scholarly journals The Many Ways to Find the “Right” and the “Left”: On dynamic projection models in the encoding of spatial relations

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Nikitina
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Representation ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Dynamic Relation ◽  
Dynamic Expression ◽  
Spatial Expressions ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

<p>Since early work by Talmy (1975, 1985), linguistic representation of space has been at the center of research in lexical typology, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics (see, inter alia, the various approaches represented in Slobin (2000), Levinson (2003), Beavers et al. (2010)). Some of the central aspects of spatial representation, however, have remained largely understudied. Particularly poorly understood is the distinction between dynamic and static spatial expressions and the ways that distinction is drawn by speakers of different languages. On the one hand, speakers often choose not to encode a dynamic relation explicitly, even though they have at their disposal a specialized means for unambiguous encoding of a goal or a source of motion (Nikitina 2008, Tutton 2009 for English). On the other hand, speakers sometimes choose to encode a static relation by means of a specialized dynamic expression, even in the absence of any perceivable motion. This paper focuses on the latter aspect of the problem: the use of dynamic expressions for the encoding of static locations. Such use is especially common with expressions encoding a spatial relation for which no specialized adposition exists, including expressions for “right” and “left”.</p>

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 242-252
Author(s):  
Adam Lee
Keyword(s):  
Daily Basis ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Suspension Of Judgement ◽  
Enduring Power

At the close of Pater’s career, then, one can summarize the broad strokes of his Platonism. He calls it a tendency and a temper; but it is really a critical acuity for negotiating or reconciling the paradox of opposites one sees on a daily basis, such as the many and the one, or the finite in the infinite, the recognition of form in matter, which in the right balance is beauty. Calling it a tendency emphasizes its enduring power in a person’s personality. It is taking seriously the importance of love in Platonism that opens Pater’s teaching up to charges of a peculiar or idiosyncratic form of the philosophy. Platonically, his aestheticism is the desire to possess beauty, and begins with the very things around us, possessing a high degree of form, becoming rarer and rarer, more select, as one learns to identify better instances of it and his taste advances. Because he is a lover and philosopher at once, he progresses up the Platonic ladder with enthusiasm for visible ideas and knowledge of Dialectic, which relies on scepticism, or a suspension of judgement, which is both a suspension of belief and disbelief. Because he becomes ...

scholarly journals St. Lucian Kwéyòl on St. Croix: How gender and education affect language choice and attitudes in a multilingual context

2011 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Edward S. Mitchell ◽  
Diana Ursulin Mopsus
Keyword(s):  
General Trend ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Gender And Education ◽  
Crucian Creole ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

Based on interviews conducted within a community of St. Lucian Creole (Kwéyòl) speakers on the island of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, the authors investigated the use of and attitudes towards Kwéyòl, English, Spanish, and Crucian Creole, the four most widely-spoken languages on St. Croix. The article examines the roles of two social variables, namely gender and education, in questions of language choice and attitudes in this bilingual creolophone community. Some of the more remarkable revelations of this study were found in the many apparently conflicting responses. On the one hand, we observed a general trend towards the loss of Kwéyòl, yet on the other, pride in the language is exceedingly high. We observed a strong tendency pointing towards a taboo against speaking Kwéyòl in public on St. Croix, while at the same time, a significant number proclaimed the right to speak Kwéyòl in public.

Hemispheric Processing of Categorical and Coordinate Spatial Relations in the Absence of Low Spatial Frequencies

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matia Okubo ◽  
Chikashi Michimata
Keyword(s):  
Visual Field ◽  
Spatial Frequency ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Right Visual Field ◽  
Spatial Frequencies ◽  
Categorical Task ◽  
The Right ◽  
Coordinate Spatial Relations

Right-handed participants performed the categorical and coordinate spatial relation judgments on stimuli presented to either the left visual field—right hemisphere (LVF-RH) or the right visual field—left hemisphere (RVF-LH). The stimulus patterns were formulated either by bright dots or by contrast-balanced dots. When the stimuli were bright, an RVF-LH advantage was observed for the categorical task, whereas an LVF-RH advantage was observed for the coordinate task. When the stimuli were contrast balanced, the RVF-LH advantage was observed for the categorical task, but the LVF-RH advantage was eliminated for the coordinate task. Because the contrast-balanced dots are largely devoid of low spatial frequency content, these results suggest that processing of low spatial frequency is responsible for the right hemisphere advantage for the coordinate spatial processing.

Ceteris Paribus—The Danger of the Increment

Philosophy ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 16 (62) ◽  
pp. 151-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lord Stamp
Keyword(s):  
Ceteris Paribus ◽  
Rational Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Freedom Of Thought ◽  
Common Man ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Masses

The final persistence of democracy depends upon whether its right decisions outweigh the wrong ones in number and value, though conceivably one really bad decision might ruin the structure built on all the right ones. It is passing from the stage where a few reasoning leaders govern the masses through their emotions, to the next perilous stage in which every man's thoughts matter. Right decisions depend upon access to relevant facts and doing the right thinking about them. It is of the essence of Nazi philosophy that general liberty of thought is self-destructive, the common man not being rational; it is of the essence of Nazi practice to flatter the many by the pretence that their thinking does matter, but to control and modify the whole supply of factual material upon which they must reason. One declared to me once that he favoured freedom of thought and was not afraid of it, for if he was allowed to supply the “facts” any ordinary rational mind could come to only one conclusion, viz. the one he intended. And in the process the ordinary man might remain proud of his reasoning power, so long as he could be sheltered from seeing the falsity of his conclusions. Control of facts must be perpetual, and cats must never be allowed to get out of bags. But in a democracy, where facts are all born free (and much too equal), it is the thinking about them that really matters.

Frames of reference and the encoding of spatial location in Mandarin Chinese

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-376
Author(s):  
Keding Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Reference Object ◽  
Conceptual System ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Linguistic Representation

Abstract This article attempts to account for how the static spatial relations of location between objects are encoded in Mandarin Chinese with Levinson’s notions of frames of reference and Talmy’s concept of Figure-Ground relations as theoretical guidance. Space is relational in nature, and spatial relations are embodied concepts that are at the heart of our conceptual system. That’s why they cannot be seen in the way physical objects are observed. Accordingly, I am inclined to propose that spatial relations are not natural entities in the physical world, but abstract ones that are construed and conceptualized subjectively by human beings. In accordance with the relational nature of space, Mandarin Chinese speakers usually encode the abstract spatial relation X Spatially Relates To Y into a linguistic representation as X V Y (P) where P is optional, when a pure static spatial relation of location between objects is construed, or into a linguistic representation as X VP zài Y P where VP stands for verbs of posture, when the object being located is conceived as being spatially related in a certain manner with respect to the reference object. Usually, such linguistic representations as X V Y (P) and X VP zài Y P are usually realized in Mandarin Chinese as two types of locative constructions: spatial relation constructions of containment/enclosure and spatial relation constructions of proximity/adjacency. What’s more, though locative constructions are related in some way to existential constructions in Mandarin Chinese, they are actually distinct from each other in three ways from a cognitive linguistics perspective: (i) they encode different spatial relations, (ii) they reveal different Figure-Ground relations, and (iii) there is a difference in definiteness of the two nominals involved.

scholarly journals Towards Recognition of Spatial Relations between Entities for Polish

2016 ◽  
pp. 119-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Mirosław Marcińczuk ◽  
Marcin Oleksy ◽  
Jan Wieczorek
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Text Processing ◽  
Heuristic Method ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Expression Recognition ◽  
Spatial Expression ◽  
Spatial Expressions ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
Definition Of

Towards Recognition of Spatial Relations between Entities for PolishIn this paper, the problem of spatial relation recognition in Polish is examined. We present the different ways of distributing spatial information throughout a sentence by reviewing the lexical and grammatical signals of various relations between objects. We focus on the spatial usage of prepositions and their meaning, determined by the ‘conceptual’ schemes they constitute. We also discuss the feasibility of a comprehensive recognition of spatial relations between objects expressed in different ways by reviewing the existing tools and resources for text processing in Polish. As a result, we propose a heuristic method for the recognition of spatial relations expressed in various phrase structures called spatial expressions. We propose a definition of spatial expressions by taking into account the limitations of the available tools for the Polish language. A set of rules is used to generate candidates of spatial expressions which are later tested against a set of semantic constraints.The results of our work on recognition of spatial expressions in Polish texts were partially presented in (Marcińczuk, Oleksy, & Wieczorek, 2016). In that paper we focused on a detailed analysis of errors obtained using a set of basic morphosyntactic patterns for generating spatial expression candidates - we identified and described the most common sources of errors, i.e. incorrectly recognized or unrecognized expressions. In this paper we focused mainly on the preliminary stages of spatial expression recognition. We presented an extensive review on how the spatial information can be encoded in the text, types of spatial triggers in Polish and a detailed evaluation of morphosyntactic patterns which can be used to generate spatial expression candidates. Rozpoznawanie relacji przestrzennych między obiektami fizycznymi w języku polskimArtykuł dotyczy zagadnienia rozpoznawania relacji przestrzennych w języku polskim. Autorzy przedstawili różne sposoby przekazywania w tekstach informacji na temat relacji przestrzennych między obiektami fizycznymi, uwzględniając sygnały o charakterze leksykalnym i gramatycznym. Istotną częścią artykułu jest omówienie znaczenia przyimków użytych w celu wyrażenia relacji przestrzennych. Znaczenie to kształtowane jest przez schematy konceptualne współtworzone przez poszczególne przyimki. Omówiono również możliwości kompleksowego rozpoznawania relacji przestrzennych wyrażonych za pomocą różnych środków językowych. Służy temu przegląd istniejących zasobów i narzędzi przetwarzania języka polskiego.Jako rezultat autorzy proponują heurystyczną metodę rozpoznawania relacji przestrzennych realizowanych językowo za pomocą struktur składniowych określonych jako wyrażenia przestrzenne. W artykule zaprezentowano definicję wyrażeń przestrzennych uwzględniającą specyfikę narzędzi dostępnych do przetwarzania języka polskiego. Zestaw reguł składniowych umożliwia wytypowanie fraz – kandydatów kwalifikujących się jako wyrażenia przestrzenne, które następnie zostają porównane z adekwatnym zestawem ograniczeń semantycznych.

scholarly journals The Spatial Cognitive Meaning of Across

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Cui Huang
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Objective World ◽  
Dynamic Relation ◽  
Spatial Terms ◽  
Cognitive Meaning

Spatial relation is a basic existent relation in the objective world, and in English, prepositions are the important spatial terms to describe spatial relations people perceive. Using Langacker&rsquo;s trajector-landmark theory from cognitive grammar, this paper attempts to analyze the cognitive process of the six main spatial meaning of English preposition across based on the entries collected by the Collins Dictionary, with data from the the Leeds Collection of Internet Corpora. The findings can be concluded: (1) The use of across should include at least a tr and a lm, and the lm cannot be covert. (2) The spatial relations across contains could be divided into simple atemporal relation and complex atemporal relation. (3) The tr in some dynamic relation of across sometimes will represent some kind of schema, such as source-path-goal schema.

scholarly journals Applying cognitive linguistics to pedagogical grammar: the english prepositions of verticality

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vyvyan Evans ◽  
Andrea Tyler
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Spatial Relation ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Primary Meaning ◽  
Pedagogical Grammar

In this paper, we illustrate the merit of applying insights from Cognitive Linguistics to pedagogical grammar. We do so by examining English prepositions, long assumed to be one of the most difficult areas of acquisition for second language learners. The approach to the semantics of English prepositions we present is that developed in Evans and Tyler (2004a, b, In prep.) and Tyler and Evans (2001a, 2003). This account offers the following insights: 1) the concepts encoded by prepositions are image-schematic in nature and thus have an embodied basis. In other words, prepositions are not appropriately modelled as constituting linguistic propositions or semantic feature bundles (the received view in formal linguistics); 2) an English preposition encodes an abstract mental idealization of a spatial relation, derived from more specific spatial scenes. This forms the primary meaning component of a semantic network; 3) the idealized spatial relation also encodes a functional element, which derives from the way spatial relations are salient and relevant for human function and interaction with the physical environment; and 4) the additional senses in the semantic network have been extended in systematic, constrained ways. We discuss two key principles of extension: ways of viewing a spatial scene and experiential correlation. We demonstrate the usefulness of a Cognitive Linguistics approach by examining a few aspects of the lexicalization patterns exhibited by in and the four English prepositions of verticality, over, above, under and below. These prepositions provide good evidence that prepositional meanings are extended from the spatial to abstract domains in ways that are regular and constrained. We conclude that a Cognitive Linguistics approach to prepositions provides a more accurate, systematic account that, in turn, offers the basis for a more coherent, learnable presentation of this hitherto seemingly arbitrary aspect of English grammar.

The Difficulties of Applied Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-48
Author(s):  
Barry Hoffmaster ◽  
Cliff Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Expected Utility ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Logical Inference ◽  
Formal Rationality ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

A second kind of formal rationality, complementary to the maximizing expected utility in Chapter 1, is logical inference. In much of moral philosophy and in standard bioethics decision making is applied ethics. Moral theories are taken to be comprised of principles that are applied to the facts of cases to deduce conclusions about what ought to be done. The canonical depiction of bioethics, for instance, consists of the four principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice. The real examples in this chapter expose the many failings of that applied ethics. Most of the cases are about when to die and how to die, but the term ‘euthanasia’ is indeterminate. The crucial notion of ‘autonomy’ also is indeterminate. Both need to be clarified and specified. But how is this to be done? Similarly, when principles and rules conflict, as they often do, how is the one that prevails to be determined? There are no higher principles or rules that can be applied to get the right answer in any of these cases. More broadly, what makes a problem a moral problem, and what does being a moral problem mean? These issues require non-formal rational deliberation, not the formal rationality of deduction.

The Paris Agreement: A New Beginning

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Streck ◽  
Paul Keenlyside ◽  
Moritz von Unger
Keyword(s):  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Individual Country ◽  
Market Mechanisms ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Cooperative Action ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Industrialized Nations ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

The adoption of the Paris Agreement is a milestone in international climate politics and brings years of near deadlock negotiations to a conclusion. The Agreement creates a global process of engagement, follow-up, regular stock-take exercises and cooperative action. On the one hand, it represents a step forward, overcoming the many divisions that had marked the Kyoto area: between developed and developing countries, between industrialized nations inside the Protocol and those outside, and between those supportive of market mechanisms and those that vehemently opposed them. On the other hand, individual country contributions fall short of the overall climate goal, and the risk is that the Paris Agreement remains a shell without sufficient action and support. It thus remains to be seen whether the Paris Agreement is the right framework through which to address the collective action problem of climate change.

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