's changing position on the MP against VT. I show how metaphorical expressions based on a motion verb differ from those based on a prepositional construction in grammatical and semantic terms, and how tense and aspect contribute to the conceptualization of the motion scenario. I argue that tense grounds the metaphorical motion event with respect to the speech event. All the participants in the motion event, as well as the metaphorical path itself, are present in each subsequent configuration tracked against VT by the conceptualizer. Thus tense has a wide scope over the motion scenario with Ego's 'now' as a reference point, while Ego's 'now' cannot serve for grounding of tense. This is why expressions such as * The meeting is difficult ahead of us are not acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns five French prepositions that mark an inclusion relation and are ordinarily considered to be synonyms of dans 'in'. The first is a simple preposition: parmi 'among'. The other four are complex prepositions built from nouns of internal location ( au centre de 'at the centre of', au milieu de 'in the middle of') and from names of body parts ( au cœur de 'at the heart of' and au sein de whose word-for-word translation is 'at the breast/bosom of' but stands for 'within' 'in' or 'among' depending on the context). We will examine them from two different, yet complementary points of view. As part of a statistical approach, we use an association measure to determine the distributional trends of each preposition. In addition, we explore in greater detail the semantic mechanisms brought into play using the theoretical framework of Cognitive Grammar. This double analysis leads us to demonstrate that these prepositions are far from synonymous and involve very different types of constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a case study of the so-called jer shift in Slavic, I argue that the Cognitive Commitment is essential for an adequate analysis of language change. While the 'social turn' and the 'quantitative turn' open up important perspectives and provide new opportunities for cognitive historical linguistics, the Cognitive Commitment remains essential because it facilitates elegant and insightful analyses and paves the way for more general hypotheses about language change. The jer shift is a prosodic change that originated in Late Common Slavic and spread to Old East Slavic in the twelfth century. This sound change involved the lax vowels /ĭ, ŭ/ (often referred to as jers or yers), which either disappeared or merged with /e, o/ depending on the prosodic environment. Contrary to traditional practice, I argue that the jer shift should be analyzed in terms of trochaic feet, i. e., rhythmic groups of two syllables, where the leftmost syllable is prominent. This account is psychologically realistic, as dictated by the Cognitive Commitment, since rhythmic grouping is a fundamental property of human cognition (Nathan 2015. Phonology. In Ewa Dąbrowska & Dagmar Divjak (eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics, 253-273. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton and Ding et al. 2016. Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech. Nature Neuroscience 19. 158-164). While the Cognitive Commitment is essential for historical linguistics, one important limitation deserves mention. Historical changes such as the jer shift can be represented as 'sound laws', i. e., statements that summarize changes that span over many generations. Such statements are not about processes in the minds of individual speakers or speech communities at any point in time. They are therefore not directly relevant for the Cognitive Commitment, but are nevertheless among the most valuable tools historical linguists have at their disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Cognitive Linguistics represents a recontextualization with respect to prior tradition, internally it has been diverse and grounded from the outset. In design and principle, this holds for Cognitive Grammar, which seeks a comprehensive yet unified account of structure and use. It foreshadowed the 'social turn' by claiming that the speaker-hearer interaction is inherent in linguistic units, which are abstracted from usage events; and also the 'quantitative turn', by its usage-based nature and the view that structure resides in processing activity. There is no single way of describing a language, just as there is no single way of describing a biological organism. Linguistics is thus a vast, multifaceted enterprise embracing a wide range of objectives, methods, and expertise. A number of points are made in this regard. (i) While corpus analysis is essential for many purposes, elicited and introspective data also have their place. (ii) With no inconsistency, language is validly characterized as both a cognitive/mental phenomenon and a social/interactive one. (iii) The fact that language resides in processing activity does not entail the absence of discreteness or the non-existence of complex structures. (iv) The importance of quantitative methods does not obviate the central role of structural analysis and description, which have equal claim to being empirical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I will argue that the cognitive-linguistic enterprise should step up its efforts to embrace the social and pragmatic dimensions of language. This claim will be derived from a survey of the premises and promise of the cognitive-linguistic approach to the study of language and be defended in more detail on logical and empirical grounds. Key elements of a usage-based emergentist socio-cognitive approach known as Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (, ) will be presented in order to demonstrate how social and pragmatic aspects can be integrated and operationalized in a cognitive-linguistic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive Linguistics should complement the Cognitive Commitment with a Sociosemiotic Commitment: a commitment to make one's account of human language accord with the status of language as a social semiotic, i. e., as an intersubjective, historically and socially variable tool, and to base that account on a methodology that likewise transcends the individual. By looking at defining features of Cognitive Linguistics (its cognitive orientation, and its usage-based character), it is argued that the relevance of the Sociosemiotic Commitment derives from the very essence of Cognitive Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between typology and Cognitive Linguistics was first posed in the 1980s, in terms of the relationship between Greenbergian universals and the knowledge of the individual speaker. An answer to this question emerges from understanding the role of linguistic variation in language, from occasions of language use to typological diversity. This in turn requires the contribution of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary historical linguistics as well as typology and Cognitive Linguistics. While Cognitive Linguistics is part of this enterprise, a theory of language that integrates all of these approaches is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its conception, Cognitive Linguistics as a theory of language has been enjoying ever increasing success worldwide. With quantitative growth has come qualitative diversification, and within a now heterogeneous field, different - and at times opposing - views on theoretical and methodological matters have emerged. The historical 'prototype' of Cognitive Linguistics may be described as predominantly of mentalist persuasion, based on introspection, specialized in analysing language from a synchronic point of view, focused on West-European data (English in particular), and showing limited interest in the social and multimodal aspects of communication. Over the past years, many promising extensions from this prototype have emerged. The contributions selected for the Special Issue take stock of these extensions along the cognitive, social and methodological axes that expand the cognitive linguistic object of inquiry across time, space and modality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a usage-based, Cognitive Grammar analysis of Place as a symbolic structure in signed languages. We suggest that many signs are better viewed as constructions in which schematic or specific formal properties are extracted from usage events alongside specific or schematic meaning. We argue that pointing signs are complex constructions composed of a pointing device and a Place, each of which are symbolic structures having form and meaning. We extend our analysis to antecedent-anaphora constructions and directional verb constructions. Finally, we discuss how the usage-based approach suggests a new way of understanding the relationship between language and gesture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given its usage-oriented character, Cognitive Grammar (CG) can be expected to be consonant with a multimodal, rather than text-only, perspective on language. Whereas several scholars have acknowledged this potential, the question as to how speakers' gestures can be incorporated in CG-based grammatical analysis has not been conclusively addressed. In this paper, we aim to advance the CG-gesture relationship. We first elaborate on three important points of convergence between CG and gesture research: (1) CG's conception of grammar as a prototype category, with central and more peripheral structures, aligns with the variable degrees to which speakers' gestures are conventionalized in human communication. (2) Conceptualization, which lies at the basis of grammatical organization according to CG, is known to be of central importance for gestural expression. In fact, all of the main dimensions of construal postulated in CG (specificity, perspective, profile-base relationship, conceptual archetypes) receive potential gestural expression. (3) CG's intensive use of diagrammatic notation allows for the incorporation of spatial features of gestures. Subsequently, we demonstrate how CG can be applied to analyze the structure of multimodal, spoken-gestured utterances. These analyses suggest that the constructs and tools developed by CG can be employed to analyze the compositionality that exists within a single gesture (between conventional and more idiosyncratic components) as well as in the grammatical relations that may exist between gesture and speech. Finally, we raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Cognitive Construction Grammar (CCxG), I present an analysis of the pluralization of haber in Dominican Spanish (e.g. Habían fiestas 'There were parties') as an ongoing language change from below during which the singular argument-structure construction (< AdvP haber Obj>) is being replaced by a pluralized schema (< AdvP haber Subj>). Using a mixed-effects regression analysis, in which the individual speakers and the NPs' head nouns were included as random intercepts, I show that speakers pluralize presentational haber in 47% of the cases and that the variation is conditioned by three general cognitive constraints (markedness of coding, structural priming, and statistical pre-emption). Using a conditional inference tree, I show that the former two cognitive constraints work in tandem to promote the pluralized construction for the encoding of conceptualizations that statistical preemption tends to reserve to the singular construction. The results also unveil that the variation is associated with social class membership. These data confirm the main hypothesis, while at the same time corroborating and strengthening the conclusions of an earlier investigation of haber pluralization in Puerto Rican Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]