ABSTRACT

This chapter illustrates how Cognitive Linguistics may contribute to establishing psychologically plausible and empirically adequate theoretical models of the quantitative patterns in linguistic variation. Cognitive Construction Grammar is a theoretical framework that forms part of the Cognitive Linguistics functionalist theoretical movement. Like other Cognitive Linguistics theories, Cognitive Construction Grammar takes a usage-based approach to language. Most importantly, Cognitive Construction Grammar proposes that language constitutes entirely of form-function pairings of different degrees of schematicity. The antagonistic relationship between, on the one hand, statistical preemption and, on the other, structural priming and markedness of coding reminds of the roles the cognitive constraints play in language acquisition and innovation. The chapter focuses on domain-general cognitive constraints on language that are assumed in Cognitive Linguistics lead to empirically correct predictions about the distribution of agreeing and non-agreeing presentational haber. This invites further research into these constraints and their effects on linguistic variation.