Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar

In the last 25 years foreign language teaching has been able to increase its efficiency through an orientation towards authentic language materials, pragmatic language functions and interactive learning methods. However, so far foreign language teaching has lacked a sufficiently strong theoretical framework to support the teaching of language in all its aspects. Arguably, such a linguistic theory has to be usage-based and cognition-oriented. Since cognitive linguistics - and especially cognitive grammar - is concerned with conceptual issues against the larger background of human cognition and because it is based on actual language use, it becomes a powerful tool for dealing adequately with the main issues of a pedagogical grammar. A pedagogical grammar aims at providing all the essential linguistic patterns considered relevant by theoretical and descriptive linguistics for the preparation of teaching materials and their exploitation in foreign language instruction.

The volume contains thirteen contributions organized into three parts. In Part 1 Langacker, Taylor and Broccias introduce the basic grammar concepts, rules and models that are available in cognitive linguistics and which are directly relevant to the construction of a pedagogical grammar. Meunier, on the other hand, describes how such a grammar could benefit from corpus linguistics. Part 2 looks at some cognitive tools and conceptual errors with contributions by Danesi and Maldonado and also reconsiders contrastive analysis in the papers by Ruiz de Mendoza and Valenzuela & Rojo. Part 3, finally, discusses language-specific constraints on a number of linguistic phenomena such as the construal of motion events (papers by Cadierno and De Knop & Dirven), distinctions in the tense-aspect system (papers by Niemeier & Reif and Schmiedtová & Flecken), and voice (Chen & Oller).

1;Frontmatter;1 2;Table of contents;7 3;By way of introduction;11 4;The relevance of Cognitive Grammar for language pedagogy;17 5;Some pedagogical implications of cognitive linguistics;47 6;Cognitive linguistic theories of grammar and grammar teaching;77 7;Corpora, cognition and pedagogical grammars: An account of convergences and divergences;101 8;Cross-linguistic analysis, second language teaching and cognitive semantics: The case of Spanish diminutives and reflexive constructions;131 9;Spanish middle syntax: A usage-based proposal for grammar teaching;165 10;What can language learners tell us about constructions?;207 11;Conceptual errors in second-language learning;241 12;Motion events in Danish and Spanish: A focus-on-form pedagogical approach;269 13;Motion and location events in German, French and English: A typological, contrastive and pedagogical approach;305 14;Making progress simpler? Applying cognitive grammar to tense-aspect teaching in the German EFL classroom;335 15;Aspectual concepts across languages: Some considerations for second language learning;367 16;The use of passives and alternatives in English by Chinese speakers;395 17;Backmatter;427