The monograph under review seeks a fine-grained description of meaning construction and interpretation process and their underlying cognitive mechanisms.Footnote [1] It explores a comprehensive and unified framework of analysis following the trend of conceptual unification in the current development of cognitive linguistics, and establishes an overall apparatus distinguished by the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) to account for emergence of meaning in different domains of linguistic enquiry.
The monograph is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 presents two central goals of this book: (i) to identify different kinds of cognitive operations and the cognitive model types on which they can work, and (ii) to provide linguistic evidence that cognitive operations underlie the comprehension of utterances at different levels of meaning representation. The LCM comprises four descriptive layers of meaning construction: argument structure, implicature, illocution and discourse relations. Within the LCM, linguistic descriptions are aimed at achieving an integration of layered accounts, communicative frameworks and motivational factors realized in structures. Following the constructional view of semantic description (Goldberg Reference Goldberg2006), the LCM proposes that ‘meaning representation at any level may take constructional or inferential paths or a combination of the two’ (7).
Chapter 2 demonstrates basic tenets advocated by the LCM and a general overview of figurative uses of language. Being opposed to what Chomsky means by the term ‘explanatory adequacy’, the authors propose that ‘explanatory adequacy requires motivation that may be external to the formal aspects of language’ (22). The notion of ‘pragmatic adequacy’ has also been cited as a complementary level of adequacy for the LCM. The framework per se embeds pragmatic categories within explanations of utterances and constructions, meaning that inferential activities are inherent in the interpretation of implicated or illocutionary meanings. To illustrate the usage-based nature of the LCM, more details of its four broad descriptive layers are presented in this chapter. For example, the interpretation of what’s X doing Y (e.g. What’s the child doing in the kitchen?) requires a unified account exploiting pragmatic dimensions from both levels 2 and 3. Two major explanatory tools of the LCM, amalgamation and subsumption, specify the integration processes within and across levels to produce complex meaning representations. This chapter also critically reviews previous approaches to figurative language, paving the way for discussions in later chapters.
Chapter 3 concentrates on cognitive model types employed by different levels of the LCM. The LCM typology of cognitive models uses two taxonomic criteria: level of description (primary, low-level or high-level), and whether a model is propositional or situational. These models underlie ‘not only the semantic base of lexical predicates and constructions but also language users’ inferential ability’ (Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez Reference Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Nolan and Diedrichsen2013: 243). In the authors’ view, concepts that are directly grounded in our sensory experience are primary cognitive models. Low-level cognitive models originate from our specific, concrete knowledge constructs based on our direct experience with and conceptualization of the world, consisting in non-generic semantic structures. High-level cognitive models, on the contrary, are obtained ‘by abstraction of the conceptual material shared by low-level cognitive models’ (64). Propositional cognitive models capture entities and their properties/relations in non-situational contexts, whereas situational cognitive models reflect sequences of events that are related to each other closely and coherently, consisting of a series of propositional models. The two taxonomic cognitive model types above often combine to form more complex cognitive models. For example, low-level propositional models can be eventive or non-eventive, and high-level situational models are related to abstract illocutionary scenarios and the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model posed by the authors. Meanwhile, each descriptive level of the LCM draws upon one cognitive model type. At level 1, lexical templates make use of low-level propositional models while constructional templates make use of primary and high-level propositional models. Levels 2 and 3 are based on low-level and high-level situational cognitive models/scenarios respectively. Level 4 employs logical, temporal or conceptual connections between primary or high-level cognitive models.
Chapter 4 addresses cognitive operations behind the meaning construction process. The authors make a distinction between two broad kinds of operations: formal and content cognitive operations, with the former being distinguished into five subtypes and the latter seven subtypes. The formal and content operations combine to constitute more complex and evident cognitive operations, such as metaphor and metonymy. Metaphoric complexes are distinguished by two interactional patterns: metaphoric amalgams and metaphoric chains. Metonymy presupposes the substitution process, which is more specifically manifested as the content operations of domain expansion and domain reduction. Two (or more) conceptual metonymies combine to form metonymic complexes, where four patterns of metonymic interaction are identified: double metonymic expansion, double metonymic reduction, metonymic reduction plus metonymic expansion, and metonymic expansion plus metonymic reduction. The authors argue that these different metonymic chains may be operational either at the lexical level or at the grammatical level. For example, the category conversion of head from a noun to a verb draws upon the process of double metonymic expansion, incorporating successive low-level domain expansion (BODY PART FOR LEADER) and high-level domain expansion (AGENT FOR ACTION). This chapter also expounds detailed patterns of metaphor-metonymy combinations as well as constraints on formal and content operations.
Chapter 5 presents a more exhaustive account of the content operations introduced in Chapter 4 and explores ‘the pervasiveness of each cognitive operation at different levels of linguistic enquiry’ (147). Each content operation achieves very different meaning effects at different levels of the LCM, like domain expansion at level 1 underlying the interpretation of utterances like The book is yours (RESULT FOR ACTION metonymy). However, more complicated scenarios are activated when analyzing utterances at level 2 or 3, whose implications or illocutionary meanings are to be inferred in terms of the cooperation between domain expansion and reduction. The interpretation of Did they have a successful hunt? Jim is a great shot at level 2 requires the combination of a low-level hunting scenario with two premise-conclusion reasoning schemas that exploit high-level metonymic chains (ABILITY FOR ACTION FOR RESULT) abstracted from concrete elements within the hunting scenario. Generally, both situational-based implicatures and illocutionary acts are supported by domain expansion plus reduction operations. Correlation and comparison operations underlie primary metaphors and resemblance metaphors respectively. Echoing is active at all the descriptive levels to demonstrate various communicative situations and pragmatic effects, including (in)direct speech reports, irony and paraphrases. Based on the LCM, meaning implications of hyperbole and understatement are accordingly constructed in terms of strengthening and mitigation operations at the implicational level. Discussions in this chapter strongly support the Equipollence Hypothesis, according to which ‘linguistic processes that have been attested in one domain of linguistic enquiry may also be at least partially active in other domains’ (29).
This monograph contributes to meaning construction in language with regard to the following points. Firstly, since cognitive linguistics does not constitute a single, homogenous theory system, it nowadays seeks to combine multidimensional insights and perspectives for the purpose of achieving conceptual unification. ‘Language is such that linguistic research is necessarily multifaceted, as will be an eventual overall synthesis’ (Langacker Reference Langacker2016: 474). The LCM exploits its descriptive and explanatory tools from distinct orientations of other linguistic schools, embracing functional, cognitive and pragmatic approaches. In this respect, linguistic researchers in different areas are likely to discover illuminating ideas that fit with their needs. The cognitive modeling provides a holistic approach to language in use from the lexical to discourse level and the motivating factors underlying it, revealing that an analysis of every utterance can go from the lowest to the highest descriptive layer. Therefore, cognitive linguists are endowed with a powerful analytic tool to link up linguistic structure with discourse and to give a full, multifaceted account of a speech act ‘grounded’ in the speech event, highlighting communicative functions of language as well as speaker-hearer interactions in particular. The authors have effectively shown the pervasiveness of cognitive operations and expanded their scope of application by listing convincing examples, inspiring readers to realize that cognitive operations indeed reside in the dynamicity of language. Since ‘sentences do not occur in isolation but within a communicative setting’ (Benczes Reference Benczes2015: 492), the LCM contributes significantly in this regard.
Secondly, the LCM develops previous construction grammar approaches. Though recognizing a construction as a form-meaning pairing and admitting the whole constructional meaning is not that transparent, the LCM ‘does not correlate the notion of entrenchment with frequency of occurrence’ but sees it ‘in terms of degree of conventionalization’ (36). Meanwhile, the concept of ‘construction’ adopted by the LCM particularly emphasizes inferential mechanisms and specific communicative contexts since previous studies of constructional types somewhat ignore the pragmatic aspects of constructions. With some scholars calling for the establishment of Construction Pragmatics to spell out the pragmatic issues of constructions (Wen Reference Wen2017), this monograph makes an attempt to explore constructions with reference to pragmatics and discourse, presenting how meaning arises from the combination of constructional characterizations with guided inferential activities. At level 2 for instance, they argue for the emergence of implicational constructions, where low-level situation-based meaning can become conventionally paired with a given linguistic form, just like who’s been doing X, whose meaning implication is obtained inferentially but also finally becomes part of the constructional meaning through entrenchment. Now that grammatical units require hearers to infer the speaker’s complete intended meaning (Benczes Reference Benczes2015), the monograph echoes this statement by providing a more tightly controlled and fully-fledged specification of linguistic elements, and by postulating metaphoric, metonymic and other processes that are operational within the process of pragmatic inferencing. Another issue is that ‘figures of speech other than metaphor and metonymy have hardly been studied within the cognitive-linguistic framework’ (Radden et al. Reference Radden, Köpcke, Berg, Siemund, Radden, Köpcke, Berg and Siemund2007: 8), but this monograph makes substantial efforts to provide detailed accounts of the cognitive processes that operate in the creation of many other figurative uses of language, all of which seem to be a breakthrough for the interface study between rhetoric and cognitive linguistics.
Thirdly, the book highlights the role of ‘genericity’ in meaning construction and interpretation. Deriving common structure from a series of cognitive models (through the formal operation of ‘abstraction’) helps to shape conceptualizers’ general modes of conceptualization as well as interactional patterns with the world, hence they are likely to get the hang of new cases in specific contexts by specifying these generic conceptual materials (through the content operation of ‘parameterization’). This chained combination of such operations integrates low-level and high-level elements into a broader picture in which metonymic domain expansion plus reduction is seen in relation to various phenomena at all descriptive levels. In this sense, the use of GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC metonymy not only manifests itself in lexical expressions, but also lends itself to illocutionary scenarios whose high-level elements ‘are parameterized by low-level concepts derived from the context of situation or from previous discourse’ (157). By and large, some generic structure is capable of providing access to more specific configurations, the selection of which is guided by cued inferencing. This book also clarifies the fundamental status and pervasiveness of metonymy. Cognitive linguists conventionally treat metonymy as a separate linguistic and conceptual phenomenon to explore its direct linguistic manifestations, its classifications, its referential functions, etc. But in this book studies on the descriptive and communicative dimensions of language are of guiding significance for recognizing and stressing the general function of metonymy in inferential activities. In treating metonymy as natural inference schemas and inferential pathways, the book captures the role it plays in guiding interlocutors to construct the meanings of linguistic expressions, as well as in helping to shape or motivate grammatical structures.
In sum, this monograph offers several intriguing proposals, appealing to different types of readership. The LCM architecture fully describes the process of meaning construction from a global, encompassing perspective. Now that ‘underspecification is an essential feature of language in use’ (Radden et al. Reference Radden, Köpcke, Berg, Siemund, Radden, Köpcke, Berg and Siemund2007: 3), the monograph makes remarkable attempts in search of ways of constructing underspecified meanings, where the activation of scenarios (situational models) and metonymic operations are crucially linked to the specifications of the conceptualizations that linguistic units code.
