cognitive linguistics

Cognitive linguistics is an approach to the study of language that encompasses a number of complementary and sometimes overlapping theories. Their defining characteristic is the guiding assumption that linguistic patterns are patterns of conceptualization. Thus, cognitive linguists consider that the study of language provides insight into other human cognitive functions and vice-versa. In this regard, cognitive linguistics challenges generative grammar's hypothesis that some basic linguistic competence is innate and separate from other cognitive faculties. It also objects to truth-conditional semantics's notion that linguistic meaning can be understood in terms of the truth or falsity of a sentence in relation to an external reality.

Cognitive linguistic theories include George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), Ronald Langacker's cognitive grammar, Charles Fillmore's frame semantics, Leonard Talmy's force dynamics, and Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner's conceptual blending.