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Lecture 5,6 and 8: Cognitive semantics: Langacker, Lakoff, Talmy |
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Martinovski, biljana@ling.gu.se,
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The following are some of the basic assumptions in cognitive semantics and grammar:
1. Meaning is conceptualization.
2. There is difference between real world and conceptualized world.
3. There is no direct correspondence between these two worlds.
4. The cognitive theory of language describes only the organization of this conceptualized world.
(What follows from these assumptions is that these theories are working only with epistemological categories and not with ontological categories.)
Another common view is that there are special cognitive processes and operations of conceptualization which are used of human beings not only for organization of linguistic but also for non-linguistic information.
5. The cognitive operations used of humans to organize and structure linguistic information are the same as those used to structure non-linguistic information.
6. Human beings have inborn capacity for such internal organization of information which is expressed by these operations.
Relative to the above are also Langacker's basic claims:
1. Meaning reduces to conceptualization (mental experience).
2. A frequently-used expression typically displays a network of
interrelated senses.(Polysemy is norm.)
3. Semantic structures are characterized relative to "cognitive
domains".
4. A semantic structure (predication) derives its value throught
the imposition of a "profile" (designatum) on a base.
5. Semantic structures incorporate conventional "imagery", i.e. they construe a situation in a particular fashion.
Conceptualization subsumes both established concepts and novel
conceptions; includes sensory, emotive, and kinesthetic sensations;
and extends to our awareness of the physical, social, and linguistic
context.
Linguistic expressions = semantic pole + phonological pole
Categorizing relationships:
1. Schematicity - the more abstract concept is the schema of the concept it defines.
The opposite direction is: specification - the next, more concrete concept is a
specification (or examplification) of its schema. Schemas are nodes in the conceptual network
defining a concept and each of them can be a cognitive domain because it may consist of
other concepts, schemas and specifications.
ex:
|Schema -> specification |
platt yta -> bordets yta
tyg material + sytt tyg -> duk
waterproofed material -> canvas
2. Extension - it is an indirect, polisemic relation between nodes in the network of cognitive domains and concepts
It may be the case that different people have different types of extensions. An extension is a concept which meaning needs additional
concepts to be added in the network, that is, the cognitive domain(s) which is(are) its
schema in the network is(are) not sifficient to define it. The extension
presupposes that there is one basic relation, a prototypical meaning of which the next
polysemic meaning is an extension. In Swedish, one may have "en tavlas duk" and
en duk paa bordet, the term is the same althought we have two quite different
objects. Apart from subjective differences there may be differences across languages.
The English word for duk paa tavla is 'canvas' but it has different extensions
than the Swedish word duk.
ex:
duk ---> duk paa en tavla
duk ---> segelduk
canvas ---> canvas of a tent
canvas ---> canvas of a painting
The transformation of a substantiv to a verb, in traditional terms, is an extension.
duk ---> duka (we need to add the domain of action, manner or movement)
In English this extension is not productive:
"I will canvas the tent."
is not used, which doesn't mean that it is impossible.
In the case of the English word "canvass" which is phonetically homonymous with "canvas" (roostvaervning) one can transform the verb, the action "to canvass" (bearbeta personer foor att vaerva rooster) to a substantiv, an object. If the verb is transformed to substantiv, that is, the manner to object or the opposite, it is not clear, one needs a diacronic account of the matter but in any case the actual transformation in a human mind is made according to which of the used meanings is learned first or/and which of the used meanings is more typical, frequent in the community.
Seldom people who are not artists say "jag skall duka" and mean
that they will put the canvas on the backside of the frame. In fact, it is not sure
that one can transform the extensional, polysemic meaning of "duk" to a verb while
preserving the same extensional meaning. And even if one does that, it may be even
described as a metaphor. For Langacker metaphors are extensions, usually complex
and long-stretched extensions.
Criteria for characterization of a lexical item.
1. Cognitive Domains
"right triangle" is a cognitive domain (schema) of the notion
"hypotenuse":
line segment angle ->triangle + perpendicularity -> right triangle
->hypotenuse X -> midpoint of hypotenuse
The full set of domains is the predication's matrix, which is
often open-ended, that is, one may constantly add in it. (interpretant in Peirce)
"I see no a priori reason to accept the reality of the semantics/pragmatics dichotomy.Instead, gradation of centrality in the specifications constituting our encyclopedic knowledge of an entity."(Langacker 1988)
Lexical item to be viewed not as "containers" but as providing access to knowledge systems of open-ended, encyclopedic proportions.
"Speakers don not send meanings to one another but sound waves. "
2. Dimensions of imagery or
structuring cognitive operations
(content/imagery)
- profile on a base of a term, profiling
"line segment" - "right triangle" of "hypotenuse"
base = matrix, (frame)
profile = prominent part of the base, head
base+profile = meaning
relations - trajector (TR) (also called figure by other authors) and landmark (LM) (also called ground)
Example:
Hunden ramlade i dammen.
TR Motion Region LM
ramlar
This concept has a TR which is moving towards a LM, that is, it is
a concept of Motion which has a Path with a specified spatial direction
from High to Low. The Region in the predication
is in the above sentence denoted by the Motion verb and the preposition.
We may try to define the relation between some cognitive semantic categories
(image-schemas), their values and the traditional grammatical categories which express them
in Swedish:
| Cognitive Semantic Category
(Image schemas) | Values | Traditional Grammatical Category | Examples |
| REGION | Interior | prep, adverb | i, in |
| Surface | prep, adverb | på | |
| Proximate | prep, adverb | på, nära,från,till | |
| Lateral | prep, adverb | bredvid, med | |
| Superior | prep, adverb | över | |
| Inferior | prep, adverb | under | |
| PATH | Place | prep, verb, adverb | i,på |
| Beginning | prep, verb, adverb, subst. | utifrån, ankomst ,
anlända |
|
| Middle | prep, verb, adverb | genom,till, tränga sig | |
| End | prep, verb, adverb | bort,landa | |
| LANDMARK | Deictic | substantiv, idiom | gå, inside |
| Allocation | substantiv, idiom | ut på gåtan | |
| MOTION | Static | verb | är |
| Dynamic | verb | springer,talar |
- level of specificity
Example:
animal - >reptile->snake->rattlesnake
(Schema)
- background assumptions and expectations
Example:
the given-new distinction
usually expressed by deictic categories, such as, definiteness, time-,
spatial and social deixis.
- secondary activation (+metaphor)
network model of semantic and phonological variants
metaphor - activation of extension from a basic variant
- scale and scope of predication
Example:
* Vi skall stanna hela sommaren i oon.
Vi skall stanna hela sommaren paa oon.
Vi skall stanna hela sommaren i byn.
* Vi skall stanna hela sommaren paa byn.
Swedish distinguishes between smaller parts of land which are separated (by water)
from the bigger terrestrial blocks called continents and other spaces.
What is called an island and a continent is dependent on the scale and the scope of the terrestrial entity in question.
- relative salience of a predication's substructures
profiling (gram. category)
relational predications assymetry
analysability
- perspective (orientation, vantage point, directionality,
objective construction)
George Lakoff - Embodiment semantics
Conceptual metaphors(including conventional conceptual metaphors)are imaginative processes creating abstract cognitive modules
on the same level as categorization and schematization in Langacker.
The main source of meaning is human bodily and social experience in combination with innate capacity to imaginative projects.
The bodily and interactional experience is transformed whith help of these innate
imagistic (in opposition ot logical) capacities (such as the operations of
superimposition and focusing) to abstract conceptual structures.
bodily experience -> abstract reason
Arguments against formal semantics and objectivism:
CONTAINER IS:
Jag vandrar i aelskogen.; inkludera, in ,i ,insides, rum
*Jag traeffade honom paa stallet.
Here the Container IS defines why the first utterance can not mean the second one and why the first
sentence is not acceptable.
The difference between stallet and stan can be explained also with the help of Langacker's
structuring operation (or dimension of imagery) referring to te scope and scale of the predication.
LINK IS -
Source/Path/Goal/Direction/ - Bollen traeffade mig i ansiktet.
The concept traeffade has one inbuild Source and Path which End is
my face. The direction of the movement is also inbuild in the concept - from
the Source to the Goal.In Bollen traeffade. there is no expressed Landmark
but it is inbuild in the concept of
the verb and this is the reason why that sentence is still meaningful and
understadable. Not only that, in this case the Goal is even definite. There is aslo a
presupposition of previous mention or contextual clue of the Goal of the ball. (Remember
Schiffrin's observation that first mention deictic expressions in the taxi driver's story
had indefinte form and second mentions had usually definite form. This expression can be explained alos by Langacker's
dimension of background assumptions which incorporates pragmatic aspects of the situation.)
MULTIPLE/MASS IS - bollar/plast
1. Maximalistic ( as opposite to the generative minimalistic model) - linguistic and
extra-linguistic knowledge are related on a scale; exceptionles rules are atypical
(anomalistic view). Thus there is no modular distinction between semantics and pragmatics.
It gives a general procedure and schema for the realization
of grammar and lexicon, where as the generative grammar does not describe the lexicon.
2. Non-reductive - both rules and individual instantiations are included in
the cognitive linguistic network. The schemas have categorizing function with minimal
specification.
3. The cognitivistic model is a bottom-up approach (as opposite to generative top-down approach).
4. Uses the notion of redundancy.
5. It is based on the notion of psychological reality where as the gerenative grammar
psychological 'aspirations'.
The nodes in the usage-based model are members of categories linked by the following relationships:
A ---->B means that B is incompeletely categorized by A
EX.:
A -> B (B is more detailed)
EX:
A<->B
Prototypes are descibed as schematized most frequent instances.
There are two basic cognitive processes in the network:
Children do overgeneralize grammatical rules which means that there
are rule-abstracting processes but they aslo learn anomalistic instantiations
for which there are no general models. This two facts point out that
a psychologiocally adequate cognitive network must deal with both
processes: abstraction of rules and treatment of individual representations.
If fact, in Swedish, and certainly in other langauges, e.g.,the irregular
forms are typical quality of some of the most frequent words ( e.g., think about the
forms of the verbs "be" and "have" in all languages you know.)
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concrete domains - > abstract domains (such as metaphors)
Examples:
Jag traeffade honom i stallet.
Jag traeffade honom paa stan.
Jag traffade honom i stan.
Langacker's usage-based network
hot (as weather condition) ----> hot (as sexual condition)
warm ->hot
table->black table
abstraction (schematization) and specification.