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This book presents a thorough overview of Cognitive Grammar, the framework Ronald Langacker has been developing since the 1970s within the broader tradition of cognitive linguistics. Cognitive Grammar's most fundamental claim is that 'grammar is symbolic in nature', which Langacker ironically refers to as an 'outrageous proposal' (5). Cognitive Grammar may seem unorthodox from the perspective of American structuralism and generative grammar, and follows more closely in the European linguistic tradition of Saussure, to whom Langacker curiously does not refer. I suspect that scholars trained in this tradition, especially in eastern parts of Europe, will find Langacker's focus on grammar as symbolic signs both natural and persuasive, considering the epithet 'outrageous' more appropriate for proposals in contemporary generative grammar.
Although Cognitive Grammar is radically different from Chomskyan generative linguistics in many important respects, both frameworks are mentalist in orientation, insofar as they focus on language as a cognitive phenomenon. However, whereas in the Chomskyan tradition it has been customary to consider language an autonomous module of the mind, Cognitive Grammar and cognitive linguistics in general seek to describe language as an 'integral facet of cognition' (8). Langacker is nevertheless careful to point out that intermediate positions are possible and indeed compatible with Cognitive Grammar. He suggests that to the extent that 'our genetic endowment makes specific provisions for language', these provisions are likely to be 'adaptations of more basic cognitive phenomena' (8).
It is important to note that Langacker's position on the autonomy issue has profound methodological consequences and involves a number of empirical claims. Langacker's methodology is to characterize linguistic phenomena in terms of well-attested mental capacities that are not unique to language. For instance, in Cognitive Grammar 'grammatical subject' is defined in terms of the notion 'trajector', which is based on our ability to focus and shift attention. Analyzing a wide range of phenomena in this way, Langacker makes a persuasive case for Cognitive Grammar.
At first sight, Cognitive Grammar may appear unconstrained since Langacker's focus is not on imposing arbitrary constraints on representations. However, an important restriction in Cognitive Grammar is the 'content requirement', the thrust of which is explained as follows:
[T]he linguistic knowledge we ascribe to...