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Cognitive semantics is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of meaning and mind. The Handbook of Cognitive Semantics is the first reference work in the field. Edited by Thomas Fuyin Li, with a detailed taxonomy of the field by Leonard Talmy, it provides an overview of the basic topics and recent developments. Since its origins, cognitive semantics has grown greatly in the range and depth of its research on conceptual structure in language. The Handbook shows that cognitive semantics has become a mature discipline that advances linguistic meaning to a central place in research on cognition. This is the fourth volume in a set of four. It contains the following parts: Part X: Force and Causation Part XI: Attention Part XII: The Targeting System of Language
Volume Editor:
Cognitive semantics is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of meaning and mind. The Handbook of Cognitive Semantics is the first reference work in the field. Edited by Thomas Fuyin Li, with a detailed taxonomy of the field by Leonard Talmy, it provides an overview of the basic topics and recent developments. Since its origins, cognitive semantics has grown greatly in the range and depth of its research on conceptual structure in language. The Handbook shows that cognitive semantics has become a mature discipline that advances linguistic meaning to a central place in research on cognition. This is the second volume in a set of four. It contains the following parts: Part III: Essential Concepts Part IV: Semantic Categories Part V: Methodology Part VI: Models and Schemas
Volume Editor:
Cognitive semantics is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of meaning and mind. The Handbook of Cognitive Semantics is the first reference work in the field. Edited by Thomas Fuyin Li, with a detailed taxonomy of the field by Leonard Talmy, it provides an overview of the basic topics and recent developments. Since its origins, cognitive semantics has grown greatly in the range and depth of its research on conceptual structure in language. The Handbook shows that cognitive semantics has become a mature discipline that advances linguistic meaning to a central place in research on cognition. This is the third volume in a set of four. It contains the following parts: Part VII: Space and Time Part VIII: Event Typology Part IX: Meaning Construction
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In: Cognitive Semantics

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Although Lakoff and Johnson’s () theory of conceptual metaphor has been extremely popular and successful, it has been criticized in many respects, one of which is its alleged inconsistency. This criticism presupposes that the principle of non-contradiction is the most important pillar of scientific theorizing because its violation turns the theory into logical chaos. Against this background, the paper asks: What kinds of inconsistencies emerge in conceptual metaphor theory and how should they be evaluated? In order to give an answer, the authors introduce , (2022) p-model as a metatheoretical framework, with the help of which they analyse those arguments which charge conceptual metaphor theory with inconsistency. The authors conclude that if the dichotomy between inconsistency and consistency is replaced by the sophisticated distinctions among strong p-inconsistency, well-motivated permanent p-paraconsistency, temporary p-paraconsistency, and p-consistency, then the initial question can be answered in a straightforward manner.

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In: Cognitive Semantics

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In this paper, I make two sets of suggestions of how collostructional analysis can be updated. One set of suggestions involves simplifying the analysis for descriptive/exploratory purposes while at the same time enriching it with bootstrapped confidence intervals. The other set of suggestions involves the idea that we should move away from a single kind of association measure for theoretical/exploratory purposes and instead quantify collostructional attraction as a tuple of, minimally, three ideally orthogonal dimensions, namely frequency, association, and dispersion, because only this kind of analysis will be able to address all the dimensions that are relevant to cognitive/usage-based approaches to constructions. In addition, I end with a (renewed) plea to take the notion of construction more seriously: Rather than looking at associations of constructions to forms, which many studies have basically amounted to, I would like us to ‘go back to’ looking at associations of constructions to constructions, i.e. to take the meaning/functional pole of constructions more seriously again and include sense/function in all kinds of collostructional analyses more.

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In: Cognitive Semantics

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The purpose of this study is to account for the functions of reduplication Nigerian Pidgin in a more comprehensive way than in previous work, by shifting the focus away from de-contextualized assignments of unitary meaning, and toward a full range of context-sensitive readings. The data for the study come from Wazobia fm radio programmes, as well as interviews and focus group discussions with native speakers of the language. Reduplication is attested in word classes such as ideophones, adverbs, numerals, adjectives, nouns, verbs and pronouns in Nigerian Pidgin. Using a version of the prototype theory elaborated by Lakoff and other Cognitive linguists, I represent the various readings of reduplicative constructions for each word class as radial categories, and show that both central and peripheral meanings are attested, and are indeed motivated by varying degrees of family resemblance.

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In: Cognitive Semantics

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Based on the most recent research on emotion and, specifically, on contemporary aesthetic emotion theories, and combining methods from cognitive and historical linguistics, this paper aims at looking into the cognitive and semantic dimension of Old English literal and figurative denominators of wonder. Exploring how these terms are used in the Old English corpus, this paper highlights a recurrent use of literal emotion terms for wonder with varying semantics, and a wide array of figurative expressions that rely on the most common action tendencies and somatic profiles that are attributed to this emotion. This research stresses the rich variety that Old English authors had at their disposal when describing wonder-experiences and the many ways in which these authors described and narrated these emotional experiences, all of which, in extreme, reveals important information about the semantic dimension of these terms and identifiable patterns of conceptualisation for this emotion.

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In: Cognitive Semantics

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This paper explores the conceptualization differences between the prototypical categories of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) in English and Polish lexicalizations of these concepts in noun, verb, and adjective forms. Measures of valence, arousal, and dominance were collected and analyzed across the six semantic categories, between parts of speech and depending on the gender of the study participants for both languages. The results indicate that the basic emotion prototypes in both languages have common characteristics hinging broadly on valence but have unique language-specific patterns of valence, arousal, and dominance across individual emotion categories. Conceptualizations of emotions were found to be different between men and women and across languages, while language-specific patterns were found in part-of-speech effects. These results have serious implications for future study designs and research methodology at the intersection of cognition, emotion, and language and in cross-linguistic contexts.

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In: Cognitive Semantics
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This study investigates the significance of the construal of specificity in syntax, particularly in modification. In Cognitive Grammar, conceptualizing a situation can be either specific or conversely schematic. Namely, the two conceptualizations focus attention on greater or lesser detail of certain aspects of a situation. Each conceptualization describes the same content but in a peculiar way, and thus results in a distinct meaning. Making use of the language resources, the speaker can map the conceptualizations into different modes of modification: syntactic device by which a noun is accompanied by preceding and/or following modifiers. The aim of the study is to show that the use of a linguistic expression is motivated by the particular construal imposed on its conceptual content relative to communicative purposes. One of the key findings of the study is that specificity intensifies a description and makes it concrete, whereas schematicity attenuates a description and makes it abstract.

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In: Cognitive Semantics