Abstrakt: | The article discusses an application, within the sphere of foreign language pedagogy,
of one of the psychological mechanisms omnipresent in language – construal (Langacker
2008: 4-5, Tomasello 2003: 13). In the fi rst part, the article takes up two major
issues: a more detailed characterization of the construal aspects in question: profi le
and base, as well as the problems often encountered in pedagogical grammar while
referring to the uses of one of the English tenses – Present Perfect: the number of uses,
the manner of defi ning them, and the level of schematicity at which the description
should take place. The second part of the article is devoted to an analysis of the uses
of Present Perfect by means of the presented Cognitive Grammar tools. In the conclusions
this analysis is reviewed from the perspective of the above-mentioned problems
and some pedagogical implications fl owing from the model proposed by the author
are discussed. |