Aspects of Meaning Construction

Aspects of Meaning Construction PDF Author: Günter Radden
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027232427
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Meaning does not reside in linguistic units but is constructed in the minds of the language users. Meaning construction is an on-line mental activity whereby speech participants create meanings on the basis of underspecified linguistic units. The construction of meaning is guided by cognitive principles. The contributions collected in the volume focus on two types of cognitive principles guiding meaning construction: meaning construction by means of metonymy and metaphor, and meaning construction by means of mental spaces and conceptual blending. The papers in the former group survey experiential evidence of figurative meaning construction and discuss high-level metaphor and metonymy, the role of metonymy in discourse, the chaining of metonymies, metonymy as an alternative to coercion, and metaphtonymic meanings of proper names. The papers in the latter group address the issues of meaning construction prompted by personal pronouns, relative clauses, inferential constructions, “sort-of” expressions, questions, and the into-causative construction.

Mental Spaces

Mental Spaces PDF Author: Gilles Fauconnier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521449496
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Mental Spaces is the classic introduction to the study of mental spaces and conceptual projection, as revealed through the structure and use of language. It examines in detail the dynamic construction of connected domains as discourse unfolds. The discovery of mental space organization has modified our conception of language and thought: powerful and uniform accounts of superficially disparate phenomena have become available in the areas of reference, presupposition projection, counterfactual and analogical reasoning, metaphor and metonymy, and time and aspect in discourse. The present work lays the foundation for this research. It uncovers simple and general principles that lie behind the awesome complexity of everyday logic.

The Communicative Mind

The Communicative Mind PDF Author: Line Brandt
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443853887
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description
Integrating research in linguistics, philosophy, semiotics, neurophenomenology, and literary studies, The Communicative Mind presents a thought-provoking and multifaceted investigation into linguistic meaning construction. It explores the various ways in which the intersubjectivity of communicating interactants manifests itself in language structure and use and argues for the indispensability of dialogue as a semantic resource in cognition. The view of the mind as highly conditioned by the domain of interpersonal communication is supported by an extensive range of empirical linguistic data from fiction, poetry and written and spoken everyday language, including rhetorically “creative” metaphors and metonymies. The author introduces Cognitive Linguistics to the notion of enunciation, which refers to the situated act of language use, and demonstrates the centrality of subjectivity and turn-taking interaction in natural semantics. The theoretical framework presented takes contextual relevance, viewpoint shifts, dynamicity, and the introduction into discourse of elements with no real-world counterparts (subjective motion, fictivity and other forms of non-actuality) to be vital components in the construction of meaning. The book engages the reader in critical discussions of cognitive-linguistic approaches to semantic construal and addresses the philosophical implications of the identified strengths and limitations. Among the theoretical advances in what Brandt refers to as the cognitive humanities is Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of conceptual integration of “mental spaces” which has proved widely influential in Cognitive Poetics and Linguistics, offering a philosophy of language bridging the gap between pragmatics and semantics. With its constructive criticism of the “general mechanism” hypothesis, according to which “blending” can explain everything from the origin of language to binding in perception, Brandt’s book brings the scope and applicability of Conceptual Integration Theory into the arena of scientific debate. The book contains five main chapters entitled Enunciation: Aspects of Subjectivity in Meaning Construction, The Subjective Conceptualizer: Non-actuality in Construal, Conceptual Integration in Semiotic Meaning Construction, Meaning Construction in Literary Text, and Effects of Poetic Enunciation: Seven Types of Iconicity.

Semantic Leaps

Semantic Leaps PDF Author: Seana Coulson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521643610
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending. By addressing linguistic phenomena often ignored in traditional meaning research, Coulson explains how processes of cross-domain mapping, frame-shifting, and conceptual blending enhance the explanatory adequacy of traditional frame-based systems for natural language processing. The focus is on how the constructive processes speakers use to assemble, link, and adapt simple cognitive models underlie a broad range of productive language behavior.

A Dictionary of Construction, Surveying, and Civil Engineering

A Dictionary of Construction, Surveying, and Civil Engineering PDF Author: Christopher Gorse
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199534462
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Book Description
An A to Z of construction, surveying, and civil engineering terms covering all core aspects, this book provides a one-stop reference for construction students and professionals.

How Words Mean

How Words Mean PDF Author: Vyvyan Evans
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199234663
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
In this book, Vyvyan Evans builds a framework for the understanding and analysis of meaning that is at once descriptively adequate and psychologically plausible. In so doing he also addresses current issues in lexical semantics and semantic compositionality, polysemy, figurative language, and the semantics of time and space.

Deconstructing Constructions

Deconstructing Constructions PDF Author: Christopher Butler
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205744
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Experts in functional linguistics and in Construction Grammar approaches explore the concept of construction, what it is, and what roles constructions play in the frameworks which can be located within a multidimensional functional-cognitive space. The volume also plots the developments which led to recent models.

Linguistic Perspectives on the Construction of Meaning and Knowledge

Linguistic Perspectives on the Construction of Meaning and Knowledge PDF Author: Elke Diedrichsen
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527540421
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
This book is an exploration of the dimensions of meaning in language from several important perspectives that are of major interest to scholars today, bringing together studies from the realms of linguistic pragmatics, semantics, ontological knowledge engineering, and computational linguistics. Situated within modern functional-cognitive constructional-ontological and computational paradigms, the analyses here are supported by authentic language data, including corpus data, from a rich set of languages. Context and situation play an important but complex role in meaning elaboration. The role of context and situation is elusive and has proved difficult to elucidate with respect to meaning and knowledge representation. This volume provides evidence of the nature of the, often rapid, emergence of meaning in the digital world of the internet, social media, and Internet memes. The use of computational avatars and the rise of human language technologies, including big data and digital corpora, have made the construction of meaning and human language understanding essential to the work of linguists, cognitive scientists and computer scientists who are increasingly working together in collaborative teams to share insights.

The Construction of Words

The Construction of Words PDF Author: Geert Booij
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319743945
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
This volume focuses on detailed studies of various aspects of Construction Morphology, and combines theoretical analysis and descriptive detail. It deals with data from several domains of linguistics and contributes to an integration of findings from various subdisciplines of linguistics into a common model of the architecture of language. It presents applications and extensions of the model of Construction Morphology to a wide range of languages. Construction Morphology is one of the theoretical paradigms in present-day morphology. It makes use of concepts of Construction Grammar for the analysis of word formation and inflection. Complex words are seen as constructions, that is, pairs of form and meaning. Morphological patterns are accounted for by construction schemas. These are the recipes for coining new words and word forms, and they motivate the properties of existing complex words. Both schemas and individual words are stored, and hence there is no strict separation of lexicon and grammar. In addition to abstract schemas there are subschemas for subclasses of complex words with specific properties. This architecture of the grammar is in harmony with findings from other empirical domains of linguistics such as language acquisition, word processing, and language change.

Figurative Meaning Construction in Thought and Language

Figurative Meaning Construction in Thought and Language PDF Author: Annalisa Baicchi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027261024
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This volume brings together twelve usage-based studies conducted by leading researchers in language and cognition that explore core issues of figurativeness from the Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The individual chapters reveal the central function of figurativeness in thought and its impact on language. Cognition relies on knowledge-structuring tools in the construction of meaning both mentally and linguistically. Collectively, the chapters delve into an array of topics that are crucial to future research in figurative meaning construction, especially on questions of identification and structure of figures, the figurative motivation of constructions, the impact of figurativeness on pragmatic and multimodal communication, and the correlation between figures and cognitive models.