Absolute Phrase INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS TRUONG VAN ANH SAIGON UNIVERSITY UNIT 3 Universals and variation in language, thought and experience Mention some semantic primes or primitives se[.]
INTRODUCTION TO COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS TRUONG VAN ANH SAIGON UNIVERSITY UNIT 3: Universals and variation in language, thought and experience Mention some semantic primes or primitives: semantic decomposition or componential analysis approach Some of the primitives Jackendoff proposes are [THING], [PLACE], [DIRECTION], [ACTION], [EVENT], [MANNER] and [AMOUNT] These ontological categories can be encoded in language For instance, each of these corresponds to a whquestion word, such as what, who, when and so on (4) What did you buy? A fish [THING] (5) Where is my coat? On the coat hook [PLACE] (6) Where did they go? Into the garden [DIRECTION] (7) What did you do? went to the cinema [ACTION] (8) What happened next? The toy fell out of the window [EVENT] (9) How did you cook the eggs? Slowly [MANNER] (10) How long was the fish? Over a meter (long) [AMOUNT] In addition to primitive ontological categories, the relations that hold between them are also primitives Consider example (11) (11) The statue is in the park The THEME of the sentence (what the sentence is about) is a particular [THING], lexicalized by the expression the statue Moreover, the statue is located with respect to a particular [LOCATION] Abstract states can also be structured in terms of the [PLACE-FUNCTION] relation, even though abstract states such as TROUBLE or LOVE cannot be construed as locations: (12) a John is in trouble b John is in love According to Jackendoff’s theory, the reason that the [PLACE-FUNCTION] relation can be applied to abstract states such as TROUBLE and LOVE is because these more abstract concepts are being structured in terms of more primitive ontological categories How many Gestalt principles? Perception: figure-ground segregation Human perception appears to automatically segregate any given scene into figure-ground organisation Perception: principle of proximity This principle holds that elements in a scene that are closer together will be seen as belonging together in a group This is illustrated in Figure 3.2 The consequence of the greater proximity of the dots on the vertical axis than on the horizontal axis means that we perceive the dots in this image as being organized into columns rather than rows Perception: principle of similarity This principle holds that entities in a scene that share visual characteristics such as size, shape or color will be perceived as belonging together in a group Perception: principle of closure This principle holds that incomplete figures are often completed by the perceptual system, even when part of the perceptual information is missing For instance, in Figure 3.5, we perceive a white triangle overlaid on three black circles, even though the image could simply represent three incomplete circles Perception: principle of continuity This principle holds that human perception has a preference for continuous figures This is illustrated in Figure 3.6 Here, we perceive two unbroken rectangles, one passing behind another, even though this is not what we actually see In fact, the shaded rectangle is obscured by the first, so we have no direct evidence that the shaded area represents one continuous rectangle rather than two separate ones Perception: principle of smallness Finally, we consider the principle of smallness This states that smaller entities tend to be more readily perceived as figures than larger entities This is illustrated in Figure 3.7 ... guidepost-based and projector-based Primary reference object is abbreviated to PRO, and secondary reference object to SRO Reference frames: ground-based (19) The grocery store is next to the office building... more primitive ontological categories How many Gestalt principles? Perception: figure-ground segregation Human perception appears to automatically segregate any given scene into figure-ground... principle holds that elements in a scene that are closer together will be seen as belonging together in a group This is illustrated in Figure 3. 2 The consequence of the greater proximity of the dots