Structural empiricist Cognitive Grammar
Hubert Kowalewski · Language Mind Culture and Society · 2019
The article sketches a structural empiricism approach to Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (CG). In philosophy of science, structural empiricism is a view on the goals of science and adopting this approach helps to solve important problems in methodology of CG and linguistics by and large. The article analyses three such problems. The first one is the evidence required for certain theoretical postulates of CG. From the structural empiricist perspective, purely theoretical concepts postulated by CG do not require evidence apart from the overall empirical adequacy of the theory. The second problem is the usefulness of diagrams used by Langacker as illustrations accompanying his analyses. On the syntactic view of scientific theories (compatible with structural empiricism), carefully designed diagrams can be mathematically rigorous formalizations of theoretical claims. The third problem is the legitimacy of constructed expressions in linguistic theorizing. In structural empiricism, constructed expressions can be treated similarly to idealizations in natural sciences, i.e. a cognitive grammarian may use them fruitfully for model-making without committing herself to the belief in their authenticity.