Lesson 11: Mental Spaces
11.0 Illustrating the Problem
Remember the ?If I were you I?d hate me/myself? problem way back at the beginning of this thread? Well, it?s time to analyze what?s going on. Consider the following sentences:
1a)
*The girl with blue eyes has green eyes.
1b)
In that photo, the girl with blue eyes has green eyes.
2a)
*I?m taller than I am.
2b)
John thinks I?m taller than I am.
Sentence (1a) and (2a), although syntactically well-formed, are unacceptable because they are semantically anomalous in that they contain contradictions. According to formalist theories of grammar (e.g., Chomsky?s), sentences (1b) and (2b) should likewise be unacceptable. But instead, they
are acceptable. How can this be?
Let?s look at our curious example from early on:
3a)
*I would hate me.
3b)
If I were you I?d hate me.
3c)
If I were you I?d hate myself.
Sentence (3a) is unacceptable because it is grammatically ill-formed (the co-referential pronoun at the end of the sentence should be ?myself?). Chomsky and other formalist theories have no simple explanation as to how this ungrammatical sentence can magically transform itself into being grammatical when preceded by the adverbial
if-phrase in sentence (3b). The situation becomes more bizarre when we see that the sentence is distinct in meaning from sentence (3c), and that the co-referenced party within each sentence
is different for each sentence, i.e., in (3b) ?me? refers to the speaker, but in (3c) ?myself? refers to the listener.
Cognitive linguistics offers elegant answers to the above puzzlers via Gilles Fauconnier?s theory of
Mental Spaces. To understand the idea of mental spaces, it is perhaps easiest to first look at the simpler linguistic phenomenon of
metonymy.
11.1 Metonymy
We discussed metonymy briefly earlier in this thread, but let?s look at it more closely. Consider the following sentences:
6)
You?ll find Hemingway on the top shelf.
7)
Van Gogh fetches enormous prices these days.
8 )
The White House has announced that all Iraqis are happy.
9)
The ham-and-cheese wants a refill on his coffee.
The above four sentences all utilize substitution of one concept in place of another. Sentence (6) does not mean Ernest Hemingway, the person, is sitting on the top shelf, but rather a book or books written by him. Likewise, in sentence (7), Van Gogh the person is not being sold into slavery, and in sentences (8 ) and (9) it is neither a white-colored building whose address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., nor a sandwich that has magically learned to talk. Metonymy shows that human beings have the cognitive ability to refer to a concept by substituting a different concept as long as the substitute concept is conceptually linked in some way, e.g., creator-for-creation, place-for-person, consumable-for-consumer, etc.
The entity that is the ?normal? referent for a metonymic construction is termed the ?trigger? while the entity to which the predicate applies is termed the ?target,? so that in sentence (6), Hemingway the person/author is the trigger and the book by him is the target. Metonymy is yet another example of how important the knowledge of frames are to understanding language usage. Consider what the above sentences would mean to someone who had never heard of Hemingway, Van Gogh, the White House, or a ham-and-cheese sandwich.
At any rate, the important lesson of metonymy to apply to the theory of mental spaces is the notion of trigger and target.
11.2 Mental Spaces
Examine the pair of sentences above in (1a/b) again. Sentence (1b) becomes grammatical because the phrase ?in that photo? serves to create a hypothetical reality, which functions as a parallel ?mental space,? allowing us to divide up the entity named in the sentence into trigger and target. The trigger (the entity who exists in ?our? reality) is ?the girl with blue eyes,? while the target is the figure pictured in the photo, an entity to which the predicate ?has green eyes? applies. The reason why ?the girl with blue eyes? can be used to refer to the target (the figure in the photo) is that there is a pragmatic function linking that figure to a real person, i.e., the fact that the figure in the photo is a representation of the girl with blue eyes in the real world. The sentence relies on an understanding common to all human beings that an image can function as a ?representation? of something in the real world. The relationship between the trigger (reality) space and the target (photo) space can be diagrammed.
Based on the above analysis, the phrase ?in that photo? is termed a
space builder because it serves to create an alternative, hypothetical mental space (i.e., hypothetical parallel reality) in which elements from reality can be mapped in a one-to-one correspondence with different but conceptually linked elements in the mental space. The creation of this alternative mental space by the phrase ?in that photo? allows for a girl with blue eyes and a girl with green eyes to co-exist and yet be one-and-the same entity, explaining why sentence (1b) can be semantically acceptable while sentence (1a) is not (because it has no space-building word or phrase to create the hypothetical parallel reality).
Similarly, the phrase ?John thinks? is a space builder in sentence (2b), creating a split between the trigger (reality) space where ?I? am, and the target (hypothetical) space where John?s beliefs reside. In the reality space, I have my actual height (h), while in the target space my height is greater than that (H). Once again, the space-builder phrase allows the two ?halves? of the contradiction to exist separately in alternate spaces, one real, the other hypothetical, allowing the sentence to be semantically acceptable while its simpler, ?single space? version (2a) is not.
As for our pesky trio of sentences (3a,b,c), the if-phrase is the space-builder which allows us to explain the distinction between (3a) and (3b), similar to the examples above. But how to explain the distinction between (3b) and (3c)? Here, we need to bring in our old friend, conceptual metaphor, to help us. In English (and presumably other languages), a conceptual metaphor exists which separates an individual human being into what has been termed the ?Subject? versus the ?Self.? The Subject is essentially the inalienable seat of our rational/moral judgments, while the ?Self? is the quasi-alienable part of ourselves that interacts directly with the world. Evidence for this Subject-versus-Self conceptual metaphor is seen in sentences such as
I couldn?t stop myself, You got carried away, He?s a very together person, She can?t help herself when it comes to chocolate. Given this conceptual split between Subject and Self, we can now diagram these sentences. First sentence (3b):
The diagram above shows ?If I were you I?d hate myself? which is uttered in the situation where I strongly disapprove of the way
you behave. Here, the if-phrase sets up a mental space (or hypothetical world, if you prefer) with counterparts of both ?I? and ?you? except that the counterpart of ?you? contains my Subject instead of yours. This means that in the mental space, your bad behavior (as judged by my Subject occupying your Self) would cause you to experience self-hatred. Since the hatred is self-directed (it is experienced by the constructed ?you? against your Self), it is appropriate to use a reflexive pronoun as per the normal grammatical rule of co-referentiality.
On the other hand, ?If I were you I?d hate me? is uttered when I disapprove of my own actions (even if you apparently do not disapprove), so that the constructed ?you? has grounds for hating ?me? (the speaker). Here, the hatred is not self-directed, thus there is no co-reference and so the appropriate accusative pronoun ?me? is correctly applied per the normal grammatical rule.
Mental space theory can also easily explain sentences involving referential ambiguities such as:
10)
Jean thinks she wants to marry a Norwegian.
This sentence has three different meanings. It can mean that there is a specific Norwegian whom Jean believes she has a desire to marry, or it can mean Jean believes she has a desire to marry some Norwegian (but she hasn?t found any eligible ones yet), or it can mean she wants to marry to a specific person she believes to be Norwegian but in fact he isn?t Norwegian at all. The mental space diagrams for all three interpretations are quite distinct from one another (trust me, ?cause I?m too lazy at the moment to draw them).
Interesting enough, some languages (e.g., the Romance languages) are able to grammatically distinguish between some of these types of sentences using the indicative versus subjunctive mood distinction. For example in French:
11a)
Jeanne veut ?pouser quelqu?un qui est Norv?gien.
11b)
Jeanne veut ?pouser quelqu?un qui soit Norv?gien.
Sentence (11a) implies a particular, identified Norwegian exists whom she has in mind, whereas sentence (11b) implies that no particular Norwegian has been identified and she may never find one for all we know.
11.3 Implications for Conlanging
This should be giving you ideas for your conlang as to just how or whether your conlang should be grammatically identifying contexts involving hypothetical mental spaces. Should you use different moods on the verbs like the Romance languages or leave it all ambiguous like English? How about a different verbal voice? Or maybe suffixes on the noun participants to indicate they are hypothetical representations of real-world counterparts. Perhaps even different counterpart lexemes altogether!? (As for Ithkuil, it has an entire morphological category called ?Essence? that identifies such hypothetical/representational contexts.)
11.4 In Conclusion
Well, I think I am going to bow out now regarding continuing these lessons. Needless to say, there are lots of other fascinating aspects of cognitive linguistics which we have not discussed (and we have only scratched the surface of the topics that have been mentioned), but unfortunately I am burning out on preparing them, and I want to get back to work on the Ithkuil lexicon and the Il?ksh website. So, for those of you who have found this thread interesting, I leave you to take it from here on doing your own research, study, etc. on the topic.
Thanks for your attention! Cheerio!
If any thread should be stickied, it's this one.
