Ten Lectures on Language As Cognition: A Multi-method Approach

Merging insights from cognitive linguistic theories of language and learning theories originating within psychology, Divjak and Milin present a new paradigm that has computational modelling at its core. They showcase the power of this interdisciplinary approach for linguistic theory, methodology and description. Through a series of detailed case studies that model usage of the English article system, the Polish aspectual system, English tense/aspect contrasts and the Serbian case system they show how computational models anchored in learning can provide a simple and comprehensive account of how intricate phenomena that have long defied a unified treatment could be learned from exposure to usage alone. As such, their models form the basis for a first rigorous test of a core assumption of usage-based linguistics: that of the emergence of structure from use.

Dagmar Divjak obtained her Ph.D. in 2004 from KU Leuven (Belgium). She is a Professor of Cognitive Linguistics and Language Cognition at the University of Birmingham, UK. Among other things, she is the author of Frequency in Language (2019, CUP), Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognitive Linguistics (2018-) and Co-Editor of the Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (Mouton De Gruyter, 2015/2019).

Petar Milin obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Belgrade (Serbia). He is a Professor of the Psychology of Language and Language learning at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the third edition of Elsevier’s Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, and Consulting Editor for Methodology and Registered Reports of the journal Cognitive Linguistics (2018-).