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- Volume 5, Issue 2, 2018
Cognitive Linguistic Studies - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2018
Volume 5, Issue 2, 2018
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The status of punctuation marks in Cognitive Grammar
Author(s): Zeki Hamawandpp.: 189–207 (19)More LessAbstractThis paper seeks to provide a new analysis of punctuation marks in English. To do so, it substantiates two claims of Cognitive Grammar. One claim is that the meaning of a linguistic expression is best understood in terms of the domain to which it belongs. In light of this claim, the paper argues that punctuation marks form sets in which they highlight similarities in general but differences in specifics. The other claim is that the use of a linguistic expression is governed by the particular construal imposed on its content. In view of this claim, the paper argues that the use of a punctuation mark stems from the particular construal the speaker chooses to describe a situation. The occurrence of two or more punctuation marks gives rise to semantic contrast, in which each mark represents a different construal, and so a different meaning. The aim of the analysis is to emphasise the roles which punctuation marks play in the interpretation of sentences, namely in conveying meaning.
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Is “to fish in a river” equivalent to “to fish a river”?
Author(s): Anne Condaminespp.: 208–229 (22)More LessAbstractUsing the example of the alternation [to fish (det) river(s)]/[to fish prep (det) river(s)/], this paper adopts a corpus linguistics approach in order to show how it can contribute to studies in cognitive semantics, combining statistics with a more qualitative analysis. The main aim is to investigate whether these two constructions (with or without a preposition) correspond to a single meaning with alternations or to two distinct meanings. Two studies, both using the Web as corpus, were carried out to elucidate this issue. The first study compared occurrences of the two constructions on French and English websites and showed that, statistically speaking, the construction without a preposition occurs mainly in angling websites that have an emotional dimension, such as blogs. The second study, focusing solely on English websites, examined the lexical environment of the two constructions and identified certain distinct semantic classes for each construction, defining two semantic scenarios. These two semantic scenarios were found to correlate closely with the nature of the website. In light of the corpus evidence, the paper concludes in favor of two meanings, each concerned by one or the other construction (with or without a preposition). The role of the emotional dimension in the relationship between the angler and the river is crucial in determining the presence or absence of a preposition before river. Such a conclusion positions this study firmly in the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics.
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Metaphorical motion in Chinese
Author(s): Xinxin Shan and Aunga Solomon Onchokepp.: 230–260 (31)More LessAbstractThis paper focuses on metaphorical motion in the Chinese language by investigating how various abstract concepts are construed in terms of spatial motion. The claim that the primary metaphor, change is motion, is central to metaphorical motion is confirmed, and we further examine sorts of target domains that are structured by spatial motion, the corresponding mappings in metaphors of entity-location pairs and orientational metaphors. Moreover, we explore how systematicity and complexity have structured the whole system. Through systematicity, coherence between different mappings and within one mapping are analyzed, and two concepts of “event” – event in “event-structure concepts” and in “motion event frame” are observed and are shown to be interrelated. By means of complexity, the specific issue of entity-location duality in metaphorical motion is discussed, and experiential bases – including physical, social and cultural basis for metaphorical motion is also considered.
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Cross-cultural conceptualizations of ageing in Australia
Author(s): Hui Huang, Farzad Sharifian, Susan Feldman, Hui Yang, Harriet Radermacher and Colette Browningpp.: 261–281 (21)More LessAbstractIn this paper, the framework of Cultural Linguistics is employed to examine how older people from two different ethnic backgrounds in Australia conceptualize ageing and their own experience of ageing. The paper employs a qualitative method for the instantiations of interviews from two focus groups of Australian women. The results indicated that women of Anglo-Celtic background had a more self-oriented perception of ageing, aged care and self, while women of Chinese background had a more relational outlook. However, the evidence indicated that changes were taking place in both traditions despite a certain degree of continuity.
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Metonymies and metaphors of sadness in the Old English vocabulary
Author(s): Emilia Castaño Castaño and Isabel Verdaguer Claverapp.: 282–302 (21)More LessAbstractThe aim of this paper is to explore the predominant metonymic and metaphoric conceptualizations of sadness in the Old English period. To this end, the Old English expressions for emotional distress recorded in The Old English Thesaurus and old English dictionaries have been analyzed. Taking as a starting point the experiential grounding of emotion conceptualization, we first present experimental evidence in support of the role of somato-behavioral reactions in emotion recognition, affective state induction and emotional information processing and interpretation, and review the most common metonymic and metaphoric expressions for sadness in Modern English. Next, we analyze the Old English vocabulary for sadness and the interplay between embodiment and culture in the conceptualization and linguistic description of emotional distress. Such analysis makes it clear that in ancient times, as in present day English, sadness and psychological distress were also conceptualized in terms of unpleasant physical conditions such as illness, cold, darkness or heaviness. Consequently, a long-term diachronic trend in the conceptualization of sadness can be traced even though its linguistic realization and motivation have varied through time.
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Metaphor and emotion
Author(s): Sunil Sharmapp.: 303–340 (38)More LessAbstractThe objective of current research article is to examine the metaphorical concepts of emotion anger in conventionalized phraseological expressions or phraseologisms (pls) of Hindi.1 It aims to find out the extent to which conceptual metaphor motivate Hindi pls and influence their semantic configuration. In addition, it also compares the metaphorical concepts of Hindi mainly with that of English and Chinese while employing the research studies conducted by Kövecses (1990), Lakoff and Kövecses (1987) and Yu (2012), who have postulated that physical interaction with surrounding world as well as cultural artefacts and practices largely mediate the conceptualization of emotions in a given linguistic community. Being the language of a collectivist cultural community in India, Hindi chooses more language-specific anger metaphors and conceptualizes anger more cultural specifically than English and other languages do.
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Foodsemic metaphors of love in Gĩkũyũ: Insights from cognitive semantics
Author(s): Moses Gatambuki Gathigia, Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo and Ruth Wangeci Ndungupp.: 341–358 (18)More LessAbstractUsing the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study discusses the transfer of semantic aspects of foodsemic metaphors upon the abstraction of love. An interview schedule was administered to 48 respondents of different gender by the researchers assisted by two research assistants. The data collected were subjected to the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU). 12 foodsemic metaphors which play an indispensable role in the understanding of love in Gĩkũyũ were identified. In addition, the study noted that gender is a dominant variable that provides people with lens through which they view love in Gĩkũyũ. This study concludes that metaphor is an integral component of the way people conceptualize and embody love in Gĩkũyũ. Further, foodsemic metaphors provide a way of understanding the nexus between gender and love in Gĩkũyũ.
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A cross-linguistic study of metaphors of death
pp.: 359–375 (17)More LessAbstractThe avoidance of directly addressing human mortality indicates fear of death. This fear elicits psychological, social and religious interdictions in language such that people resort to the use of metaphors to avoid confronting death. Under the premise that metaphor is a conceptual mapping from a concrete source to an abstract target domain, this study aims to identify and categorize euphemistic metaphors of death in six languages: Chinese, Farsi, Gĩkũyũ, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Those metaphors are interpreted via the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). In doing so, 40 speakers in each of the languages were asked to complete a short questionnaire. Various metaphors of death were identified in each language and categorized into four conceptual metaphors: death is a journey; death is the end; death is a rest; and death is a summons. The key finding is that the most common metaphor of death is death is a journey. This holds across linguistic groups regardless of gender and age factors. This study also discusses the role of embodied cognition theories in accounting for how metaphors of death are created and their role within cognition in general.
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Mental models, (de)compressions, and the actor’s process in body-swap movies
Author(s): Ahmed Abdel-Raheempp.: 376–409 (34)More LessAbstractThe body-swap comedy, where someone finds themselves inhabiting an entirely different body, is a well-established Hollywood tradition. Crucially, American filmmakers have tried every twist and contortion of this genre premise at a point or another over the past few decades. And yet, other countries, such as Egypt, Japan, and South Africa, seem to have just now put different spins on the theme. Nevertheless, this genre is under-theorized and under-explored. Drawing on insights from blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner 2002), mental models (van Dijk 2014), and the actor’s process as described by, among others, Stanislavsky (1995, 2008) and Brecht (1964, 1970), this article provides cognitively plausible answers to the perennial questions: What is so funny in body-swap films? How do spectators make sense of this genre? How do blending processes operate in body-swap movies? Do spectators “live in the blend?” What patterns of compression or decompression are at work in body-swap templates? Can humor be a strong determiner of moral-political cognition? And what connections can be drawn between acting and cognitive neuroscience? A discussion of English and Arabic examples (i) points to some of the cultural concepts involved in body-swap films, (ii) shows how conceptual blending in humorous films serves to both perpetuate and modify culturally relevant concepts, and (iii) highlights the necessity to expand the current scope in compression, embodiment and identity research. More generally, then, this article presents a new cognitive theory of how cinema, television, or theatre communicates meaning. The most important aim of this study is thus to contribute to the small but growing number of publications that use the cognitive sciences to inform scholarly and practical explorations in theatre and performance studies, as well as to the study of Arab theatre and cinema, which are among the most neglected subjects in the field.
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The time of human thoughts and deeds
Author(s): Gayane R. Hovhannisyanpp.: 410–425 (16)More LessAbstractA mysterious part of our physical and psychological models of the world is Time. Its cognitive representation has evolved from Mythology through Literature to Physics. In ancient times, it was Kala of the Indo-Europeans, Chronos of the Greek gods, and the Kirke of Odyssey whose world could make heroes forget about anything. Then came Renaissance, the gradual awakening of the Time of Soul, the swing of philosophical mind between material and ideal worlds, its acceleration to the Relativity of Einstein, and the recent collapse on the Quantum Theory and to new biocentric passages. Shakespeare’s world of human mind and characters is so diverse and opulent, that anyone can find and emulate natural and supernatural phenomena in it, getting food for philosophical, psychological contemplation and even ideas for quantum-physical speculations. The truth is that Time molds the world of matter with the subjective world of human dreams and deeds.
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Uncanny resemblance
Author(s): Alessandro Cavazzana and Marianna Bolognesi
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