Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory PDF
Preview Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory
I PROTOTYPES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY SECOND EDITION JOHN R. TAYLOR LINGUISTIC CATEGORIZATION LINGUISTIC CATEGORIZATION Prototypes in Linguistic Theory JOHN R. TAYLOR Second Edition CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 1995 Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Calcutta ('ape Town Dar n Salaam Delhi Florence I long Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., Sen1 York ©John R.Taylor 1989, 1995 First published 1989 First published in paperback 1991 Second Edition 1995 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form ofbinding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library* of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Linguistic categorisation : prototypes in linguistic theory JohnR. Taylor. - 2nd [enl.f ed. I. Categorisation (Linguistics) 2. Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) 3. Cognitive grammar. 4. Semantics. I. Title. PI28.C37T38 1995 40l\43-dc20 95-19066 ISBN 0-19-870012-1 (Pbk) ISBN 0-19-870013-X I 3579108642 Typeset by Joshua Associates Limited, Oxford Primed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd., MidsomerNorton For GeniaandAry Preface to the Second Edition FOR the second edition of this book, I have added an extra chapter, Chapter 14, which updates the treatment, especially of issues in lexical semantics. The focus on word meanings reflects a personal interest, but also the belief that a good deal of a person's knowledge of a language resides, precisely, in the knowledge of words, and of their properties. I am grateful, as always, to the many individuals who have encouraged me in my work, including Dirk Geeraerts, Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, Savas Tsohatzidis, Rob MacLaury, and especially Rene Dirven. My intellectual debt to Ronald Langacker will be apparent throughout. A special word of thanks, also, to my editor at Oxford University Press, Frances Morphy, who first suggested the expanded second edition. I regret that, because of my translation to the other side of the globe, she had to wait a little longer than promised for the delivery of the additional chapter. J.R.T. Preface to the First Edition THE title of this book is intentionally ambiguous. In one of its senses, 'linguistic categorization' refers to the process by which people, in using language, necessarily categorize the world around them. When ever we use the word dog to refer to two different animals, or describe two different colour sensations by the same word, e.g. red, we are undertaking acts of categorization. Although different, the two entities are regarded in each case as the same. Categorization is fundamental to all higher cognitive activity. Yet the seeing of sameness in difference raises deep philosophical problems. One extreme position, that of nominalism, claims that same ness is merely a matter of linguistic convention; the range of entities which may be called dogs, or the set of colours that may be described as red, have in reality nothing in common but their name. An equally extreme position is that of realism. Realism claims that categories like DOG and RED exist independently of language and its users, and that the words dog and red merely name these pre-existing categories. An alternative position is conceptualism. Conceptualism postulates that a word and the range of entities to which it may refer are mediated by a mental entity, i.e. a concept. It is in virtue of a speaker's knowledge of the concepts "dog" and "red", i.e. in virtue of his knowledge of the meanings of the words dog and red, that he is able to categorize different entities as dogs, different colours as red, and so on. Con ceptualism may be given a nominalist or a realist orientation. On the one hand, we can claim that concepts merely reflect linguistic convention. The English speaker's concepts "red" and "dog" arise through his observation of how the words red and dog are con ventionally used; once formed, the concepts will govern future linguistic performance. Alternatively, we might claim that concepts mirror really existing properties of the world. On this view, our concepts are not arbitrary creations of language, but constitute part of our understanding of what the world is 'really' like. This book will take a course which is intermediate between these two positions, yet strictly speaking consonant with neither. To the extent that a language is a conventionalized symbolic system, it is indeed the case that a language imposes a set of categories on its users. Conventionalized, however, does not necessarily imply arbitrary. The categories encoded in a
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