University OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY
Cognitive Linguistics is a new approach to die study of language that emerged in the 1970's as a reaction against the dominant generative paradigm which pursues an autonomous view of language. Some of the main assumptions underlying the generative approaches to syntax and semantics are not in accordance with the experimental data in linguistics, psychology and other fields; the 'generative commitment' to notational formalism, that is to say the use of 'formal grammars' that views languages as systems of arbitrary symbols manipulated by mathematical rules of the sort first characterised by Emil Post, is used at the expense of descriptive adequacy and psychological realism (see Lakoff 1987). What Lakoff refers to as 'nonfinitary phenomena' (Lakoff 1990: 43), i.e. mental images, general cognitive processes, basic-level categories, prototype phenomena, the use of neural foundations for linguistic theory and so on, are not considered part of these grammars because they are not characterisable in this notation. It is from this dissatisfaction with the dominant model that Cognitive Linguistics is created. Cognitive Linguistics is not a totally homogeneous framework. Ungerer and Schmid (1997) distinguish three main approaches; Experiental view, the Prominence view and the Attentional view of language.
The 'Experiental view' pursues a more practical and empirical description of meaning; instead of postulating logical rules and objective definitions based on theoretical considerations, in this approach it is the user of the language who tells us what is going on in their minds when they produce and understand words and sentences. Eleanor Rosch carried out the first research within this approach, mainly in the study of cognitive categories, which led to the prototype model of categorisation.
Within this framework, the knowledge and experience human beings have of the things and events that they know well is transferred to those other objects and events, which they are not so familiar with, and even to abstract concepts, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) were among the first ones to pinpoint this conceptual potential, especially in the case of metaphors. However, this does not only apply to the field of metaphor but to other figurative resources which are not considered part of the language in more traditional linguistics, such as metonymy.
The 'Prominence view' is based on concepts 'of profiling and figure/ground segregation, a phenomenon first introduced by the Danish gestalt psychologist Rubin. The prominence principle explains why, when we look at an object in our environment, we single it out as a perceptually prominent figure standing out from the ground. This principle can also be applied to the study of language; especially, to the study of local relations. It is also used in Langacker's (1987, 1991) grammar, where profiling is used to explain grammatical constructs and, figure and ground for the explanation of grammatical relations.
Finally, the 'Attentional view' assumes that what we actually express reflects which parts of an event attract our attention. A main concept of this approach is Fillmore's (1975) notion of 'frame', i.e. an assemblage of the knowledge we have about a certain situation. Depending on our cognitive ability to direct our attention, different aspects of this frame are highlighted, resulting in different linguistic expressions (see Talmy 1988,1991, and 1996).
Despite these three different viewpoints in Cognitive Linguistics, the majority of cognitive linguists agree on the tenets described in the following section. In both sections 1 and 2 I follow Barcelona's (1997) framework for describing the methodological and theoretical principles in this approach.
1. MAIN TENETS IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS
As human beings the way in which we interact with our world through our spatial and temporal orientation, our manipulation of objects, our perception of the things that surround us and our bodily movements influences how we construct and understand meaning. Based on empirical research in different areas such as Cognitive Psychology and Anthropological Linguistics Cognitive Linguistics argues that both the design features of languages, and our ability to learn and use them are accounted for by general cognitive abilities, kinaesthetic abilities, our visual and sensimotor skills and our human categorisation strategies, together with our cultural, contextual and functional parameters (Barcelona 1997: 8).
Other approaches such as the Modularity Hypothesis (cf. Chomsky 1986; Fodor 1983) view the ability to learn one's mother language as a unique faculty, as a special innate mental module; here, language is understood as a product of general cognitive abilities. It is the result of what Lakoff calls 'the cognitive commitment'; the fact that linguistic theory and methodology must be consistent with what is empirically known about cognition, the brain and language (Lakoff 1990: 40).
Therefore, the most fundamental tenet in this model is embodiment (Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999). Mental and linguistic categories are not abstract, disembodied and human independent categories; we create them on the basis of our concrete experiences and under the constraints imposed by our bodies.
This kind of embodiment corresponds to one of the three levels that Lakoff and Johnson (1999) call the 'embodiment of concepts'. It is the 'phenomenological level' which "consists of everything we can be aware of, especially our own mental states, our bodies, our environment, and our physical and social interactions" (1999: 103). This is the level at which one can speak about the feel of experience, the distinctive qualities of experiences, and the way in which things appear to us. There are two more levels of embodiment: the 'neural embodiment' -deals with structures that define concepts and operations at the neural level-, and me 'cognitive unconscious' -concerns ail mental operations that structure and make possible all conscious experience. According to these authors it is only by the descriptions and explanations at these three levels mat one can achieve a full understanding of the mind.
Human conceptual categories, the meaning of words and sentences and the meaning of linguistic structures at any level, are not a set of universal abstract features or uninterpreted symbols (Barcelona 1997: 9). They are motivated and grounded more or less directly in experience, in our bodily, physical, social and cultural experiences, because after all, "we are beings of the flesh" (Johnson 1992:347).
The second main idea is related to the theory of linguistic meaning. Most cognitive linguists reject ''objectivist' theories of meaning. The term 'objectivism' is used by Lakoff (1987. 1988) and Johnson (1987) to refer to those theories of linguistic meaning that understand objective reality as independent from human cognition, such as Frege (Geach and Black 1952), Montague's Model-theoretical Semantics. For Cognitive Linguistics, meanings do not exist independently from the people that create and use them; all linguistic forms do not have inherent form in themselves, they act as clues activating the meanings that reside in our minds and brains This activation of meaning is not necessarily entirely the same in every person, because meaning is based on individual experience as well as collective experience.
Therefore, for Cognitive Linguistics, we have no access to a reality independent of human categorisation, and mat is why the structure of reality as reflected in language is a product of the human mind. Semantic structure reflects the mental categories which people have formed from their experience and understanding of the world. This understanding of our linguistic skills as the result of our cognitive abilities leads to deep methodological differences in respect to more traditional approaches to meaning, as we shall see in the following section.
2. METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
Human categorisation is one of the major issues in Linguistics. The ability to categorise, i.e. to judge that a particular thing is or is not an instance of a particular category, is an essential part of cognition. Categorisation is often automatic and unconscious, except in problematic cases. This can cause us to make mistakes and make us think that our categories are categories of things, when in fact they are categories of abstract entities. When experience is used to guide the interpretation of a new experience, me ability to categorise becomes indispensable. How human beings establish different categories of elements has been discussed ever since Aristotle.
The classical view on categorisation, that of Aristotle, claims that categories are defined in terms of a conjunction of necessary and sufficient binary features, that is to say that linguistic analytical categories impose a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the membership in me category. This requirement not only implies that categories have clear boundaries and mat all members of a category have equal status but also that there is an abstract, general definition with which all the members of that category must comply. For instance, the different senses of die word burn in Jonek buru handia dauka 'John has a bid head' and in Ezpafaren burua 'pommel of a sword' (ELH) would be considered as related to one general, core abstract sense of bum.
However, this abstract definition of 'core meaning' is problematic; as Sweetser (1986) points out, in cases when the extension of meaning has been carried out by means of metaphor or metonymy, it is very difficult to identify this abstract meaning. In the examples above, it could be argued that this core sense is 'an end of something', but this core meaning cannot account for other instances of bum as in Ez zait burntik joango esan didazima 'I won't forget what you told me' (IS), Artalde bat zazpi mila bumekttt 'a herd with seven thousand head of cattle' (ELH), Ekonomiari buruz hitzegin zuen hizlariak 'The speaker talked about economy' (HM) or Esaten won nire buniari 'I was saying to myself (oeh). These other examples lead us to another problem; no matter how complex mis core abstract meaning could be, it will leave some likely candidates outside of the domain.
These above examples would be analysed quite differently under the Cognitive Linguistics methodology. Instead of relating these different senses to an abstract default sense that includes all of them, the cognitive approach adopts a prototype categorisation model (cf. Rosch 1973, 1977, 1978, 1983; Rosch and Mervis 1975; Mervis and Rosch 1981). In this model human categories have two types of members: the 'prototype' and several less-central members related to me former in a motivated way. The prototype is the best, the most prominent and the most typical member of a category. It is the example that first comes to mind when one thinks of that category.
Prototype categorisation stems from Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1953) thesis that necessary and sufficient conditions are not appropriate for defining the meanings of many words. His example of the concept of game showed how there are very few properties, if any, that are shared by all games; instead, one game shares some properties with another game, and this other game may share some properties with a third and so on. This concept of game is based on what he called 'family resemblance': members of a family resemble one another in various ways. But, everyone in the family does not need to share the collection of properties that define that family, gradience (how much a member belongs to the family) and centrality (central/good and non-central/bad members). However Eleanor Rosch (see references above) was the first to provide a general perspective on these problems.
Following Rosch's approach to categorisation, a cognitive methodology identifies the prototypical use of burn as that referring to a part of the body, and would treat the other uses of this lexical item as motivated, non-prototypical senses, related to the prototypical sense in a systematic way. In Ez zait burntik joango esan didazuna, Ekonomiari buruz hitzegiien zuen hizlariak and Esaten nion nire human the link is carried out by means of metaphor; whereas in Artalde bat zazpi mila burnefdn, the link is metonymical (part for whole).
Another consequence of the primacy of cognitive abilities is that there is no strict distinction between encyclopaedic and linguistic knowledge. Objectivists differentiate between these two different epistemological types of knowledge. On the one hand, 'linguistic' or 'definitional' knowledge that "corresponds to the essential properties of the entities and categories that the words designate"; and on the other, 'encyclopaedic' knowledge "corresponds to the contingent properties of the entities and properties that the words designate" (Lakoff 1987; 172). This dictionary-encyclopaedia distinction leads objectivists to postulate a 'meaning per se' (Leech 1981: 70), independent of whatever the speaker may know about the states of affairs that he is referring to. This paradigm also induces the distinction between literal (objectively true or false) and figurative meaning (no direct correspondence to entities and categories in the real world).
For Cognitive Linguistics, however, this distinction is not strict. Meanings are cognitive structures embedded in our patterns of knowledge and belief; conventional meanings arise from experience and knowledge and our complex conceptual structures are invoked in language use and comprehension. The fact that our experience-based knowledge is present in linguistic meaning at every level implies that there is not a strict distinction between lexicon and grammar, between semantics and pragmatics, between synchrony and diachrony.
This continuum between language and experience has led cognitive linguists to study how conceptual structures or cognitive models are reflected in language. According to Langacker (1987: 147ff.), most concepts invoke other concepts and without making an explicit reference to them, they cannot be adequately defined. Consider for instance the concept of [astelehena]. If we ask ourselves about the meaning of me word Astelehena, we will probably say that it is a day of the week; but again what is the meaning of [ASTE]? Asteak are imaginative creations of the human mind. The kind of imaginative structure required for the description of concepts such as [astelehena] are what Langacker (1987: 150) calls 'abstract domains1: "any concept or conceptual complex that functions as a domain for the definition of a higher-order concept". These abstract domains are similar to Lakoff's (1987) 'Idealised Cognitive Models' (ICMs) and Fillmore's (1982, 1985) 'frames'. These abstract domains give structure to what Langacker (1987: 148) refers to as 'basic domains', i.e primitive representational fields, not reducible to another; they occupy the lowest level of conceptual complexity. These basic domains are what Lakoff (1987: 281). following Fauconnier's (1985) terminology, calls 'mental spaces', mediums for conceptualisation and thought. In mis case, the basic domain of the concept of [aste] would be [DENBORA].
In some cases, one abstract domain or ICM on its own cannot define the meaning of words. The latter may need the characterisation of several ICMs simultaneously; this is what Lakoff (1987:74) calls ''cluster models' (or domains).
Questions for self-examination
1. Why did the Cognitive Linguistics emerge?
2. What assumptions were the mains in the generative approaches to study of language?
3. Why were generative approaches disproved?
4. What does Lakoff refer to as "nonfinitary phenomena"?
5. What does generative paradigm view language?
6. What phenomena does Lakoff consider as the main in his approach to study of language?
7. What approaches to study of language do Ungerer and Schmid distinguish?
8. Tell about "Experiential view".
9. Tell about "Attention view".
10. What factors influence on our constructing and understanding of the meaning?
11. Tell about "Prominence view".
12. What is the prototype?
13. What is the gestalt structure?
14. What are the main tenets of the theory of embodiment?
15. What three levels of embodiment are distinguished in Cognitive Linguistics?
16. What does Cognitive Linguistics view the linguistic meaning?
17. What does semantic structure reflect according to the Cognitive Linguistics?
18. What is the "generative commitment"?
19. What is the "cognitive commitment"?
20. What is the "phenomenological level"?
21. What is the level of "neural embodiment"?
22. What is the level of "cognitive unconscious"?
23. What is the image schema?
24. How are conceptual structures (cognitive models) reflected in language?
25. What is the domain (mental space)?
26. What is the theory of blending (conceptual integration)?
27. What is the frame?
28. What is the principle difference between semantic approach to learn the language phenomena and cognitive one?
29. What is the subject of studying in semantic approach to learn the language phenomena and cognitive one?
30. What are the tasks of the semantic approach to learn the language phenomena and cognitive one?
31. How is the view on the distinction between encyclopedic and linguistics knowledge of semantic approach and cognitive one?
32. What kind of approaches does this model of analysis represent:
- concept;
- sours domain;
- target domain;
- typical models of the scenario;
- frames;
- slots;
- blending and differences realms of sours and target domains;
- productivity of the connection between the sours domain and target one?
Tasks
1. Analyse one of the following concepts according to cognitive approach and one of the semantic fields according to semantic approach:
"Weapon", "Cadets", "Military meetings", "Fight", "Defense", "Sports", "Studying", "Water space", "Economy", "Emotional states of person", "Space", "Time", "Relations", "Quality".
2. Find out the concepts referring to domain "Seasons". Compare English and Ukrainian concepts. How will you take into account this information in translation?
3. Restore the idealized cognitive models "Distance" in English and Ukrainian using Russian one.
На небольшом расстоянии
Слова: близко, близехонько, возле, невдалеке, недалеко, неподалеку, вблизи, поблизости, подле, около, рядом, недалече.
Фраземы: в нескольких шагах, глаза в глаза, двор о двор, бок о бок, дверь в дверь, на шаг, ни на шаг, не за горами, нос в нос, носом к носу, грудь в грудь, один шаг, под боком, под самым носом, перед лицом, перед глазами, под рукой, рукой подать, лицом к лицу, плечом к плечу.
Ключевое слово близко
Близко: возле, подле ( уст.), около (что-то находится возле, подле, около чего-то) ; рядом (что-то находится рядом с чем-то);
не за горами (что-то находится не за горами) - не очень далеко;
рукой подать (от чего-то к чему-то рукой подать) – недалеко;
в нескольких шагах (что-то от чего-то в нескольких шагах);
двор о двор (что-то и что-то) - о постройках, находящихся рядом (употребляется редко);
дверь в дверь (что-то и что-то) - о жилых помещениях, находящихся рядом;
на шаг, один шаг (что-то на шаг от чего-то, от чего-то один шаг до чего-то).