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Involves meaning; the other two characteristics specify the nature of the semantic

phenomena in question. The primacy of semantics in linguistic analysis follows in a straightforward fashion from the cognitive perspective itself: if the primary function of language is categorization, then meaning must be the primary linguistic

phenomenon. The encyclopedic nature of linguistic meaning follows from the categorical function of language: if language is a system for the categorization of the world, there is no need to postulate a systemic or structural level of linguistic

meaning that is different from the level where world knowledge is associated with

linguistic forms. The perspectival nature of linguistic meaning implies that the world is not objectively reflected in the language: the categorization function of the language imposes a structure on the world rather than just mirroring objective reality.

Specifically, language is a way of organizing knowledge that reflects the needs, interests, and experiences of individuals and cultures. The idea that linguistic meaning has a perspectivizing function is theoretically elaborated in the philosophical, epistemological position taken by Cognitive Linguistics (see Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Geeraerts 1993). The experientialist position of Cognitive Linguistics vis-a`-vis human knowledge emphasizes the view that human reason is determined by our organic embodiment and by our individual and collective experiences.

Given this initial characterization of the cognitive nature of Cognitive Linguistics, we can now turn to the second question: how can it be that Cognitive Linguistics and Generative Grammar both proclaim themselves to be cognitive enterprises?

Essentially, the two approaches differ with regard to the epistemological role of natural language. They both agree (and this is their common cognitive parentage) that there can be no knowledge without the existence of a mental representation introducing cognitive linguistics 5 that has a constitutive, mediating role in the epistemological relationship between subject and object. But while, according to Cognitive Linguistics, natural languages precisely embody such categorial perspectives onto the outside world, the generative linguist takes natural language as the object of the epistemological relationship, rather than as the intermediate link between subject and object. Cognitive Linguistics is interested in our knowledge of the world and studies the question how natural language contributes to it. The generative linguist, conversely, is interested

In our knowledge of the language and asks the question how such

knowledge can be acquired given a cognitive theory of learning. As cognitive enterprises, Cognitive Linguistics and Generative Grammar are similarly interested in those mental structures that are constitutive of knowledge. For the Cognitive approach, natural language itself consists of such structures, and the relevant kind of knowledge is knowledge of the world. For the generative grammarian, however, the knowledge under consideration is knowledge of the language, and the relevant

mental structures are constituted by the genetic endowment of human beings that

enables them to learn the language. Whereas Generative Grammar is interested

in knowledge of the language, Cognitive Linguistics is so to speak interested in

knowledge through the language.

The characterization that we just gave of the ‘‘cognitive’’ nature of Cognitive Linguistics in comparison with the cognitive nature of Generative Grammar suggests that there are two ways in which a direct confrontation of Cognitive Linguistics and Generative Grammar can be achieved.

In the first place, taking into account the formalist stance of Generative Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics should try to show that an adequate description of the allegedly formal phenomena at the core of generative theory formation involve

semantic and functional factors that are beyond the self-imposed limits of the

generative framework. In this sense, Cognitive Linguistics is characterized by a

specific working hypothesis about natural language, namely, that much more in

natural language can be explained on semantic and functional grounds than has

hitherto been assumed (a working hypothesis that it shares, to be sure, with many

other pragmatically and functionally oriented linguistic theories). Any time a particular phenomenon turns out to involve cognitive functioning rather than just

formal syntax, the need to posit genetically given formal constraints on possible

syntactic constructions diminishes. A prime example of this type of argumentation

can be found in van Hoek’s chapter 34 of this Handbook.