The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 61. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 570 JOHN R. TAyiGR a sentence was determined not by the fact of its occurrence in a corpus but on the basis of native speaker intuitions. The primitive elements of the rule system were symbols such as S sentence N Noun NP Noun Phrase Aux Auxiliary these like the mathematician s x and y or the logician s p and q were variables contentless in themselves but which could take on as values any contentful element of the appropriate category. The rules operated over strings of such symbols expanding them rearranging them and performing other kinds of transformations. Like Bloomfieldian descriptivism the algebraic shift left its mark on academic linguistics by introducing a new rigor into linguistic discourse. Linguists were required to formulate rules with a degree of precision and explicitness which allowed the rules to be evaluated against counterexamples and alternative rule formulations. Within a relatively short span of time all manner of tests were developed which could be applied in order to substantiate a given analysis. Many of these tests for example tests for confirming the status of a nominal as clausal subject tests for diagnosing complements as opposed to adjuncts tests for distinguishing control verbs from raising verbs are now part of the arsenal of every practicing linguist. It did not take long for the algebraic enterprise to be biologized. This move was made explicit in Chomsky s next major publication Aspects of the Theory of Syntax Chomsky 1965 . The system of rules which constitute the grammar had to be evaluated not only in terms of its descriptive adequacy but as a hypothesis about the cognitive state of a speaker 47-59 . Moreover since human beings are not born with knowledge of any particular language the rule system pertaining to a given language had to be acquired. Attention therefore moved toward those features of the human mind which support and enable the acquisition and mental representation of language. The shift signaled the emergence of
