认知语言学入门读书报告

Reading Report on An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics

An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, written by Ungerer and Schmid is an explanatory book for those who start to access to cognitive linguistics. In this book, the authors rate cognitive linguistics as a tool for the study of linguistics. From their standpoint, cognitive linguistics mainly adopts three methods as its representation, namely experiential view, prominence view, and attentional view. As for the experiential view, it means that language use is not identical with the description of the objective world, in the meantime, body experience should be embedded. Then the prominence view, it deems that the arrangement of information in sentence structure is determined by its prominence degree, which, needless to say, is linked to subject s’willingness. Finally, the attentional view, it indicates that what we express in a situation is the part that attracts our attention most.

The whole book can roughly be divided into five parts. The first part embraces from unit one to unit three. Unit four is the second part , and unit five is the third part, respectively represented by the above three views. Unit six is the fourth part about blending and relevance. Unit seven is the fifth part about other issues in cognitive linguistics. Now, I will make a brief introduction on each part as follows: Chapter one is prototypes and category. It includes three parts. The first part is early empirical research into lexical categories, which begin with the category of color conducted by Rosch. Based on empirical research, Rosch comes to a conclusion that focal colors are perceptually more salient than non-focal colors, focal colors are more accurately remembered in short-term memory and more easily retained in long-term memory, and the names of focal colors are more rapidly produced in color-naming tasks and are acquired earlier by children. Inspired by this research, Rosch expands his research into squares, birds, cups, and events domains, which come to a similar conclusion. Based on these researches, he proposes the notion of prototype, which is the main topic of the second part of unit one. Prototype, from the intuitive view, is the good example of a certain category, while more often than not, it is defined as a member has the most attributes in a category. Prototype plays a crucial role in categorization, it acts as a cognitive reference point, which is indicative of its function of forming the internal structure of a category. Also, there is no denying that family resemblance is significant in the formation of category. When speaking of category, a clear distinction should be made between cognitive category and classic category. In contrast with classic category theory, cognitive category theory claims that, first, there exists a prototype in a category, and each member occupies different status in the category. Second, unlike classic category theory, which takes a common feature as the necessary and sufficient condition, the cognitive category theory adopts family resemblance as its criteria. Third, cognitive category theory thinks that the boundary between categories is fuzzy, which means that a member can belong to two categories in some condition, for example, tomato belong to both vegetable and fruit. With regard to the third part, it is about context-dependence and cultural models which is an expanse of the notion of prototype. As is known to all, our life is inseparable from the world, and people from different regions or countries must have their own cultural and social knowledge. So the prototype is not fixed, and it may

change when a particular context is introduced, and it is testified by some examples presented by the author.

Chapter two is about levels of categorization. Cognitive categories are connected with each other in a kind of hierarchical relationship if we want to have a successful and sufficient recognition of the world, and it is consistent with the cognitive economy rule. The principle underlying this hierarchical structure is the notion of class inclusion, typically type-of relationship, which necessarily refers to three concepts: superordinate category, basic level category, and subordinate category. And it is deserved to mention the other kind of hierarchy, namely part-whole hierarchy, which is based on a relationship of continuity and connectivity between entities in the really world, and it can be arguably traced back to out own basic bodily experiences, the links may range from genuine connections between parts and wholes to a loose association of elements. Loosely speaking, the superordinate category and subordinate category are called parasitic category, because their identification are relied on the basic level category, or rather the prototype. However, it does not necessarily means that they are valueless in the process of world cognition. As a matter of fact, subordinate category can highlight the specific attributes who intend to, and apart from highlighting function, the superordinate category also has a collecting function, that is to say it has the potential to collect more attributes of relevant category. As for basic level category, it has considerable bearing on prototype. And their relationship are that prototype categories are most fully developed on the basic level and basic level categories only function as they do because they are structured as prototype categories. They can be interpreted in detail as follows:(1) the basic level provides the largest amount of relevant and digestible information about objects and organisms of the world, or, to put it more technically, it offers the largest bundles of correlated attributes. (2)the basic level is where the overlap of shapes is so great that it permits reliable gestalt perception, which is particularly easy for prototypical examples. (3) prototypes maximize the distinctiveness of basic level categories because they attract not only the largest number of attributes shared inside the category，but also the largest number of attributes not shared with members of other categories.(4) prototypes maximize holistic perception because their gestalts integrate all functionally important parts. In the last part of this unit, the author proposes a new word-formation of compounds analysis in terms of cognitive categorization, which deems compounds as type-of compounds and part-whole compounds based on attributes analysis. From this kind of analysis, the compound can emerge some new attributes that belong neither of the two elements in a compound, thus making us have a better understanding of the compound. Compared with the traditional modifier-head analysis, the new approach has several advantages as follows:(1) the traditional view which posits a basic head item and a strictly specifying modifier element is far too rigid. with many compounds, like apple juice, the modifier category supplies more than just the specifying attributes, these additional attributes may not all be objective properties, but are often associative and experiential. (2) the basic item is not necessarily expressed by the second element of a compound. Depending on the salience of the categories involved, the cognitive category corresponding to the first

element may be equally important, or even dominant.

Chapter three is about conceptual metaphor and metonymies. Traditionally, metaphors and metonymies have been regarded as figures of speech. Metaphors and metonymies are powerful cognitive tools for our conceptualization of abstract categories. They are pervasive in our daily language. Metaphors are not only conceptual phenomena, but also ‘structure our way of thinking through the language we use. The difference between them is that metonymy involves a relationship of contiguity between what is denoted by the literal meaning of a word and its figurative counterpart and that one constituent of the metonymic link stand for each other, in contrast, metaphor refers two different concepts based on similarity. However, both of them are conceptual in nature and can be understood as mapping process. When they are at work, three elements are involved: source concept, target concept, and mapping scope. Furthermore, the mapping scope mainly exists three components: (1)image schemas, which are firmly grounded in our bodily experiences, including orientational schemas, path schema, part-whole schema, just to name a few. (2)basic correlations, which guides us in understanding the events and actions in the world around us, bracing action-change correlation with motion, cause-effect, purpose-goal and so on.

(3) culture-dependent evaluation, which are restrict to the members of a specific culture. In addition, the authors have listed some examples for the practical application of metaphor and metonymy. For instance, the structuring power of metaphor in lexical level on ‘argument’ and ‘idea’ and metonymy on word-formation. Chapter four is about figure and ground, which is in consistency with prominence view. On the one hand, figure seems to have special properties and it has form or shape, on the other hand, ground is unstructured, shapeless, and uniform. All in all, figure is perceived as being more prominent than ground, and psychological research has shown that it is more likely to be identified and remembered, and to be associated with meaning, feeling, and aesthetic values. when carrying out prepositional analysis, especially the orientational image schema, it refers two concepts, namely trajector and landmark. And the authors further make it clear that trajector is called figure, and ground function as a reference point for orientation and is therefore called landmark. This means that the notions trajector and landmark are specific manifestations of the more widely applicable notions of figure and ground. Based on this pair of notions, linguists have proposed some models for the explanations of clause patter, such as stage model, billiard-ball model and Langacker’s role archetypes theory. In these theories, their main concern is how a clause is arranged, in other words, which element function subject, and which is object. From the cognitive view, it is the most prominent element that acts as subject and the next level as object, and the verb function as the representation of their relationship.

Chapter five is about frames and constructions，which is relevant to attentional view. The notion of frame is introduced by Fillmore, who initially defines it as any system of linguistic choices that can get associated with prototypical instances of scenes. And later, a refined one is specific unified frameworks of knowledge, or coherent schematizations of experience, which is obvious from the cognitive view. When putting it into sentence pattern analysis, frame exerts much significance to

syntactic perspective, which is governed by verbs of sentences. Also, the notion of perspective relies on the principle of prominence, namely, on figure-ground segregation. But there exists some difference between them. For instance, researchers working in frame paradigm are much more interested in the verbs on a related frame and besides the syntactic figure(subject) and syntactic ground(object), frame notion has a wider scope, because indirect object and adverbial are also addressed, which parts just attract a small portion of our attention. As for the types of event frame, it can be divided into motion event-frame, causation event-frame, cyclic event-frame, participant-interaction event-frame and interrelationship event-frame, and in this book, the authors have particularly described the motion event-frame, which mainly contain six components, figure, ground, path, motion, manner, and cause. Among these six components, path plays an important role in our cognition of the world, because it refers to a notion called windowing of attention. When expressing a sentence, we just indicate partial path of an event using linguistic method. In fact, a motion event involves initial windowing, medial windowing, and final windowing, or several of them combined to express the windowing of attention of a motion event. Similar to frame theory, the script theory also occupies an important position in cognitive linguistics, unlike frame that describes a specific situation, it views an event in a sequential perspective which is frequently recurring in our daily life. Also, the authors associate frame with construction grammar, because the idea that there is a close correspondence between frame components and syntactic constituents (which indicates syntactic pattern is embedded with humans’ experiences) gives insight into the notion of construction grammar. And construction grammar has the implicatures, (1) there seems to be a close correspondence between certain conceptual structures derived from everyday experience and syntactic structures. (2)construction is stored in our long-term memory. (3) construction itself carries meaning, and it is a united pair of form and meaning.

Chapter six is about blending and relevance. Blending, unlike other conceptual structures, like image schemas, frames, construction mentioned above, is an online language processing. This process includes three space, namely, two input spaces, and a blended space(other linguist has postulated another space called generic space). According Fauconnier and Turner, the projection from the input spaces into the blended space involves three processes：composition，completion，and elaboration, these whole processes can be called compression, which may emerge new meaning except the literal meaning of input spaces. Yet, it should be pointed out that the input spaces are linked by cross-space mapping, which is called vital relations, with identity, space, time, cause-effect, and part-whole included. When the blending theory is postulated, it invited the criticism of the type that ‘anything goes’. In response to such a problem, Fauconnier and Turner propose nine governing principles, and condensed into five in the textbook as follows: (1) typology principle, which requires the blend to take over and preserve important aspects of the conceptual structure of the input spaces. (2) integration principle, which require the establishment of an emergent structure has the qualities of a conceptual gestalt. (3) principle of unpacking, which means that the normal processing direction of the blend is reversed and the input

spaces are approached from the angle of blended space. (4) principle of relevance, which has a more basic function: by distributing significance to the elements of the blend, this principle decides in which direction the blend is developing. (5) principle of human scale, which means that it should comply with cognitive economy rule. The blending theory has evoked significant explanation for linguistics. And it is used to analyze the advertising texts, riddles and jokes in this book.

Chapter seven is about other issues in cognitive linguistics. it brings together a number of issues that have not originated in cognitive linguistic research. Although three of them, iconicity, grammaticalization and lexical change, can look back on a long tradition in linguistics, they have benefited considerably from being put on a cognitive basis. Iconicity is postulated against the notion of arbitrariness proposed by Sassure, who excludes the phenomenon of onomatopoeia. But for cognitive linguists, iconicity is a cognitive footing, and there exists many phenomena of iconicity in language use, not only in lexical level, but also syntactic level, apart from the phenomenon of onomatopoeia. Grammaticalization has a long-standing concern of linguists, and this book interprets it from the cognitive framework, which is of great benefit for a better understanding of grammar. The final section discusses the potential of a cognitive approach to foreign language learning. The notion of prototype, basic level, metaphor, figure and ground etc. all facilitate foreign language learning.

In conclusion, this book has basically integrated all content of cognitive linguistics. Also, in the last part, it explores the relevant cognitive approach into foreign learning, which may invokes a further investigation for other linguists and persons who are dedicate to it. As for my overall impression on this book, it has provided many empirical researches and applications for the explanation of some relevant notions and theories, making readers has a clear understanding of the development of notions and the usage of theories. However, maybe due to limited space or knowledge-stored level, some notions are not explained and defined clearly, for example, construction grammar. Besides, the arrangement within each chapter seems to lack of coherence. All in all, this textbook is suited for a cognitive linguistics learner, because basically each notion and theory is equipped with examples, which facilitate readers to understand well.