Comment la linguistique est (re)devenue cognitive

Abstract

This paper describes the birth of the conglomerate of interconnected views that is known as cognitive linguistics. In today's parlance, "cognitive linguistics" refers to a movement that was born in the United Sates in the 1970s and progressively took shape in the work of linguists who wished to break away from generative grammar. Although generative grammar was initially perceived by some linguists as a liberating new framework, which made it possible again to explore semantic matters and the mapping of meaning to forms, it soon became clear to the same linguists that the Chomskyan school was not taking generative grammar in that direction. The dissident approach which resulted from their alternative point of view, generative semantics, anticipated and, to a certain extent, prepared the split between cognitive linguistics and the Chomskyan paradigm. Both steps, -the generative semantics period and the ensuing move to cognitive linguistics -are retraced here. In the second part of the paper, the move to cognitive linguistics (or various brands of it) is examined in some detail for four linguists who had all at one point views sympathetic to generative semantics and played a major role in the constitution of cognitive linguistics (Chafe, Talmy, Lakoff and Langacker). The last part describes how the reawakening of semantics and of an empiricist view of cognition favored the adoption of prototype theory and promoted metaphor as an important field of inquiry. Since prototype theory and metaphor have been linked to psychology and general views on cognition, it is appropriate at that point to discuss the interactions between linguistics and cognitive science.