Editing Cognitive linguistics (section)

====Cognitive and construction grammar====

''Constructions'', as the basic units of grammar, are conventionalised form–meaning pairings which are comparable to [[memes]] as units of linguistic evolution.<ref name="Dahl_2001">{{cite journal |last=Dahl |first=Östen |date=2001 |title=Grammaticalization and the life cycles of constructions |journal=RASK – Internationalt Tidsskrift for Sprog og Kommunikation |volume=14 |pages=91–134 }}</ref><ref name=Kirby_2013>{{cite book |last=Kirby|first=Simon |chapter=Transitions: The Evolution of Linguistic Replicators |editor-last1=Binder |editor-last2=Smith |year=2013 |title=The Language Phenomenon |series=The Frontiers Collection |publisher=Springer |url=http://www.labex-whoami.fr/images/documents/kirby_Labex_JC_paper.pdf |pages=121–138 |doi=10.1007/978-3-642-36086-2_6 |isbn=978-3-642-36085-5 |access-date=2020-03-04}}</ref><ref name=Zehentner_2019>{{cite book |last=Zehentner |first=Eva |year=2019 |title=Competition in Language Change: the Rise of the English Dative Alternation |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |isbn=978-3-11-063385-6 }}</ref><ref name="MacWhinney_2015">{{cite book |last=MacWhinney |first=Brian|editor-last1=MacWhinney |editor-first1=Brian |editor-last2=O'Grady |editor-first2=William|title=Handbook of Language Emergence |publisher=Wiley |date=2015 |pages=1–31 |chapter=Introduction – language emergence |isbn=978-1-118-34613-6 }}</ref> These are considered multi-layered. For example, [[idiom|idioms]] are higher-level constructions which contain words as middle-level constructions, and these may contain [[morpheme|morphemes]] as lower-level constructions. It is argued that humans do not only share the same body type, allowing a common ground for embodied representations; but constructions provide common ground for uniform expressions within a speech community.<ref name="Clark_2015">{{cite book |last=Clark |first=Eve |editor-last1=MacWhinney |editor-first1=Brian |editor-last2=O'Grady |editor-first2=William |title=Handbook of Language Emergence |publisher=Wiley |date=2015 |pages=1–31 |chapter=Common ground |isbn=978-1-118-34613-6 }}</ref> Like biological organisms, constructions have [[Biological life cycle|life cycles]] which are studied by linguists.<ref name="Dahl_2001" />

According to the cognitive and ''constructionist'' view, there is no grammar in the traditional sense of the word. What is commonly perceived as grammar is an inventory of constructions; a [[complex adaptive system]];<ref name="Ellis_2011">{{cite book |last=Ellis |first=Nick C. |date=2011 |editor-last1=Simpson |editor-first1=James |title=Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics |chapter=The emergence of language as a Complex Adaptive System |pages=666–679 |citeseerx=10.1.1.456.3740 |isbn=978-0-203-83565-4 }}</ref> or a population of constructions.<ref name="Arbib_2008">{{cite book |last=Arbib |first=Michael A. |date=2008 |editor-last1=Arbib |editor-first1=Michael A. |editor-last2=Bickerton |editor-first2=Derek |title=The Emergence of Protolanguage |chapter=Holophrasis and the protolanguage spectrum |pages=666–679 |isbn=978-90-272-8782-3 }}</ref> Constructions are studied in all fields of language research from [[language acquisition]] to [[corpus linguistics]].<ref name="Ellis_2011" />