1.

Linguistics is not just about knowledge of the language (thats the focus of generative grammar), but language itself is a form of knowl-edge and has to be analyzed accordingly, with a focus on meaning.Conversely, Cognitive Linguistics is not the only linguistic approach focusing on meaning: there are diverse forms of functional approaches to language that go in the same direction. Teori prototype 3.1. Prototype theory Lakoff (1982a, 1982b, 1987) was one of the first to realize the important philosophical implications of prototype research for the functioning and the study of language. Although Roschs prototype theory uses psychological research methods, it represented a serious challenge for the tacit belief on the part of philosophers in Aristotelian classical views of categories. The basis of Aristotelian epistemology is that all members of a category, e.g. the category fruit, share some essential feature(s), that all category members have equivalent status as members, and that category boundaries are clear-cut. In contrast, Rosch showed that categorization is based on everyday experience and does not always lead to clear-cut categories with necessary and sufficient features. Rather more often than not, it leads to categories which have a clear center populated by prototypical members, and which have fuzzy boundaries that allow for marginal members which may

even overlap with other neighboring categories. Lets suppose that for the category fruit characteristic features such as sweet, soft, having seeds, and growing on bushes or trees are necessary and sufficient features. In this case several types of fruit would remain outside the category: lemons, because they are not sweet, avocados, because they are not necessarily soft, and bananas, because they have no obvious seeds. Strawberries are more like rhubarb because both grow on the ground, not on bushes or trees. Are

they fruits? Why is a strawberry a fruit, while rhubarb is not? All this fuzziness within or between categories suggests the necessity of a prototype view of categorization (Berlin and Kay 1969; Geeraerts 1989; Rosch 1973, 1977, 1978), which holds that categories do not reflect objective assemblies of features, but rather are man-made approximations consisting of clear, central or prototypical members such as apples, pears and oranges for the category fruit, and less central or even marginal members such as avocados, lemons and strawberries. Hence, members of a category do not have equivalent status and category boundaries are not clear-cut (nuts grow on trees but do not share any of the three other basic features). Categories are to some extent also based on family resemblances as shown by Wittgenstein (1953) for the German category Spiele games, which not only contains the category game, but also such diverse category members as a (sports) match, a (theater) play, and gambling for money. There is also psychological evidence for prototype effects in categorization. Statements about central members are processed far more quickly than statements about marginal members, and reasoning about any category is based on what is known about good examples of the category (Rosch 1978).

when describing categories analytically, most traditions of thought have treated category membership as a digital, all-or-none phenomenon. That is, much work in philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology assumes that categories are logical bounded entities, membership in which is dened by an items possession of a simple set of criterial features, in which all instances possessing the criterial attributes have a full and equal degree of membership. In contrast, it has

recently been argued ... that some natural categories are analog and must be represented logically in a manner which reects their analog structure (Rosch and Mervis 1975: 573574).