Cognitive linguists share the belief that language is based in our experience of the world. Although scientific in its claims, cognitive linguistics appeals to the intuitive feeling that our ability to use language is closely related to what goes on in our minds when we look at the things and situations around us and form mental images of them.
This book provides a basic and intelligible introduction to all the major issues in the field, including impor-tant recent developments such as conceptual blending.
Author(s): Friedrich Ungerer; Hans-Jörg Schmid
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 384
Preface to the second edition/vii
Typographical conventions/ix
Introduction/1
1 Prototypes and categories/7
1.1 Colours, squares, birds and cups: early empirical research into lexical categories/7
1.2 The internal structure of categories: prototypes, attributes, family resemblances and gestalt/24
1.3 Context-dependence and cultural models/45
2 Levels of categorization/64
2.1 Basic level categories of organisms and concrete objects/64
2.2 Superordinate and subordinate categories/76
2.3 Conceptual hierarchies/85
2.4 Categorization and composite word forms/92
2.5 Basic level categories and basic experiences: actions, events, properties, states and locations/101
3 Conceptual metaphors and metonymies/114
3.1 Metaphors and metonymies: from figures of speech to conceptual systems/114
3.2 Metaphors, metonymies and the structure of emotion categories/132
3.3 Metaphors as a way of thinking: examples from science and politics/144
3.4 Thinking in metonymies: potential and limitations/154
4 Figure and ground/163
4.1 Figure and ground, trajector and landmark: early research into prepositions/163
4.2 Figure, ground and two metaphors: a cognitive explanation of simple clause patterns/176
4.3 Other types of prominence and cognitive processing/191
5 Frames and constructions/207
5.1 Frames and scripts/207
5.2 Event-frames and the windowing of attention/218
5.3 Language-specific framing and its use in narrative texts/230
5.4 Construction Grammar/244
6 Blending and relevance/257
6.1 Metaphor, metonymy and conceptual blending/257
6.2 Conceptual blending in linguistic analysis and description/268
6.3 Conceptual blending in advertising texts, riddles and jokes/280
6.4 Relevance: a cognitive-pragmatic phenomenon/288
7 Other issues in cognitive linguistics/300
7.1 Iconicity/300
7.2 Lexical change and prototypicality/312
7.3 Cognitive aspects of grammaticalization/321
7.4 Effects on foreign language teaching/328
Conclusion/343
