|
|
Beijing
Lectures
Cognitive
Construction of Meaning
Gilles
Fauconnier
_____________________________________________________________________
Abstracts
Mental Spaces
As we think and talk, rich arrays of mental spaces and connections
between them are constructed unconsciously. This lecture outlines
the simple and general principles that govern mental space
construction. When combined and applied to rich pragmatic
situations, the principles yield unlimited numbers of meanings and
unlimited nesting. Grammar is the link between invisible
backstage cognition and the observable behavior of humans when they
talk and think. The cognitive theory of mental spaces explains a
variety of logical phenomena, such as opacity, presupposition
projection, and analogical counterfactuals. It leads to the
theory of conceptual integration which will be presented in the
following lecture.
Conceptual Integration
Conceptual integration (blending) is a basic mental operation that
leads to new meaning, global insight, and conceptual compressions
useful for memory and manipulation of otherwise diffuse ranges of
meaning. It plays a fundamental role in the construction of
meaning in everyday life, in the arts and sciences, in mathematics, and
in religious thought. The essence of the operation is to
construct a partial match between inputs, to project selectively from
those inputs into a novel 'blended' mental space, which then
dynamically develops emergent structure. It has been suggested
that the capacity for complex conceptual blending ("double-scope"
integration) is the crucial capacity needed for thought and
language. This lecture illustrates conceptual blending through
examples drawn from everyday human behavior, and presents the
constitutive and governing principles that constrain the cognitive
operation.
Causal Compressions in
Language and Thought
Compression of vital relations is a key component of conceptual
integration. This lecture focuses on the compression of causal
chains and discusses the remarkable human capacity to decompress
elaborate causal chains when prompted by minimal linguistic cues.
The overall problem raised by causal compression phenomena is the
following: elaborate space configurations are set up and
processed in the absence of explicit grammatical markings for the
frames, spaces, and connections needed. Language guides us in
certain directions and constrains the configurations, but it does not
directly specify the causal chains that need to be constructed in order
for meaning to emerge. Types of compression are discussed, along
with the principles that govern them. Consequences for grammar,
design, and communication are discussed.
Emergent Structure in Conceptual Networks
A powerful aspect of conceptual integration networks is the dynamic
emergence of novel structure. Emergent structure is manifested in
the blended spaces created by a network, and also in its overall web of
connections between mental spaces. In this lecture we will
analyze data from language, mathematics, technology, and
advertising. The analysis will highlight the ways in which
conceptual structures can evolve, both culturally and
individually. Emergent structure that humans can develop through
double-scope blending is the key to scientific and artistic creativity,
and to the construction of religious experience. But creativity
with emergent structure also takes place routinely in everyday life and
is especially visible in humor, cartoons, and irony. The unity of
human invention in very different areas will be shown through the study
of the underlying integration networks.
Metaphor and Conceptual Blending
Metaphors are usually double-scope conceptual blends. The
standard source-target model has been very useful in developing
metaphor theory, but a deeper account requires a framework in which to
study emergent structure and compression produced by metaphor.
This lecture will focus on the emergence of complex metaphors through
successive conceptual blends. The conceptualization of time will
be discussed. The time as space metaphor that we observe in
everyday language is itself emergent when we consider the full spectrum
of relevant data. Multiple inputs and succesive integrations
operate in the elaborate conception of time that humans create over
long periods and that children acquire in a short period through a mix
of supervised and unsupervised learning.
Integration and
Grammatical Constructions
A basic function of grammar is to prompt for the construction of
mental space configurations during ongoing discourse. In
particular, grammatical constructions are typically templates for
blending form and content. In this lecture, we will look in some
detail at causative grammatical constructions in English, French, and
Hebrew. Grammar, as it turns out, is a powerful compression
tool. Understanding a language is having the ability to
decompress grammatical constructions in context. Typically, this
depends on the mastery of conventional blends and their creative
application to novel situations. We will show that this is
equally true of the simplest constructions, such as noun-noun compounds
or "x of y", and the most complex ones commonly studied in linguistics
as syntax.
Origins of Language
During the Upper Paleolithic, human beings developed an unprecedented
ability to innovate. They acquired a modern human imagination, which
gave them the ability to invent new concepts and to assemble new and
dynamic mental patterns. The results of this change were awesome: human
beings developed art, science, religion, culture, refined tool use, and
language. A key factor was the evolution of the mental capacity for
conceptual blending. In this lecture, we will explore the implications
of these findings for the origin of language. There are many problems
besetting theories of the origin of language. These problems
include the absence of intermediate stages in the appearance of
language, the absence of existing languages more rudimentary than
others, the appeal to some extraordinary genetic event unlike any other
we know of, and the difficulty of finding a defensible story of
adaptation. Conceptual integration theory opens up a different
way of looking at the origin of language that is free of such problems.
Material Culture and
Meaning Construction
The cognitive anthropologist Ed Hutchins has shown that material
objects can be powerful anchors for conceptual blends. In
particular, technology evolves to produce cultural human artefacts such
as watches, gauges, compasses, airplane cockpit displays, with
structure specifically designed to match conceptual inputs and
integrate with them into stable blended frames of perception and action
that can be memorized, learned by new generations, and thus culturally
transmitted. Existing structure in the world can also be
recruited opportunistically for the same purpose. Like
mathematics and grammar, technology evolves through successive
blending, as for example in the case of banking and computing blended
to the human manipulation of automatic teller machines. This
lecture will discuss such cases and show their importance for
understanding how language, whether signed or spoken, is anchored
materially by gesture, sound, and writing.
Generalized Integration
Networks
This lecture will point out some useful generalizations that emerge
from the study of integration, along with some of the pervasive
fallacies that stand in the way of making such generalizations.
Through the analysis of attested data, we will explore the notion of
"generalized integration networks" and how they allow the construction
of a multiplicity of surface products in human thought and
action. Labels like metaphor, metonymy, counterfactual, help to
classify our superficial intuitive observations, but they do not
correctly reflect the wide array of possibilities offered by conceptual
mappings. Surface phenomena need to be analyzed more deeply with
a precise characterization of the cognitive operations and
constructions involved in each particular case. Specific typical
cases will be examined and used to illustrate the more general
theoretical consequences for the study of language.
Methods and
Generalizations in Linguistics
In contrast to sharply autonomous views of language structure,
cognitive linguistics has resurrected an older tradition. In that
tradition, language is in the service of constructing and communicating
meaning, and it is for the linguist and cognitive scientist a
window into the mind. Seeing through that window, however, is not
obvious. Deep features of our thinking, cognitive processes, and
social communication need to be brought in, correlated, and associated
with their linguistic manifestations. We are achieving a genuine
science of meaning construction and its dynamics by intensively
studying and modeling the cognition that lies behind language and goes
far beyond it. In this last lecture, I will use the results
obtained in the study of conceptual mappings to illustrate the powerful
methods developed within cognitive linguistics, guided by the general
scientific principles of economy, operational uniformity, and cognitive
generalization.
<>
|
