Andrea Tyler's Homepage

Welcome to Andrea Tyler's Home Page!

E-Mail: tyleran@georgetown.edu
Mailing address:
Andrea Tyler
Department of Linguistics
Box 571051
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C. 20057-1051
Phone: (202) 687-5956
Dept. Fax: (202) 687-6174

Research Statement [See Full Versoin]

My research interests revolve around what language learning reveals about the nature of language and the efficacy of theoretical models of language. Over the years, my investigations have convinced me that the study of language and language learning is most insightful when undertaken from the perspective of language in use and, by extension, language in context. The particular view of language that guides my work recognizes the following as foundational: 1) humans use language purposefully, primarily to communicate with other humans beings; 2) what any one utterance communicates is multidimensional involving, at minimum, the ideational, interpersonal, and textual; 3) communication always occurs in a context, richly defined; and 4) the complex, multi-layered interpretations we regularly assign to naturally-occurring language are underdetermined by the lexical items and the syntactic patterns in which they occur. Although these attributes are so basic and so unquestionably true, they have not been of central concern for many linguists and language acquisitionists. Placing this particular perspective at the center of my linguistic inquiry has had profound consequences for the questions I ask, the data I consider, the patterns I discover, and my interpretation of the import of those patterns. In the last few years, my basic view of language has evolved to include a recognition of the critical relationship between human conceptual structure and the nature of language. This has led me to adopt a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. My work is also defined by a recursive style of investigation that emphasizes interactions between theory and practical application. It usually begins with the observation of learners experiencing difficulty with an aspect of language. The puzzle is then to figure out why this aspect presents such a challenge. This leads to an examination of the theoretical explanations and to an attempt to refine the theory so it more accurately describes and explains the target phenomena. Finally, I test the accuracy or usefulness of the refined model, often in an experimental setting. This methodology has its basis in my doctoral research in which I investigated 4 th, 6 th, 8 th, and 10 th graders' acquisition of English derivational morphology and how they used that knowledge when reading for comprehension. In various ways, that early work has informed all my subsequent research as it provided a foundation in experimental design and methodology as well as an abiding interest in language processing, a commitment to examining models of language through the lens of language learning, and the belief that the results of those examinations can both help refine the model and eventually aid the language learner. [See Full Version]

Research Interests:
Cognitive Linguistics, Cross Cultural Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, Language and the Law, Writing Theory and Reading Theory

Courses [Back to Top]

Linguistics

How To Teach a Second/Foreign Language [Syllabus (Fall 2009)]
Metaphor and the Mind [Syllabus (Spring 2005)]
Linguistics and Reading [Syllabus (Fall 2002) (Fall 2004)]
Second Language Writing [Syllabus (Spring 2003) (Spring 2004) (Fall 2005)]
Linguistics and Writing [Syllabus]
Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers [Syllabus (Fall 2006)(Spring 2009)]
Pedagogical Grammar [Syllabus (Spring 2002)]
Seminar: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language [Syllabus (Fall 2008)(Fall 2009)]
Seminar: Topics in Language Teaching [Syllabus (Fall 2002)]
Seminar: Spoken Professional Disourse [Syllabus (Spring 2005)] (with Dr. Lucy Pickering)
Seminar: Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Language [Syllabus (Spring 2007)(Spring 2008)(Spring 2009)]

Georgetown Law Center (http://www.law.georgetown.edu/)

LAWG 550: English for Layers (Fall 2003)
LAWG 550: Statutory Interpretation and Case Analysis (Spring 2004)
LAWG 550: Foundations for Lawyers (Summer 2004)
LAWG 550: Advanced ESL Writing Seminar (Fall 2004, Fall 2005)

Books [Back to Top]

Language in Use
The Semantics of English Prepositions [Korean edition] [Japanese edition]
Language in the Context of Use
Language and Space
US Legal Discourse for International Lawyers

Language in Use: Cognitive and Usage-based Approaches to Language and Language Learning
(Selected papers from Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics 2003)

Edited by Andrea Tyler, Mari Takada, Yiyoung Kim, and Diana Marinova

Georgetown University Press, March 2005
Publisher's page: http://press.georgetown.edu/detail.html?id=1589010442

[Full Introduction]

In recent years, there has been growing awareness of the importance of studying language and language learning in its context of use. Researchers who identify themselves as taking a cognitive approach (broadly defined) and those who take various discourse perspectives have sounded the theme, often independently of each other, that an accurate understanding of the properties of language requires an understanding of how language is used to create meaning. Moreover, an increasing number of researchers language learning have argued that in acquiring a language the learner experiences the language in context. This perspective emphasizes the importance of studying language learning as it is embedded in meaningful communication and recognition that language learning is crucially shaped by the particular language patterns to which a learner is exposed. The aim of GURT 2003 was to bring together research from various perspectives that emphasize the shared notions that the properties of language and the process of language learning crucially involve how language is used in context and how these patterns relate to cognition more generally. The presentations at GURT 2003 adhered to a shared set of tenets concerning language as it occurs in natural contexts. These shared tenets include the following : when humans use language, they do so for a purpose; with very few exceptions, the purpose is to communicate with other humans beings; communication always occurs in a context; language is created by humans who are unique not only in their language using ability but also in their particular physical and neurological anatomy, as well as many aspects of their social organization and culture making; and language is inevitably shaped by the nature of human cognition and social-cultural activity. In spite of the fact that these attributes stem from basic, common-sensical observations, for many linguists and language acquisitionists, they have not been of central concern. Placing this particular perspective on language at the center of our inquiries has profound consequences in terms of the questions we ask, the data we consider, the patterns we discover, and our interpretation of the import of those patterns. Although cognitive researchers, discourse analysis researchers, and language researchers have the foregoing assumptions about language, the particular areas of inquiry and emphases of these subfields are diverse enough that many of us have tended to remain unaware of the interrelations among these approaches. Thus, we have also remained unaware of the possibilities for research from each of these perspectives to challenge, inform, and enrich the others. A key goal of GURT 2003, the success of which is admirably reflected in this collection of papers, was to begin to make these connections more transparent.[Full Introduction]

CONTENTS

Part I: Language Processing and First Language Learning

1. Support from Language Processing for a Constructional Approach to Grammar
Adele E. Goldberg and Giulia M. L. Bencini
Princeton University and New York University

2. Homonyms and Functional Mappings in Language Acquisition
Devin Casenhiser
Princeton University

3. Little Persuaders: Japanese Children's Use of Datte (but-because)
Tomoko Matsui, Peter McCagg, and Taeko Yamamoto
International Christian University, Japan

4. "Because" as a Maker of Collaborative Stance in Preschool Children's Peer Interactions
Amy Kyratzis
University of California, Santa Barbara

Part II: Issues in Second Language Learning

5. Contextualizing Interlanguage Pragmatics
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Indiana University

6. Learning the Discourse of Friendship
Catherine Evans Davies
University of Alabama

7. Applied Cognitive Linguistics and Newer Trends in Foreign Language Teaching Methodology
Susanne Niemeier
University Koblenz-Landau, Germany

8. Language Play and Language Learning: Creating Zones of Proximal Development in a Third Grade Multilingual Classroom
Ana Christina DaSilva Iddings and Steven G. McCafferty
Vanderbilt University and University of Nevada at Las Vegas

9. Cognates, Cognition and Writing: An Investigation of the Use of Cognates by University Second Language Learners
Robin Cameron Scarcella and Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman
University of California at Irvine and California State University, Fullerton

Part III: Discourse Resources and Meaning Construction

10. Intonation, Mental Representation, and Mutual Knowledge
Ann Wennerstrom
University of Washington

11. Linguistic Variation in the Lexical Episodes of University Classroom Talk
Eniko Csomay
San Diego State University

12. The Unofficial Business of Repair Initiation: Vehicles for Affiliation and Disaffiliation
Hansun Zhang Waring
Teachers College, Columbia University

13. Pragmatic Inferencing in Grammaticalization: A Case Study of Directional Verbs in Thai
Kingkarn Thepkanjana and Satoshi Uehara
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand and Tohoku University, Japan

Part IV: Language and Identity

14. "Trying on" the Identity of "Big Sister": Hypothetical Narratives in Parent-Child Discourse
Cynthia Gordon
Georgetown University

15. The Discourse of Local Identity in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina
Aida Premilovac
Georgetown University

16. Immigration Geographies, Multilingual Immigrants and the Transmission of Minority Languages: Evidence from the Igbo Brain Drain
Rachel R. Reynolds
Drexel University

[Back to Books]

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The Semantics of English Prepositions:
Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning, and Cognition

Andrea Tyler and Vyvyan Evans

Published June 2003 by Cambridge University Press
Hardback: 0521814308
[Back to Books]

Using a cognitive linguistics perspective, this book provides the most comprehensive, theoretical analysis of the semantics of English prepositions available. All English prepositions originally coded spatial relations between two physical entities; while retaining their original meaning, prepositions have also developed a rich set of non-spatial meanings. In this innovative study, Tyler and Evans argue that all these meanings are systematically grounded in the nature of human spatio-physical experience. The original 'spatial scenes' provide the foundation for the extension of meaning from the spatial to the more abstract. This analysis articulates a new methodology that distinguishes between a conventional meaning and an interpretation produced for understanding the preposition in context, as well as establishing which of several competing senses should be taken as the primary sense. Together, the methodology and framework are sufficiently articulated to generate testable predictions and allow the analysis to be applied to additional prepositions.

[Preface] [Sample Chapter]

CONTENTS
1. The nature of meaning
2. Embodied meaning and spatial experience
3. Towards a model of principled polysemy: spatial scenes and conceptualization
4. The case of over
5. The vertical axis
6. Spatial particles of orientation
7. Bounded landmarks
8. Conclusion [Back to Books]

The Korean-language Edition (2004)

[Preface to the Korean edition]

[Back to Books]

The Japanese-language Edition (2005)

http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4327401404/qid=1133760237/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/249-7172975-5549960

[Back to Books]

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Language in the Context of Use: Usage-Based Approaches to Language and Language Learning

Edited by Andrea Tyler, Yiyoung Kim, and Mari Takada

Published by Mouton de Gruyter in 2008
[Back to Books]

Overview [Full Version] [Table of Content 1][Table of Content 2]

The papers in this volume represent cognitive research that relies on naturally-occurring language gathered from observational data or large corpora, thus they provide an unusually strong contextualized, cognitive perspective. The volume offers an exciting set of new cognitive investigations that consider the context in which language is created, the specific purpose for which language is used, and how those factors affect the structure of language. The volume will be of interest to both researchers and language teaching practitioners. Cognitive linguists, particularly those interested in the relationship between language learning--either first or second--and the structure of language, will find many fresh ideas by several widely recognized leaders in the field. The volume also provides an entry point into cognitive linguistics for applied linguistics, SLA researchers, and second language teachers. While the sections on first and second language learning will be of most direct interests to those in the applied areas, the more theoretical papers also offer important insights for language learning and teaching. For instance, unaccusative and passive constructions have been of considerable interest to SLA researchers and second language teachers because second language learners often have difficulty with these constructions. So, native speakers of Korea and Japanese learning English frequently produce ungrammatical sentences such as "The accident was happened last night". Archard's study of French unaccusatives begins to offer an explanation for how these constructions might work in other languages, such as English, and provides a model for how to investigate the issue.[See Full Version]

CONTENTS Introduction: Andrea Tyler

I. First Language Acquisition

- Melissa Bowerman MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen & Free University of Amsterdam, Constructing semantic categories in first language acquisition
- Michael Israel, University of Maryland, Mental space configurations in child language
- Melissa Smith & Nancy Budwig, Clark University, The development of verb-argument structure in child discourse: On the use of construction variation in peer play
- Ruth Berman & Dorit Ravid, Tel Aviv University, Information packaging in writing and speech: A developmental view

II. Second Language Acquisition

- Nick Ellis Bangor University, Wales, U.K. Usage-based and form-focused SLA: The implicit and explicit learning of constructions
- Lynne Cameron, University of Leeds, U.K. A discourse approach to conceptual metaphor: Explaining metaphors for literacy practices in a school discourse community
- Olga Liamkina, Georgetown University, Making dative a case for semantic analysis: Differences in concept and use between native and non-native speakers of German
- Valentina Marras & Teresa Cadierno, University of Southern Denmark, Spanish ´’gustar’ vs. English ‘like’: A cognitive analysis of the constructions and its implication for SLA

III. Signed Language

- Terry Janzen, University of Manitoba, Perspective shifts in ASL narrative: The problem of clause structure
- Barbara Shaffer, University of New Mexico, BORING: It's anything but
- Sherman Wilcox, University of New Mexico, Iconicity and cognitive grammar in signed language
- Randall Hogue, Michele Bishop, Rachel Brockmann, Kristin Mulrooney, Marie Nadolske, Debra Patkin, Travas Young, & Sarah Taub, Gallaudet University, Count and mass nouns in ASL

IV. Discourse and Corpus Considerations

- Eve Sweetwer, UC Berkeley, Discourse structure marking in gesture
- Carol Lynn Moder, Oklahoma State University, It's like making soup: Metaphors and similes in spoken news discourse
- Michel Achard, Rice University, Unaccusativity in French? V. Conceptual Metaphor and Blending - Barbara Dancygier, University of British Columbia, Personal pronouns, blending, and narrative viewpoin
- Joseph Grady, Cultural Logic, "Superschemas" and the grammar of metaphorical mappings
- Akiko Fujii , Christian Women's University, Tokyo, Meaning Construction in Humorous Discourse: Context and Incongruities in Conceptual Iintegration

[Back to Books]

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United States Legal Discourse: Legal English for Foreign LLMs

Craig Hoffman (J.D., Ph.D., Georgetown University Law Center)
Andrea Tyler (Ph.D., Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University)

[Back to Books]

Overview [Table of Content 1][Table of Content 2]

United States Legal Discourse: Legal English for Foreign LLMs provides a comprehensive, interactive, introduction to the U.S. legal system for foreign lawyers enrolled in U.S. LL.M. programs. The book grows out of the innovative GU legal writing program for international lawyers earning a masters degree, United States Legal Discourse (USLD). The course simulates U.S. legal practice and engages the students in addressing challenging legal issues that are directly relevant to their transnational interests. The approach to second language (L2) legal writing presented in the book offers a significant departure from traditional approaches. The work represents the first attempt to date to create a methodology for L2 legal writing instruction that draws on the expertise of both professional lawyers and applied linguists with extensive experience in application of discourse analysis to issues in L2 writing. The approach that has emerged from this joint effort centers on the perspective that professional, genre-specific discourse reflects a set of social literacy practices specific to a particular discourse community. It directs international lawyers in US legal programs, who come from discourse communities with quite distinct social literacy practices, to explicitly engage in the social literacy practices employed within the US legal community. This perspective contrasts with standard L2 legal writing instruction and L2 legal writing books that tend to focus on skill development through modeling the surface elements of sample texts and reading legal texts for factual information.

[Back to Books]

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Language and Space

Vyvyan Evans and Andrea Tyler

Currently in preparation and under contract to John BenjaminsTo be published in the Cognitive Linguistics in Practice series
[Back to Books]

This book represents an introduction to the relationship between language and space from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics.The book develops the perspective that space is always perceived from the viewpoint of the human experiencer, and hence our understanding of space always involves human mental capacities and a human body.This 'embodied' perspective means that space, as humans experience it, is as much a construct of the way we perceive the world as what the world is actually like. This book examines the way in which space has been modelled, e.g., in terms of images schemas, spatial scenes, reference frames, figure-ground organization, and how language serves to encode objects and spatial relations, and aspects of motion, and how the conceptual level of representation intersects and interacts with embodied experience and representation in language. The book also explores the origins of spatial language, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variation, and what this implies about notions such as universals vs. relativity, and the role of space and experience of space in abstract thought such as metaphor systems. Each chapter includes exercises and suggestions for further reading.

CONTENTS

1. Spatial representation and spatial language
2. The semantics of space: Objects and spatial relations
3. Spatial scenes and reference frames
4. Spatial relations and semantic networks
5. The semantics of English prepositions: An overview
6. Functional aspects of spatial relations
7. Non-spatial extensions of spatial relations
8. Cross-linguistic variation in language and space
9. The spatial basis of abstract thought
10. The evolution of spatial markers

[Back to Books]

Selected Articles [Back to Top]

Forthcoming

Tyler, A. Cognitive Linguistics, Functional Linguistics, and Second Language Learning. In C. Polio (Ed.), Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. (2009)

Tyler, A. Cognitive Linguistics. In S. Gass and A. Mackey (Eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Routledge. (2011).

Tyler, A. Perceptions of Coherence in Parallel Native Speaker/ Non-native Speaker Discourse (accepted for publication). In Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics.

Schiffrin, D., & Tyler, A. Functional approaches to grammar and linguistic approaches to discourse analysis. In L. Waugh and J. Joseph (Eds.), Cambridge History of Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tyler, A., & Takahashi, H. Metaphor and Metonymy. In Mainenborn, C., von Heusinger, K. and Portner, P. (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning. Mouton de Gruyter.

Tyler, A. & Verspoor, M. The Role of Cognitive Linguistics in Second Language Research. In Ritchie, W. & Bhatia, T. (Eds), The new handbook of second language acquisition, 2nd edition. Elsevier.

Recent publications

Tyler, A. (2008). Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Instruction. In N. Ellis & P. Robinson (Eds.), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Tyler, A. & Shakhova, D. (2008). Extending the principled polysemy model beyond English: The case of Russian za. In P. Chilton and V. Evans (Eds) London: Equinox Press.

Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2006). Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Second Language Teaching. In D. Dutra & H. Mello (Eds.), Cognitive linguistics and second language teaching. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Davies, C. and Tyler, A. (2005). Discourse strategies in the context of cross-cultural institutional talk: Uncovering cross-linguistic pragmatics. In K. Bardovi-Harlig and B. Hartford (Eds), Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring institutional talk. 133-156. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Boxer, D. and Tyler, A. (2004). Gender, sexual harassment and the International Teaching Assistant. In B. Norton and A. Pavlenko (Eds.), Gender and English Language Learners. 29-42. TESOL. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2004a). Applying cognitive linguistics to pedagogical grammar: the case of over. In M. Achard & S. Niemeier (Eds.), Cognitive Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Foreign Language Teaching ( pp. 257-280). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [PDF File]

Evans, V., & Tyler, A. (2004b). Spatial experience, lexical structure and motivation: the case of in. In G. Radden & G. Panther (Eds.), Studies in Linguistics Motivation [In The Cognitive Linguistics Research Series] (pp. 157-192). New York and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [PDF File]

Evans, V., & Tyler, A. (2004c). Rethinking English "Prepositions of Movement": The Case of To and Through. In H. Cuyckens, W. de Mulder & T. Mortelmans (Eds.), Adpositions of Movement (Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 18) (pp. 247-270). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.[PDF File]

Other Selected Publications [Back to Top]

Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2001a). Reconsidering prepositional polysemy networks: the case of over. Language, 77(4), 724-765. Reprinted in B. Nerlich, L. Todd, V. Herman and D.D. Clarke (Eds.) (2003), Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and Language ( pp. 95-160). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [PDF File]

Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2001b). The relation between experience, conceptual structure and meaning: non-temporal uses of tense and language teaching. In M. Puetz, S. Niemeier & R. Dirven (Eds.), Applied Cognitive Linguistics I: Theory and Language Acquisition (pp. 63-108). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [PDF File]

Nakahama, Y., Tyler, A., & van Lier, L. (2001). Negotiating meaning in conversational and information-gap activities: a comparative discourse analysis. TESOL Quarterly, 35(3).

Johnson, Marysia & A. Tyler. (1998). Re-examining natural context: how much does the LPI look like a conversation? In R. Young and A. He (Eds.) Language Proficiency Interviews: A Discourse Approach . (pp. 23-53). Amsterdam : Benjamins.

Tyler, A. (1995). Co-constructing miscommunication: the role of participant frame and schema in cross-cultural miscommunication. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 129-152.

Tyler, A. & D. Boxer. (1996). Sexual harassment? Cross-cultural/crosslinguistic differences in interpretation. Discourse and Society, 7, 131-157.

Tyler, A. (1994). The role of syntactic structure in discourse structure. Applied Linguistics, 15 , 215-235.

Tyler, A. (1994). The role of repetition in perceptions of discourse coherence. Journal of Pragmatics, 21 , 671-688.

Tyler, A. & J. Bro. (1994). Discourse processing effort and perceptions of comprehensibility in nonnative discourse: the effect of ordering and interpretive cues revisited. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15 , 507-522.

Tyler, A. (1992). Discourse structure and the perception of incoherence in international teaching assistants' spoken discourse. TESOL Quarterly, 26 , 713-730.

Tyler, A. & W. Nagy. (1990). Use of English derivational morphology during reading. Cognition, 36 , 17-34.

Tyler, A. & Nagy, W. (1989). The acquisition of English derivational morphology. Memory and Language, 28 , 649-667.

Presentations [Back to Top]

"Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Learning: An Overview" Plenary. International Conference on Cognitive Linguistics and Language Learning. Bengu, China (November 2008)

"Putting Linguistics Back Into Second Language Teaching" Plenary. LAUD. Landau, Germany. (March 2008).

September 2009 (11:40 a.m. - 12:55 p.m. in ICC 462)
Faculty Research Talk, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University

"It's Not Over When It's Over: A Cognitive Linguistics Analysis of the Semantics of English Prepositions"

[PPT Slides]

English prepositions are notorious for their multiple meanings. For instance, over has at least 16 attested meanings. Traditional approcahes have represented the semantics of English prepositions, such as over, as largely arbitrary. Applying a cognitive linguistic framework, I will present an analysis of over that illustrates the non-arbitrary quality of the semantics of prepositions and the highly creative nature of the human conceptual system. The analysis takes the following as basic: 1) human conceptualization is the product of embodied experience, i.e. that the kinds of bodies and neural architecture humans have, in conjunction with the nature of the physical world humans inhabit, determines human conceptual structure, and 2) semantic structure dervies from and mirrors conceptual structure. As humans interact with the world, they perceive recurring spatial configurations that become represented in memory as abstract, image-schematic conceptualizations, i.e. spatial scenes. These spatial scenes, in conjunction with a few well-established principles of language and language processing, form the basis for the systematic semantic extension found with prepositions. I will end by discussing applications of this analysis to second language instruction.

Links [Back to Top]

Second Language Acquisition at Georgetown

Cognitive Linguistics journal

The International Cognitive Linguistics Association

Blending and Conceptual Integration

Construction Grammar

Berkeley Construction Grammar (UC Berkeley)

Conceptual Metaphor Home Page (UC Berkeley)

The Metaphor and Metonymy Group (University of Leeds)

Neural Theory of Language (NTL) (UC Berkeley)

Neurocognitive Linguistics (Rice University)

Vyv Evans (University of Brighton)

Research Statement [See Full Versoin]

I. First Language Acquisition

II. Second Language Acquisition

III. Signed Language

IV. Discourse and Corpus Considerations