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Introduction: A Rough Guide To Cognitive Linguistics

This document provides an overview of cognitive linguistics concepts for analyzing how language conveys meaning. It discusses Leonard Talmy's analysis of how different dimensions of language, like syntax versus lexicon, convey different types of conceptual information. It then explains two models for describing how polysemous or flexible expressions relate multiple meanings: the radial network model and prototype theory. The radial network model describes category structures with a central meaning that radiates out to less central meanings. Prototype theory also involves categorization with central exemplars that define categories.

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Arul Dayanand
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323 views1 page

Introduction: A Rough Guide To Cognitive Linguistics

This document provides an overview of cognitive linguistics concepts for analyzing how language conveys meaning. It discusses Leonard Talmy's analysis of how different dimensions of language, like syntax versus lexicon, convey different types of conceptual information. It then explains two models for describing how polysemous or flexible expressions relate multiple meanings: the radial network model and prototype theory. The radial network model describes category structures with a central meaning that radiates out to less central meanings. Prototype theory also involves categorization with central exemplars that define categories.

Uploaded by

Arul Dayanand
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Introduction: A rough guide to Cognitive Linguistics 9

lexical dimension of the language, and the structural dimension – the syntax and
the morphology. Talmy notes that there are some forms of conceptual construal
that are hardly ever expressed by the grammatical structure (like color), whereas
others (like the distinction between singular and plural) are typically expressed by
syntax and morphology. The bulk of Talmy’s paper, then, provides an overview of
different types of conceptual construal systems that are typical for the structural,
grammatical rather than the lexical subsystem of natural languages.

2.2. The dynamic nature of grammar

If natural language signs are flexible, we will need a model to describe how the
different readings of the expressions relate to each other. Several such models
for the polysemic architecture of expressions have been proposed by Cognitive
Linguistics, and the three concepts in this group describe the most important of
them.

RADIAL¬NETWORK

The radial network model describes a category structure in which a central case
of the category radiates towards novel instances: less central category uses are
extended from the center. The paper featured in this collection, ‘Cognitive topol-
ogy and lexical networks’ by Claudia Brugman and George Lakoff is based on
Brugman’s seminal analysis of the preposition over. The study was seminal not
just in the sense that it popularized the radial network model, but also because
it spawned a whole literature on the analysis of prepositions (more on this in
the Further reading chapter). Brugman suggests the ‘above and across’ reading
of over (as in the plane flew over) as central, and then shows how less central
readings extend from the central case. These can be concrete extensions, as in a
‘coverage’ reading (the board is over the hole), but also metaphorical ones, as in
temporal uses (over a period of time).

PROTOTYPE¬THEORY

Radial categories constitute but one type of a broader set of models that fall under
the heading of prototype theory. For instance, the importance of specific birds
in the category structure of bird (this is a point we drew the attention to before)
belongs in the same set of phenomena as the radial set idea. The paper ‘Pros-
pects and problems of prototype theory’ by Dirk Geeraerts presents a systematic
overview of the different prototype-theoretical phenomena that are mentioned in
the literature. Specific attention is paid to the mutual relations that exist among
these phenomena: it is argued that prototype is itself a prototypically structured

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