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Abstract:

Traditionally, associative conceptual relations, unfolding over time, have been analysed less by (prescriptive) terminology than hierarchical ones. We claim that cognitive linguistics may be fruitful as a framework for the descriptive terminology of these relations. This chapter offers a conceptual reading of the interconnectedness of associative relations of instrument, cause and time in titles of an English research journal of medicine. These authentic examples show complex patterns of sometimes more than one instrumental used simultaneously or successively in causal sequences, to be decomposed in causing and caused events and which involve different instrumental subtypes, as well as roles for patients, effects and goals. Keywords: Associative relations; Cognitive linguistics; Frame semantics; Construction grammar; Descriptive terminology