scholarly journals A Few Remarks on Prototype Theory in Cognitive Linguistics

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Alicja Cuper ◽  
◽  
Małgorzata Cuper-Ferrigno ◽  

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate both the historical background of the prototype theory and its definitional problems. It presents two fundamental tenets of cognitive linguistics and the origin of prototype theory. Eleonor Rosch introduced her theory (1975) in order to explain how semantic categories are perceived by our mind.

This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood and examines the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the phenomena involved. Following an opening section that provides an introduction and historical background to the topic, the volume is divided into five parts. Parts 1 and 2 present the basic linguistic facts about the systems of modality and mood in the languages of the world, covering the semantics and the expression of different subtypes of modality and mood respectively. The authors also examine the interaction of modality and mood, mutually and with other semantic categories such as aspect, time, negation, and evidentiality. In Part 3, authors discuss the features of the modality and mood systems in five typologically different language groups, while chapters in Part 4 deal with wider perspectives on modality and mood: diachrony, areality, first language acquisition, and sign language. Finally, Part 5 looks at how modality and mood are handled in different theoretical approaches: formal syntax, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, and formal semantics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Molina

Historical dictionaries have not yet incorporated prototype theoretical principles, from which singular enhancements might be obtained in historical lexicography. Revisiting diachronic definitions from a prototypical standpoint underlines how salience-based definitions comply more accurately with the cognitive constraints of the human mind. Upon this realization, the paper presents a template for reorganizing historical definitions according to the principles of prototype theory. The resulting definitions depict the semasiological profile of terms in a more transparent way while stressing the mutual interface between linguistic and extralinguistic data and between synchrony and diachrony. At the same time, the paper shows how the theoretical tenets of cognitive linguistics can be put to use in the field of applied linguistics, viz. lexicography.


2021 ◽  
pp. 21-57
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Shaver

This chapter and the next provide an introduction to the field of cognitive linguistics. This chapter focuses on core concepts including conceptual metaphor, metonymy, polysemy, and prototype theory (conceptual blending is explored in Chapter 3). Based on this overview, the author argues that language “means” not through referential correspondence to objective, observer-independent reality but by prompting for embodied simulation on the part of hearers and readers. Language, then, is true insofar as these simulations are apt to reality as experienced by embodied human beings. The chapter proposes that this epistemological perspective of “embodied realism” is congruent with the critical realism endorsed by many recent theologians and with a sacramental worldview in which the material world can be the arena for God’s self-communication.


Author(s):  
S. Terekhova

The article deals with the investigation of fundamentals and present state of multyparadigmal analyses of language units representing the system of coordinates of communication in the Ukrainian, Russian and English languagess. Coordinates of communication are presented in the work as a deictic start-point of communication “I – here – now”, defined by K. Buhler in his “Language Theory” as well as the related language units of the same semantics and functions in the languages. The specifics of these words and word combinations is in their possibility to express different types of reference changing them in frames of a certain context of communication act. Multy-paradigmality is described in the present article as a basis of complex methodology of modern researches on linguistics, in particular, contrastive linguistics and linguistics of translation. Many works of modern linguists have been done based on semantic or / and structural aspects of linguistic and pragmatic analyses of the system of communication coordinates at all or its particular representations (see works by Yu. Apresyan, N. Arytyunova, K. Buhler, K. Brugman, J. Lions, N. Kirvalidze, Ch. Fillmore, etc.). But there has not been done any complex multy-paradigmal researches of communication coordinate system before. Works of such a kind (see the ones by M. Avdonina, N. Zhabo, S. Terekhova, etc.) mainly characterize allomorphic and isomorphic features of the analyzed language units in Russian, English, French, and Ukrainian. This article represents roots, origin and patterns of multy-paradigmality of the characterized language units which are important for the future development of both contrastive linguistics and translation theory. It describes the procedure of multyparadigmal analyses of language units that is appropriate for the above mentioned fields of science. Lexical centric approach and textual centric one, being involved in the investigation, contain complex methodology of functional and semantic categories study that is appropriate for such language categories as deixis, reference, anaphor, etc. It contains complex, multy-paradigmal analyses of units of different language levels denoting “place or direction in space”, “time” and “person” indication. Multy-paradigmal approach provided in the research includes the following stages: 1) conceptual / logical and semantic analyses; 2) language units analyses (including structural, lexical and grammatical, functional and semantic ways of analyses); 3) psycholinguistic analyses (in particular, free associative experiment and its verifying). The results of the above mentioned procedure are supplied additionally with some extra-lingual facts complementing it. They essentially help to simplify the correct comprehension, understanding and learning of communication coordinates representations in speech for foreigners. The tendency to complex analyses of language units of different types has become regular for modern researches on contrastive linguistics as well as linguistics of translation for the last decades, although multyparadigmal investigations are yet less regular than other ones nowadays. The methodology and procedure of multy-paradigmal analyses can be varied partially in accordance with the material and purpose of the research however the principles of multy-paradigmality of both the above mentioned fields of science are out of changes, they are universal for Indo-European languages. The further investigations of multy-paradigmality in languages and translation appear in functional semantics, cognitive linguistics, language and culture studies, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, especially if they are developed based on the contrastive analyses.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Marianna Pozza ◽  

"View, Knowledge, Word: The Container Image-Schema Applied to a Case of Proto-Indo-European Polysemy. The present discussion aims at reconsidering the theoretical process of knowledge in some ancient Indo-European languages in the light of the prerequisites offered by cognitive linguistics and prototype theory. Thanks to the dynamic pattern of the Container Image-Schema – which is a primitive mental structure – some historical outcomes of a polysemic Indo-European root will be discussed in order to place them within the continuum of the semantic space in which the container is located. Keywords: Conceptual metaphor; polysemy; Image-Schema; Indo-European; semantics. "


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Bölcskei

Hungarian place names reflecting former ecclesiastical possession. Summary of a habilitation dissertation The dissertation discusses the linguistic and onomastic features of a culturally motivated name type, i.e. place names reflecting (former) ecclesiastical possession. With the advent and spread of Christianity in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, buildings and estates belonging to the Church were erected and named accordingly. Many such place names have been preserved to the present day and new ones could also emerge based on analogy. The first chapter of the thesis describes how the changes in the geographical landscape influenced the contemporary linguistic landscape and, eventually, the place naming patterns of the language. Chapter Two focuses on the historical background: how the church system and the institutions of the monastic orders were established in Medieval Hungary and sustained in later centuries. Chapter Three enumerates the sources from which the relevant place names were gathered and explains the setup of the database that served as a basis of the analysis. Chapter Four provides a comprehensive description of the collected name forms with respect to lexical, morphological, syntactic, motivational and denotative features, according to the classical periods in the history of the Hungarian language. Chapter Five discovers the trends in the development of the name forms concerning time, space and use. The dissertation adopts the viewpoint and ideas popularized in place name studies by functional cognitive linguistics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (31) ◽  
pp. 144-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatyana Skrebtsova

The terms “centre” and “periphery” commonly used nowadays in cognitive studies of language can be traced to earlier linguistic theories. One is field theory advanced by German linguists in the inter-war period. Here, the notions of centre and periphery, along with an array of other spatial images served to visualize the structure of lexical fields. Another tradition in the use of the terms stems from the works of the Prague linguistic circle. Czech scholars claimed that linguistic units vary in their degree of integration into the system. Well -integrated items are associated with the notion of centre while those lacking integration are characterized as peripheral. Cognitive linguistics has offered yet another perspective on the notions concerned. Drawing on Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory, centre is associated with the category’s best example and periphery with its non-typical members. Thus, terms being the same, their implications differ significantly. It turns out that both field theory and Prague school used them in the context of language-as-an-autonomous-structure view, in accordance with the dominant structuralist paradigm. Cognitive linguistics picked up the psychological approach to the notions of centre and periphery, linking them to subjects’ ratings of category members, and hence to our mental models of the world. These interpretations more often are compatible than non-compatible.


Author(s):  
E. D. Butsyk

The article regards the phenomenon of political communication from the perspective of the particularities of constructing gender identity by politicians. As far as the influence of the gender factor on politicians' speech is concerned, the most relevant approach among many others is the discourse approach formed within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, which considers political discourse as the object of study. The paper deals with the notion of political discourse and examines a hypothesis that gender factor might have a number of manifestations in political communication. It is noted that studying the specificity of constructing gender identity by politicians in discursive practices is becoming a highly topical issue as the importance of female participation in public and political life is growing. Political decision-making has long been considered the prerogativeofmen, but now the necessity of studying the female factor in this sphere is obvious. The author dwells upon the historical background of linguistic gender studies and summarizes the main stages of their development focusing mainly on the theory of the social construction of gender. The founders of this theory advance the thesis that an individual's gender identity is shaped in the process of constructing gender relations in communicative interaction. Further in the article we analyse a few devices of creating the images of masculinity and femininity by famous English and American politicians. As structural components of gender identity, masculinity and femininity turn out to be modifiable parameters depending on the pragmatic attitudes of communicators. Traditional androcentrism of political discourse may account for modifying the female speech style towards masculinity to achieve certain communicative aims.


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