ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the cognitive approaches to grammar as attempts to 'complete the picture' of a semantic structure suggested by cognitive semantics. It examines the conceptual basis of closed-class elements exploring the theoretical frameworks proposed by Leonard Talmy and Ronald Langacker. Both these researchers have been centrally concerned with the conceptual basis of grammar and with providing a description of how closed-class elements are meaningful. The chapter re-examines the related issues of categorisation and polysemy from the perspective of the grammatical subsystem. It explores how closed-class elements reflect categorisation as a fundamental property of human cognition and how, like the open-classes categories, the closed-classes categories also display polysemy. Two of the most important theoretical constructs in Langacker's theory are the notion of profile-base organisation, which relates to the parameter of selection, and trajector-landmark organisation, which relates to the parameter of perspective.
