Intro to Basic Concepts of COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

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JohnQPublik
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Post by JohnQPublik »

Lesson No. 2: Construal, Iconicity and Perspective

2.1 Construal
Traditional generative grammar generally considers the following two sentences to be semantically equivalent, their differences explicable solely on the basis of the application of formal syntactical rules (e.g., deriving one from the other via transformational rules).

1a) John gave the book to Mary.
1b) John gave Mary the book.

The idea is that any situation can be mentally decomposed into parts, each of which bears a one-to-one correspondence with some element of language, i.e., a one-to-one mapping between the external world and a corresponding element of language, after which, simply application of syntactical rules takes over with no further impact on meaning or conceptualization. The pair of sentences above illustrate the well-known distinction between a "ditransitive" construction versus the presumably equivalent "complement" structure for indirect objects.

However, cognitive linguists do not believe in this sort of one-to-one mapping. Instead, any situation can be ?construed? in different ways conceptually. Different construals are encoded in different sentence patterns. Thus, the differences in Sentence (1a) and (1b) above are indicative of a conceptual difference, i.e., a difference in meaning. Evidence for this exists in the fact that, in some cases, the ditransitive pattern is not allowed, e.g.,

2a) He brought the wine to the table.
2b) ??He brought the table the wine.

The ???? symbol indicates the acceptability of this sentence to native English speakers is highly questionable (i.e., it sounds ?weird?). Sentence (2b) tends to be acceptable only if we consider the word ?table? to be a metonymn substituting for ?the people at the table? (metonymy is the substitution of one concept to represent another, such as when we use a place or object to represent the person associated with that object, as in The White House is threatening a blockade, or The ham-and-cheese wants a refill on his coffee.)

2.2 Iconicity
Here's another interesting example involving the ditransitive construction:

3a) Loretta gave Sue a wedding gift.
3b) Loretta gave a wedding gift to Sue.

Again, most generative grammarians would state that these two sentences are semantically equivalent. However, there is a subtle semantic difference between the two sentences. The first strongly implies that the wedding gift is for Sue, i.e., Sue is the bride and intended recipient. The second sentence, however, invites the possibility that Sue is only a temporary or circumstantial goal for the act of giving, but not the bride and intended recipient. For example, if Sue is merely a guest at the wedding and Loretta needed Sue?s help carrying an armload of wedding gifts, she might give a wedding gift to Sue, but that does not mean she would give Sue a wedding gift. This is an example of a conceptual principle cognitivists refer to as iconicity. The concept of iconicity is that the word order of a sentence reflects a conceptual distinction in the mind of the speaker. There are several types of iconicity. The type of iconicity distinguishing a recipient from a directional goal is an example of what is termed ?distance iconicity,? because the two linked words are made more ?distant? from each other in the sentence as a reflection of their more circumstantial association. Thus, the order of the words themselves reflects information about how we are to understand the utterance.

In English and other Western languages, the most common way in which iconicity is manifested is what is termed ?sequential order iconicity,? the idea that the actual sequential order of words in a phrase or sentence reflects the sequential order of the events they describe. For example, the phrases ?eye it, try it, buy it,? ?I came, I saw, I conquered,? or ?dine and dash? describe sequential events where the sequence of the words reflect the sequence of the events. What is most important is that re-ordering of the words either changes the meaning of the phrase or leads to semantic nonsense, e.g., ?buy it, eye it, try it? implies that a different sequence of events actually takes place than ?eye it, try it, buy it.? This can be more dramatically illustrated with the following pair of sentences.

4a) Jane got married and had a baby.
4b) Jane had a baby and got married.

In English, the ambiguous word ?and? is interpreted as connecting a sequence of events, i.e., ?and? is interpreted to mean sequential ?then? (= ?and following that,? ?then next? or ?then later?). As a result, the meanings of the two sentences imply very different social interpretations about Jane.

Besides the reflection of sequential order, other types of word-order iconicity are possible. For example, compare the subtle difference in meaning between the following two sentences:

5a) Sam painted the fence white.
5b) Sam painted the white fence.

In the first sentence, we do not know what color the fence was prior to being painted, or even if it was a new fence that had never been painted before. In the second sentence, not only do we know what color the fence had been, but also that it was not previously unpainted, however, we do not necessarily know what its new color is. This sort of iconicity is used to convey a resultative state of affairs, i.e., by placing the adjective ?white? after the word ?fence? (seemingly in violation of the usual adjective-before-noun word order used in English), we describe a resulting state of affairs.

2.3 Perspective
Another big way that alternate construals of the same situation are manifested is via a difference in what cognitivists call perspective. Compare the following sets of sentences:

6a) The path descends steeply into the valley.
6b) The path climbs steeply out of the valley.

7a) John bought the car from Mary.
7b) Mary sold the car to John.

8a) The pen is on the table.
8b) ??The table is under the pen.

The two sentences in each pair above describe the exact same scene, yet they do not have the same meaning, and the actual position or physical viewpoint of the speaker is not what determines the difference. It?s perfectly OK to say either (6a) or (6b) whether you?re at the top of the valley looking down or at the bottom of the valley looking up. Either (7a) or (7b) can be used by any third party to describe the single commercial transaction that took place between John and Mary. It?s all dependent on the perspective that the speaker chooses to emphasize. (Wouldn?t it be interesting to have a specific morphological category in a conlang to automatically switch such a perspective on a verb, so that you didn?t need to have separate lexemes for what are merely ?opposing? or complementary perspectives?)

Sentence pair (8a) and (8b) illustrate that pragmatic factors can affect the acceptability of a sentence, even if there is nothing wrong with the sentence syntactically. It is not within the normal realm of conceptual perspective to position a table with respect to a pen, rather the normal practice is the other way around. Thus, actual human conceptualization based on external world experience ends up having a direct impact on grammatical usage, irrespective of the acceptability of syntax.

There are several other conceptual factors which play a role in construal, but most of these have to do with concepts of physical space. The human mind?s conceptualization of physical space is one of the most important aspects of cognitive linguistics. Therefore, before continuing on with simply listing factors which impact construal, we will first devote our study to the conceptualization of space. Concepts we will learn about are landmarks and trajectors, as well as image schemas. The concept of image schemas will be very important in leading us later on into the study of metaphor and frames. Stay tuned for Lesson No. 3!

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Post by RedFox »

JohnQPublik wrote:(Wouldn?t it be interesting to have a specific morphological category in a conlang to automatically switch such a perspective on a verb, so that you didn?t need to have separate lexemes for what are merely ?opposing? or complementary perspectives?)
My conlang, Maalian, does something like this - there are two sets of verb conjugations which I call Donative and Receptive. They are used for the "forward" and "reverse" forms of verb pairs such as go/come, buy/sell and of course give/receive :)
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Post by chris_notts »

RedFox wrote:
JohnQPublik wrote:(Wouldn?t it be interesting to have a specific morphological category in a conlang to automatically switch such a perspective on a verb, so that you didn?t need to have separate lexemes for what are merely ?opposing? or complementary perspectives?)
My conlang, Maalian, does something like this - there are two sets of verb conjugations which I call Donative and Receptive. They are used for the "forward" and "reverse" forms of verb pairs such as go/come, buy/sell and of course give/receive :)
See the papuan language Oksapmin for verbal affixes in the past tense indicating point of view. The following examples are given:

su-yaa-0
kill-Plural.immediate.past-Actor's.view
they have just killed it (their viewpoint)

su-yaa-he
kill-Plural.immediate.past-Other's.view
they have just killed it (someone else's viewpoint)

The suffixes distinguish between an action seen from the viewpoint of of a participant who's a performer of the event, vs viewpoint of an observer outside the event. These suffixes apparently play a bit part in discourse... especially stories or accounts I guess, where altering the viewpoint for pragmatic effect might be pretty important.
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

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Post by zompist »

I'm finding John's lessons interesting, because I've never studied cognitive linguistics directly, but I'm familiar with much of the work that led up to it.

When I was learning transformational grammar in college, I used to get frustrated at what I felt were linguists' perverse assumptions about the mind. As an example, I remember reading an argument that such-and-such couldn't be duplicated in each entry in the mental lexicon, and therefore had to be in the grammar. That struck me as silly. Why can't you have duplicate information? Or pointers? Or (in O-O terms) base information plus overrides? Fortunately, a lot of recent non-Chomskian work tends to address these concerns.

I also really disliked the generative semanticist idea of approaching semantics using either predicate calculus or tree diagrams. It seemed like a case if having only a hammer and seeing nails everywhere. So it's interesting that the GS people themselves eventually bagged this approach, and some of them were instrumental in founding cognitive linguistics.

The bit on "construal" reminds me of very old arguments in TG-- e.g. Barbara Partee had a paper circa 1970 on whether transformations preserve meaning. Informally, I'd say that the early Chomskians assumed that meaning was preserved because it led to an interesting and (for its time) elegant theory of syntax. But it was a tactical simplification, much as the laws of motion were first elaborated (and are still taught) without taking friction into account. Eventually the science has to go back and put back the things that were simplified away.

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Post by So Haleza Grise »

JohnQPublik wrote:LESSON 1: Introduction

1.0 Preface
The one I will be mostly relying upon for my material is David Lee?s Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction, which is less technical and, IMO, more coherently presented but also more elementary than the more comprehensive Cambridge Series book by Croft and Cruse mentioned in an earlier post.
I second that recommendation. David was my Cognitive lecturer and his explanations were excellent. It's a quite easy read if people wanted to knock it over.

John, you're not from UQ, are you?
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Post by JohnQPublik »

So Haleza Grise wrote:
JohnQPublik wrote:LESSON 1: Introduction

1.0 Preface
The one I will be mostly relying upon for my material is David Lee?s Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction, which is less technical and, IMO, more coherently presented but also more elementary than the more comprehensive Cambridge Series book by Croft and Cruse mentioned in an earlier post.
I second that recommendation. David was my Cognitive lecturer and his explanations were excellent. It's a quite easy read if people wanted to knock it over.

John, you're not from UQ, are you?
Sorry, I don't even know what UQ is -- the name of a university I suppose? I'm way too old to have ever studied under any cognitive linguist, except for Langacker, who was the only one teaching the cognitive paradigm back in the late 1970s when I was getting a linguistics degree, but he was at a different school. No, everything I know about cognitive linguistics is from reading books and papers after getting my degree (poverty kept me from going to grad school). Because of the cognitivists, I basically had to learn linguistics all over again. My first exposure was when I picked up Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things in a bookstore just after it came out in 1987. I read half a chapter in the bookstore and I was hooked! From then on, I bought books on cognitive linguistics whenever I could afford them. Of course, being exposed to all of this stuff meant I had to scrap 80% of the conlang I'd been working on for a decade at the time (which eventually became Ithkuil) and start over.

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Post by So Haleza Grise »

JohnQPublik wrote:
So Haleza Grise wrote:
JohnQPublik wrote:LESSON 1: Introduction

1.0 Preface
The one I will be mostly relying upon for my material is David Lee?s Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction, which is less technical and, IMO, more coherently presented but also more elementary than the more comprehensive Cambridge Series book by Croft and Cruse mentioned in an earlier post.
I second that recommendation. David was my Cognitive lecturer and his explanations were excellent. It's a quite easy read if people wanted to knock it over.

John, you're not from UQ, are you?
Sorry, I don't even know what UQ is -- the name of a university I suppose?
Yes it is. The University of Queensland, which is where David Lee is now. Or at least he was when I did it. You studied under Langacker. . . now that's impressive!
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Post by JohnQPublik »

So Haleza Grise wrote:You studied under Langacker. . . now that's impressive!
Sorry, but I wasn't clear in my previous post. Although Langacker was teaching cognitive grammar back in the late 1970s while I was studying linguistics (I believed he called it "Space Grammar" back then), I never studied under him, as I was at a different university.

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Post by JohnQPublik »

Lesson 3: Space, Landmarks, and Trajectors

3.1 Spatial Conceptualization
Consider the physical nature of one?s actions when inserting a foot into a stirrup in preparation to ride a horse. Compare this to the physical nature of one?s actions when preparing to wear a ring on one?s finger. Both actions involve placing a bodily extention into an enclosing metallic ring of metal and keeping it there, right? So why is the second sentence of the following pair generally unacceptable by native speakers of English?

1a) I put my foot in(to) the stirrup.
1b) ?? I put my finger in(to) the ring.

Conversely,

2a) ?? I put the stirrup on my foot.
2b) I put the ring on my finger.

If both situations involve the same kinds of physical action, why are they grammaticized differently using different prepositions (?in? versus ?on?)?

Cognitive linguistics answers this question based on a powerful model of how human beings conceptualize space. Furthermore, our conceptualizations about space are so basic to our cognition that we subconsciously extend those spatial conceptualizations to describe far more abstract situations and relationships between entities.

Infants spend most of their waking hours observing things and people in motion, and manipulating toys and other items within their reach, placing them on top of one another, next to one another, inside one another, etc., as well as observing others manipulate objects. They come to understand how the world works at a physical level by grasping things, picking them up, dropping them, pulling and pushing them, hitting them, and throwing them, always watching how the object responds. These spatial relationships and concepts of motion, along with sensory input become well-understood even before the infant is able to use words to describe them. This ?sensorimotor knowledge? is so cognitively fundamental that human beings naturally use space, motion, and the senses as domains for conceptually structuring less concrete, even entirely abstract aspects of our experience.

3.2 Landmarks and Trajectors
Research by cognitive psychologists and cognitive linguists support the conclusion that humans cognize spatial relationships between objects in terms of a landmark and a trajector (these are Langacker?s original terms; some authors use different terms for these). For our purposes, think of a landmark as an entity with respect to which some other entity moves. That other entity that moves with respect to the landmark is the trajector. So when screwing in a lightbulb, the bulb (trajector) moves with respect to the socket (landmark), whereas in the identical physical relationship between a jar and a lid, it is the lid (trajector) that moves with respect to the jar (landmark). Perhaps now you can begin to understand why we say ?the bulb in the socket? but not ?*the jar in the lid?, as well as ?the lid on the jar? but not ?*the socket on the bulb,? even though the physical relationship and connection between the two parts is highly similar, both involving a quasi-cylindrical glass object whose upper end bears a spiral groove pattern which connects via circular motion into a sparate ring-like metallic component also bearing spiral grooves.

Basic spatial relationships in English and other Indo-European languages are referenced by simple prepositions such as ?in?, ?on?, and ?at.? Some of you might say at this point, ?wait a minute, those little prepositions are far too vague in their meanings to really represent any sort of ?basic? spatial relationship.? And so it might seem at first, yet ask a native English speaker to give sentences using these three prepositions and nine times out of ten you will get sentences such as:

3a) The cat is in the house.
3b) The pen is on the table.
3c) My friends are at the supermarket.

as opposed to sentences such as

4a) The cat is in agony.
4b) The train is on time.
4c) My skills are at a new level.

Note that sentences (4a,b,c) are no less grammatical than (3a,b,c), nor are they more complex syntactically. Generative grammar would have no recourse but to explain the tendency via the social forces of ?pragmatics? or ?discourse rules.? But cognitive linguists have a more satisfying answer. Sentences (4a,b,c) represent ?extended? or more abstract applications of the basic meanings of interiority, support against gravity, and locational reference, at the heart of the words ?in?, ?on,? and ?at? so speakers are less likely to use examples like these. A child first learns to ?map? a correspondence between his established sensorimotor knowledge of ?interiority? to the word ?in.? Later, of course, more exacting words such as ?inside? and even ?interiority? are learned, but the child retains a fundamental association with the first word mapped to the concept ?in? with the raw sensorimotor concept ingrained during infancy. As a result, a ?prototypical? or best example notion of what ?in? means, is retained even into adulthood at a subconscious level. (As some of you might be guessing now, I am foreshadowing our eventual lesson on prototypes and fuzzy sets.) This explains why sentences (3a,b,c) are more likely examples of ?in?, ?on,? ?at? than (4a,b,c), as they describe situations nearer to the prototype meaning.

As to just how and why simple words like ?in?, ?on? and ?at? get extended to usages such as ?in agony?, ?on time? and "at a new level," will be discussed in a future lesson. We'll also take a look at what's really going on in the "foot IN the stirrup" versus "ring ON the finger" examples.

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Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

This is an interesting subject. I think it will definately help me in my conlanging to make it more realistic, as you pointed out. :)
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Post by ¡Papapishu! »

Gazariah wrote:What I call grammatical categories are things like number in English, case in German, aspect in Russian. There is no way of using a noun in English without it's being singular or plural. No German noun belongs to an "intermediate" case. No Russian verb can be neither imperfective nor perfective, or both imperfective and perfective. Occasional syncretisms (accusative plural has the same form as nominative plural) do not undermine these claims, I think.
I put the cat out.

Is it present habitual, or simple past?

It must be good.

Is it a conclusion the speaker has drawn, or is a statement of what's required?

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Post by aanimo »

Don't have much to add, but thanks for posting the lessons. This is a very interesting topic I'd never thought about before :)
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Post by Gazariah »

?Papapishu! wrote:
I put the cat out.

Is it present habitual, or simple past?

It must be good.

Is it a conclusion the speaker has drawn, or is a statement of what's required?
Good examples. But what I'm saying is that every time a sentence like these is used, the speaker is encoding one usage or the other. In most circumstances, the hearer or reader is not even aware of the potential ambiguity, since the context leaves only one possibility.

The main point is that examples like these, or Chomsky's famous "Flying planes can be dangerous," must be constructed. These are instances or homonymy or syncretism. Grammatical categories are obligatory when a language assigns them, and intermediate values do not exist. That makes grammatical categories different from lexical categories. As Lakoff pointed out, "bird" is a category with central members, like robins and sparrows, and marginal members, like penguins and ostriches. But if a language has singular and plural as exponents of a grammatical category of number in nouns, no noun is a "better" representative of singular or plural than any other noun, and no noun can escape being categorized for number. It's all 0s and 1s.

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Post by linguoboy »

Gazariah wrote:But if a language has singular and plural as exponents of a grammatical category of number in nouns, no noun is a "better" representative of singular or plural than any other noun, and no noun can escape being categorized for number. It's all 0s and 1s.
Is it? I would think that the prototypical case of pluralisation in English is singular -0, plural -s and that, if you asked someone for an example of English pluralisation, they would be highly unlikely to respond with ox, oxen or schema, schemata.

Remember when you couldn't pick up a newspaper without reading about "hanging chad"? It was very interesting to see the range of treatments, from mass-noun to unmarked plural count-noun. Many sentences allowed multiple interpretations. But I suppose you wouldn't consider these counterexamples since the composer presumably had only one interpretation in his mind as he composed the sentence and/or no reader could hold more than one interpretation simultaneously? How would you go about proving this?

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Post by chris_notts »

Gazariah wrote:But if a language has singular and plural as exponents of a grammatical category of number in nouns, no noun is a "better" representative of singular or plural than any other noun, and no noun can escape being categorized for number. It's all 0s and 1s.
Minor problem: there are languages that optionally mark the grammatical category of number ie having unmarked stem for singular or plural, then separate affixes for explicit singular or plural... so being grammatically (even morphologically) marked != being compulsarily distinguished. If you give me a day or two I can even get out the book again and tell you the name of the language so you can look it up yourself.
As for no noun being better than any other for things like number... some nouns clear are. Take nouns like for instance sand, water, or anything else which is typically concieved of as mass... such nouns are clearly much less representative of either singular or plural than things which human beings can clearly differentiate into individuals. That's why languages tend to have difficulty deciding where to place them unless they're divided in some way into clearly identifiable units like glasses (of water) or piles (of sand).
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

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Post by JohnQPublik »

Regarding the "best example" issue which is the basis of prototype theory and seems to be driving the above discussion:

Cognitive linguistics also provides for another type of categorization scheme called "radial categories" (Lakoff's terminology) or "family resemblances" (term used by other authors such as Taylor, originally borrowed from Wittgenstein, I believe).

In a radial category there is no "best example" of the category because no single member of the category manifests all of the attributes which form the basis for the category. Wittgenstein's "game" was the first example of this sort of category. Another example in linguistics is a dialect chain such as with the Inuit languages. None of them are considered "central" or a "parent" language, each of them is intelligible with others, but no one dialect is intelligible to all, and the extreme western and eastern dialects are completely different languages. We will look more closely at radial categories in a future lesson.

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Post by RedFox »

No comments yet - I'm just happily lapping it all up.

This cat is definitely not in agony :)
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Post by Gazariah »

chris_notts wrote:
As for no noun being better than any other for things like number... some nouns clear are. Take nouns like for instance sand, water, or anything else which is typically concieved of as mass... such nouns are clearly much less representative of either singular or plural than things which human beings can clearly differentiate into individuals. That's why languages tend to have difficulty deciding where to place them unless they're divided in some way into clearly identifiable units like glasses (of water) or piles (of sand).
Sand and water are clearly singulars in English: we are sure that sand is, and so is water. In a language like Russian, the adjective too would have singular agreement.

There are "sands" and "waters," of course, in different usage. Those are clearly plural.

I would be interested to see your examples of categories with morphological markers that are not compulsory. In Turkish, the singular is said to be "neutral" for number, since it can designate a class or an invidual member of the class: şiir yazar ?he writes poetry,? bir şiir yazar ?he writes a poem,? şiirler yazar ?he writes poems." Maybe these should be treated as collectives of some sort, like "She likes icecream" versus "She would like an icecream."

And of course diminutives have grammatical markers, but do not represent grammatical categories. I think of such things as part of word derivation.

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Post by linguoboy »

Gazariah wrote:I would be interested to see your examples of categories with morphological markers that are not compulsory.
All nominal cases in Korean are this way. Also, some (e.g. subject, direct object) are incompatible with the topic marker (n)un whereas others take both particles. If I say Eddy nun cwukyesseyo, only context tells you whether it means "It was Eddy who killed (someone)" or "It was Eddy who (someone) killed."
In Turkish, the singular is said to be "neutral" for number, since it can designate a class or an invidual member of the class: şiir yazar ?he writes poetry,? bir şiir yazar ?he writes a poem,? şiirler yazar ?he writes poems." Maybe these should be treated as collectives of some sort, like "She likes icecream" versus "She would like an icecream."
It might well make sense to treat them as collectives when translating, but I don't see the point of construing a collective category in Turkish on the basis of what other languages might do.

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Post by chris_notts »

Gazariah wrote: Sand and water are clearly singulars in English: we are sure that sand is, and so is water. In a language like Russian, the adjective too would have singular agreement.
My point was that languages which mark plurality compulsarily in general often make different choices regarding the singularity vs plurality of mass nouns (not that within any particular language there will be a lot of variation), while at the same time generally agreeing on what's singular and what's plural for easily differentiable (count) nouns, and from this that mass nouns are clearly less prototypical nouns wrt number than count nouns. I doubt you'll accept that argument though...
Another problem I see with your argument is that it relies on the fact that English has number agreement in the third person. If I have a language which compulsarily marks number on count nouns (with singular marked by -0), but doesn't on mass nouns (ie zero marking), and that furthermore lacks verbal agreement, what's to stop me arguing that mass nouns are not marked as singular, but rather not marked at all, ie only some nouns are marked for number? I would arguing that marking for any category requires contrast, and if there is no contrasting possible marking for a particular (sub)category like mass nouns, then they are not compulsarily marked by one of that category, but rather that they're not marked at all (since there is no possible distinction).
To take a different example, in many bantu languages action verbs contrast perfective and imperfective, but stative verbs don't have any contrasting perfective vs imperfective forms (although they may still take tense marking). Now, according to your argument as I see it, we have to accept that stative verbs in such languages still have inherent imperfective or perfective aspect even though there is no marking contrast between the two... or, for that matter, agreement, as with the English number example. Why exactly should we say that all stative verbs always have an aspect associated with them when there's no such marking on them? What value does it add to the analysis, and what cognitive evidence is there for it? Why don't we simply accept that the lack of obligatory surface marking of aspect reflects a deeper lack of obligatory aspect in the production of that language in the case of stative verbs?
Basically, I accept that for a language which overwhelmingly marks some category the speakers of that language generally track it even when the morphology/syntax fails to.. for instance in the case of English "hit", which can be present or past since the forms have merged. But if there is a large well defined subclass (like say the subclass of verbs called stative verbs) which lack a surface contrast, I don't see any valid reason for saying that they do necessarily underlying have such a contrast in the minds of the speakers of that language.
The problem I think you have is that you posit that for all languages the class of verbs, say, or nouns, etc is basically the same, and from that you then argue that if, say, some subclass of verbs exhibits aspectual or tense distinctions, all must, at some stage of cognition, have such a contrast. But while most languages have categories roughly equivalent to English nouns or verbs, those categories are by no means exactly the same... they may be slightly bigger or smaller, or they may be subdivided with one subgroup showing one set of contrasts, and another lacking or gaining some other distinctions. I don't believe that you can truly take for granted that the concept of verb, noun, or anything else is an absolute invariant between languages, and thus that all members of a class that are treated the same with respect to, say, number in English will be treated the same in all languages that also mark number in some cases.
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

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Lesson 4: More on Spatial Relationships and a Preview of Image Schemas

4.0 Recap
We saw in Lesson No. 3 above that the choice of using one preposition over another in English is not necessarily based on the objective properties of the observed situation, but rather on the way in with the situation?s various elements and their inter-relationships are construed. This is why it is possible to say ?The fly on the ceiling? even though the actual physical situation should theoretically call for the phrase ?The fly under the ceiling.? Here we start to see the problems inherent in traditional (Aristotelian) theory of categories (classical set theory) where all members must share a necessary feature?examples like ?fly on the ceiling? suggest that even members with diametrically opposed features can still qualify for membership in the same category.

4.1 Preview of an Image Schema
Compare the following two sentences:

1a) Sam is in the bus/train/ plane/boat.
1b) Sam is on the bus/train/plane/boat.

I would ask all of you who are native speakers of English to stop and think to yourself what the semantic difference is between these two sentences. Although it is subtle, you definitely sense a difference, sentence (1a) probably seeming somehow more ?exact? or ?concrete.? The reason that English allows both constructions, and the reason they both carry distinct meanings, is because English allows larger vehicles such as busses, trains, planes, and boats to be construed either as containers, or as supporting surfaces against gravity. Essentially, we?re back to our basic sensorimotor knowledge from infancy. Is a person taking the bus to work, being carried within a container? Or is he being moved over the ground while sitting upon a supporting surface? English spatial conceptualization allows both possibilities and encodes (i.e., ?maps?) these possibilities to the prepositions ?in? and ?on?.

This idea of a complex object such as a bus or airplane being seen as a container and also as a supporting surface is a basic example of the concept of image schemas (while the correct plural is schemata, all authors in this area use ?schemas?). An image schema is a subconscious conceptual metaphor, where basic spatial concepts from early childhood such as containment and support against gravity, become extended to apply to highly complex, even abstract situations, allowing us to subconsciously understand them in a simple way.

Actually, the ?in? versus ?on? a vehicle choice is even more subtle than described above. For example, if the vehicle is not moving, speakers are more likely to say Sam is ?in? the train, as when someone on a station platform is asking for the whereabouts of Sam who is already waiting aboard the train which is yet to depart. On the other hand, if Sam?s train is due to arrive in five minutes, we are more likely to say he is ?on the next train? rather than ?in the next train.? This is because we are more likely to subconsciously think of the train as a transport/supporting surface mechanism moving relative to the ground in this context, than as a container. The fact that people are contained inside it is seen as less important in this context than the fact that they are attached to and supported by it. The level of abstraction can become quite conceptually complex, as when we say ?Sam is on the 8:45 from Boston.? Here, the idea of transport is paramount, to the point that the idea of containment becomes so irrelevant that encoding it into ???Sam is in the 8:45 from Boston? sounds ludicrous to a native speaker.

Perhaps now you see that in the bus seems more "concrete" than "on the bus" because it is. "In" is conceptually closer to the idea of being inside a container such as a large vehicle, while "on" requires a further degree of abstraction, as it extends to the more complex situation of a supporting surface moving relative to the ground for the purpose of transportation.

There is a large amount of literature by cognitive linguists on the encoding of contrasting prepositions from basic to highly abstract meanings. Based on what we?ve discussed above, think about the way spatial conceptualization is being applied to abstract situations in the following sentences:

a) There are bubbles on the surface.
b) There are bubbles at the surface.

a) She has wrinkles on her skin.
b) She has wrinkles in her skin.

But compare...
c) That vase has cracks in it.
d) *That vase has cracks on it.

...and yet...
e) That vase has spots in it.
f) That vase has spots on it.

Also, try to come up with a ?cognitive? explanation, based on the idea of the containment versus transport/support image schemas, as to why the ?in? versus ?on? distinction doesn?t work with automobiles, and in an opposite pattern, does not work for motorcycles, e.g.,

a) Sue is in the car.
b) *Sue is on the car. [can only mean she is outside on top of the hood or roof of the car.]

a) *Joe is in the motorcycle.
b) Joe is on the motorcycle.

4.2 Applying Spatial Image Schemas to Purely Abstract Situations
The idea of ?in? representing a subconscious image schema involving seeing complex objects and even abstract ideas as containers and moving surfaces is very powerful, and begins to explain the extension of these basic spatial concepts to phrases like ?in agony? (where ?agony? is subconsciously construed as an enclosing place where one is trapped), ?on time? (where ?time? is construed to be a linear moving surface like a roadway), or ?at another level? (where one?s skills are subconsciously construed as vertically arranged, shelf-like containers, on which things can be placed at varying heights relative to the ground).

We will be discussing image schemas in more detail in the next lesson. As you can see, we are working our way to our analysis of metaphor as perhaps the most powerful tool of human cognition. Stay tuned for Lesson No. 5!

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Lesson 5: Image Schemas

5.1 The Problem of Lexical Encoding of Spatial Concepts
Consider the English word ?out.? Its basic concept is spatial in nature, specifically the idea of either static or dynamic exteriority, i.e., ?being or moving to the outside of something." So why does its usage extend to what appear to be contradictory examples? E.g.,

1a) The sun is out. The stars are out.
1b) The light is out. The fire is out.

2a) The sun came out.
2b) The sun went out. [e.g., in a sci-fi or fantasy context, or in a dream]

3a) Jim threw out a suggestion to the others.
3b) The others threw out Jim?s suggestion.

The weirdness continues when we look at the following pair of sentences which a non-native speaker learning English might initially conclude to be opposites, but, in fact, are used to describe the exact same situation.

4a) Tom filled in the form.
4b) Tom filled out the form.

Here?s an example of the same phenomenon using a different pair of prepositions.

5a) They closed up the bookstore.
5b) They closed down the bookstore.

In other cases, the meanings of the supposed ?opposites? in fact refer to situations which bear no apparent relationship to one another:

6a) The student dropped in. [i.e., came to visit us]
6b) The student dropped out. [i.e., quit school]

Still in other cases, two prepositions whose basic meanings don?t seem related to one another, yet can be used to describe the exact same situation:

7a) A lot of people turned up for the rally.
7b) A lot of people turned out for the rally.

The above examples would appear to support the conclusion that the correct usage of simple prepositions in English is semantically chaotic and that the rules governing usage must be learned by rote for each preposition (I know this is how I?ve studied prepositions in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German, and I still make mistakes all the time!) It would appear that:
  • --The same preposition can express opposite meanings
    --Opposite meanings can be expressed by semantically unrelated prepositions
    --Pairs of prepositions which normally express opposite meanings can express similar meanings
    --Pairs of prepositions which normally express opposite meanings can express unrelated meanings
    --Similar meanings can be expressed by unrelated prepositions
Generative grammarians would probably simply indicate that any given preposition in the lexicon must be accompanied by a myriad of rules relating to usage that are ultimately arbitrary and specific to each lexical item.

But cognitive linguists can do better. Careful analysis of these kinds of phenomenon using the concept of image schemas that we?ve already talked about can simplify this ?chaos? significantly.

5.2 Examining English ?Out?
Let?s diagram the image schema for English ?out.? In cognitive linguistics, such diagrams utilize LM and TR to represent the landmark and the trajector, as well as additional symbols to convey other entities considered part of the image schema, such as observers, conceptualizers (i.e., a mental observer of an abstract concept), sources, goals, etc. Arrows and dotted lines are also used to indicate spatial relationships and motion.

Image

The image schema for ?out? indicates that a trajector entity is located outside of a container or container-like space. The relationship can be static or dynamic as in The cat is out of the house versus The cat goes out of the house. This basic meaning is extended to a large number of situations, both tangible and abstract, wherever the notion of exteriority can be construed.

And so we get examples such as The lava spread out in which an entity expands in size, thus taking up an area previously outside of the original landmark domain. Similarly, Hand out the brochures and Roll out the carpet describe situations where the area of dissemination or presence becomes greater than the original, i.e., the entity has moved ?out? and beyond its original occupying space.

Image

Abstracting further, we extend the concept to situations where a trajector entity (or a part thereof) moves outward from the landmark without any accompanying notion of ?exit?, as in They set out on their trip or He reached out for it. Because such concepts can also be expressed without the notion of ?exteriority? (e.g., using verbs like enlarge, increase, leave, etc.), it becomes clear that imposing a notion of exteriority upon them is a form of construal (see Lesson No. 2, if necessary).

In our The sun is out example, an added semantic notion comes into play besides exit from an original location?the idea that the landmark is a container that is inaccessible to the observer and that the trajector (the sun) emerges from this container into the observer?s perceptual field. This interpretation is supported by the fact that we use the verb ?come? when saying the dynamic equivalent of the sentence, The sun came out, which conveys movement towards the speaker or conceptualizer. Notice how those sentences such as The light is out or The fire is out convey an ?opposite? meaning where the metaphorical movement involves the trajector moving away from the observer into the inaccessible landmark, evidenced by the fact we use ?go? instead of ?come? when saying the dynamic equivalent:

8a) The fire is out.
8b) The fire went out.
8c) *The fire came out. [this sentence is grammatical but not synonymous with 8b]

These examples show how the notion of perspective we studied in Lesson No. 2 comes into play when considering image schemas. Thus...

Image

Image

We now see why and how the same word ?out? can be used in semantically ?opposite? contexts. It is not arbitrary as we initially thought or as a traditional grammarian would state. In fact, we don?t even have to change the meaning of ?out?; it?s usage in the two contexts is based on the same underlying notion of exteriority applied to both contexts, but differentiated by perspective. These same schemas explain contexts such as The news is out or The secret is out, where the accessbility/innaccessibility is in relation to one?s cognitive field as opposed to perceptual field, given that these sentences describe abstract contexts rather than tangible ones as with the ?sun? examples. The principles extend to contexts such as She speaks out, It all turned out okay, I?ve sorted it out, in which the result or outcome of a process or action becomes known or comprehensible.

Examples similar to our The fire went out schema include The music drowned out his voice, I want to blot out the memory, and The criminal is hiding out, where there is metaphorical movement of the trajector into a landmark that is inaccessible to the coneptualizer's perceptual or cognitive field. This notion of landmark inaccessibility is further extended metaphorically to contexts involving the unavailability of tangible or intangible resources, e.g., We?re out of gas, The supplies ran out, I?m tired out.

In the next lesson we?ll continue our discussion of image schemas and their metaphorical extension to abstract situations, and will be discussing the implications of image schemas on conlanging. In the meantime, if you find yourself intrigued by this stuff, I?ll give you an assignment (or a challenge, if you prefer). Using the ideas from the above discussion, provide a cognitive explanation as to why Sentences (4a) and (4b) above can be used to describe the exact same situation. HINT: Think about how the two sentences are subtly different in meaning.

See ya next lesson!
Last edited by JohnQPublik on Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

The positive thing with these lessons is that I'm learning a lot from it. :) The negative thing is that it's so complex I'll probably not be able to incorporate it into my conlang... :(
In the meantime, if you find yourself intrigued by this stuff, I?ll give you an assignment (or a challenge, if you prefer). Using the ideas from the above discussion, provide a cognitive explanation as to why Sentences (4a) and (4b) above can be used to describe the exact same situation. HINT: Think about how the two sentences are subtly different in meaning.
Will you give us the answer the next lesson?

Too bad I'm not a native English speaker... things like this, when you need to know the subtle differences between prepositions etc. is hard when you don't have the actual "feeling" for it, but just know what you've learnt. But I'm doing my best to understand at least.
Attention, je pelote !

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Post by JohnQPublik »

Dingbats wrote:The positive thing with these lessons is that I'm learning a lot from it. :) The negative thing is that it's so complex I'll probably not be able to incorporate it into my conlang...
I think that once we get into Metaphor and Frames, you will find it easier going and will see more opportunities for applying the concepts to your conlang(s).

I will start off the next lesson with the answers to some of the "puzzlers" I've presented in the first five lessons. It'll probably be Sunday or Monday before I post Lesson No. 6.

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Lesson 6: Explanations

I?ll spend this lesson explaining some of the ?puzzlers? I left you with in previous lessons (since no one seems to want to offer their own attempts to explain).

Remember these?

1a) I put my foot in(to) the stirrup.
1b) ?? I put my finger in(to) the ring.

2a) ?? I put the stirrup on my foot.
2b) I put the ring on my finger.

The difference between ?in? versus ?on? here is the same as the light bulb + socket versus jar + lid example I gave earlier. While the physical action of inserting a body part into a ring-like object is the same for both situations, the notion of which is the landmark and which is the trajector is reversed. So we subconsciously identify the stirrup as the landmark (the part that doesn?t move relative to the trajector) while our foot is the trajector (the moving part with respect to the landmark), whereas we see the reverse relationships with the ring and finger, the ring being the trajector against the stationary landmark of the finger. ?In(to)? is semantically associated with insertion within a surrounding landmark, so is appropriate for the stirrup example, whereas ?on? is semantically associated with placement of a trajector so that it surrounds or covers a landmark, thus making it appropriate for use with the ring example.

Next example:
3a) There are bubbles on the surface.
3b) There are bubbles at the surface.

In sentence (3a) the bubbles are conceptualized as a simple positional reference, while in (3b) they are conceptualized as being at a point along a path, that path being the path they have traversed while rising from beneath the surface. The choice between which sentence to use is one of construal, as described in Lesson No. 2.

Next examples:
4a) She has wrinkles on her skin.
4b) She has wrinkles in her skin.
4c) That vase has cracks in it.
4d) ??That vase has cracks on it.
4e) That vase has spots in it.
4f) That vase has spots on it.

Sentence (4a) and (4b) differentiate between conceptualizing wrinkles solely by visual appearance relative to a surface, versus being integrated within that surface as a feature of that surface. (4c) is like (4b) in this regard, but (4d) is questionable because ?cracks? are conceived as by nature extending in depth into a surface, thus being integrated as a feature of that surface, not lying ?upon? that surface. Wrinkles, on the other hand, can be clearly conceptualized as being ?on? a surface, based on the analogous use of wrinkles on a flat two-dimensional surface such as a bedsheet or a shirt, in which there is no three-dimensional ?depth? for the feature to be integrated into. Sentences (4e) and (4f) show that ?spots? can be conceptualized either way, but with different meanings. In (4e) the connotation is that the spots are permanently fixed within, or visible underneath, the surface (e.g., under a transparent glaze), whereas (4f) implies the spots are temporary and not part of the surface (e.g., they can potentially be removed, say, with a cloth).

In the next examples, I asked, based on the idea of the containment versus transport/support image schemas, why the ?in? versus ?on? distinction doesn?t work with automobiles, and in an opposite pattern, does not work for motorcycles, even though it works for saying either ?in? or ?on? the bus/train/boat/plane.

5a) Sue is in the car.
5b) *Sue is on the car. [can only mean she is outside on top of the hood or roof of the car.]
5c) *Joe is in the motorcycle.
5d) Joe is on the motorcycle.

Sentence (5a) works because, like busses, trains, etc., cars can be conceptualized as containers. Conversely, (5c) does not work because motorcycles do not have an ?interior? compartment relative to an external shell/body by which they can be conceptualized as containers, whereas (5d) works because a rider can be easily conceptualized as a trajector relative to the landmark of the motorcycle (same as the ring on a finger example). The interesting sentence, of course, is (5b). Intuitively it would seem that, if we can say ?on a bus/train/boat/plane?, we should be able to say ?on a car? with the same meaning (i.e., the transport/support image schema). It would appear, then, that there is more to the transport/support image schema than meets the eye. Apparently the schema subconsciously includes the idea of a very large size (or possibly length) of the landmark relative to the trajector in order to function semantically. The relatively small size ratio between a car and a person, as compared to boats, trains, plains, and busses, is insufficient to meet the salience necessary to permit use of the schema.

Lastly, I asked why ?opposite? prepositions can be used to describe the same exact situation, as in:
4a) Tom filled in the form.
4b) Tom filled out the form.

Again, our answer is pure construal. Sentence (4a) conceptualizes a form as via the container schema, in which writing answers on it is seen as analogous to placing things inside of its internal compartments. Sentence (4b) on the other hand, conceptualizes the form in terms of an ?additive? schema as something that grows in size or weight as answers are written on it. This is analogous to the image schema for ?spread out? shown in an earlier lesson.

Time to discuss metaphor...

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