ABSTRACT
This chapter examines in very general terms both the achievements of the cognitive linguistics enterprise and its remaining challenges. The cognitive approach faces a number of challenges, including the extension of the model to a fully developed account of language beyond semantics and grammar, and the development of empirically falsifiable methodology. In addition to its influence in linguistics and in cognitive science, cognitive linguistics has also been influential in the social sciences and in the humanities. Cognitive linguistics has also contributed to extending the range of conceptual phenomena studied by cognitive scientists. The cognitive linguistics enterprise has provided an approach for studying the imagination, and has shown that language reveals systematic processes at work in human imagination which cognitive linguists have argued are central to the way we think. The fact that cognitive linguistics is a collection of distinct theories and approaches rather than a single theoretical perspective means that there is often overlapping terminology.
