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view, at least in the epistemic sense, it is no longer the subject who undergoes a force and is driven along a deductive path; reality itself evolves in a structured world: ‘‘there is an essential force-dynamic element to our conception of its struc- ture, which we can see as constraining and influencing elements that unfold within it’’ (Langacker 1991: 276). Langacker nevertheless holds that his account is not necessarily incompatible with Sweetser’s, since the speaker is the person respon- sible for assessing the structure of reality and the future course of events (274). Achard’s (1996, 1998) analysis of the French modals pouvoir ‘can’ and devoir ‘must’ combineselements from both Sweetser’s and Langacker’s analyses. Following Sweetser, Achard (1998: 145–59) uses the terms ‘‘force’’ and ‘‘barrier’’ to define the root senses of these French modals: in (39), pouvoir meaning ‘possibility’ expresses the removal or the absence of a (potential) external barrier or obstacle, which stands between the subject and the accomplishment of the infinitival process. 15 (39) Il peut venir vous voir demain. ‘He can come and see you tomorrow.’ As such, the root meaning of pouvoir differs from its uses as a main verb as in (40), where it expresses ability: (40) Marie est forte, elle peut soulever cent kilos. ‘Marie is strong, she is able to lift one hundred kilos.’ Indeed, whereas in (40) the subject can be identified with the locus of potency, in (39), the locus of potency can be identified with external factors removing the barrier. Thus, as was already pointed out by Langacker, the locus of potency gets more diffused; at the same time, however, the speaker gets more and more in- volved, since he or she is aware of these external circumstances, whereas the subject is not. Figure 12 . 4. Langacker’s (1991: 277) dynamic evolutionary model 310 walter de mulder The same holds with respect to devoir’s root meaning of obligation, where the locus of potency (Talmy’s Antagonist) is also associated, not with the subject, but with the speaker (41) or with a more diffused source of obligation (42): (41) Vous devez rentrer  aa six heures. ‘You must come back at six o’clock.’ (42) Les e ´ tudiants doivent respecter leurs professeurs. ‘The students must respect their teachers.’ As far as the epistemic senses are concerned, Achard (1996: 10) again follows Langacker, stating that pouvoir places the process in potential reality, whereas devoir places it in projected reality: (43) Je ne vois pas de lumi  eere, il peut ne rentrer que demain. ‘I do not see any light, he may only come back tomorrow.’ (44) Il a laisse ´ la porte ouverte, il doit revenir bient ^ oot. ‘He left the door open, he must be coming back soon.’ (Achard 1998: 160) Here, the locus of potency is equated with the world and its evolution, but, ac- cording to Achard (1998: 166), it is then necessarily ‘‘speaker-internal, because considerations about the world and its evolution are only accessible to the speaker by the mental operations of observation and analysis.’’ At the same time, Achard stresses that the speaker’s control over the com- plement increases, as is suggested by the fact that infinitives following savoir and pouvoir in their epistemic sense can take perfect or passive markers (45), whereas this is not possible when these verbs express ability or capacity (46). (45)a.Il doit e ˆ tre enferme ´ , je l’entends crier. ‘He must be locked up; I can hear him scream.’ b. Il peut ne pas avoir compris, il faudrait re ´ pe ´ ter. ‘He might not have understood, we should repeat.’ (46)a.*Il sait avoir nage ´ . *‘He knows how to have swum.’ b. ? Il peut e ˆ tre enferme ´ dans le placard. ‘He can be locked up in the closet.’ (Achard 1996 : 3–4) That the speaker exerts conceptual control over the complement should not come as a surprise, since the epistemic uses of savoir and devoir express the evaluation by the speaker, and not the subject, of the force of the evolutionary momentum. 5. Force-Dynamics in Syntax Langacker’s (1990; 1991: 282) analysis of grammatical relations confirms the rele- vance of force-dynamic notions to syntax. Langacker defines clause structure with respect to two folk models, the ‘‘billiard-ball model’’ and the ‘‘stage model,’’ whose force dynamics 311 combination yields the ‘‘canonical event model’’ (Langacker 1991: 286). In keeping with the stage model, events are conceived as observed from an external vantage point by a viewer; in accordance with the billiard-ball model, events are conceived as consisting of discrete objects moving about and interacting energetically. This model is reflected in the prototypical transitive clause, which ‘‘profiles an action chain involving the transmission of energy from the subject to the object, with the former being agentive and the latter undergoing a change of state’’ (Langacker 1990: 220). 16 These ideas are illustrated in examples (47)–(50): (47) Floyd hit/broke the glass with the hammer. (48) The hammer hit/broke the glass. (49) The glass easily broke. (50) Floyd hit the hammer against the glass. The examples also show that different portions of the event expressed may receive attention: (47) focuses on the even t as a whole, (48) on the interaction between the instrument and the patient, (49) on the patient’s state of change, and (50)onthe agent’s manipulation of the instrument. Although for a full analysis of clause struc- ture, other elements, such as the distinction between dependent and autonomous parts (Langacker 1991: 286–91), must be taken into account, the force-dynamic analysis of clause structure permits an initial characterization of central grammatical notions such as ‘subject’ and ‘direct object’. The subject is the head of the profiled portion of the action chain or the participant that is farthest upstream with respect to the energy flow, whereas the object is the tail of the profiled portion of the action chain (Langacker 1990; 1991: 310). At first sight, these definitions are not schematic enough, since they do not seem to apply to examples with symmetric predicates such as (51) (Langacker 1991: 311): (51) a. Joshua resembles Jonathan. b. Jonathan resembles Joshua. However, there is still some asymmetry in these sentences: in (51a), Jonathan serves as the standard of comparison for the evaluation of Joshua, whereas in (51b), this relation is reversed. Thus, in (51a), Joshua is the Figure and Jonathan is the Ground, whereas in (51b), Joshua is the Ground and Jonathan is the Figure. Consequently, Langacker (1990: 222; 1991: 313) defines the subject as the Figure of the relationship profiled by the verb and the object as the ‘‘secondary clausal Figure’’ (Langacker 1991: 324). At the same time, these definitions can still be held to reflect the action- chain structure, since the starting point and the end point attract more attention than the other elements (322). Since the force-dynamic canonical event model provides a coherent basis for the prototypical notion of transitivity (Langacker 1991: 302 refers to Rice 1987 for this idea; see also Kemmer and Verhagen 1994: 126), clauses whose structure is similar to the prototypical transitive one, will, as Kemmer and Verhagen (1994: 127) argue, be based onthe same force-dynamic model. Instances of such clauses are what Kemmer 312 walter de mulder and Verhagen (1994) call the intransitive causative construction (52) and the transitive causative construction (53): (52) I made Mary cry. (53) I made her eat some cake. In their view, the intransitive causative schema preserves the force-dynamic struc- ture of transitivity and consequently shows subject and direct object marking just as in a simple transitive clause; the transitive causative schema, on the other hand, is modeled either on the structure of the ditransitive clause or on the model of clauses containing an instrumental phrase, such as I hit it with a hammer: in the first case, the clause contains subject, object, and indirect object marking on the three par- ticipants; in the second, it contains an instrumental participant. Causative con- structions are thus again presented as ultimately based on a fundamental force- dynamic pattern. 6. Conclusion Force dynamics, as proposed by Talmy, is a fundamental notion which underlies grammatical categories, such as modal verbs in English, and which structures the meanings of many lexical items. The notion has proved useful for analyzing various linguistic expressions (prepositions, conjunctions, logic-gators, etc.), as well as sen- tence structure and grammatical notions such as ‘subject’ and ‘object’. Despite the fruitfulness of the notion, a lot of questions remain to be answered, especially concerning the relation of force dynamics to other linguistic and nonlinguistic systems, its use in structuring nonphysical domains (by metaphorical transfer or not?), and its exact nature (preconceptual, image-schematic or not?). Moreover, Talmy (2000, 462–67) has suggested that further research is needed on some pa- rameters of the force-dynamic system (e.g., Is the force-exerting entity localized or distributed? Is the force exerted uniformly or does it change?). In the end, then, force dynamics is not only an essential grammatical category, but also a rich area of research. NOTES 1. All examples in section 2 are taken from Talmy (2000: 409–70). 2. This connection between ‘causing’ and ‘letting’ is confirmed by the analysis of Dutch laten and doen as expressing indirect and direct causation, respectively (Verhagen and Kemmer 1997). force dynamics 313 3. Earlier analyses treated causation as an atomic notion—often represented as cause (McCawley 1968); and even those treatments that mentioned a more detailed set of factors (Shibatani 1973; Jackendoff 1976; and Talmy 1976, 1985) ‘‘were still founded upon an unanalyzed notion of primitive causation’’ (Talmy 2000 : 428). 4. The idea of ‘‘negative causation’’ as a further type of causation is presented by Soares da Silva (1999, 2003) as the meaning unifying the different senses of the verb deixar. 5. Four syntactic and morphological properties define the core modal verbs (can, may, must, shall, will, need, dare, had better, and ought): ‘‘lack of to for the infinitive form of the following verb, lack of -s for the third-person singular, postposed not, and inversion with the subject as in questions’’ (Talmy 2000: 440–41). Verbs such as have to, be supposed to, be to, and get to are considered to be ‘‘honorary modals,’’ because, although syntactically regular, their meanings and uses are comparable to those of the core modals. 6. Jackendoff (1990: 125) rejects the definition of theme as ‘‘the thing affected,’’ an analysis which derives, in his view, ‘‘from the notion of Theme as a default case-marker, like Fillmore’s (1968) Objective case.’’ 7. It would be preferable to identify Antagonist with Actor. 8. Likewise, Boye (2001: 31–32) points out that the Danish ‘‘force modals’’ burde ‘ought to’, ma ˚ tte(-n) ‘must’, skulle ‘shall’, and ville ‘will’—that is, those that are defined using the notion of force and that express necessity and probability—take directional complements: Det bør/ma ˚ (-n)/skal/vil frem. it ought/must/shall/will out-dir ‘It ought/must/shall/will be brought to light.’ 9. The number of meanings to be distinguished in English modals varies from author to author; Sweetser (1990), for instance, also distinguishes speech act modality, whereas other authors think this is ‘‘pragmatically reducible’’ to one of the other kinds of modality (Boye 2001: 36); see Mortelmans (this volume, chapter 33) for more details. 10. ‘‘Root’’ meaning, as defined by Sweetser (1990) is broader than ‘‘deontic’’ modality, which is first and foremost associated ‘‘with the more narrow notion of social and moral obligation alone’’ (Johnson 1987: 50). Johnson himself shares Sweetser’s (broader) character- ization of root modality, which is also found in Langacker (1991: 246, note 4) and Achard (1998: 126), although the latter seems to regard ‘‘deontic’’ as a synonym to ‘‘root’’; see Mortelmans, this volume, chapter 33, note 5). 11. The question is further complicated by the fact that Johnson (1987: 46), Sweetser (1990: 60), and Pelyva ´ s(1996: 138) also describe our reasoning processes as invoking the idea of a journey through space. 12. Boye (2001: 36) calls the domain of ability the ‘‘dynamic’’ domain and holds it to be basic for the analysis of the Danish modals. 13. Some authors even cast doubt on the polysemy view as such; see Mortelmans, this volume, chapter 33. 14. See also Lampert and Lampert (2000: 238–39) on the different views of Talmy and Johnson concerning the shared nature of (pre)conceptual patterns. 15. The distinction between ‘‘force’’ and ‘‘barrier’’ modals is also made by Boye (2001) for Danish modal verbs. 16. For largely compatible ideas, loosely inspired by Talmy’s (1972, 1976) analyses of causatives, see Croft (1991: 165–82). 314 walter de mulder REFERENCES Achard, Michel. 1996. French modals and speaker control. In Adele E. Goldberg, ed., Conceptual structure, discourse and language 1–15. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. Achard, Michel. 1998. Representation of cognitive structures: Syntax and semantics of French sentential complements. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Belie ¨ n, Maaike. 2002. Force dynamics in static prepositions: Dutch aan, op, and tegen. In Hubert Cuyckens and Gu ¨ nter Radden, eds., Perspectives on prepositions 185–209. Tu ¨ bingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Boye, Kasper. 2001. The force-dynamic core meaning of Danish modal verbs. Acta Lin- guistica Hafniensia 33: 19–66. Bybee, Joan L. 1988. Semantic substance vs. contrast in the development of grammatical meaning. Berkeley Linguistics Society 14: 247–64. Bybee, Joan L., and William Pagliuca. 1985 . 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Introduction This chapter presents an overview of cognitive linguistic research in spatial se- mantics, in other words, investigations into the meaning of spatial language that regard language as an integrated part of human cognition. This rather broad def- inition is meant to cover not only the type of research that can be said to con- stitute ‘‘the prototype’’ within Cognitive Linguistics (e.g., by Lakoff, Langacker, and Talmy), but also research that ‘‘deviates’’ from this prototype (e.g., by Jack- endoff, Levinson, and Sinha). Within the cognitive linguistic literature so far, there have been three sub- stantial edited volumes (Bloom et al. 1996;Pu ¨ tz and Dirven 1996; Hampe 2005), two special issues of the journal Cognitive Linguistics (1995, issues 1 and 2/3), a large number of monographs (Brugman 1981; Lindner 1981; Casad 1982; Cuyckens 1991; Vandeloise 1991; Durst-Andersen 1992; Svorou 1994; Regier 1996; Zlatev 1997; Takahashi 2001; Levinson 2003; Tyler and Evans 2003; Pourcel 2005), and numer- ous articles (e.g., Talmy 1983; Landau and Jackendoff 1993; Sinha and Kuteva 1995; Kreitzer 1997; Cienki 1998; Pederson et al. 1998; Engberg-Pedersen 1999; Sinha and Jensen de Lo ´ pez 2000; Tyler and Evans 2001; Goddard 2002)—all of these dedi- cated largely to spatial semantics. A natural question is: why has spatial meaning received such extensive attention? One reason is universality. Space pertains to a central and universal aspect of human experience, and thus constitutes a good searching ground for linguistic universals, as exemplified in the work of, for instance, Talmy (1975, 1983, 1985, 1988, 2000). Conversely, the demonstration of language-specific patterns of semantic and possibly conceptual categorization in this type of domain would provide a strong case for ‘‘linguistic relativity’’ (Whorf 1956; Pourcel 2005) or at least ‘‘lin- guistic mediation’’ (Vygotsky 1978; Bowerman 1996; Pederson et al. 1998; Levinson 2003). The second major reason for the focus of Cognitive Linguistics on spatial se- mantics has to do with the supposed basic nature of space. It has long been known that there are strong parallels between space and other semantic domains, reflected in the fact that the same expressions often take spatial, temporal, and other more abstracts meanings, as seen in expressions such as from here to there, from now to tomorrow, and from me to you (Gruber 1965; Anderson 1971; Clark 1973). The stan- dard cognitive linguistic explanation of this parallelism is conceptual metaphor, that is, a systematic asymmetric mapping between two experiential domains where the more abstract domain is understood in terms of the more concrete one (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1987; Grady, this volume, chapter 8). Since space appears to be more concrete than the domains it maps onto, its structure is expected to be mapped onto these domains: ‘‘space is at the heart of all conceptualization’’ (Putz and Dirven 1996: xi); ‘‘abstract domains are consistently conceptualized in terms of spatial image schemata’’ (Kreitzer 1997: 317). If that is indeed the case, an under- standing of spatial categorization would provide the key to human conceptual cat- egorization in general. However, the metaphorical interpretation of the space/nonspace analogy is not uncontroversial, other possible explanations being historical processes of gram- maticalization (Heine, Claudi, and Hu ¨ nnemeyer 1991) or fundamental properties of mental representation rendering space and other domains partially isomorphic (Langacker 1987; Jackendoff 1990). In both cases, it would be possible to argue that space is not experientially more basic than, for example, time (Engberg-Pedersen 1999; Evans 2003). At the same time, this controversy has itself sparked research into the supposed primacy of space (see section 5.4). The overall structure of this chapter is as follows. Section 2 sets the stage by addressing two important preliminary questions, each of which allows for several answers: What is to be regarded as ‘‘spatial language’’? and How can spatial se- mantics be studied from the nonmodular, interdisciplinary perspective of Cog- nitive Linguistics? Despite substantial differences between the various approaches to spatial semantics, one can discern a basic set of spatial semantic concepts within the literature, which is presented and discussed in section 3. Section 4 provides a brief review of the empirical basis for such generalizations, showing an initial focus on European languages, but a gradual movement toward non-Indo-European languages and eventually more general typological frameworks. Section 5 takes up four controversies, often discussed in connection with spatial semantics, but of more general significance for linguistic theory; reviewing these gives an idea of the ‘‘problem space’’ that an explanatorily adequate theory of spatial meaning would need to negotiate. The chapter concludes with a summary and some anticipations for further research in spatial semantics. spatial semantics 319 . hit/broke the glass with the hammer. (48) The hammer hit/broke the glass. (49) The glass easily broke. (50) Floyd hit the hammer against the glass. The examples also show that different portions of the. characterization of central grammatical notions such as ‘subject’ and ‘direct object’. The subject is the head of the profiled portion of the action chain or the participant that is farthest upstream. (47) focuses on the even t as a whole, (48) on the interaction between the instrument and the patient, (49) on the patient’s state of change, and (50)onthe agent’s manipulation of the instrument.