Reviewed by Sandra Cristina Becker, Federal University of Minas Gerais

Considered a modern school of linguistic thought, cognitive linguistics (CL) is firmly rooted in two pillars: the generalization commitment and the cognitive commitment. The first involves general principles that are responsible for all aspects of human language, and the latter establishes that language and linguistic organization reflect cognitive principles. Rejecting the claim that there is a distinct language module, cognitive linguists believe that language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty and that knowledge of language emerges from language use. In order to minimize the lack of methodological principles underpinning some studies in CL, theoretical research focused on methodological approaches have been carried out. While cognitive semantics is concerned with investigating conceptual structure and processes of conceptualization, grammar-based studies are centered on studying the language system itself, highlighting its conceptual organization.

This volume is a highly relevant collection of nine articles on one of the central themes within CL: corpus linguistics. In methodological terms, most of the papers pertain to the quantitative sphere. In the opening chapter, Stefan Th. Gries does a good job of setting the scene for the entire book. In his solid introduction he not only clarifies the assumptions that CL and functional linguistics have in common but also singles out the parameters considered in corpus-driven investigations.

In the first article Dagmar Divjak turns to Russian near-synonymous verbs to draw a lucid basis for a network representation, and sheds some light on the phenomenon of categorization. ‘Corpus-based methods and cognitive semantics: The many senses of to run’, by Gries, addresses the issue of prototype identification and polysemy. Although the corpus presented was not large enough, it was sufficient for Gries to wittily demonstrate the possible uses of a lexeme, as well as what makes a database reliable for sense analysis. Stefanie Wulff’s ‘Go-V vs. Go-and-V in English: A case of constructional synonymy’ aims to account for the substantial difference between these two constructions. It must be said that one of the most important achievements of this study was the methodological points raised as it delineates a model for research on polysemy. Beate Hampe and Doris Schönefeld’s bright contribution offers interesting evidence on cognitive systems underlying ‘creative’ constructions. As the authors state, their conclusions ‘cannot be drawn on the basis of corpus data alone’ (150), since experimental evidence would hopefully corroborate their findings.

Gaëtanelle Gilquin’s ‘The place of prototypicality in corpus linguistics: Causation in the hot seat’ provides a detailed account of prototypical causation. Willem Hollmann’s paper accounts for passivization of English periphrastic causatives, delineating some of their aspects within the implicational universals proposal. Different degrees of transitivity are addressed by John Newman and Sally Rice. According to them, inflected verb forms have their own semantic and constructional properties, and ‘inflectional island’ is a relevant notion to explain such properties.

Posture verbs and their causative counterparts are ingeniously explored by Maarten Lemmens. Using extensive corpus material, Lemmens identified the degree of productivity of these verbs as well as spatial relationships encoded by language. Schönefeld’s insightful and original study deals with a number of collocations to delineate construal operations that are related to image schemas.

All in all, Corpora in cognitive linguistics represents a broad spectrum of interests. The volume’s value is enhanced by excellent analyses that will certainly contribute to the field and stimulate new research. Undoubtedly, it deserves to be placed on the reading list of all who are interested in cognitive linguistics and methodological approaches.