Cognitive Linguistics

17.04.2023
Categorization
One of our basic cognitive abilities is our ability to categorize. This will be a very basic
ability for linguistic semantics.
Prototype Categorization
Prototype theory is a reaction to the classical theory of categorization. Recall that the
classical theory of categorization claimed:
1. Categories are defined by necessary and sufficient conditions.
2. All members of a specific category have the same status.
We discussed point 1 when we spoke about Wittgenstein and family resemblances.
Point 2 is NOT confirmed by experiments in cognitive psychology. Certain members of the
category are more representative than others: A classic example involves the English word
bird.
Rosch (1973) found that experimental subjects judged robins to be highly representative (=
prototypical) examples of the category bird. She also obtained clear evidence showing that
subjects rated examples such as ostriches as being less representative of, or peripheral to, the
category.
CONCLUSION: people do not consider all the members of a category to be of equal
status.
The Internal Structure of Categories
Experiments like the one mentioned above show that: the internal structures of categories are
graded from “good” to “poor” (i.e., central to peripheral) cases;
This is another way of saying that highly representative members, or prototypes,
possess a special conceptual prominence or salience over less representative
members. For example: Chairs and sofas are unquestionably felt to be more central to
the category furniture than are lamps, stools, or magazine racks (cf. Rosch 1975b).
Even categories that are completely definable by necessary and sufficient conditions, such as
odd number, display graded internal structures, e.g., the numeral 3 is more representative of
an odd number than is 501 (cf. Armstrong et al. 1983; Gleitman et al. 1983).
Category Boundedness and the Lack Thereof
Classical theories assume that all categories are clearly bounded, since category membership
is only based on meeting criteria requirements. If true, this would entail the following
dichotomy: an entity either belongs to the category in question or it does not. Prototype
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theory questions the universality of this assumption. It is true that some categories, such as
bird and odd number, are judged to be inherently bounded (i.e., they don’t have fuzzy
boundaries). With other categories, however, the situation is less clear.
Take, for example, the word bachelor.
In a typical criteria analysis, the meaning of this word is broken down into the following
distinctive features:
<+ human> <+ male> <+ adult> <+ never married>
On the classical view of categorization, any person that meets these criteria should be a
perfect example of a bachelor. However, as Fillmore has noted, the Pope “is not properly
thought of as a bachelor” (Fillmore 1982: 34). To be sure, John Paul II technically fits the
description of an ‘adult human male who has never been married.’ However, it does seem
rather bizarre to regard him as a bachelor (though it is perhaps not impossible).

The point is this:

– whether the Pope belongs to the category bachelor is anything but a clear-cut matter (cf.
Lakoff 1987).
– This therefore shows that not all categories are clearly bounded.
QUESTION: Now, if the Pope meets all the technical requirements of bachelorhood, why
then is he such a bad example of it?
Fillmore (1975, 1982) suggests that the answer is intimately tied to background assumptions
that take the form of social expectations: in our culture, men and women are expected to
marry after reaching adulthood;
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Furthermore, they are expected to get married only once and stay together with their spouse
until he or she dies. What Fillmore is saying is that the expectations surrounding our
conception of the institution of marriage provide the necessary conceptual context, or
cognitive domain, for us to grasp the meaning of bachelor.
Idealized cognitive models
Lakoff (1987) has called these mental representations idealized cognitive models
(henceforth, ICMs). These knowledge structures are partial and, above all, simplifications.
This means that they do not always take special cases into account.
That is, ICMs are encyclopedic in scope (in that they are composed of our knowledge about
the world); nonetheless, they are only partial representations of our full awareness of how the
world is organized.
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Take for example the case of the Pope:

● Members of the Catholic clergy hold no expectations of marriage.
● This clashes with the general marriage ICM and therefore motivates the interpretation
that (at the very least) the Pope constitutes a highly atypical member of the category
bachelor.
● According to this account, instances of a category that do not conform well to the
relevant ICM are judged to be peripheral members; on the other hand, those that do fit
well enjoy the status of prototypes (cf. Lakoff 1987).

Two Warnings
There are two important warnings to be issued with regard to the notion of prototype.
Warning
Warning 1: Prototypes are Effects Prototypes do not exist objectively in the real world.
Rather they seem to be effects having to do with judgments of representativity (cf. Rosch
1983). That is, things are not inherently more or less prototypical; rather, prototypicality falls
out from the fit between the categorized entity and the ICM it is compared with (cf. Lakoff
1987).
● The more a categorized entity coheres with the underlying assumptions of the
category, the more prototypical an entity seems to be.
● The less a categorized entity coheres with the relevant ICM, the peripheral it
will seem.
● Prototype organization is, according to this account, an effect stemming from
the fit between the properties of the particular thing being categorized and the
categories underlying ICM.
Odd number again
● Given the above view of prototypicality, the fact that the numeral 3 is considered to be
more representative of the category odd number than 501 is not so strange.
○ For one thing, our number system is base-ten, which is undoubtedly motivated
(though not determined) by the fact that we have ten fingers;
○ for another, the oddness or evenness of a large number is easily ascertained by
considering the last digit.
● Experiential factors such as these give special prominence to numbers under ten and
account easily for the graded internal structure of odd number (cf. Lakoff 1987).
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● Therefore, in categories with clear boundaries, it is not so much that there are degrees
of membership per se, but rather degrees of representativity
QUESTION: Recall our discussion of the concept of “mother”. What do you think is more
prototypical of the category MOTHER: an adoptive mother or a biological mother (= gives
the child up for adoption)?
Warning 2: Ad-Hoc Categories
ii. Not all categories are of exactly the same nature.
An important example of this is the distinction between:
● conventional categories, such as those we have been considering; and
● ad-hoc categories, which tend to be less conventionalized (cf. Barsalou 1983,
1991).
A further difference between conventional and ad-hoc categories has to do with
family-resemblance phenomena.
Conventional categories tend to contain members with a high degree of family resemblance;
genuinely spontaneous ad-hoc categories tend to hold members that share little similarity (cf.
Barsalou 1983).
Consider an ad-hoc category such as WAYS TO ESCAPE BEING KILLED BY THE
MAFIA.
Members of this category can be quite diverse and basically depend on one’s imagination; a
person threatened by the mafia could do one of many things:
● go to the FBI and ask for protection;
● move to an obscure place in some far-away land;
● change identities and have plastic surgery;
● plead for mercy from the mafia bosses; etc.
Such alternatives hold little in common in terms of shared attributes They are spontaneously
generated together by the need to achieve a particular goal (cf. Barsalou 1983). This does not
seem to be the case of conventional categories which tend to be well established in long-term
memory.
Basic-Level Concepts
Basic-level concepts are located (metaphorically) on the vertical axis of categorization.
(Prototype effects correspond to the horizontal axis categorization. See below.) Based on
evidence from her categorization studies, the cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch argued
that basic-level concepts are special because they constitute the level of conceptual
organization at which we tend to operate with the most cognitive efficiency. Put in more
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understandable words, we seem to be psychologically most efficient at the basic level.

Consider a list of properties exhibited by basic-level concepts:
A. give the most information for the
least processing cost;
B. tend to be learned first by
children;

C. recognized quickest in
reaction-time experiments;
D. are the highest level of abstraction
of a taxonomic hierarchy in which:
i. we can generate detailed lists of attributes;
ii. we use the same motor programs;
iii. we perceive things as having the same overall shape; iv. we can associate a
particular mental image with the whole category.
Concerning point (i): consider the following relationship:
(1) Vehicle > car > sports car
SUPERORDINATE: Vehicle
BASIC LEVEL: Car
SUBORDINATE: Sports car
The basic level is the highest level of abstraction at which we can generate detailed lists of
attributes. We have less effective knowledge about a superordinate concept such as
“vehicle” , because such categories cover a very wide range of members (everything from
skateboards and unicycles to 16-wheel trucks and rocket ships are vehicles). Conversely, we
appear to have somewhat more fine-grained knowledge about a subordinate concept like
sports car than we do about its basic-level counterpart. However:
under unbiased conditions the extra information conveyed by a subordinate concept is not
offset by the added cognitive-processing costs. We know this because reaction-time
experiments show that people are faster at the basic level than at either the subordinate or
superordinate levels.
(As an aside, it should be mentioned that prototypes also give rise to faster reaction times, but
this is because anything that is cognitive basic is easier to process.)
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Therefore, the basic level is the highest level of abstraction (= diversity of category members)
at which we store the most amount of effective knowledge.
CAREFUL: The terms subordinate and superordinate can be used slightly differently out of
the context of basic-level categories:
SUPERORDINATE: dog
SUBORDINATE: St. Bernard
That is, when you are talking about two hierarchically related terms, then you can speak of
one as being the superordinate and the other the subordinate. Basic-level concepts are special
in terms of cognitive development: basic-level concepts seem to be the first to be understood
and used by children (cf. Mervis 1987).

More clarifications:
As already mentioned, basic-level concepts are reacted to faster than subordinate or
superordinate concepts. It is important to remember that the basic level is where we can list
lots of attributes, which is something we don’t do very well at the superordinate level.
On the other hand, at the subordinate level we just know a little bit more than at the basic
level. Basic-level concepts constitute the highest level of a given taxonomic hierarchy at
which we can interact with physical referents using the same motor programs (= how we
interact with objects using our bodies).
(2) (Piece of) furniture > table > coffee table.
We have certain motor programs for a basic-level object, such as a table, as well as for a
subordinate object, such as a coffee table, but at the superordinate level we simply do not
possess any specific motor program for all the objects that can be subsumed under the rubric
of (piece of) furniture (e.g., bed, shelf, dresser, mirror, lamp, etc.).
Another important matter regarding basic-level concepts has to do with perception.
One of the things that Rosch noticed in the course of her experiments was that the basic level
was the highest taxonomic level at which subjects perceived physical referents as having
approximately the same overall shape. Likewise, Rosch and her coworkers found the basic
level to be the highest level at which a single mental image could be associated with a
concept category in its entirety.
This is an important point. We can easily produce a generic mental image of a basic-level
concept, such as tree, but we cannot do the same for its immediate superordinate plant, as
such an image would have to be of a specific type of plant. Taken collectively, the above list
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of basic-level properties seem, in principle, to favor concrete nouns over other grammatical
classes. For the most part, this does seem to be the case.
(For example, we know that, cross-linguistically, concrete nouns tend to be learned before
verbs and other grammatical classes.)
However, the privileged status of concrete nouns does not mean that it is impossible to
construct taxonomic hierarchies based on abstract nouns or verbs denoting actions:
(3)
a. Emotion > sadness > grief, homesickness, melancholy, etc.
b. Do > kill > murder, assassinate, execute, slay, etc.
QUESTION: Which terms in (5) probably represent basic-level concepts? It’s extremely
important to realize that the clarity of taxonomic hierarchies depends crucially on the amount
of knowledge that we have regarding a particular domain.
Let us take, as an example, the case of aeroplanes, a vehicle used in the experiments
by which basic levels were verified. While “aeroplane” appeared to be the basic level
for most of the subjects participating (i.e., the most inclusive level at which many
attributes and motor movements were listed in common, etc.), for one former
aeroplane mechanic, the taxonomy appeared to be quite different. The lists of
attributes common to aeroplanes produced by most subjects were paltry compared to
the engthy lists of additional attributes which he could produce in common for
different types of aeroplanes. (Rosch 1977: 42-43)
This passage shows quite handily that expertise can alter one’s mental structuring of a given
hierarchy, making the basic level drop down a notch. (Conversely, lack of expertise probably
has an undermining effect, creating indeterminacy of structure.)
QUESTION: It’s hard to know which concepts are basic-level concepts without performing
an experiment, but sometimes it’s pretty intuitive. Say which are the basic-level concepts in
the following unordered lists:

Apple fruit golden

Plant redwood tree tree

House duplex building

Furniture Rocker chair

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Prototypes vs. basic-level categories

Nonliteral language and thought

● Figurative language = nonliteral language
● The most well-studied figures (or tropes) are:
○ metaphor and
○ metonymy .
● Other figures include:
○ irony,
○ hyperbole,
○ zeugma, etc.
These later figures have yet to receive much treatment in cognitive linguistics.
Two basic references to metaphor (and metonymy):
1. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
2. Lakoff, George & Mark Turner. 1989. More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to
Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Metaphor
The cognitive linguistics view of metaphor: metaphor is NOT just a mere “figure of speech.”
That is, metaphor is more than a stylistic device for embellishing utterances or texts. Instead,
metaphor is a specific thought process in which we understand one domain of experience
(i.e., a cognitive domain) in terms of another.
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Conceptual metaphor
Conceptual metaphors = schematic metaphorical patterns
(1) MORE IS UP:
a. Inflation in our country just keeps on going up.
b. Prices have risen a lot lately. ¸. The unemployment rate is very high.
(2) LESS IS DOWN
a. Interest rates have come down.
b. Prices have continued to fall on Wall Street. My income is very low.
In the MORE IS UP/LESS IS DOWN conceptual metaphor we conceive of QUANTITY in
terms of VERTICALITY.
The expressions in (1) and (2) are metaphorical, since nothing goes up or down in reality.
What makes them seem unmetaphorical is that they are conventional. However,
metaphoricalness and conventionality do not exclude each other. Conceptual metaphors are
general schemas, or templates so to speak, that license metaphorical expressions. This is
something like the distinction between phonemes and allophones: allophones instantiate
phonemes; metaphorical expressions instantiate conceptual metaphors. It is important,
however, not to take this parallelism too far. Phonemes belong only to linguistic systems:
they have no existence outside of language. This is emphatically NOT the case with
conceptual metaphor. Conceptual metaphors play a role in conceptualization outside of
language.
QUESTION: How are house thermometers oriented? Why?
Target domain and source domain → In metaphor we conceive of the target domain in
terms of the source domain. Consider the following metaphor:
(3) RATIONAL ARGUMENT IS WAR
● Source domain: WAR
● Target domain: RATIONAL ARGUMENT
a. She attacked my paper.
b. He defended his theory. ¸. The cognitive camp has shot down many
generative claims.
c. When the Generative Semanticists rebelled, the Chomskyans brought in the
heavy artillery.
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The Internal Structure of Conceptual Metaphors

(4) INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS ARE RELIGIONS:
a. Generative linguistics is a religion.
b. Noam Chomsky is the linguistics pope. ¸. Chomsky and his disciples think
they’re doing linguistics.
c. Generative dogma holds that grammar is independent of semantics.
d. Cognitive linguists are heretics.
Conceptual metaphors are structured by a series of source-to-target domain mappings. We
could picture this something like in figure 2.
These mappings, which stipulate the
internal structure of the conceptual
metaphor, are called ontological
correspondences:
INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS
ARE RELIGIONS:

Target: INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS

Source: RELIGIONS

The Intellectual movement a religion (ex. a)

The leader of the intellectual movement The leader of the religion (ex. b)

The followers in the intellectual movement The followers in the religion (ex. c)

The main tenets of the theory religious dogma (ex. d);

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Those who do not accept the theories of the unbelievers (ex. e).
predominant theory

We import structure from the source domain to the target domain, we also import inferences.
These cross-domain inferences are called epistemic correspondences.
INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS ARE RELIGIONS:
Source: the most powerful figure of a religious movement is its leader.
Target: the most powerful figure of an intellectual movement is its leader.
Source: you cannot change the dogma without changing some basic aspect of the
religion;
Target: you cannot change the main tenets of the intellectual movement without
changing some basic aspect of the theory.
The following rather ordinary sentences illustrate the metaphor IDEAS ARE FOOD.

(5)
a. That’s definitely food for thought.
b. Mike just cooked up the greatest idea. ¸. I’ve put that idea on the back
burner for now.
c. I could never swallow that idea. d. It will take you a little time to digest
today’s lecture.
e. I can’t stomach the thought.
f. Please don’t just regurgitate my notes on the final.
Ontological correspondences

Target: IDEAS Source: FOOD

the food the idea

the cook the cognizer

cooking thinking the idea up

eater the person considering the idea

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digesting comprehending

palatability acceptablity

Ontological correspondences
Strictly speaking, we should have an epistemic correspondence for every ontological
correspondence. We will limit ourselves to just a couple, though:
Source: Food is nourishment for the body.
Target: Ideas are nourishment for the mind. (Folk theory)
Source: Food can be shared with others.
Target: Ideas can be shared with others
QUESTION: Now it’s your turn. What is the conceptual metaphor behind the following
example taken from a pop song. What is the source domain and what is the target domain.
What are the ontological correspondences? Give one set of epistemic correspondences.
(HINT: think of symbiosis in biology.)

(6)
After all is said and done,
one and one still is one:
When we cry, when we laugh,
I am half, you are half.
Now let’s go from a pop song to serious poetry. To exemplify this more clearly, let us reflect
upon the following fragment taken from a short poem by Raymond Carver about the
premonition of death:
(7) I go to sleep on one beach and wake up on another. Now what cognitive-linguistics
analyses of poetry have discovered so far is that poetic language tends to make use of much
of the same conceptual metaphors as ordinary language does.

(8) DEATH IS SLEEP:

a. Rest in peace.
b. At a funeral after a suicide: “[...] God, no one among us knows what the sleeper
knows. (adapted from Cather 1918 [1980: 117]).
(9) CHANGE OF STATE IS CHANGE OF LOCATION:
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a. Things went from bad to worse.

b. John fell into a deep sleep.
Now the main thing about poetic metaphor is the high degree of innovation. That is, even if
the poet uses well-entrenched conceptual metaphor, the phrasing used is rarely very
conventional, but rather tends to be highly innovative. This is what makes poetic metaphor
seem special.
Metonymy
In Cognitive Linguistics, we make no formal distinction between synecdoche (having to do
with part-whole relationships) and metonymy. This is because from our point of view
synecdoche is a type of metonymy. This said, the term metonymy will cover both cases. In
metonymy, one conceptual entity is made to stand for another, where (in principle) both
entities enjoy a certain conceptual contiguity within the same domain. One waitress says to
another: (10) The ham sandwich just left without paying his tab.
The cognitive domain here is the scenario of a
restaurant. The metonymy used by the
waitress is: the customer’s order (i.e., the ham
sandwich) for the customer.
Conceptual contiguity = belong to the same
domain.
In this case the costumer and the costumer’s
order belong to the domain of RESTAURANT.
The major difference between metaphor and metonymy is that, while metaphor uses two
domains, metonymy only uses one (see below).
By using the ham sandwich, the speaker is picking out a salient or relevant feature associated
with the customer (namely, his or her order).
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This salient feature—in this case the meal that was ordered—is called the reference point
(RP); the structure that is actually being referred to will be called the target—in this case the
customer.
Another way of looking at things is to say that the reference point activates the target.
Some more examples of metonymy:
(11)
a. Tie your shoes.
b. We need a good arm at third base. ¸. Pass me the water.
c. My mother reads Freud.
Example
(2a) uses a WHOLE FOR PART metonymy (i.e., synecdoche), in which the shoes (the whole)
stand for the shoelaces (a part).
Example (2b) uses the opposite type of synecdoche: PART FOR WHOLE, in which the
player’s arm stands for the player.
In example (2c), the metonymy used is that of CONTAINED FOR CONTAINER, i.e., the
water stands for the pitcher.
Finally, in (2d) the metonymy is the AUTHOR FOR HIS PUBLICATIONS, by which Freud
stands for published work.
As we can see, there is nothing special about these sentences. Clearly, metonymy is just as
much a part of everyday language as metaphor. In fact, metonymy is much more pervasive
than metaphor.

Metonymy in Grammar
Consider the following example is from Ronald Langacker:
(12) Eve ate an apple.
About which he writes:
The profiled participants are Eve and the apple, which the subject and object nominals
refer to as unitary wholes. Yet only certain facets of these entities figure directly in the
profiled relationship. Presumably involved are Eve’s hands, mouth, teeth, tongue, and
the upper parts of her alimentary canal, but not her hair, knees, or ovaries. Likewise,
only certain portions of the apple are probably consumed (not the stem, core, or
seeds), although the term apple refers to the entire fruit. (Langacker (1991: 455)
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QUESTION: What metonymy is being used.

Recall the distinction we made between profile and base. In metonymy there is a sort of
deviance in the profile chosen to be imposed on the base.
(13)
a. I can hear the piano.
b. I can hear the sound of the piano.
The first sentence uses the metonymy THE INSTRUMENT FOR THE SOUND IT MAKES.

therefore leaves the musical instrument’s sound unprofiled in the base. The second sentence
makes direct reference to the sound. The sound, then, figures directly in the profile of the
sentence.
As a final example, consider the following line taken from Ted Hughes’s poem “The
Thought-Fox”:
(14) The window is starless still.
QUESTION: Would you say that this line contains a metaphor or a metonymy?

Metaphor vs. metonymy :

To recapitulate:
In metonymy we make reference to an implicit structure (the target) via an explicit structure
(the reference point) within the context of the same domain.
Put another way: the structure chosen for the profile (the reference point) tends to be more
salient (more easily accessible) than the entity it stands for (the target).
In metaphor, on the other hand, we conceive of a target domain in terms of source domain
via ontological and epistemic correspondences. Source domains tend to more tangible target
domains
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Ordinary language vs. poetic language

This approach to metaphor and metonymy is equally applicable to ordinary language as it is
to poetic language. Why? Because poetic language makes use of the same general cognitive
mechanisms as ordinary language; for example:
A. The ability to conceive one domain of experience in terms of another (i.e.,
metaphor).
B. The ability to use an explicit structure of a domain to refer to another implicit
structure in that same domain (i.e., metonymy).
The difference between the two types of language lies in the fact that, whereas ordinary
language tends to rely upon more conventional instantiations of such “figures of thought,”
poetic language relies upon less conventional uses, which oftentimes take the form of very
surprising and unexpected syntagmatic combinations
This accounts for the relative transparency of ordinary language and the relative opaqueness
of poetic language.