This paper discusses the phenomenon of L(eft) D(islocation) in Arusa – a southern variety of Maasai – and, in particular, the presence of resumption in LD constructions. With respect to resumption, Arusa allows for two types of LD. In most cases, a non-resumptive type of LD is used. This variant is obligatory if a possible resumptive element refers to an argument of the verb of the matrix clause (i.e. subject, direct and indirect objects and applied objects). The resumptive type, which is significantly less frequent, appears only if the dislocate corresponds to an adjunct in the matrix clause. The pervasiveness of the non-resumptive LD stems from the ungrammaticality of overt independent pronominal arguments in most positions in Arusa. As a result, resumption cannot be viewed as a decisive feature for the classification of a construction as LD, and its lack as a sufficient reason to propose a different category. Rather, LD should be viewed as a radial category containing both constructions that match the LD prototype and structures that are more remote from the exemplar.

As compared to their purely verbal manifestations, multimodal realizations of image schematic metaphors have received far too little attention in cognitive linguistics than they would deserve. It will be argued that image schemas (Johnson 1987, Talmy 1988), since they are skeletal conceptual structure, afford an excellent source domain for metaphors that are realized verbo-visually in cartoons. The cartoons selected for this study are all by Janusz Kapusta, a Polish artist, whose works have appeared every week in the Polish magazine “Plus-Minus” for over ten years. In contrast to the gestural medium, films and music, where the relevant elements of image schematic source domains of metaphor are never fully available at once, the cartoons give a “snapshot” of a conceptual image which is ready for inspection as a single Gestalt. They are therefore a good testing ground for discussing the question of how the visual and the verbal modality interact in spatialization of abstract ideas. Providing insights into the function of multimodal metaphors and levels of their activation, the discussion contributes to the ongoing debate on the conceptual nature of metaphor and the embodiment of meaning. The results of the study are also considered in relation to the role of verbo-pictorial metaphor in structuring abstract concepts in a creative way.

The paper provides a cognitive grammar analysis of reflexivization phenomena in English and Polish. Three separate although related claims are made: (i) underlying reflexiviza­tion phenomena is the intersubjectification process which involves the so-called refer­ence point relationship; (ii) the intersubjectification process takes place in the Current Discourse Space – CDS (Langacker 2008), whereby the degree of the antecedent’s ac­cessibility for the reflexive pronoun is established; (iii) while in Polish, the antecedent’s accessibility is closely linked to the detransitivization process, in English, it is determined by the accessibility hierarchy in the sense of Kuno (1987).

This paper presents a highly contextualizing approach to the meaning pattern of in. It introduces perspectivization (or vantage point taking) as an important cognitive pragmatic mechanism that accounts for meaning variation of prepositions. In addition, contextualization is included as an important part of the methodology for sense decision. It is hoped that the proposed model can shed light on the connection between cognitive semantics and the cognitive pragmatic principle of relevance.

In this article, I want to put forward the following argument: Cognitive Linguistics – after a long hegemony of Chomskyan formalist linguistics – has offered models of language as “motivated” by general and prior cognitive abilities; as such it has been able to provide representations of a much wider range of linguistic phenomena (both grammatical and lexical); however, the “human face” of Cognitive Linguistics is that of a generic human being rather than that of actual people: members of particular social communities in which languages develop through “figuration” and “articulation”.

I would like to suggest that the cognitive perspective on language, developed for over half a century, has been challenged in an unparalleled manner by Daniel Dor (2015). He points out that competing schools of linguistics (formalists, functionalists, pragmaticists) all share Chomsky’s original assumption that linguistics is part of Cognitive Science and language is primarily a mental entity. Dor proposes to rethink the status quo in linguistics from an alternative starting point: language is a social communication technology for the instruction of imagination. I believe that this confrontation with mentalism in language study may lead, in time, to a paradigm shift. I also point out – in the context of Charles Taylor’s latest (2016) book – that Dor’s social perspective on language has its limitations too.

The paper discusses some cognitive processes that underlie emergence, development and disappearance of image (“one-shot”) metaphors. It is claimed that expressions with a primarily literal meaning can function in a particular discourse so that they become elevated to the status of rich image metaphors. The first step on the way towards metaphorization involves the emergence of metonymic expressions, which are based on the speakers’ choice of salient elements of events or situations. Two or more such metonymies can then coalesce via conceptual integration to create an image metaphor. The metaphor, in turn, can be transformed into an idiomatic expression, separated from its original non-verbal context. The discussion is illustrated with a slogan used in connection with recent social and political developments in Poland.