Cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language teaching

This collection of twelve papers illustrates how concepts from the Cognitive Linguistics movement provide valuable insights into second language acquisition and pedagogy. The first part presents three papers that analyze second language acquisition data through Cognitive Linguistics constructs. The first paper discusses Talmy's typology of motion events as a framework for investigating discrepancies in motion event acquisition. The second paper uses the notion of "construction" to explain differences in the use of the English verb "get" between native and non-native speakers. The third paper highlights the importance of frequency and similarity effects in learning prepositions in a second language. The second part of the collection demonstrates how key concepts from Cognitive Linguistics can help language teachers effectively present challenging material in foreign language classrooms. These concepts include polysemy, figure/ground gestalt, usage-based grammar, radial category organization, metaphors, and cultural scripts. This book establishes the relevance of the Cognitive Linguistics paradigm in analyzing linguistic phenomena and its application to second language acquisition and pedagogy. It is aimed at Cognitive Linguists, Second Language Acquisition specialists, and foreign language pedagogy researchers, instructors, and students.