Basic Verbs in English

Newman offers a unique account of eleven commonly used verbs of British English (eat, drink, sit, stand, lie, etc.), combining corpus-linguistic methods and the analytical tools of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar. For each verb, an original data set of 100 concordance lines representing both spoken and written registers is the basis for identifying patterns of usage and their relative frequencies.

The empirical approach leads to usage-based conclusions that are not usually found in dictionaries or grammars, e.g., patterns of cooccurrence of phrases with the verbs and the relative frequencies of the verbs in their non-literal senses. Complementing the usage-based analysis of each verb is a Cognitive Grammar account of the main semantic structures associated with the verbs, employing intellectually provocative Langacker-style diagrammatic representations. The verbs may be very “ordinary” words in the view of speakers who will feel that they know these verbs very well. Subjecting them to analysis as in this book, however, shows them to have considerable semantic complexity, even when used in their everyday literal senses, and an impressive richness in the range of their semantic extensions.

Perfect for researchers and postgraduate students in cognitive linguistics and English language study.

John Newman FRSC FAHA holds the position of Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta and is an Affiliate in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, Monash University. He has taught at Monash University, Tsinghua University (Taiwan), Massey University (New Zealand), National Chengchi University (Taiwan), and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and has served as Chair, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta (2002-2011). His research interests include cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, and typology and he is the author of Give: A Cognitive Linguistic Study (Mouton de Gruyter, 1996). His publications cover English and German historical linguistics, Mandarin and Chinese dialects (Cantonese, Hokkien, Wenzhou), Austronesian, and Papuan. He has carried out fieldwork in Sarawak (Malaysia), Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) and Alberta (Canada). He served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognitive Linguistics (2014-2018).