UNIT 2

INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

(no importante para el examen)

1 HISTORICAL CONTEXT (BARCELONA & VALENZUELA)

Cognitive linguistics first started as a reaction against generative approaches to

language. Chomskyan generative tradition had built a view of language that mad very
strong commitments about the primacy of syntax, disregarding the role of semantics and
pragmatics in linguistic theorizing.

Other aspects of the generative agenda were also extremely controversial, namely, the
assumption of innate structures for grammar and language, especially in the form of a
“universal grammar”, and the assumption that linguistic knowledge is isolated from the
rest of cognitive faculties, which resulted in the claim of the autonomy of syntax and the
modularity of language, that is, the existence of a specialized brain module dedicated to
processing language in an encapsulated manner.

Cognitive linguistics considers discoveries made in: Anthropological linguistics (Berlin

and Kay). Cognitive psychology (Rosh). Cultural anthropology (Berlin, Holland and
Quinn). Evolutionary biology (Deacon). Neurology and neurophysiology (Edelman and
Damasio).

➡ Which evidences that:

 There is an interconnectedness of brain areas (no separate language module, e.g.

Broca’s and Wernicke’s area).
 Language is a part of our cognitive system (perception, motion, emotion,
language, memory, attention) and a product of general cognitive abilities
(perception, categorization, abstraction and blending).

The view of language as a product of general cognitive abilities is in fact a result of the
observance of a yet more basic principle in cognitive linguistic, namely, the cognitive
commitment (Lakoff). The need to provide an account of language that is consistent

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with what other disciplines of cognitive science have revealed about cognition and the
brain.

It comprises several theories: Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson).

Frame Semantics (Fillmore). Force-Dynamics (Talmy). Cognitive Grammar
(Langacker). Construction Grammar (Lakoff, Fillmore, Kay, and Goldberg). These
theories have shared assumptions:

 Linguistic processes are grounded in more general cognitive systems.

 Linguistic knowledge is conceptual in nature.
 Grammatical forms are themselves meaningful.
 Meaning is grounded in experience.
 Alternative lexical and grammatical constructions constitute experience

A keyword in cognitive linguistics is embodiment (Johnson and Lakoff). Mental and

linguistic categories cannot be abstract, disembodied, or human-independent. We
construct and understand our categories based on experience, under the constrains
imposed by our bodies. Human conceptual categories, the meanings of words and
sentences, of linguistic structures at any level, are not just a combination of a set of
universal abstract features, of uninterpreted symbols. A very large number of these
meanings and structures are more or less directly motivated by experience, in many
cases, by bodily experience.

Concepts are non-linguistic entities, but mentals structures. They are knowledge
structures that reside in our mind built on the basis of our experience (bodily, physical,
mental, social, cultural, familiar, personal, etc.). This clashes with the absolute
arbitrariness of the linguistic sings. Cognitive linguistics claim that conventional
meaning of morpheme constructions (syntactic structures) is partly motivated and not
wholly arbitrary.

Alternative conceptualizations are paired at the conceptual level and their selection in
discourse imposes upon the scene a specific structural configuration and distribution of
attention. They encode in text alternative construals which are recognized by readers
and constitute their experience of the events described.

The theory started as a rejection against generative approaches, Chomsky had rejected
semantics and pragmatics but Langaker stated that meaning is what language was all

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about. In fact, there were controversies with the innate structures of grammar and
language. They wanted to distance themselves from the mainstream linguistics.

🗝 Key concepts of the theory:

 Non-modularism: our general cognitive abilities jointly account for the main
design features of language and our ability to learn and use them.
 Non-objectivist view of linguistic meaning: meanings do not exist independently
from the people that create and use them.

COGNITIVE OPPERATIONS IN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

1 INTRODUCTION

A number of cognitive operations determine the way language is used. This chapter
will present three types of cognitive operations:

 Construals are operations that help select the appropriate structural

possibility among various alternatives. It is a process by which a speaker
puts into words their description/expression of a scene. Construals are
strikingly similar to principles of perceptual organisation.

 Mental spaces are packages of information that are built and evoked in the
current discourse. Mental spaces draw upon our wider encyclopaedic
knowledge about things in the world.

 Inferences are cognitive operations in which conclusions are drawn from

a set of premises. The hearer’s inferential process in arriving at the meaning
of an utterance is known as conversational implicature.

2 CONSTRUALS

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In choosing one conceptual or linguistic alternative rather than another, the speaker
“construes” her thoughts in a specific way. This is what is meant by the notion of
construal. Construals are cognitive operations which are often strikingly similar to
principles of visual perception.

▪ I may describe the contents of a bottle of whisky as being half full or half empty.

➔ In describing it as half full, I am looking at the drink that is (still) left in the
bottle,

➔ and in describing it as half empty, I am thinking of the drink that is gone.

The descriptions clearly differ with respect to the perspective adopted. Adopting
a particular perspective is one of many possible construal operations.

We will look at nine dimensions of construal that are relevant in grammar:

Related to viewing Viewing frame, generality vs. specificity, viewpoint,

➔
operations objectivity vs. subjectivity, mental scanning, fictive motion

Related to
➔ Windowing of attention, figure and ground, profiling
prominence

2.1. VIEWING FRAME

In viewing a scene, I may take a more distant or a closer position giving me a

wider or more restricted viewing frame.

Ex. Imagine the scene of a train travelling from Norwich to Peterborough.

These two viewing situations are evoked by the grammatical structures used in
the following sentences :

A) This train goes from Norwich to Peterborough.

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 o The use of the non-progressive makes us see in our mind the whole route and
schedule of the train; it is a construal which provides a maximal viewing
frame of a scene .

B) This train is going from Norwich to Peterborough.

o The use of the progressive aspect by contrast, only lets us see part of the
scene: it is a construal which provides a restricted viewing frame .

2.2. GENERALITY VS SPECIFICITY

The notions of generality and specificity relate to the degree of precision with
which a scene is viewed or conceived. A distant view normally gives us a
general impression of a scene while a close view or the use of a microscope or
binoculars enables us to discern in depth details .

By using higher-level categories, the speaker construes a situation in a more

general way; by using lower-level categories, the speaker construes the
situation in a more specific way. We will describe these construals as generality
and specificity (also called granularity).

Ex. Cars

As with all construals, each of the alternative ways of expression has its own
contextual meaning. Thus, the superordinate term vehicle in (a) might be used
by the Department for Transport or found in traffic reports. Basic -level terms
such as car are used to describe situations in the most usual and common way as
in (b). Subordinate terms like Mitsubishi or Ferrari 612 might be used by
automobile experts like mechanics or car fanatics. The same thing may thus be
“seen” in different detail by different people and in different situations.

2.3. VIEWPOINT

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 In visual perception I necessarily look at a scene from my viewpoint or vantage
point, i.e. from the point where I, the observer, am positioned. In cognition we
may also adopt another person’s point of view .

Example. Newly published book

We typically look at the world and describe it from our viewpoint (i.e.: as we
perceive it). Some expressions have a built -in viewpoint on a situation. The
motion verbs come and go as well as bring and take inherently adopt the
speaker’s viewpoint and designate motion towards or away from the speaker,
respectively. These verbs, whose usage is dependent on the speech situation, are
known as deictic verbs .

➔ If the motion is directed towards the speaker as the goal (as in a), the
speaker’s viewpoint is typically described by using the verb come.

‘my grandparents are coming to my graduation’.

👨🏼‍🦳👩🏼‍🦳 - - - - → 👩🏽 (me)

The speaker / The goal

➔ If the speaker is not the goal of motion (as in b), where motion is directed
away from the speaker’s location, the verb go is used.

‘I’m going to my sister’s graduation’

👩🏽 (me) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - → 👧🏼

↘ ↘

The speaker The goal

If the hearer is mentioned, we have two options.

▪ c. I’m going to your graduation.

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 ▪ d. I’m coming to your graduation.

➔ In using go, (as in sentence c), the speaker keeps her own viewpoint relative
to the hearer. This construal sounds neutral, or under certain circumstances
almost threatening, for example when I am known for misbehaving at official
celebrations.

‘I’m going to my your graduation’

👩🏽 (me) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - → 👩🏼‍🦰 (hearer)

My p.o.v is that I am moving towards you, sine you are my goal

➔ The speaker may, however, also mentally switch her viewpoint (as in
sentence d). The speaker takes the hearer’s viewpoint, i.e.: the hearer becomes
the deictic centre.

Yet another type of viewpoint is typically found in authority relations such as

between mother and child, doctor and patient, or policeman and driver. Parents,
doctors or nurses often express their patronising sympathy towards their child
or patient, and policemen may feign empathy with a traffic offender by
identifying with her, i.e. by taking jointly their own and the hearer’s viewpoint.

Ex. Mother to child: “And now we’re going to sleep.”

2.4. OBJECTIVITY VS SUBJECTIVITY

We tend to believe that we see the world objectively as it is; at the same time,
however, we are part of the world we perceive and inevitably bring in our own
relation to the world. A speaker may also construe a scene more objectively
or more subjectively. It also has to do with factivity: action verbs, opinion and
modals.

- Objectivity refers to the construal of a scene as detached from the speaker.

- Subjectivity refers to the construal of a scene in which the speaker is involved.

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 Example

a. “The President is determined to fight a war on terrorism.”

b. “I will hunt down the terrorists.”

c. “There may still be weapons of mass destruction.”

2.5. MENTAL SCANNING

In the same way that we may visually scan a mountain range, we may mentally
scan a situation .

Example

a. The couple next door have adopted a baby.

b. Another couple down the road want to adopt a baby, too.

c. Adopting a baby can be a joyful experience.

d. Older couples cannot apply for the adoption of a baby.

2.6. FICTIVE MOTION

Fictive motion, also known as abstract, mental, virtual or subjective motion,

is a special kind of mental scanning. It is the construal of a static scene in terms
of motion. In physical motion, the moving object continually changes its
location in time; in fictive motion, our eyes mentally scan an imaginary path.
Like physical motion, fictive motion involves directionality.

Example

a. The gate leads into the garden.

b. The cliff drops down 600 feet.

c. Christmas is coming

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 2.7. WINDOWING OF ATTENTION

We cannot possibly attend to all the stimuli around us; our brain subconsciously
selects those stimuli for our attention that are salient or important to us.
Focusing one’s attention is a cognitive operation which “windows” our
attention on selected elements of a scene and downplays other elements.

This also applies to our linguistic construal of a scene. The very fact that
something is explicitly mentioned in discourse means that the speaker directs at
least some attention to it . To a certain extent , language preselects the
possibilities for our windowing of attention .

Example

▪ This train goes from Norwich to Peterborough

▪ This train goes to Peterborough

▪ This train comes from Norwich.

A single scene may often be described in different ways by windowing our

attention on particular elements of it.

Example. Cowboy, horse, and sheriff

➔ The ‘commercial event’ frame comprises the following elements: a buyer, a

seller, goods, money, and the exchange of the goods and money . When a
speaker wants to describe a commercial transaction, she can bring any of these
elements into focus by using different verbs: buy, sell, pay, spend, charge, and
cost. Each of these verbs evokes the ‘commercial event’ frame, but does so in
different ways. By choosing a given verb, attention is focused on some of the
elements of the frame, while others are downplayed, i.e. they are not mentioned
at all or their inclusion is optional.

➔ The main attention in each case is directed towards the entity expressed by
the subject, and only secondarily towards the object entity. Here we can observe
how the semantics of a verb interacts with the grammatical structure of a
sentence.

▪ h. The cowboy bought the horse for a good price.

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 ▪ i. The sheriff sold the horse for a good price.

➔ These sentences show that the event is viewed from the perspective of the
person who is expressed as the subject of the sentence.

➔ What a good price means depends on the subject participant. For the buyer in
h) it means paying very little money, whereas for the seller in i) it means getting
a lot of money.

➔ Thus, if we want to draw attention to the buyer and secondarily to the goods,
we use buy as in a) and h ), if we want to draw attention to the seller and
secondarily to the goods, we use sell as in b) and i)

2.8. FIGURE AND GROUND

In focusing our attention on something, we automatically give prominence to

some elements of a scene and downplay others. We automatically arrange the
elements of a visual scene into a salient figure and a non -salient background,
or simply ground. The principle of figure/ground alignment also applies to
language.

▪ Example: just as we see in this visual scene the bird becoming

the figure and the tree receding into the background, there is also a
preferred way of construing and describing this situation. Thus, it
is more natural to say The bird is on the treetop than The treetop
is under the bird.

If the two entities are of about equal size and prominence, we may switch
between figure and ground.

▪ Example in a visual scene

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 ➔ It may be seen as a white vase at one moment and as two
black faces in profile the next moment, but we never see both a
vase and the two faces at the same time.

▪ Example of this in language:

We can speak of either 1) the cinema near the supermarket or 2) the

supermarket near the cinema.

As we can see, English expresses the ground in spatial situations by means of

prepositional phrases.

In the structure of a simple transitive sentence, the entity described by the

subject is the figure, and the entity described by the direct object is the ground.

Example 1. The cowboy bought a horse. / The sheriff sold the horse.

Example 2. The horse cost $500

Example 3. $500 buys a good horse.

Likewise , the events described in complex sentences also divide into figure
and ground . In general, the function of a subordinate clause is to provide the
ground for the figure event, which is described by the main clause .

Example.

a. We got married after we had children. [event 2 – event 1 ]

b. We had children before we got married. [event 1 – event 2 ]

Both sentences describe the same sequence of events, which is indicated by the
subscripted numbers with each event: we first had children and then got married.

➔ These sentences thus display figure/ground reversal and, concomitantly,

mean different things. Our knowledge of the ‘marriage and having children’
frame allows us to read more than purely temporal meaning into Sentence a) we
could understand it in the sense that ‘we got married because we had children’.
Sentence b), by contrast, can only be interpreted in a temporal sense; a causal
interpretation is ruled out because the figure event, our having children, occurred

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 later than the ground event, our getting married, and thus cannot possibly have
been caused by the latter.

2.9. PROFILING

A special kind of figure/ground relation is the relation between an expression

and its conceptual base. Profiling means designating a conceptualisation by
means of a linguistic expression, and the base is the immediate larger
conceptual content characterising it.

Example

▪ Sunday

▪ Elbow

We can test whether a conceptual unit is an immediate base or not by applying

the test for kind of- or part of-relations.

▪ We may say a human body has two arms, an arm has an elbow and a hand, a
hand has five fingers, fingers have nails, but not *a body has an elbow or *an
arm has five fingers .

📒✏ EXERCISES

Exercise 1. Identify the dimensions of construal in the following sentences:

❕❕ It will be in the exam ❕❕

a. The Eiffel Tower is in front of you. → [Utterance] Figure and ground reversal.
The predicate is in front that connects the human being and the monument. In
this case, even if the person should be the most important, the Eiffel Tower is
profiled. That is why is reversal.

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 b. Europe is no longer cut off thanks to the Channel Tunnel. → Viewpoint. It is a
biased viewpoint, since in reality is the UK which gets cut off, not Europe.
c. The Rocky Mountains flew by. → Fictive motion. Mountains don’t move, the
speaker does.
d. Mother to son: "Don’t lie to your mother!" → Viewpoint. Authority relation.
Also objectivity because she is detaching herself from the situation. She situates
herself as the observer to convey authority.
e. The sun disappeared behind the clouds. → Fictive motion. We are also
extending the meaning of ‘disappeared’ because it is not a motion verb, but by
adding ‘behind’ it becomes a motion verb.
f. I'm coming with you. → Viewpoint. Come is a motion verb that inherently
adopts the speakers viewpoint towards the speaker. There is a shift in the deictic
centre. Deixis, since we are egocentric. Hierarchy of salience. We are profiling
the other person.
g. Doctor to patient: "Now we're taking these pink tablets for the night." →
Viewpoint. Patronising sympathy, we know this because he uses ‘he’.
h. The road runs past the factory, continues through the tunnel and goes on to
London. → Fictive motion. The road doesn’t move but we mentally scan an
imaginary path.
i. A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. → Viewpoint.
j. Sign in public buses in New York City: “If you see something, do something."
→ Generality. You can only understand ‘something’ in the context of 9/11.

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