midtest Flashcards
The four tenets of cognitive linguistics
perspectival
dynamic and flexible
encyclopedic and non-autonomous
based on usage and experience
TWO KEY COMMITMENTS:
GENERALIZATION AND COGNITIVE
Polysemy (G)
is not restricted to word meaning but is a
fundamental feature of human language.
metaphor (G)
meaning extension. Metaphor can give rise to
new meaning.
Profiling in language
(C)
Linguistics organization should reflect general
cognitive principles.
There is no distinct language module in our mind.
Profile vs. base
The car hit the tree
The tree was hit by the car
fuzzy categories in categorization
(C)
Metaphor
(C)
We conceptualize markets, the economy as a patient.
We conceptualize doing business as fighting a war
We conceptualize being in love as fighting a battle
The embodied mind
Mind and body are NOT distinct entities (reject mind/body dualism; generative
grammar of Chomsky and formal semantics)
Human experience, the centrality of the human body AFFECT the nature of our
experience.
Image schemas: concepts that come from pre-conceptual experience of the world
mediated by the human body: CONTAINER
Two kinds of universals
•Patterns of similarity that are attested in typological studies (comparative linguistics)
•
•Underlying principles of linguistic organization in human mind
•
Cognitive vs. Formalist view
Cognitive vs. Formalist view
Embodiment constraint
- Evidence: Human visual system lacks access to color in the infrared range b/c we can’t experience this part of the color spectrum.
- This constraint => no word to refer to infrared colors.
Environment constraint
•Gravity and other ‘physical laws’ are experienced by humans is essentially the same way at cognitive level.
•
•We all see polar star in direction of North but it may not be North due to light being bent
Experience constraint
•Sensory experience gives rise to concepts in domain of SPACE, MOTION, TEMPERATURE …
•
•Subjective experience gives rise to concepts in domain of emotion, consciousness, duration of time
Gestalt psychology
•Interested in principles that allow unconscious perceptual mechanisms to construct wholes or incomplete perceptual input.
figure-ground segregation
•Human perception automatically segregate any given scene into figure-ground organization.
Proximity
•Elements in a scene that are closer together will be seen as belonging together in a group
Similarity
•Entities in a scene that share visual characteristics such as size, shape or color will be perceived as belonging together in a group.
Closure
•Incomplete figures are often completed by the perceptual system even when part of the perceptual information is missing.
Continuity
•Human perception has a preference for continuous figures.
Smallness
•Smaller entities tend to be more readily perceived as figures than larger entities.
Categorization
•Many human categories are not organized by necessary and sufficient conditions but by prototypes.
Patterns in the conceptualization of SPACE
- figure-ground segregation;
- the relative proximity of the figure with respect to the ground
- the location of the figure with respect to the ground.
Figure-ground segregation
•Gestalt principle of smallness predicts that the smaller entity (the bike) will be perceived as the figure
The bike is near [the house].
Primary & secondary reference object
The ground can be divided into 2 reference objects to better locate the figure.
Big Ben is north of the River Thames.
While the River Thames is the primary reference object, the secondary reference object, the Earth, is implied by the spatial expression north of
Relative proximity of figure and reference object
The second way in which linguistic variation is constrained with respect to spatial scenes is that languages must encode the relative proximity of the figure with respect to the (typically immoveable) ground
Reference frames
•Reference frames represent the means language has at its disposal for using reference objects in order to locate figures.
–Ground based (Primary reference object only)
–Field based (+ Secondary reference object)
–Guidepost based (+ Secondary reference object)
–Projector based (+ Secondary reference object)
Reference frames: ground-based
Reference frames: field based
Reference frames: guidepost based
Reference frames: projector based
Patterns in the conceptualization of time
Moving time model, Moving ego model & Temporal sequence model.
Cognitive model
A level of organization in which various lexical concepts are integrated, together with their patterns of conventional imagery. This means that cognitive models are larger-scale knowledge structures than individual lexical concepts.
Cognitive model: moving time
Cognitive model: moving ego
Cognitive model: temporal sequence
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Strong version
- A speaker of language X will understand the world in a fundamentally different way from a speaker of language Y, particularly if those two languages have significantly different grammatical systems.
- Cause: a speaker will only have access to cognitive categories that correspond to the linguistic categories of his or her language
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Weak version
The structure of a language may influence (rather than determine) how the speaker performs certain cognitive processes, because the structure of different languages influences how information is ‘packaged’.
Structure of metaphor
Conceptual metaphor theory
Ideas for metaphor
Typical metaphor sorces
typical metaphor targets
3 kinds of metaphor
structural metaphor
orientational metaphor
ontological metaphor
primary vs. compound metaphor
