认知语义学研究的实证转向

The Empirical Turn in the Study of Cognitive Semantics

尽管早期的认知语言学家没有提出一个实证的研究路线,但是他们提出的理论为实证研究打下基础。另外,语言现象的复杂性须要采用多因素的分析方法,许多语言学家开始把多元统计方法运用到语言分析中。在这种背景下,近来的认知语义学研究开始出现一种实证的转向。本文主要探讨这一转向产生的背景和动因,并讨论定量语料库驱动的认知语义学以及在这一领域所流行的两种研究方法。

Despite the fact that early cognitive linguists didn’t develop an empirical approach of research, their theories established a cornerstone for empirical linguistic study. Additionally, linguistic complexity needs a multifactorial approach, so many linguists have begun applying multivariate statistics to language analysis. In this context, the recent studies of cognitive semantics have begun to have an empirical turn. This paper mainly discusses the background and motivation of the turn. It also discusses the quantitative corpus-driven cognitive semantics and the two popular approaches within the field.