Review of Cognitive Linguistics. Published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2011

Two fundamental problems remain unsolved: “what counts as experiential basis, [or] … what the typology of experiential bases might be” (Grady, Taub & Morgan, 1996), and the concrete-abstract distinction (Gibbs, 1996). The paper distinguishes between concrete entities as material, and abstract as non-material. In the material domain, we claim that the object schema is the ultimate, i.e. subject to no further metaphorization, source domain. All other domains depend on the object.We analyse expressions referring to the abstract entities THOUGHT, FEAR and RACE (contest), and discuss neuroembryological evidence, psychological issues, the Great Chain of Being and Kotarbiński’s reism. In consequence of the sharp distinction between material and non-material entities, a new typology of metaphors is proposed: metonymy-based, concrete-to-abstract and abstract-to-abstract metaphors.We suggest that in this order, the metaphorical processes may reflect the phylogenetic development of concrete-to-abstract thought. Furthermore, concrete-to-abstract metaphorization (objectification1), may have played the greatest role in the development of abstract thinking, through identifying, conceptualizing and assigning language expressions to abstract entities.

This article offers a Cognitive Semantic approach to antonymy in language and thought. Based on a series of recent empirical investigations using different observational techniques, we analyze (i) the nature of the category of antonymy, and (ii) the status of its members in terms of goodness of opposition. Our purpose is to synthesize these empirical investigations and provide a theoretical framework that is capable of accounting for antonymy as a mode of thought in language use and meaning-making. We show that antonymy has conceptual basis, but in contrast to other lexico-semantic construals, a limited number of words seem to have special lexical status as dimensional protagonists. Form–meaning pairings are antonyms when they are used as binary opposites. Configurationally, this translates into a construal where some content is divided by a BOUNDARY. This configuration (or schema) is a necessary requirement for meanings to be used as antonyms and all antonyms have equal status as members. In contrast to categorization by configuration, categorization by contentful meaning structures forms a continuum ranging from strongly related pairings as core members to ad hoc couplings on the outskirts. In order to explain why some lexico-semantic couplings tend to form conventionalized pairs, we appeal to their ontological set-up, the symmetry of the antonyms in relation to the boundary between the meaning structures, their contextual range of use and frequency.

The present contribution argues that illocutionary interpretation is not only metonymic (Panther & Thornburg, 1998, 2003), but also a matter of active zone/profile discrepancy (Langacker, 1987, 1999). The theoretical framework is the Lexical Constructional Model propounded by Ruiz de Mendoza & Mairal (2008, 2011) and Mairal & Ruiz de Mendoza (2009). In this study I examine active zone/profile discrepancy in a number of expressions that are constructionally polysemous from an illocutionary perspective. Such is the case of the utterance Stay away from me if you don’t want to get in trouble, which profiles an instruction to avoid some negative consequences and can be understood either as a threat or a warning depending on the active zone. The results of the analysis provide evidence of the need to consider cognitive construal operations in the approach to illocution adopted by the Lexical Constructional Model.