Issues in Cognitive Linguistics

629 Pages·1999·85.087 MB·English

by  Leon de Stadler, Christoph Eyrich

Issues in Cognitive Linguistics
1749
1999
Cognitive Linguistics Research
12
Editors
Rene Dirven
Ronald W. Langacker
John R. Taylor
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Issues in Cognitive Linguistics
1993 Proceedings of the
International Cognitive Linguistics
Conference
Edited by
Leon de Stadier
Christoph Eyrich
w
DE
G
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York 1999
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin
® Printed on acid-free paper
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (3rd : 1993 :
Louvain, Belgium)
Issues in cognitive linguistics : 1993 proceedings of the In-
ternational Cognitive Linguistics Conference / edited by
Leon De Stadier, Christoph Eyrich.
p. cm. - (Cognitive linguistics research ; 12)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 3-11-015219-3 (alk. paper)
1. Cognitive grammar Congresses. I. De Stadier, L. G.
(Leon G.) II. Eyrich, Christoph, 1964- . III. Title.
IV. Series.
P165.I58 1993
415-dc21 99-26546
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Issues in cognitive linguistics : 1993 proceedings of the Interna-
tional Cognitive Linguistics Conference / ed. by Leon De
Stadier ; Christoph Eyrich. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de
Gruyter, 1999
(Cognitive linguistics research ; 12)
ISBN 3-11-015219-3
© Copyright 1999 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Printing: Werner Hildebrand, Berlin
Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin
Printed in Germany
Preface
This volume contains contributions in the field of Cognitive Linguistics orig-
inally presented as papers at the Third International Cognitive Linguistics
Conference held in Leuven, Belgium, during the summer of 1993. Due to
its long incubation period, many of the contributions were revised and the
references updated.
The contributions
Although it lies at the very heart of the cognitive linguistic paradigm that one
should not have the linguistic level approach traditionally associated with a
school such as generative linguistics, I have opted for some kind of thematic
organization in this volume. Even though I acknowledge the fact that many of
the contributions may fit into more than one slot in the organizational pattern,
I have placed them in six broad categories according to the main focus in each
contribution, namely
• Theoretical Issues
• Lexical Semantics and Morphology
• Metaphor
• Syntax and Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Computational Linguistics
The variety of the contributions give a clear indication of the diversity and
vigour to be found in the cognitive linguistic paradigm. With the following
prelude I wish to give a first glimpse of this diversity and vigour as it is
portrayed in the pages to follow.
In the theoretical section, Frederick Newmeyer addresses the possibility of
a convergence between cognitive grammar and generative approaches to lan-
guage. He explores the extent to which the differences between the theories
are merely the result of differences in focus or even terminology and the ex-
tent to which they are substantive, showing that at least some of the stumbling
blocks to mutual understanding are the result of pseudo-issues.
The field of lexical semantics, and lately related fields such as morphology,
drew quite a substantial number of contributions.
vi Preface
The first paper in this section, by Michel Aurnague and Laure Vieu, aims to
elaborate some formal tools for representing the semantic content of French
expressions referring to space. They discuss the topological prepositions sur
On' and dans 'in', as well as the projective propositions dessus 'above',
dessous 'below', devant 'in front of \derriere 'behind', in the schema "N
target
est prep Nj^^^". In the category of spatial referents they also took into ac-
count several internal localization nouns such as haut 'top', has 'bottom',
devant 'front extremity', which are all lexical items pointing out the different
portions of an object. From an empirical point of view, the whole study rests
on a detailed semantic analysis which distinguishes the different spatial con-
figurations each of these lexemes allow us to refer to. This linguistic study
also identifies the different inferential schemata that appear to combine spa-
tial expressions in discourse. On the basis of these observations, they propose
a formal representation of the semantic content of these expressions.
The contribution by Dirk Geeraerts offers an onomasiological analysis of
Belgian beer names. He argues that two important factors influence the selec-
tion of a name for a particular type of beer. On the one hand, salience effects
reveal that some referential features of the beers (the target domain of name
giving) are more prominent onomasiological motifs than others. On the other
hand, an analysis of the source domains of the figurative names reveals the
metaphorical connotations that are attributed to beer.
Various languages possess opposites that have developed historically from
the same root. The paper by Gabor Gyori and Iren Hegedus examines the
cognitive processes underlying this kind of semantic change in the case of
some basic perceptual oppositions. It is argued that such oppositions can
only be conceptualized as gestalts, i.e. as two inseparable poles of a unity.
The simultaneous lexicalization of these oppositions probably reflects this
feature. They show that the semantics of the original form must have been
characterized by an internal polarization, which split up at the lexical level
and caused the opposite semantic developments to proceed in parallel.
The paper by Laura Janda deals with the phenomenon of irregular inflec-
tional affixes in inflected languages. What were once forms related to pro-
ductive and systematic linguistic distinctions often seem to fade into obliv-
ion. However, Janda makes the point that not all of these affixes necessarily
wither and die. Languages are capable of recycling nearly extinct morphemes
and using them either to restore distinctions that have eroded or even to build
entirely new systems of distinctions. She illustrates this exaptative analogical
extension with a chapter from the history of the Slavic languages: the spread
Preface vii
of Isg -m from a handful of athematic verbs to much or all of the verbal
lexicon in the West and South Slavic languages.
In his paper, Arthur Mettinger looks at the cognitive basis of the tradition-
ally well-established semantic phenomenon of antonymy and complementar-
ity in adjectives. The claim is made that two image Schemas, the SCALE
schema and the CONTAINER schema, are responsible for our understand-
ing of these adjectives. Moreover, the contribution shows the necessity of
integrating image-schematic structures (grounded in bodily experience) and
word-class specific schematic structures (grounded in linguistic experience).
Finally, suggestions as to the poly schematic nature of CONTRASTIVITY
(opposition) are made.
John Newman shows that 'give' verbs are part of basic vocabulary as well
as being complex in their internal semantic structure. These properties are
relevant to understanding the impressive range of semantic extensions which
these verbs show cross-linguistically. These extensions, including grammati-
cizations of 'give' verbs as prepositions, auxiliaries etc., are documented and
classified into major subgroups, and some attempt is made to motivate each
of these figurative extensions.
Kiki Nikiforidou examines the semantics of action/state nominalizations in
English and Modern Greek and proposes that at a cross-lexemic level, nomi-
nalizations have meanings such as the product or result, the manner (in which
an action was performed), the degree (to which a state holds) and the fact
(that the action/state occurred) which are fairly regular and systematic. She
suggests that these meanings are related by metonymy to the basic action or
state meaning of a given nominal. Although some of these meanings (prod-
uct and result) represent semantic extensions for some nominals while others
(manner, degree, fact) should be best viewed as pragmatic variants, they are
all regular enough to warrant description through general metonymic princi-
ples which turn out to be quite productive. She shows the relevance of her
research for lexicography, proposing that the lexicographic treatment of nom-
inalizations, which appears to have been rather unsystematic, should take into
account such metonymic mappings in order to achieve consistency.
Roy Ogawa and Gary Palmer take the concepts of Langacker (1991) and
create a methodology for constructing the semantics of morphemes of spatial
relations from the Coeur d'Alene language. The semantics are described by
Langacker's networks of Schemas. The results of their analysis are applied
to the prefixes /*it/, /t-/ and/*-/, all of which are glossed with some usage
of the English word On'. Their methodology consists of the following. For
viii Preface
each prefix, a list of words that contain it are collected. A spatial relation
is extracted from the meaning of each word and is schematized. The words
are then subcategorized according to these spatio-relational Schemas. These
subcategories, each associated with a common spatio-relational schema, are
arranged in a network where the Schemas are related by extension or elab-
oration. Each network may include more than one connected component,
each of which represents a meaning-complex of the prefix made up of re-
lated meanings of the prefix. The separate components represent unrelated
meanings of the prefix. In the case of /*it-/ two meaning-complexes make
up the whole group; there are four subcategories for /t-/ with two meaning-
complexes; and, there are five subcategories with two meaning-complexes
for /*-/. Results show all of the previous glosses to be either incorrect or
incomplete and better glosses are given.
The paper by Sally Rice forms part of a large-scale empirical investiga-
tion into the syntax and semantics of the English prepositions, the theoretical
implications that their multivariate behaviour has on models of lexical repre-
sentation, and, given their polysemy, whether the prepositions form a homo-
geneous or heterogeneous word class. In the paper she focuses on aspectual
properties of prepositions using concepts from Cognitive Grammar.
In Japanese a limited number of morphemes, called "relational nouns"
(RN's), occupy a central place in locational expressions. RN's occur as the
head of a "noun + particle, no + RN" noun phrase, followed by the locational
particle ni 'at'. They also occur without the first two morphemes. In her
paper, Yoshiko Tagashira examines the characteristics of the seven RN's and
those of the aforementioned structures built around them. The following find-
ings, which may shed new light on the question of how people conceptualize
locations and on a few location-derived concepts, follow from her research:
(1) RN's denote regions or areas in our basic conceptualization of the envi-
ronment and this conceptualization is mapped onto locational relations within
an object or within the abstract world of human society, etc. (2) In most cases,
the noun which precedes the no Of preceding the RN thereby modifying it,
represents PLACE rather than OBJECT. (3) The ground of a locational ex-
pression designates a PLACE and the RN specifies a particular dimension or
facet within that PLACE. (4) Grammaticalization has taken place and some
RN's are used to express such abstract concepts as TIME, QUALITY, and
CAUSE. (5) The function of the RN stated above in (3) explains occurrence
or non-occurrence of the RN's. (6) Two related but distinct lines in which the
use of RN's is expanded should be recognised: (i) the orientational opposi-
Preface ix
tions existing in our environment are mapped onto abstract areas; (ii) RN's are
used with a PLACE noun and specify a particular dimension or facet within
that PLACE.
In a paper crossing the boundary between syntax and morphology, Adger
Williams presents an analysis of the Russian reflexive marker -sja. The pa-
per shows that this analysis has interesting implications for the analysis of
reflexives in particular, but also for grammatical theory within the cognitive
framework in general. He outlines an experiment to verify the hypothesis
that the Russian marker -sja is, in certain cases, used to mark a predicate that
presents a situation prototypical of the verb that the marker is affixed to. He
then argues that this implies that schematic networks of the categories sym-
bolized by verbs in Russian must have two different kinds of nodes, and that
the grammar recognizes this distinction by affixation of -sja to a verb that is
used to present a situation symbolized by a marked node. Finally, he shows
that this development represents another instance of grammaticalization of a
former reflexive marker.
Research in the field of metaphor has been central to the development of the
cognitive paradigm, as the contributions by Cienki, Delaney and Emanatian,
Hilferty, and Jäkel attest.
Alan Cienki's discussion on left/right polarity mediates neatly between the
sections on lexical semantics and metaphor. In Russian, as in many lan-
guages of the world, there is a very strong semantic differentiation between
non-spatial meanings of the terms for "left" and those for "right". "Right"
is often used for reference to what is correct or proper, authority, a straight
line; while "left" has negative connotations, often referring to something be-
ing wrong, illegal, crooked, or weak. However, the left-right spatial axis is
very weakly polarized in terms of the human body and our daily conscious
functioning. Research in the field of cognitive linguistics has shown that the
metaphorical usage of spatial terms is normally based on the transformation
of an 'image-schema', some structure or pattern which organizes our expe-
rience. The question is, what is the basis for the strong semantic polarity of
the two terms, given their relatively weak markedness in the spatial realm?
Cienki argues that left and right metaphors rely heavily on force-dynamic
concepts of strength and weakness. Using Russian for a case study, he con-
siders diachronic semantic evidence that shows an association of positive and
negative concepts (primarily of strength and weakness) with the right and
left hands respectively, and demonstrates how this can inform a synchronic
semantic analysis of the Russian roots -lev- (left) and -prav- (right).