Full Description
This book, intended primarily for researchers and advanced students, expands greatly on previous work by the authors exploring the topography of the multidimensional "functional-cognitive space" within which functional, cognitive and/or constructionist approaches to language can be located. The analysis covers a broad range of 16 such approaches, with some additional references to Chomskyan minimalism, and is based on 58 questionnaire items, each rated by 29 experts on particular models for their importance in the model concerned. These ratings are analysed statistically to reveal overall patterns of (dis)similarity across models. The questionnaire ratings and experts' comments are then used, together with the authors' close reading of the literature, in detailed discussion leading to a final dichotomous rating for each feature in each model, the results again being analysed statistically. The final chapter presents the overall conclusions and suggests how existing collaborations between approaches could be strengthened, and new ones created, in future research.
Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space has been awarded the 2016 prize of the Spanish Association for Applied Linguistics (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada, AESLA) for work by experienced researchers.
Contents
1. Acknowledgment; 2. Abbreviations for models; 3. Figures and Tables; 4. Chapter 1. Introduction; 5. Chapter 2. Profiles; 6. Chapter 3. Features for the characterization of models: The questionnaire; 7. Chapter 4. Statistical analysis of the questionnaire data; 8. Chapter 5. Characterization of models: Introduction; communication and motivation; 9. Chapter 6. Characterization of models: Coverage; 10. Chapter 7. Characterization of models: The database for description; 11. Chapter 8. Characterization of models: Explanation; 12. Chapter 9. Characterization of models: The form of the grammar; 13. Chapter 10. Characterization of models: Applications; 14. Chapter 11. Statistical analysis of final ratings; 15. Chapter 12. Compatibilities and contrasts; 16. References
