Cognitive Semantics
It has two foundations:
Prototype theory from Rosch et al:
Basic Level
There is a significant level of human interaction "Basic Level"
At this level, you find the human mind employing
Gestalt perception, mental imagery, and motor movements to help process the data from the world.
This is the level of "physical experience". We are happy, efficient, and successful at this level. Giraffe from
elephant is ok, different giraffes are more difficult.
At this level, There is some preconceptual structure in place:
an ability to use Gestalt perception, mental imagery, and motor movements
when we are born.
Therefore, our experience of what is Basic level concept is understood in terms of these preconceptual
structures.
At this level, there are no building blocks to get to it: it simply is. There are conceptually higher and lower
concepts beyond the basic level.
Our bodies can interact very easily with Basic Level Concepts.
There are Basic level objects, actions, and properties
Actions: running walking, eating drinking are basic
Moving or ingesting are superordinate = more complex
Ambling and slurping are subordinate = less complex.
Properties: tall, short, hard, soft, colors: black white red, green blue yellow
===============================================================
Kinesthetic Image Schemas
Experience is structured in a significant way prior to the existence of its concept.
Called Kinesthetic Schemas
Example of these schemas are
Container Schema: interior, exterior, boundary, and defines in and out. We understand our bodies as containers
as well as hundreds of other activities and objects directly experience and metaphorically.
Whole Part Schema:
The Link Schema
The Center Periphery schema
Source path goal schema
Up Down
Front Back
Linear order
There are more being studied.
Abstract reasoning exist because it is:
based upon bodily experience
and
metaphorical projections from concrete to abstract domains
These image schemas are mapped together through metaphors into abstract domains. These metaphors are
themselves structured around everyday bodily experience.
Experiential Basis of Metaphors
Every metaphors has implicit in its meaning a "source" domain, a "target" domain and a "source to target"
mapping or path.
When a metaphor is motivated by the structure of our experience, we call it a natural metaphor. This is how
dysfunction begins Ralph
To be natural it must answer three questions
What determines the choice of the source domain?
What determines the pairing for the source and target?
What determines the details of the mapping?
More is up and less is down:
The source is verticality
The target is quantity
More is mapped on to up…………….why for all three.
As a source domain, it must first be understood alone.
Up down is understood as it structures all our functions around gravity.
From everyday life, the following correlations of experience have occurred:
when you add more something goes up never down.
Therefore every detail of the metaphor is motivated by our physical functioning
Purposes are destinations
This pairing is not metaphorical, because achieving involves movement
There is an isomorphism between structural correlation and metaphorical mapping.
A source domain has the following characteristics:
pervasive in experience
well understood because it is pervasive
well structured
simply structured
emergent and well demarcated.
A metaphor emerges as a natural consequence of our experience when it has these items.
Things that seem natural are motivated by experience.
Schemas that structure our bodily experiences preconceptually have a basic logic. The preconceptual structural
correlations in experience motivate metaphors that map that logic into abstract domains.
Abstract reasoning really has a bodily basis
===========================================
Conceptualizing capacity
We form symbolic structures that correlate with preconceptual structures in our everyday experience.
The ability to project metaphorically from structures in the physical domain to structures in the abstract: this
allows us to reason about abstract domains like purpose and quantity.
The ability to form complex concepts and general categories using image schemas as structuring devices.
============================================================
Mental Spaces
A medium for conceptualization and thought.
A mental space exist for each of the following:
Immediate reality
Fictional situations as understood
Past and future situations
Hypothetical situations
Abstract domains: economic, physics, math, etc.
Mental space has these properties:
Contain mental entities, which are structured by a model
These spaces may connect to other spaces
Entities in one space may be related to entities in another space
Spaces are extendable:
The cognitive processing involves the following strategies:
Within a space avoid contradictions
Maximize common background assumptions
Foreground elements become background elements in future spaces: this is the hierarchy idea
Ralph. He say they move from to back I said the move up done in a hierarchy of importance. So,
it is a graded theory as well.
Mental spaces are conceptual in nature, there is no status outside the mind, because they are purely cognitive,
mental spaces are free to function within the semantics based on the internal; or experiential realism: Ralph this
is another survival advantage and effect use of energy
==========================================================
The structure of cognitive models.
Image schematic concepts which are understood in terms of physical experience provide the structure for more
complex models.
Remember container, source path goal, link part whole center periphery up down back front: all these structure
our space.
These same schemas structure concepts themselves
P283.
==============================================================
Lakoff talks of his spatialization of Form Hypothesis:
In this hypothesis
Categories are container schemas
Hierarchical structure are up-down and part-whole schemas
Relational structure are link schemas
Radial structure are center periphery schemas
Foreground-background are front back schemas
Linear quantity is up-down and in linear order schemas.
What takes place is a metaphorical mapping from physical space to conceptual space.
Spatial structure is mapped into conceptual structure or also put
Image schemas are mapped on to abstract configurations.
Thus conceptual structure is understood in terms of image schemas plus a metaphorical mapping.
The metaphorical mapping are also understood in terms of image schemas
Conceptual domains are set off from each other by container schemas
Entities in one domain are mapped to another entity in another domain by source path goal schemas.
Image schemas:
concepts that have directly understood structures
used metaphorically to structure more complex concepts.
There are two types of complex symbolic structures:
Building block structure: all elements exist independent, meaning of the whole is the meaning of the
parts.
Gestalt structure: all elements do not exist independent of the whole, whose meaning is not predictable
from the meaning of the individual parts and the way they come together.
Directly meaningful symbols all have Gestalt structure. Basic level concepts are also Gestalt structure since they
are defined in part by images and motor movements
Symbols can be:
entities without any internal structure
complexes with a building block structure
have a gestalt structure
5 basic types of Cognitive models
image Schemas
prepositional
metaphoric
metonymic
symbolic
Each model has an ontology and a structure;
Ontology is the set of elements used in the model. Elements may be Basic Level Concepts (entity, actions, state,
properties, etc) or concepts characterized by cognitive models of other types.
Structure consists of the properties of the elements and the relations obtaining among the elements.
1) The Propositional Cognitive model: Does not use imaginative devices the proposition: set of arguments, a
predicate which holds of these arguments.(whole-parts)
2) The scenario: an initial state, sequence of events, a final state (source path goal), also a purpose structure for
people.
3) The feature Bundle: is a collection of properties inside a container schemas = classical categories and
taxonomies. These are a creation of the mind.
4) The taxonomy: all the elements are categories. Each category is a container schema, with whole part up
down schemas. One of the most important schemas to make sense of our experience.
5) The radial category: as container and sub categories are containers inside it. Structure center periphery
schema
6) Graded Categories: the boundary is fuzzy (unlike the container schema) it has a linear width defined along a
scale which represent a degree of membership in the category
7) Graded Propositions: the degree to which a given property holds of an individual ( the degree to which they
are tall or rich)
Concepts are elements of cognitive models
Many concepts are characterized by a scenario
Every concept has a category
The category if defined by necessary and sufficient conditions = classically defined =can become a
simple prototype
When part of the category leads to the whole category it is a metonymic prototype
If the concept is defined by a graded scale then it is a graded category.
Metaphorical and Metonymic models
Metaphoric mapping involves a source domain and target domain
The source is structured by a proposition or image schema.
This mapping is typically partial: it maps the structure of the model in the source domain on to a
corresponding structure in the target domain: this is Ralph model
Both source and target are container and the mapping is source path goal
A metonymic model occurs within one domain which is structured. Given two elements inside the
domain, one represents the other in a source path goal schema. However, if B is a category and A is a
member of B and A stands for B then A is a metonymic prototype.
Different prototypes
Metonymic: A stands for B, social stereotype, typical case, an ideal, submodel
Radial: A at the center of collection, A stands for B's
Generative: A category is generated by another category plus a rule
Graded: A grade category with B given a degree of 1
Classical: A has all the feature bundles of B
===========================================
Symbolic models and cognitive grammar
These ICM are conceived without words or language. When you add words, the relationship becomes a
symbolic cognitive model
Filmore: Frame Semantics
Meaning are characterized in terms of cognitive models
A meaning is an element in a model
The model is the background to where the word is defined.
Nouns
Person place or thing
Best example of basic level physical object experience
Radial structure: noun in center and person place things around it. These are prototypical. Then there are
non-central nouns like abstract nouns like strength and strange nouns like umbrage.
Verb is a radial category
Basic level physical action is the center
Remaining verbs are characterize by their motivation to the center
Prototype theory permits general principles that provide a semantic basis for language.
Syntactic structure can be categorized in icm structure
Linguistic expressions get their meaning from:
1) being associated with ICM
2) Having elements of the ICM directly understood in terms of pre-conceptual structures: Ralph says
some of these you are born with or indirectly understood in terms of directly understood concepts
plus structural relations ( how two radial categories relate to each other)
Essential conclusion is that language is based on cognition
Structure of Language uses the same devices used in structuring a cognitive model: image schemas which are
understood in terms of bodily experience
Language is meaningful because it is tied to meaningful thought and depends upon the nature of the thought
Thought is made meaningful via two connections to preconceptual bodily functioning which is constrained by
the nature of the world that we function in
Language and Thought are meaningful because they are motivated by our functioning as part of reality.
=============================
Philosophical Issues
To begin
What is meaningful is important.
Meaningful ness can be defined through the successful definitions of the most critical concepts of human
thought: meaning, understanding, truth, knowledge, and objectivity.
These concepts can be explained by the following principles:
There are preconceptual structures in our mind.
These result directly from bodily experience of functioning in the world as a child, therefore they must be
meaningful to the body and therefore the mind.
These preconceptual structure permit the construction of Basic Level and image schema concepts, therefore
they must be meaningful since they derive from a meaningful concepts of direct experience.
Meaning
What is meaningful to us?
Meaningfulness derives from direct experience.
Basic level concepts are meaning full because they characterize the way we perceive overall shapes in terms of
whole part schemas and they way we interact with our bodies.
Image schemas structure our perceptions and bodily movement but in a less detailed way.
There are natural metaphorical concepts that are meaningful because they are based on directly meaningful
concepts and correlations with our experience.
Understanding
Direct understanding:
Of sentences and situations
Sentences is meaningful if the concepts associated are meaningful
Situations are meaningful if they play a causal role in the experience, or if they are preconceptually structured
Truth
A correspondence between understanding of the sentence and understanding the situation.
The basic level concept mental image is in agreement with your perception of the overall shape of your vision
The Image Schema of the relationship of the shapes is in agreement with your perception of that relationship of
shapes.
Or
If the concepts of the sentence are in direct agreement with the concepts of the situation, then this is truth
relative to a direct understanding.
The bulk of our understanding is indirect, but
Lakoff provide an answer: indirect understanding of situations through metaphorical understanding. But it stops
there
Part of indirect understanding of situations will demand relative accuracy and good sense.
If sentence is true, it is true by virtue of what it means and how it is understood: truth depends on
meaningfulness.
Truth
We understand the statement as fitting our understanding of the situation closely enough for our purposes. This
is not absolute. I t is experiential.
Truth is relative to understanding.
Absolute concepts come from people's acceptance of Folk Theory: one and only one way to believe
When more than one understanding is possible of a situation then truth becomes relative to understanding. This
account of truth explains why metaphors can be true, since metaphors provide understanding of experience
Ways of understanding situations changes with history: time as a resource
Created Realities.
Many of our most important truths are not physical truths but truths that come about as a result of being human
beings acting in agreement with conceptual system that cannot in any sense be said to fit a reality completely
outside of human experience.
Since we act in accord of our conceptual system (mind does not lie, ever so we are always looking for
agreement with something, and since are actions are real (like mother yelling, our conceptual systems must
create a reality to account for what it is experiencing.
Truth as a radial concept
There are central and non-central truths
Central truths: directly understood in terms of preconceptual structure of experience:
Basic level concepts of the physical domain
General Schemas emerging from experiences (kinesthetic image schema concepts.
Central truths are true by virtue of their directness of fit between the preconceptual structure of experience
(genetic, possible) and the conceptual structure in terms of which the sentence is understood.
Noncentral truths: Most of our sentence cannot be understood this way as central truths. They usually contain
very general concepts or very specific or abstract or metaphorical or metonymic or other indirectness relative to
a direct structure of experience.
Knowledge
What does it mean to know something?
How is knowledge possible?
If truth is a radial concept then so is knowledge
Best examples of knowledge are the basic objects, actions, and relations of the physical domain.
We get our basic knowledge from immediate physical environments: touching, perceiving, and manipulating.
Other knowledge comes directly or indirectly.
The stuff we know best comes from basic level experience
Much of our technology is aimed at expanding basic level experience.
Knowledge we are confident of can grow because we see as having the potential extend our basic level
perceptions and manipulations much farther. Remember the dysfunctional parent who kills this natural trend. In
different people this extendibility differs and may be a function of genetics.
For an extension of basic level perception and manipulation to be, acceptable standard of Consistency,
reliability and to a lesser extent rational explanation must be met. P 298
Knowledge, like truth, depends upon understanding, most centrally on our basic level understanding of
experience: Freud was right!!!
We take our basic level perceptions to be unshakable. Unless there is good reason to believe otherwise: this is
the mother's influence over the child vs the child's reality at 5 or six.
What is taken at the basic level is real and known: child logic
They must be coherent with our basic level perception and accepted by the community in order to be generally
accepted as true. When a child sees this doesn't work, they construct a scenario to make it true.
Once it is true, it becomes part of our knowledge. Now there is social acceptable understanding available to
further reinforce what is knowledge and therefore true.
=====================================================