Describe two relatively well developed theories of encyclopedic semantics

There are two relatively well developed theories of encyclopaedic semantics. The first is the theory of frame semantics, developed in a series of publications by Charles Fillmore (e.g., 1975, 1977, 1982, 1985; Fillmore & Atkins, 1992). A second theory is the theory of domains developed by Ronald Langacker (e.g., 1987).

Fillmore proposes that a semantic frame is a schematization of experience (a knowledge structure), which is represented at the conceptual level, and held in longterm memory. The frame relates the elements and entities associated with a particular culturally embedded scene from human experience. Thus, a word cannot be understood independently of the frame with which it is associated.

Langacker’s (e.g., 1987) theory of domains (like Fillmore’s theory of Frame Semantics), is based on the assumption that meaning is encyclopaedic, and that lexical concepts cannot be understood independently of larger knowledge structures. Langacker calls these knowledge structures domains.

25. Who found the theory of Idealized Cognitive Models (ICM)?

A third important theoretical development in cognitive semantics relates to George Lakoff ’s theory of Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs), developed in his now classic 1987 book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Like Fillmore’s notion of a semantic frame, and Langacker’s domains, ICMs are relatively stable background knowledge structures with respect to which lexical concepts are relativized. However, Lakoff ’s account was less concerned with developing an approach to encyclopaedic semantics than with addressing issues in categorization which emerged from developments in cognitive psychology.

26. Talmy’s open-class subsystem

Talmy argues that while no inventory of concepts expressible by open-class forms can ever be specified (because there is no limit to human experience, knowledge and understanding), there is a restricted inventory of concepts expressible by closed-class forms. Each individual language has access to this inventory, but it does not follow that any given language will exploit all the available possibilities. Thus, one of the major impulses behind Talmy’s work is to provide a descriptively adequate account of the major semantic content associated with the grammatical subsystem. He does this by identifying what he refers to as schematic systems within which closed-class elements appear to cluster. These systems include (at least) a configurational system, an attentional system, a perspectival system and a force-dynamics system. Thus, Talmy’s approach represents an attempt to characterize that aspect of our cognitive representation that is encoded by the closed-class subsystem, and to describe how that system is organized.

27. Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar

Cognitive Grammar is the theoretical framework that has been under development by Ronald Langacker since the mid 1970s, and is best represented in his two Foundations of Cognitive Grammar volumes published in 1987 and 1991. This is also arguably the most detailed and comprehensive theory of grammar to have been developed within cognitive linguistics, and to date has been the most influential.

Langacker’s approach attempts to model the cognitive mechanisms and principles that motivate and license the formation and use of symbolic units of varying degrees of complexity. Like Talmy, Langacker argues that grammatical or closed-class units are inherently meaningful. Unlike Talmy, he does not assume that open-class and closedclass units represent distinct conceptual subsystems.

Instead, Langacker argues that both types of unit belong within a single structured inventory of conventionalized linguistic units which represents knowledge of language in the mind of the speaker. Accordingly, Langacker’s model of grammar has a rather broader focus than Talmy’s.

For Langacker, knowledge of language (the mental grammar) is represented in the mind of the speaker as an inventory of symbolic units (Langacker, 1987, p. 73). It is only once an expression has been used sufficiently frequently and has become entrenched (acquiring the status of a habit or a cognitive routine) that it becomes a unit. From this perspective, a unit is a symbolic entity that is not built compositionally by the language system but is stored and accessed as a whole. Furthermore, the symbolic units represented in the speaker’s grammar are conventional. The conventionality of a linguistic unit relates to the idea that linguistic expressions become part of the grammar of a language by virtue of being shared among members of a speech community. Thus conventionality is a matter of degree. For instance, an expression like dog is more conventional (shared by more members of the English-speaking community) than an expression like allophone, which is shared only by a subset of English speakers with specialist knowledge relating to the study of linguistics. The role of entrenchment and conventionality in this model of grammar emerge from the usage-based thesis (see Langacker, 2000, for detailed discussion; see also Evans & Green, 2006, Chapter 4, for a review).

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1061