Francisco Gonzálvez-García: Functional-cognitive space in the 21st century - an overview

These lectures provide a cursory view of the main points of analogy and divergence among the main exponents of functional models (Role and Reference Grammar, Systemic Functional Grammar, the work of Givón, Functional Dikkian Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar) as well as cognitivist and constructionist models (e.g. Cognitive Grammar, Cognitive Construction Grammar, Radical Construction Grammar, Berkeley Construction Grammar, Boas' frame-semantic approach and the  interactional linguistics program). It is argued that the present-day scenario is best characterized in terms of clusters of features which correspond to a certain extent, but not completely, with the labels 'functionalist', 'cognitivist' and 'constructionist', as these terms are currently used in the literature. Finally, special attention will be paid to the Lexical Constructional Model (Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal Usón 2008), which sets out to bridge the gap between functionally-oriented models such as Role and Reference Grammar, on the one hand, and cognitivist/constructionist models such as Goldberg's Cognitive Construction Grammar and Lakoff's Idealized Cognitive Models, on the other.