When we consider the topic of “language evolution: cognitive and cultural factors”, one of the
first questions that come to mind is what is meant by “evolution”: language change over the …

For the last 25 years,(type) coercion—and related notions such as type shifting (Partee and
Rooth 1983), accommodation (Goldberg 1995), enriched composition (Jackendoff 1997) …

This lively introduction to figurative language explains a broad range of concepts, including
metaphor, metonymy, simile, and blending, and develops new tools for analyzing them. It …

Diachronic construction grammar addresses a range of theoretical topics from lexicalization
to grammaticalization. In most cases, a historical dimension has been added to a largely …

In the nineteen eighties, a lot of ink was spent on the question of symbol grounding, largely
triggered by Searle's Chinese Room story (Searle, 1980). Searle's article had the advantage …

In this book, Ljiljana Progovac proposes a gradualist, adaptationist approach to the
evolution of syntax, subject to natural selection. She provides a specific framework for its …

This chapter puts forward the claim that rigidity is one of the central, characterising
properties of procedural meaning, which plays a crucial role in accounting for the inferential …

This book examines a challenging problem at the intersection of theoretical linguistics and
the psychology of language: the interpretation of gradient judgments of sentence …

Although recent research on the neural substrates of word classes has generated some
valuable findings, significant progress has been hindered by insufficient attention to …

The term “creativity” comes from Latin, and means “give birth to” or “bring into existence”(cf.
Cicero Omnes res, quas et creat natura, et tuetur “All things, which nature makes as well as …