Cognitive Linguistic Studies - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2015

Fluent speakers do not appear to have conscious knowledge of the linguistic categories and declarative rules that linguists use to describe grammar and that most psycholinguists have adopted for explaining language functioning. The implication derived in this paper is that these categories and rules are deprived of psychological reality. It is proposed that a psychologically real morphosyntax is concerned with sentence surface. The pragmatic framework and the semantic relational matrix at the onset of sentence production are converted directly into syntagmatic patterns, flexibly distributed along the sentence line. These patterns are reflected in probabilistic associations between words and sequences of words. Natural morphosyntax is learned incidentally through implicit procedural learning. Children extract frequent syntagmatic patterns from adapted adult input. The resulting knowledge is stored in procedural memory. The cortico-striatal -cerebellar system of the brain has the computational power necessary to deal with sentence sequential patterning and associative regularities.

A letter-reading task (Experiments 1) and a word-reading task of regular words (Experiments 2) and of visually distorted words (Experiments 3) were used to examine the reciprocal interaction between phonological encoding strategies and visual factors, such as the global word shape, local letters shape, and inter-letter spacing. Our participants comprised Arabic readers familiar with different letter and word forms (connected vs. unconnected: without inter-letter spaces vs. with inter-letter spaces). In addition, this study is the first instance of the word length effect being studied in an Arabic context using different word lengths (3 vs. 5 letters). The average reading times for Arabic words are affected by the word connectivity, since the average reading time is shorter for connected than unconnected words of all word lengths (3 and 5 letters) reflecting the activation of lexical route, which processes letters in letter strings in parallel. As well, the average reading times for Arabic words are affected by the word length, since the average reading time is shorter for 3-letter words than 5-letter words reflecting the activation of non-lexical route, which processes letters in letter strings sequentially. Length effect is the signature of the non-lexical route due to its seriality caused by assembled phonology.

This paper examines conceptualizations of temperature in contemporary Persian, from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics. Several expressions in which temperature terms are used reflect cultural metaphors where temperature is used as a source domain for conceptual mapping to the domain of emotion. The paper also examines particular cultural (folk) categorizations of food, fruit, and human nature pertaining to the concept of ‘temperature’ in Persian, and traces back the root of these categorizations to Iranian Traditional Medicine. Temperature terms are also used to describe and categorize things such as color and smell. Overall, the observations made in this paper support the view that conceptualizations of temperature provide an interface for the interaction between sensory and bodily experiences, human conceptual faculties, and cultural conceptualizations.

GHEIRAT seems to be a complex emotion in Iranian men and women with a variety of contextual meanings including, jealousy, chivalry, courage, and protecting one’s nâmus ‘female family members’. GHEIRAT may be defined as a monitoring device or alarm system in the mind of Iranians. The cognitive linguistic analysis of the conceptual domains interacting with GHEIRAT indicates that the GHEIRAT concept operates to protect one’s values against threat, insult, and injury, provide assistance to the Other, and aid the Self in accomplishing goals as a supplementary force. Moreover, the paper comes to the conclusion that in Iranian culture, the cultural model of GHEIRAT is largely constituted by conceptual metaphors (THE OTHER IS A POTENTIAL OPPONENT, GHEIRAT IS A PHYSICAL SUPPLEMENTARY FORCE), conceptual metonymy (CAUSE FOR EFFECT) and related key concepts (ÂBERU ‘face’, NÂMUS ‘one’s female family members and the sanctity associated with them’, MAHRAMIAT ‘the legitimate physical and emotional intimacy between men and women’). Furthermore, based on Kövecses’s (2000) account of emotion concepts, it is revealed that GHEIRAT fulfills its functions indirectly through acting as a cause for other emotions and feelings such as ANGER, HATRED, JEALOUSY, and SELFLESSNESS.

This paper is an attempt to study Kövecses’s (2000a) claim on the stability of emotion metaphors during time with regard to love metaphors in Persian language. In other words, the aim is to see whether love metaphorical expressions in Persian everyday language underlie the same conceptual metaphors in Persian creative language such as poetry. At the same time, we aim to see if similar conceptualization of love exists in English everyday language. Also the paper seeks to find the cognitive grounding of love metaphors in Persian according to Kövecses’s (2012) cognitive experiential basis of metaphors. The results of study indicate that both literary and ordinary love Persian expressions are built upon the same conceptual metaphors that account for love expressions in English everyday language too. Also, it was discovered that among four suggested ways of grounding conceptual metaphors, two of them were more likely to motivate love metaphors in Persian.

The present paper examines the acquisition of English physical motion constructions by Spanish translators in training. Drawing from Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) typological framework for motion event descriptions and Slobin’s (1996, 2003) thinking-for-speaking hypothesis, the main aim of this research is to study whether the acquisition of English lexicalization patterns by Spanish translators in training could be facilitated by instructing them to think-for-translating into English. To this end, first, participants in the experimental and control group were told to translate some narrative fragments from Spanish into English. Then, once they completed the task, participants in the experimental group were instructed on the typological differences between English and Spanish with regard to the domain of physical motion and on how to render typical Spanish motion descriptions into English motion constructions. Finally, after a one week delay they were told to translate new fragments from Spanish into English. We observed that participants in the experimental group produced a higher number of manner verbs plus path expressions than the control group which, in turn, favoured the use of non-manner verbs plus path expressions. The results show that, overall, instruction contributes to better performance in the production of satellite-framed constructions but translators in training still have problems with the use of satellites and prepositional phrases.

There is wide literature on metaphor and legal language (e.g., Henly 1987; Twardzisz 2008, amongst many others). Certainly, metaphor is a part of legal language (Alcaraz and Hughes 2002: 43), but not just an ornamental part. Metaphors may play a very important role in legal texts, a cognitive role. They can convey intricate legal notions and may also communicate certain opinions and perspectives (Dickerson 1996: 374; Joo 2002: 23). Another interesting aspect connected with metaphors in the language of law is translation. We must bear in mind that legal translation has its own special difficulties, such as complex terminology and usually two very dissimilar legal systems as background (Soriano 2002: 53; Gémar 2002: 167). Metaphorical expressions constitute an additional hindrance for legal translators since they transfer a metaphorical image together with a legal concept. In the present study we aim at analysing some metaphorical expressions found in the United States Supreme Court opinions and their translation. We will focus on the scrutiny of some English–Spanish translation strategies in order to comment on the solutions adopted. Our hope is to shed some light on the field of legal translation regarding metaphors.

This article presents an Abstract Algebraic framework within which two major theories of metaphor comprehension, the class-inclusion and structure-mapping, are incorporated. Looking at Gentner’s structure-mapping model from this perspective, this article suggests that any comparison between two systems of relations is made by the mediation of an abstract system of relations rather than by a direct comparison between two concrete systems of relations. Regarding class-inclusion model, it is proposed that the class in which the topic is directly included is the class of abstract representation (deep representation) of vehicle. In this way, two levels of meaning are defined for the vehicle of a metaphor. The first level is the abstract representation or deep representation, which includes one or at most several salient semantic features. This is the metaphorical meaning of vehicle, which might be shared by a set of words with different degrees of typicality. The second level of meaning is the surface representation or literal meaning. This level includes a large number of semantic features. Therefore, metaphorical meaning includes one or at most several very salient semantic aspects, while literal meaning includes a large number of semantic features.