Objects

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-114
Author(s):  
David Kemmerer
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Object Representation ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
Subsequent Section ◽  
Nominal Classification

It is tempting to suppose that all languages represent objects in comparable ways. Typological research has shown, however, that while there are many cross-linguistic similarities in this semantic realm, there are also numerous differences. This chapter describes some of these findings and explores their implications for cognitive neuroscience. The first section discusses plant, animal, and artifact concepts jointly, but in a manner that still respects their different treatments by typologists and neuroscientists. Then the subsequent section focuses on a fourth domain, namely body parts. Next, the chapter considers some of the ways in which objects are represented by the following kinds of closed-class items and constructions: grammatical-semantic splits involving possession, and nominal classification systems. Although both of these forms of object representation have been intensively investigated in typology, they have been almost completely neglected in neuroscience; hence, they are especially relevant to the latter field of study.

scholarly journals Flexible Concepts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Pecher ◽  
Rolf Antonius Zwaan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Conceptual System ◽  
Nominal Classification ◽  
Insight Into

This is a commentary on Kemmerer (2016), Categories of object concepts across languages and brains: The relevance of nominal classification systems to Cognitive Neuroscience. The consequences of nominal classification systems for the organization of the conceptual system are consistent with several theories and findings in cognitive psychology. Concepts are flexible; they are categorized in various ways and change across contexts. Languages with nominal classification systems provide an interesting source of data that can give further insight into the mechanisms of flexible concepts.

Be happy when your stomach is

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-208
Author(s):  
Dorothea Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
Noun Incorporation ◽  
Closed Class ◽  
River Region

Abstract In this paper I provide a description of the role of body-part terms in expressions of emotion and other semantic extensions in MalakMalak, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Daly River area. Body-based expressions denote events, emotions, personality traits, significant places and people and are used to refer to times and number. Particularly central in the language are men ‘stomach’, pundu ‘head’ and tjewurr ‘ear’ associated respectively with basic emotions, states of mind and reason. The figurative extensions of these body parts are discussed systematically, and compared with what is known for other languages of the Daly River region. The article also explores the grammatical make up of body-based emotional collocations, and in particular the role of noun incorporation. In MalakMalak, noun incorporation is a central part of forming predicates with body parts, but uncommon in any other semantic domain of the language and only lexemes denoting basic emotions may also incorporate closed-class adjectives.

scholarly journals Guest Editorial: Introduction to Philosophical Issues in Neuroethics

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
TUIJA TAKALA
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Guest Editorial ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Editorial Introduction ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Present Collection

Neuroethics studies the ethical, social, and legal issues raised by actual or expected advances in neuroscience. The relevant fields in neuroscience include, but are not limited to, neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychopharmacology, neurogenetics, and neuropsychiatry. For many, neuroethics is best understood as a subcategory of bioethics, and although not all agree, for the purposes of the present collection of articles, this definition is assumed. Although bioethics as a field of study started in the early 1970s as a normative enterprise, mainly practiced by philosophers and theologians, it has since become truly inter- and multidisciplinary, comprising also law, sociology, psychology, gender studies, disability studies, anthropology, history, and many other approaches. What we particularly wanted to do in this issue, however, was to find the most pertinent questions of neuroethics from the viewpoint of philosophy, and the call for papers was drafted accordingly.

scholarly journals The Temporal Dynamics of Object Processing in Visual Cortex during the Transition from Distributed to Focused Spatial Attention

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 4094-4105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chien-Te Wu ◽  
Melissa E. Libertus ◽  
Karen L. Meyerhoff ◽  
Marty G. Woldorff
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Object Representation ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Object Processing ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity

Several major cognitive neuroscience models have posited that focal spatial attention is required to integrate different features of an object to form a coherent perception of it within a complex visual scene. Although many behavioral studies have supported this view, some have suggested that complex perceptual discrimination can be performed even with substantially reduced focal spatial attention, calling into question the complexity of object representation that can be achieved without focused spatial attention. In the present study, we took a cognitive neuroscience approach to this problem by recording cognition-related brain activity both to help resolve the questions about the role of focal spatial attention in object categorization processes and to investigate the underlying neural mechanisms, focusing particularly on the temporal cascade of these attentional and perceptual processes in visual cortex. More specifically, we recorded electrical brain activity in humans engaged in a specially designed cued visual search paradigm to probe the object-related visual processing before and during the transition from distributed to focal spatial attention. The onset times of the color popout cueing information, indicating where within an object array the subject was to shift attention, was parametrically varied relative to the presentation of the array (i.e., either occurring simultaneously or being delayed by 50 or 100 msec). The electrophysiological results demonstrate that some levels of object-specific representation can be formed in parallel for multiple items across the visual field under spatially distributed attention, before focal spatial attention is allocated to any of them. The object discrimination process appears to be subsequently amplified as soon as focal spatial attention is directed to a specific location and object. This set of novel neurophysiological findings thus provides important new insights on fundamental issues that have been long-debated in cognitive neuroscience concerning both object-related processing and the role of attention.

Cognitive Neuroscience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Timothy Walsh ◽  
Evelyn Attia ◽  
Deborah R. Glasofer
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Brain

Cognitive neuroscience is the name of a field of study with the aim of understanding the biological processes that underlie thinking and behavior, with a specific focus on the connections in the brain involved in mental processes. The tools of cognitive neuroscience include...

Canonical gender

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
GREVILLE G. CORBETT ◽  
SEBASTIAN FEDDEN
Keyword(s):  
Classification Systems ◽  
Single Type ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Single Gender ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
The World ◽  
Canonical Ideal ◽  
Typological Approach ◽  
Nominal Classification ◽  
Gender System

Nominal classification remains a fascinating topic but in order to make further progress we need greater clarity of definition and analysis. Taking a Canonical Typology approach, we use canonical gender as an ideal against which we can measure the actual gender systems we find in the languages of the world. Building on previous work on canonical morphosyntactic features, particularly on how they intersect with canonical parts of speech, we establish the distinctiveness of gender, reflected in the Canonical Gender Principle: In a canonical gender system, each noun has a single gender value. We develop three criteria associated with this principle, which together ensure that canonically a noun has exactly one gender value; we give examples of non-canonicity for each criterion, thus gradually building the typology. This is the essential groundwork for a comprehensive typology of nominal classification: the Canonical Typological approach allows us to tease apart clusterings of properties and to characterize individual properties with respect to a canonical ideal, rather than requiring us to treat the entire system as belonging to a single type. This approach is designed to facilitate comparisons of different noun classification systems across languages.

scholarly journals Single versus concurrent systems: Nominal classification in Mian

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Greville G. Corbett ◽  
Sebastian Fedden ◽  
Raphael Finkel
Keyword(s):  
Concurrent Systems ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
Single System ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Canonical Approach ◽  
Precise Measure ◽  
Semantic Compositionality ◽  
Nominal Classification ◽  
Single Versus

AbstractThe Papuan language Mian allows us to refine the typology of nominal classification. Mian has two candidate classification systems, differing completely in their formal realization but overlapping considerably in their semantics. To determine whether to analyse Mian as a single system or concurrent systems we adopt a canonical approach. Our criteria – orthogonality of the systems (we give a precise measure), semantic compositionality, morphosyntactic alignment, distribution across parts of speech, exponence, and interaction with other features – point mainly to an analysis as concurrent systems. We thus improve our analysis of Mian and make progress with the typology of nominal classification.

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