1. Introduction
2. The semantics of grammar
2.1 Semantic constraint on grammar
2.2 Topological principle for grammar
2.3 Concept-structuring function of grammar
3. Schematic structure
3.1 Configurational structure.
3.2 Perspective point.
3.3 Distribution of attention.
4. Conceptual organization
4.1 Figure/ground organization
4.2 Factive/fictive organization
4.3 Force dynamics
5. Interactions among semantic structures
5.1 Conceptual imposition
5.2 Cognitive recruitment
5.3 Semantic conflict resolution
5.4 Semantic interrelations
6. Conclusion
7. References

Pre-final draft of an article appearing in:
Handbook of Semantics
edited by Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger, Paul Portner
Mouton de Gruyder

Cognitive Semantics: an Overview

Leonard Talmy
Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science
University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Abstract.

The linguistic representation of conceptual structure is the central concern of the two-to-three decades old field that has come to be known as "cognitive linguistics". Its approach is concerned with the patterns in which and processes by which conceptual content is organized in language. It addresses the linguistic structuring of such basic conceptual categories as space and time, scenes and events, entities and processes, motion and location, and force and causation. To these it adds the basic ideational and affective categories attributed to cognitive agents, such as attention and perspective, volition and intention, and expectation and affect. It addresses the semantic structure of morphological and lexical forms, as well as of syntactic patterns. And it addresses the interrelationships of conceptual structures, such as those in metaphoric mapping, those within a semantic frame, those between text and context, and those in the grouping of conceptual categories into large structuring systems. Overall, its aim is to ascertain the global integrated system of conceptual structuring in language.

1. Introduction

The linguistic representation of conceptual structure is the central concern of the two-to-three decades old field that has come to be known generally as "cognitive linguistics" through such defining works as Fauconnier (1985, 2002), Fillmore (1975, 1976), Lakoff (1987, 1992), Langacker (1987, 1991), and Talmy (2000a, 2000b), as well as through edited collections like Geeraerts & Cuyckens (2007). This field can first be characterized by contrasting its "conceptual" approach with two other approaches, the "formal" and the "psychological". Particular research traditions have largely based themselves within one of these approaches, while aiming -- with greater or lesser success -- to address the concerns of the other two approaches.

The formal approach focuses on the overt structural patterns exhibited by linguistic forms, largely abstracted away from or regarded as autonomous from any associated meaning. This approach thus includes the study of syntactic, morphological, and morphemic structure. The tradition of generative grammar has been centered in the formal approach. But its relations to the other two approaches have remained limited. It has all along referred to the importance of relating its grammatical component to a semantic component, and there has indeed been much good work on aspects of meaning, but this enterprise has generally not addressed the overall conceptual organization of language. The formal semantics that has been adopted within the generative tradition (e.g., Lappin, 1997) has largely included only enough about meaning to correlate with the formal categories and operations that the main body of the tradition has focused on. And the reach of generative linguistics to psychology has largely considered only the kinds of cognitive structure and processing that might be needed to account for its formal categories and operations.

The psychological approach regards language from the perspective of general cognitive systems such as perception, memory, attention, and reasoning. Centered in this approach, the field of psychology has also addressed the other two approaches. Its conceptual concerns (see e.g., Neely, 1991) have in particular included semantic memory, the associativity of concepts, the structure of categories, inference generation, and contextual knowledge. But it has insufficiently considered systematic conceptual structuring -- the global integrated system of schematic structures with which language organizes conceptual content.

By contrast, the conceptual approach of cognitive linguistics is concerned with the patterns in which and processes by which conceptual content is organized in language. It has thus addressed the linguistic structuring of such basic conceptual categories as space and time, scenes and events, entities and processes, motion and location, and force and causation. To these it adds the basic ideational and affective categories attributed to cognitive agents, such as attention and perspective, volition and intention, and expectation and affect. It addresses the semantic structure of morphological and lexical forms, as well as of syntactic patterns. And it addresses the interrelationships of conceptual structures, such as those in metaphoric mapping, those within a semantic frame, those between text and context, and those in the grouping of conceptual categories into large structuring systems. Overall, the aim of cognitive linguistics is to ascertain the global integrated system of conceptual structuring in language.

Cognitive linguistics, further, addresses the concerns of the other two approaches to language. First, it examines the formal properties of language from its conceptual perspective. Thus, it aims to account for grammatical structure in terms of the functions this serves in the representation of conceptual structure. Second, as one of its most distinguishing characteristics, cognitive linguistics aims to relate its findings to the cognitive structures that concern the psychological approach. It aims both to help account for the behavior of conceptual phenomena within language in terms of those psychological structures, and at the same time, to help work out some of the properties of those structures themselves on the basis of its detailed understanding of how language realizes them. It is this trajectory toward unification with the psychological that motivates the term "cognitive" within the name of this linguistic tradition. In the long term, its aim is to integrate the linguistic and the psychological perspectives on cognitive organization in a unified understanding of human conceptual structure.

with its focus on the conceptual, cognitive linguistics regards "meaning" or "semantics" simply as conceptual content as it is organized by language. thus, general conception as experienced by individuals -- i.e., thought -- includes linguistic meaning within its greater compass. And while linguistic meaning -- whether that expressible by an individual language or by language in general -- apparently involves a selection from or constraints upon general conception, it is nevertheless qualitatively of a piece with it.

cognitive linguistics is as ready as other linguistic approaches to represent an aspect of language abstractively with a symbolic formula or schematic diagram, provided that that aspect is judged both to consist of discrete components in crisp relationships and to be clearly understood. But most cognitive linguists share the sensibility that such formal representations poorly accord with the gradients, partial overlaps, interactions that lead to mutual modification, processes of fleshing out, inbuilt forms of vagueness, and the like that they observe in semantics. They instead aim to set forth such phenomena through descriptive means that provide precision and rigor without formalisms. They further find that formal accounts present their representations of language organization with premature exhaustiveness and mistakenly uniform certainty. We might propose developing a field of "theoryology" that taxonomizes types of theories, according to their defining properties. In such a field, a formal theory of language, at any given phase of its grasp of language phenomena, would be of the type that requires encompassive and perfected mechanisms to account for those phenomena. But cognitive linguistics rests on a type of theory that, at its foundation, builds in gradients for the stage of development to which any given aspect of language under analysis has been brought, and for the certainty with which the analysis is held.

While cognitive linguists largely share the approach to language outlined here, they may differ in more limited respects. For example, Ronald langacker generally stresses the contribution of every morpheme and construction in a sentence to the unified meaning of the sentence, while George Lakoff and I see certain interactions among the elements as overriding such contributions. And Lakoff stresses a theory of embodiment that Langacker and I break into subtheories and in part challenge (see section 5.1).

Terminologically, "cognitive linguistics" refers to the field as a whole. Within that field, "cognitive grammar" is largely associated with Langacker’s work, while "cognitive semantics" is largely associated with my own work (the main focus below), though it is sometimes used more extendedly.

Externally, cognitive linguistics is perhaps closest to functional linguistics (e.g., Givon 1989). Discourse is central to the latter while more peripheral to the former, but both approach language with similar sensibilities. Jackendoff’s approach is comparable in spirit to cognitive linguistics, as seen in article 31 Conceptual semantics. Thus, he assumes a mentalist, rather than a cognition-avoiding logical, basis for meaning. And he critiques the approaches of Fodor, Wierzbicka, and Levin and Rappaport Hovav (see article 19 Lexical conceptual structure) much as does cognitive linguistics. But his reliance on an algebraic features-based formalism to represent meaning differs from the cognitive-linguistic view of its inadequacy in handling the semantic gradience and modulation cited above. And his privileging of spatial structure in semantics is at variance with the significance that cognitive linguistics sees in such further domains as temporal structure, force-dynamic/causal structure, cognitive state (including purpose, expectation, affect, familiarity), and reality status (including factual, counterfactual, conditional, potential), as well as domains that he himself cites, like social relations.

2. The semantics of grammar

To turn to the specific contents of cognitive semantics, then, this outline opens with the semantics of grammar because it is the key to conceptual structuring in language. A universal design feature of languages is that their meaning-bearing forms are divided into two different subsystems, the open-class, or lexical, and the closed-class, or grammatical (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 1). Open classes have many members and can readily add many more. They commonly include (the roots of) nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Closed classes have relatively few members and are difficult to augment. They include bound forms -- inflections, derivations, and clitics -- and such free forms as prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners. In addition to such overt closed classes, a language can have certain implicit closed classes such as word order patterns, a set of lexical categories (e.g., nounhood, verbhood, etc. per se), a set of grammatical relations (e.g., subject status, direct object status, etc.), and grammatical constructions.

2.1 Semantic constraint on grammar

Within this formal distinction, the crucial semantic finding is that the meanings that open-class forms can express are virtually unrestricted, whereas those of closed-class forms are highly constrained. This constraint applies both to the conceptual categories they can refer to and to the particular member notions within any such category. For example, many languages around the world have closed-class forms in construction with a noun that indicate the number of the noun’s referent, but no languages have closed-class forms indicating its color. And even closed-class forms referring to number can indicate such notions as singular, dual, plural, paucal, and the like, but never such notions as even, odd, a dozen, or countable. By contrast, open-class forms can refer to all such notions, as the very words just used demonstrate.

The total set of conceptual categories with their member notions that closed-class forms can ever refer to thus constitutes an approximately closed inventory. Individual languages draw in different patterns from this universally available inventory for their particular set of grammatically expressed meanings. The inventory is graduated, progressing from categories and notions that may well appear universally in all languages (a candidate is "polarity" with its members `positive’ and `negative’), through ones appearing in many but not all languages (a candidate is "number"), down to ones appearing in just a few languages (an example is "rate" with its members `fast’ and `slow’).

2.2 Topological principle for grammar

The next issue is what determines the conceptual categories and member notions included in the inventory as against those excluded from it. No single global principle is evident, but several semantic constraints with broad scope have been found. One of these, the "topology principle", applies to the meanings -- or "schemas" -- of closed-class forms referring to space, time or certain other domains. This principle largely excludes Euclidean properties such as absolutes of distance, size, shape, or angle from such schemas. Instead, these schemas exhibit such topological properties as "magnitude neutrality" and "shape neutrality".

To illustrate magnitude neutrality, the spatial schema of the English preposition across prototypically represents motion along a path from one edge of a bounded plane perpendicularly to its opposite. But this schema is abstracted away from magnitude so the preposition can be used equally well in The ant crawled across my palm, and in The bus drove across the country. Likewise in time, the temporal schema of the past tense morpheme -ed represents occurrence at a point on the time line before that of the current speech event, but the magnitude of the interval between the two points is irrelevant. Thus, Alexander died young can refer to an acquaintance a year ago or to Alexander the Great over two millennia ago.

The topological property of shape neutrality is seen in the preposition through. In one usage, its schema represents motion along a linear path located within a medium. But this path can be of any shape, as seen in I made a bee-line / circled / zigzagged through the woods.

2.3 Concept-structuring function of grammar

Based on their formal and semantic differences, a further major finding is that the two types of form classes exhibit a functional difference. In the conceptual complex evoked by any portion of discourse, the open-class forms contribute most of the content, while the closed-class forms determine most of the structure.

For illustration, consider the sentence A rustler lassoed the steers (a "rustler" being a cowboy who steals another’s livestock). Its three open-class morphemes -- rustle, lasso, steer -- are conceptually rich. Thus, rustle includes concepts of property ownership, illegality, theft, and livestock. Lasso includes the concepts of twirling a looped rope, casting the loop over an animal’s head, and tautening and drawing the rope’s end. Steer includes the concepts of breeding for human consumption, a certain type of animal, and castration. These morphemes seem to provide most of the conceptual content.

By contrast, the more numerous closed-class forms are conceptually spare. They include: -ed `occurring before the present moment’; -s `multiple instantiation’; `unitary instantiation’; the `speaker infers that the addressee can identify the referent’; a `speaker infers that the addressee cannot identify the referent’; -er `performer of the represented action’; noun status for rustler and steer `thing’; verb status for lasso `process’; subject status for rustler `Agent’; and direct object status for steer ‘affected Patient’. These seem to set most of the conceptual structure.

Shifting one class of forms while keeping the other class intact highlights their content/structure division of labor. A shift in all the closed-class forms -- as in Will the lassoers rustle a steer? -- restructures the conception, but leaves the cowboy-landscape content largely intact. By contrast, a shift in the open-class forms -- as in A machine stamped the envelopes -- changes content while leaving the structure intact.

The crucial conclusion is that the closed-class subsystem is perhaps the most fundamental conceptual structuring system of language. The fact that language may thus have a formally distinct subsystem dedicated to representing conceptual structure may give it a central role in the larger aim of examining conceptual structure across human cognition overall.

3. Schematic structure

The structuring of conception just outlined for language is also termed "schematic" in cognitive linguistics. When schematic structure pertains to the meaning of a single morpheme -- as above for across -- it is termed a "schema" in my own work and an "image-schema" in Lakoff’s (e.g., 1987) work. Schematic structure extends further, though. At a first level, closed-class notions group into conceptual categories ("number" was an initial example), each with its own distinctive schematic structure. Such categories also largely share certain structural properties, such as the capacity for converting from one category member to another, the multiple nesting of such conversions, and a structural parallelism between objects in space and events in time. At a second level, these categories join in extensive "schematic systems" that structure major sectors of conception. Four of these schematic systems are outlined next.

3.1 Configurational structure.

One schematic system, "configurational structure", comprehends all the respects in which closed-class schemas represent structure for space or time or other conceptual domains often in virtually geometric patterns (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 3, 2003, 2006, Herskovits 1986, article 110The expression of space, article 121 Space in semantics and cognition). It thus includes much that is within the schemas represented by spatial prepositions, by temporal conjunctions, and by tense and aspect markers, as well as by markers that otherwise interact with open-class forms with respect to object and event structure. This last type of schema is seen in the categories of "plexity" and "state of boundedness", treated next.

Plexity

The conceptual category of plexity pertains to a quantity’s state of articulation into equivalent elements. Its two main member notions are "uniplexity" and "multiplexity". The novel term "plexity" was chosen to capture an underappreciated generalization present across the traditional categories of "number" for objects in space and "aspect" for events in time. In turn, uniplexity thus covers both the singular and the semelfactive, while multiplexity covers both plural and iterative. If an open-class form is intrinsically lexicalized for a uniplex referent, a closed-class form in construction with it can trigger a cognitive operation of "multiplexing" that copies its original solo referent onto various points of space or time. Thus, in English, the noun bird and the verb (to) sigh intrinsically have a uniplex referent. But this can be multiplexed by adding -s to the noun, as in birds, or by adding keep -ing to the verb, as in keep sighing. (True, English keep is open-class, but parallel forms in other languages are closed-class iterative forms.)

An operation of "unit excerpting" can perform the reverse conversion from multiplexity to uniplexity on an intrinsically multiplex open-class form. In English, this operation is performed only by grammatical complexes, as in going from furniture to (a) piece of furniture or from breathe to take a breath. But other languages have simplex forms. Thus, Yiddish goes from groz `grass’ to (a) grezl `(a) blade of grass’. And Russian goes from ˇixat’ `sneeze a multiplex number of times’ to ˇixnut’ `sneeze once’.

State of boundedness

A second conceptual category is "state of boundedness", with two main member notions, "unboundedness" and "boundedness". An unbounded quantity is conceptualized as able to continue on indefinitely without intrinsic finiteness. A bounded quantity is conceptualized as an individuated unit entity with a boundary around it. As with plexity, these new terms are intended to capture the commonality across the space and time domains, and to generalize over such usually separate distinctions as mass and imperfective on the one hand, and count and perfective on the other. An English noun and verb lexicalized for a bounded referent are lake and (to) dress, as seen by their compatibility with in, as in: We flew over a lake in 1 hour and I dressed in 8 minutes. But water and (to) sleep express unbounded referents, as seen by their incompatibility with in, as in: *We flew over water in 1 hour. / *I slept in 8 hours. But a closed-class form can trigger a cognitive operation of "bounding" or "portion excerpting" on these morphemes, as seen in: We flew over some water in 1 hour. / I slept some.

The reverse operation of "debounding" to convert a bounded referent into an unbounded one is also represented, at least for objects in space. Thus, the English count nouns (a) shrub / panel can take closed-class suffixes to yield the mass nominals shrubbery / paneling.

Configurational nesting

Schemas from all the schematic systems and the cognitive operations they trigger can be nested to form intricate structural patterns. Specifically, schemas from the plexity and boundedness categories of the configurational schematic system can nest in this way. Nesting can be illustrated first for events in time with the verb (to) flash. The basic uniplex status of this verb is seen in The beacon flashed (once). This uniplex event can be multiplexed as in The beacon kept flashing. This can be bounded as in The beacon flashed 5 times in a row. This can then be treated as a new uniplexity and remultiplexed as in The beacon kept flashing 5 times at a stretch. And this can in turn be rebounded, as in The beacon flashed 5 times at a stretch for 3 hours.

A homologous set of structures can be represented for objects in space. This is seen in the following sequence of sentences: I saw a duck. / I saw ducks. / I saw a group of 5 ducks. / I saw groups of 5 ducks each. / I saw 3 acres of groups of 5 ducks each.

The progressively greater structural nesting common across these sentence-sets can be represented as follows:
a. !
b. ...!!!!!!...
c. [!!!!!]
d. ... [!!!!!] - [!!!!!] ...
e. [ [!!!!!] - [!!!!!] ... [!!!!!] - [!!!!!] ]

3.2 Perspective point.

While the first schematic system, configurational structure, establishes the basic delineations by which a scene or event being referred to is structured, a second schematic system, "perspective point", directs one as to where to place one’s "mental eyes" to look out at the structured scene or event (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 1). This perspectival system includes a number of conceptual categories, three of which are outlined next.

Perspectival location

One conceptual category, "perspectival location" is a perspective point’s spatial or temporal positioning within a larger frame. The following two sentences are a spatial example: The lunchroom door slowly opened and two men walked in. / Two men slowly opened the lunchroom door and walked in. The first sentence induces the listener to locate her perspective point inside the room, whereas the second sentence is conducive to an external perspectival location (or perhaps to a non-specific one). How is this accomplished? The cognitive calculations at work appear to combine a rule of English with geometric knowledge. Though often breached, an apparent general rule in English is that if the initiator of an event is visible, it must be included in the clause expressing the event, but if not visible, it must be omitted. Thus, in the first sentence, no initiator of the door’s opening is mentioned, hence none must have been visible. But the second clause indicates that the apparent initiator, the two men, moved from outside to inside the lunchroom. Assuming opaque walls and door, the only way that an entering initiator could not be visible to an observer during the door’s opening is if that observer were located inside the lunchroom. In the second sentence, by contrast, the initiator is mentioned, hence must be visible. The only way a door-opening initiator who moves from the outside to the inside can be visible to an observational perspective point is if that perspective point is outside.

Perspectival distance and motive state

Two further conceptual categories here are "perspectival distance", with three main member notions: a perspective point’s distal, medial, or proximal distance from a referent entity; and "perspectival motive state", with two main member notions: a perspective point’s remaining stationary or moving along a path. Both can be illustrated at once by the following two sentences: There are some houses in the valley. / There is a house every now and then through the valley. Both sentences could refer to the exact same physical scene, and that circumstance will be assumed here. But the closed-class forms in the first sentence -- the plural subject, the collective quantifier some, and the stationary preposition in -- direct a listener to cognize the scene as if from a stationary distal perspective point with global scope of attention. By contrast, the closed-class forms of the second sentence -- the singular subject, the distributive temporal phrase, and the motion preposition through -- direct a listener to cognize the scene as if with a moving proximal perspective point with local scope of attention, that is, as if with a series of close-up views of successive houses.

Perspectival nesting

As with configurational nesting earlier, the perspectival schematic system also exhibits nesting. Its illustration here shows that perspective applies to time as well as to space as above, and introduces a further category, "direction of viewing". Consider the sentence At the punchbowl, John was about to meet his first wife-to-be. The expression be about to establishes a perspective point for the speaker shortly before John’s encounter with a particular woman and a direction of viewing prospectively aimed toward that encounter. Next, the expression (wife-) to-be establishes a second prospective viewing that looks ahead to the time when the woman whom John encounters will be his wife. The originating point of this viewing can be taken either as the speaker’s from the same earlier perspective point or as John’s at the time of his encounter, nested within the speaker’s earlier perspective. Then, triggered by the word first, a further prospective viewing, or family of viewings, points ahead to a subsequent wife or wives following John’s marriage with the woman at the punchbowl. Finally, a perspective point of the speaker at the present moment of speech is established by the past tense of the main verb was. It is this perspective point at which the speaker’s cumulative knowledge of the reported sequence of events is stored as memory and, in turn, which functions as the origin of a retrospective direction of viewing over the earlier sequence. The earlier perspective points are here nested within the scope of the viewing from the current perspective point.

3.3 Distribution of attention.

A third schematic system, " distribution of attention", directs a listener’s attention differentially over the structured scene from the established perspective point (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 4, 2007). Grammatical and other devices set up regions with different degrees of salience, arrange these regions into different patterns, and map these patterns in one or another way over the components of the structured scene. Several patterns are outlined here.

Focal attention

One attentional arrangement is a center-surround pattern with the center foregrounded as the focus and with the surround backgrounded. The grammatical relation of subject status can direct focal attention to the referent of the subject nominal, and alternative selections of subject can place the center of the pattern over different referents, even ones within the same event. Thus, focal attention can be mapped either onto the seller in a commercial transaction, with lesser attention on the remainder, as in The clerk sold the vase to the customer, or onto the buyer, with lesser attention on the new remainder, as in The customer bought the vase from the clerk (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 1).

For another realization of this pattern, Fillmore’s (1976) term "frame" and Langacker’s (1987) term "base" refer to a structured set of coentailed concepts in the attentional background. Their respective terms "highlighting" and "profiling" then refer to the foregrounding of the portion of the set that a morpheme refers to directly. A Husserl (1970) example can illustrate. The nouns husband and wife both presuppose the conception of a married couple in the background of attention, while each focuses attention on one or the other member of such a pair in the foreground.

Level of synthesis

In expressions referring to the same scene, different grammatical forms can direct greater attention to either of two main "levels of synthesis" or of granularity, the Gestalt level or the componential level. Thus, the head status of pyramid in the sentence The pyramid of bricks came crashing down, raises its salience over that of bricks with its dependent status. More attention is at the Gestalt level of the whole pyramid, conceptually tracking its overall movement. But the dependency relations are reversed in the sentence The bricks in the pyramid came crashing down. Here, more attention is at the componential level of the constituent bricks, tracking their multiple movements (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 1).

Window of attention

A third pattern is the "window of attention". Here, one or more (discontinuous) portions of a referent scene are foregrounded in attention (or "windowed") by the basic device of their explicit mention, while the remainder of the scene is backgrounded in attention (or "gapped") by their omission from mention. To illustrate, the sentence The pen kept rolling off the uneven table conveys the conception of an iterating cycle in which a pen progresses through the phases of lying on a table, falling down, lying on the ground, and being placed back on the table. But the overt linguistic material refers only to the departure phase of the pen’s cyclic path. Accordingly, only this portion of the total referent is foregrounded in attention, while the remainder of the cycle is relatively backgrounded. With enough context, the alternative sentence I kept placing the pen back on the uneven table could refer to the same cycle. But here, the presence of overt material referring to the return phase of that cycle foregrounds that phase in attention, while now the departure phase is backgrounded (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 4).

Attentional nesting

Nesting was shown for configuration and for perspective, and it can also be seen in the schematic system of attention. It appears in the second of the following two sentences: The customer bought a vase. / The customer was sold a vase. In the second sentence, focal attention is first directed to the seller by the lexical choice of sell but is then redirected to the buyer by the passive voice. If this redirection of attention were total, then the second sentence would be semantically indistinguishable from the first sentence, but in fact it is not. Rather, the redirection of attention is only partial: it leaves intact the foregrounding of the seller’s active intentional role, but it shifts the main focus onto the buyer as target. Altogether, then, it can be said that attention on the seller is hierarchically embedded within a more dominant attention on the buyer.

4. Conceptual organization

In addition to schematic systems, language has many other forms of extensive and integrated conceptual organization, such as the three presented next. Although Figure/Ground organization and factive/fictive organization could be respectively comprehended under the attentional and the configurational schematic systems, and force dynamic organization has elsewhere been treated as a fourth schematic system, these are all extensive enough and cut across enough distinctions to be presented here as separate bodies of conceptual organization.

4.1 Figure/ground organization

In representing many spatial, temporal, equational, and other situations, language is so organized as to single out two portions of the situation, the "Figure" and the "Ground", and to relate the former to the latter (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 5). In particular, the Figure is a conceptually movable entity; its location or path is conceived as a variable whose particular value is at issue. The Ground is a reference entity with a stationary setting relative to a reference frame; the Figure’s variable is characterized with respect to it.

For a spatial example, consider the sentence The bike is near the house. The bike functions as Figure as a movable object whose location is characterized in terms of the house’s location. The stationary house, set within the implicit reference frame of the neighborhood, etc., correspondingly functions as Ground. The presence of these Figure / Ground functions is demonstrated by the fact that the sentence with the nominals reversed -- The house is near the bike -- in which the house is now the Figure and the bike is the Ground, clearly has a different meaning and is odd to boot. Since the `near’ concept is symmetrical, the meaning difference must be attributed to something like the reversed Figure / Ground roles. Since prototypically a house is not conceptually movable and a bike is not a fixed reference point, these new role assignments clash with our background knowledge and the sentence is flagged as different and odd.

The temporal form of Figure / Ground roles can be seen in two events represented by the clauses of a complex sentence. Thus, in the sentence He exploded after he touched the button, the button-touching event, occurring earlier in time, functions as a Ground with its presumptively known location on the time line, while the explosion event functions as a Figure, getting localized on the time line with respect to the button-touching event. As before, these Figure / Ground roles are reversed in the otherwise synonymous sentence He touched the button before he exploded. And as before, these new role assignments clash with the prototypical bases for characterizing such temporal locations and so again flag the sentence as semantically different and unusual.

4.2 Factive/fictive organization

At least in language and visual perception (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 2), a pervasive cognitive pattern can be posited in which two different cognitive subsystems in an individual form discrepant representations of the same entity. Further, a third subsystem in the individual assesses one of those representations as more veridical, or "factive", and the other as less veridical, or "fictive". In particular, language abounds in "fictive motion", in which a factively stationary situation is represented in terms of motion. Of the many categories of fictive motion, two are outlined next.

Coextension paths

The category of fictive motion previously most noticed, "coextention paths", depicts the form, orientation, or location of a spatially extended object in terms of a path over the object’s extent. An example is the sentence The fence zigzags from the plateau down into the valley. Here, one cognitive subsystem in a listener has the world knowledge that the fence is stationary. But another subsystem responds to the literal wording -- specifically, the motion words zigzag, from, down, and into -- to evoke a sense of motion along the linear extent of the fence that serves to characterize the fence’s contour and positioning. A parallel sentence The fence zigzags from the valley up onto the plateau, evokes a sense of motion in the opposite direction. These two sentences together show how a concept -- here, that of a sense of directed motion -- can be imposed on or imputed to concepts of phenomena in the world through linguistic devices (see 5.1). By contrast, the factive stationariness of the fence might be represented, if poorly, by a sentence like The fence stands in a zigzag pattern at an angle between the plateau and the valley.

Emanation paths

Another category of fictive motion, "emanation paths", involves the fictive conceptualization of an intangible line emerging from a source object, passing in a straight line through space, and terminating on a target object, where factively nothing is in motion. In one subtype, "demonstrative paths", a directed line emerges from the pointed front of a source object. This is seen in The arrow points toward / past / away from the town.

In the "radiation paths" subtype, a beam of radiation emanates from a radiant object and terminates on an irradiated object. This is seen in Light shone from the sun into the cave. It might be claimed that photons do factively emanate from a radiant object, so that fictive motion need not be invoked. However, we do not see photons, so any representation of motion is cognitively imputed. In any case, in a related subtype, "shadow paths", none will claim the existence of "shadowons", and yet once again fictive motion is seen in a sentence like The pole threw its shadow on the wall.

Finally, a "sensory path" is represented as moving from the experiencer to the experienced object in a sentence like I looked into / past / away from the tunnel. Such an emanating "line of sight" can also be represented as moving laterally. Both these forms of fictivity -- first lateral, then axial -- are represented in I slowly looked down into the well.

One question for this fictive category, though, is what determines the direction of the intangible emanation. Logically, since motion is imagined, it should be possible to conceptualize a reversed path. Attempts at representing such reversed paths appear in sentences like *Light shone from my hand onto the sun, or *The shadow jumped from the wall onto the pole, or *I looked from that distant mountain into my eyes. But such formulations do not exist in any language that represents such events fictively. Rather, an "active-determinative" principle appears to govern the direction of emanation. Of the two objects, the more active or determinative one is conceptualized as the source. Thus, relative to my hand, the sun is brighter, hence, more active, and must be treated as the source of radiative emanation. My agency in looking is more active than the inanimate perceived object, so I am treated as the source of sensory emanation. And the pole is more determinative -- I can move the pole and the shadow will also move, but I cannot perform the opposite operation of moving the shadow and getting the pole to move -- so the pole is treated as the source of shadow emanation.

4.3 Force dynamics

Language has an extensive conceptual system of "force dynamics" for representing the patterns in which one entity, the "Agonist", has force exerted on it by another entity, the "Antagonist". (see Talmy 2000a: ch. 7). It covers such concepts as an Agonist’s natural tendency toward action or rest, an Antagonist’s opposition to such a tendency, the Agonist’s resistance to this opposition, and the Antagonist’s overcoming of such resistance. It includes the concepts of causing and letting, helping and hindering, and blockage and the removal of blockage. It generalizes over the causative concepts of traditional linguistics, placing them naturally within a matrix of finer distinctions. It also cuts across conceptual domains, from the physical, to the psychological, to the social, as illustrated next.

The physical domain

A contrast between two sentences can illustrate the physical domain. The sentence The ball rolled along the green represents motion in a force-dynamically neutral way. But The ball kept rolling along the green adds force dynamics to the otherwise same spatial movement. In fact, it has readings for two different force dynamic patterns. Interpreted under the "extended causing of motion" pattern, the ball as Agonist has a natural tendency toward rest but is being overcome by a stronger Antagonist such as the wind. Alternatively, interpreted under one of the "despite" patterns, the ball as Agonist has a natural tendency toward motion and is overcoming a weaker Antagonist such as stiff grass -- that is, it moves along despite opposition from the grass.

The psychological domain

An individual’s psyche can be conceptualized and linguistically represented as a "divided self" in which two different components are in force dynamic opposition. To illustrate, the sentence I didn’t respond is force dynamically neutral. But the sentence I refrained from responding, though it still represents a lack of response, now adds in the force dynamic pattern "extended causing of rest". Specifically, a more central part of me, the Agonist, has a tendency toward responding, while a more peripheral part of me, the Antagonist, opposes this tendency, is stronger, and so blocks a response. The two opposing parts are explicitly represented in the corresponding sentence I held myself back from responding.

The social domain

Much as the closed-class category of prepositions is largely associated with a specific semantic category, that of paths or sites in relation to a Ground object, so the closed-class category of modals is largely associated with the semantic category of force dynamics -- in particular, with its social application. Here, certain interpersonal interactions, mediated solely through communication, can be metaphorically represented in terms of force or pressure exerted by one individual or group on another.

For example, must , as in You must go to school, represents one of the "causing" force dynamic patterns between individuals. It sets the subject up as an Agonist whose desire -- taken as a kind of tendency -- is to do the opposite of the predicate’s referent. And it sets up an implicit Antagonist -- for example, I, your mother, people at large -- that exerts psychological pressure on the Agonist toward performance of the undesired action.

The modal may, as in You may go to the playground, instead represents a "letting" force dynamic pattern. Here, the subject as Agonist has a desire or tendency toward the stated action that could have been blocked by an implicit stronger Antagonist, but this potential blockage is withheld.

5. Interactions among semantic structures

The preceding discussion has mostly dealt with conceptual structures each in its own terms. But a major aspect of language organization is that conceptual structures, from small to large, can also interact with each other in accordance with certain principles. Such interactions are grouped together below under four extensive categories.

5.1 Conceptual imposition

A widespread view about the contents and structures of cognition is that they ultimately derive from real properties of external phenomena, through processes of perception and abstraction, in what John Searle has called the "world-to-mind direction of fit". While acknowledging such processes, cognitive linguistics calls attention instead to intrinsic content and structure in cognition -- presumably mainly of innate origin -- and to how extensive they are.
Such native cognitive properties certainly apply to the general functioning of cognition. But they also apply in many forms of "conceptual imposition" -- the imputation of certain contents and structures to our conceptions and perceptions of the world in a "mind-to-world direction of fit". Several realizations of such conceptual imposition are outlined next.

The imputation of content or structure

An initial non-linguistic example of autochthonous cognition is "affect". Emotions such as anger or affection are experienced either as such or as applied to outside entities. But it is difficult to see how such feelings could arise from a process of abstraction from the external world. Linguistic examples of course abound. Fictive motion offers some immediately striking ones, such as the "shadow path" in The pole threw its shadow onto the wall. As described in 4.2.2, the literal wording here depicts a movement from pole to wall that is not overtly perceived as occurring "out there". That is, at least the language-related portion of our cognition imposes the conceptualization of motion onto what would be perceived as static.

Actually, though, virtually all the semantic structures described so far are forms of conceptual imposition. Thus, in the scene represented by the sentence The post office is near the bank, based on the discussion in 4.1, it could hardly be claimed that the post office is inherently Figure-like and the bank Ground-like, beyond our cognitive imputation of those roles to those objects. And houses dispersed over a valley, as described in 3.2.2, could scarcely possess an associated moving or stationary perspective point from which they are viewed, apart from the linguistic forms that ascribe such perspective to the represented scene.

Alternatives of conceptualization

A consequence of the fact that a particular structural or contentful conception can be imputed to a phenomenon is that a range of alternative conceptions could also be imputed to it. These are alternatives of what my work has termed the "conceptualization" and Langacker’s has termed the "construal" of a phenomenon. For example, as seen in 4.2.1, the fictive motion that could be imputed to a fence along one coextension path, as in The fence goes from the plateau down into the valley could also be imputed to it along the reverse path, as in The fence goes from the valley up onto the plateau.

Or consider the deictics this and that, which establish a conceptual boundary in space and depict an indicated object as being respectively either on the speaker’s side of the boundary or on the side opposite the speaker. Then, referring to the exact same bicycle standing, say, some 8 feet away, a speaker could opt to say either This bike is in my way, or That bike is in my way. The speaker can thus impose alternatives of conceptualization on the scene, imputing a conceptual boundary either between himself and the bike or on the other side of the bike.

Embodiment

The notion of "embodiment" extends the idea of conceptual imposition. It assumes that such imposed concepts are largely based on experiences humans have of their bodies interacting with environments or on psychological or neural structure. It proposes that such experiences are imputed to, or form the basis of, our understanding of most phenomena (Lakoff & Johnson 1999). In my view, though, the linguistic literature has largely applied the blanket term "embodiment" to a range of insufficiently distinguished ideas that differ in their validity. Four such distinct ideas of embodiment in current use are outlined here.

First, in what might be called the "bulk encounter" idea of embodiment, phenomena are grouped and categorized in terms of the way in which our bodies -- with their particular shape and mesoscopic size -- can interact with them. But this idea is either incorrect or limited. For example, many languages have closed-class representation for a linear configuration, as English does with the preposition along. This preposition applies to a Ground object schematizable as linear. But due to magnitude neutrality (see 1.2), this schema can be applied to objects of quite different sizes, as in The ant climbed up along the matchstick, and The squirrel climbed up along the tree trunk. Yet, although the along schema can group a matchstick and a treetrunk together, we bodily interact with those objects in quite different ways. Accordingly, the bulk encounter idea of embodiment does not account for this and perhaps much else in the structure of linguistically represented conception.

Second, in what could be called the "neural infrastructure" idea of embodiment, it is the organization and operation of our neural structure that determines how we conceptualize phenomena. Thus, the linear schematization just cited might arise from neurally based processes of visual perception that function to abstract out just such one-dimensional contours. Comparably, the concept evoked on hearing a word such as bicycle or coffee might arise from the reactivation of the visual, motor, and olfactory areas that were previously active during interaction with those objects, in the manner of Damasio’s "convergence zones". The problem with this idea of embodiment is that, although generally correct, it is simply subsumed by psychology and needs no separate statement of its own.

Third, in what could be called the "concreteness as basic" idea of embodiment, the view is that experience with the tangible world is developmentally earlier and provides the basis for later conceptions of intangible phenomena, much as in Piagetian theory. A commonly cited example is concepts of time based on those of space. Another is the conception of purpose based on that of destination, that is, one’s destination in a physical journey in what Lakoff (1992) terms the "event structure metaphor". While something of this directional bias is evident in metaphoric mapping (see below), it is not clear that it correctly characterizes cognitive organization. On the contrary, we may well have an innate cognitive system dedicated to temporal processing -- perhaps already evident very early -- that includes perception of and control over duration; starting, continuing, and stopping; interrupting and resuming; repeating; waiting; and speeding up and slowing down. We may likewise have an innate cognitive system for intention or purpose. In any case, "purpose" cannot be derived from "destination". After all, the concept that a person moving from point X to point Y has Y as a "destination" already includes a component of purpose. When such a component is lacking, we do not say that a person has point Y as her destination but rather that her motion simply "stops" at that point. Accordingly, the notion of purpose present in the concept of "destination" could not derive from perceptions of concrete motion patterns, but might originate in an innate cognitive system for the enactment and conception of intention or purpose.

In a fourth and final type here, what can be called the "anti-objectivism" idea of embodiment faults the view that there exists an autonomous truth, uniform and pervasive, in such realms as logic and mathematics that the human mind taps into for its understandings and activities in those realms. Rather, we deal with such realms by imputing or mapping onto them various of our conceptual schemas, motor programs, or other cognitive structures. On this view, we do much of our thinking and reasoning in terms of such experientially derived structures. For example, our sense of the meaning of the word angle is not derived from some independent ideal mathematical realm, but is rather built up from our experience, e.g., from perceptions of a static forking branch, from moving two sticks axially until their ends touch, or from rotating one stick while its end touches that of another. This view of how we think may be largely correct. But if applied too broadly, it might obscure the possible existence of an actual cognitive system for objectivity and reason. Such a system might have the capacity to check for coherence across concepts, for global consistency across conceptual and cognitive domains, and for consistency across inferences and reasoning, -- whether or not the assessed components themselves arose through otherwise embodied processes -- and it might be the source of the very conception of an objective domain.

5.2 Cognitive recruitment

I propose the term " recruitment" for a pervasive cognitive process in which a cognitive configuration with a certain original function or conceptual content gets used to perform another function or to represent some other concept. That is, the basic function or concept is appropriated or co-opted in the service of manifesting another one.

Such recruitment would certainly cover all tropes, including fictivity and metaphor. Thus, in a coextension path example of fictive motion like The fence goes from the plateau to the valley (see 4.2.1), the morphemes go, from, and to originally and basically refer to motion, but this reference is conscripted in the service of representing a stationary configuration.

And metaphor can also be understood in terms of recruitment. In cognitive linguistics, metaphor has been mainly studied not for its salient poetic form familiar from literature but -- under the term "conceptual metaphor" -- for its largely unconscious pervasive structuring of everyday expression (see e.g., Lakoff 1992, article 26 Metaphors and metonymies)). In the basic analysis, certain structural elements of a conceptual "source domain" are mapped onto the content of a conceptual "target domain". But in our present terms, it can also be said that the conceptual structures and morphemic meanings original to the source domain are recruited for use as structures and meanings within the target domain. The directionality of the mapping -- based on the "concrete as basic" view of embodiment (see 5.1.3) -- is typically from a more concrete domain grounded in bodily experience to a more abstract domain. Thus, the more palpable domain of space is systematically mapped onto the more abstract domain of time in such everyday expressions as Christmas is ahead / near / almost here / upon us / past.

Recruitment can be seen as well in the appropriation of one type of construction to serve as another type. For example, the English question construction with certain modals can serve as a request, as in Could you pass me the salt?. Fictivity terminology could be extended to label the host construction here as a fictive question, and the parasitic construction as a factive request. Or it could be said that a request construction has recruited a question construction.

Finally, to illustrate functional recruitment, repair mechanisms in discourse, in their basic function, comprise a variety of devices that a speaker uses to remedy hitches that arise in the production of an utterance. Talmy (2000b: ch. 6) cites a recorded example of a young woman rejecting a suitor in which she uses an inordinate density of repair mechanisms, including false starts, interruptions, corrections, and repetitions. But it is evident that these originally corrective devices have been co-opted to perform a different function: to manifest embarrassed concern for the addressee’s sensitive feelings. And, built in turn upon that function is the further function of the speaker’s signaling to the addressee that she did have his feelings in mind.

5.3 Semantic conflict resolution

A conflict or incompatibility often exists between the references of two constituents in a sentence, or between the reference of a constituent and the context or one’s general knowledge (see Talmy 2000b: ch. 5). The treatment of such semantic conflict thus complements treatments of semantic "unification" in which the referents of constituents integrate unproblematically. A hearer of a conflict generally applies one out of a set of resolutions to it. These include shifts, blends, juxtapositions, and juggling. Of these, the first two are characterized next.

Shifts

In the type of resolution Talmy (1977) termed a "shift" -- now largely called "coercion" after Pustejovsky (1993) -- the reference of one of the two conflicting forms changes so as to accord with the reference of the other form. A shift can involve the cancellation, stretching, or replacement of a semantic feature. Each of these three types of shifts is illustrated next.

The across schema cited in 1.2 can illustrate component cancellation. This schema prototypically involves a horizontal path on a bounded plane from one edge perpendicularly to its opposite. But the path’s termination on the distal edge can be canceled, as in a sentence like The shopping cart rolled across the boulevard and was hit by an oncoming car. Here, the English preposition is not blocked from usage, or replaced by some preposition referring to partial planar traversal, but continues on with one of its semantic components missing. In fact, the preposition can continue in usage even with both of the path’s edge contacts canceled, as seen in The tumbleweed rolled across the desert for an hour.

The across schema can also illustrate component stretching. A prototypical constraint on this schema, not mentioned earlier, is that the main axis of the plane, which is perpendicular to the path, may be longer than the path or of the same length, but cannot be shorter. Accordingly, I can swim "across" a square swimming pool from one edge to the other, or "across" a canal from one bank to the other, but if my path parallels a canal’s banks, I am not swimming "across" the canal but "along" it. But what if I am at an oblong pool and swim from one of the narrow edges to its opposite? In referring to this situation, the acceptability of the sentence I swam across the pool is great where the pool is only slightly longer than a square shape, and decreases as its relative length increases. The across schema thus permits the path length within the relative-axis constraint to be stretched moderately but not too far.

Finally, component replacement can be seen in a sentence like She is somewhat pregnant. Here, the gradient specification of somewhat conflicts with the basic all-or-none specification of pregnant. A hearer might resolve this conflict through the mechanism of juxtaposition, to yield the "incongruity effect" of humor. If not, though, the hearer can shift pregnant into accord with somewhat by replacing its `all-or-none’ component with that of `gradience’. Then the overall meaning of pregnant shifts as well from involving the presence or absence of a fetus to involving the length of gestation.

Blends

An incompatibility between two sets of specifications in a sentence can also be resolved as a "blend", in which a hearer generates an often imaginative conceptual hybrid that accommodates both of the original conceptual inputs in some novel relation to each other. Talmy (1977) distinguished two types of blends, superimposition and introjection, and illustrated the former with the sentence My sister wafted through the party. The conflict here is between waft suggesting something like a leaf moving gently in an irregular pattern through the air, and the rest of the sentence suggesting a person (moving) through a group of other people. In myself, this sentence evokes the blended conceptualization of my sister wandering aimlessly through the party, somewhat unconscious of the events around her, and of the party somehow suffused with a slight rushing sound of air.

Fauconnier & Turner (2002) have greatly elaborated on this process, also terming it a "blend" or a "conceptual integration". In their terms, two separate mental spaces (see below) can map elements of their content and structure into a third mental space that constitutes a blend of the two inputs, with potentially novel structure. Thus, in referring to a modern catamaran reenacting a century-old voyage by an early clipper, a speaker can say At this point, the catamaran is barely maintaining a 4 day lead over the clipper. The speaker here conceptually superimposes the two treks and generates the apparency of a race.

5.4 Semantic interrelations

In the preceding three subsections, semantic structures have in effect "acted on" each other to yield a novel conceptual derivative. But semantic elements and structures can also simply relate to each other in particular patterns. Four such patterns are outlined next.

Within one sense of a morpheme

Several bodies of research within cognitive linguistics address the structured relations among the semantic components of the meaning of a morpheme in one of its polysemous senses. Two of these are "frame semantics" and "prototype theory", outlined next.

Fillmore’s (e.g., 1976) frame semantics (see article 29 Frame semantics) shows that the meaning of a morpheme does not simply consist of a central concept -- the main concern of a speaker in using the morpheme -- but extends out indefinitely with ever further conceptual associations that bear particular relations to each other and to the central concept. In fact, several different morphemes can share roughly the same extended frame while foregrounding different portions in the center. Thus, such "commercial frame" verbs as sell, buy, spend, charge, and cost all share in their frames a seller, a buyer, money, and goods, as well as the transfer of money from the buyer to the seller and, in return for that, the transfer of the goods from the seller to the buyer. Each of these concepts in turn rests on a further conceptual infrastructure. For example, the `money’ concept rests on notions of governmental minting and socially agreed value, while the `in return for’ concept rests on notions of reciprocity and equity.

In Lakoff’s (1987) prototype theory (see article 28 Prototype theory), a morpheme’s meaning can generally be viewed as a category whose members differ in privilege, whose properties can vary in number and strength, and whose boundary can vary in scope. In its most prototypical usage, then, the morpheme refers to the most privileged category member, assigns the fullest set of its properties at their greatest strength to that member, and tightens its boundary to enclose the smallest scope. For an example from Fillmore (1976), the meaning of breakfast -- in its most prototypical usage -- consists of eating certain foods, namely, eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, orange juice, and the like, at a certain time of day, namely, in the morning. But the meaning can be extended to less prototypical values, for example, either to different foods -- The Joneses eat liver and onions for breakfast -- or to different times of the day -- Breakfast is served all day.

Across different senses of a morpheme

Brugmann (1981) was the first to show that for a polysemous morpheme, one sense can function as the prototype to which the other senses are progressively linked by conceptual increments within a "radial category". Thus, for the preposition over, the prototype sense may be ‘horizontal motion above an object’ as in The bird flew over the hill. But linked to this by "endpoint focus" is the sense in Sam lives over the hill.

Relations from within a morpheme to across a sentence

The "Motion typology" of Talmy (2000b: ch. 1) proposes a universal semantic framework for an event of motion or location. This consists of four components in the main event proper -- the moving or stationary "Figure", its state of "Motion" (moving or being located), its "Path" (path or site), and the "Ground" that serves as its reference point -- plus an outside "Co-event" typically of Manner or of Cause. Languages differ typologically as to which of these components they characteristically include within the verb of a sentence, and which they locate elsewhere in the sentence. And these two sets of allocations are correlated.

Thus, a "verb-framed" language like Spanish characteristically places the components of Motion and Path together in the verb, and so has an extensive series of "path verbs" with meanings like `enter’, `exit’, `ascend’, `descend’, `cross’, `pass’, and `return’. In correlation with this lexicalization pattern for the verb, the language has a ready colloquial construction for representing the Co-event -- typically a gerund form that can appear right after the path verb. For example, `I ran into the cave’ might be expressed as Entr´ corriendo a la cueva -- literally, "I entered running to the cave".

By contrast, a "satellite-framed" language like English characteristically places the components of Motion and Co-event together in the verb, and so has a series of "Manner verbs" like run, limp, scuttle and speed. In correlation with this lexicalization pattern for the verb, the language also has an extensive series of "path satellites" -- e.g., in, out, up, down, past, across and back -- as well as a partially overlapping set of path prepositions, together with the syntactic construction for their inclusion after the verb. The English sentence corresponding to the preceding Spanish one is thus: I ran into the cave.

This correlation within a language between a verb’s lexicalization pattern and the rest of the syntax in a Motion sentence can be put into relief by noting minimally occurring patterns (see Slobin 1996). Thus, Spanish does not have a path satellite category or an extensive set of path prepositions, and in fact can largely not use the prepositions it does have to represent a path. For instance, it could not do so for the cave example. For its part, English does not have a colloquial gerund construction for use with its few path verbs (which in any case are mostly borrowed from Romance languages, where they are native). Thus, a sentence like I entered the cave running is fully awkward.

Across a sentence

Fauconnier (1985) shows how different portions of a sentence can set up distinct "mental spaces" with particular relations to each other (see article 30 Mental spaces). Each such space is a relatively self-contained conceptual domain with its component elements in a particular arrangement; two spaces can share many of the same elements; and a mapping can be established between corresponding elements. The mapping is directional, going from a "base" space -- a conceptual domain generally factual for the speaker -- to a "subordinate" space that can be counterfactual, representational, at a different time, etc. Thus, in Max thinks Harry’s name is Joe, the speaker’s base space includes `Max’ and `Harry’ as elements; the word thinks sets up a subordinate space for a portion of Max’s belief system; and this contains an element `Joe’ that corresponds to `Harry’.

6. Conclusion

In this survey, the field of cognitive linguistics in general and of cognitive semantics in particular is seen to have as its central concern the representation of conceptual structure in language. The field addresses properties of conceptual structure both local and global, both autonomous and interactive, and both typological and universal. And it relates these linguistic properties to more general properties of cognition. While much has already been done in this relatively young linguistic tradition, it remains quite dynamic and is extending its explorations in a number of new directions.

keywords: conceptual cognitive semantics

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