Now available in paperback for the first time since its original publication, the material in this book provides a broad, accessible guide to semantic typology, crosslinguistic semantics and diachronic semantics. Coming from a world-leading team of authors, the book also deals with the concept of meaning in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, and the understanding of semantics in computer science. It is packed with highly cited, expert guidance on the key topics in the field, making it a bookshelf essential for (...) linguists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and computer scientists working on natural language. (shrink)

That is the central goal of this volume, and it develops and explains new techniques for tackling this question.

...the true difference between languages is not in what may or may not be expressed but in what must or must not be conveyed by the speakers.

The first four lectures revolve around field semantics - research methods for studying linguistic meaning under fieldwork conditions. The remaining six lectures deal with semantic typology, the crosslinguistic study of how humans communicate about the world in terms of the meaning categories of the languages they speak. Together, the lectures present one of the first comprehensive introductions to either topic. A thread pervading the lectures involves the following questions: how much do languages vary in how they represent reality? (...) To what extent does this variation reflect cultural differences? To what extent does it influence the nonverbal thinking of the speakers? (shrink)

This book will interest typological and historical linguists at graduate level and above.

The aim of this article is to show how modifications of meaning can influence argumentation. I present the basic concept of so-called ‘semantic argumentation,’ its definition, and its different variants. I analyse the various kinds of argument in which meanings of terms are modified in support of a persuasive goal. The analysis of different semantic arguments reveals certain structures and patterns that are needed to construct a typology of such arguments. I thus outline a basic concept of (...) argumentation based on modifications of meaning, before presenting various examples of such arguments together with an analysis of their structures, and then, finally, constructing a typology for them. (shrink)

Berber languages use the directionals =d and =nn to specify the deictic path of motion verbs. These clitics occur with a range of verbs from other semantic classes (e.g. change of state verbs, verbs of vision and perception), with which they can be attributed different meanings. The first goal of this paper is to provide a cross-dialectal description of these meanings. The second goal is to show the role of verbal semantics in their constructions and the overall distribution of (...) the clitics. Adopting Talmy’s framework (2000) of lexicalisation of semantic concepts, linked to the domain of space and motion, I propose that the particular meaning components lexicalised by the modified verb govern the occurrence of the clitics and their particular meaning. (shrink)

The book is an investigation of the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring, and its connection to the mass/count distinction from a theoretical and crosslinguistic perspective. It reviews some recent major linguistic results in these topics, and presents the author's new research including in-depth case studies of a number of typologically unrelated languages.

This volume is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and readable introduction to linguistic meaning. While partial to conceptual and typological approaches, the book also presents results from formal approaches. Throughout, the focus is on grammatical meaning -- the way languages delineate universal semantic space and encode it in grammatical form. Subjects covered by the author include: the domain of linguistic semantics and the basic tools, assumptions, and issues of semantic analysis; semantic properties of entities, events, and thematic roles; language (...) and space; tense, aspect, and the internal structure and temporal ordering of events; modality, negation, and the epistemology of the speaker; and modification and attribution. In contrast to most current treatments of semantics, this book is accessible to the beginning student of semantics and linguistics and also useful to the advanced practitioner. A textbook and reference work in a single volume, it can be used in a number of disciplines: psychology, computer science, and anthropology as well as linguistics. (shrink)

Earlier work on literal motion has shown that English and Turkish belong to typologically distinct classes of languages, with English speakers paying greater linguistic attention to the manner dimension of motion events (e.g., Özçalişkan and Slobin 1999a, 2003). As a further step, this article investigates whether typological differences hold true for the metaphorical extensions of motion events. Thus, the article compares two types of languages with regard to their lexicalization patterns in encoding metaphorical motion events: (1) verb-framed languages (or V-languages, (...) represented by Turkish), in which the preferred pattern for framing motion events is the use of a path verb with an optional manner adjunct (e.g., enter running), and (2) satellite-framed languages (S-languages, represented by English), in which path is lexicalized in an element associated with the verb, leaving the verb free to encode manner (e.g., run in). The analysis of written texts and elicited responses in the two languages shows clear typological contrast, with English speakers encoding manner of motion in their metaphorical descriptions more frequently and extensively than Turkish speakers, using a variety of linguistic devices (e.g., verbs, adverbials). Overall, the results indicate that the degree of codability of a semantic dimension in a lexical item (i.e., motion verb) has a spillover effect on the choice of other lexical items in a sentence, suggesting the conceptual salience of this dimension for its speakers. This effect is observable in both the literal and the metaphorical uses of the lexicon. (shrink)

In this paper, the set-theoretic approach in the logical theory of normative systems is extended using Broome’s definition of the normative code function. The syntax and semantics for first order metanormative language is defined, and metanormative language is applied in the formalization of the basic principles in Broome’s approach and in the construction of a logical typology of normative systems. Special attention is given to the types of normative systems which are not definable in terms of the properties of (...) singular sets of requirements (e.g. the realization equivalence of codes, the social compatibility of codes, and the compatibility of codes issued by different normative sources). Examples are given of the application of the typology in the interpretation of philosophical texts. Von Wright’s hypothesis on the connection of logical properties of normative systems, conceived set-theoretically, with standard deontic logic is proved by introducing the translation function between the metanormative language and the restricted language of standard deontic logic. The translation reveals that von Wright’s hypothesis must be appended. The problems of narrow and wide scope readings of the deontic conditionals and of the meaning of iterated deontic operators are addressed using the distinction between relative and absolute normative codes. The theorem on the existence of a realization equivalent absolute code for any relative code is proved. (shrink)

It is widely believed by historians of linguistics that the 19th-century was largely devoted to historical and comparative studies, with the main emphasis on the discovery of soundlaws. Syntax is typically portrayed as a mere sideline of these studies, while semantics is seldom even mentioned. If it comes into view at all, it is usually assumed to have been confined to diachronic lexical semantics and the construction of some (mostly ill-conceived) typologies of semantic change. This book aims to destroy (...) some of these prejudices and to show that in Europe semantics was an important, although controversial, area at that time. Synchronic mechanisms of semantic change were discovered and increasing attention was paid to the context of the sentence, to the speech situation and the users of the language. From being a semantics of transformations', a child of the biological-geological paradigm of historical linguistics with its close links to etymology and lexicography, the field matured into a semantics of comprehension and communication, set within a general linguistics and closely related to the emerging fields of psychology and sociology. (shrink)

Semantic roles have continued to intrigue linguists for more than four decades now, starting with determining their kind and number, with their morphological expression, and with their interaction with argument structure and syntax. The focus in this volume is on typological and historical issues. The papers focus on the cross-linguistic identification of semantic-role equivalents, on the regularity of, and exceptions concerning change and grammaticalization in semantic roles, the variation of encoding the roles of direction and experiencer in (...) specific languages, presenting evidence for identifying a new semantic role of speech addressee in Caucasian languages, on semantic roles in word formation, and finally a cross-linguistic comparison of the functions and the grammaticalization of the ethical dative in some Indo-European languages. The book will be of interest to anyone involved with case and semantic roles, with the syntax-semantics interface, and with semantic change and grammaticalization. (shrink)

This paper is part of an ongoing project devoted to the investigation of the psychotropic brew Ayahuasca from a cognitive-psychological perspective. This perspective contrasts with those of practically all investigations of Ayahuasca which pertain either to the natural sciences-notably botany, pharmacology, brain science and clinical medicine-or to anthropology. Here, I discuss the visualizations induced by Ayahuasca from a structural, as opposed to contentual, point of view. A typology of the structural forms in which visualizations may appear is drawn. Also (...) examined are the various types of interaction a person can have with his/her visions and aspects pertaining to the semantics of visions and their narrative structure. The distinctions drawn are readily applicable to hallucinatory and visionary experiences induced by other agents and in other contexts. Thus, the present typology may be regarded as presenting the foundations for the cognitive-psychological study of such experiences at large. (shrink)

An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, green, and blue (...) were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time. (shrink)

An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, green, and blue (...) were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time. (shrink)

This book explores the cognitive constraints and principles of variation in structures of linguistic meaning across languages. It unifies cognitive-semantic representations with formal-semantic representations to make a unique contribution to the study of typological generalizations and universals in natural language semantics. This unified approach not only helps reveal why semantic structures have the observed variation they have, but also sheds light on the compelling cognitive and formal regularities and patterns in the variation of linguistic semantics. The book (...) also advances the general principles of a cognitively-oriented semantic typology. Lucid and topical, the book will be an indispensable resource for students and researchers of language typology, linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and semantics. It will also be of interest to theoretical linguists of both cognitivist and formalist schools. (shrink)

We argue for an intimate relation between semantic externalism and semantic deference and propose a typology of speakers’ metasemantic views as revealed by their deferential attitudes. Building on this typology, we then offer a classification of metasemantic disagreements understood as verbal disputes between speakers who (consciously or unconsciously) hold divergent metasemantic views about the same word. In particular, we distinguish lower-order metasemantic disagreements between speakers who disagree on the exact source of meaning determination for a word (...) yet agree on the kind of deferential attitude this word is liable to, from higher-order metasemantic disagreements between speakers who do not even agree on the suitable kind of deferential attitude. We demonstrate the fruitfulness of our classification through the concrete implications it has for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

The author of the article deals with the main issues of Chinese neologisms formation. Language is a complex and dynamically developing system. Vocabulary is one of the most unstable and changeable layers of a language; it is highly sensitive to any changes in the society. In the study, a number of neologisms found in Chinese dictionaries of neologisms published in 2012-2015 is analyzed. The research is based on the concept of linguistic motivation, which distinguishes three levels of motivation of lexical (...) units: phonetic, morphological and semantic. Phonetically motivated lexical units under the examination are phonetic borrowings and homonymous lexical units. On the morphological level, such productive ways of word formation were analyzed as compounding, derivation, and such phenomena as acronyms and lettered words. Special attention is paid to the study of Chinese semantic word-formation where metaphorization plays an important role. The specific feature of Chinese metaphors is that abstract concepts are expressed with the help of concrete words, which is explained by national and cultural peculiarities of the Chinese language. Chinese native speakers perceive the world through concrete images that is conditioned by the Chinese language typology and the hieroglyphics. (shrink)

Day 3 of advanced course on "Crosslinguistic compositional semantics" at 2009 LSA Summer Institute at UC Berkeley. Plan for the day: (a) Introduction: Toward sun-sem typology (b) CCG+UC1 fragment of Kalaallisut, (c) Kalaallisut BA.TO.L-traits explained.

According to the popular Grounded Cognition Model (GCM), the sensory and motor features of concepts, including word meanings, are stored directly within neural systems for perception and action. More precisely, the core claim is that these concrete conceptual features reuse some of the same modality-specific representations that serve to categorize experiences involving the relevant kinds of objects and events. Research in semantic typology, however, has shown that word meanings vary significantly across the roughly 6500 languages in the world. (...) I argue that this crosslinguistic semantic diversity has significant yet previously unrecognized theoretical consequences for the GCM. In particular, to accommodate the typological data, the GCM must assume that the concrete features of word meanings are not merely stored within sensory/motor brain systems, but are represented there in ways that are, to a nontrivial degree, language-specific. Moreover, it must assume that these conceptual representations are also activated during the nonlinguistic processing of the relevant kinds of objects and events (e.g., during visual perception and action planning); otherwise, they would not really be grounded, which is to say, embedded inside sensory/motor systems. Crucially, however, such activations would constitute what is traditionally called linguistic relativity—that is, the influence of language-specific semantic structures on other forms of cognition. The overarching aim of this paper is to elaborate this argument more fully and explore its repercussions. To that end, I discuss in greater detail the key aspects of the GCM, the evidence for crosslinguistic semantic diversity, pertinent work on linguistic relativity, the central claim that the GCM entails linguistic relativity, some initial supporting results, and some important limitations and future directions. (shrink)

According to the popular Grounded Cognition Model (GCM), the sensory and motor features of concepts, including word meanings, are stored directly within neural systems for perception and action. More precisely, the core claim is that these concrete conceptual features reuse some of the same modality-specific representations that serve to categorize experiences involving the relevant kinds of objects and events. Research in semantic typology, however, has shown that word meanings vary significantly across the roughly 6500 languages in the world. (...) I argue that this crosslinguistic semantic diversity has significant yet previously unrecognized theoretical consequences for the GCM. In particular, to accommodate the typological data, the GCM must assume that the concrete features of word meanings are not merely stored within sensory/motor brain systems, but are represented there in ways that are, to a nontrivial degree, language-specific. Moreover, it must assume that these conceptual representations are also activated during the nonlinguistic processing of the relevant kinds of objects and events (e.g., during visual perception and action planning); otherwise, they would not really be grounded, which is to say, embedded inside sensory/motor systems. Crucially, however, such activations would constitute what is traditionally called linguistic relativity—that is, the influence of language-specific semantic structures on other forms of cognition. The overarching aim of this paper is to elaborate this argument more fully and explore its repercussions. To that end, I discuss in greater detail the key aspects of the GCM, the evidence for crosslinguistic semantic diversity, pertinent work on linguistic relativity, the central claim that the GCM entails linguistic relativity, some initial supporting results, and some important limitations and future directions. (shrink)

Almost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in (...) the mechanisms of human cognition. (shrink)

'This study is extremely authoritative and up-to-date... This book has much to offer linguists motivated by any one of several primary interests, particularly universals and the connection between language and cognition' -Journal of Linguistics 'Aikhenvald displays the rare gift of being able to inspire interest in new research through the success of her own results, without stifling those future possibilities through undue certitude in having discovered all of the answers already. The best thing about this very excellent book is precisely (...) the author's keen awareness that it is not the last word on the subject' -Journal of Linguistics 'Data presented in a clear, straightforward manner... also cutting edge research presented in the spirit of a work in progress' -Journal of LinguisticsAlmost all languages have some ways of categorizing nouns. Languages of South-East Asia have classifiers used with numerals, while most Indo-European languages have two or three genders. They can have a similar meaning and one can develop from the other. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how emojis are integrated into the text that they occur with. I use the typology of gestural iconic enrichments proposed by Schlenker (2018a, 2018b) to investigate the hypothesis that emojis denoting objects (e.g., ????) and activities (e.g., ????) project (i.e., interact with logical operators) when co-occurring with text in a similar way as gestures do with speech. In particular, I claim that [i.] emojis generate co-suppositions, i.e., assertion-dependent presuppositions, when immediately following text (e.g., (...) the sentence “John didn’t train today ????” gives rise to the inference that “if John had trained today, weightlifting would have been involved”); [ii.] emojis generate supplements (in the sense of Potts, 2005), just like appositive relative clauses, when they are separated from the accompanying text by a pause (e.g., the sentence “John trained today...????” gives rise to the inference that “John trained today, which involved weightlifting”); [iii.] when used as replacements for words (e.g., “Yesterday, John didn’t ???? ”), emojis have an at-issue semantics and can trigger standard presuppositions. (shrink)

During the last 100 years, several interpretations of the Thesmophoria have been advanced. Following the typology of H.S. Versnel, we can classify these interpretations as substantive, functionalist and cosmological. The three approaches can be seen as comple­mentary, but in practice they are hardly ever pursued simultaneously. This article examines how they fit together. In particular, it re-examines the subject of fertility, asking how it fits in with the wider social and ideological issues to which Detienne and others have drawn (...) attention and which, to our mind, have little connection with agriculture or human repro­duction. As a response this paper offers a synthetic interpretation that places fertility in a wider cosmological context and shows it as interconnected with all the other levels of the festival.Plusieurs interprétations des Thesmophories ont été proposées depuis un siècle. En suivant la typologie d’H.S. Versnel, on peut les qualifier de substantives, de fonctionnalistes et de cosmologiques. Les trois approches peuvent être complémentaires, mais, en pratique, elles sont difficilement assumées en même temps. L’article examine la manière dont elles fonctionnent ensemble. Il reprend en particulier le thème de la fertilité, en posant la question de savoir comment il s’insère dans les thèmes sociologiques et idéologiques plus larges sur lesquels Detienne et d’autres ont attiré l’attention et qui, dans notre esprit, ont peu de rapport avec l’agriculture et la reproduction humaine. En réponse à ce problème, on offre une interprétation synthétique qui situe la fertilité dans un contexte cosmologique plus vaste et en montre les relations avec les autres niveaux de la fête. (shrink)

Maria Bittner (M2: August 3, 2009) 1. TOWARD SYN-SEM TYPOLOGY • E. Jelinek 1984: W(arlpiri)-TYPE (EJ traits (62.a-f) ~ MB traits BA, TO, L, …).

Especially in functional-typological linguistics, semantic roles have been studied thoroughly, because they constitute a good starting point for any study on argument marking due to their semantically defined nature. However, the very concept of semantic roles is far from being without problems, and there is still no consensus on how the roles are best defined. In this volume, the notion will be discussed from novel perspectives with the aim of providing new insights into our understanding of semantic (...) roles. Two of the papers deal with semantic role clusters, one with semantic roles in verbless constructions, one with diachrony of semantic roles and two with individual semantic roles that have not been studied in too much detail in previous studies. The book may not offer answers to all questions the readers may have, but at least it raises interesting further questions relevant to arriving at a better understanding of semantic roles. Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 38:3 (2014). (shrink)

According to the popular Grounded Cognition Model (GCM), the sensory and motor features of concepts, including word meanings, are stored directly within neural systems for perception and action. More precisely, the core claim is that these concrete conceptual features reuse some of the same modality-specific representations that serve to categorize experiences involving the relevant kinds of objects and events. Research in semantic typology, however, has shown that word meanings vary significantly across the roughly 6500 languages in the world. (...) I argue that this crosslinguistic semantic diversity has significant yet previously unrecognized theoretical consequences for the GCM. In particular, to accommodate the typological data, the GCM must assume that the concrete features of word meanings are not merely stored within sensory/motor brain systems, but are represented there in ways that are, to a nontrivial degree, language-specific. Moreover, it must assume that these conceptual representations are also activated during the nonlinguistic processing of the relevant kinds of objects and events (e.g., during visual perception and action planning); otherwise, they would not really be grounded, which is to say, embedded inside sensory/motor systems. Crucially, however, such activations would constitute what is traditionally called linguistic relativity—that is, the influence of language-specific semantic structures on other forms of cognition. The overarching aim of this paper is to elaborate this argument more fully and explore its repercussions. To that end, I discuss in greater detail the key aspects of the GCM, the evidence for crosslinguistic semantic diversity, pertinent work on linguistic relativity, the central claim that the GCM entails linguistic relativity, some initial supporting results, and some important limitations and future directions. (shrink)

This paper takes a stand on Hamblin semantics and its relation to the semantics-to-pragmatics interface. Biased questions, where the speaker finds one of the options more likely and expects the confirmation that p is true, raise a concern about the limits of Hamblin semantics. I argue that biased questions have modified Hamblin semantics, while unbiased questions have unconstrained Hamblin semantics. The optional bias feature explains compositionally. It is triggered by likelihood presuppositions ranging Hamblin sets and highlighting the preferred alternative(s). Biased (...) effects are exceptionally possible in alternative and wh-questions, but only in polar questions, they can be encoded lexically and grammatically. I argue that Hamblin semantics covers all core types of questions, while some of its applications for non-questions are problematic. (shrink)

Purpose. The article deals with the consideration of certain types of value models of human creation from the standpoint of philosophical anthropology and social philosophy. It is about certain models that fulfill the worldview-semantic modes of a person. Theoretical basis. The authors cover peculiarities of such models in the process of creation of "the new types of a person". The process of reformatting these types and its means are studied. The process of valuing metamorphoses of Ukrainians is taken as (...) an example. The research is limited to the Soviet period and the period of independence, which is reflected respectively in Thesis I – The Phenomenon of Homo Sovieticus and Thesis II – A Person in the Situation of Post-Homo Sovieticus. The emphasis is on the peculiarities of the value matrix of these types and their ideological potential. Originality is in the disclosure of anthropological models that correspond to the value functionality, that is, the determination and expression of the essence of a person. It is shown that certain projects, under the conditions of forced reformatting, by their value reduction are classified as inhuman. They are based on the narrative of ideological myth and deprived of the projection of the complete development of a personality. The proposed approach allows to revise the current trends of such projections and, most importantly, to predict their value potentials in the dynamics of the transformational progress of the essence of the modern Ukrainian. Conclusions. The essay reflects the process of transformation of the worldview-semantic modes, which are represented by two situations-products – the Soviet person and the contemporary. The first type is formed by the mythology of political ideology. This person is deprived of himself or herself. Their collective identity is brought up by the anthropological effect of violence and fear. The second type is very similar. This person finds himself or herself in the situation of value disorientation, nostalgic impulses and instrumental thinking. Their task is to move towards the "monad personality". This is possible by means of formation of the "own philosophy", "inherent teleology of a breakthrough", as well as by taking into account the problem of consolidation and radicalism of external factor. (shrink)

One of the two central suggestions put forth in Longobardi (1991, 1994) was that Romance/English differences in the syntax of proper names were parametrically connected to supposed differences in the semantics of bare (plural and mass) common nouns (BNs). The present article will pursue this line of investigation, trying to make precise such meaning differences and to understand the reason for their apparently surprising parametric association with the syntax of proper names.It will be shown that in most Romance varieties BNs, (...) unlike their English counterparts, distribute their existential and generic readings across all different contexts exactly like (Romance and English) overt indefinites. All the differences will be unified under the proposal that Romance BNs are nothing but a type of indefinites (variables, existentially or generically bound) in Kamp-Heim’s DRT sense, while English BNs are rather systematically ambiguous between this quantificational interpretation and a referential (i.e. directly kind-denoting, much in the spirit of Carlson 1977a, b) one, providing for another type of generic reading.The analysis will therefore crucially exploit and empirically support Gerstner and Krifka’s (1987) distinction between referential and quantificational genericity. On such grounds we will finally gain a conceptual understanding of the typological implication originally established in Longobardi (1991, 1994), thus confirming that the strategies of interpretation of nominals, whether proper or common nouns, are basically one and the same, though differently parametrized in different languages. This result, in turn, will shed some light on the question whether comparative semantics is possible and whether it can be singled out as a legitimate independent component of parametric theories of grammatical variation. (shrink)

This book approaches depictive secondary predication from a crosslinguistic perspective. It maps out all the phenomena and brings together critical surveys and new contributions on their morphosyntactic and semantic properties"--Provided by publisher.

This study examines the semantics of a root form underlying a wide range of Dene lexical expressions. The root evolved from a simple nominal denoting “club” to expressions lexicalizing the movement of stick-like objects and the rotation of helicopter blades. These semantic extensions arise through source-in-target and target-in-source metonymies. Drawing on Cognitive Linguistics, especially the theory of metonymy, offers a method of describing the range of meanings expressed by this root in a concise manner. Focusing on the results of (...) metonymic meaning extensions also opens the way to addressing questions in the history of Dene languages. This study contributes to increasing the typological scope of Cognitive Linguistic approaches and argues for the usefulness of the theory in addressing problems in Dene linguistics. (shrink)

This paper presents a preliminary and tentative formulation of a novel empirical generalization governing the relationship between grammar and cognition across a variety of independent domains. Its point of departure is an abstract distinction between two kinds of cognitive structures: symmetric and asymmetric. While in principle any feature whatsoever has the potential for introducing asymmetry, this paper focuses on one specific feature, namely thematic-role assignment. Our main empirical finding concerns the role of language, or, more specifically, grammar, in effecting and (...) maintaining the distinction between symmetric and asymmetric cognitive structures. Specifically, whereas symmetric structures devoid of thematic-role assignment more commonly occur in a non-grammatical and usually also non-verbal medium, asymmetric structures involving thematic-role assignment are more likely to be associated with a grammatical medium. Our work draws together three independent strands of empirical research associated with three diverse phenomenological domains: compositional semantics, metaphors and schematological hybrids. These three domains instantiate conceptual combinations, bringing together two or more subordinate entities into a single superordinate entity. For compositional semantics this consists of a juxtaposition of constituent signs to form a single more complex sign; for metaphors this entails the bringing together of two different concepts in order to produce a comparison; while for schematological hybrids this involves the combination of different entities to form a single new hybrid entity. Our empirical results reveal a remarkable parallelism between the above three domains. Within each domain, symmetric structures tend to be associated with a non-verbal or otherwise non-grammatical medium, while asymmetric structures are more frequently associated with a grammatical medium. Thus, within each domain, grammar introduces asymmetry. More specifically, we find that in all three domains, the asymmetry in question is one that involves the assignment of thematic roles. To capture this effect, we posit two distinct levels, or tiers, of cognition: non-grammatical cognition, more commonly associated with symmetric structures, and grammatical cognition more conducive to asymmetric structures. Within each of the three phenomenological domains, we find the distinction between non-grammatical and grammatical cognition to be manifest in three independent realms, phylogeny, ontogeny, and the architecture of human cognition. (shrink)

This volume presents studies on pronouns in embedded contexts, and offers fundamental insights into this central area of research. Much of the recent research on pronouns has shown that embedded environments, such as clausal complements of attitude predicates, provide a window into the nature of pronouns. Pronouns in such environments not only exhibit familiar distinctions such as that between bound and referential pronouns; if they refer to the attitude holder, they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g., distinguishing (...) between a de se reading and a de re reading. Topics covered include: the semantics of attitude reports that contain pronominal elements, the semantics of pronominal features and their connection to indexicality, new insights in the connection of pronominal typology and logophoricity or anti-logophoricity, and finally, the localization of embedded pronouns within a bigger picture involving the nature of perspective and the analysis of quasi-pronominal phenomena such as sequence of tense. (shrink)