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- Volume 12, Issue, 2014
Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 12, Issue 1, 2014
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Conceptual metaphors as a tool for the efficient teaching of Dutch and German posture verbs
Author(s): Sabine De Knop and Julien Perrezpp.: 1–29 (29)More LessThe article deals with the typological differences between the Romance language French and the Germanic languages German and Dutch for the linguistic expressions of posture and location. It describes how these typological differences can be problematic for French-speaking learners of German and Dutch. The main difference between both types of languages is that posture and location tend to be encoded by posture verbs in Germanic languages and by very general verbs in Romance languages (Talmy 2000). After a detailed description of the semantic networks of the German and Dutch posture verbs, the paper takes a critical look at how these expressions are dealt with in teaching manuals. It further presents strategies for the efficient teaching of posture verbs to foreign language learners. These strategies are among others awareness-raising exercises about the compulsory use of posture verbs in Germanic languages and the description of conceptual metaphors in different languages. These pedagogical avenues for the efficient teaching of the Dutch and German posture verbs constitute a first step towards the elaboration of an experimental set-up aiming at verifying them.
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Constraining factors on the family of resultative constructions
Author(s): Alba Luzondo-Oyónpp.: 30–63 (34)More LessDrawing on the assumptions made in Construction Grammar(s), the present proposal addresses the debate between formulating broad-scale generalizations of the type postulated by Goldberg (1995) or finer-grained analyses, heavily based on lexical-class identification, as those put forward by Boas (2010, 2011), who claims that Goldberg’s account leads to the over-generation of ungrammatical examples. The position taken here is that, although Goldberg’s theory has largely overlooked the role of verb meaning(s), generalizations in the form of constraints are still necessary to build a fully principled account of lexical-constructional fusion. Taking the family of resultative constructions as a case study, I employ the analytical tools (i.e. the apparatus of so-called internal and external constraints on constructional integration) developed by the Lexical Constructional Model in order to show that a fine-nuanced description can go hand in hand with the postulation of macro-generalizations.
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Blending and folk theory in an explanation of irony
Author(s): István Pálinkáspp.: 64–98 (35)More LessThis paper casts a critical glance at the traditional pragmatic view of irony as well as the most definitive theories of the 1980s and 1990s, and shows that most of these conceptions are incomplete: they have a limited sphere of explanatory sway, as attested by the occurrence of instances of ironic speech not conforming to these models. In order to avoid the uncertainties induced by previous approaches, this paper takes a cognitive stance and treats irony as a mode of thought rather than as a figure of speech. As a cognitive-conceptual phenomenon, this study argues, irony cannot be explained in one single definition but rather it should be treated as a matter of folk psychology. The paper also concludes that the ironies discussed in this study are related by the process of conceptual integration. Through a discussion of three ironies, this paper introduces a different way of thinking about irony.
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Metaphor and phraseology from the language of bullfighting in Spanish
Author(s): Michael White and Beatriz Villacañaspp.: 99–132 (34)More LessMass-audience events provide languages with fertile sources of metaphor. Such events display pronounced spatial parameters, dynamicity and purposive activity, all of which have been shown to enable metaphor processes. Furthermore, the mass following and the experiential recurrence of such events facilitate conventionalisation and phraseological development. This article examines such a phenomenon, namely, the deployment of metaphorical and phraseological expressions of bullfighting origin in the ordinary use of the Spanish language. Taking evidence from existing inventories plus references to literature and the press, the article categorises the diverse manifestations into coherent patterns in consonance with cognitive linguistics metaphor studies. It shows that the different participants and different aspects of the bullfighting event motivate those patterns. As well as highlighting the cultural specificity of this phraseology, the article also shows its potential in cross-sectional and longitudinal terms – it functions across a variety of contexts as well as in depth in any particular context.
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Fuzzy sets and Prototype Theory: Representational model of cognitive community structures based on lexical availability trials
Author(s): Antonio M. Ávila-Muñoz and José María Sánchez-Sáezpp.: 133–159 (27)More LessPrototype Theory offers one of the most accepted models for semantic memory organization. Lexical availability trials provide investigators with a faster and easier means of observing this cognitive organization, since lists of available lexicon are generated from associations relating some lexical elements with others. The experiments with lexical availability are able to activate one of the best-known lexical production mechanisms within experimental psychology: semantic category fluency. In this work we propose the appropriate means to reconstruct the community cognitive organization. This shared metastructure constitutes the concept of shared field of experience used as the base for availability trials. The key notion is the prototypicality of common vocabulary as the base for the construction of community models. To obtain a representation of these prototypes we use the mathematical framework of fuzzy sets.
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A constructional approach to transitional formatives: The use of -head in so-called ‘exocentric’ formations
Author(s): Carmen Portero Muñozpp.: 160–192 (33)More LessThe noun head is commonly found in the second position of many English noun compounds. Typically, noun compounds with head in the right are endocentric formations, that is, composite forms which designate a more specific type of the concept denoted by head (e.g. pinhead). The noun head is also found in a significant number of so called ‘exocentric’ formations with a variety of interconnected meanings (e.g. airhead, acidhead, Potterhead). The different exocentric patterns where head participates raise questions about the grammatical status of this element, which is sometimes analysed as a suffixal element, illustrating the fuzzy boundaries between derivation and compounding. In the linguistic literature there is an extensive debate as to whether processes like this one are to be regarded as cases of grammaticalization or lexicalisation. In this paper it will be proposed that exocentric formations in -head are suitable for an analysis using a schema-based approach in Ryder’s (1994) fashion, or a constructional approach (Booij, 2010a) insofar as new creations arise by analogy with the patterns that can be extracted from existing cases. The different patterns of exocentric formations with head can be conveniently characterized by postulating a hierarchical lexicon with schemas or constructions of different degree of abstraction.
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A cognitive sociolinguistic approach to metaphor and denominative variation: A case study of marine biology terms
Author(s): José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno and Pamela Faberpp.: 193–222 (30)More LessThis research applied corpus analysis techniques to a corpus of marine biology texts in Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why these varieties of Spanish have different designations for the same sea organism. The focus of our research was thus on types of formal onomasiological variation (Geeraerts, Grondelaers, & Bakema, 1994) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse. Also addressed was the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and designation. Domain-specific and standard strategies were used for the semi-automatic retrieval of metaphorical terms. The resulting qualitative and quantitative account of terminological diversity reflected the pervasiveness of intralingual denominative variation in scientific language and also identified its causes.
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