Cognitive Corpus Linguistics: five points of debate on current theory and methodology

TLDR

Cognitive linguistics increasingly relies on authentic, replicable corpus data, yet the indirect nature of offline linguistic evidence and unresolved methodological issues remain a concern. The note outlines five debated issues—convergence of corpus and experimental evidence, the representativeness of corpora for psychological reality, the theoretical value of alternations, the link to grammaticality judgments, and explanatory frameworks—calling for further discussion.

Abstract

Within cognitive linguistics, there is an increasing awareness that the study of linguistic phenomena needs to be grounded in usage. Ideally, research in cognitive linguistics should be based on authentic language use, its results should be replicable, and its claims falsifiable. Consequently, more and more studies now turn to corpora as a source of data. While corpus-based methodologies have increased in sophistication, the use of corpus data is also associated with a number of unresolved problems. The study of cognition through off-line linguistic data is, arguably, indirect, even if such data fulfils desirable qualities such as being natural, representative and plentiful. Several topics in this context stand out as particularly pressing issues. This discussion note addresses (1) converging evidence from corpora and experimentation, (2) whether corpora mirror psychological reality, (3) the theoretical value of corpus linguistic studies of ‘alternations’, (4) the relation of corpus linguistics and grammaticality judgments, and, lastly, (5) the nature of explanations in cognitive corpus linguistics. We do not claim to resolve these issues nor to cover all possible angles; instead, we strongly encourage reactions and further discussion.