Embodied semantic parameters for the lexical representation of spatial relational categories

This paper discusses how the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) contributes to our understanding of meaning is constructed, interpreted and expressed. It especially addresses the role of constructional meaning in this complex process, while making critical revisions of other constructionist accounts of language, whether cognitivist or functionalist. It includes the notion of replicability into the definition of construction. According to this notion, a form-meaning pairing can be considered a construction, even if the pairing is not frequent, provided that it can be felt by competent native speakers as being ‘potentially replicable’, i.e. as being naturally meaningful without doing any violence to the nature of the language to which the construction belongs. The paper further argues that constructional structure mediates the syntactic realization of verbal meaning. In this view, meaning is not composed by assembling concepts, as postulated in Cognitive Grammar, but rather by making use of the conceptual scaffolding provided by constructions. Then, the paper relates the architecture of the LCM to a taxonomy of cognitive models and addresses meaning construction from the point of view of the descriptive and explanatory tools of the LCM. These tools include the definition of several central processes: subsumption, amalgamation, and saturation of variables. The role of each process is assessed at the various descriptive levels of the LCM. Finally, the paper relates formal expression to meaning representation in terms of idiomatic and non-idiomatic constructions. In this connection it specifies the requirements for full formal expression and relates such requirements to the format of constructional templates in the LCM.

180LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) manic Verb Second phenomenon. Working papers in Scandinavian syntax 50.1-24. Lund: University of Lund Department of Linguistics. Rrzzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ans van Kemenade Vrije Universiteit Department of English de Boelelaan 1 105 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands [kemenade@let.vu.nl] Semantics: Primes and universals. By Anna Wierzbicka. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xii, 500. $105.00. Reviewed by Bert Peeters, University of Tasmania Anna Wierzbicka's contribution to semantics, to the exploration of what she so aptly calls 'the dazzling beauty of the universe of meaning' (233), has been and continues to be immense. W has left on the semantic enterprise an indelible mark which generations of linguists to come will thankfully acknowledge. This is yet another collection of her papers, and at the time of writing it was clear that it would by no means be the last. Previously unpublished (like Chs. 2 and 3, and unlike all the others), Ch. 1 ('Introduction', 3-34) presents the newcomer to natural semantics (which is how W's theoretical framework has come to be known) with the necessary background to tackle the rest of the book. When I say 'previously unpublished', I mean 'in this format'. Having translated extracts from W's earlier work into French for an issue of the journal Langue française devoted to semantic primitives (Peeters 1993), I recognize large chunks of material inserted here without major rewriting. Ch. 1 deals with the importance of analyzing meaning not by any old means but with the help of a set of semantic primitives, all of which are lexical universals (although the opposite is not true) and presumably innate concepts; it also deals with questions of syntax (e.g. the combinability of primitives, the issue of verb valency, etc.). Furthermore, the reader is provided with a short history of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) and with an account of how the theory has come to deal with phenomena such as polysemy and allolexy, to mention but a few. On p. 28, W falls prey, after so many others, to the belief that the phrase où tout se tient is to be found in Saussure. It isn't (cf. e.g. Peeters 1985, 1991a). Ch. 2 (? survey of semantic primitives', 35-111) provides separate sections dealing with old primitives (i.e. the list put to the test in Goddard/Wierzbicka 1994) and new primitives (added in the last couple of years). The continued expansion of the NSM is to be applauded, especially since it goes hand in hand with extensive empirical research aimed at avoiding the inclusion of concepts which do not meet NSM's rigorous standards. There is no comprehensive table of semantic primitives given anywhere in the volume. I will redress that lack below; the descriptors in the left column are cover terms for sets of interrelated concepts and are not themselves part of the metalanguage. The new primitives are in italic. substantivesI, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE determinersTHIS, THE SAME, OTHER, SOME quantifiersONE, TWO, MANY (MUCH), ALL augmentarMORE mental predicatesTHINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR nonmental predicatesMOVE, THERE IS, (BE) AUVE speech and wordsSAY, WORD actions and eventsDO, HAPPEN evaluatorsGOOD, BAD REVIEWS181 descriptorsBIG, SMALL timeWHEN, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, NOW spaceWHERE, UNDER, ABOVE, FAR, NEAR, SIDE, INSIDE , HERE partonomy and taxonomyPART (OF), KIND (OF) metapredicatesNOT, CAN, VERY interclausal linkersIF, BECAUSE, LIKE imagination and possibilityIF ... WOULD, MAYBE The legitimacy of each primitive is discussed at length. Personally, I would have preferred 'IN' to 'INSIDE' as a space primitive (cf. Peeters 1997 for detailed discussion based on French). The addition of '(BE) ALIVE' is welcome. Some time ago, in a letter to this reviewer, the French lexicologist Jacqueline Picoche queried its absence from the metalanguage; she will now feel vindicated by this recent inclusion. Very interesting throughout Ch. 2 are the frequent references to the literature on child language acquisition in which ample supporting evidence may be found for the appropriateness of various inclusions and exclusions. Because NSM is a metalanguage and not a metalexicon, it has its own universal syntax, discussed at length in Ch. 3 ('Universal grammar: The...

The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) theory developed in such research as Wierzbicka (1972, 1980, 1994a) and Goddard (1994, 1998) has taken SAY to be a semantic primitive without specifying exactly which semantic domains it covers. Empirical research shows, however, that the words that might intuitively be taken as the exponents of SAY in English (say), Hebrew ('amar), Japanese (iu), and Spanish (decir) very frequently do not translate as each other, so that we cannot simply say that SAY = say = 'amar = iu = decir. In order to reconcile the translation data with a theory of universal primitive meaning, it is necessary to posit a number of cases of suppletion and polysemy, the former to account for automatic, non-meaning-based alternations between allolexes reflecting a single semantic primitive, the latter to account for meaning-based alternations between different lexemes. The resulting analysis is relatively straightforward and plausible, though some aspects of it may seem initially surprising, for example that tell has two distinct meanings (tell a story vs. tell me what you want), that tell in the latter meaning alternates allolexically with say, and that ask can serve as an exponent of SAY when the clause it introduces is formally a question but does not pragmatically function as a question.

This monograph studies cognitive operations on cognitive models across levels and domains of meaning construction. It explores in what way the same set of cognitive operations, either in isolation or in combination, account for meaning representation whether obtained on the basis of inferential activity or through constructional composition. As a consequence, it makes explicit links between constructional and figurative meaning. The pervasiveness of cognitive operations is explored across the levels of meaning construction (argument, implicational, illocutionary, and discourse structure) distinguished by the Lexical Constructional Model. This model is a usage-based approach to language that reconciles insights from functional and cognitive linguistics and offers a unified account of the principles and constraints that regulate both inferential activity and the constructional composition of meaning. This book is of value to scholars with an interest in linguistic evidence of cognitive activity in meaning construction. The contents relate to the fields of Cognitive Grammar, Cognitive Semantics, Construction Grammar, Functional Linguistics, and Inferential Pragmatics. Cognitive Modeling has been awarded the 2015 prize of the Spanish Association for Applied Linguistics (Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada, AESLA) for work by experienced researchers.

This article reviews briefly some recent work on relationships across a spectrum of functionalist, cognitivist and constructionist approaches to language. It then goes on to chart the history of the model currently known as the Lexical Constructional Model, showing how it has developed from work in a range of earlier approaches: Dikkian Functional Grammar, Coseriu’s Lexematics, Role and Reference Grammar, Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage model, Mel’èuk’s Meaning-Text Theory, and most recently Goldberg’s version of Construction Grammar and the theory of metaphor and metonymy. The strengths of the model are then summarised, and a number of challenges for the future are discussed.

N.C. Ellis, P. Robinson, An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Language Instruction. Section I: Cognitive Linguistics and Cognition. L. Talmy, Aspects of Attention in Language. J.R. Taylor, Prototypes in Cognitive Linguistics. R.W. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar as a Basis for Language Instruction. R. Hudson, Word Grammar, Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Learning and Teaching. K.R. Coventry, M. Guijarro-Fuentes, Spatial Language Learning and the Functional Geometric Framework. W. O'Grady, Language without Grammar. E. Lieven, M. Tomasello, Children's First Language Acquistion from a Usage-based Perspective. A.E. Goldberg, D. Casenhiser, Construction Learning and SLA. J. Bybee, Usage-based Grammar and SLA. Section II: Cognitive Linguistics, SLA and L2 Instruction. T. Cadierno, Learning to Talk about Motion in a Foreign Language. M. Gullberg, Gestures and SLA. T. Odlin, Conceptual Transfer and Meaning Extensions. B. MacWhinney, A Unified Model. N.C. Ellis, Usage-based and Form-focussed SLA: The Associative Learning of Constructions, Learned-attention and the Limited L2 Endstate. S.Th. Gries, Corpus-based Methods in Analyses of SLA Data. M. Achard, Teaching Construal: Cognitive Pedagogical Grammar. A. Tyler, Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Instruction. P. Robinson, N.C. Ellis, Conclusions: Cognitive Linguistics, SLA and L2 Instruction - Issues for Research.

This chapter provides a critical examination of the cognitive approach, which claims to follow a semiological or symbolic principle according to which the fundamental role of language is to allow the symbolization of conceptualizations by means of phonological sequences. It asks whether Cognitive Grammar is faithful to this principle and argues that the cognitive postulate of a continuum between semantics and pragmatics stands in direct contradiction to it. Critical assessments are also offered of Prototype Theory, Conceptual Semantics, Construction Grammar, and Natural Semantic Metalanguage.

Essentials of construction grammar theories In chapter 9, we presented the argument for representing grammatical knowledge as constructions. In this chapter, we will examine the structure of constructions and their organization in the grammatical knowledge of a speaker. This section introduces fundamental concepts and descriptive terms for the analysis of the structure of a grammatical construction. The concepts in this section form the basis of any syntactic model, although they are combined in different ways in different syntactic theories. Any grammatical theory can be described as offering models of representation of the structure of an utterance, and models of organization of the relationship between utterance structures (presumably, in a speaker's mind). The latter are sometimes described in terms of levels of representation, linked by derivational rules. But construction grammar is a nonderivational model (like, for example, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar), and so a more general description of this aspect of grammatical theory is ‘organization.’ Different versions of construction grammar will be briefly outlined in §10.2. We survey four variants of construction grammar found in cognitive linguistics – Construction Grammar (in capital letters; Kay and Fillmore 1999; Kay et al. in prep.), the construction grammar of Lakoff (1987) and Goldberg (1995), Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1991) and Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001) – and focus on the distinctive characteristics of each theory.

This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring 'big questions' concerning the diversity and universals of people’s experience in the world. In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka’s former students, old and current colleagues, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘sparring partners’ engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented. The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics. The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka’s research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.

Contents: Piotr Stalmaszczyk: Turning Points in the Philosophy of Language and Linguistics. Preface - Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt: Time as Degress of Epistemic Commitment - Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk: Events as They Are - Francisco Jose Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez/Francisco Gonzalvez-Garcia: Illocutionary Meaning Revisited: Subjective Transitive Constructions in the Lexical Constructional Model - Janusz Badio: Simulation Semantics: A Synopsis - Tomasz Ciszewski: The End of Phonology: Some Philosophical Implications - Maria Jodlowiec: Metarepresentation and Language: A Relevance Theoretic Approach - Andrew Jorgensen: Understanding Semantic Scepticism - Henryk Kardela: Ludwik Fleck's Thought Style Revisited. Where Do Facts in Linguistics Come From? - Krzysztof Kosecki: Do Mechanisms and Abstract Ideas Have Inner Lives? The Concepts of Subject and Self in English Personification Metaphors - Jakub Macha: Metaphor in the Twilight Area between Philosophy and Linguistics - Ratikanta Panda: Is Anything Static About Meanings? A Wittgensteinian Perspective - Wiktor Pskit: Categories and Constructions in Current Syntactic Theory - Monika Rymaszewska-Chwist: So Who Is Right? In Search of Philosophy behind Cognitive Science - Slawomir Wacewicz: Concepts as Correlates of Lexical Items - Lei Zhu: Sound, Body and Writing: A Phenomenological View of Linguistics as Representation of Speech - Przemyslaw Zywiczynski: Classical Indian Philosophy of Language.

This paper analyses the domain of verbs of anger and closely related emotions in order to implement a formalised lexical constructional account. Through a detailed analysis of psych-verbs, this research explores their syntactic and semantic specifications. By investigating the roles of experiencers and stimuli arguments either as syntactic subject or object when causing changes in psychological states, the study attempts to shed light on the syntactic and semantic properties of anger and related verbs and the constructions in which they occur. Drawing on constructional and lexical templates for argument structure, this study provides a detailed mapping of how language lexicalises verbal predicates of anger. Overall, this research offers an insight into their formalised representation, relying on the general principles of the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM) (Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera-Masegosa, 2014; Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal-Usón, 2007, 2008, 2011), Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) (Bentley et al., 2023; Van Valin, 2005; Van Valin & La Polla, 1997), and Construction Grammar (CxG) (Fillmore & Kay, 1996; Goldberg, 1995, 2006; Hoffmann, 2022; Michaelis, 2013; Sag & Boas, 2012).

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) aims to represent the conceptual structure of metaphors rather than the structure of metaphoric language. The theory does not explain which aspects of metaphoric language evoke which conceptual structures, for example. However, other theories within cognitive linguistics may be better suited to this task. These theories, once integrated, should make building a unified model of both the conceptual and linguistic aspects of metaphor possible. First, constructional approaches to syntax provide an explanation of how particular constructional slots are associated with different functions in evoking metaphor. Cognitive Grammar is especially effective in this regard. Second, Frame Semantics helps explain how the words or phrases that fill the relevant constructional slots evoke the source and target domains of metaphor. Though these theories do not yet integrate seamlessly, their combination already offers explanatory benefits, such as allowing generalizations across metaphoric and non-metaphoric language, and identifying the words that play a role in evoking metaphors, for example.

Cognitive poetics, the recently developed field of literary theory which utilizes principles from cognitive science and cognitive linguistics to examine literature, is applied in this study to an exploration of the poetry of William Butler Yeats. The theoretical foundation for this approach is embodiment theory, the concept from cognitive linguistics that language is an embodied phenomenon and that meaning and meaning construction are bodily processes grounded in our sensorimotor experiences. A systematic analysis including conceptual metaphors, image schemas, cognitive mappings, mental spaces, and cognitive grammar is applied here to selected poems of Yeats to discover how these models can inform our readings of these poems. Special attention is devoted to Yeats's interest in the mind's eye, his crafting of syntax in stanzaic development, his atemporalization through grammar, and the antinomies which converge in selected symbols from his poems.

The chapter attempts to account for conventionalized request realization patterns in Modern Greek and the semantic motivation behind their conventionalization in particular uses. It adheres to recent formulations within Cognitive Linguistics regarding illocutionary meaning as emerging from the co-activation of higher order cognitive structures from linguistically codified patterns and from information available in the context of the interaction. It further argues for the conceptual prominence of the optionality attribute in the request Idealized Cognitive Model, exploring the ways it is linguistically safeguarded in language use. The semantic import of optionality can be best described in terms of the proximity vs. distance to reality metaphor as effected through the grounding specifications of the proposition in Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar.

In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the system of Transitivity is a common means by which to analyse both isolated clauses as well as clauses in context. To date, two Transitivity models have emerged. The first and more established of the two is the Sydney model, which was proposed by Halliday (Journal of Linguistics 3(1):37–81, 1967; An introduction to functional grammar, 1985; An introduction to functional grammar, 1994) and more latterly developed by himself and Christian Matthiessen (Halliday and Matthiessen, An introduction to functional grammar, 2004; Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar, 2014). The second is the Cardiff Grammar (CG) model put forward by Fawcett (Cognitive linguistics and social interaction: Towards an integrated model of a systemic functional grammar and the other components of a communicating mind, 1980; The semantics of clause and verb for relational processes in English, 1987) as an alternative to the former and, which has subsequently been elaborated by Neale (More delicate Transitivity: Extending the process type system networks for English to include full semantic classifications, 2002; Matching corpus data and system networks, 2006). Although both models have various strengths, neither model is void of limitations. Thus, the aim of this paper is to describe, compare and draw on the inadequacies associated with either one or both of the aforementioned systems, which have come to light following substantial research on Transitivity. All in all, several issues are raised here in order to highlight particular areas that need to be addressed if we are to ensure a systematic and delicate analysis of Transitivity patterns across texts.