Steven Clancy

Cognitive Linguistics Spring 2004

Human Being, Language, and Mind: An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics

This course will explore the relatively new framework of Cognitive Linguistics. Topics will include metaphor and metonymy, prototypes, polysemy, categorization and conceptualization, blends, constructions, the embodiment of meaning, construal, grammaticalization, and language pedagogy, among others. The major ideas behind this linguistic theory will be grasped quickly, affording students the opportunity to begin applying this theoretical knowledge to their own interests through classroom assignments and a research project.

Readings will be drawn from the work of Croft, Janda, Fillmore, Lakoff & Johnson, Langacker, Sweetser, Talmy, Turner, Wierzbicka, and others. Additional readings will take up topics from neuroscience, philosophy (phenomenology), literature (poetic and non-poetic metaphor, structure of parable/myth/fairy tale, etc., especially as related to the work of Tolkien and the Inklings), and other disciplines. The course will be of interest to students in linguistics, literature, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, music, language teaching and learning, and other fields.

NO PREREQUISITES: Open to both undergraduates and graduates. Familiarity with at least one language, ancient or modern, is recommended, no other linguistic knowledge is assumed.

Selected Readings from:
* Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff & Johnson) * Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (Lakoff) * Concept, Image and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar (Langacker) * The Abolition of Man (Lewis) * Introduction to Phenomenology (Sokolowski) * The Literary Mind (Turner) * "Cognitive Linguistics" (Janda) * Philosophy in the Flesh (Lakoff & Johnson) * "Force dynamics in language and cognition" (Talmy) * "The relation of grammar to cognition" (Talmy) * "On Fairy-Stories" (Tolkien) * "Frame Semantics" (Fillmore) * Semantic Primes (Wierzbicka) * Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words (Wierzbicka) *

Selections or Articles:
Chesterton, G.K. "The Ethics of Elfland", in Orthodoxy.
Fillmore, Charles. 1982. "Frame Semantics", Linguistics in the Morning Calm, The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.). Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co.
Fillmore, Charles, et al. The Frame Net Project.
Fillmore, Charles J., Christopher R. Johnson, and Miriam R. L. Petruck. 2003. "Background to FrameNet," International Journal of Lexicography 16(3), 235-250.
    NOTE: available in on-line journals through Regenstein as PDF file.
Goddard, Cliff. 2002. "The search for the shared semantic core of all languages" in Ch 1 (pp. 5-40) of Meaning and Universal Grammar -
    Theory andEmpirical Findings, vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Janda, Laura. 2000. "Cognitive Linguistics". SLING2K Position Paper.
Oakes, Edward T. 1993. "Discovering the American Aristotle," in First Things 38 (December), pp. 24-33. 
Peirce, C.S. Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs in PDF
Talmy, Leonard. "Force dynamics in language and cognition," in Toward a Cognitive Semantics, vol. 1. [amazon.com $35.00]
Talmy, Leonard. "The relation of grammar to cognition," in Toward a Cognitive Semantics, vol. 1. [amazon.com $35.00]
Tolkien, J.R.R. 1965. "On Fairy-Stories", Tree and Leaf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. [Also available in The Tolkien Reader [amazon.com $6.99]

Course Syllabus

Course syllabus

Guest Lectures

Homework Questions and Problem/Data Sets

Analyze the data to make sense of the word guy in English.

Some things to think about:
• What is the main meaning (prototype) for Engl guy?
• What are the other meanings and how are they related?
• What other issues arise?

Clancy, Steven J. 1999. "The Ascent of Guy", American Speech 74(3):282-97.

HW#2: Metaphors around you.

Come up with about 15 metaphors that you hear or see in the next couple of days (draw from conversations, tv, newspapers, internet, etc.), providing a glimpse into the metaphorical language that is all around us.

Some things to think about:

• How are the metaphors structured? What are their sources?
• How well do the metaphors work (for example, in advertisements)?
• Do you understand the sources or are they obscured?

HW#4: Metaphors we ought to live by?
Questions available on the class handout.

HW#5: Additional questions from #3 and #4
Write up an additional question from either #3 or #4.

HW#6: Dative Verbs in Czech
The dative case in Czech is a good example of polysemy (multiple meanings) of a grammatical category. Verbs with the meanings below all govern the dative case in Czech. Many of these verbs can take both a direct object (in accusative) and an indirect object (in dative), but others have no accusative object, only a dative object. Can you figure out what the dative case means? Can you identify a central meaning and/or major related meanings? (Hint: the word ÒdativeÓ comes from the Latin word meaning ÔgiveÕ and all of this seems to have something to do with human beings as Òdatives of manifestationÓ as well.)
Data available on the class handout in abbreviated form (English meanings only) and with full Czech data.

HW#7: Prepositions
Think about the meaning of a single preposition in English or another language that you know. What is the central meaning and what are the sub-meanings? How many meanings are present? Can you account for the data you find?

HW#8: Polish GEN sg in -a or -u
Hard stem masculine nouns in Polish have a Genitive singular ending in either -a or -u. In general, the genitive case expresses possession, the meanings of Engl 'of', quantity, and some other meanings dealing with goals and sources. The -a ending is used with nouns that refer to human beings, animate beings (e.g., animals), and facultative animates (inanimate nouns that are treated as animates (weÕll deal with these in a separate homework question). In addition to these predictable uses of -a, the items in the -a column below also take GENsg -a. Most inanimate nouns use the -u ending, however. Can you account for the alternation with GENsg -a/-u in hard masculine nouns in Polish? How is the category structured? DATA available here in PDF format.

HW#9: Polish Nominative Plural Endings
Here is a data set on forms of the Nominative Plural in Polish for hard-stem masculine nouns that refer to human beings (soft-stem nouns don't show any variation, so they aren't interesting for our purposes). There are basically 3 endings here (-y, -i, -owie) and it is your job to figure out their distribution. For reasons that you don't want to know any more about, historical -i can be spelled -y and historical -y can be spelled -i; just take our word for it that this distinction is perceived by native speakers due to alternations of stem final consonant which happen with historical -i, but not with historical -y. Note also that male animals, inanimates, and all things female have NOMpl in -y (hard stems, at least). The format in the data set lists NOMsg, NOMpl, an English gloss, and the breakdown of historical -i/-y.

HW#10: Human Beings in Human Language
What does it mean to be a human being in language? In what ways does this correspond to what it means to be a human being in general? [Despite the way it might sound, this is not a trivial question. I'll put up some hints if you'd like, though there are many ways to tackle this one from the perspective of many languages.]

HW#11: Reflecting on Langacker, Part 1
This handout contains a few questions to get you started. This is what I handed out on Monday of 6th Week, but it includes a second page as well.

HW#12: Reflecting on Langacker, Part 2
Another handout of questions for Langacker.

HW#13: Reflecting on Langacker, Part 3
What's going on with až and než in Czech? DATA.

HW#14: Five Retro Questions
On metaphors, mothers, lexical semantics, etc.

    As a preview:

On lexical semantics and historical change:
Is drunk still the past participle (or whatever you want to call it) of drink? Or has drank replaced it leaving drunk purely as an adjective? Why might this be the case? Likewise, why does drink without any specified object automatically trigger alcohol as the substance?

HW#15: Talmy's grammatical and lexical systems
Make an outline of all the terms and categories presented in Talmy's "The relation of grammar to cognition" with short definitions for your own reference.

HW#16: Engl like
Data set and questions in the handout given out in class (this one isn't posted due to the author's request).

HW#17: Development of Modal Constructions
In response to those who would dismiss all statements of value and first principles, C.S. Lewis states "that an ought must not be dismissed because it cannot produce some is as its credential" (Abolition of Man, chapter 2). Without acceptance of first principles, no amount of logical reasoning will explain the motive for duty constructions. Considering the extensions of ÔhaveÕ to modal duty contexts in Czech and Polish, we may take Lewis literally and out of context and discover that, while we cannot derive an  ought from an is, we do appear to be able to derive an ought from a has. Respond to this statement, taking into account what you know about the meanings and uses of modals such as should and ought and the semantics of have. How do we account for such modal constructions given what Talmy and Sweetser say about force dynamics?

HW#18: Language and the Brain, part 1
Respond to Dr. Small's talk. What does a linguist need to know about the brain?

HW#19: Language and the Brain, part 2
Is language innate or learned? Is there a critical period for language learning? Is language localized or global in the brain? Respond.

HW#20: "uh" words in English
-uck, -ug, -unk, -ung, -utt, -ud, -unt, -und, -up, -ub, -ump, -umb, -utch, -udge, -urch, -um, -ush, -usk, -urd, -un-, -url, -unch
One can discuss the arbitrary character of the signifier-signified relationship, yet one can also wonder what happens as a linguistic system continues to develop over time. Do the forms of individual words take on meaning as well? Do individual sounds take on a meaning of their own? What can you make of the sound ÒuhÓ in the following list of English words (this is meant to be comprehensive, let me know if you find additional words). DATA

HW#21: Peirce, Semiotics, and Abduction
Comment on some aspect of Peirce's "Logic as Semiotics".

HW#22: Turner's Notion of Parable
Questions on page one of this PDF.

HW#23: Blends
Questions on page two of this PDF.

HW#24: Mythunderstanding Tolkien*

REASON: Why do you call these ideas myths?
[STEPHEN] PINKER: Because theyÕre wrong.

*NOTE: Not my pun. Blame Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: Man and Myth.
**NOTE: from October 2002, "Biology vs. the Blank Slate. Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker deconstructs the great myths about how the mind works."

HW#Anytime: Response Paper
Respond to any reading we've done in this course or make up a question of your own or develop your own data set.

Course Mini-Conference

Schedule

Panels

Jessica M. Clapp: Meaning of luck in English

Ryan Rubin: Meaning of Engl just

Sara Behrman: The Metaphor of Light in the Bible

Jess Lent: "A New Language of Color": the Successes of Advertising

Aaron Turon: Programming Languages and Cognitive Linguistics

Hilary Kabak: The Dative

Michael Ellsworth: Uzbek Converbs and Hindi-Urdu Compound Verbs

Additional Selected Bibliography

See especially the academic journal Cognitive Linguistics. Currently housed at University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, edited by Adele Goldberg. Certain back-issues and current issues are available electronically through the Regenstein.

Also the bibliography to the Janda article we are reading as an introduction is great for Slavic related papers.

Croft, William. Radical Construction Grammar. [amazon.com $34.30]
Damasio, Antonio R. 1994/2000. Descartes' Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Quill/HarperCollins. [amazon.com $10.80] 
Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and The Mind's Hidden Complexities. [amazon.com $14]
Fillmore, Charles, et al. 2001. The FrameNet Project.
Goldberg, Adele. Constructions [amazon.com $27.50]
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. [amazon.com $15.40]
Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Volume One: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford University Press. [amazon.com $29.95]
Langacker, Ronald. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Volume Two: Descriptive Application. Stanford University Press. [amazon.com $29.95]
Langacker, Ronald. 1993. "Reference-point constructions," Cognitive Linguistics 4(1):1-38
Sweetser, Eve. From Etymology to Pragmatics : Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge University Press. [amazon.com $22]
Talmy, Leonard. "Force dynamics in language and cognition," in Toward a Cognitive Semantics, vol. 1. [amazon.com $35.00]
Talmy, Leonard. "The relation of grammar to cognition," in Toward a Cognitive Semantics, vol. 1. [amazon.com $35.00]
Wierzbicka, Anna, and Cliff Goddard, eds. 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and Empirical Findings, 2 vols. John Benjamins. [amazon.com $72 and amazon.com $72]
Wierzbicka, Anna. Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words. [amazon.com $39.95]

Some Cognitive Linguistics Related Web Sites:
International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA)
Mark Turner (Cognitive Linguistics, Blending, Metaphor)
Gilles Fauconnier (Cognitive Linguistics, Blending, Mental Spaces, Metaphor)
William Croft (Cognitive Linguistics, Radical Construction Grammar)
Laura Janda (Cognitive Linguistics, Slavic Linguistics)
Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard (Natural Semantic Metalanguage)
Charles Fillmore(FrameNet)
Paul Kay (color research, frame semantics, construction grammar)
Adele Goldberg (Construction grammar)
Antonio Damasio (Neuroscience)
Michael Tomasello (child language acquisition) 
Christopher Johnson (Construction Grammar, FrameNet)
Steven L. Small (Neurology and Brain Research Imaging Center)
Lawrence Zbikowski (Music and Cognitive Science)
Seana Coulson (Cognitive Linguistics, Blending)