Transcript 幻灯片 1

Chapter 10
Cognitive Linguistics
Contents
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10.1 Introduction
10.2 Categorization and Categories
10.2.1 The classical theory
10.2.2 Prototype theory
10.2.3 Levels of categorization
10.3 Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy
10.3.1 Conceptual metaphor
10.3.2 Conceptual metonymy
10.4 Iconicity
10.4.1 Iconicity of order
10.4.2 Iconicity of distance
10.4.3 Iconicity of complexity
10.5 Grammaticalization
10.1 Introduction
Describe a car
★ box-like shape, wheels, doors, windows,
engine, brakes, seat…
★ comfortable, fast, social status…
★ personal affairs connected with cars, e.g.
car accident
What does this example tell us?

This example tells us that the description of a car
goes beyond the objective description, but
provides a richer, more natural view of its meaning,
and includes the use of metaphor. This approach
to language is closely related to human
experience of the world and the way to perceive
the world. This new approach to language is called
cognitive linguistics.
 cognitive
linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics is the study of
language based on human bodily
experience of the world and the way they
perceive and conceptualize the world.
认知语言学是基于人类对世界的经验以及他
们感知和概念化世界的方式。
 Background:
Cognitive linguistics is a newly established
approach to the study of language that
emerged in the 1970s as a reaction against
the dominant generative paradigm which
pursues an autonomous view of language and
has been increasingly active since 1980s.
three major hypotheses of cognitive
linguistics:
 1) Language is not an autonomous;
 2) Grammar is conceptualization;
 3) Knowledge of language emerges
from language use.

10.2 Categorization and Categories
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Categorization:

Categorization is the process of classifying our
experiences into different categories based on
commonalities and differences.
范畴化是基于人类经验的异同将我们的经验划分成不同的
类型。

Categorization is our ability to identify entities as
members of groups.
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The world consists of an infinite variety of
objects with different substances, shapes and
colors.
How do we translate this variety into
manageable word meanings?
Three phenomena in the world:
1) organisms and objects (one type of entities):
e.g. people, animals, plants and all kinds of
everyday artifacts such as books, chairs, cars
and houses
They are clearly delimited (有界) objects.
2) parts of organisms (another type of
entities):
 a. knees, ankles and feet of human
beings and animals;
 b. the trunk, branches and twigs of a
tree.
 The boundaries of these entities are far
from clear; they are vague.
 So classification seems to be forced
upon us by the boundaries provided by
reality.
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3) But there are phenomena in the
world where this is not the case. Take
physical properties such as length,
width, height, temperature and colors.
 All of them are uninterrupted scales
extending between two extremes:

The above phenomena can be conceived
as a mental process.
 This mental process of classification is
now commonly called categorization,
and its products are categories
(cognitive categories/ mental concepts).
 There is nothing more basic than
categorization to our thought, perception,
action, and speech.

Every time we see something as a kind of
thing (e.g. a tree), we are categorizing.
 Whenever we reason about kinds of things
(chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any
kind of thing at all) we are employing
categories.
 Whenever we intentionally perform any
kind of action (e.g. say something as
mundane as writing with a pencil,
hammering with a hammer, or ironing
clothes), we are using categories.

Most categorization is automatic and
unconscious.
 A large proportion of our categories are
not categories of things; they are
categories of abstract entities.
 We categorize events, actions,
emotions, spatial relationships, social
relationships, and abstract entities of
an enormous range.

10.2.1 The classical theory
The classical theory of categorization
can be traced back to Aristotle, and it is
carried forward by structuralist and
transformationalist linguists.
10.2.1 The classical theory
The classical theory—the view that
categories are defined by a limited set
of necessary and sufficient conditions.
 It was the prevalent model since the
time of Aristotle.
 These conditions are called ‘necessary
and sufficient’ because they are
individually necessary but only
collectively sufficient to define a
category.

Traditionally, the conditions were
thought to be sensory or perceptual in
nature.
 The “conditions” in the definition are
also called features.
 The features are necessary in that no
entity that does not possess the full set
is a member of the category, and they
are sufficient in that possession of all
the features guarantees membership.
 In short, category membership is an
‘all-or-nothing’ affair.

Four assumptions of the classical theory
1. A thing cannot both belong to a category
and not belong to it.
2. Features are binary.
3. Categories have clear boundaries.
4. All members of a category have equal
status.
Criticisms of the classical theory
Certain things do not fall into clear
categories. For instance, do ostriches and
penguins belong to the BIRD theory? Even if
they do, aren’t they less of birds than robins
are? Then what about ducks and peacocks?
Are they more of birds than penguins?
10.2.2 The prototype theory
The prototype theory started in the mid-1970s
with E.Rosch’s psychological research into the
internal structure of categories.
The prototype theory has had a steadily
growing success in linguistics since the early
1980s. It is for this linguistic tradition of
prototype-theoretical research that the prototype
theory has a very important status in cognitive
linguistics.
 Prototype
the best example of a category
 The
usefulness of the prototype theory
★It is useful for explaining how people deal
with atypical examples of a category.
★It can explain how people deal with
damaged examples.
★It can work for actions as well as objects.

In the BIRD category, there are many
members, such as ostrich, sparrow,
penguin, goose, duck, dove, robin, owl,
peacock, parrot, etc. But they differ in
prototypicality.
Good examples are prototypes or
prototypical members, and bad
examples are nonprototypes or
nonprototypical members.
 Robin and sparrow are good examples,
and ostrich and penguin are bad
examples, and others are neither good
nor bad examples (goose, duck, dove,
owl, peacock, parrot).

In the FURNITURE category,
 Prototypical members (good examples):
chair, sofa, couch, table
 Nonprototypical members (bad
examples): ashtray, vase, telephone

10.2.3 Levels of categorization
Categories arrange from level to level.There are
three levels in categories:
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superordinate level: higher level or more general
level, e.g. furniture, animal
basic level: more specific but not too specific, e.g.
chair
subordinate level: lower level or more specific, e.g.
desk chair
Basic level 基本层次范畴
The categories at the basic level are those that
are most culturally salient and are required to
fulfill our cognitive needs the best.
This is the level where we perceive the most
differences between “objects” in the world.
The basic levels are not defined by the
external world, but by our interactions
in it.
 Three factors of basic level category
 1) The basic level is where we perceive
the most obvious differences between
the organisms and objects of the world.
For example, all dogs are distinguished
from cats, lions, tigers, pigs, etc.
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2) The common overall shape is perceived
holistically and can be seen as an important
indicator of gestalt perception.
All category members (e.g. all members of
the category DOG) have a characteristic
shape.
This shape not only unites all kinds of dogs,
but also distinguishes them from the
members of other basic categories, such as
CATS, LIONS, TIGERS, PIGS, ELEPHANT,
MOUSE, etc.
3) The actions or motor movement are
performed when we interact with
objects and organisms. It is only on
this basic level that objects and
organisms are marked by really
characteristic actions.
 Cats can be stroked, flowers can be
sniffed, balls can be rolled and
bounced.
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Basic-level categories are basic in three
respects:
1.Perception: overall perceived shape; single
mental image; fast identification.
2.Communication: shortest, most commonly
used and contextually neutral words first
learned by children and first to enter the
lexicon.
3.Knowledge organization: most attributes of
category members are stored at this level.

Superordinate level 上位层次范畴
Superordinate categories are the most general
ones. The members of a superordinate category
do not have enough features in common to
conjure up a common gestalt at this level.
其特征体现在以下四个方面(Croft and Cruse)：
1 上位范畴没有基本层次范畴好，尽管它的成员可以区别于邻
近的范畴，但是范畴内的相似性相对比较低。
2 上位范畴比基本层次范畴的定义特征是少。
3 基本层次范畴与上位范畴之间有单一的修饰关系。
4 从语言学的角度说，上位范畴的名词大多是物质名词，而基
本层次范畴的名词是可数名词。
Subordinate level 附属层次范畴
At this level we perceive the differences betwee
the members of the basic level categories. Often
the names for SUBORDINATE LEVEL categories are
morphologically complex. They are typically
composite forms. One such example is that of
compound nouns.
其特征体现在以下三个方面（Croft and Cruse）：
1 附属范畴比基本范畴层次低，尽管它们的成员之间有很高的相
似性，但于临近的范畴成员的区别性却很低。
2 它们的信息性相对比它们的中间层次上位范畴少。
3 它们是多词素性的，而最普遍的格式是修饰－中心语结构。
Table 1
Superordinate level
Basic level
Subordinate level
KITCHEN CHAIR
CHAIR
LIVING-ROOM
CHAIR
KITCHEN TABLE
FURNITURE
TABLE
DINING-ROOM
TABLE
FLOOR LAMP
LAMP
DESK LAMP
10.3 Conceptual Metaphor and metonymy
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Traditionally, metaphors and metonymies
have been regarded as figures of speech, i.e.
as more or less ornamental devices used in
rhetorical style.
However, metaphors and metonymies also
play an important part in everyday language.
Philosophers and cognitive linguists have
shown that they are powerful tools for our
conceptualization of abstract categories.
10.3.1 Conceptual Metaphor
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1) Novel metaphor
Novel metaphors are new metaphors which are
“imaginative and creative”.
e.g. the eye of heaven —Sonnet 18 by
Shakespeare
2) Conventional metaphor
(=conventionalized metaphors/ dead metaphors)
Such metaphors are used in everyday speech.
They have entered the conceptual system of the
English language.
Prime examples of this are the parts of
the body:
 e.g. eye, leg, hand, and foot, as in eye
of the needle, hand on the clock, foot of
the bed, or a little more elaborate,
womb, as in the womb of time, a head
of cabbage, the leg of a table, the foot
of the mountain, the foot of a page, the
arm of a chair, the arm of a tree, the
nose of an aircraft, the lips of a jug.
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3) Conceptual metaphor
Metaphor—According to cognitive linguistics,
metaphor is defined as understanding one
conceptual domain or cognitive domain in
terms of another conceptual domain.
Source domain: the conceptual domain from
which we draw metaphorical expressions to
understand another conceptual domain
Target domain: the conceptual domain that is
understood this
Metaphors are not just a way of expressing
ideas by means of language, but a way of
thinking about things.
Conceptual metaphor
CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN(A) IS CONCEPTUAL DOMAIN(B)
TARGET DOMAIN
He
SOURCE DOMAIN
is
a
tiger.

Some examples of conceptual metaphor
e.g. LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Look how far we’ve come.
It’s been a long, bumpy road.
We can’t turn back now.
We’re at a crossroads.
We may have to go our separate ways.
We’re spinning our wheels.
Our relationship is off the track.
The marriage is on the rocks.
We may have to bail out of this relationship.
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What is striking about these examples is that
they represent ordinary everyday ways of
talking about relationships:
There is nothing stylized or overtly poetic
about these expressions.
Moreover, for the most part, they do not
make use of the linguistic formula A is B,
which is typical of resemblance metaphors.
However, these expressions are clearly nonliteral: a relationship cannot literally spin its
wheels, nor stand at the crossroads.
Observe that the expressions in the
above example have something in
common:
 In addition to describing experiences of
relationships, they also rely upon
expressions that relate to the
conceptual domain JOURNEYS.
 Indeed, our ability to describe
relationships in terms of journeys
appears to be highly productive.

From a cognitive point of view, the
crucial aspects of a metaphor are not
only the properties inherent in the
individual categories, but their role in
the structure of an entire “cognitive
model”.
 What is transferred, then, by a
metaphor is:
 a. the structure,
 b. the internal relations or the logic of
a cognitive model.

There is a conventional link at the
conceptual level between the domain of
LOVE RELATIONSHIPS and the domain
of JOURNEYS.
 LOVE, which is the target (the domain
being described), is conventionally
structured in terms of JOURNEYS,
which is the source (the domain in
terms of which the target is described).
 This association is called a conceptual
metaphor.

What makes it a metaphor is the
conventional association of one
domain with another.
 What makes it conceptual (rather than
purely linguistic) is the idea that the
motivation for the metaphor resides at
the level of conceptual domains.
 In other words, we not only speak in
metaphorical terms, but also think in
metaphorical terms.
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From this perspective, linguistic expressions
that are metaphorical in nature are simply
reflections of an underlying conceptual
association.
There are a number of distinct roles that
populate the source and target domains.
e.g., JOURNEYS include TRAVELLERS, a
MEANS OF TRANSPORT, a ROUTE followed,
OBSTACLES along the route and so on.
Similarly, the target domain LOVE
RELATIONSHIP includes LOVERS, EVENTS
in the relationship and so on.
The metaphor works by mapping roles
from the source onto the target:
 LOVERS become TRAVELLERS (We’re
at a crossroads), who travel by a
particular MEANS OF TRANSPORT
(We’re spinning our wheels),
proceeding along a particular ROUTE
(Our relationship went off course),
impeded by obstacles (Our marriage is
on the rocks).

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As these examples demonstrate, a
metaphorical link between two domains
consists of a number of distinct
correspondences or mappings. These
mappings are illustrated in Table 10.2.
From a cognitive perspective a metaphor is a
mapping of the structure of a source model
onto a target model.
Table 2 Mappings for LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Source: JOURNEY
TRAVELLERS →
VEHICLE →
Mappings Target: LOVE
LOVERS
LOVE RELATIONSHIP
JOURNEY →
EVENTS IN THE RELATIONSHIP
DISTANCE COVERED → PROGRESS MADE
OBSTACLES
ENCOUNTERED →
DECISIONS ABOUT
DIRECTION →
DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED
DESTINATION OF THE
JOURNEY →
GOALS OF THE RELATIONSHIP
CHOICES ABOUT WHAT TO DO
10.3.2 Conceptual metonymy
According to the classical definition,
metonymy is a figure of speech in which one
word is substituted for another on the basis
of some material, causal, or conceptual
relation. Some typical substitutions include
author for work, place for a characteristic
product of that place, object for possessor,
abstract features for concrete entities, etc.
Conceptual metonymy
 Metonymy—a cognitive process in
which one cognitive category, the
source, provides mental access to
another cognitive category, the target,
within the same cognitive domain, or
idealized cognitive model
Conceptual metonymy
Within one
cognitive domain
Cognitive category A
Target category
Cognitive category B
Source category
Conceptual metonymy
 Generally speaking, the most commonly
used conceptual metonymies are as
follows:
 1) THE PART FOR THE WHOLE
 (1)
We don’t hire longhairs.
 (2)
Get your butt over here!
2) PRODUCER FOR PRODUCT
 (3)
He’s got a Picasso in his den.
 (4)
He bought a Ford.
 (5)
I hate to read Heidegger.
 3) OBJECT USED FOR USER
 (6) The buses are on strike.
 (7) The sax has the flu today.

4) CONTROLLER FOR CONTROLLED
 (8) Nixon bombed Hanoi.
 (9) Napoleon lost at Waterloo.
5) INSTITUTION FOR PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE
(10) You’ll never get the university to
agree to that.
 (11) I don’t approve of the government’s
action.

6) THE PLACE FOR THE INSTITUTION
 (12) The White House isn’t saying
anything.
 (13) Hollywood isn’t what it used to be.
 (14) Wall Street is in a panic.

7) THE PLACE FOR THE EVENT
 (15) Pearl Harbor still has an effect on
our foreign policy.
 (16) Watergate changed our politics.
In the cognitive view of figurative
language, the role of metaphor is paid
attention to but not that of metonymy, in
the construction of abstract categories.
However, metonymy does play a very
important part in the structures of
emotion categories.
The similarities between metonymy and metaphor
1.both are regarded as being conceptual in nature
2.both can be conventionalized
3.both are means of extending the resources of a
language
4.both can be explained as mapping processes
 The difference between metonymy and metaphor
metaphor involves a mapping across different
conceptual or cognitive domains while metonymy
is a mapping within one conceptual domain.

10.4 Iconicity
Iconicity—a feature of language which
means that the structure of language
reflects in some way the structure of
experience, that is, the structure of the
world, including the perspective
imposed on the world by the speaker
 In short, it refers to the way in which
grammatical organization mirrors
experience.

Iconicity

e.g., the tendency for some languages
to present old information before new
information in an utterance represents
iconicity between language and
experience, because new experiences
happen later than old ones.
10.4.1 Iconicity of order

Iconicity of order—the similarity between
temporal events and the linear arrangement of
elements in a linguistic construction.
(1) a. He opened the bottle and poured himself a glass of wine.
b.* He poured himself a glass of wine and opened the bottle.
( 2) a. He jumped onto his horse and rode out into the sunset.
b.* He rode out into the sunset and jumped onto his horse.
(3) a. Tom ran out of money, and had to
find another job.
b. * Tom had to find another job, and
ran out of money.
If b in examples 1-3 means anything at all
it means something quite different.
In both English and Chinese,
iconicity of order works, but in many
cases, it works in different ways.
(4) a. 他笑着走进来对我说了声谢谢。
b. 他走进来笑着对我说了声谢谢。
c. 他走进来对我笑着说了声谢谢。

If we translate the three sentences into
English, iconicity of order does not
work:
a. He came in smiling and said thanks
to me.
b. He came in and smiled, then said
thanks to me.
c. He came in and said thanks to me
with a smile.
10.4.2 Iconicity of distance
 Iconicity of distance—the fact that
things which belong together
conceptually tend to be put together
linguistically, and things that do not
belong together are put at a distance.
(5)a. I killed the chicken.
b. I caused the chicken to die.

 When
several adjectives modify a
noun, the iconicity of complexity is
“subjective adj. + objective adj.”
 For example:
 (6) the beautiful big old red wooden
house
 “beautiful” is put in the first position
because it is more subjective, and
“wooden” is put in the last position
because it is more objective.
Iconicity of distance can also give a
satisfactory explanation to the sequence of
multi-adjectives before a noun.
(7) a. the famous delicious Italian pepperoni
pizza
b.* the Italian delicious famous pepperoni pizza
c.* the famous pepperoni delicious Italian pizza
d.* the pepperoni delicious famous Italian pizza

 10.4.3
Iconicity of complexity
 Iconicity of complexity (quantitative
iconicity)—the phenomenon that
linguistic complexity reflects
conceptual complexity.
 A difference in syntactic form
always spells a difference in
meaning.
Consider the following examples:
 (8)a. This guy is getting on my nerves.
b. This aggressively impertinent
egghead is getting on my nerves.
 Obviously, there is a marked difference
in the length of the subject noun
phrase between the two sentences.
 This difference corresponds to the
amount of information provided for the
description of the person referred to.

 However,
this view brings with it a
serious problem: no matter how
much information is supplied, the
person in the real world that is
referred to stays the same.
 In other words, the view that iconic
quantity establishes a relation
between linguistic expressions
and the person (or object) in the
real world cannot be upheld in
such a simple form.
All cases of reduplication in the
language of the world are instances
where more form stands for more of
content. For example:
 (9) Isn’t that fair and square?
 (10) Her son was wise and clever, but
her daughter was silly and foolish.
 (11) 寻寻觅觅，冷冷清清，凄凄惨惨戚戚。
(李清照)


Iconicity of complexity accounts for our
tendency to associate more form with more
meaning and, conversely, less form with
less meaning. This idea has long been an
important aspect of markedness theory.
Marked forms and structures are typically
more complex than unmarked ones.
10.5 Grammaticalization
Grammaticalization
the process whereby an independent word
is shifted to the status of a grammatical
element e.g. full
-ful
 Grammaticalization is not only a syntactic
change, but also a global change influencing
the morphology, phonology and semantics.

(12) a. Susan’s going to London next month.
b. She’s going to London to work at our office.
c. She’s going to work at our office.
d. You’re going to like her.
e. You’re gonna like her.
f. You gonna like her.(non-standard)



(13) a. I have read a lot since we last met.
(time)
b. Since Susan left him, John has been very
miserable. (time, implying reason)
c. Since you are not coming with me, I’ll have
to do alone. (reason)
 Since
in (a) only indicates time,
and in (b) implies that what
happened first (Susan left him) is
the reason for what happened next
(John has been very miserable). In
(c), the implied meaning (reason)
has developed into the meaning of
reason.
 (14)
a. I say that: he comes.

b. I say that he comes.
 The pronoun that in (a) has been
grammaticalized as a conjunction
that in (b).
 (15) a. 他们两个长得好像。(adv. + v)

b. 刚走的那个人好像我哥哥。

c. 他好像有个哥哥在东北。(adv.)
Grammaticalization brings about typical
changes in meanings and the distribution
of forms.
 Another characteristic of grammaticalized
forms is that the constraints on their
grammatical uses tend to reflect their
lexical histories.
 Another typical outcome of
grammaticalization is the development of
different historical levels of nearly
equivalent forms.


Conclusion
The language we use to express the world
is based on our cognitive conceptual
structures and the worldly experience from
which they come from. Cognitive linguistics
provides many new angles for our insight into
language. Its significant position in linguistics
is evident. It seems to give us hope that
some unsolved problems in language studies
may be solved in cognitive linguistics.
Exercises:
I. In a category there are many
members, but they differ in
prototypicality. Good examples of the
category are called prototypes and bad
examples nonprototypes. The following
are some of the members in the BIRD
category:
 ostrich sparrow penguin goose duck
dove robin owl peacock parrot

Put them into the following three
groups:
 Group I (Prototypical):________
 Group II (Neither prototypical nor
nonprototypical): _________
 Group III (Nonprototypical): ____


II. According to cognitive linguistics, there is
conceptual metaphor in language. Put the
following English sentences into three
different groups of conceptual metaphor:
 I’ve never won an argument with him.
 This relationship is foundering.
 He shot down all of my arguments.
 That’s food for thought.
 Our marriage is on the rocks.
 He devoured the book.
 We’ll just have to go our separate ways.
 Your claims are indefensible.
 If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
 I just can’t swallow that claim.
(Note: You needn’t copy the sentences.
Just write their numbers.)
 Group I (AN ARGUMENT IS
WAR):______
 Group II (IDEAS ARE FOOD):______
 Group III (LOVE IS A JOURNEY):______

Thank you!