Cognitive semantics Introduction
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C5P153
2025-12-14
35
Cognitive semantics Introduction
Like the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics, cognitive semantics is not a unified theory. It represents an approach to the study of mind and its relationship with embodied experience and culture. It proceeds by employing language as a key methodological tool for uncovering conceptual organisation and structure.
In Chapter 5, What is cognitive semantics?, we examine the four guiding principles that collectively characterise the collection of approaches that fall within cognitive semantics. These principles can be stated as follows:
1. Conceptual structure is embodied.
2. Semantic structure is conceptual structure.
3. Meaning representation is encyclopaedic.
4. Meaning-construction is conceptualisation.
We examine each of these principles in turn, and provide a preliminary overview of how they are reflected in the concerns addressed by cognitive semanticists. The subsequent chapters address specific theories within cognitive semantics that, to varying degrees, reflect these guiding principles.
Chapter 6, Embodiment and conceptual structure, examines the theory of image schemas developed in particular by Mark Johnson and the conceptual structuring system approach developed by Leonard Talmy. The research on image schemas by Johnson and others highlights the embodied basis of conceptual structure while Talmy’s research illustrates the ways in which language reflects conceptual structure which in turn reflects embodied experience. Thus these two approaches illustrate the first two of the guiding principles introduced in Chapter 5.
Chapter 7, The encyclopaedic view of meaning, is concerned with the third guiding principle of cognitive semantics: the idea that linguistic meaning is encyclopaedic in nature. This issue is explored by presenting, comparing and contrasting the theory of Frame Semantics developed by Charles Fillmore and the theory of domains pioneered by Ronald Langacker.
Chapter 8, Categorisation and idealised cognitive models, introduces the research perspective of George Lakoff and discusses his impact on the devel opment of cognitive semantics. In particular, we examine his proposal that experimental research on categorisation and prototype theory from cognitive psychology can be applied and extended in a theoretical account of cognitive representations that he calls ‘idealised cognitive models’. Lakoff applied his theory to three distinct aspects of conceptual organisation and language in three influential ‘case studies’ in his book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (1987). The first two of these, which relate to conceptual metaphor and lexical semantics, are the subjects of the next two chapters.
Chapter 9, Metaphor and metonymy, examines the development of Conceptual Metaphor Theory pioneered by George Lakoff in collaboration with Mark Johnson, together with the later development of approaches to conceptual metonymy. According to this model, conceptual metaphor maps structure from one conceptual domain onto another, while metonymy highlights an entity by referring to another entity within the same domain. More recent research suggests that metonymy may be more fundamental to conceptual structure than conceptual metaphor. In the light of this claim, we examine the research of Antonio Barcelona, Zoltán Kövecses and Günter Radden.
In Chapter 10, Word meaning and radial categories, we begin by illustrating Lakoff’s approach to word meaning. Following influential research by Claudia Brugman, Lakoff argues that words represent categories of meaning or ‘senses’. From this perspective, words are conceptual categories like any other, organised with respect to a prototype. However, his approach has been challenged by more recent research in cognitive semantics. In particular, we discuss the ‘Principled Polysemy’ framework developed by Vyvyan Evans and Andrea Tyler.
In Chapter 11, Meaning construction and mental spaces, we examine a model developed by Gilles Fauconnier which is concerned with providing an architecture for modelling meaning construction (sentence meaning) in discourse. Mental spaces are temporary knowledge structures constructed on the basis of ongoing discourse and can form the basis of an account for a range of phenomena including referential ambiguities, tense and aspect, and epistemic distance.
In Chapter 12, Conceptual blending, we discuss Blending Theory, the more recent approach that developed from Mental Spaces Theory. Blending Theory was developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner and is concerned with generalising key ideas from Mental Spaces Theory and modelling the way that dynamic meaning construction often results in a conceptual representation that is ‘more than the sum of its parts’. The approaches discussed in Chapters 11 and 12 illustrate the fourth guiding assumption of the cognitive semantics approach introduced in Chapter 5.
Finally, Chapter 13 compares and contrasts some of the assumptions of cognitive semantics with formal (truth-conditional) semantics and Relevance Theory, a formally-oriented model of communication that presents a view of linguistic meaning that is in certain respects consonant with cognitive approaches, despite directly opposing starting assumptions.
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
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