Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space

This book, intended primarily for researchers and advanced students, expands greatly on previous work by the authors exploring the topography of the multidimensional "functional-cognitive space" within which functional, cognitive and/or constructionist approaches to language can be located. The analysis covers a broad range of 16 such approaches, with some additional references to Chomskyan minimalism, and is based on 58 questionnaire items, each rated by 29 experts on particular models for their importance in the model concerned. These ratings are analysed statistically to reveal overall patterns of (dis)similarity across models. The questionnaire ratings and experts' comments are then used, together with the authors' close reading of the literature, in detailed discussion leading to a final dichotomous rating for each feature in each model, the results again being analysed statistically. The final chapter presents the overall conclusions and suggests how existing collaborations between approaches could be strengthened, and new ones created, in future research.