Cognitive Linguistics and the Second

Language Classroom
RANDAL HOLME
Hong Kong Institute of Education
Hong Kong

Cognitive Linguistics (CL) makes the functional assumption that form

is motivated by meaning. CL also analyses form-meaning pairings as
products of how cognition structures perception. CL thus helps tea-
chers to fit language to the nature of the cognition that learns whilst
devising modes of instruction that are better attuned to the nature of
the language that has to be learnt. This paper argues that facets of a
new approach are starting to emerge and that these can be broadly iso-
lated according to four principles that comprise: embodied learning,
conceptualization, the lexico-grammatical continuum, and usage. The
principles interact one with another to consolidate the use of some
older classroom methods and to point towards new ways of analyzing
and presenting English lexis and grammar. They also set down key
principles to direct research into classroom learning.
doi: 10.1002/tesq.5

T aking the functional assumption that lexical as well as grammatical

forms should be analysed as motivated by meaning, Cognitive Lin-
guistics (CL) promises a more direct impact on language teaching
than do formal approaches (Langacker, 2008, p. 67). CL treats gram-
mar and lexis as poles of the same semantic continuum and assumes
that a language’s mental and social representations are the same. Any
“poverty” in the linguistic stimulus is compensated by the richness of
the substrata, or by the perceptual structures of an embodied cogni-
tion and the imagery that they create from experience (Feldman,
2006). CL thus explores meaning not as grasped directly from the
world but as conceptualised out of the way our bodies and minds shape
our perceptions, looking at how language encodes the different per-
spectives from which an embodied cognition construes the same scene.
The response of our common anatomy to such environmental features
as gravity, temperature, form, and substance ensures that different
languages and cultures construe reality through similar imagery. But
our environments and our experiences of them also differ in some
aspects, ensuring variation in how cultures and languages construe the
world. CL therefore treats language learning as (a) matching new

6 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 46, No. 1, March 2012

© 2012 TESOL International Association
forms to already acquired meanings, (b) understanding the new mean-
ings of new forms, and (c) looking at reality from the new perspectives
that these meanings sometimes require (Slobin, 1996).
Deriving a pedagogical perspective from CL faces two initial hur-
dles, however. First, any evolved form of language pedagogy must treat
language as text. Although informed by a functional or social view
of language, CL’s attempts to tackle discourse have so far been
fragmentary. The other problem is that CL itself is not entirely unified
in its approach. The deepest difference concerns the status of grammat-
ical categories. In Langacker’s (1987) Cognitive Grammar approach,
nouns and verbs are categories derived from our experience of the
world. In Croft’s (2001) Radical Construction Grammar, grammatical
categorisations are metageneralisations of the way words are used by
grammatical constructions. Yet applied linguists can find that both posi-
tions share substantive premises about the nature of language and
mind, and hence about how the nature of cognition shapes language
and vice versa. This common ground can be summarised as follows:
• Grammar and lexis are on the same semantic continuum.
• Lexis and grammar possess category meanings derived from the
conceptualisation of embodied experience.
• Language is acquired as constructions through usage as tokens of types.
This study sets out the above premises as grounds for a classroom
approach based on (a) embodied learning, (b) the lexico-grammatical
continuum, (c) conceptualisation and the motivated nature of linguis-
tic representation, and (d) usage. It therefore argues that these princi-
ples show CL as taking us beyond the search for new ways to isolate
and present language content towards a larger consideration of how we
may find a better fit between the language content taught and the
mind that learns. As with any emerging perspective on pedagogy, how-
ever, much that is postulated may be hypothetical in respect of what
works in the classroom. Much may also simply provide a new theoreti-
cal framing for existing pedagogies. My interest here is thus threefold:
first, to summarise the theoretical basis of the above principles; second,
to discuss how they help assess language pedagogy; and third, to evalu-
ate whether we know enough about the effectiveness of the resultant
methods to justify consolidation of them as a larger approach.

THE EMBODIED LEARNING PRINCIPLE

Merleau-Ponty (1962) saw the body as “the third term,” shaping how
“mind” experiences “reality” (p. 115). Accordingly, cognition does not

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 7

build meaning as a reflexive response to sense experience. Meaning is
conceptualised from a mind that is an extension of the body and
through a body that is part of the mind. The nature of our bodies
attests to the form and substance of what is encountered and so con-
figures the reality we experience, a position now supported by develop-
ments in neurological and anatomical understanding. For example,
the study of what is called proprioception explores how the body tracks
its movements and registers the positions of its limbs relative to itself.
The brain thus extends into the body through proprioceptors and these
set out a “body map” in the brain. Infants move to explore their world
and develop motor skills by grasping at objects. They thus build their
image of a phenomenon through the bodily actions that test its func-
tion and weight. Meaning therefore develops from movement and the
physical grasp of forms (Gallagher, 2005; Gibbs, 2005). We also use
the body for meaning-making, or what Charles Peirce called semiotic
material (Hartshorne & Weiss, 1931–1958). Language may even origi-
nate ontogenetically and phylogenetically in gesture (McNeil, 1992).
Gesture both supports meaning making and carries clues to the con-
ceptualisations from which meanings evolve (McNeil, 1992; Negueru-
ela & Lantolf, 2004). Further, the association between language and
movement in articulatory processes (Gallagher, 2005) gives phonology
“a life of its own,” coercing language to categorise meaning in ways
convenient to the sounds the embodied mind can make and differen-
tiate (Taylor, 2002, p. 81).
Associating gesture, locomotion, and articulation with meaning
infuses language with the imagery of physical experience (e.g., John-
son, 1987; Kövecses, 2002, 2005; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999). Thus
a metaphorical expression such as keep a balanced view shows balance as
conceptualising a positive social goal. In CL, when infants achieve the
upright posture central to human experience, they build a series of
mental associations around that sensation, or establish what is called
an image schema. Because the balance schema is associated with positive
feelings, we develop a conceptual metaphor: balance is positive. The met-
aphor is conceptual because it builds our understanding of a correct
and desirable state, shaping it from physical experience. It is also pri-
mary because it develops from infant experience and is fundamental
to further conceptualisation (Grady, 1997). Our language develops the
metaphor when we require opinions to stand up to scrutiny (Gibbs,
2005) or have good grounds. Equally, grammatical forms such as the
transitive clause exploit imagery developed from infant experiences of
physical forces (Goldberg, 1995). Grammars use spatial relationships
to conceptualise those that exist between words. For example, the to
infinitive (I want to go) uses the experience of going to a physical desti-
nation to conceptualise purpose (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Such

8 TESOL QUARTERLY
examples suggest that Cognitive Grammar is essentially a space grammar
(Langacker, 1982) constructing grammatical relations from spatial
imagery.
The semantic relationship of metonymy also arises from embodied
experience. Metonymy is based upon physical and hence semantic
contiguity as when sail stands for ship or the example of a category,
hoover, stands for the category itself, vacuum cleaner (Lakoff, 1987;
Radden & Kövecses, 1999). The relation emerges from grasping one
thing through another, a cup through a handle, for example, or more
basically the proprioception of our limbs as our body, a perception
emerging into language in such expressions as hands for people in
deckhands. Less basically, metonymy construes abstract meanings and
enters the grammar. For example, we make the singular Mozart
uncountable when we talk about some nice Mozart because we are using
a producer (Mozart) for product (music) metonymy (Croft & Cruse,
2004).
A common anatomy and some shared environmental features
ensure that different languages share basic meanings. However, some
meanings differ because we use metaphor, metonymy, and other con-
strual operations to build higher level categories, differentiating a uni-
versal such as anger from that of annoyance, for example (Kövecses,
2005). When a meaning is less basic and more abstract, then its con-
ceptualisation may need greater cognitive effort, creating greater lin-
guistic and cultural difference in how it is perceived (Lakoff, 1987;
Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, pp. 27–31). An abstract entity such as time is
existentially basic and always grasped through various spatial meta-
phors. Yet our organisation of temporal space and its landmarks will
differ between cultures and languages (Kövecses, 2005). Because gram-
matical meaning is abstract and represents relations between phenom-
ena in time and space, grammatical meanings may differ more
between languages than lexical ones, something that linguistic relativ-
ists such as Whorf (1956) understood well.

Language Learning and the Imagery of the Embodiment

Broadly, embodied approaches to language teaching try to make

language more memorable by showing how a meaning has been
derived from physical experience. My suggestion, however, is that the
new form will be made more memorable if it is thus reinvested in the
movements, gestures, and physical imagery from which the meaning
was conceptualised. A further possibility is to use such procedures to
clarify meanings that do not exist in the students’ first language (L1)
by relating them back to the physical images and activity from which

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 9

they derive. These objectives can be advanced actually and virtually.
The actual embodied experience of meaning proposes enactment and
movement (E&M) routines whereby students get to feel the
force-dynamics from which meanings are conceptualised. The virtual
experience uses diagrams and pictures to illustrate how meanings are
motivated by that physical imagery. Teachers can also construct a “mid-
dle way,” reinforcing E&M routines with virtual, illustrative methods or
vice versa.

Actual Embodied Routines

These routines can involve interactions with realia in ways already

common throughout many classrooms. For example, English deter-
miners construe phenomena as bounded forms in the countable
a paper or as unbounded substance in the uncountable paper. An
embodied approach would attach physical exemplars of the form to a
student’s grasp of an entity as shape or as textured substance. Teach-
ers can then demonstrate how metonymy extends the meaning and
shifts the grammar, perhaps exchanging the paper for a newspaper and
stressing its countable form. With younger learners particularly, teach-
ers can relate a metaphor’s conceptualisation of abstract meanings
back to the movements and gestures in which it originates, for exam-
ple, jumping for joy, or conversely feeling down and dropping the head,
or applying pressure to show meanings such as depressed. In a more
direct mimetic procedure, Lindstromberg and Boers (2005) increased
the retention of English’s extensive inventory of verbs of manner
(trudge, saunter, etc.) when learners enacted them. Their focus on
movement tackles an important area of conceptual differentiation
between languages. This is between verb-framed languages, which con-
tain the path of movement within the verb itself (e.g., the French
rentrer à pied) and satellite-framed languages, which take the manner
inside and put the path outside (e.g., the English walked back; Talmy,
2000a, 2000b). Teachers can also give language itself a greater physical
presence in the class when they stress the iconic nature of some sounds
or make mnemonic use of its alliterative patterns. This may help
advanced students learn lexical phrases (Boers & Lindstromberg,
2005) or lexis with alliterative associations, as when wings whir or flames
flicker.
CL thus revives interest in an iconic principle in language, whereby
linguistic form is motivated by its development of similarity relation-
ships to its meanings in such phenomena as onomatopoeia. Teachers
can also exploit iconicity by using mind maps that show the proximity
or remoteness of different category meanings. An unexplored tech-

10 TESOL QUARTERLY
nique involves looking at how linguistic forms give a phonological rep-
resentation of conceptual distance. For example, students troubled by
the difference between stopped eating and stopped to eat could think how
the latter separates two actions with to. The separation reflects the
actions’ sequential nature. In contrast, stopped eating iconically
integrates stopped in the process it instigates (Taylor, 2002). This is
something that can be acted out in class. Thus the student says, “I
stopped eating,” and stops. For stopped to eat the teacher chalks down
an action space and an intention space. Standing in the action space,
the student stops another action such as walking, points to the
spatially separate intention space and says, “To.” The student then
moves to the intention space, says, “Eat,” and begins the action.
Teachers can ask constantly if learning is not more effectively recon-
stituted as physical activity. Moving to learn is implicit to many diver-
gent educational cultures. For example, Islamic school rooms associate
rote learning with rhythm and movement; Jacques-Dalcroze (1919/
1988) developed children’s musical understanding through their
expression of music as dance and mime. Even advanced English as a
second language students with tonal L1s can try learning stress timing
in language and the poetic meter on which it is based by tapping out
word stresses.
A researched approach to the re-embodiment of meaning in physi-
cal activity is Asher’s (1969) Total Physical Response (TPR) method.
TPR experimentation showed that students who responded to com-
mands with actions achieved significantly higher scores on comprehen-
sion tests (Asher, 1969). Asher’s method was later connected to
Krashen’s (1985) assumption that second language acquisition (SLA)
needs a silent period for students to process language mentally with-
out speaking. Quite differently, the Embodied Learning Principle
ascribes the success of TPR to helping learners experience meaning as
physical activity. For example, the teacher wants to teach a new form,
“w-al-k.” Whether or not the teacher gives a translation, the learners
normally map the word onto their L1 equivalent. TPR, however, rein-
vests the word in the physical activity from which its meaning was con-
ceptualised and may therefore make it more memorable. From TPR,
the embodied principle can be developed towards a spectrum of simi-
lar well-tried methods. Learners and teachers can instruct each other
in tasks with movement outcomes, coach each other in sport and
dance, build models, cook, or perform scientific experiments. Also
available are repertoires of mime techniques and charades-like rou-
tines, in which, for example, learners produce text in response to peer
or teacher mime or mime pictorial or textual content (e.g., Davis &
Rinvolucri, 1995; Dixey & Rinvolucri, 1978; Maley & Duff, 1978). It
remains, however, that the effectiveness of such techniques is often

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 11

either unquantified or researched only from the perspective of student
attitudes (e.g., Brice Heath, 1993; Di Pietro, 1987).
Language students tackling new writing systems feel that grapheme
reproduction helps grapheme recognition. Learning to read Chinese
characters has been found to be facilitated by learning to write them
(Guan, Cao, Chan, Perfetti, & Wu, 2009). Students brought up in
literacy-based education systems often need to write words, partly to
preserve them for future study, but often also to learn them through
writing them out, or through using physical action to give them a
visual form. There is an intriguing embodied perspective on this. Writ-
ing by hand supposes a use of the body to form signs. In this sense,
writing is frozen gesture, or an act of recording the symbolisation of
meaning in movement (Holme, 2009). But it is one thing to suggest
that tracing out a sign helps learners acquire the conventions of that
sign and quite another to propose that it also helps them learn the
collective meanings that the sign encodes. There is a need for more
research into whether writing itself promotes memorisation and
whether handwriting does this more effectively than keyboard use.

The Virtual Embodied Principle

This principle suggests that graphics or explanations can make

meanings clearer by showing how they derive from physical interac-
tions with forces and objects. Tyler (2008) demonstrates how graphics
can illustrate the embodied experience of forces implicit in English
modality. Thus the agent of the modal, will, is illustrated by a stick fig-
ure with an arrow projecting from it to show it as the origin of a force.
For would, the same graphic uses dotted lines to show weakened com-
mitment. For must, another figure and arrow are added to show an
external force applied to the agent. Controlling modality is central to
studying law. Tyler cites research that shows how law students who
have been taught with these methods control modality better when
writing law papers (Abbuhl, 2005; Hama, 2005).
Niemeier and Reif (2008) and Holme (2009) discuss how students
of English aspect may be helped by imagery derived from the concep-
tualisation of time as bounded or unbounded. For example, a Power-
Point picture strip helps learners find verbs to represent a story’s focal
actions. Each picture frame shows the actions as bounded events in a
sequence. To switch to the continuous, the teacher can click on one
picture and trigger an animation in which the picture expands into
the whole slide, covering all others. This picture now supports an
unbounded, progressive function. For Niemeier and Reif, animating
the picture shows how continuous aspect expresses the homogeneous

12 TESOL QUARTERLY
nature of the event and not its position in a narrative sequence. How-
ever, the success of such techniques awaits more rigorous empirical
study.
Practitioners have also used CL’s interest in spatial imagery to help
learners explore English prepositional or particle meanings. Thus CL
analyses the use of prepositions in English as often motivated by spatial
representation (Boers, 1996; Lindner, 1981; Tyler & Evans, 2003) as in
the expression of logical relations with “we can deduce ‘a’ from ‘b’”
(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Additional work has applied such insights
into teaching (e.g., Coventry & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2008; De Knop &
Dirven, 2008; Littlemore, 2009; Littlemore & Low, 2006a; Rudzka-Ostyn,
2003; Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáňez, 2008). For example, Ruiz de Mendoza
Ibáňez (2008) extends what Lakoff and Johnson (1999) call the invari-
ance principle to help learners understand abstract metaphorical preposi-
tional constructions by looking at their concrete counterparts.
Researchers have used spatial imagery to make English phrasal verbs
appear more principled and transparent. Thus students can be shown
how a group of verbs uses up and the conceptual metaphor that what is
unknown and unconscious is treated as buried until brought up, looked
up, or thought up. Condon’s (2008) systematic study of this approach
reports a mixed result. One experimental group showed significantly
improved usage over a control group, but another no significant differ-
ence. Kövecses and Szabó (1996) and Boers (2000a) reported more
consistent results with a similar procedure. Such procedures also find
support in work that shows how exploring the metaphorical origins
of expressions helps learners understand, use, and remember them
(e.g., Boers, 2000b, 2001; Boers & Demecheleer, 1998; Dirven, 1985;
MacLennan, 1994). More recent research shows how graphics that illus-
trate the literal origins of such metaphorical expressions as pitfall can
improve retention if some account is taken of learning styles (Boers,
Lindstromberg, Littlemore, Stengers, & Eyckmans, 2008).

THE PRINCIPLE OF A LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL

CONTINUUM

We could use the fixed expression in Example 1 to make a statement

about human behaviour with words whose individual meanings refer to
birds. In this expression the words lose their conventional types of refer-
ence. Traditional grammars called such expressions constructions or idi-
oms. According to this traditional analysis, Example 2 would be an
opposite case because both words retain their conventional referents
whilst being given grammatical functions by their clause structure.

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 13

Example 1: Birds of a feather flock together.
Example 2: Birds fly.
There are restrictions on the words available to a clause with Exam-
ple 2’s meaning, however. Even the assumption that the verb must
have an intransitive meaning could get us into trouble. In Example 3,
flock is an intransitive verb, which according to the British National
Corpus cannot be used with this type of construction.
Example 3: Birds flock.* (*ungrammatical sentence)
Example 4: The public have been flocking into the cinemas to see
Avatar.
Flock needs a complement expressing the goal of motion as in
Example 4. In CL’s construction grammar we could say that this word
frames two meanings that need representation, a dispersed agent, and
a goal where that agent gathers. The specific but still schematic nature
of the frames exemplifies how lexical meanings shape grammatical
selections, denying an autonomous role to syntax.
CL’s approach to this problem is first to treat Examples 1, 2, and 4
as different variations of the same principle. These forms are all con-
structions in which the fact of words being used in combination
changes their meaning. In Example 1 the change in the words’ mean-
ing is quite radical. Birds might refer to something not avian at all,
perhaps to people with similar interests. Example 2 (birds fly) is much
more productive. We could specify this as Subject + Verb (intrans).
Here, by combining these words we are saying that the noun’s mean-
ing changes to that of an agent in an action and the verb unfolds that
action. CL calls such meanings schematic and the construction is compo-
sitional. A schematic meaning is like a semantic outline that needs fill-
ing or instantiation. A schematic meaning such as the semantic role
agent can potentially encompass any phenomenon that can be con-
strued as instigating an action. Such vague meanings pertain more to
the relationships between phenomena than to phenomena themselves.
They thus require instantiation by more concrete lexical meanings. A
construction is compositional because its meaning can compose
relations between different lexical meanings, but it has meaning
nonetheless.
CL places lexis and grammar on a continuum that runs from this
substantive and noncompositional meaning to the compositional.
Figure 1 illustrates this with a diagram based upon Croft (2001).
The noncompositional pole may be an idealisation when in lan-
guage all elements are finally composed of other elements that have
and retain variable semantic significance (Taylor, 2002).

14 TESOL QUARTERLY
 Complex

Mostly Partly
Substantive Schematic
substantive substantive Schematic
bound

Birds of a +ed
e.g., birds of a NP+flock+PP Subj+
feather (flock) +s (plural)
feather V(intrans)
together +ing

Lexis Grammar

Push Green of
e.g., birds,
give large the
feathers
make a

Substantive
Substantive Schematic
relational Partly schematic
atomic

Atomic
FIGURE 1. The lexico-grammatical continuum.

Teaching Along the Lexico-Grammatical Continuum

Corpus linguistics introduced into English language teaching prac-
tice the notion of a lexicalised grammar that is illustrated by Examples
1 and 4. Sinclair (1991) expressed the lexico-grammatical continuum
as a choice between idiomatic and open principles, seeing normal
discourse as idiomatically patterned to a degree that made idiom a first
choice in processing. This led to the recognition that much discourse
consists of idioms and lexical phrases, making these patterns essential
to language learning (Lewis, 1993, 2000; Nattinger & DeCarrico,
1992). Yet it is arguable that lexical approaches overstress the substantive
nature of language content and understress the compositional nature
of even heavily lexicalised forms. Learners following lexically focused
syllabi may lack the compositional means to fully integrate learnt phra-
sal islands into discourse. The intuition here is that the more subtle
representation of the continuum shown may help teachers explore the
grammar-lexis interface more effectively, treating focus on form less as
an opportunity to oscillate between idiomatic and open choices and
more as an occasion to grasp the interrelatedness of lexical and gram-
matical meaning. In this, CL’s notion of schematicity and its associated
stress upon the symbolism of both grammar and lexis can use the
notion of the continuum itself to show how a lexicalised form can be
the exemplar of a more productive meaning. Thus the idiom kick the

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 15

bucket is first an opaque form whose words cannot be substituted with-
out a complete change of meaning but second an exemplar of the
very productive transitive construction. Further, even the idiom can be
compositional in the sense of using tense to fit a context.

Teaching Along the Lexico-Grammatical Continuum:

The Lexical Pole
At the lexical end of the continuum, CL’s interest in polysemy, cate-
gories, and frames gives an insight into how lexical meanings such as
that of flock in Example 1 can both constrain and develop the produc-
tivity of the constructions of which they are part. Thus one can
explore how metaphor develops flock’s sense of people gathering
about an agreed goal from the larger observation of some animals.
Though of restricted usefulness, the verb builds one of the thousands
of constructions whose idiomaticity differentiates native and second
language speaker discourse. Teachers tackling this idiom deficit can
find support from CL’s large body of research into how students can
organise idioms according to the conceptual metaphors from which
they derive (e.g., Cameron & Low, 1999; Danesi, 1986; Dirven, 1985;
Holme, 2004; Lindstromberg, 1991; Littlemore, 2001, 2003; Littlemore
& Low, 2006b; Low, 1988; Richardt, 2005). Exploring the metaphorical
origins of an expression also helps students understand how it is and
is not productive. Thus a metaphor-based analysis of the error cited in
Example 5 can help students find constructions that fit lexical choices:
Example 5: Strategies relate specifically to areas that they make more
interference errors on (author’s data).
The learner needs to construe area with a container metaphor. Next
the learner needs a relative clause construction to represent it as the
place in which errors may occur. This would avoid the convoluted syn-
tax and stranded preposition.

Teaching Along the Lexico-Grammatical Continuum:

The Grammatical Pole

CL’s insights may also help refocus the lexical interest in collocation
away from the teaching of collocates per se and towards the form they
identify. Straightforwardly, teaching a construction such as I am ready
to leave rather than a collocation, ready to, means giving learners a
prototype from which other similar examples could be produced.
From these exemplars more schematic and hence more productive

16 TESOL QUARTERLY
meanings may be established as the teacher moves the class towards
the grammatical pole and perhaps looks at other purposive predicative
adjective constructions (anxious to go, eager to please, etc.).
I should note, nonetheless, that chunking, or treating potentially
productive forms as substantive lexical elements, is a normal stage in
construction learning. Tomasello (2003) notes what he calls construc-
tional islands, putting forward an exemplar-based view of acquisition in
which first language learners acquire a specific lexical realisation of a
form. Generalisation is a consequence of an innate human or animal
ability to recognise patterns and use these as a basis for categorisation
(Tomasello, 2003). There is no issue about whether these abilities
survive the acquisition of a first language, because they are part of the
larger ongoing ability to categorise reality. Thus even if the aim is a
productive form, the first objective is to make sure that students
acquire a prototype of the compositional construction to which they
are introduced. Manzaneres and Rojo Lópes (2008) demonstrate that
learners of English with Spanish as their L1 using the ditransitive or
double object construction (Example 6) prefer a particular lexical
model and bed this down before generalising it.
Example 6: I gave/owed/made them some money.
Goldberg and Casenhiser (2008) discuss how learners find general-
isation unproblematic after acquiring a construction’s prototypical
form. They also stress that learners need strong exemplars to use as
prototypes. Another point for future research in the language class-
room is how in clausal constructions some verbs provide learners with
clearer guidance than others to the construction’s meaning (Goldberg,
1995). Thus, Goldberg (1995) analyses the core meaning of the ditran-
sitive example shown in Example 6 as transferring possession. Give
clearly typifies this meaning. Owe extends the meaning away from this
with a use of metonymy (giving is the prerequisite of owing), whereas
make has this meaning entirely imposed upon it by the construction
itself. Give should therefore be in the learner model.
However, it is important to remember that correct generalisation
does not necessarily follow from successful prototype learning. First, as
Ellis (2005) notes, one must process the different tokens, or differently
lexicalised examples of a form, before one can grasp it as schematic or
patterned. Second, research suggests that second language (L2) users
continue to avoid compositional forms (e.g., Ullman, 2005). Third,
successful generalisation does not preclude overgeneralisation and
hence error. Having introduced a compositional construction, teachers
therefore need to think about helping learners encounter it in differ-
ent forms in subsequent activities, and to notice it when they do. This
can mean highlighting its occurrence in text and asking learners to

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 17

relate it back to a previously encountered form. It could also be part
of a rich correction strategy whereby teachers not only prompt learn-
ers to give a correct form but also explore how it generalises.
Holme (2010) reports on two interventions in which Hong Kong
sixth formers were taught to identify constructions useful for writing
up their English project. They explored the constructions’ meanings,
experimented with their generalisation, and sometimes proposed
appropriate contexts for the generalisations produced. For example,
the students encountered Example 7 in text.
Example 7: . . . they finally got them to do it in the right way.
Students understood the expression, but a cloze test had previously
found they could not use this get-somebody-to-do-something construction
accurately. The teacher therefore trained the learners to look for
forms of the expression that showed how it could be generalised. To
show the construction as a relational pattern that could use different
lexis within schematic limitations, the learners rewrote it with pro-
forms. This schematic version of the form was then put into the top of
a substitution table such as that shown in Table 1, and the students
were asked to produce generalisations in groups. Words in italics are
the fixed terms around which other lexis was inserted.
Groups then challenged each other to use their generalisations in
contexts. The experimental class showed an improved uptake of the
forms over a control class that simply encountered these forms in their
materials. This was unsurprising because of time on task. More interest-
ingly, the students were asked to reproduce two of their project’s text
types at the beginning and end of the intervention. One text type was
the analysis of an advertisement and the other a (local) news report.
To make the assessment as objective as possible, all grammatical and
lexical errors in their writing were assessed equally. Students made sig-
nificantly fewer errors after the intervention.

THE CONCEPTUALISATION PRINCIPLE

The conceptualisation principle overlaps all others, and the discus-

sion of it in the section on embodiment in particular curtails the
treatment here. In CL, all meanings are products of conceptualisation.
TABLE 1
Generalising Constructions with Substitution Tables

Somebody got someone to do something

I persuaded Kerry take her out
We asked the teacher slow down

18 TESOL QUARTERLY
A given grammatical or lexical category does not refer straightforwardly
to an entity in the world but is part of a network of related meanings
and the knowledge we have built about them. Our ability to use these
meanings assumes encyclopedic knowledge of a meaning’s texture,
shape, function, and differentiation as well as of the semantic frames
that a verb requires (for buy: purchaser, goods, seller). Finally, these mean-
ings may also contain a variable knowledge of the imagery from which
they have evolved and through which they may be connected to each
other. This imagery can contain high cultural specificity that adds to the
learning burden. For example, using stone needs an encyclopedic under-
standing of where it may be encountered and when it refers to a form
and when a substance. Meanings further vary between British and
American English. As substance or texture it is also associated with life-
lessness. Similarity-based metaphor gives us stone-dead/cold. Metaphor
and metonymy then create another adjectival extension. Stoned was asso-
ciated with the stupefaction induced by drugs but has developed
towards a general description of drug- or alcohol-induced states.
Construction meanings are also categories, as Example 6 shows. With
some constructions it may help students to study the meanings as differ-
ent but related parts of one category. For example, I’ve been here a long
time and I’ve been here before use the same present perfect construction to
construe an action in different but related ways. Theoretically at least,
helping learners recognise the difference and relationship between the
meanings can start their building of that larger aspectual category. The
notion of frame can also help learners explore how verb meanings
shape clausal constructions. For example, in I’ve sold him my car learners
can brainstorm for different instantiations of “seller (I), goods (my car)
and purchaser (him)” (Holme, 2009, p. 115). CL also gives insights into
how the constructions of one language may construe a topic quite dif-
ferently from those of another. This adds a dimension to language
learning that has been called conceptual fluency (Danesi, 2008). Concep-
tual fluency helps us rework the longstanding topic of error analysis.
Though far from catastrophic, the error in Example 8 expresses this
conceptual problem.
Example 8: The knowledge in villages in China is very low.*
(*ungrammatical sentence; Holme, 2009, p. 86)
Example 9: The level of knowledge in villages in China is very low.
Example 10: Knowledge in villages in China is not great.
A comparison of Chinese and English shows how words for knowl-
edge represent different categories in both languages, with the Chinese
also containing the idea of education. CL further reminds how knowl-
edge in English is not itself conceptualised as a bounded level that is
low or high but as a substance that is great or small. Thus English

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 19

exploits a metaphor of knowledge as a contained substance with such
expressions as a high/low level of knowledge. Without level of the deter-
miner in Example 8 is overgeneralised. Unbounded knowledge refers to
all knowledge and so would be undetermined, making Example 10 a
possible correction. In effect, it can be hard to make Corder’s (1981)
long-standing categorisation of errors as either intra- or interlingual.
The error is interlingual in the sense that the L1 has no determiners
and provides no definite article meaning, but intralingual because the
lack of such knowledge means there is no interference. The conceptu-
alisation principle urges a closer look at such effects in learner lan-
guage and at the larger problem of teaching new meanings. Yet
developing CL frameworks for learner errors must overcome the prob-
lem of distinguishing conceptually and semantically motivated errors.
Further, the hope that CL’s insights can help learners re-engineer
their conceptual systems should be moderated by Negueruela and
Lantolf’s (2004) research into conceptualisation as expressed by ges-
ture, and the conclusion that even bilingual people do not always
build new conceptual systems in the L2.

THE USAGE PRINCIPLE

The usage principle confirms the social orientation of CL’s

approach to language and thus to language learning. Usage is first
bound up with frequency effects whereby repeated encounters with a
form promote its acquisition (Bybee, 2008; Ellis, 2002, 2005; Larsen-
Freeman & Cameron, 2008), provided other factors such as its saliency
and the ease or difficulty of perceiving its meaning are taken into
account (Tomasello, 2003). Imagine that a learner’s first encounter
with the regular English past tense is through talked. When the learner
reproduces the verb correctly, the mentally stored type and the used
token will match provided some allowance is made for allophonic vari-
ation. But when the learner generalises this type to another token, per-
haps walked, there is a type-token mismatch. This generalisation
requires development of a more abstract verb + ed schema.
Infants first chunk a few irregular and regular verb forms and so
produce correct representations of the past tense (Cazden, 1968).
CL attributes this to a frequency effect whereby forms that domi-
nate the input also dominate uptake (Bybee, 2008; Ellis, 2002).
Irregular verbs are picked up as chunks when their usage is fre-
quent and meaning salient. For example, a type, went, matches the
token went. Equally, Pine and Lieven (1997) note how there is little
evidence for abstract grammar in the speech of infants, but more a
process of chunks opening slots that are filled with an appropriate

20 TESOL QUARTERLY
meaning, for example, I wanna _______. Subsequently, as the lear-
ner is exposed to a larger repertoire of verbs, there is another fre-
quency effect whereby the regular –ed form becomes dominant in
uptake so that learners even regularise irregular forms as verb + ed (Caz-
den, 1968). A third phase sees schema competition (MacWhinney,
2005, 2008) as the type, verb + ed, or goed competes with went, resulting
in an oscillation between the correct irregular and incorrect regular
form. In the last step, learners sort out forms into regular and irregu-
lar categories (Cazden, 1968). This can be attributed to further fre-
quency effects as the different regular and irregular forms become
more prominent in the input.
MacWhinney’s (2005, 2008) Unified Model treats L1 and L2 learn-
ing as similar and as exploiting the same cognitive strategies. L1 and
L2 learning are different only in that L2 learners are older and have
a developed category system already in place. Extant category knowl-
edge makes L2 acquisition faster in the first instance but also sets up
the later problem of semantic interference and conceptual fluency.
According to the unified model, the problems of mature language
learners can be better associated with such interferences and a
decline in receptivity to new forms than with Lenneberg’s (1967)
critical period. The automatisation of the knowledge needed for lan-
guage and its associated motor skills presupposes that knowledge’s
protection from interference by other forms. The usage principle
therefore treats L2 learning as something of a forcing process, in
which one tries to overcome the natural resistance of old knowledge
to new.
An already developed category knowledge gives L2 learners greater
control over their learning through the conscious exploitation of the
strategies that learning requires (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). Teachers
can make a more subtle contribution to this process by input engineer-
ing. This proposes that a key feature of instruction is ensuring that
learners are re-exposed to lexis and constructions and that, in the case
of the latter, learners notice the forms in which they reoccur (Schmidt,
1990). However, there are still uncertainties about how far the acquisi-
tion of a construction is advanced by learners’ consciousness of its
meaning and reoccurrence. What cannot be doubted is that explicit
instruction in form is effective provided it is concurrent with exposure
to a sufficient number of exemplars and the provision of contexts in
which to reuse them (Carroll, Roberge, & Swain, 1992; Carroll &
Swain, 1993; Eckman, Bell, & Nelson, 1988; Ellis, 2002; Gass, 1982;
Tomasello & Herron, 1988). A usage principle might show how expli-
cit instruction shortcuts frequency effects by furnishing learners with a
sense of type without their having to build this from repeated expo-
sure to different tokens. For example, explaining the meaning of the

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 21

 The Embodied The Conceptualisation
Learning Principle Principle

enactment and
movement; ritual and
repetition

text production image exploitation

L2 Pedagogy
and processing

construction isolation
and exploration

The Lexico-Grammatical
The Usage Principle
Continuum Principle

FIGURE 2. Modeling a CL approach.

definite article construction helps establish it as a productive meaning

without learners having to glean this meaning from multiple contexts.
Yet these points are currently speculative. More generally also, CL’s
treatment of meaning as conceptualised from embodied experience
may also afford some insight into how our use of language is bound
up with our emotional lives but does not yet give teachers a strong
idea of how to exploit this.

CONCLUSIONS: A PEDAGOGICAL MODEL

Figure 2 shows the consolidation of the four tenets just outlined as

facets of a larger approach. The figure should capture teaching and
learning as dynamic processes (Ellis, 2005; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron,
2008) within which each principle impacts the others.
CL insists that meanings are motivated by the imagery derived from
the body as a third term. A consequent theory of embodied learning has
actual and virtual impacts. In the actual case, many E&M techniques
are implemented because of a felt perception about their encourage-
ment of TL usage, though some have been shown to have clear bene-
fits, particularly when tied to specific meanings. Generally, though, we
justify the adoption of these techniques with a sounder theory but less
certainty about actual results. One must also consider age, culture,
and learner predisposition. E&M can achieve little if learners cannot
be convinced that they should be moving and acting in class. Virtual
techniques offer evidence for having improved the quality of the

22 TESOL QUARTERLY
learning experience, but there is less general certainty about whether
they result in a markedly better uptake of communicatively effective
language.
The conceptualisation principle emerges from embodied theory because
we conceptualise meaning through our embodied nature. The princi-
ple proposes that learners reinvest new pairings of form and meaning
in the imagery out of which those meanings were conceptualised. It
helps learners explore category meanings and advocates understand-
ing how metaphor and metonymy enable their extension. Some of the
work on the classroom applications of metaphor theory has had con-
siderable success. There is also some promise for our analysis of error,
but as yet no certain knowledge about how to distinguish its semantic
and conceptual origins or how to use these insights to adjust a learn-
er’s conceptual systems to fit new languages.
The principle of the lexico-grammatical continuum emphasises the large
number of forms that successful L2 use requires and so points up a
longer standing realisation that students need a stronger grasp of lexi-
cal patterning in language. The principle invokes that of conceptuali-
sation to help explore the schematicity and productivity of construc-
tions. Embodied techniques can furnish the rhythms, repetition, and
imagery that support lexis and construction learning. More research is
needed into the real length of the grammar syllabus when lexicalised.
Advanced learners need to focus on raising their level of idiomaticity.
CL’s continuum can help them do this by grasping constructions less
as fixed phrases and more as tokens of types that, though productive,
are more lexically constrained than those that typify a core grammati-
cal syllabus. Some research evidence indicates that asking students to
try generalising some lexically substantiated forms will improve accu-
racy. Teachers must also give students strong repeated prototypes of
constructions from which to generalise (Goldberg & Casenhiser,
2008). Less certain is how an approach that is focused on both sub-
stantive and schematic meaning will benefit the advanced learner’s
communicative ability.
A construction’s form and category meanings can only be fully
grasped when differently unfolded by different texts, thus proposing
the usage principle. Usage in the classroom finally means what it says
and is arguably implicit in some task-based learning approaches
(Robinson & Ellis, 2008) with lexico-grammatical density, and hence
the frequency of new constructions being raised by task complexity
(Robinson, 2001). Perhaps, though, the principle calls for more teach-
er control over input and output, or for what I call input engineering, to
make sure that forms reoccur and are noticed when they do. It also
implies basic good practice in the maximisation of target language
contact outside the classroom and so building greater learner

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 23

autonomy. We can also see a frequency effect in explicit grammar
teaching itself. Examining a form-meaning pairing and exploring how
it generalises to new contexts reinforces usage. This may be part of
the explanation for why grammar teaching works. Here, the conceptu-
alisation principle also helps learners obtain a better sense of the con-
straints on construction generalisation with its exploration of the
imagery that builds schematic meanings.
In general, the research gaps into how well these principles apply in
the classroom are considerable. Further, there is as yet no larger sense
of what they might achieve if unfolded over time and in combination.
Yet the basis of an approach to teaching that is friendlier to the cogni-
tive nature of language is now starting to emerge.

THE AUTHOR

Randal Holme is an associate professor in the Department of English at the

Hong Kong Institute of Education. His research interests include the pedagogi-
cal use of texts, English for specific purposes, applying cognitive metaphor theory,
and literacy.

REFERENCES

Abbuhl, R. J. (2005). The effect of feedback and instruction on writing quality: Legal writ-
ing and advanced L2 learners. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgetown
University, Washington, DC.
Asher, J. (1969). The Total Physical Response approach to second language learn-
ing. Modern Language Journal, 53, 3–17. doi:10.2307/322091
Boers, F. (1996). Spatial prepositions and metaphor: A cognitive semantic journey along
the up-down and the front-back dimension. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr.
Boers, F. (2000a). Enhancing metaphoric awareness in specialized reading. English
for Specific Purposes, 19, 137–147. doi:10.1016/S0889-4906(98)00017-9
Boers, F. (2000b). Metaphor awareness and vocabulary retention. Applied Linguis-
tics, 21, 553–571. doi:10.1093/applin/21.4.553
Boers, F. (2001). Remembering figurative idioms by hypothesizing about their ori-
gin. Prospect, 16(3), 35–43.
Boers, F., & Demecheleer, M. (1998). A cognitive semantic approach to teaching
prepositions. ELT Journal, 52, 197–204. doi:10.1093/elt/52.3.197
Boers, F., & Lindstromberg, S. (2005). Finding ways to make phrase learning feasi-
ble: The mnemonic effect of alliteration. System, 33, 225–238. doi:10.1016/j.
system.2004.12.007
Boers, F., Lindstromberg, S., Littlemore, J., Stengers, H., & Eyckmans, J. (2008).
Variables in the mnemonic effectiveness of pictorial elucidation. In F. Boers & S.
Lindstromberg (Eds.), Cognitive linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary and
phraseology (pp. 189–216). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Brice Heath, S. (1993). Inner city life through drama: Imagining the language
classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 27, 177–192. doi:10.2307/3587142

24 TESOL QUARTERLY
Bybee, J. (2008). Usage-based grammar and second language acquisition. In
P. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second lan-
guage acquisition (pp. 216–236). New York, NY: Routledge.
Cameron, L., & Low, G. (Eds.). (1999). Researching and applying metaphor. Cam-
bridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Carroll, S., Roberge, Y., & Swain, M. (1992). The role of feedback in adult second
language acquisition: Error correction and morphological generalizations.
Applied Psycholinguistics, 13, 173–198. doi:10.1017/S0142716400005555
Carroll, S., & Swain, M. (1993). Explicit and implicit negative feedback. Stud-
ies in Second Language Acquisition, 15, 357–386. doi:10.1017/S0272263100012
158
Cazden, C. B. (1968). The acquisition of noun and verb inflections. Child Develop-
ment, 39, 443–448. doi:10.2307/1126956
Condon, N. (2008). How cognitive linguistic motivations influence the learning of
phrasal verbs. In F. Boers & S. Lindstromberg (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics
approaches to teaching vocabulary and phraseology (pp. 133–158). Berlin, Germany:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Corder, S. P. (1981). Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford, England: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Coventry, K. R., & Guijarro-Fuentes, P. (2008). Spatial language learning and the
functional geometric framework. In P. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook
of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 114–138). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Croft, W. (2001). Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspec-
tive. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Croft, W., & Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge, England: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Danesi, M. (1986). The role of metaphor in language pedagogy. Rassegna Italiana
di Linguistica Applicata, 18, 1–10.
Danesi, M. (2008). Conceptual errors in second language learning. In S. De Kop
& T. De Rycker (Eds.), Cognitive approaches to pedagogical grammar (pp. 231–253).
Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Davis, P., & Rinvolucri, M. (1995). More grammar games: Cognitive, affective and
movement activities for EFL students. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press.
De Knop, S., & Dirven, R. (2008). Motion and location events in German, French
and English: A typological, contrastive and pedagogical approach. In S. De
Knop & T. De Rycker (Eds.), Cognitive approaches to pedagogical grammar (pp. 295–
324). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Di Pietro, J. (1987). Strategic interaction: Learning languages through scenarios. Cam-
bridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Dirven, R. (1985). Metaphor as a basic means for extending the lexicon. In
W. Parotté & R. Dirven (Eds.), The ubiquity of metaphor (pp. 85–119). Amster-
dam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Dixey, J., & Rinvolucri, M. (1978). Get up and do it! Sketch and mime for EFL. Lon-
don, England: Longman.
Eckman, F. R., Bell, L., & Nelson, D. (1988). On the generalization of relative
clause instruction in the acquisition of English as a second language. Applied
Linguistics, 9, 1–20. doi:10.1093/applin/9.1.1
Ellis, N. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implica-
tions for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 24, 143–188. doi:10.1017/S0272263102002024

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 25

Ellis, N. (2005). Dynamic systems: The interactions of explicit and implicit lan-
guage knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 305–352.
doi:10.1017/S027226310505014X
Feldman, J. A. (2006). From molecule to metaphor: A neural theory of language. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford, England: Clarendon
Press.
Gass, S. (1982). From theory to practice. In M. Hines & W. Rutherford (Eds.), On
TESOL ‘81 (pp. 129–139). Washington, DC: TESOL.
Gibbs, R. (2005). Embodiment and cognitive science. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument
structure. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, A. E., & Casenhiser, D. (2008). Construction learning and second lan-
guage acquisition. In P. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive lin-
guistics and second language acquisition (pp. 197–215). New York, NY: Routledge.
Grady, J. (1997). Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphor and primary scenes. Unpub-
lished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, California.
Guan, Q. C., Cao, F. C., Chan, D., Perfetti, C., & Wu, S. (2009). Read write integration.
Retrieved from http://www.learnlab.org/research/wiki/index.php/Perfetti_-
_Read_Write_Integration
Hama, M. (2005). The effects of the minilesson on advanced learners’ acquisition of Eng-
lish modals: A case study. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Linguistics,
Georgetown University.
Hartshorne, C., & Weiss, P. (Eds.). (1931–1958). The collected papers of Charles Saun-
ders Peirce (Vols. 1–4). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holme, R. (2004). Mind, metaphor and language teaching. Basingstoke, England:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Holme, R. (2009). Cognitive linguistics and second language teaching. Basingstoke,
England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Holme, R. (2010). A construction grammar for the classroom. International Review
of Applied Linguistics, 48(4), 355–377. doi:10.1515/iral.2010.015
Jacques-Dalcroze, E. (1988). Rhythm, music and education. Salem, NH: Ayer (Origi-
nal work published 1919)
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination,
and reasoning. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press.
Kövecses, Z. (2005). Metaphor in culture: Universality and variation. Cambridge, Eng-
land: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Z., & Szabó, P. (1996). Idioms: A view from cognitive semantics. Applied
Linguistics, 17, 326–355. doi:10.1093/applin/17.3.326
Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. London, Eng-
land: Longman.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire and dangerous things: What human categories reveal
about the mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). The metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh. New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Langacker, R. W. (1982). Space grammar, analysability, and the English passive.
Language, 58(1), 22–80. doi:10.2307/413531

26 TESOL QUARTERLY
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume 1: Theoretical pre-
requisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar as a basis for language instruction. In
P. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second lan-
guage acquisition (pp. 66–88). New York, NY: Routledge.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Cameron, L. (2008). Complex systems and applied linguistics.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons.
Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach: The state of ELT and the way forward. Hove,
England: Language Teaching.
Lewis, M. (Ed.). (2000). Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical
approach. Hove, England: Language Teaching.
Lindner, S. (1981). A lexico-semantic analysis of English verb particle constructions with
up and out. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San
Diego, CA.
Lindstromberg, S. (1991). Metaphor in ESP: A ghost in the machine. English for
Specific Purposes, 10, 207–226. doi:10.1016/0889-4906(91)90025-R
Lindstromberg, S., & Boers, F. (2005). From movement to metaphor with manner-
of-movement verbs. Applied Linguistics, 26, 241–261. doi:10.1093/applin/ami002
Littlemore, J. (2001). Metaphor as a source of misunderstanding for overseas stu-
dents in academic lectures. Teaching in Higher Education, 6, 333–351. doi:
10.1080/13562510120061205
Littlemore, J. (2003). Interpreting metaphors in the EFL classroom. Les Cahiers de
l’APLIUT, 23, 57–70.
Littlemore, J. (2009). Applying cognitive linguistics to English language teaching and
learning. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Littlemore, J., & Low, G. (2006a). Figurative thinking and foreign language learning.
Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Littlemore, J., & Low, G. (2006b). Metaphoric competence, second language
learning and communicative language ability. Applied Linguistics, 27, 268–294.
doi:10.1093/applin/aml004
Low, G. (1988). On teaching metaphor. Applied Linguistics, 9, 125–147.
doi:10.1093/applin/9.2.125
MacLennan, C. H. G. (1994). Metaphors and prototypes in the learning and
teaching of grammar and vocabulary. International Review of Applied Linguistics,
32, 97–110.
MacWhinney, B. (2005). A unified model of language acquisition. In J. F. Knoll &
A. M. B. De Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches
(pp. 49–67). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
MacWhinney, B. (2008). A unified model. In P. Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Hand-
book of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 341–371). New
York, NY: Routledge.
Maley, A., & Duff, A. (1978). Drama techniques in language learning. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.
Manzaneres, J. V., & Rojo Lópes, A. M. (2008). What can language learners tell
us about constructions? In S. De Knop & T. De Rycker (Eds.), Cognitive
approaches to pedagogical grammar (pp. 197–230). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de
Gruyter.
McNeil, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 27

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). The Phenomenology of Perception, New York, NY: Routledge
& Kegan-Paul.
Nattinger, J. R., & DeCarrico, J. S. (1992). Lexical phrases and language teaching.
Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Negueruela, E. J., & Lantolf, J. P. (2004). The private function of gesture in sec-
ond language communicative activity: A study on motion verbs and gesturing
in English and Spanish. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14, 113–147.
doi:10.1111/j.1473-4192.2004.00056.x
Niemeier, S., & Reif, M. (2008). Applying cognitive grammar to tense-aspect teach-
ing in the German EFL classroom. In S. De Knop & T. De Rycker (Eds.), Cogni-
tive approaches to pedagogical grammar (pp. 325–355). Berlin, Germany: Mouton
de Gruyter.
O’Malley, J. M., & Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning strategies in second language acqui-
sition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Pine, J. M., & Lieven, E. V. M. (1997). Slot and frame patterns in the development
of the determiner category. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18, 123–138. doi:10.1017/
S0142716400009930
Radden, G., & Kövecses, Z. (1999). Towards a theory of metonymy. In G. Radden
& K.-U. Panther (Eds.), Metonymy in cognition and language (pp. 17–60). Amster-
dam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Richardt, S. (2005). Metaphors in languages for special purposes. New York, NY: Peter
Lang.
Robinson, P. (2001). Task complexity, cognitive resources, and syllabus design:
Atriadic framework for examining task influences on SLA. In P. Robinson
(Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 287–318). Cambridge, Eng-
land: Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, P., & Ellis, N. C. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of cognitive linguistics and sec-
ond language acquisition (pp. 456–488). New York, NY: Routledge.
Rudzka-Ostyn, B. (2003). Word power: Phrasal verbs and compounds: A cognitive
approach. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáňez, F. J. (2008). The case of Spanish diminutives and reflex-
ive constructions. In S. De Knop & T. De Rycker (Eds.), Cognitive approaches to
pedagogical grammar (pp. 121–153). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning.
Applied Linguistics, 11, 129–158. doi:10.1093/applin/11.2.129
Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford, England: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Slobin, D. I. (1996). From “thought and language” to “thinking for speaking.” In
J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity studies in the
social and cultural foundations of language (Vol. 1, pp. 70–96). Cambridge, Eng-
land: Cambridge University Press.
Talmy, L. (2000a). Towards a cognitive semantics, Volume 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Talmy, L. (2000b) Towards a cognitive semantics, Volume 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Taylor, J. R. (2002). Cognitive grammar. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage based theory of language acqui-
sition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tomasello, M., & Herron, C. (1988). Down the garden path: Inducing and
correcting overgeneralization errors in the foreign language classroom. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 9, 237–246. doi:10.1017/S0142716400007827

28 TESOL QUARTERLY
Tyler, A. (2008). Cognitive linguistics and second language instruction. In P.
Robinson & N. C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language
acquisition (pp. 456–488). New York, NY: Routledge.
Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2003). The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ullman, M. T. (2005). A cognitive neuroscience perspective on second language
acquisition. In C. Sanz (Ed.), Adult second language acquisition: Methods theory and
practice (pp. 139–177). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, thought and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND THE SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 29