Abstract Diachronic studies have played an increasingly important role in recent Cognitive Linguistics. This introductory paper provides overview of some major lines research this field, starting with the inherently panchronic approach that characterizes most flavors usage-based theory from Grammar to complex adaptive systems approaches. In particular, “constructionist turn” and “quantitative L...

LINGUISTICS, as every other empirical science, is a complex mixture of theory and observation. The precise nature of this mixture is still not too well understood, and in this respect the difference between linguistics and, say, physics is probably at most one of degree. This lack of methodological insight has often led to futile disputes between linguists and other scientists dealing with lang...