Power points at sil/~tuggyd

1. Power points at www.sil.org/~tuggyd

2. Crash Course in CG—Review A language isa structured inventoryof conventionallinguisticunits

3. Review • Association: Two concepts occur together in the mind. • All established cognitive relationships, besides whatever else they may be, are associations.

4. Review • Correspondence: two concepts are taken to be the same.

5. Review • A - -  B = Partial schematicity: The standard is recognized in distorted form in the target.

6. Review • A  B = Full schematicity: the standard is recognized without distortion in the target. • We are wired to like it when we find schematicity, especially full schematicity.

7. Review • A schema can have multiple subcases. • A subcase may instantiate multiple schemas. • Multiple relationships of these kinds show up in large and complex networks.

8. Review • Concepts in such networks typically differ in salience (cognitive prominence) • Relationships involving a prominent concept are more prominent.

9. Review • Classical categories, taxonomies, “family resemblances”, prototypes, radial categories, etc., can be read off such networks. • They are impoverish-ments of the richer network structure.

10. Review • You have a classical category when the prototype (most prominent member) and highest schema coincide.

11. Review • Most human categories are much more complex than classical categories. • Complex categories are ubiquitous in language.

12. End of Review • New stuff coming up …

13. Basic semantic structures: profile and base • CG claims that most (if not all) semantic structures consist of a profile (designatum, named entity) which “stands out in bas-relief” against the base (cognitive background). • This is doubtless related (if not in some sense identical) to the “figure/ground” phenomenon. • The meaning does not consist in either the profile alone or the base alone, but both, and each in relation to the other.

14. Profile and Base • The concept CIRCLE designates a simple closed curve in (2-d) space. • 2-d space is the base. • The closed curve is profiled (designated) • The profile stands outas figure against the ground. • (It’s diagrammed with the thickred line.) • This constitutes the semanticpole of the word circle.

15. Profile and Base • Any established concept can function as the base for other concepts. • CIRCLE functions as the base for ARC. • ARC in turn functionsas the base forCHORD.

16. Profile and Base • Sometimes the base is relatively simple. • The base for CIRCLE is the basic domain of space. • Basic domains have to do with very general areas of our perception of the world: • vision and perception of space • hearing • touch • smell • the passing of time • etc.

17. Profile and Base • The vast majority of concepts do not have only basic domains in their bases. • E.g. arc and chord, as we saw, have CIRCLE and ARC in their bases. CIRCLE and ARC function as non-basic domains in these cases. • It is normal to have many levels of non-basic domains in the base of a concept. • Consider how to define BATTING AVERAGE starting from basic domains. Good luck!

18. Profile and Base • It would be a bit like trying to define an albatross in terms of quarks. • Some domains can be more important (salient, prominent) for a meaning than others. • You can’t always identify a “most-important” domain. • In fact adjusting the prominences of domains is one of the things that different contexts do for/to you.

19. Profile and Base • The concept EM designates a letter in the (non-basic) domain of the alphabet (which is a sequence of letters.) • The letter isassociated witha family of orthographicforms.

20. Profile and Base • The letter is also associated with the sound [m] and the articulation that produces it. • This conceptis linked to the phono-logical pole [ˈem]. ˈem

21. Profile and Base • (The meaning is iconic to this phonological pole: to pronounce the phonological pole you must activate the articulation and sound designated in the meaning.)

22. Profile and Base • It is not clear that any of these domains is most prominent. • Obviously the phonological domains are very prominent. • But so is the domain ofthe alphabet. • And so is the domain ofwriting, and the 2-d shape(s)of the letter.

23. Profile and Base • Not everything in the base is equally prominent. • In the word abuela, the base includes prominently the domain of kinship. • Less prominent, but also relevant, are domains of age, human relationsand attitudes, etc.

24. Profile and Base • In the primary domain of kinship, a configuration of two generations is singled out for special prominence. • Within that configura-tion, a person in thesecond descendinggeneration has a special degree of prominence.

25. Profile and Base • That person —the “ego”— functions as a point of reference for the designated entity.

26. Profile and Base • The designated entity is a female two generations above ego. • In the secondary domains there are specifications such as affection for grandchildren, or expectation of ageover 50 years or so. • All of this, with the differences in promi-nence involved, functions as base forthe profiled person.

27. Profile and Base • In all these cases, the meaning is not the profile without the base, much less the base without the profile. It is the profile in relation to the base.

28. Profile and Base • The same base may be used for more than one profile. • GRANDPAhas much the samebase as doesGRANDMA. • It just designatesa different person.

29. Profile and Base • GRAND-DAUGHTER has basically the same base as GRANDMA • but it interchanges theprofile and the “ego”roles, • and it has differentspecifications in theminor domains.

30. Expectations and Instructions • Classical semantics didn’t want to mess with specifications that were not absolute. • It sought “necessary and sufficient” requirements for its categories. • But the fact is that you find tendencies or expectations in human categories, rather than absolute requirements. • They are defeasible, i.e. they can be contradicted or annulled, with differing degrees of difficulty.

31. Expectations and Instructions • It is possible, as a limiting case, for specifications to be absolute and indefeasible, but they are by far the minority among semantic specifications. • And they are by no means necessarily the most prominent or important to the meanings in ordinary humans’ minds. • It is better to think of all semantic specifications as expectations, but bear in mind that in a given usage any of them may be downplayed or even contradicted.

32. Expectations and Instructions • All the structures we are talking about are cognitive “routines” that are “run”, not static “things” you can find in the brain (or elsewhere). • When you communicate such a structure to someone else, you are implicitly instructing that person to run the appropriate routines. • There is a sense in which any meaning can be viewed as an instruction. • Process terminology (of certain types) fits in the model very well.

33. Encyclopedic meaning • The question arises: what is the extent of the base of a concept? • The answer CG (and CL generally) gives is: it includes whatever is conventionally known about the profiled element.

34. Encyclopedic meaning • Various lines of argument support this, including: • The impossibility of drawing consistent, motivated lines between “denotations” and “connotations” • This includes the very common cases where a “connotation” becomes a “denotation” over time, and vice versa. • The syntactic use of connections to very remotely connected pieces of meaning • The following is one example of this.

35. Encyclopedic meaning • We know many things about FIRE; some are central, others less so.

36. Encyclopedic meaning • We also know many things about TRUCK; some are central, others less so. • One thing we know about FIRE is that it can be dangerous, to people and forests and buildings.

37. Encyclopedic meaning • We also know that people especially in urban areas where there are many buildings, have special organizations responsible to prepare for the threat of fire and combat it if it happens.

38. Encyclopedic meaning • We know that the firepersons  have many kinds of special equipment that they use in combatting fires. • We know that among those things are trucks that they use to carry them and their equipment to a fire.

39. Encyclopedic meaning • It is not until you have gotten this far away from the central meanings of fire that you find a correspondence link to the profiled element of TRUCK.

40. Encyclopedic meaning • Such links are, on the CG view, the one essential component of syntactic linkages.

41. Encyclopedic meaning • Clearly, in this case, if you don’t get this correspondence, you don’t understand what FIRE TRUCK means.

42. Encyclopedic meaning • And of course, if the meaning FIRE excludes access to the fire-fighting scenario, the linkage cannot be made.

43. Encyclopedic meaning • Coming from the other side, TRUCK includes the information that there are specialized kinds of trucks used for particular purposes.

44. Encyclopedic meaning • Coming from the other side, a thing we know about TRUCKs is that there are specialized kinds of them used for particular purposes.

45. Encyclopedic meaning • Among those specialized trucks are those used for fighting fires. (There are actually several kinds of them.)

46. Encyclopedic meaning • It is only at this level of detail that a link is found for the profiled element of FIRE. • Actually, at this level there is are obvious corres-pondences between other specifications as well.

47. Encyclopedic meaning • The whole fire-fighting scenario corresponds between the two meanings. • This implies correspondences between the participants in the scenario.

48. Encyclopedic meaning • In any case, the point here is that you can’t describe what people understand when they join FIRE and TRUCK syntagmatically, without going a long way beyond what a dictionary entry would give you.

49. Encyclopedic meaning • Fwiw, if the redundancy of this analysis bothers you (the same semantic structures being part of both meanings), don’t worry too much. • Under CG, these are the same structures, not separate ones.

50. Encyclopedic meaning • This kind of argument leads to the conclusion that the base of a meaning is encyclopedic. • You needn’t always activate everything in it, but everything is available for activation as needed.