Cognitive linguists study, as their name indicates, how individuals cognitively process language. At the same time, they stress that language use is an inherently social activity, as a primary function of language is to facilitate communication between individuals. So how does the cognitive processing of individuals lead to tendencies and changes in language at the community level? And conversely, how are those community level tendencies or social categories processed and represented in the mind of the individual?

These are some of the questions that we aim to answer at the CogLing Days of 2024. The Cogling Days constitute the biennial conference of BeNeCla , the cognitive linguistics association of Belgium and the Netherlands. The conference is first and foremost intended to spark local collaborations, foster the exchange of new ideas, and provide a place to present the latest research conducted in the Low Countries.

In addition to a plenary talk and the regular talks, the present edition features a panel on the question how to study the interplay between the individual and the community.

The program and book of abstracts can be found here.

Registration is now closed.

Plenary speakers and panelists

Freek Van de Velde

Freek Van de Velde is appointed as professor of Dutch linguistics and historical linguistics at KU Leuven. His research interests comprise several interlocking domains: the history of the Dutch language (and related languages), general mechanisms of diachronic morphosyntax, the interplay of external and internal factors in language change, quantitative linguistics, and Cultural Evolution.

Marie Barking

Marie Barking recently defended her dissertation with the title “A Usage-Based Account of Language Transfer – A Case Study of German Speakers in the Netherlands”. In her research, she explores the German as spoken by native German speakers living in the Netherlands and shows that these speakers, due to their frequent use of Dutch and the similarity between Dutch and German, often experience extensive transfer from their second language Dutch to their native language German. She uses this case study to explore both the cognitive and the social factors involved in (bilingual) speakers’ language use. Marie Barking now works as an Assistant Professor at the department of Communication and Cognition at Tilburg University.

Peter Petré

Peter Petré is an associate research professor of English linguistics at the University of Antwerp, holding a PhD from KU Leuven. Combining linguistics and history with data-oriented methodologies, his current research focuses on grammar change across the lifespan and how community grammar emerges out of, and feeds into individual interactions. He acquired funding for this research from ERC (Mind-Bending Grammars, 2015-2021), and FWO (2021-2025). Next to numerous publications in journals and monographs on these topics (e.g., with Freek Van de Velde in Language 2018, with Lauren Fonteyn in Language Variation and Change in 2022), he authored a monograph withOxford UP on constructional change (2014), and co-edited a book on English philology (2018, Benjamins), and the special issue Constructionist Approaches to Individuality in Language (Cognitive Linguistics, 2020).

Arie Verhagen

Arie Verhagen (www.arieverhagen.nl/) is professor emeritus of Dutch Linguistics, and of Language, Culture, and Cognition at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He has worked on several grammatical topics (e.g. word order, causatives, complementation) from a cognitive-pragmatic theoretical perspective, and served as editor of a number of journals, including Cognitive Linguistics as editor-in-chief. His 2005 monograph Constructions of Intersubjectivity (Oxford University Press) contributed to the ‘social turn’ in cognitive linguistics. Recent projects include stylistics and the (cultural) evolution of language.  Results of the former are presented in Stijl, Taal en Tekst (co-authored with Ninke Stukker; Leiden University Press, 2019), and of the latter in Ten Lectures on Cognitive Evolutionary Linguistics (Brill, 2021). This recent work has recently also led to papers and lectures on conceptual/​terminological foundations of linguistic research (“philosophy of linguistics”).