Ten Lectures on Cognitive Modeling : Between Grammar and Language-Based Inferencing [1 ed.] 9789004439221, 9789004439214

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Ten Lectures on Cognitive Modeling

Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics Edited by Fuyin (Thomas) Li (Beihang University, Beijing) Guest Editors Cuiying Zhang, Junjie Jin and Shan Zuo (Beihang University, Beijing) Editorial Assistants Jing Du (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences), Na Liu and Cuiying Zhang (doctoral students at Beihang University) Editorial Board Jürgen Bohnemeyer (State University of New York at Buffalo, USA) – Alan Cienki (Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam, Netherlands and Moscow State Linguistic University, Russia) – William Croft (University of New Mexico, USA) – Ewa Dąbrowska (Northumbria University, UK) – Gilles Fauconnier (University of California, San Diego, USA) – Dirk Geeraerts (University of Leuven, Belgium) – Nikolas Gisborne (The University of Edinburgh, UK) – Cliff Goddard (Griffith University, Australia) – Stefan Th. Gries (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) – Laura A. Janda (University of Tromsø, Norway) – Zoltán Kövecses (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary) – George Lakoff (University of California, Berkeley, USA) – Ronald W. Langacker (University of California, San Diego, USA) – Chris Sinha (Hunan University, China) – Leonard Talmy (State University of New York at Buffalo, USA) – John R. Taylor (University of Otago, New Zealand) – Mark Turner (Case Western Reserve University, USA) – Sherman Wilcox (University of New Mexico, USA) – Phillip Wolff (Emory University, USA) – Jeffrey M. Zacks (Washington University, Saint Louis, USA) Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics publishes the keynote lectures series given by prominent international scholars at the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics since 2004. Each volume contains the transcripts of 10 lectures under one theme given by an acknowledged expert on a subject and readers have access to the audio recordings of the lectures through links in the e-book and QR codes in the printed volume. This series provides a unique course on the broad subject of Cognitive Linguistics. Speakers include George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, Leonard Talmy, Laura Janda, Dirk Geeraerts, Ewa Dąbrowska and many others.

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/dlcl

Ten Lectures on Cognitive Modeling Between Grammar and Language-Based Inferencing By

Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José, 1961- author. Title: Ten lectures on cognitive modeling : between grammar and  language-based inferencing / by Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza  Ibáñez. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Distinguished  lectures in cognitive linguistics, 24684872 | Includes  bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2020036019 (print) | LCCN 2020036020 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004439214 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004439221 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Cognitive grammar. | Psycholinguistics. | Inference. Classification: LCC P165 .R855 2020 (print) | LCC P165 (ebook) | DDC  415.01/835—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036019 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036020

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2468-4872 isbn 978-90-04-43921-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-43922-1 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Note on Supplementary Material vii Preface by the Series Editor viii Preface by the Author x About the Author xii 1

Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations 1

2

Metonymy, Inferencing, and Grammar 35

3

Metaphor, Inferencing and Grammar 68

4

Conceptual Complexes 99

5

Constraining Lexical-Constructional Integration through Metaphor and Metonymy 130

6

Implicational Constructions and Cognitive Modeling 161

7

Illocutionary Constructions and Cognitive Modeling 188

8

Discourse Constructions and Cognitive Modeling 223

9

Irony and Cognition 249

10

Modeling Hyperbolic Meaning 277 References 303 About the Series Editor 309 Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers 310

Note on Supplementary Material All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as handouts and PowerPoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via a QR code for the print version of this book. In the e-book both the QR code and dynamic links will be available which can be accessed by a mouse-click. The material can be accessed on figshare.com through a PC internet browser or via mobile devices such as a smartphone or tablet. To listen to the audio recording on hand-held devices, the QR code that appears at the beginning of each chapter should be scanned with a smart phone or tablet. A QR reader/ scanner and audio player should be installed on these devices. Alternatively, for the e-book version, one can simply click on the QR code provided to be redirected to the appropriate website. This book has been made with the intent that the book and the audio are both available and usable as separate entities. Both are complemented by the availability of the actual files of the presentations and material provided as hand-outs at the time these lectures were given. All rights and permission remain with the authors of the respective works, the audio-recording and supplementary material are made available in Open Access via a CC-BY-NC license and are reproduced with kind permission from the authors. The recordings are courtesy of the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics (http:// cifcl.buaa.edu.cn/), funded by the Beihang University Grant for International Outstanding Scholars.

The complete collection of lectures by Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez can be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi .org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5037212

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_001

Preface by the Series Editor The present text, entitled Ten Lectures on Cognitive Modeling: Between Grammar and Language-based Inferencing by Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, is a transcribed version of the lectures given by Professor Ruiz de Mendoza in November 2019 as the forum speaker for the 19th China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics. The China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics (http://cifcl.buaa .edu.cn/) provides a forum for eminent international scholars to give lectures on their original contributions to the field of Cognitive Linguistics. It is a continuing program organized by several prestigious universities in Beijing. The following is a list of organizers for CIFCL 19. Organizer: Fuyin (Thomas) Li: PhD/Professor, Beihang University Co-organizers: Yihong Gao: PhD/Professor, Peking University Baohui Shi: PhD/Professor, Beijing Forestry University Yuan Gao: PhD/Professor, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Xu Zhang: PhD/Professor, Beijing Language and Culture University The text is published, accompanied by its audio disc counterpart, as one of the Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics. The transcriptions of the video, proofreading of the text and publication of the work in its present book form have involved many people’s strenuous efforts. The initial transcripts were completed by Cuiying Zhang, Shan Zuo, Wei Guo, Junjie Jin, Siqing Ma, Wangmeng Jiang and Wenjing Du. Junjie Jin and Shan Zuo made revisions to the whole text. We editors then made word-by-word and line-by-line revisions. To improve the readability of the text, we have deleted the false starts, repetitions, fillers like now, so, you know, OK, and so on, again, of course, if you like, sort of, etc. Occasionally, the written version needs an additional word to be clear, a word that was not actually spoken in the lecture. We have added such words within double brackets [[…]]. To make the written version readable, even without watching the film, we’ve added a few “stage directions”, in italics also within double brackets: [[…]]. These describe what the speaker was doing, such as pointing at a slide, showing an object, etc. Professor Ruiz de Mendoza

Preface by the Series Editor

ix

made final revisions to the transcriptions; the published version is the final version approved by the speaker. Thomas Fuyin Li

Beihang University [email protected]

Cuiying Zhang

[email protected]

Preface by the Author Let me express my heartfelt gratitude to prof. Fuyin (Thomas) Li for inviting me to present ten lectures at the prestigious 19th China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics, held at Beihang University, Beijing, in November 2019. The lectures are focused on the study of the principles of cognitive modeling, which include insights into conceptual complexity, and how these principles can be applied to improve our understanding of different domains of linguistic enquiry, especially grammar, implicational structure, illocutionary meaning, discourse, and figurative language use. While many of the ideas presented in these lectures can be traced back to my previous published work, the Forum has provided me with an opportunity to discuss parallels and convergences among previous analyses and to offer the audience, and now the reader, more than just some reorganized materials. The ten lectures contain new work and ideas whose relevance against the background of previous research I have emphasized during the presentations. I feel very grateful for the input provided by those attending the lectures through their questions and observations. The Forum certainly provides a unique context for high-level discussion and for the exchange of ideas. It is my hope that the published version of the lectures will spur further debate in the future and that, taking it as a starting point, more research will be carried out in relation to the principles of cognitive modeling. I am convinced that these principles underlie much of the way in which languages are shaped and used for communication. While in Beijing, I was very positively impressed by the wonderful organization of the Forum. The work of all the volunteers was really commendable. I have been no less impressed by the rigorous post-Forum arrangements to take care of the transcription and publication of the lectures, a task that was conscientiously carried out by Cuiying (Wendy) Zhang, Shan (Amanda) Zuo, Wei (William) Guo, Junjie (King) Jin, Siqing (Margaret) Ma, Wangmeng (Doris) Jiang, and Wenjing (Sylvia) Du. To me these are more than the names of volunteers. These are the names of friends. They not only acted professionally by making every aspect of the organization run smoothly. They were also perfect hosts for me and my wife helping us in every possible way whenever it was needed. They certainly made us feel at home in Beijing. I wish all of them the very best in their careers and I am hopeful we will have future chances of interaction.

Preface by the Author

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Finally, special words of thanks go to my former doctoral student at the University of La Rioja, Spain, Wangmeng (Doris) Jiang. It was a great pleasure to see her again and to realize that the work that she carried out under my supervision while she was an international student in my university has yielded good fruits. Doris has a very special place in my heart. Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza February 10, 2020

About the Author Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez works on Cognitive Linguistics, Construction Grammar(s), inferential pragmatics and functional approaches to language. He has coordinated funded work on figurative language from scholars across Europe, many of them part of the Lexicom research group, which he co-founded (www.lexicom.es). He has published extensively on metaphor, metonymy, and illocution, and has created, with professor Ricardo Mairal, the Lexical Constructional Model. He has edited or co-edited several books: Cognitive Linguistics: Internal Dynamics and Interdisciplinary Interaction (2005, Mouton), Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives (2006, Mouton), Defining Metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics: Towards a Consensus View (2011, John Benjamins), Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space (2014, John Benjamins), The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse: Applications and Implications (2014, John Benjamins). He has authored or coauthored several books on linguistic theory, the most recent one being Cognitive Modeling: A Linguistic Perspective (2014, John Benjamins), which received the 2015 AESLA Research Award for experienced researchers. He serves or has served on the editorial and scientific boards of journals such as Miscelánea, Jezikoslovlje, ITL-International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Revue Romane, and Cognitive Linguistics. Former editor of the Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics, he has been the editor of the Review of Cognitive Linguistics, and co-editor of Applications of Cognitive Linguistics (Mouton de Gruyter) since their inception. Since January 2012 he has been co-editor of the Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy (John Benjamins). He also serves on the editorial board of book series, such as Human Cognitive Processing (John Benjamins, since 2010), Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication (John Benjamins, since 2010), and Figurative Thought and Language (John Benjamins, since 2015). He has been the head organizer of two major international conferences: 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (University of La Rioja, 2003); 44th International Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (University of La Rioja, 2011) and several other conferences and seminars.

Funding

The research on which this work is based has been financed by FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, State Research Agency, project no. FFI2017-82730-P.

lecture 1

Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations Thank you so much for inviting me to be here, which is a great honor and a privilege, and second, for pronouncing my name almost perfectly, which is a real challenge for anyone! I’m also acquainted to some extent with this forum, because Professor Li, quite some time ago, was kind enough to give me a couple of books that contained Ronald Langacker’s and George Lakoff’s talks in [[a previous edition]]. And I became interested in it. In fact, it helped me a lot to understand better the thoughts, the ideas, of these great scholars. And then I have been following up on some of the developments over the years. What I could never imagine is that I would be here. I feel a lot of gratitude and I truly feel that it is a privilege to be among you today. My field of, let’s call it, expertise, is cognitive modeling. The notion of cognitive model comes from Lakoff’s work. If we go back to the 1980s, in 1987 precisely, George Lakoff published a book called Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, which has a very attractive title, which nobody understands well. Well, inside the book, you get an explanation about why. There is a language that uses a [[marker]] that applies to these conceptual categories. But the idea of the book, to me, the central idea, is the notion of cognitive model. For some reason, in George Lakoff’s strand of Cognitive Linguistics, most of the work has focused on metaphor, developments of metaphor theory. Some of them are cultural. Some of them have to do with the brain sciences. My feeling over the years was that the linguistic part of metaphor theory was somehow being neglected. And I wanted, as a linguist, to make up for that. So I decided to put the theory of Idealized Cognitive Models to a test and to see how much progress we could make with it, how much we could say about language on the basis of this theory, and to say: where are the boundaries of cognitive modeling as a theory, if we decide that it can be a theory. To my surprise, what I have found is that it is a very solid foundation for almost any approach within the cognitive and functional arena and also to any level and domain of inquiry in linguistics. All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555650

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_002

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lecture 1

Meaning construction and cognitive modeling • Meaning construction is grounded in the principles of cognitive modeling (Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014, Ruiz de Mendoza 2017). • Cognitive modeling is the dynamic process whereby we represent and construe the world of our experience. • It is on based the activity of cognitive operations on cognitive models: • A cognitive operation is any mental activity that has an identifiable effect resulting from the brain’s response to human (sensorimotor) interaction with the world. • A cognitive model is any internally consistent conceptual network representing part of what we know about the world, at whatever degree of genericity.

figure 1

What I hope is that, during this series of talks, I can give you some glimpses of how cognitive modeling can affect different areas of language, for example, of course, metaphor theory, but [[also]] the connections between metaphor and, for example, grammar, or metaphor and inferencing, metonymy and grammar, metonymy and inferencing. Metaphor and metonymy were postulated as cognitive models by George Lakoff on a par with frames and other forms of conceptualization, including also image schemas. We will talk about implicational structure. We will talk about illocution. And we will talk about a few figures of thought other than metaphor and metonymy, for example, irony and hyperbole. I think that what we have is a common engine, a common foundation, for all these linguistic phenomena. If we have the right idea about how cognitive modeling works, we may be able to explore in a lot more detail, you know, with a lot more depth, all these fields of linguistic inquiry that have not been very well connected within the world of pragmatics and functional linguistics. But I think that they can be connected through the notion of cognitive modeling and made part of Cognitive Semantics à la Lakoff. So, this will be mostly a Lakoffian approach, a development of Lakoff’s ideas with inroads into some of the fields of analysis that have not been tackled systematically within Cognitive Linguistics. The first of these ten talks that I will give during this week is on the notion of cognitive operation and how cognitive operations work on cognitive models, thus producing some meaning effects that are relevant for linguistic analysis.

Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations

3

So, the first slide is about meaning construction and cognitive modeling, and what meaning construction is, and what cognitive modeling is. To put it in very simple words, cognitive modeling is simply mental activity that is connected to how the brain, or the mind, can efficiently manage the production and the comprehension of meaning. Fundamental to the notion of cognitive modeling is the notion of cognitive operation, and, secondly, the notion of cognitive model. A cognitive operation can be defined as any mental activity that has an identifiable effect resulting from the brain’s response to human interaction with the world. And by human interaction here we mean sensorimotor interaction. We perceive the world and we act on the world on the basis of motor programs that we have developed and that we know about on an intuitive basis. Any type of mental activity that has an effect resulting from how the brain responds to interaction with the world could be a cognitive operation, which means that probably we have lots and lots of cognitive operations. If you go to handbooks of cognitive psychology, they list many so-called cognitive processes, which are cognitive operations. And they are not classified. They are simply produced ad hoc by the analysts, as they are needed for their work. I have tried to systematize that, and we will go into [[it]] in a minute. What is a cognitive model? This is a conceptual representation. It is knowledge about the world, including our inner world, that we store in our minds. It represents part of what we know about the world. And it works at different levels of genericity or at different levels of abstraction. Well, Lakoff already said in 1987 that we have propositional structure stored in our minds, and that was dealt with by Fillmore and his associates by means of the notion of frame. Frames have been defined as sets of properties of entities and the relations that hold among those entities within a scenario. Whenever we think about a frame, we need to have [[another]] background frame that will give [[us]] the right perspective to think about the first frame. In Langackerian linguistics, this is called profile/base relationships. We use the profile that designates an object to understand the concept on the basis of a framework of concepts that is called the base. How do we build frames? What we do is that we experience the world: we move; we think; we see; we touch; we hear (we use our senses). So, we build conceptual structure from those experiences by abstracting away things that they have in common, aspects or properties that they have in common. One interesting form of experience with the world is image-schematic conceptualization. Image schemas are of course abstractions. They’re schematizations, as the label “schema” indicates. They’re schematizations of embodied spatial

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lecture 1

Cognitive model types: frames and image schemas • A frame captures sets of properties of entities and the relations that hold among them within a scenario; e.g. a bull, a bullfighter, the bullring, the arena, onlookers, etc., in a bullfight. (Fillmore et al 2003). • It is built by abstracting conceptual structure away from multiple experiences. • Image schemas are related schematizations (i.e. abstractions) of embodied spatial experience (Johnson 1987, Hampe 2005, Peña 2008): • Spatial orientations: up/down, front/back • Space regions and positions: in/out; on/off; at/away from. • Forward/backward motion (along a path). • Part-whole structure.

figure 2

experience. They have to do with spatial orientations, space regions, positions, forward and backward motion, part-whole structure, and then other concepts that are associated with these ones. For example, if you think about motion along a path, you may find obstacles to motion, and the notion of ‘obstacle’ would be not only part of the ‘path of motion’ or ‘motion-along-a-path’ conceptualization, but it would also be an image schema in its own right. Lakoff also argued that metaphor and metonymy are cognitive models, and we will go into that later on. On the basis of these seminal ideas by Lakoff, Fillmore, and some of their associates, and by searching for lots and lots of forms of conceptualization in different areas of linguistic analysis, working together with my associates at the university of La Rioja, we came up with a classification of cognitive models that we think is useful to understand different areas of linguistic analysis. There are some basic cognitive model types that we distinguish on the basis of this research. And the classification is here: – Low-level non-situational models, [[which]] account for lexical structure and idiomatic phrases. – High-level non-situational models, [[which]] relate to argument-structure constructions. Some of them were mentioned [[previously]]: the caused motion; the resultative; the ditransitive. – We can have low-level situational models. These relate to implicational structure constructions, constructions like the famous What’s X doing Y, [[which]] was popularized by Kay and Fillmore in the 1990s: What’s John

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Basic cognitive model types • Low-level non-situational models: lexical structure (boy, run) and idiomatic phrases (spill the beans) • High-level non-situational models: argument-structure constructions (caused-motion, resultative, ditransitive, etc.) (The boy kicked the ball into the net) • Low-level situational models: implicational structure constructions (What’s X Doing Y?) (What’s John doing speaking Russian?) • High-level situational models: illocutionary structure constructions (Could You Please X?) (Could you please be quiet?)

figure 3

doing speaking Russian?, which means, non-compositionally, that the speaker doesn’t really like the idea, or feels, has an attitude about John’s speaking Russian, like ‘I can’t believe that John speaks Russian’, or ‘I don’t like John speaking Russian’; it depends on the context. You may have one or several different meanings, but the basic idea is that the speaker has an attitude, usually negative, about the situation that has been described in the rhetorical question. – Then, we have high-level situational models, [[which]] have to do with illocutionary structure constructions, like Could you please do that for me?, which is a way of asking someone to do something (it’s a request): Would you please be quiet?, Can you stay here?, Will you stay with us a little bit longer?, and so on. These would be the, let’s say, four basic types of cognitive models. There are other sub-types, and the interesting thing about these basic types is that they are the result of combining low-level and high-level parameters with situational and non-situational parameters. A low-level non-situational model is any lexical item or idiomatic phrase, as I said before. Can we have a high-level nonsituational model?: argument-structure constructions—that generalize over such things as transitive verbs and you would obtain the transitive construction; ditransitive experience, ditransitive verbs [[and]] you obtain ditransitive constructions. With respect to situations, linguistic systems are equipped to deal with situations and to produce implicated knowledge related to those situations. They can also work at the low and high levels. [[…]] We have two

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lecture 1 74

Situational

Non-situational (propositional) Non-scalar Eventive Causal

Scalar Non-eventive

Non-causal

Relational Controlled

Primary-level –

Caused motion, Motion, change Have force, counter-force

Low-level

Going to a party, reading a magazine, flying a kite

Kill, kiss

Die, slide, describe

High-level

Begging, promising, thanking

(Effectual) action

(Natural/ self-occuring) process or activity

Non-relational

Non-controlled Be, belong

Shape, container-content, partwhole, object, path, control

Size, heat, speed, weight, quantity, quality, frequency, probability, anger, love

Own, stand, sit, Win squat, sprawl

Tree, dog, picture, car

–

Reason-result, cause-consequence, possession

(Physical/non– physical) entity, state, circumstance

Happen

figure 4

talks about these. We will talk in detail about these two types of models. But low-level situational models relate to traditional implicature and high-level situational models to traditional illocution. (I hope you can see this. For those at the back rows, I hope you can read it, or you may have the printout, or your PDF files in the laptop). This is a taxonomy of cognitive models that develops in more detail the previous layout of basic cognitive model types. Rather than simply distinguish between low and high level, I would like to introduce a new parameter, which is primariness, the primary level of abstraction. To explain this in a very simple way, the primary level of organization of knowledge is the one that directly arises from sensorimotor experience. So anything that has to do with imageschematic notions like ‘motion’, ‘part-whole structure’, the notion of ‘containment’, and others like these, is going to be primary-level conceptualization; [[and]] also, some basic notions like size, heat, speed, weight, quantity, quality, frequency, [[which]] arise from how we interact with the world. We see events that happen over and over again. And from those observations [[there]] arises the notion of frequency. And we see that sometimes things may happen or may not happen, and the notion of probability arises from there. And also, such notions as ‘anger’ and ‘love’, emotions in general, would be primary-level notions, because they are straightforward experience arising from our contact with the world, to be distinguished from low-level and high-level cognitive models. In the case of low-level cognitive models, we refer to things that happen in the world or objects in the world and how they relate to one another. In some

Cognitive Modeling

A taxonomy of cognitive models (Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014)

Table 2. A taxonomy of cognitive models

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cognitive-linguistic approaches, we have such notions as frames and scenarios that deal with this type of knowledge structure or type of cognitive model. So, [[…]] such scenarios as going to a party, flying a kite, reading a magazine, taking a walk in the park would be situational cognitive models. And because we have personal experience, visual perceptual experience about how they happen and how they develop, they work at the low-level in the same way as concrete objects. If you think of a bottle of water, this would be a low-level experience. Of course, this is also a container. I can think of this bottle of water from the point of view of its image-schematic structure. But if I add all of the aspects that combine together—all the properties—into this bottle, I will have imageschematic notions at the base, including color, and size, and shape. But then I know that functionally this is used for me to drink water out of. And that I can weigh it, [[and]] touch it. I can see it. And I have a mental image of the object. So, it would be a low-level notion. Actions like kill or kiss, processes like die, slide, describe, and sometimes simply relations like win, or control relations like own, stand, sit, squat, sprawl, those would be low-level characterizations. Then, high-level situational cognitive models—I mentioned before—are traditionally called speech acts or illocutionary meaning. So, such acts as begging, promising, thanking can be contemplated from the perspective of cognitive modeling. We have knowledge about how to make a request. I know that, to make a request, I have to approach someone and I have to make it evident to the person that I approach that I am in need of something. And once that need is identified and I’ve perceived that the need has been identified, the next step would be for me to ask a question related to my need. I could simply go with saying—imagine that I need to drink water—, I could be like I’m thirsty or I could say something like Could I have some water, Could you give me some water, or Could you give me something to drink, or I would need something to drink. All those expressions exploit the same mental scenario, which is a highlevel situational cognitive model based on social conventions. We may also have non-situational high-level models: the idea of action, which is a generalization over real actions like kill, kiss, strike. Some of them are causal, like these ones. But others are non-causal, like processes: live and die. We may have noneventive cognitive models like reason-result connections, cause-consequence connections, the notion of ‘happening’, or simply [[…]] knowledge about entities, states, and circumstances. As we proceed along this series of lectures, we will be using some elements of this [[table]]. And you will come to understand the real power that this type of analysis can have for a cognitive-linguistic approach to meaning construction.

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lecture 1

Types of cognitive operation • Concept-building operations: they result in the creation and internal manipulation of bodily-based knowledge stores (e.g. memory encoding and retrieval; tactile, visual and auditory encoding; mental imagery manipulation). • Sensory-motor operations: they underlie the bodily aspects of interaction with the world, and influences concept building (e.g. motor programs and their execution). • Representational operations: they work on pre-existing knowledge stores, which, together with their analysis of contextual factors, allow people to produce (new) meaning representations in the form of inferences (e.g. metaphoric mappings). figure 5

What about cognitive operations? I mentioned before that a cognitive operation is any type of mental activity that arises from our interaction with the world and allows us to interact with the world. And cognitive operations work on the basis of cognitive models. They act on cognitive models, at least some of them. If we go to the literature on cognitive operations, we find lots and lots of labels, and I have been “brave” enough to distribute those labels across three general categories. One category I call concept-building operations. These have to do with how we manipulate the knowledge that we have, how we store knowledge or we encode knowledge, [[or as]] psychologists say, how we retrieve coded knowledge. And also, it has to do with tactile, visual and auditory encoding, not only with the memories themselves, but with the input for perception. And mental imagery manipulation would also fall within this label, this category of conceptbuilding operations. A second type, a second broad category of cognitive operations, would be sensory-motor operations. These underlie the bodily aspects of interaction with the world, for example, motor programs, the execution of motor programs. It has an influence on how we build concepts. But these operations are separate from those related to visual perception, tactile perception, and the encoding and retrieval processes. And finally, the third broad category that I am more interested in for this series of talks is representational operations. These work on pre-existent knowledge stores, which, together with their analysis of contextual factors, allow people to produce new meaning representations in the form of inferences.

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An example of this type of operations would be metaphorical and metonymic mappings. If you think about it, the famous LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor, [[which]] was popularized in the early 1990s by Lakoff and followers, the mapping between two different domains that gives rise to the reasoning process underlying this metaphor is simply a matter of taking two concepts and finding connections between those two concepts. So, this mapping process would be a form of representational operation. Because when we use the metaphor, love is a journey, the metaphor allows us to think about love relationships in terms of something else, in this case of journeys. It allows us to understand love relationships. It allows us to think about them and to reason about them. They are meaning construction operations of a representational kind. Some people may say, but these representational operations are connected to sensory-motor operations or to concept-building operations. Yes, they are. These are broad category labels that allow us to group the operations. But sensory-motor operations underlie representational operations. The way we move, how we interact with the world, has an influence on how we store knowledge, and then on how we use the knowledge that we have stored. If I have a motor program that tells me how to get into buildings, and then I have perceptions about how I feel protected from the rain and the snow when I’m in a building, that may carry over into meaning representations later on in language, when I use expressions with, for example, the preposition in: if I say I am in dire straits, that’s very negative; if I say I’m in love, that’s positive, in the same way as when I’m comfortable in a building; that’s something positive; I am “inside” that situation. So, there is a connection between our motor programs and other notions arising from how we use those motor programs and the way in which representational operations produce meaning. Another distinction that I would like to make is between formal and content cognitive operations. Once we focus our attention on the representational kind, this is the main division. So, representational operations are divided up into formal and content cognitive operations. In a sense, I’m not going to give you anything new. Only the way that I structure the ideas is going to be new, the way I bring together the different types of cognitive processes, because in the literature, you will find sometimes passing reference and sometimes very detailed analyses of these types of cognitive operations: formal and content. What is a formal cognitive operation? It is one that has the function of preparing conceptual structure for other types of cognitive activity. It cooperates with other cognitive operations. In general, formal operations underlie content cognitive operations. They cooperate with content cognitive operations,

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Representation through inference • The literature on metaphor/metonymy (also including Fauconnier & Turner’s 2002 blending theory) has directly or indirectly dealt with representational cognitive operations. • I will propose to group them into two broad categories: • Formal: They have the function of either preparing conceptual structure for meaning-bearing cognitive activity or cooperating with other operations to give final shape to such activity • Content: They are lower-level operations used to make inferences on the basis of cues provided by the linguistic expression or the context in which it is produced.

figure 6

or they allow us to use content cognitive operations. They are like a prerequisite to engage in content operational thinking. What is a content cognitive operation? Well, think of metaphor—that would be an example—or metonymy. But I will use different labels. I will try to break down the concepts of metaphor and metonymy into more basic categories. But in general, we could say that metaphor is a content cognitive operation, because it makes connections between two different objects. Let me draw your attention to an example. I can say that John is a rat, meaning that John betrays people: John is a traitor. I am making a predicative use of the notion of rat: John is a rat. That syntactic structure tells me that being a rat is a property of John. But imagine that John is coming into the room, and instead of saying John, who is a rat, is coming into the room, I say The rat is coming into the room, in a derogatory way. From a formal perspective, I have made a predicative and a referential use of the word rat. But from the point of view of metaphor, I only have a metaphor. It’s the same metaphor with two different formal uses. So, this is the dividing line between formal and content operations. From a formal perspective, two different uses, but conceptually, I have the same mental mechanism to understand the shades of meaning of the notion of ‘rat’ being used metaphorically. Formal operations are higher level, and content operations are less abstract; they’re lower level operations. Content operations are used to make inferences on the basis of the text or of the context, in other words, on the basis of textual or contextual clues or a combination of both of them.

Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations

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FORMAL COGNITIVE OPERATIONS: PREPARING CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE • Cueing: it consists in prompting the activation of selected conceptual structure on the basis of conceptual consistency: She eats/wears rabbit (the meat/the fur). • Abstraction: deriving generic-level structure from lower level structure: The posts are strung out across the desert [it is a pre-requisite for the metaphor that maps the image of stretched strings onto the overall shape of posts as seen from a distance]. • Selection: it involves disregarding structure that is irrelevant for a content cognitive operation: My wife really mothers me uses the nurturance model about motherhood to the detriment of the birth, marital, biological and genealogical models.

figure 7

Some formal cognitive operations. And this is where I say I’m not saying anything new, but I am giving them the label and I am giving them a specific role within linguistic theory. This is well known: cueing, abstraction, selection processes, integration, substitution. You are probably familiar—you have read some cognitive-linguistic literature—you’re probably familiar with these labels. What is cueing? These are my own definitions. So, if anything is wrong with them, it is my fault, not any other scholar’s fault. Cueing consists in prompting the activation of selected conceptual structure on the basis of conceptual consistency. In an example like She eats vs. She wears rabbit, meaning she eats the meat, but she wears the fur, we have a clear case of cueing where eats tells us which part of the rabbit is going to be activated. If I ask you to think about a rabbit, you think of a whole rabbit, you think of the whole animal with the meat and the fur. But if I say, Have you eaten rabbit?, you are focusing your attention on the meat. If I say, Hey, she wears rabbit, can you see? rather than mink, you will focus the attention on the fur. So, eat and wear cue for the activation, the relevant activation, of different parts of the rabbit. Abstraction. This consists of deriving generic-level structure from lowerlevel structure. If you go to the previous [[table]] remember that I said: well, the notion of ‘action’ arises from our knowledge about specific actions like kill, or kiss, or strike, or hunt. The same with ‘processes’. We have processes like describe, slide, die, live. And the notion of process arises from our observation of the things that these items have in common. Abstraction is useful to produce higher-level categories. And it’s useful to align analogical structures when

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we use language. This would be a case of metaphor, the example on the slide: The posts are strung out across the desert. The abstraction operation is necessary for us to understand this metaphor. What we map here is the image of a stretched string onto the overall shape of [[a succession of]] posts as seen from a distance. Because the generic-level structure of the posts and of this stretched string is about the same, it’s similar, we can make the connection. We can find that there is something similar between the image-schematic grounding of the two conceptualizations. So, you will see that every time that you perform a metaphorical mapping, connections across conceptual domains, there is some abstract structure that licenses us to make that connection. There has to be things that are in common between the two concepts at this level. It also allows us, of course, as I mentioned, as I said before, to derive higher-level categories like ‘action’, ‘process’, ‘result’, [[and]] ‘consequence’ from lowerlevel notions. Then we have selection, which involves disregarding structure that is not relevant for other content cognitive operations to do their work. The example My wife really mothers me can illustrate this. We all know what a mother is. Lakoff talked about “mothers” in the 1987 book, and he said that the notion of ‘mother’ is simply a cluster of converging models. A couple of them are the birth model and the nurturance model. When I say My wife mothers me, I am not using the birth model or any other model that is different from the idea of ‘taking care of’. So, we have notions about mother. A mother [[is]], from a genealogical perspective, the most immediate female ancestor. That is not relevant here. I know that mothers sometimes are married, they’re married to the fathers of their children. That is not relevant here. What is relevant is that mothers take care of their children. That’s called the ‘nurturance model’ in Lakoff’s account. So, what we do through this selection operation is that we focus our attention on the structure that is relevant for an ensuing—a following—content operation. In this case, when we use mother in this way, we are using it metaphorically. That would be the content cognitive operation. Integration. This operation has become so famous in Cognitive Linguistics through the immense amount of work carried out by Turner and Fauconnier with Blending Theory. It simply consists of bringing together two or more than two items of conceptual structure. But the items have to be prompted for. They have to be cued: She was led into a depression. You will identify here very easily the ‘path’ schema. It is directly invoked by into, the preposition into. She was led into a depression has the path schema at its basis. But the path schema is simply skeletal structure. It is schematic. The path schema is here enriched by

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FORMAL COGNITIVE OPERATIONS: MANIPULATING CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE • Integration: It consists of the merging of conceptual structure from any number of cued items: She was led into a depression [The 'path' schema is enriched by the container schema filling in the end-of-path structural slot]. • Substitution: it takes place when either partial conceptual structure or a whole cognitive model is replaced either by related partial conceptual structure or by a different cognitive model in its entirety. Substitution is a pre-requisite for metonymy (They broke the window ‘the pane’) and euphemism (She’s ample ‘fat’) to be possible.

figure 8

the ‘container’ schema. At the end of the path, we have a container, which is the notion of depression. So, what we have is motion along a path (it is caused motion), and at the end of the path, the destination of motion is enriched by the notion of containment. It is a three-dimensional image-schematic notion, the container schema. And the container schema fills in the end-of-path structural slot of the path schema. So, we’re integrating, in other words, the container schema into the path schema. Substitution. That takes place when we have partial conceptual structure, or a whole cognitive model, that is replaced by some other type of a structure, whether partial or full. It is a pre-requisite for metonymy. Take the case of window meaning the ‘window pane’, the glass, or take the case of euphemism as in ample for ‘fat’. There has been a lot of controversy over how to define metonymy. And I feel that many of the problems of those controversies—we will talk about that in another lecture—many of the controversies around the notion of metonymy and how to define it are solved by simply understanding that metonymy has to do with focusing our attention on an aspect of a concept or using an aspect of a concept to give rise to, to have access to the whole concept, combined with the notion of ‘substitution’. Most metonymies work on the basis of substitution. But substitution is not exclusive of metonymy or euphemism. You can find substitution in some uses of metaphor. I gave you an example before: the example of The rat is coming, where rat substitutes for the person that behaves like a “rat”, the person that behaves like a traitor. Then we come to content cognitive operations. I want to make this clear because it will be necessary for us during the whole series of lectures. Remember,

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lecture 1 CONTENT OPERATIONS: A IS B PATTERN • Correlation: Where A and B designate co-occurring events in our experience: She gave me a warm embrace (METAPHOR) • Resemblance: Where A and B designate entities/states of affairs that resemble each other: Her teeth are pearls (METAPHOR) • Echoing: Where B designates any entity/state of affairs that matches someone’s (actual or attributed) thoughts (A): Yeah, right, she’s an angel (IRONY) • Strengthening: Where A is a point in a scale and B is an upper-level point in the same scale: This suitcase weighs a ton (HYPERBOLE) • Mitigation: Where A is a point in a scale and B is a lower-level point in the same scale: It’s just a scratch (said of a bad wound) (UNDERSTATEMENT) • Contrasting: Where B is the opposite of some aspects of A and A contains B: I must be cruel to be kind (a cruel action B is in fact kind A if seen from a perspective where initial harm ultimately brings about a benefit) (PARADOX)

figure 9

please, that content operations combine with formal operations and that sometimes formal operations are prerequisites for content operations to be possible. That is necessary for all of us to keep in mind. So, well, you already know about this, from the literature on metaphor: correlation, [[and]] resemblance. These are notions that relate to metaphor. When metaphor theory, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, started, with Lakoff and Johnson’s 1980 book Metaphors We Live By, the emphasis was on what we now call “correlation metaphor”. In literary analysis and in rhetoric, they thought that metaphor was based on resemblance: A resembles B and we can have either metaphor or simile. That was the idea. But with Lakoff and Johnson and some other scholars before them, to whom they paid due recognition, the idea was that sometimes we have metaphors that are not based on two entities resembling each other. For example, if you say a warm embrace, what is the connection between ‘affection’ and ‘warmth’? The affection and warmth connection is not one of similarity. There is nothing like that in that connection. When we say a warm embrace, what we are simply doing is correlating pieces of experience. When we embrace people, we feel bodily warmth and our brains are aware of that. Our brains know that when we hug someone, we feel warmth. So, affection is connected to warmth on the basis of correlations of experience. Then, of course, we have “resemblance”.: the famous Her teeth are pearls, from literature, from literary theory. Well, what we see is the brightness and the whiteness of someone’s teeth as being similar to the brightness and whiteness of pearls. And we may even have more connections; for example, the size; teeth have enamel and pearls also; so we have more connections. We see the

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similarities. And on the basis of those similarities, we construct resemblance metaphor. Another operation that comes, not from the cognitive-linguistic literature, this time it comes from inferential pragmatics, is the notion of echoing. With echoing, what we do is repeat a previous mental representation or a previous thought. Sometimes a thought materializes into words and when we repeat the words, we are echoing those words; reported speech is a good example of echoing. But irony is another example of echoing. If you read a little bit of the relevance-theoretic literature on language use, you will find quite a few studies on the notion of echoing and how it works to build ironical meaning. If a friend of mine says I will be there in a minute, and I report on what my friend says, [[and]] I say: Well, John says, or my friend says, that he will be there in a minute, I am echoing what he said. If I believe that he has in his mind the idea to be here in a minute, and I say I think he’s going to be here in a minute, I am echoing his thought. With irony, someone says something, or I can attribute a thought to someone, and then make reference to it, repeat what someone said or repeat what I think that someone thought. And, if what I say in echoing what someone thought, or what someone said, is in sharp contrast with the observable situation, ironic meaning arises. The example on the slide is She’s an angel. Imagine that I believe that my neighbor’s daughter is great, wonderful, obliging. She’s an angel. She’s wonderful. And I say to my wife, Our neighbor’s daughter is a real angel—which by the way is metaphorical and hyperbolic too—and then we discover to our surprise that she is not, that she is very nasty. Ironically, I can say, Well, yeah, right, she is an angel. I am echoing my own words about my neighbor’s daughter. And that’s ironic because it clashes with the observable situation. Strengthening. Strengthening is typical of hyperbole, but we can find strengthening elsewhere in language. We use strengthening to upscale scalar concepts. For example, in This suitcase weighs a ton, we do not actually mean that the suitcase weighs a thousand kilograms, which is a ton. What we mean is that it weighs too much. It has excessive weight. And there is also some attitude in our emotional meaning associated with this: ‘I feel bad about it; I feel frustrated. This suitcase weighs a ton. I am incapable of carrying this suitcase’. So, what we do with hyperbole is that we build a concept that is disproportionate with respect to reality on the basis of upscaling the concept. To do that, the concept has to be—if we go back to the table on the righthand side—it has to be scalar. So, we can upscale size, heat, speed, weight, quantity, frequency, probability, and so on. Instead of saying I have told you too many times not to do that, I can say I’ve told you a thousand times not to do that, I have told you a million times not to do that, and be even more emphatic. I am upscaling the concept.

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But, of course, we can find strengthening also; for example, in illocutionary activity: Do have some coffee. I am putting some pressure on the addressee to have some more coffee; or instead of Take a seat, Do take a seat. Mitigation is the opposite of strengthening. With mitigation, we downscale a concept; we go from a higher point to a lower point on the scale. For example, in some cases of understatement, we find mitigation, as in It’s just a scratch (but you have a bad wound). You simply want to mitigate the importance of the wound: ‘It’s just a scratch, not as bad as you are bleeding’. But in illocutionary activity, you may also have mitigation; for example, with the use of the adverb please: Please, do that, rather than Do that, which is a strong command. Then we have contrasting. With contrasting, what we have is a clash between conceptual items. One case of contrast is found in paradox; for example, I must be cruel to be kind. You can’t be, logically speaking, you can’t be cruel and kind at the same time. But of course, we know that by reframing concepts we can find a way out of the apparent contradiction in paradoxes. We can be temporarily cruel to someone so that that person will derive some benefit from what we do. That could be considered cruel. So, it depends on the perspective. You can be cruel and kind at the same time. We can find contrast elsewhere other than in paradox. We’ll go into that. The previous operations belong to what I have called the ‘A is B’ pattern. By ‘A is B’ pattern, I do not mean metaphor. What I mean is that we have crossdomain activity. We have two different domains, two discrete domains of experience, and we find connections across those two domains. That’s [[the case]] CONTENT OPERATIONS: A FOR B PATTERN

• Domain expansion: Where B is a matrix domain and A is a subdomain of A: sax > sax player (PART-WHOLE METONYMY) • Domain reduction: Where A is a matrix domain and B is a subdomain of A: window > window pane (WHOLE-PART METONYMY) • Parameterization: A case of domain reduction where A is a generic domain and B a specific subdomain of A: You do (‘clean’) the carpet and I’ll do (‘wash’) the dishes. (LEXICAL GENERICITY). • Generalization: A case of domain expansion where A is a specific subdomain of a generic domain A: She needs an aspirin (‘any pain killer’) (MEMBER FOR CLASS). • Saturation: Where B is constructionally coherent with A: John's not good enough [for an executive position] (CONSTRUCTIONAL UNDERDETERMINATION) figure 10

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of metaphor, but it could also apply to hyperbole. With hyperbole, I upscale a concept, yes, and the real thing, the real situation, is different from the concept that I have upscaled. So, we have connections across concepts. We also have another pattern, which I call the ‘A for B’ pattern, which is typical of domain expansion, domain reduction, parametrization, generalization, and saturation. I have listed these operations separately, but you will see that some of them relate, and they could be considered—simply—specific cases of a previous operation. Let’s start with domain expansion. With domain expansion, we have a conceptual item or a piece of a conceptual item that affords access to broader form of conceptualization. This is typical of PART-WHOLE metonymies. When you say The sax didn’t attend today’s rehearsal, you mean the person that plays the sax didn’t attend, the sax player. So, it’s typical of PART-WHOLE metonymies. Domain reduction is the opposite. You have a domain of experience, and then one of its subdomains. And you go from the domain to the subdomain. He broke the window means he broke the glass, not the whole window. Probably he didn’t break the handle or the frame, simply the glass. With the following one, parametrization, what we have is domain reduction. So, this could be simply a sub-case of domain reduction. In this case, we go from something generic to something specific. The example [[on the slide]] will illustrate this: You do the carpet means ‘You clean the carpet’; I’ll do the dishes means ‘I will wash the dishes’. You’re not going to clean the dishes. You’re not going to wash the carpet. We have default assumptions about how we do the carpet and how we do the dishes, which are based, of course, on our knowledge of the world. Generalization is the opposite. It is a case of domain expansion. So, it is a sub-case of domain expansion, where we go from something that is specific to something more generic; for example, that’s something that I often say: I need an aspirin, and I don’t mean an aspirin. I mean anything that will kill my pain. I’m in pain. I need aspirin. But aspirin means any painkiller. So, the MEMBER FOR CLASS metonymy is a case of generalization. But of course, it’s also a case of domain expansion. And then we have saturation. This is a matter of a constructional coherence. If I say John’s not good enough, that’s usually enough—let me put it that way—to convey the meaning that I have, if the context is well defined. So, for example, if we are talking about John being applying for an executive position and I say Well, John is not good enough, what I mean is that he’s not good enough for that position. The linguistic phenomenon underlying saturation here is constructional under-determination. But John is not good enough stands

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THE ROLE OF THE ACTIVITY OF COGNITIVE OPERATIONS IN MEANING CONSTRUCTION • They underlie inferential and non-inferential meaning construction. • The type of meaning they help create differs depending on the cognitive model type they act on. • They may act alone or in combination.

figure 11

for ‘John is not good enough for an executive position’. So, this is an ‘A for B’ pattern, like the others. Saturation has also been called completion in the literature on inferential pragmatics. To summarize, what is the role of cognitive operations in meaning construction? From the examples that we have examined, we can see that cognitive operations underlie inferential and also non-inferential meaning construction. So, they underlie both, for example, illocution, when illocution is purely based on inference (for example, I say I’m thirsty, meaning ‘I want you to give me some water’), or they underlie non-inferential meaning construction as when I use a well-entrenched expression like Could you give me something to drink?, which is an illocutionary construction. The type of meaning that cognitive operations [[give rise to]] differs depending on the cognitive model type that they act on. And they may act alone or they may act in combination. Now, I want to put forward a methodological hypothesis for linguistic analysis. And then we will see how it applies. The hypothesis comes from our observation that these cognitive operations are not exclusive to just one or two phenomena in one restricted domain of linguistic activity. But they apply across different categories and different phenomena. One of the goals of linguistic theory is to account for the features that unify processes across domains of inquiry. The Equipollence Hypothesis attempts to guide the researcher to provide the scientific community with these unifying features. It’s simply a working

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The Equipollence Hypothesis • One of the main goals of linguistic theory is to identify and account for unifying features and processes across different levels and domains of linguistic enquiry. • Equipollence Hypothesis (EH). This is a working assumption according to which analysts should check whether linguistic processes that have been attested in one domain of linguistic enquiry may also be at least partially active in other domains. • The application of the EH to the understanding of meaning construction reveals the ubiquity of cognitive operations as modeling factors and as licensing and/or motivating factors. figure 12

assumption. It’s not a big principle. It is very simple. It is a working assumption according to which the analyst should always check whether a linguistic process that has been attested in one area of linguistic analysis can also be at least partially attested in other areas of linguistic analysis. So, I may find that mitigation works for the production of understatements in an inferential account of language—we’re doing pragmatics—but mitigation also underlies not only under-determination; it may underlie illocutionary meaning that can be mitigated, like the use of the adverb please with commands: Don’t do that versus Don’t do that, please. The Equipollence Hypothesis would further lead us to look for other areas where maybe we have mitigation processes used productively by language users. The application of this hypothesis to the understanding of meaning construction reveals the ubiquity of cognitive operations as modeling factors, and as licensing or motivating factors. For the sake of convenience, I will refer to four descriptive levels of meaning construction: argument structure, which could include lexical and constructional structure; implicational structure; illocutionary structure, and discourse structure. We will see how we have different cognitive operations working on these four different levels of structure thus underlying and motivating different phenomena. The idea is, as I mentioned before, that one cognitive operation can be at work at different descriptive levels and motivate them.

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Standard levels of description of meaning construction

a) b) c) d)

Argument structure (lexical and constructional) Implicational structure Illocutionary structure Discourse structure

figure 13

The ubiquity of cognitive operations across levels of description • The same cognitive operations can work across descriptive levels involving a variety of cognitive model types thereby giving rise to: Ødifferent linguistic constructs (e.g. a specific metaphor or metonymy or a construction) Ødifferent linguistic phenomena (e.g. implicature generation, illocutionary meaning constructions, focalization, discourse relations).

figure 14

I hope you can read that [refers to Figure 15]. This is domain expansion and reduction, [[which]] we connected to metonymy. So, at the lexical level, we can have domain expansion, for example, when we use one word to mean another word that includes the first one from a conceptual perspective. If I say We need a hand on the farm or We need a new hand, what I mean is we need a new laborer. That would be a metonymy of the PART-WHOLE kind. But, if I adjust a concept, a generic concept, in discourse, and I reduce the concept, I would have the opposite, domain reduction. For

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Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations Domain expansion and reduction

(based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 158) Cognitive operation

Lexical Expansion S-in-T metonymy: A FOR B We need a hand (A < B) RESULT FOR ACTION: This book is yours Recategorization: “I want to stay in bed all day” days Reduction T-in-S metonymy: (B FOR A) Spain won the World Cup (A > B) ENTITY FORPROPERTY:

Levels of representation Implicational Illocutionary Expansion + Expansion + reduction: reduction: I’ve forgotten my A: Did they pen have a successful hunt? B: Jim is a great shot

Discourse Anaphora to a content item: I told you so (so stands for e.g. that you would lose your money) Focalization: He stole WÁTCH

my

There is a lot of America in what she does) Recategorization: her “I played all day” hair

figure 15

example, Spain won the World Cup—not the whole country, it was the players, but, of course, they stand for the country. We can have some higher-level configurations, like the RESULT FOR ACTION metonymy. Go back to domain expansion. That would be a case of non-lexical expansion, as when I say This book is yours; well, the result of the action stands for the action of ‘I am giving this book to you; therefore, this book is yours now’. Or in cases of grammatical recategorization: “I want to stay in bed all day” days. This is an interesting construction. I suppose Martin would have to say a lot about it, a lot more than I can. But from the perspective of cognitive modeling, I want to stay in bed all day describes a situation which somehow becomes coded in our minds, and I can use that as an adjective or as a prenominalization. Instead of saying a wonderful day, I can say an “I stay in bed all day” day, a day in which I would like to stay in bed all day. We can also have non-lexical reduction. Go to the bottom on the left. For example, in There is a lot of America in what she does, America stands for American values, American lifestyle, American ideas. So, America, which is a unique entity, stands for one of its relevant or highlighted properties, which is American lifestyle, values and so on. This would be another case of domain reduction. It is a concept that is associated with America as a matrix concept. Or in some cases of grammatical recategorization, we have another example, which is constructional: her “I played all day” hair, ‘the hair that looks like

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I played all day’. It is unkempt hair. We go from the whole situation in which, because you play all day, the result is that your hair is untidy. And that’s domain reduction. So domain expansion and domain reduction are basically metonymic at one level, but they can also be used—probably with an underlying metonymy, but in a way that scholars have never called metonymic, which is the case of recategorizations. I would argue that in a lot of America, or in her “play all day” hair, examples like these, what we have is metonymic reduction, because what we have is one domain inside another domain and one standing for the other. So basically, we have a metonymy. If you look at the implicational level, further on the right, we can have, for example, Did they have a successful hunt?, which is an example that we will analyze again, and the answer Jim is a great shot. By Jim is a great shot, what we mean is that, yes, the hunt was successful because Jim knows how to kill animals. And because he knows how to kill, he probably killed a lot of animals. So, we go from ‘Jim knows how to shoot’ to the idea that when a person knows how to shoot, he will probably kill many animals. And from that idea, by reduction, to ‘the hunt was successful’. At the illocutionary level, I’ve forgotten my pen means ‘I need another pen’. We have the same process. I’ve forgotten my pen stands for a more complex scenario in which you express a problem or a need and someone comes to rescue you, and it combines both operations. In the case of anaphora—I don’t think we have anything like metonymy here, or we could have metonymy, I’m not really sure about that, it could be arguable, but, in general, when we use adverbials like so meaning ‘in that way’, [[this]] stands for the action that has been carried out in that way. In I told you so, so stands for, for example, [[the idea]] that you would lose a lot of money: [[…]]; and so would have to be expanded to make anaphoric reference to something that came before. In the case of focalization, what we have is reduction. When you say He stole my WATCH, making emphasis on WATCH, with accentual prominence, [[this]] means that he stole only the watch, not the wallet, for example. Imagine that instead of He stole my watch, you have said PETER stole my watch with emphasis on PETER: PETER stole my watch, not JOHN. The contrast will be between Peter and John. This is very elemental. It’s a matter of focus, but focalization can be connected to domain reduction: stealing the watch, not any other item. This is an example of double metonymy where you have both processes at work. It is conventional. I don’t think English speakers think too much about what they’re saying when they use this expression. It is idiomatic also. He has

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ACE FOR INSTITUTION FOR PEOPLE HEAD FOR LEADER FOR ACTION OF LEADING

UTHOR

Domain expansion and reduction in lexical metonymy: He has too much lip

FOR

WORK

FOR INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION FOR ABILITY (TO

figure 16 Domain expansion/reduction in implicature generation ACTION = hunting frame ABILITY = hunting skills RESULT = successful hunt

A: Did you have a good hunt? B: Jim is a great shot

ACTION

ABILITY

RESULT

figure 17

too much lip means that he knows how to speak well, so he has the ability to speak very well. He uses his lips to speak very well. The instrument, the lip, stands for the action of speaking and then for the ability to perform that action very well, which means that both processes can be combined at the lexical level. But if you go to the non-lexical level, in this case implicational structure, you have a representation of the Jim is a great shot example that I gave you before, where the ability or the skills as a hunter that Jim has stands for the

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Correlation (based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 165) Cognitive operation Correlation (A IS/FOR B) (A and B are co-occurring events)

Levels of representation Lexical

Implicational

UNDERSTANDING IS Co-occurrence of events GRASPING: (low-level situational He caught the idea models): ABILITY FOR ACTION: I can hear the music

Did he give you the ring?

Illocutionary Co-occurrence of events (high-level situational models): Give me a hand here?

figure 18

whole hunting scenario, and then we focus by reduction on the result. We have expansion and reduction, in the same way as here, at the lexical level. Let’s go, now, into correlation, one of my favorite topics. And you will see that we go into it again in a future lecture. With correlation, what we have is pieces of experience that happen together. Another correlation metaphor to be added to the one that I gave you before, the warm embrace example, would be UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING. This is a very well-known metaphor. We grasp ideas, meaning that we understand the ideas. We can also grab them. We can also toy with them. We can manipulate ideas. Ideas can be envisaged as if they were objects. In He caught the idea in a flash, we have this primary metaphor. The grounding for this metaphor is simply our experience of holding objects in our hands and deriving information and knowledge from them. I know about this bottle because I can see it [[and]] I can touch it. When I touch it, I can know about its size, its shape. When I see it, I know about its color and other properties. So, UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING and also UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING would be correlation metaphors. That works at the lexical level, grasping meaning understanding. In I can hear the music from here, what I actually mean is that I hear the music. I go to England; I am in London; I rent an apartment; the apartment overlooks the famous Thames river, and I say: I can see the Thames from my window. Because I come from La Rioja, we have the river Ebro. I could say I can see the Ebro from my window. I can see doesn’t mean that I can see. It means that ‘I actually see because I can see’. That’s the ABILITY FOR ACTION metonymy, and the two notions, the ability to see or the ability to hear and actually hearing or seeing are connected

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on the basis of correlations in experience. When I go out into the balcony and I look at the river Ebro, I say Oh, beautiful river! I can see the river, and because I can see, I see. That’s the connection. It’s also metonymic from another perspective. So, we could say that here the metonymy ABILITY FOR ACTION is grounded in correlation, which is an interesting connection for metaphor and metonymy theory. Metonymy here is based on metaphorical thinking, which is based on experiential correlation. So, for those theories that argue that metonymy is completely distinct from metaphor, [[…]] what we have is metonymy being probably based on the correlation of experiences and the metaphorical reasoning that is associated with them. At the implicational level, think of this sentence: Did he finally give you the ring? If he gave you the ring, it means that he proposed for marriage, at least in some cultures. I don’t know about China. Do you do that? Yes. Ok, so it works here. Did he finally give you the ring? means Did he propose for marriage? And of course, again, this is a co-occurrence of events. We have a scenario, a lowlevel situational model, and giving the ring stands for proposing, and the two experiences go together. So, we have correlations of experience also at work in deriving implicature. At the illocutionary level, Can you give me a hand here? means ‘Can you help me?: ‘to give a hand’ for ‘help’, because you give help with the hands. Again, we have a correlation of experiences. You assist someone by using your hands [[…]]. Is it metonymy? Yes, but at the same time, there is a correlation of experiences that underlies this metonymy. Resemblance (based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 176) Cognitive operation Resemblance (A IS B) (A and B are resembling entities/states of affairs)

Lexical level of representation Metaphor

– Structural:

His nose is an elephant’s trunk His teeth are pearls

– Non-structural:

Simile: Her skin is as smooth as silk Her skin is like silk Iconicity: onomatopoeia, suprasegmental features

figure 19

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lecture 1 Contrast (based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 176)

Cognitive operation Non-scalar Scalar

Contrast (A IS B) (A is the opposite of some aspects of B)

Levels of representation Lexical Full contrast: everybody but you

Partial contrast: There are no trees except for some birches Understatement: litotes, meiosis:It’s just a scratch

Discourse Full contrast: A, on the other hand B Partial contrast: exception relations: I’d do anything except giving you away Alternation relations: Either you come or we go

Overstatement: hyperbole, auxesis: the lacerations inflicted on my client

figure 20

We go to resemblance. And for the time being, I have only been able to find resemblance at work at the lexical level, but I’m open to an example at the implicational, illocutionary, [[and]] discourse levels. Resemblance works very well for metaphor and simile. And we will talk about metaphor and simile in another talk. So, I’m not going to go into the details. But, also, I would like to draw your attention to this fact, to iconicity. The most basic example of iconicity that I can think of is onomatopoeia, like, for example, when you close the door and say: He slammed the door (He made the noise of a slam), or He banged the door. Bang, slam, those are iconic. An icon is simply a case of extreme resemblance. So, we have resemblance as a very important phenomenon: at least metaphor and simile, and also extreme resemblance in the case of iconicity. What about contrast, which I mentioned before in connection with paradox? We can have contrast in examples like Everybody but you or There are no trees except for some birches, where the linguistic system has coded a device, has coded a connector that is going to set up the contrast connection. So, contrast can be coded. It’s not only simply a matter of reframing concepts, as was the case with paradox. We can have contrast at work in understatement, litotes, meiosis and also in hyperbole. Because what we say is at loggerheads with reality. If reality is observable in the case of hyperbole, if I say something like This weighs a ton, and obviously we know that it doesn’t weigh a ton, there is a contrast of concepts. And it depends on what we have, whether this is

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Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations Echoing (based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 198) Operation

Levels of representation Lexical

Echoing Direct speech (A IS B) Indirect speech (A is any entity/state of TYPICAL VERBAL affairs that REACTION TO AN contradicts EVENT FOR the thoughts echoed WHOLE EVENT in B)

Implicational

Illocutionary Discourse

Irony: She is an angel

Don’t You X NP

Paraphrases: X, in other words, Y

Implicational constructions: Don’t You X NP Do I look like X? I am not X

figure 21

hyperbole, understatement, or paradox, or even irony, [[which]] also expresses contrast, that we have different ways of handling this operation, but we will talk about that later on. So, contrast is generally coded grammatically. Also, we have discourse markers for contrast, and it also happens in figures of speech like understatement, overstatement, irony, and paradox. Then, we go into echoing again very briefly. With echoing, at the lexical level, we produce direct speech or indirect speech reports, which, to me, could be a case of metonymy also, and, of course, this is controversial, but it could be: A TYPICAL VERBAL REACTION TO AN EVENT stands FOR THE WHOLE EVENT. And that could be a way of explaining indirect speech metonymically. At the implicational level, we have echoing with irony, as I mentioned before, and then in some constructions, for example, the Don’t you X NP construction. For example, Don’t you daddy me! Imagine, my daughter has done something wrong, I am upset, and she comes to me with a mild tone of voice: Daddy!; and I say: No, no, no, no! Don’t daddy me! Don’t daddy me! echoes what she has just said. And this is not ironic. This is simply constructional. [[Finally, we find echoing]] in paraphrases at discourse level as X, in other words, Y, which means that the linguistic system in English has coded a mechanism to capture the notion of echoing. Then, strengthening and mitigation for hyperbole and understatement, [[which]] I mentioned before. We can find strengthening and mitigation at

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lecture 1

Strengthening and mitigation (based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 205) Cognitive operation Strengthening (A IS B) (A is a point in a scale and B is an upper-level point in the same scale) Mitigation (A IS B) (A is a point in a scale and B is a lower-level point in the same scale)

Lexical level Lexical strengthening: very Hyperbole: I told you a million times Lexical mitigation: little

Implicational level

Illocutionary level

Hyperbolic use of litotes: It Wouldn’t Kill X To Y

Grammatical strengthening (e.g. emphatic do): Do shut up now!

Understatement: I like him a little bit

Grammatical mitigation: please, tags (will you?)

Litotes: It Won’t Do You Harm To X

figure 22

the lexical, implicational, and illocutionary levels. We already saw examples at the lexical and illocutionary levels. Let’s go, briefly, to one at the implicational level. For example, hyperbole typically makes use of strengthening: It wouldn’t kill you to do something, It wouldn’t kill you to make your bed. Well, of course we’re not talking about kill. You are talking about ‘it wouldn’t do you any harm’ or ‘it would not be a nuisance’. But we’re upscaling the idea of ‘This is going to bother you, but this is not going to bother you as [[much as]] being killed; it is not as serious as being killed’. In the case of understatement: I like him a little bit. By a little bit, what I mean is ‘a lot’. So, I have to upscale the concept to understand what is really meant, but the speaker has downscaled the concept from ‘a lot’ to ‘a little bit’. We will go again into some of these ideas. Then parameterization. We saw a couple of examples before. They were examples of lexical genericity. We can also have, at the same level, which is lexical, propositional truisms: Do you smell if you don’t shower?. Of course, people smell, right? So, by smell, what we mean is ‘Do you smell bad?’ (‘Do you stink?’). Or, in semantic under-determination, for example, There were ten thousand people in the audience, where we’re not really sure if it was ten thousand. It could be nine thousand eight hundred and forty-five, and we rounded it up to ten thousand. So, we would parameterize from the “ten thousand” figure to a lower figure if we had the exact amount of people attending.

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Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations Parameterization Cognitive operation Parameterization (A FOR B) (A is generic, B specific, and A>B)

(based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 214) Levels of representation Lexical Lexical genericity: I had my hair done (trimmed, cut, colored, etc.) Propositional truisms: Do you smell if you don’t shower? Semantically (‘smell bad`) underdetermined expressions: There were ten thousand people in the audience

Illocutionary Specification of the highlighted part of a high-level situational cognitive model: for I’m thirsty, solving the speaker’s need

Discourse Specification: Let me tell you something: it’s over Exemplification: Some of them were fired; for example, Mary. Evidentialization: The threat continues, as is evidence by recent attacks. Time: Where does he go after he leaves the bar? Location: I found it where I thought it would be.

figure 23

At the illocutionary level, I mentioned before the case of indirect illocution, where we afford access to an illocutionary scenario, and then we focus on one item of the scenario. So, by saying I’m thirsty, I’m giving evidence to the addressee that I have a need to be solved, and when the need is solved, the focus on the type of action would be a case of parameterization, which would be domain reduction. And if you go to the discourse level, you have specification, exemplification, evidentialization, time, and location, as [[…]] ways of achieving parameterization in discourse. For example, you say Let me tell you something: this is all over. Something then has to be further specified into This is all over. With exemplification: Some of them were fired, for example …, and you give only one of the names. Evidentialization: The threat continues as is evidenced by recent attacks. The evidence is here also partial. And time and location: we know that time is generic, and we fill in the time slot in our conceptual representations, most of the times by default. But sometimes language will give us clues as to how to parameterize time and location. At the level of discourse, this may happen with expressions like after he leaves, in the case of time, or where I thought it would be, in the case of location. The operation of saturation is also found at the lexical and discourse levels: different lexical phenomena and different discourse phenomena. At the

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lecture 1 Saturation

(based on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera 2014: 221)

(B COMPLETES A) (B is construction -ally coherent with A)

Constructional underdetermination (Are you ready?) Minor clauses (Morning!)

Saturation + expansion (I asked her out and she said no) Saturation + parameterization (What do you do, apart from my son?)

Discourse level Obligatory Saturation

Saturation

Levels of representation Lexical level

Non-obligatory saturation

Cognitive operation

Specification: X that Y (I know that the cat died) Cause: X because Y (The cat died because it ingested poison) Condition: If X, Y (If the cat ingests the poison, it will die) Concession: Even if X, Y (Even if the cat ingested that poison, it wouldn’t die) Comment: X, which Y (The cat, which ingested poison, died) Addition: X and Y (The cat ingested poison and died) Consecution (X, so Y) (The cat ingested poison, so it died)

figure 24

lexical level, you may have constructions of underdetermined expressions like Are you ready?, [[which]] we mentioned before: Are you ready to do something?, Are you ready to come with us? The case of minor clauses: Morning! meaning ‘good morning’. Or saturation and metonymic expansion combined: I asked her out and she said no. And saturation and parametrization, as in What do you do, apart from my son? Well, completing the question brings up the specific type of ‘doing’ that is going to be carried out, which here is connected to sexual activity. At the discourse level, we have discourse relations, like specification, cause, condition, concession, comment, addition, and consecution. If, for example, we comment on something—we say X, which Y—we are completing an incomplete mental representation. What you said, which is not the real thing, [[…]] completes or saturates an initially incomplete mental representation, and the same holds for the other connectors. I would like to very briefly make you aware, simply aware, that the same form of cognitive modeling in this case is going to take the form of EFFECT FOR CAUSE, [[which]] may underlie different phenomena including figures of speech, the integration of one figure into another, and constructional behavior. So, I would like you to focus your attention on these two examples. [[Take]] synesthesia, [[as]] when you use the word dull meaning that something lacks

Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations

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The ubiquity of linguistic constructs: the case of EFFECT FOR CAUSE • Language-based inferencing involves the same kind of cognitive activity that allows for the organization of the lexico-grammar; e.g. EFFECT FOR CAUSE (based on domain expansion) (Ruiz de Mendoza and Peña, in prep.). • EFFECT FOR CAUSE is a high-level domain expansion metonymy that (i) underlies figures of speech, (ii) licenses the integration of one figure into another, (iii) licenses constructional behavior.

figure 25

EFFECT FOR CAUSE in figurative language • Synesthesia: a sound and a color are both “dull” because they have a similar effect: the lack of intensity. The similarity of effects stands for similar (and thus exchangeable) causes. • Hypallage (transferred epithet): sad novel (a novel that causes readers to feel sad).

figure 26

intensity. For example, you may say that a sound is dull, but you can also say that a color is dull. Why is it possible to talk about dull sounds but also about dull colors? The reason is one of resemblance. There is similarity of effects, but this is not low-level similarity. This is high-level similarity. And the similarity of effects allows us to think naively and make a connection between the causes. So, sound and color mix in our mind with respect to this property of being dull because of the similarity of effects, which is the lack of intensity.

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lecture 1

EFFECT FOR CAUSE licensing metaphorical amalgams • My boss is a pig (IMMORAL PEOPLE ARE FILTHY ANIMALS) => IMMORALITY IS FILTH is built into PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS => This is possible through the application of the EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy: ØUnrelated causes can be equated if their corresponding effects are similar (a person’s immoral behavior can be as revolting as pigs dirty behavior; e.g. wallowing in mud filled with excrement).

figure 27

There is a figure of speech called hypallage, [[which]] has been defined by theorists as a “transferred epithet”. [[Imagine]] you have read a novel and then you find that it is a sad novel; but the novel cannot be sad. It’s the person that reads the novel that is sad. In fact, this is a case of the EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy allowing you to transfer the epithet: a novel that causes readers to feel sad. Sad is the effect and the cause is what you mean. So, a sad novel would be paraphrased as ‘a novel that causes you to feel sad when you read it’. The effect stands for the cause. The EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy also underlies some combinations of metaphor. This is another interesting phenomenon. If you think about it in a naive way, the sentence My boss is a pig is simply a realization of the metaphor PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS. And because you don’t like pigs, you don’t like people, in some cultures. I don’t know about your culture. In my culture, pigs are dirty, so we don’t like them. They stink. But if I say that My boss is a pig, I do not actually mean that he is dirty. I can use the pig metaphor to mean that someone is dirty. But what I mean is that he’s immoral, that he abuses me, that he doesn’t treat me nicely. How can I explain this? This is a combination of two metaphors, and one is built into the other. One of them is IMMORALITY IS FILTH, which is built into PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS. Immoral people are filthy animals. That’s the combination. And why is that combination possible? Why is immorality filth? Because filthiness makes us feel disgusted in the same way as immorality. The commonality of effects licenses the commonality of causes, when the causes are not really in common, which is also a case of naive

Cognitive Models and Cognitive Operations

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EFFECT FOR CAUSE licensing constructional behavior • The door opened suddenly profiles an effect (the door having become open) that stands for its cause (someone performing the action of opening it). • This metonymy allows grammar to treat the action verb open syntactically as a non-causal intransitive verb denoting an effect/result-oriented process that can stand for an implicit causal action (Ruiz de Mendoza and Peña 2008), i.e. EFFECT FOR CAUSE licenses PROCESS FOR ACTION.

figure 28

thinking. So, we can relate the causes, because we do relate the effects on the basis of similarity. We will go back to this example in a future lecture. And finally, I think this is also a case of EFFECT FOR CAUSE to some extent. This is a construction that has been called by theorists the inchoative construction: The door opened; The door opened suddenly. Doors do not open by themselves. So, what you actually mean is that someone or something, for example, a gust of wind, opened the door. But you pretend that the door has opened by itself. So, the actual communicative value of this construction is that you pretend that things happen “just because” by themselves. [[In]] the same way [[…]], when a child breaks an expensive item [[and]] says, Oh, it broke, mom! I’m sorry, it’s broken, [[we know that]] no, it didn’t “break”: [[the child]] broke it. So, it’s the same idea. You pretend that it happened by itself. In a sense, this construction is licensed, it is allowed, by a high-level metonymy, which is EFFECT FOR CAUSE. You focus on the effect, something that happened, and the cause is there, underlying. When you say It broke or It opened, you know that someone “broke” and someone “opened”. So, the cause is there. By way of conclusion, meaning construction, at very many different levels and also in different domains of linguistic research, is based on cognitive modeling. And cognitive modeling is the result of using representational cognitive operations acting on cognitive models of different kinds. Cognitive model types allow us to organize the architecture of a meaning construction model of language and to set up descriptive levels, like the four levels that I mentioned before, namely argument structure, implicational, illocutionary, and discourse

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lecture 1

Conclusions • Meaning construction is based on cognitive modeling, which is the result of representational cognitive operations acting on cognitive models of various kinds. • Cognitive model types allow us to organize the architecture of a meaning construction model of language and to set up descriptive levels (argument-structure, implicational, illocutionary, discourse-structure) and find parallels across such levels. • Initial evidence for types of cognitive operations comes from the study of metaphor (correlation, resemblance) and metonymy (domain expansion/reduction).

figure 29

• Additional evidence comes from examining other cases of language use such as figurative language irony (echoing, contrasting), hyperbole (strengthening, contrasting), understatement (mitigation), and underdetermined expressions (parameterization, saturation). With a typology of cognitive operations and of cognitive models, in compliance with the Equipollence Hypothesis, it is possible to study patterns of cognitive modeling across descriptive levels of meaning construction. • The resulting account is endowed with a higher degree of generalization than accounts that do not take into account meaning regularities based on cognitive modeling.

figure 30

structure. And we can find parallels, convergences, across the different levels and some initial evidence for all this comes from the analysis of so-called “figurative speech”, like the example—or the case—of the study of metaphor or the case of the study of metonymy, but also of hyperbole, paradox, and so on, that we mentioned before. Thank you very much.

lecture 2

Metonymy, Inferencing, and Grammar This second talk is based on some aspects of this morning’s talk. We dealt with cognitive operations as a way of explaining meaning construction, and we mentioned that there were two operations called expansion and reduction, [[which]] were not exclusive of metonymy, but that were central to understand much of metonymic thinking. Now we are going to talk about how those two operations [[…]] work in making inferences, and also in some grammatical processes that I strongly believe can be traced back to metonymic thinking. [[Since such processes are]] heavily entrenched [[…]] when we make use of those parts of grammar, we are not aware, as speakers, that at some point in time metonymic thinking was used. Here there is a diachronic connection that you might like, Martin. Probably, at some point in time, the metonymy was active in the speech community, and with the passage of time, there was a consolidation or an entrenchment of the form-meaning pairing. And we are not aware anymore that there is a metonymic origin, but the effects of that original metonymic thinking can be seen in language structure and language function. But before I go into those details about the connections between metonymy-grammar, and metonymy and pragmatic inferencing, I would need to define metonymy. And this is—let me use the metaphor—“getting into hot water.” There is no consensus right now in the cognitive-linguistic community about what metonymy is. Probably I’m not doing justice to the large variety of approaches to the notion of metonymy within cognitive linguistics. But my experience in dealing with the topic guides me into setting up three basic positions that I think are largely compatible and [[go a long way]] into explaining what metonymy is. There are other positions that maybe develop aspects of these ones in some detail, or, simply, are alternatives to this one, but I think these are the three main ones. In one of them, we see metonymy as a domain-internal conceptual All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555680

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_003

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lecture 2

Defining metonymy • How to define metonymy is still a matter of controversy in Cognitive Linguistics (cf. Benczes et al 2011). • Three basic positions, which are largely compatible: • Metonymy as a domain-internal conceptual mapping (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). • Metonymy as a “reference point” phenomenon (cf. Langacker, 1993, 2000) • Metonymy as a combination of more basic cognitive operations (Ruiz de Mendoza 2000)

figure 1

mapping. This is the original Lakoffian position. It goes back to 1980. Another position starts from Langacker’s insights into what he called reference point phenomena, back in 1993. And then there is a third position, and I’m giving my name, because it is my position, but there are some followers across Europe of this position, which is seeing metonymy as a combination of more basic cognitive operations. Now, I do not claim that my position overrides any of the other positions. What I claim is that it throws light on the notion of metonymy, and that it is largely complementary with the other two positions. 1

Metonymy as a Mapping

The first one, metonymy as a mapping revolves around some main assumptions. Those were spelled out by Lakoff and Johnson back in 1980. They said that metonymy is a mapping within a conceptual domain. They wanted to tell the difference between metonymy and metaphor. So, for them, metaphor was a mapping across conceptual domains, and metonymy was a mapping inside a single domain. I don’t think they defined the notion of conceptual domain. They took it for granted. But in general, it is assumed that what they had in mind was that a conceptual domain was simply a knowledge construct with internal coherence. So, probably, a frame or part of a frame could be a conceptual domain, or a scenario or part of a scenario. Metonymy, they also pointed out, involves a “stands for” connection between related parts of a conceptual domain, or between the whole domain and

Metonymy, Inferencing, and Grammar

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The main assumptions • Metonymy is a mapping within a “conceptual domain” (an internally coherent knowledge construct), while metaphor is a mapping across discrete conceptual domains. • Metonymy involves a “stands for” relationship between related parts of a conceptual domain, or between the whole domain and one of its parts, or between part of a domain and the whole of it. Metaphor is based on an “is a” relationship where one conceptual domain allows us to think and reason about another conceptual domain: • Metaphor: CHANGE IS GETTING/LOSING A POSSESSION: acquiring or losing a property is seen as getting or losing a possession, regaining a property is regaining a possession and purposes are desired possessions: I keep getting these terrible headaches; He has lost his mind; She regained her strength; He’d like to have some more courage. • Metonymy is not used for reasoning. It serves a referential function: The guitar has been drinking heavily ‘the musician that plays the guitar’. The referential value of “the guitar” and the ‘stands for’ connection between the metonymic source and target are felt to be related: if A stands for B, and A is a referential expression, it follows that A refers to B.

figure 2

one of its parts, or between part of a domain and the whole of it. In my own terminology, I usually refer to the whole domain by the label matrix domain. And you’ll probably see that in my papers and also in the handouts. Any other subdomain of the matrix domain can be accessed metonymically, or we can use subdomains to have access to the matrix domain. Metaphor, they said, is based on an “is a” relationship (A is B), [[such that]] one conceptual domain allows us to think and reason about another domain. But in metaphor, we do not have the “stands for” relationship. To give a couple of examples, one of metaphor, and another one of metonymy, think of CHANGE IS GETTING/LOSING A POSSESSION, as in He has lost his mind, or She regained her strength, or He’d like to have some more courage. Acquiring or losing a property is seen as getting or losing a possession, regaining a property is regaining a possession, and purposes are desired possessions. This was the traditional approach to metaphor back in 1980. In the case of metonymy, we do not have such a reasoning process, and metonymy seems to serve only a referential function. For example, when you say The guitar has been drinking heavily, you don’t mean the instrument, you mean the musician that plays the instrument. This metonymy has a referential value which is connected with the “stands for” connection between the source and the target that are felt to be related. There are weaknesses to this approach. They have been pointed out by some cognitive linguists, one of them Mario Brdar, from Croatia, who pointed out, back in 2009: That’s okay, yes, metonymy may suggest or may be connected with the idea of “stands for” very frequently, but that doesn’t mean that metonymy is referential. So, saying that A stands for B is metonymic doesn’t mean

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lecture 2

The weaknesses • Metonymy is not necessarily referential; e.g. I’ll be brief stands for ‘I will speak briefly’ (Brdar 2009: 269) • It is not always clear when a mapping is carried out inside a domain (metonymy) or across domains (metaphor), since sometimes domains are “conflated” on the grounds of frequent co-occurrence in our experience, a phenomenon that is known as experiential “correlation”: His wealth is continually on the rise (MORE IS UP; based on seeing levels rise and fall as quantity increases and decreases). Reasoning process: in connection with MORE IS UP, we reason that prices can go up and down, either slowly or quickly, or that they can stagnate.

figure 3

that necessarily A will be referential to B. For example, they give the sentence, I’ll be brief. Mario Brdar and Rita, his wife, argue that I’ll be brief stands for ‘I will speak briefly’. So, there is no referentiality, unlike in the case of The guitar has been drinking, where the guitar refers to the guitar player. The second weakness is that it is not always clear when a mapping is carried out inside a domain or across domains, since sometimes domains are conflated on the grounds of frequent co-occurrence in our experience. This is the phenomenon that we talked about this morning, called experiential correlation, which is now very, very well-known in Cognitive Linguistics. An example to be added to those that I gave this morning is His wealth is continually on the rise, [[which]] hinges on the correlation metaphor MORE IS UP. And MORE IS UP is probably based on seeing levels rise and fall as quantity increases and decreases. There is a reasoning process, though, behind MORE IS UP. If MORE IS UP, then we can think that LESS IS DOWN. We can think of going up quickly or slowly. We can think of prices soaring or plummeting. And we can also say that the economy or the prices may stagnate. So, there is a small reasoning process even behind this very simple metaphor. And if MORE and UP are conflated in our minds on the basis of experiential correlation, why say that MORE IS UP is actually a metaphor?, these people argue. We could say that, well, maybe UP is used to stand for MORE. When we say that prices go up, up simply means that prices are increasing. It stands for [[MORE]]. And that could be a weakness of an account of metonymy that tries to make a clear-cut distinction between the notions of metaphor and metonymy on the basis of the cross-domain versus the domain-internal structure of the mappings.

Metonymy, Inferencing, and Grammar

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Metonymy as a Reference Point Phenomenon

The second view is metonymy as a reference point phenomenon. This is a very nice position. It starts with a paper, a very well-known paper, written by Langacker back in 1993 on reference-point phenomena. Langacker listed metonymy as one case of reference-point relationships. What is a reference-point relationship? This is very easy. The entity that is first invoked when we speak, when we produce a sentence, allows us to establish mental contact with another related entity. Mental contact would be spatial or could be any other type of mental contact. An example is the Saxon genitive in English, Mary’s best friend, or the possessive case in other languages. We first focus our attention on Mary when we say Mary’s best friend, but then shift our attention to her best friend, relegating Mary to the background. From this point of view, why not say that metonymy is, like Mary’s best friend, simply a mechanism devised by our brains, with a materialization in language use, whereby one entity gives access to another related entity with a change in focus, as in the case of the possessor-possessed relationship. Think of the sentence He has a Picasso, where Picasso refers to a sample of his work. It is a reference point for a sample of his work and we would have a changing focus, which is similar or parallel to the one that we talked about before with respect to the possessor-possessed relationship. This idea of “affording mental access” applies not only to referential metonymies. So, this could be an advantage, if we have issues with the declaration that, well, maybe most metonymies are

The position

• Reference-point relationships: the entity first invoked allows us to establish “mental” contact with another (spatially or otherwise) related entity. • Possessor-possessed: • Mary’s best friend => we first focus our attention on Mary, but then shift our attention to her best friend thereby relegating Mary to the background. • Metonymy: one entity affords access to another related, which brings about a change in focus: • He has a Picasso => the artist is a reference point for a sample of his work. • The idea of “affording mental access” applies to non-referential metonymies (cf. Kövecses and Radden 1998, Barcelona 2000, and Langacker 2000): • Predicative: He’s a real brain ‘a person with high intellectual ability’. • Propositional: I’ll be brief ‘I will speak briefly’. • Illocutionary: I’m thirsty (‘Give me something to drink’) figure 4

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The weaknesses • Panther (2005) has argued that this “afford access” view of metonymy overgeneralizes. It cannot tell the difference between metonymy and other non-metonymic phenomena: ØThe loss of my wallet put me in a bad mood > “the loss of my wallet” affords access to the idea of ‘non-possession of the wallet’. But this connection is an entailment; it is non-contingent or conceptually necessary, whereas metonymic relations are contingent. • In INSTRUMENT FOR PLAYER (The piano is in a bad mood), however, the existence of the instrument does not entail the existence of the player.

figure 5

referential, while some of them are not. This could solve the problem. It applies to non-referential metonymies. For example, if we say I’ll be brief, meaning I will speak briefly, what we have is the proposition ‘I’ll be brief’ allowing for a change of focus in which the focus goes from brevity in general, assigned to the speaker, to what the speaker says, to the product of the speaker’s action. In the case of illocution, some scholars have argued, I’m thirsty would provide access to ‘give me something to drink’. This is not a referential metonymy, but it works as a reference point phenomenon. The reference-point thesis would allow us to explain it. In the case of predicative metonymies, like He’s a real brain—a very famous one meaning ‘a person with high intellectual skills’—we would have the same. This is not a referential metonymy, but a real brain gives access to the person that has these outstanding skills. Are there weaknesses to this approach? Well, there’s at least one scholar that has identified one possible weakness. The scholar is Klaus Panther, from Hamburg University, in Germany. He has argued that the “afford access” view of metonymy overgeneralizes, so it cannot tell the difference between metonymy and other non-metonymic phenomena. Let me clarify that. I don’t think that Langacker—and then the people that followed up on Langacker either—had the intention to argue that metonymy was (exclusively) to be explained as a reference point phenomenon. They were aware that there are many reference point phenomena. [[…]] Metonymy belongs to this broad category of phenomena. But in any case, it is true that—because there are other phenomena that can be explained on the basis of the “afford access” view—probably it is not enough to say that metonymy is a reference point phenomenon, if you want

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to define metonymy in an accurate way. Well, Panther gives the example The loss of my wallet put me in a bad mood. And his argument goes as follows. He says, when I say the loss of my wallet, what I mean is that I lost my wallet. This is a presupposition. So, the loss of my wallet affords access to the idea that I do not have my wallet any longer, to the idea of ‘non-possession of the wallet’. But this connection is non-contingent, that is to say, it is conceptually necessary. If you say the loss of my wallet, there is no way out: you have lost the wallet or you are a liar. But metonymic relations are not like this. They are contingent. Take The piano is in a bad mood where the piano stands for the piano player. The existence of the instrument does not entail the existence of a player. In INSTRUMENT FOR PLAYER, you can have the piano without a player. That’s Panther’s argument. So, this could be a weakness—but let me be clear about it—only if we understand that the “afford access” view is the only possibility to define metonymy. And I don’t think that is the real position of Günter Radden, Zoltán Kövecses, or even Langacker, when he first proposed the idea. 3

Metonymy in Terms of Cognitive Operations

Another possibility that I ascribe to myself and some people that have been working with me over the last two decades is metonymy in terms of cognitive operations. And this links up with this morning’s talk. The position • A domain-internal conceptual mapping where the target domain is either the result of an expansion or of a reduction of the conceptual material in the source domain (Ruiz de Mendoza 2000). • These operations combine with a (structural or formal) substitution operation whereby the source stands for the target. • Each operation underlies a basic metonymy type: • Domain expansion: source-in-target metonymies: HAND FOR LABORER (We need to hire a new hand), COSTUME FOR WEARER (The stuffed shirts arrived earlier), MATERIAL OF OBJECT FOR OBJECT (He likes to wear plastic), PLAYING PIECE FOR ENTIRE GAME (Play ball). • Domain reduction: target-in-source metonymies: COMPANY FOR WORKERS (General Motors plans to change its advertising strategy), LOCATION FOR INSTITUTION (Washington has decided to end the war on poverty), COUNTRY FOR RULER (France has vetoed two Security Council resolutions). figure 6

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In this position, the idea that metonymy is a conceptual mapping is accepted. There is no problem with it. The idea that metonymy supplies a point of access is not a problem either. It’s acceptable, but rather than say that metonymy is simply one thing, what we want to do is to say, well, metonymy has a number of properties, and if you bring together all those properties, then you have a more accurate account of what metonymy is. I’m not really sure that this position that I want to put forward actually finishes the topic off. What I think is that it simply adds one more view and it is compatible with other views, and complementary to them, and that probably other insights into the definition of metonymy have to be [[brought]] into this framework. The basic view is that we have two cognitive operations that are also at work elsewhere in language called expansion and reduction. I discovered that there is a school of thought in pragmatics, Relevance Theory, where they have a very similar idea for inferential pragmatics and their discussions on metaphor and metonymy. They argue that metaphor is a matter of expansion. They don’t call it expansion; they call it broadening. And then they have narrowing for what I call reduction. They are mostly parallel terms, but not exactly the same. For them, the ideas of broadening and narrowing are pragmatic [[tasks]], and they don’t have any mental reality. In my view, if you can go from one concept to another concept, that’s a mental operation, and we can’t [[…]] say that it’s simply a pragmatic task. In the relevance-theoretic framework, reduction is the only operation that is connected with metonymy, not expansion. Expansion, they connect with metaphor and with hyperbole (or the version of expansion which [[they call]] broadening). But I don’t see that as being the case. I don’t think that we enlarge a concept when we do metaphor. Their view of metaphor is that, for example, if you say that someone is a shark, shark creates an ad hoc concept, and it is not actually a shark, but a person that behaves like a shark. That’s their idea. So, you expand the scope of the concept. What I see is a mapping in the Lakoffian way. What I see is that you treat a person as a shark and that you carry over, or you map, some of the properties of sharks onto the notion of lawyer. These two operations that I propose, expansion and reduction, combine with what we called, this morning, substitution operations, which are structural or formal. So, the combination of expansion and/or reduction with substitution gives rise to metonymy. When I say, for example, in HAND FOR LABORER, We need to hire a new hand, we have domain expansion, because ‘hand’ stands for ‘the person that will use his hands to work’. We also have this substitution operation with COSTUME FOR WEARER: The stuffed shirts arrived earlier. We have the same. The costume stands for the wearer because of this formal property of metonymies, which is the substitution operation. [[Also,]] MATERIAL OF AN

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OBJECT FOR THE OBJECT: He likes to wear plastic; PLAYING PIECE FOR THE ENTIRE GAME: to play ball; and there are many others. In the case of domain reduction, we go from what I call the matrix domain to one of its subdomains, as is relevant in terms of the pragmatic properties of the sentence. We have to look at the context and the text and decide what type of reduction we are going to achieve. For example, in the case of COMPANY FOR WORKERS, as in the sentence General Motors plans to change its advertising strategy, it is not the whole company that makes the change: it is someone inside the company, or maybe a number of people, maybe a committee inside the company, or maybe a whole department. It is someone that is not easily identifiable. And because it is not easily identifiable, metonymy provides an excellent resource to talk about what happens with the advertising strategy. Since we cannot pin down who in General Motors has made the changes, we simply ascribe the action to the company itself. In Washington has decided to end the war on poverty, we have LOCATION FOR INSTITUTION and the institution is inside the location. So that would be another case of domain reduction. And the same with COUNTRY FOR RULER, where we mention the country: the country stands for the ruler, and the ruler is part of the country, as in France has vetoed two security council resolutions. This would be the basic position, and in this basic position, we still see metonymy as a point of access, and we still see metonymy as a mapping, if we take into account, of course, that the notion of mapping simply means making connections. A mapping is a set of connections between concepts.

• Part-for-part metonymies are regarded either as misclassified cases of the two basic types or as cases of double metonymies: • The ham sandwich is waiting for his bill (ORDER FOR CUSTOMER) is a source-in-target mapping since the order placed by a customer is part of our experiential domain about the customer. • Napoleon lost at Waterloo (RULER FOR ARMY) is a target-in-source metonymy since the army operates under the ruler’s command. • His book redefines physics (traditionally described as PRODUCT FOR PRODUCER) is in fact a case of the double mapping MEDIUM FOR WORK FOR AUTHOR (reduction + expansion).

figure 7

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Now, sometimes people ask me about where part-for-part metonymies fall in this simplified division between two types of processes, broadening/narrowing, or expansion/reduction. My feeling is that part-for-part metonymies are probably largely irrelevant in terms of cognitive saliency and their use is almost negligible. It is almost irrelevant. There are very many traditional examples of part-for-part metonymies, but I think that most of them are misclassified cases of one of the two basic types, or they might be cases of what I call double metonymies, which other scholars have called metonymic chains. To give an example, we can think about this sentence in very different ways, and depending on how we set up the profile/base connections or the basic aspects of saliency for the sentence, maybe we will have different perspectives on what is a matrix domain and what is a sub-domain. Take the famous Lakoffian example that was borrowed from somebody else, the “ham sandwich” example: The ham sandwich is waiting for his bill. This is a case of ORDER FOR CUSTOMER, typically classified as part-for-part within the context of a restaurant. We have the customer, we have the order, and then because they are somehow pragmatically or functionally related, the order can stand for the customer. But what if we see that from a different perspective, if we think of the customer as the person that is actually dealing with the order (he is eating the ham sandwich)? And the ham sandwich somehow becomes part of the experiential domain of the customer within the context of a restaurant? So, it could be possible to deal with this example as one of, not part-for-part, but part-for-whole, or domain expansion, as I said before. The second one: Napoleon lost at Waterloo. You have the ruler and you have the army. Can we see this differently? Rather than the ruler is one part, [[and]] the army is another part of a broader context, can we see this differently? Can we see the ruler as the controller of the army and the army as the controlled entity? If we change the perspective in terms of the relationship that is at work here to make meaning out of this sentence, probably Napoleon is the matrix domain and the army under his command—the entity that is ruled by Napoleon—would be a subdomain. You will see later that there are correlations between these two types of metonymy in this approach and anaphoric reference to metonymic noun phrases. Finally, the example His book redefines physics has been traditionally described as an example of PRODUCT FOR PRODUCER. The book is the product, but the producer of the book is the person that has redefined physics. But could we consider this an example of a double mapping from the book as the medium for the work and the work standing for the author? So, we would have MEDIUM FOR WORK FOR AUTHOR. From MEDIUM to WORK, we would have domain reduction, because the book contains the contents; and from the WORK to the AUTHOR of the contents, we would have domain expansion.

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Advantages • The account makes connections between metonymy and other linguistic phenomena; e.g. euphemism makes use of substitution (She’s ample ‘fat’, where ‘ample’ substitutes for ‘fat’) but not of expansion or reduction; focalization is based on domain reduction: He stole my WATCH! (not any other belonging) [note that, in principle, steal suggests a belonging of some type]. • It allows us to understand the true operational nature of metonymic complexes (metaphtonymy and metonymic chains). • It allows us to account for the cognitive grounding of implicature-derivation and implicit illocution combines expansion and reduction operations: part of a situational cognitive model stands for the whole, which then stands for another part. • It allows us to account for anaphoric reference involving metonymy. figure 8

So, these are some possibilities. I would argue that, probably, these examples of metonymy are not cases of part-for-part metonymy. Other people—that’s not on the slide—have argued that EFFECT FOR CAUSE and CAUSE FOR EFFECT metonymies are clear cases of part-for-part metonymies. And I have to accept that probably this is a case of contiguity. But we can also see effectcause and cause-effect connections as going parallel to action-result connections that show very often in grammar, especially in some grammatical constructions. If we see EFFECT FOR CAUSE as parallel to RESULT FOR ACTION and we think of a causal-actional framework, then the effect of a cause could be a subdomain of that causal action in the same way as the result of an action is a subdomain of the action. So, there is also a possibility that we can re-perspectivize this approach to part-for-part metonymy in the case of EFFECT FOR CAUSE and CAUSE FOR EFFECT, and see that as cases of expansion, in the case of EFFECT FOR CAUSE, and reduction in the case of CAUSE FOR EFFECT. What are the advantages of an account of this kind? I think it has at least the following advantages. Some of them will be already evident to the audience [[…]]. One is that this account makes connections between metonymy and other linguistic phenomena. I brought up the case of euphemism this morning, which makes use of substitution, because we see metonymy as a combination of substitution and then expansion/reduction. Well, an example like She’s ample for ‘she is fat’, where ample substitutes for fat, can also be explained in terms of substitution, like metonymy. And it makes a connection between metonymy and euphemism. And I also gave you an example this morning: He stole my WATCH with emphasis on my watch, which I suggested is based on

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reduction, if we understand that we are focalizing on the watch within the domain of the person’s belongings. So, domain reduction and domain expansion also have parallels, outside the world of metonymy, with the two processes that we identify as [[part of a]] definition of metonymy, expansion and reduction. This could be one advantage, that we can make connections that, otherwise, would be missing. And I would like to contemplate these connections as an addition to the idea of metonymy as a point of access and to the idea of metonymy as a mapping. Also, another advantage is that this approach allows us to understand the true operational nature of metonymic complexes. We will also see that when I give you an overview of metaphtonymy—combinations of metaphor and metonymy—and metonymic chains, which I will do briefly. Also, it allows us to account for the cognitive grounding of implicaturederivation and implicit illocution, which combines expansion and reduction operations. I mentioned that very briefly this morning in passing, and you will have a whole lecture on that, but I will give you an appetizer in a minute. The basic idea is that part of a situational cognitive model can stand for the whole model, which, then, can stand for another part. I will give you some examples immediately. And finally, anaphoric reference, which I briefly mentioned before, which seems to somehow have something to do with this idea of expansion and reduction when anaphoric reference has a metonymic antecedent. Let’s start with metaphtonymy. This is a term that was popularized after Louis Goossens published, I think back in 1990, a very good paper, in the journal Cognitive Linguistics, by the same name: “Metaphtonymy”. But Goossens had Metaphtonymy

• Metonymic expansion of a metaphoric source: He ran away with his tail between his legs (maps dog’s behavior when threatened onto corresponding human behavior when facing a challenge, but the linguistic expression only supplies part of the metaphoric source, thus requiring metonymic development). • Metonymic expansion of metaphoric target: He knit his eyebrows (the source has a person knitting clothes; the target one that frowns, which affords metonymic access to a situation in which someone frowns because he is angry). • Metonymic reduction of a metaphoric source: He's the life and soul of the party (this metaphor maps a person onto a party, with special emphasis on the ability of a person’s lively behavior to cause entertainment). • Metonymic reduction of metaphoric target: She won my heart (the source has a winner that wins a prize and the target a lover that obtains her loved one’s heart, which stands for his love). figure 9

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been working only with a very limited corpus of examples based on body parts and, I think, on speech acts. So, his conclusions were preliminary. Of course, he didn’t argue, he didn’t contend, that his conclusions were final at all. With my co-workers at the University of La Rioja, we went through lots of examples of combinations of metaphor and metonymy that are available to anyone in a database that we call CogMod (for “cognitive modeling”). And from the data, from the examples, and the manual analyses of all these examples, we came to the conclusion that there are four basic patterns of metaphtonomy. These are slightly different from those that Goossens had identified. If you want to read a little bit about Goossens’ work, I have a summary in a 2014 paper—that I can send you—and also the contrast with this reorganization of the classification. One type of metaphtonomy is based on expanding the metaphoric source domain, that is, there is a metonymic elaboration through expansion of the metaphoric source. In another case, we have metonymic expansion, not of the source, but of the target. In another case, we can have metonymic reduction of the source; and in the last case, a metonymic reduction of the metaphoric target, which means that the basic framework, when metaphor and metonymy interact, is metaphorical and metonymy simply elaborates on the source or the target of the metaphor. And because we have two metonymic operations, we have four possibilities as a result: metonymic expansion or reduction of either the source or the target of the metaphor. I’ll give you some examples, and we had better look at the diagrams. The first one corresponds to the sentence He ran away with his tail between his legs, which is, by the way, one of Goossens’ examples that we’ve reanalyzed. In this example, the sentence only provides part of a more complex scenario:

!

The!dog,!after!being! threatened,!has!decided! not!to!confront!the! challenge!!

METONYMY!

! A!dog!runs!away!with! its!tail!between!its! legs!(as!a!sign!of! submission)! !

figure 10

METAPHOR!

A!person!is!publicly! threatened!and!decides! not!to!confront!the! challenge,!which!he/she! evidences!by!adopting!a! submissive!attitude!

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TARGET SOURCE a person knits articles of clothing

METAPHOR

a person puts his eyebrows closely together SOURCE METONYMY situation in which a person frowns because he is angry

TARGET

!

figure 11

the idea that there is an animal, probably a dog, that runs away with its tail between its legs. We understand that as a sign of submission, but that is not said; that is not explicit. So, what is implicit about this? Well, the idea that a dog has been threatened, has been mistreated, and has decided not to confront the challenger and the challenge. So, A dog runs away with its tail between its legs, which is what the sentence says, has to be expanded into ‘a dog runs away with its tail between its legs as a sign of submission after being threatened and deciding not to confront the challenger’. Of course, we’re not going to say all of that. That is not a good idea in terms of economy. But using metonymy is a good idea. We only provide one relevant part of the whole scenario and then we expect the hearer, who is acquainted with the same piece of experience, to activate the rest of this scenario. This maps metaphorically onto the situation in which there is a person, not an animal, that is publicly threatened and decides not to confront the challenge and adopts a submissive attitude of some kind, not necessarily the same one as the dog, right? Because it’s impossible. This type of submissive attitude could be signaled in any other way: by lowering the head, simply running away, or complaining in a low voice; any other sign of submission would be relevant. So, this is a case of metonymic expansion of the metaphoric source. Once we have completed the metaphoric source through expansion, we can perform the metaphorical mapping. The second example corresponds to the sentence He knit his eyebrows. In the source, obviously, we have a person knitting articles of clothing, and in the target, we have a person that puts his eyebrows closely together. And here what we do is we elaborate on the target. We expand the target into a situation

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SOURCE person

Metaphor

TARGET party

life and soul Metonymy

lively behaviour Metonymy

the most cheerful and consequently entertaining character at a party

entertainment

figure 12

!

in which a person does that—put his eyebrows closely together, which we call “frown”—because he has an emotion—he’s emotional about it—usually anger. A person frowns when a person is angry or upset in some way. This would be a case of metonymic expansion of the metaphoric target. Another example, which is slightly complicated, He’s the life and soul of the party, would be a case of double-domain reduction of the metaphoric source. In He’s the life and soul of the party, the source has a person that displays his lively behavior, or her lively behavior, in a party, and as a result provides entertainment to others. He is an amusing person. In the target, we have the party and we have the most cheerful and consequently entertaining character at the party. So, in the source, we have a person; a person has life and soul. Life and soul allow you to live, to display lively behavior, and to provide entertainment. And in the target, we have the party and the person that displays the most cheerful behavior and, consequently, is the most entertaining character at the party. Final example, about “winning hearts”. The original example was She won my heart. In the source, we have a ‘winner’, we have ‘winning’, and we have a ‘prize’. In the target, the source maps onto the ‘lover’, ‘winning’ is ‘obtaining’, and the ‘price’ is ‘someone’s heart’. But you know that culturally we think of the ‘heart’ as being filled with emotions; one of them is ‘love’. So, it’s like a container, and ‘love’ is the substance in the container. So that’s metonymic reduction. We have one of the correspondences that is elaborated metonymically through domain reduction. So, we can obtain the final meaning representation that what she won was not the heart; she won someone’s love.

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TARGET

SOURCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Metaphor winner winning prize

lover obtaining someone's heart

SOURCE

Metonymy TARGET love

!

figure 13

DOUBLE METONYMY • Double domain reduction: Wall Street is in panic • Place > institution > people associated with the institution • Double domain expansion: His sister heads the policy unit. • Head > leader > action of leading • Domain reduction + domain expansion: Shakespeare is on the top shelf • Author > author’s literary work > medium of presentation of work • Domain expansion + domain reduction: He has too much lip • Lip > action of speaking > ability to speak in a certain way

figure 14

Then, double metonymy. In double metonymy, this idea of dividing metonymy up into two operations is also very productive. I will give you just a few examples. One of them, the first one, is a case of double domain reduction. The second one will be one of double domain expansion. Then, you will have a combination of reduction and expansion in two possible ways: domain reduction plus domain expansion and, conversely, domain expansion plus domain reduction. We will see one example after the other.

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place

institution

people

!

figure 15

action of leading

leader/agent head

! figure 16

Let’s start with the first one: double-domain reduction, with the sentence Wall Street is in panic. Here, what we have is a metonymy from the place, Wall Street, to the institution, the stock exchange, then to the people associated with the institution. This diagram shows the connections: the institution inside the place, and the people that belong to the institution or that work within the context of the institution.

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author

work

medium/format

!

figure 17

action

instrument

figure 18

ability

!

The second example, His sister heads the public policy unit, [[involves]] double domain expansion. We go from the ‘head’ to the ‘leader’ to the ‘action of leading’, as you can see here (the leader or agent); double domain expansion. Then Shakespeare is on the top shelf would have this diagram [refers to Figure 17]. Shakespeare is the author that produces his work, a subdomain. And from the work, we go to the medium of presentation of the work, which is the book. That explains Shakespeare is on the top shelf, which is different from simply saying I love Shakespeare, where Shakespeare stands for his work and no mention is made of the formal presentation of the work. In I love Shakespeare,

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that is simply one metonymy: from the author to his work. There is no second metonymic link. And finally, we saw this morning very briefly He has too much lip. I bring it here again. ‘Lip’ stands for the ‘action of speaking’, and then that [[stands]] for the ability to speak in a certain way, as you can see in that diagram [refers to Figure 18]. 4

Metonymic Expansion and Reduction in Implicature and Illocution

I also mentioned this morning that we can have metonymic expansion and reduction processes at work to explain implicature and illocution. We begin with implicature, and this would be the metonymic mapping that would explain B’s response in the brief exchange Did you have a good hunt? Jim is a great shot, or Jim knows how to shoot well [[or any similar response]], whatever you feel like. The idea about Jim is a great shot is that he has the ability, he has the skills, to kill very many animals. That maps onto—or activates—the hunting scenario. And then we focus our attention on the result of hunting, that the hunt was successful. And that’s a double metonymy too, very much like this one: INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION FOR ABILITY, in terms of its form. Expansion and reduction combine. Here, you have a pragmatically oriented analysis of the same sentence. We have what I call a chained reasoning schema. It is a combination of two reasoning schemas which are basically grounded in metonymy. In the first schema, the implicit premise, which is retrieved from our world knowledge, would be Domain expansion/reduction in implicature generation ACTION = hunting frame ABILITY = hunting skills RESULT = successful hunt

A: Did you have a good hunt? B: Jim is a great shot

ACTION

ABILITY

figure 19

RESULT

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Metonymy-based reasoning schema giving rise to implicature FOCUS ON ABILITY Implicit premise 1 (retrieved from world knowledge): An excellent marksman is likely to kill much game while hunting. Explicit meaning: Jim is a great marksman. Implicated conclusion 1: Jim probably killed much game while hunting. FOCUS ON ASSESSED RESULT Implicit premise 2 (retrieved from world knowledge): Killing much game makes a hunt successful. Previous implicated meaning: Jim probably killed much game. Implicated conclusion 2 (new implicated meaning): The hunt was successful.

figure 20

that an excellent marksman is likely to kill much game while hunting. What is explicitly said by the sentence is that Jim is a great shot, a great marksman, and the implicated conclusion is the other part of the implicit premise: Jim probably killed much game while hunting. So, if a good marksman is likely to kill much game, and Jim is a great marksman, then Jim probably killed much game. This reasoning schema is not enough to account for the whole meaning of the sentence. We need a second one. In the second one, we have the activation of a second implicit premise that is also retrieved from our knowledge of the world: killing much game makes a hunt successful. Because Jim probably killed much game, which is the previous implicated conclusion, then a new implicated conclusion is that the hunt was successful. If we combine the two inferential schemas which have this metonymic grounding here, ABILITY, ACTION, [[and]] RESULT, we obtain the final meaning representation of the sentence Jim is a great shot/ a great marksman. What about illocution? Quite some time ago, in exploring illocution from a different perspective, I postulated the existence of a conventional scenario, a conventional frame, that accounts for much of our illocutionary thinking. And this scenario applies to the Anglo-Saxon culture and also to my own culture. So, this is connected to world knowledge and to social conventions as we see them in my own culture. In the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. —we will go into this model in a lot more detail—one basic idea is that if we see that someone has a problem, we are somehow expected to give help. And I think that belongs to your own culture too. When you see that I have a problem—and I have tested that—, you come to the rescue and you help me, which is good, and I’m very grateful.

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Metonymy, Inferencing, and Grammar Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model (high-level situational) • If it is manifest to A that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B, and if A has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then A should do so (You should have helped your sister) • If it is manifest to A that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to B, then A is not expected to bring it about (Why did you hit your little sister?) • If it is manifest to A that a potential state of affairs is beneficial to B, then A is expected to bring it about (Sorry, I didn’t know you needed another towel).

figure 21

Domain expansion and reduction in indirect illocution: I’m thirsty !

Ability!stipulation!of!the! Cost9Benefit!Cognitive!Model! The! speaker!is! in!need![of! water]!

The! addressee! should! satisfy!the! speaker’s! need![of! water]!

figure 22

More technically, we can say that “if it is manifest to A that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B and if A has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then A should do so”. For example, that would explain a sentence like You should have helped your sister: ‘You didn’t help her; you saw that she had a problem; why didn’t you help her?’ So, we have linguistic manifestations of this social convention that I think is part of a more complex model called the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. And there are many other items, but let’s focus on this one. With this one, if someone says I’m thirsty, that person is revealing that he or she has a problem:

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Metonymy-based reasoning schema giving rise to illocution (based on part of the ability stipulation of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model) FOCUS ON SPEAKER’S NEED Implicit premise 1: Stating a non-beneficial state of affairs involves the speaker’s incapability to resolve it by himself. Explicit meaning: The speaker says he is thirsty. Implicated conclusion 1: The speaker cannot resolve the problem about his thirst. FOCUS ON EXPECTATION ON HEARER SATISFYING THE NEED Implicit premise 2: The social convention (If B is in need, and A has the capacity to satisfy B’s need, then A should do so.) Previous implicated meaning: the speaker cannot resolve the problem about his thirst (B is in need of water) Implicated conclusion 2: The hearer is expected to satisfy the speaker’s need (thereby changing the state of affairs to the speaker’s benefit, e.g. by giving him a glass of water) (A should cater for B’s need [by giving him some water].

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‘The speaker in need’ affords access, because metonymy is a reference point phenomenon, to a more complex scenario which is connected to the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, to the idea that we have to provide help to other people. So, if you’re able to do it and you detect someone’s need, then do it. And we go from the speaker’s need to the ability stipulation of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model that I read before. And from there we focus our attention, through reduction, on the addressee being expected to satisfy the speaker’s need, in this case, by giving the addressee some water. So, through expansion and reduction, we can account for at least this piece of illocutionary activity. Can we stipulate, as we did before, for implicature a double reasoning schema? Yes, we can. It would use as an implicit premise, not knowledge about the objective world, but social knowledge, the convention. And it would have one implicated conclusion, and then that implicated conclusion would be used to derive a further—second—implicated conclusion. Let’s see how it works. The first implicit premise is that if you state that there is a non-beneficial state of affairs that affects you, and that you can’t resolve by yourself, then someone has to do something for you. Someone has to help you. The explicit meaning is saying I’m thirsty. The speaker says that he is thirsty. And the implicated conclusion is: ‘Well, if the speaker says that he is thirsty, it means that he cannot resolve the problem about his thirst’. The second reasoning schema. The second premise is the social convention: “If B is in need and A has the capacity to satisfy B’s need, then A should do so”. The previous implicated conclusion is now brought into the reasoning

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Metonymy and grammar: (i) Metonymy motivating constructional phenomena. (i) Agreement in anaphoric reference to a metonymic phrase.

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schema. The speaker cannot resolve the problem about his thirst; that was the previous conclusion. And the second implicated conclusion would be that the hearer is expected to satisfy the speaker’s need, thereby changing the state of affairs to the speaker’s benefit, for example, by giving him something to drink. Interestingly, both implicature and illocution follow the same thinking pattern. This morning in the first talk, I mentioned that we have situational and non-situational cognitive models, and that situational and non-situational models can have at least three levels of organization. One is primary structure, the primary level; another one is the low level; and then another one, the high level. And this is a simplification because, of course, there are more levels of abstraction, as many as the mind sees fit for the cognitive activity at hand. The question is that, if we have a basic division between low level and high level, do we realize that social conventions are high-level constructs? A specific situation, like a dog running away from a person that is hitting the dog, is not high-level; it’s low-level. So, implicature seems to be connected to low-level situations or scenarios, whereas illocution is connected to high-level situations or scenarios. Lexical structure is generally considered low-level, like saying glass (lexical structure when it refers to concrete objects). But we have notions like ‘action’, or ‘result’, or ‘process’. Those would be high-level, if you will remember this morning’s division. We now go into grammar. In grammar, what we have is metonymic thinking, but it works at this high level. And we will see that high-level configurations are exploited metonymically, and that they underlie some grammatical

58 Grammatical Example phenomenon Categorial conversion He hammered the nail into the wall [alternate: He drove the nail into the wall with a hammer] Subcategorial There is a lot of America in what she does; There were conversion three Johns at the party [no clear alternates: What she does is heavily influenced by American values; There were three people called John at the party] Enriched composition She enjoyed/began the beer (Jackendoff 1997: 61) [no hard and fast alternate: She enjoyed/began drinking/bottling/distributing, etc. the beer] Parametrization This week, he’ll do the carpet and I’ll do the dishes [alternate: This week he will clean the carpet and I will wash the dishes] Intransitivization with The door opened object-to-subject [alternate: The wind opened the door] promotion The car won’t handle without the proper shock (causative/inchoative package alternation)

lecture 2 Metonymy INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION

(cf. Kövecses & Radden, 1998) AN ENTITY FOR ONE OF ITS PROPERTIES; AN INDIVIDUAL ENTITY FOR A COLLECTION INCLUDING THAT ENTITY

AN OBJECT FOR AN ACTION IN WHICH THE OBJECT IS INVOLVED GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC

PROCESS FOR ACTION

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phenomena. I will start with metonymy motivating some constructional phenomena, and then I will deal with a case of anaphoric reference that I already mentioned. You have a [[table]] here with different grammatical phenomena. I have chosen traditional labels. So, construction grammarians, please forgive me, if you don’t want to use these labels. But it’s only for the sake of convenience. So, take a case of, sorry to say, categorial conversion, where we have the noun hammer being converted into the verb to hammer, as in the sentence He hammered the nail into the wall. Kövecses and Radden, back in 1998, already listed quite a few high-level metonymies. They didn’t call them that way. But interestingly, the label INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION is an appropriate one to describe the process underlying this [[type]] of conversion phenomenon. We think of the hammer not only as the instrument, but also we think of the whole action in which the instrument is involved. Could we use an alternate structure to express roughly the same meaning? Yes, we could. Of course, it would not be the same. Any change in form usually entails a change in meaning, and by changing the form, we could say He drove the nail into the wall with a hammer. In fact, this would be more like the Chinese approach, wouldn’t it? The alternate. Yes, you will not be able to say something like He hammered the nail into the wall. Because English and Chinese belong to different language groups from a typological perspective. And well then, Talmy, who’s in the audience, knows a lot more than I do about that. He is the father of a classical division [between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages].

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So, we’ll go to a second case in which we find metonymy affecting grammar in some way. And I already gave you this example: There is a lot of America in what she does. You could say There is a lot of China in what she does. There is a lot of “any country”. There is a lot of America means a lot of American values, ideas, beliefs [[and]] lifestyle. So, it is any relevant property that we associate with America that is at work here. And this is a case—in other grammars, noncognitive-linguistic grammars—of subcategorial conversion. So, when we say a lot of America, we are using America syntactically in a way that is not possible. You can’t say that. America is a unique entity. One. An entity, America, stands for one of its properties and it is the metonymy that licenses this constructional change. Also, we can have an individual entity standing for a collection that includes the entity. This example was mentioned this morning by Hilpert: There were three Johns at the party. Instead of saying three people called John, we say three Johns, which is brief and to the point. It is metonymic. We use John, the individual entity, to stand for the collection that includes that entity. There are no clear alternates here. So, unless we have metonymic thinking at work, it is very complex to express the same meaning. Paraphrases are very difficult here. We could say There were three people called John at the party, but it’s not a clear paraphrase. And it doesn’t have actually the same meaning impact. Or, we could say for the other sentence, what she does is heavily influenced by American values. But again, it’s not the same meaning. It doesn’t convey the same type of meaning. It doesn’t have the same impact. An interesting phenomenon that was described by Jackendoff, and that has been dealt with by many other linguists with different labels, was called by Jackendoff enriched composition back in 1997. It is possible that enriched composition is actually a metonymy and there is no such thing as “enriched composition”. What I think Jackendoff had in mind with these examples, She enjoyed the beer, She began the beer, is that we have some interface between syntax and semantics where “strange” things happen. In the case of She enjoyed the beer, of course, we can’t use beer together with the verb enjoy, because enjoy subcategorizes for an action, not for a noun. So, we have a problem. We should be unable to say She enjoyed the beer, or She began to beer. But, of course, we can say it and people say it. Could it be possible that this is licensed by the metonymy, AN OBJECT FOR AN ACTION IN WHICH THE OBJECT IS INVOLVED? So, She enjoyed drinking the beer, She enjoyed canning the beer, She enjoyed distributing the beer, She enjoyed bottling the beer, and selling the beer. Think of any activity that can be coherently associated with the beer, and it could parametrize the

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notion of enjoy the beer. So, it is very likely that metonymic thinking is a better explanation than postulating an extra meaning component between form and meaning, an extra layer of organization. We don’t need to say that there is enriched composition. Or we could say that there is enriched composition, but it is metonymically grounded. Ultimately there is a metonymy. Then, parametrization, which I mentioned this morning also, could be explained in terms of the metonymy GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC: I’ll do the carpets, you do the dishes meaning ‘I will clean the carpets, you wash the dishes’, right? And finally, in The door opened, this is a case of intransitivization where the object of the transitive sentence is promoted to subject position, described in traditional terms. So, Someone opened the door becomes The door opened with, of course, drastic meaning differences. When you say Someone opened the door, you’re not lying. You’re telling descriptively what has happened, that there is an external force that has opened the door. But if you say The door opened, you’re pretending that it happened just by itself, but of course you’re not lying, because the hearer knows perfectly well that you’re not actually saying that the door opened by itself. But the idea is that the agent is somehow secondary. It is unimportant, or we don’t want to talk about the agent. And sometimes this is very useful. I mentioned the case of a child breaking a glass and saying Oh, mom, the glass broke, when the child wants to hide his mischievous action so that his mother will not get upset. So, it is useful from a pragmatic perspective. Now, wouldn’t this also be metonymic thinking? This morning I [[discussed]] another [[related]] example: It opened suddenly. But now, without the adverb, I postulate a different metonymy, which is PROCESS FOR ACTION. We present an action as if it were a process, and we make the process stand for the action. So, it is possible that we have at least these phenomena that are connected to metonymy. There are more. And interestingly, this explanation goes a long way into motivating these grammatical phenomena. These grammatical phenomena are not simply a matter of formal manipulation by the mind. It’s more than that. It is a matter of conceptualization and perspective. We see things from different perspectives. We see things as if there [[were]] no agent, but we know that there is an agent, and this brings a different bias into our interpretation of what goes on. Well, finally, I wanted to discuss metonymy and anaphora, and this is a very complex issue. And believe me I do not claim to have the final answer. This is something that I simply proposed back in time, in the year 2000; then in 2004 we elaborated it [[further]]. And this is not the only principle. There are some other principles that can be connected with this one. Probably there is a tension between principles. So, what I have done is simply reduce the complex phenomenon to some of its most basic aspects in the hope that you will see

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Metonymy and anaphora: the Domain Availability Principle • The Domain Availability Principle or DAP (Ruiz de Mendoza 2000; Ruiz de Mendoza & Díez 2004): Ø Only the matrix (i.e. main or most encompassing) domain in a metonymic mapping is available for anaphoric reference. ØBy default, the matrix domain is conceptually more salient than any of its subdomains (whole over part is one of the principles of relative salience listed by Langacker 1993: 30, together with human over non-human, concrete over abstract, visible over non-visible, etc.). • Examples: (a) General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook after determining its paid ads had little impact on consumers => “General Motors” is metonymic for ‘people in charge of the advertising policy of GM’. GM is the matrix domain with which “its” agrees in gender and number. (b) Table 4 has complained again that his meal is cold => table 4” is metonymic for the ‘customer sitting at table 4’, which is the domain that supplies the conceptual material for anaphoric reference through “his”.

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the relevance of the expansion/reduction distinction, at least for this phenomenon. The idea is that when we have anaphoric reference to a metonymy, there are situations that have to be explained that do not seem to be grammatical. They seem to be conceptual. For example, remember the “ham sandwich” metonymy?: The ham sandwich is waiting for his bill. We don’t say that *The ham sandwich is waiting for its bill. So how can we postulate that his is anaphoric to ham sandwich when there is no agreement in terms of gender? His is masculine and ham sandwich is not. So, there is a breach of agreement. And that could be a problem. But then in other examples, there is no problem. We can say that Napoleon lost at Waterloo and he didn’t regret it. Napoleon means the army. And [[in]] He didn’t regret it, he links up with Napoleon. No problem. There is agreement. He is masculine and Napoleon is masculine too. So, we have this irregularity. And what’s the way out of it? There are some proposals in the market. One of them is that this is a matter of saliency and I would stick to that idea because it links up with what I’m going to say. What I postulated to explain this is that there is something that we can call the Domain Availability Principle. In its first formulation, I would say that this is only a tentative formulation—and probably the word only is not the best possible word here—but I said that only the matrix domain in a metonymic mapping is available for anaphoric reference. I would not be so strict nowadays and I would say that there is a tendency to make the matrix domain available for anaphoric reference. Probably there are other factors that interact with this principle, [[which]] may override the DAP or Domain Availability Principle. So why does this happen? Because, by default, the matrix domain is conceptually more salient than any of its subdomains. The idea is that “whole” is

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more salient than “part”. This is one of the principles of relative saliency that has been handled in Cognitive Linguistics. There are others, like “human over non-human”, “concrete over abstract”, “visible over non-visible”, and so on. So, some examples. We have example (a): General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook after determining its paid ads had little impact on consumers. Focus your attention on its. General Motors agrees with its, or its agrees with General Motors. And General Motors is metonymic for ‘people in charge of the advertising policy of general motors’. General Motors would be the matrix domain and there is agreement between the matrix domain and its in gender and number. Take now table 4. I don’t want to repeat the “ham sandwich” one, so table 4 this time: Table 4 has complained again that his meal is cold, not its meal. So, table 4 is metonymic for ‘the customer that is sitting at table 4’, which is the domain that supplies the conceptual material for anaphoric reference. That’s why we can say his. So, this is a matter of saliency. And probably there is a strong tendency to make the matrix domain of a metonymic mapping available for anaphoric reference. Now, can we test that with more examples? I have tested this personally with more than one hundred examples. And many exceptions have been postulated at conferences where I have discussed this idea. Most of the exceptions are very easily dealt with once we understand the notion of matrix domain and subdomains, and the idea of different perspectives. Remember what we discussed before in connection with this: that it depends on how we see each concept as profiled against its base domains that we will have different possible connections between concepts. I mentioned this in connection to the famous “ham sandwich” example, or in connection with the “ruler for army” example, which can be a case of “controller for controlled”. So, it depends very much on what we have in our minds when we approach a metonymy that we will reorganize conceptual domains in one way or another to make meaning. So, going back to The ham sandwich—this is the first example—is waiting for his check, and he is getting restless. It is very clear that we have reference to the customer that has ordered a ham sandwich. And we have to see the customer as the matrix domain. The customer that is eating the ham sandwich is the matrix domain, and it becomes available for anaphoric reference. Then, in the second one, The sax has the flu, so he won’t come to today’s rehearsals, we don’t say *it won’t come to today’s rehearsals. Again, the instrument is a subdomain of the player that plays the instrument. In the third one: We need the best helping hand that we can get but how are we going to pay him? Not pay *it. The hand for the worker. The worker is the matrix domain.

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The DAP with low-level source-in-target metonymies [1] The ham sandwich is waiting for his check and he (*it) is getting restless. [2] The sax has the flue so he (*it) won't come to today's rehearsals. [3] We need the best helping hand that be can get but how are we going to pay him (*it)? [4] The taxi nearly hit me so I chased him (*it) and caught up with him at the end of the road. [5] There is just one bus on strike and he (*it) won't return to work by any means

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The DAP with low-level target-in-source metonymies [6] Over the last year, Sears has bought five franchise operations and it (*they/*he/*she) now plans to buy 54 stores from Kmart Holdings. [7] After she read the book ('the contents'), she put it (i.e. the physical entity) back on the shelf. [8] I wouldn't tie my shoes ('shoelaces') before polishing them (i.e. the shoes); cf. *He first untied his shoes and then changed them (i.e. the shoelaces) for thinner ones. [9] Norman Mailer likes to read himself (i.e. his own work) every night.

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The taxi nearly hit me so I chased him (*it) and caught up with him at the end of the road. There is a preference to use the same gender as the matrix domain, which is the taxi driver that carried out the action of hitting the other person. In number five: There is just one bus on strike. This is again a case of controller/controlled. The bus is the controlled entity. It is a subdomain of the controller. And [[he in]] He won’t return to work by any means is the controller. The DAP seems to make sense with these examples. These examples were all cases of low-level source-in-target metonymies, that is, metonymies where we

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have domain expansion. What if we have domain reduction, what I call targetin-source metonymies? It should be the case of COMPANY FOR WORKERS, which we mentioned before as the General Motors example. And this is another one that I retrieve from a corpus: Over the last year, Sears has bought five franchise operations and it now plans to buy 54 stores from Kmart holdings. You say it; you don’t say *they, *he, *she. That’s impossible because we make reference to the matrix domain, that is, the company, not the workers of the company, or one single worker in the company. Number seven: After she read the book—meaning the contents—she put it—meaning the physical entity—back on the shelf, where remember that we had two metonymies and two matrix domains: one is the author, and the final matrix domain is the medium, the book. She put it means she put the physical book, not the contents of the book on the shelf. I wouldn’t tie my shoes (‘shoelaces’) before polishing them (‘the shoes’). You can’t say *He first untied his shoes and then changed them—meaning the shoelaces—for thinner ones; so shoes is the matrix domain. Shoes is the matrix, and the shoelaces is a subdomain of the domain we make reference to (the shoes). Norman Mailer likes to read himself (meaning ‘his own work’) every night. Again, himself and Norman Mailer are connected and agree in terms of gender and number. We don’t say Norman Mailer likes to read *itself every night. Again, the DAP would go a long way to explaining the apparent irregularity between the two types of examples. But we have to connect the DAP with domain expansion and domain reduction as cognitive operations. The DAP with low-level source-in-target metonymies [1] The ham sandwich is waiting for his check and he (*it) is getting restless. [2] The sax has the flue so he (*it) won't come to today's rehearsals. [3] We need the best helping hand that be can get but how are we going to pay him (*it)? [4] The taxi nearly hit me so I chased him (*it) and caught up with him at the end of the road. [5] There is just one bus on strike and he (*it) won't return to work by any means

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What if instead of working at the low level of conceptualization, we do so at the high level? Please focus your attention only on examples (10) and (11). This first example, (10), we already mentioned this morning one similar to this: I can see street gangs fighting each other nearly every day, where I can see stands for ‘I actually see’. This is the metonymy POTENTIALITY FOR ACTUALITY, which was identified and discussed in a preliminary way by Panther and Thornburg in 1999. When you say I can see street gangs fighting each other nearly every day; it is a sad experience, it refers to actually seeing the gangs fighting. It does not refer to your ability to see the gangs fighting. So, again, we have the matrix domain as [[the one]] available for anaphora. In (11), that’s an example by Panther and Thornburg, also, [[from]] a paper in 2000 dealing with the EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy. They gave this brief exchange for other purposes. But I think that it can be explained on the basis of the DAP. What’s that noise?: What’s that noise means ‘What’s the origin, what is the source?, what is the cause of that noise?’ When you say Is it a burglar?, what does it link up with? It links with the cause of the noise, not with the noise itself. You don’t want a description of the noise. You want to know what causes the noise. Maybe it is a burglar that’s trying to steal from us. Interestingly, you can’t say *That noise is a burglar, but you can say The cause of that noise is a burglar trying to break into the house. So, it refers to the cause of the noise and it is odd to say that the noise itself is a burglar. So, it doesn’t make reference to the noise. This is an interesting test. Go now to these two other examples. And these are more difficult to deal with: What’s that bird? Is it a robin? And What’s that building? Is it the Royal The DAP with high-level target-in-source metonymies [13] What's that bird ('what kind of bird is that')? Is it a robin? (GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC; cf. Panther & Thornburg, 2000). (Note the correctness of saying Is that bird a robin?; this is possible because the metonymy in question motivates class-inclusion constructions). [14] What's that building ('the identity of that building')? Is it the Royal Palace? (GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC; Ruiz de Mendoza & Pérez, 2001)

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Palace? And I think the reason is because it is potentially ambiguous between different interpretations. When we say What’s that bird?, the actual meaning is ‘What kind of bird is that?’ This is an example of the GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC metonymy. And when you say Is it a robin?, it refers to the kind of bird, not to the bird. With (14), we have a similar situation. It has a different parameterization. It’s a similar construction: What’s that building? So here, you don’t want the person to classify the building. You want your interlocutor to identify the building: ‘What’s the identity of that building?’ What’s that building? Is it the Royal Palace? And this is another instance of the same metonymy, GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC. And when you say Is it the Royal Palace?, [[it]] means ‘Please, tell me if I have identified the building correctly’. It refers to the identity of the building: is the identity of the building the Royal Palace, or is it another building? So again, reference is made to the matrix domain, which is the notion of GENERIC rather than the notion of SPECIFIC. So given these regularities, I would say that the DAP is a fairly solid principle, probably not the only one. And it goes a long way into accounting for part of the metonymic behavior. It correlates very well with the distinction between two basic types of metonymy and two basic cognitive operations underlying the two basic types of metonymy: expansion, underlying source-in-target metonymies, and reduction, underlying target-in-source metonymies. Now, by way of conclusion, so we can have some time for questions, I would highlight the following points. First, that metonymy is actually a domaininternal conceptual mapping, as was postulated by Lakoff and Johnson, but Conclusions

• Metonymy is a domain-internal conceptual mapping based on expansion or reduction operations, which combine with a formal substitution operation (which is not exclusive of metonymy). • Expansion and reduction operations are characteristic of metonymy. However, reduction is a consequence of highlighting a relevant part of a conceptual domain and it may be associated with focalization in discourse. • Expansion and reduction operations are essential for the understanding of conceptual interaction phenomena involving metonymy such as metaphtonymy and metonymic chains. • Expansion and reduction operations account for the production of situation-based implicatures and illocutionary values. • Determining the activity of expansion and reduction operations allows us to determine the matrix domain of metonymic mappings and account for the nature of anaphoric agreement to a metonymic expression. figure 31

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we can add that it is based on either expansion or reduction, or a combination of expansion and reduction operations, plus formal substitution, which, of course, is not exclusive of metonymy. Expansion and reduction operations are characteristic of metonymy. So, they need to be included in a definition of metonymy. However, reduction is a consequence of highlighting a relevant part of a conceptual domain and it may be associated with other phenomena. I gave you, as an example, focalization in discourse. Expansion and reduction operations are essential for the understanding of conceptual interaction phenomena involving metonymy such as the case of metaphtonymy and metonymic chains. Expansion and reduction operations account for the production of situation-based implicatures and illocutionary values, which work in parallel ways, but at different levels of abstraction. And finally, determining the activity of expansion and reduction operations allows us to determine the matrix domain of metonymic mappings and to account for the nature of anaphoric agreement to a metonymic expression. Thank you.

lecture 3

Metaphor, Inferencing and Grammar Yesterday, we talked about cognitive operations and cognitive models, the activity of cognitive operations on cognitive models, ranging across different areas of linguistic inquiry. And that was [[talked about]] in the morning. In the afternoon, I talked about metonymy. And the title of the talk was Metonymy, inferencing and grammar. Today, we talk about metaphor, and in the same way, inferencing and grammar. So, the two talks are parallel to each other. But you will see that there are some interesting differences in what we can say about this topic from the perspective of metaphor. Remember that metonymy provides a point of access—it’s a matter of perspectivization—, whereas metaphor is a matter of reasoning: we use one knowledge system to reason and talk about another knowledge system. In metonymy we simply afford access to a concept with a starting point in a related concept.

Initial observations • Metaphor is a basic cogni0ve process. This has been evidenced by psycholinguis0c experiments on embodiment and metaphor (Gibbs 2006, 2014) but there is a massive amount of linguis0c evidence that points in the same direc0on. • As a basic process, metaphor is ubiquitous in language. It underlies both low-level and high level inferen0al processes.

figure 1

All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555707

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_004

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Go als

• Show the theoretical value of distinguishing between lower and higher levels of conceptual organization in metaphor. • Point to the role of high-level metaphor in conceptual organization at the grammatical level. • Discuss traditional syntactic alternations as epiphenomenal to broader lexical-constructional integration phenomena guided by metaphor. • Discuss the possible combinations of high-level metaphoric and metonymic models and their impact for grammar (and subsequently for communication).

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Metaphor is a very basic cognitive process. This was first postulated in the 1980s, and now we have so much empirical evidence about it that it’s not an issue any longer. It is pervasive in thought and pervasive in language. And it is also an embodied reality. When we think metaphorically, we think in that way, because the interaction between the body and the world and how we feel and perceive our bodies somehow affects the way in which we think, the way in which we create concepts, and the way in which we interact with the world. There is a large number of psycholinguistic experiments on this idea. I give you two references, but the amount of references is simply overwhelming. But there is also linguistic evidence. Over the last two to three decades, the emphasis has been on providing evidence coming from the world of psycho­ linguistics and also the brain sciences in general. I intend to give you more linguistic evidence that I don’t think has ever been produced before on the pervasiveness of metaphor in the world of inferencing and in the world of grammar. I want to show the theoretical value of distinguishing between lower and higher levels of conceptual organization in metaphor. This is going to be very important for us to understand some cognitive processes, especially those that have to do with grammatical organization when they have a metaphorical grounding. Yesterday, in the evening talk, we saw that metonymy can have an impact on grammatical organization; in much the same way, metaphor can have a similar sort of impact. I also want to point to the role of metaphor in allowing us to understand constructional behavior. I don’t think we can have a full account of constructional behavior until we deal with metonymy and metaphor as constraints on the way in which we use constructions.

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One of the phenomena that I will discuss later on is the integration of lexical structure into argument-structure constructions when such an integration is mediated by metaphorical thought. As a result of that integration and the constraints provided by metaphor, we can have, as a side effect, what we call syntactic alternations. Syntactic alternations have been discussed in length in formal accounts of language. You can think of Beth Levin and Rappaport for example. And in the functionalist world, there is also a lot of talk on syntactic alternations from a very similar perspective. Now, I don’t think that syntactic alternations are real phenomena. They’re epiphenomena, that is, side effects of deeper cognitive processes. If we go into those deeper cognitive processes, we will know why there is an appearance of syntactic alternation. This is very much the same as what happens with synonyms. Probably when you were at school, they told you: well, these two words are synonymous because they mean the same; they designate the same reality in the world. And with time, you began to know that maybe synonyms are not always full synonyms. We use one of the pair of synonyms in some contexts [[and]] we use the other pair in other contexts, much in the same way as with syntactic alternations. The scholars used to say: well, they are synonymous because we use two alternative constructions to designate the same reality. But there are differences. And the differences arise from deeper thought processes than what has been assumed in formal accounts of language. So, we will discuss a little bit of that and we will also try to make connections between cognitive processes and communicative effects. 1

Conceptual Metaphor Theory

For those of you that might not be acquainted with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, very briefly, I will divide the studies on Conceptual Metaphor Theory into two time segments. The earliest approach, which started off with Metaphors We Live By in 1980, made the proposal that metaphor was pervasive in language, that it was a matter of conceptualization and cognition. It was not an ornament; it was not a matter of rhetoric or literary approaches, but metaphor was present in everyday thinking. They also made emphasis on the idea that, with metaphor, we make connections between two different conceptual domains. And they gave the classical examples of LOVE IS A JOURNEY, PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS, MORE IS UP, and so on. Within this period of time, around the end of the 1980s, Lakoff, in cooperation with Mark Turner, made some additions to the previous ideas. They had

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The earliest approach • Metaphor is not primarily a matter of language but of cognition: people make use of some concepts to understand, talk, and reason about others. • Metaphor is described as a “conceptual mapping” (a set of correspondences) from a source domain (traditional vehicle) to a target domain (traditional tenor). The source is usually less abstract (i.e. more accessible to sense perception) than the target. • Preliminary efforts to classify metaphors: – Lakoff & Johnson (1980): ontological (PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS), structural (LOVE IS A JOURNEY), orientational (MORE IS UP). – Lakoff & Turner (1989) add image metaphors (A HORSE’S MANE IS A RAINBOW), and redefine ontological in terms of a folk model about nature called the Great Chain of Being, which specifies physical and behavioral attributes of human beings, animals, plants, natural objects, and artifacts.

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Conceptualization, culture, language comprehension • The ini0al proposals have inspired a large amount of work where metaphor has been studied in connec0on to: • Abstract conceptualiza0on (e.g. emo0ons, as in Kövecses 2000), • Culture (Kövecses 2005) • Language comprehension processes (e.g. Gibbs 1994).

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classified metaphor into ontological, structural, and orientational, and then they added the idea that we could also create metaphors on the basis of images, the so-called image metaphors, as when you say that A horse’s mane is a rainbow. And they redefined the ontological and structural division a little bit and took into it the notion of the Great Chain of Being. That’s in the literature. We could talk about that later. But basically, what we have is the definition of metaphor as a conceptual mapping, that is, a set of correspondences between discrete conceptual domains. A lot of people have studied metaphor on the basis of that initial perspective: cultural studies on metaphor abound; metaphor and emotions; then, the impact of metaphor in comprehension processes. So, there’re quite a few ideas

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LOVE IS A JOURNEY -Lovers are travelers -The love relationship is a vehicle -Lovers’ common goals are destination -Difficulties in the relationship impediments to motion

Our marriage is off to a good start; We are going the nowhere; It’s been a long, bumpy road; We are back are on track again

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in the market of research on metaphor. And those are some of the examples in the literature. This is the LOVE IS A JOURNEY mapping. Lakoff said that we can conceptualize love and other target-oriented activities like a career, a profession, also life, as if they were journeys. In the case of LOVE IS A JOURNEY, we have the following correspondences: lovers are travelers; the love relationship is a vehicle; lovers’ common goals are the destination; and difficulties in the relationships are impediments to motion. Typical examples of this metaphor are sentences like: Our marriage is off to a good start; We are going nowhere; It’s been a long, bumpy road; We are back on track again. You may realize that there is a reasoning system underlying LOVE IS A JOURNEY. If I say We are going nowhere, I can reason on the basis of We are going nowhere, and say: We are going nowhere this way; maybe we have to retrace our steps, and start again from scratch. So, there is a reasoning system behind metaphor, which has an impact from a pragmatic and discourse perspective, and that has also been explored by many linguists. This reasoning system does not exist in the case of metonymy. ANGER IS HEAT is another very popular metaphor, where you have an angry person that is seen or treated as a container, the person has internal pressure, and the container holds a hot substance in its interior. The pressure of the substance on the container is the force of the anger. The angry person keeping the substance inside the container is controlling the anger and releasing the substance is the expression of anger. External signs of heat are external signs of anger. [[These are some]] examples: You make my blood boil; He blew his top;

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ANGER IS HEAT -An angry person is a (generally pressurized) container -The container holds a hot substance (the anger) in its interior -The pressure of the substance on the container is the force of the anger on the angry person -Keeping the substance inside the container is controlling the anger -Releasing the substance is the expression of anger -External signs of heat are external signs of anger

You make my blood boil; He blew his top; He got steamed up; He got red/hot under the collar; Let him stew

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He got steamed up; He got red/hot under the collar; Let him stew. When you say, for example, He got red under the collar, that is an external sign of anger. It suggests that there is a hot substance inside the body of the person, and that there is pressure, and that there is heat because there is redness in the neck, and so on. So, the general idea is that you can conceptualize, not only anger, but also other emotions in terms of substances inside a container. You can say that A person is full of love, or A person is out of love, for example. And there are many others. This was also investigated with preliminary work by Zoltan Kövecses, who then did a lot more. And other scholars have scanned tons of metaphors in cross-cultural analysis to see similarities and differences between different conceptualizations of emotions on the basis of metaphor. Another famous one is THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS, from the earlier approach to metaphor. Theories can be built, pulled down, demolished, buttressed, etc. Building tools are instruments to formulate a theory. Building materials are elements in the theory. So, imagine that you don’t like my theories. You can, well, pull them down. You can demolish my theories on the basis of debate. Right? Imagine that I do not have a very concrete idea about what I want to say. You can say: Well, he’s all scattered; His ideas are scattered; He should bring them together; He should pull them together. When we pull together ideas, they become consistent, so they make sense. And if they’re all scattered, or spread, they’re not consistent. The facts underlying a theory are the bricks and mortar of the theory. So we use the building notion to talk about theorizing.

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THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS -Theories can be built, pulled down, demolished, buttressed, etc. -Building tools are instruments to formulate a theory -Building materials are elements in the theory

He pulled down my theory; He couldn’t put together all his ideas; These facts are the bricks and mortar of my theory

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ARGUMENT IS WAR -Arguing is engaging in battle All our arguments were -People arguing are enemies shot down and we were -Arguments are weapons defeated; -Winning or losing is military victory or He had no other weapon defeat respectively to counteract their claims; He felt defeated long before the debate ended

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ARGUMENT IS WAR. When two people engage in debate, the debate can become heated, and at some point, we can describe that as a war. You can say things like He used all his weapons to defeat his opponent. But we are not talking about a real war. We are talking about two people engaged in debate: He felt defeated. All our arguments were shot down and we were defeated. So, arguing is engaging in battle, people arguing are enemies, arguments are weapons, and winning or losing is military victory or defeat respectively.

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Correlation vs. Resemblance Metaphor1

Then, in 1999, there was not a change, but there was an interesting development of metaphor theory with some proposals that came from Joseph Grady. Grady noted that some of the formulations of conceptual metaphor theory, like LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, A CAREER IS A JOURNEY, and so on, could be better formulated in terms of more basic metaphors, which he called primary metaphors. For example, for LOVE IS A JOURNEY, and the other related metaphors in the system, he proposed GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS. The primary metaphor GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS arises directly from our experience with reaching places. Imagine that I want to go back to Spain; I have to take a flight. And when I arrive in Madrid, my destination in Spain, I can say: Well, I’ve achieved my goal of reaching my destination. So, goal-achievement is connected to physically reaching a destination on a journey. Goals are destinations because the two events, the event of successfully reaching a goal, and the event of successfully reaching the end of your journey conflate in our minds, [and] they become the same thing through this correlation of experiences. When we talk about correlating experiences, we are talking about sensorimotor experience. It is our perceptual systems and our motor systems that play an important role in telling our brain that our more abstract notions are,

• Grady (1997) noted that some of the formulations of CMT like LOVE/A BUSINESS/A CAREER/A TASK, ETC. IS A JOURNEY could be better formulated in terms of more basic metaphors, called primary, like GOALS ARE DESTINATIONS, since they arise directly from sensorimotor experience. Primary metaphor is in fact a correlation metaphor since it does not relate resembling domains but co-occurring experiences. • Later on, Grady (1999) insisted in making a clear distinction between primary metaphor (based on experiential correlation) and resemblance metaphor (based on cross-domain similarities). • The notion of primary or correlation metaphor finds the roots of metaphor in the conflation of concepts arising from co-occurring events in primary experience and can thus be straightforwardly linked up with research in psychology and the brain sciences (Grady & Johnson 2002).

figure 9 1  Grady 1999.

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in fact, bodily notions. Achieving a goal is an abstract idea, but reaching a destination at the end of a journey is a physical, concrete experience. If the two correlate, what we do is what Lakoff said back in the early 1980s: we are using concrete experience to talk about abstract notions, which is one of the main ideas in metaphor theory. Later on, Grady insisted on making a clear distinction in the cognitivelinguistic literature between the notion of primary metaphor and the notion of resemblance metaphor. The emphasis had been enormous on primary metaphors. They were all the time talking about correlations of experience and they forgot about the similarities across concepts, similarities between objects, between entities. So, he tried to redress the balance between the notion of primary metaphor (based on experiential correlation) and resemblance metaphor (based on cross-domain similarities). The notion of primary or correlation metaphor finds the roots of metaphor in the mixing up of concepts. That is technically called conflation. This arises from co-occurring events in primary experience and can be very easily linked up with research in psychology and the brain sciences. We have massive evidence now that primary metaphor is a psychological reality and that it plays a role in the development of the human mind and, of course, of the brain. [[Here are]] some examples of correlation metaphor. These are taken from Lakoff and Johnson’s 1999 book, Philosophy in the Flesh. AFFECTION IS WARMTH, as in She gave me a warm embrace. I mentioned this metaphor already. The correlation of experiences is that we feel warm when we are held affectionately. Examples of correlation metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1999) AFFECTION IS WARMTH: She gave me a warm embrace Correlated experiences: feeling warm while being held affectionately CHANGE IS MOTION: She’s going from bad to worse Correlated experiences: we tend to correlate certain states with certain locations (e.g. being cool in the shade, warm in bed, safe at home) IMPORTANT IS BIG: He’s a big wheel in the company Correlated experiences: large objects exert major forces and dominate our visual experience more than small objects INTIMACY IS CLOSENESS: They are really close friends Correlated experiences: being intimate usually involves physical closeness figure 10

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CHANGE IS MOTION, as She’s going from bad to worse. The correlation of experiences is that certain states are associated with certain locations. Imagine that you are under the shade of a tree: you feel cool. But if you go back again into the sun, the sunshine will give you warmth, or you will feel hotter. You can feel safe at home, warm in bed, or you can be frightened if you are lost in a dark cave. So, we associate certain states with certain locations. IMPORTANT IS BIG, as in He’s a big wheel in the company. A big wheel is not necessarily a wheel. It is the person that makes the company move forward. So, we have a combination of metaphors. And when we say big, what we mean is ‘really important’. How on earth does big mean really important? Because we feel awed by objects in nature that are huge, that are big, or by entities that are big. Large objects exert major forces and they dominate visual experience more than smaller objects. It’s impressive to see a huge building or a temple or a massive mountain. INTIMACY IS CLOSENESS, as in They are really close friends. The correlation of experiences is that when two people are intimate, they are physically close. If two people are not friends, they tend to be at a distance. So, there is another correlation of experiences. KNOWING IS SEEING, which is connected to the last one, UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING. The idea is that we derive information from our surrounding context, from our environment. And by means of the senses, we can derive information, and two of the most prominent ways of deriving information are [[by]] touching objects and seeing objects. That’s why we can say I see what you mean, or He was unable to grasp the idea or to grasp the notion. KNOWING IS SEEING: I see what you mean Correlated experiences: seeing is a crucial way of getting information MORE IS UP: Prices are soaring; World stocks have plummeted overnight Correlated experiences: levels rise and fall as quantity, e.g. of a fluid, increases, or decreases SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS: These two colors are very close Correlated experiences: similar objects tend to cluster together (a flock of birds, a group of stars, a bunch of grapes) UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING: He was unable to grasp the notion of intersubjectivity Correlated experiences: holding and touching an object allows us to get information about it figure 11

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MORE IS UP. We already discussed Prices are going up or they are going down; they may be soaring [[too]]. It can be faster [[or]] it can be slower: World stocks have plummeted overnight. The correlation of experiences is that we see levels rise and fall as quantity increases or decreases. And SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS, as in the sentence These two colors are very close. The correlation of experiences is that similar objects tend to cluster together in nature. You can see a flock of birds, a group of stars, [[and]] a bunch of grapes. I would like to make now a small proposal. When we talked about cognitive operations, I made a distinction between correlation operations and resemblance operations, which was obviously inspired by this work. And I gave the idea of correlation the status of a special cognitive process that is not exclusive of metaphor. We can find correlations elsewhere. I think I gave you an example of a situation in which you do something that is connected to something else. For example, Did he give you the ring and then propose for a marriage? That’s a correlation of experiences that is not fully simultaneous, but it belongs to the same picture, and one event is so close to the other in time—in the sequence— that, in our minds, they belong together and that provides the grounds for us to produce a low-level situational metonymy with an implicature that He gave you the ring means ‘He proposed for marriage’. That was something that I mentioned in my first talk and it is one way of making correlations. It is not metaphorical; it is the grounds for a metonymy rather than for a metaphor. Other correlations are the grounds for metaphor. What I didn’t tell you—and I want to disclose today—is that what we call correlation metaphors also exploit resemblance. And I want to make a distinction between two forms of detecting resemblance. One is low-level and the other one is high-level. Let’s go into it. First, have a look at these examples: Her eyes are an ocean of blue, in this second paragraph. Obviously, this metaphor is based on the idea that the color and the depth of someone’s eyes are like the color and the depth of the ocean. In a sense, in the speaker’s mind, the eyes and the ocean have some similarities. This is a case of low-level resemblance. We simply have similarity of attributes that can be seen and perceived immediately. There is no abstract reasoning process behind this, other than making the connection between the two items. But go to the next one, which is a matter of situational similarity: SUFFERING FROM A DISEASE IS BEING IN A JAIL. When we are bedridden because of a disease, we feel terrible. We cannot move. We cannot stand up because we’re very weak. We cannot enjoy life, much in the same way as when we are incarcerated. We are not free to go wherever we feel like. So, there

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Low and high-level resemblance • Metaphor can be based on the perception of similarities between low-level attributes of objects and the generic or high-level properties of situations and events. • OBJECTS (similarity of attributes): we can think of the color and depth of someone’s eyes by referring to the ocean (Her eyes are an ocean of blue). • SITUATIONS (similarity of high-level properties): suffering from a disease is being in a jail. This is so because people who are in jail suffer from restrictions and cannot enjoy life in much the same way as people who are bed-ridden because of an illness or infirmity. • EVENTS (similarity of high-level properties): We can say that death is a thief because it deprives us of our most precious possession, which is life (high-level cause-effect similarity). figure 12

is a connection between the restrictions that we have when we are ill and the restrictions that we have when we are in jail. This is a case of similarity of highlevel properties, because we are talking about suffering from restrictions. This is not a matter of something concrete that I can see, like the color of the eyes, or the whiteness of someone’s teeth in connection with the pearls, which are low-level similarities. This is high-level similarity. We have to go one step above in abstract thinking to make a connection about restrictions: suffering from restrictions. Go to the next example which is about events. If you say that Death is a thief. Why do you say that Death is a thief? You say that because you think of death as depriving you of your most precious possession, which is life. So, death will steal your life from you. It’ll take it away. This is again, another case of similarity of high-level properties, cause-effect similarity; in the same way as death deprives me of my life, in that same way [[…]] someone stealing an object from me is depriving me from my possession. We’re talking about deprivation of possessions. This is high-level thinking. So, we can have low-level and high-level resemblance. Low-level resemblance is connected to objects that we can see, touch, etc. And high-level resemblance is connected to situations and events that have analogous causeeffect structure or generic-level structure in common. So, what about correlation? I want to make a point here. This point is new in the literature. I am the first one, I think, to suggest this idea. So, I might be wrong and I will probably debate this with a lot of people in the future. I think that high-level resemblance plays a very important role in understanding

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Correlation metaphor and high-level resemblance • The distinction between correlation and resemblance in metaphor is equivalent to the one between high-level and low-level resemblance, posited before to account for event and situation-based metaphors. • Thus, at the low level of conceptualization, there is no similarity between understanding and seeing. However, at the high level, these two domains share the element of awareness, which can be mental (understanding) or perceptual (seeing). That is, we are aware of what we understand and of what we see. • This observation makes correlation metaphor a special case of situation and event-based metaphors, one in which high-level resemblance is rooted in experiential correlation.

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correlation metaphor. So, correlation metaphor is a high-level resemblance metaphor. I can give you an example, which is UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING; that’s the second paragraph. Why can we say that UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING, as in Can you see what I mean? Because there is “awareness” both through perceptual input and through mental understanding. So, the element that they have in common is the element of awareness. It is a high-level concept. This is not like the whiteness of the teeth. This is not like the color of the ocean. This is a high-level conceptualization. And if this observation is correct, it would make correlation metaphors a special case of situation and eventbased metaphors. We have these two types: situations and events. These are high-level resemblance metaphors and a special case of these would be UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING, because we have this common element of awareness. Let’s see if this works with a few examples of correlation metaphors. These are again taken from Lakoff and Johnson (1999). But here is the alternative way of looking at them. AFFECTION IS WARMTH, like She gave me a warm embrace, which we mentioned before. We have similar feelings of comfort when receiving affection and when in a warm place. So, this is about feelings of comfort. We don’t care much about the source, whatever the source. If we have similarity of the feelings associated with that context, we can make the mental connection and correlate the two items. CHANGE IS MOTION. The grounding for this would be having similar feelings of being in a different condition when changing state and when changing location. So, again, we have high-level similarity.

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Examples of high-level resemblance in correlation metaphors • AFFECTION IS WARMTH => similar feelings of comfort when receiving affection and when in a warm place • CHANGE IS MOTION => similar feelings of being in a different condition when changing state and when changing location • IMPORTANT IS BIG => similar experience of awe and wonder when faced with an important event and when faced with a massive object. • INTIMACY IS CLOSENESS => similar feeling of familiarity when intimate with a person and when physically very near a person. • KNOWING IS SEEING => similar experience of awareness when learning about an object or a state of affairs and when being a visual witness to it. • MORE IS UP => similar experience of increase when seeing objects accumulate and when seeing an object reach a higher position. • SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS => similar experience of spatial contiguity when comparing two objects and when two objects are close to each other. • UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING: similar experience of awareness when understanding the nature of an object or a state of affairs and when touching it.

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With IMPORTANT IS BIG, we have the similar experience of awe and wonder when faced with an important event or when faced with a huge object. In the case of INTIMACY IS CLOSENESS, we have similar feelings of familiarity when intimate with a person and when physically very near a person. With KNOWING IS SEEING, we have a similar experience of awareness when learning about an object or a state of affairs and when being a visual witness to the state of affairs or the object. In the case of MORE IS UP, we have the similar experience of increase when seeing objects accumulate, and when seeing an object reach a higher position; you have a feeling of “something is bigger” (increases). SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS. We have the similar experience of spatial contiguity. This would be the abstract concept here, when comparing two objects and when two objects are close to each other. In fact, it is very difficult to compare objects if we don’t bring them close to each other. And finally, with UNDERSTANDING IS GRASPING, we have the [[same]] experience of awareness as in KNOWING IS SEEING, when understanding the nature of an object, or a state of affairs, and when touching the object. Now let’s go back to low-level resemblance. Low-level resemblance is not only about making connections between different properties of objects. That’s the simplest case of low-level resemblance. We have other cases that we exploit communicatively. They give rise to [[…]] different figures of speech. They also give rise to [[different]] forms of reasoning. One of the forms of reasoning that I’m interested in right now is analogy. I want to discuss “analogy” as a case of low-level structural resemblance. We can distinguish this, of course, from low-level property-based resemblance, which is the case of the ocean and the

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Low-level structural resemblance: analogy • Low-level structural resemblance (analogy) is to be distinguished from low-level property-based resemblance (non-situational and non-eventive resemblance metaphor). • In low-level structural resemblance, the similarity judgment takes the form A is to B as C is to D (so A is C); e.g. the heart is to the circulatory system what a pump is to a hydraulic system (so the heart is a pump). • In property-based resemblance, the similarity judgment is based on the A is B form, where A and B have a property C in common.

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teeth, the color of the ocean, and the color and brightness of the teeth that I mentioned before. If you look at this, in low-level structural resemblance, the similarity judgment takes the form of “A is to B as C is to D”. So, this is not the same as “the teeth are pearls” example where we have whiteness and brightness, one connection, and there we go, that’s the mapping. Here, the mapping is more complex, and it requires a structural connection between at least two pairs of items, A and B, and then C and D. If A is to B as C is to D, then A is C, and of course, B is D. An example is talking about the heart as if the heart were a pump. And, in fact, the heart is like a pump. So, there is a similarity. The heart is to the circulatory system what a pump is to a hydraulic system, because the heart moves blood all around the system in the same way as a pump. We can say that the heart is a pump. That is, A is C because of this structural resemblance. It is low-level, but it is not feature-based, it is structure-based. Then, we have the interesting case of paragon. Paragon is a subcase of analogy. So again, we’re going to have structural resemblance to some extent. But paragon makes use of the metonymic enrichment of the analogy. I define paragon as a metonymy-based analogy. In a paragon, a person or an object is regarded as a perfect example of a certain quality. Take Rabindranath Tagore is the Shakespeare of India [[for example]]. Of course, most people will argue that Shakespeare is much better than Rabindranath Tagore. But the analogy is good, even if Shakespeare’s qualities as a writer are much higher than Tagore’s, at least from the perspective of [[some]] scholars. But the analogy works because we can see connections

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Analogy and paragon

• Paragon is a metonymy-based analogy. • In paragon a person or object is regarded as a perfect example of a certain quality. In fact, the person or the object is metonymic for such a quality. • Rabindranath Tagore is the Shakespeare of India. • Shakespeare is a paradigmatic case of extraordinary literary influence and stands for it. Tagore is a paradigmatic of extraordinary literary influence in Bengali literature. • Reasoning form: A is to B as C is to D (so A is C): • Tagore (i.e. his literary influence) is to Bengali literature (in India) as Shakespeare (i.e. his literary influence) is to English (or even universal) literature. So Tagore is the Shakespeare of India. figure 16

between Tagore’s ability to write literature and Shakespeare’s ingenuity and skills in writing literature. But the interesting thing is that Shakespeare is a paradigmatic case of extraordinary literary influence [and] extraordinary skills. And Tagore is paradigmatic of extraordinary literary influence, but only in Bengali literature rather than universally like Shakespeare. The reasoning process is again the same one as we had before for the heart and the pump: A is to B as C is to D. So, A is C. That’s why we say Tagore is Shakespeare. Tagore and his literary influence is to Bengali literature in India as Shakespeare and his literary influence is to English—or even universal—literature; so Tagore is the Shakespeare of India. You can see that there are connections and that Shakespeare stands for his literary influence and Tagore stands for his literature influence. And we create the connection after we had made the metonymic development. What about analogy and allegory? In allegory, what we have is a description of characters, places, and events that are used to represent and reason about real world occurrences. Take this famous fable, Aesop’s fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare”, where we have a boastful hare that teases the tortoise for being too slow. The tortoise challenges the hare to a race. Strikingly, because of the hare’s over-confidence and laziness, finally the tortoise wins. The hare has overslept and that’s why the tortoise can win the race. Now, evidently, when the fable was created, the idea was not to talk about tortoises and hares. The use of the tortoise has a reason behind it. It’s a very slow animal, with low speed, and it contrasts with the hare that can run really fast. So, they represent the whole class of items. This is the metonymy A MEMBER OF A CLASS FOR THE

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Analogy and allegory • In allegory is described as characters, places, and events are used to represent and reason about real-world occurrences. • Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”: the boastful hare teases the tortoise for being too slow. The tortoise challenges the hare to a race and, strikingly, because of the hare’s overconfidence and laziness, the tortoise wins the race as the hare oversleeps while taking a nap halfway through the race. • A MEMBER (OF A CLASS) FOR THE (WHOLE) CLASS: The hare stands for talented people that waste their time to idleness; the tortoise stands for those that compensate their lack of talent with hard work and perseverance. • Reasoning: the prototypical skills of the hare and the tortoise are each to the domain of speed as idle talented people and persevering untalented people are respectively to the domain of success in life. figure 17

High-level metaphor as a constraint on grammar • Metaphors can act as constraints on some grammatical phenomena. • Grammar is thus dependent on embodied cognition. • Understanding high-level metaphor allows us to reconsider the theoretical status of some grammatical phenomena. We will examine: a) Constructional coercion over lexis resulting in transitivity type shifts. b) Syntactic alternations. • Determining the effects of metaphor on grammar can enhance the explanatory power of a linguistic account.

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WHOLE CLASS. The hare stands for talented people, but they are people that waste their time because they are lazy. The tortoise stands for those that compensate for their lack of talent with hard work and perseverance. We have two items that stand for a whole class of items. The reasoning process behind this [[is that]] the prototypical skills of the hare and the tortoise are each to the domain of the speed as idle talented people and persevering untalented people are, respectively, to the domain of success in life. We have A is to B as C is to D.

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Now, we’re going to change the topic slightly. This first part was about metaphor, low-level resemblance, high-level resemblance, the reasoning processes behind the two types of resemblance, and distinguishing different forms of low-level resemblance. Let’s talk now about high-level metaphor as a constraint on grammar. This affects Construction Grammar to some extent. What I will propose is that metaphors act as constraints on some grammatical phenomena. Of course, if metaphor constrains grammar, then grammar is dependent on embodied cognition since metaphor is embodied. Understanding metaphor in this way allows us to reconsider the theoretical status of some grammatical phenomena. We will examine two grammatical phenomena. One of them was mentioned in Martin Hilpert’s talk. It is “constructional coercion over lexical items” when we want to incorporate lexical items into constructions. Remember that the principle of coercion says that the construction always wins. I will explain how it happens from the point of view of metaphor. And then we have syntactic alternations, which I said before are epiphenomenal: they are simply side effects; they are not real phenomena. They happen or we can talk about them just because there is something deeper going on that allows us to produce syntactic alternations. And of course, if we can determine the effects of metaphor on grammar, then the explanatory power of our linguistic account is going to be so much greater. If we can talk about grammar from the point of view of embodiment, we know a lot more about the origin of grammar and the behavior of grammar at the same time. 3

Motivating Constructional Coercion over Lexis Resulting in Transitivity Type Shifts on the Basis of Simple Re-construal

This subtitle looks scary, doesn’t it?: “Motivating constructional coercion over lexis resulting in transitivity type shifts on the basis of simple re-construal”. Terrible! I don’t even understand it myself. But you will see that it is not that difficult. You know that “constructional coercion” means that the construction always wins and the lexical item loses. We force the lexical item into taking a different form and different meaning nuances. (That’s what we think; maybe we [[can]] have a better explanation than this approach to coercion). And “transitivity type shifts” is simply changes in the type of transitivity: from transitive to intransitive, from intransitive to transitive. And “on the basis of reconstrual”: re-construal makes reference to metaphor. We re-construe reality,

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Grammatical phenomenon Transitivity type shift: valency extension (through subcategorial conversion of target-oriented intransitive verb into a causal transitive predicate)

Example Metaphor A (TARGET-ORIENTED) He talked me into it ‘He caused COMMUNICATIVE ACTION IS me to become involved in it by AN EFFECTUAL ACTION talking to me’ -Subcategorial conversion is a pre- (CAUSED MOTION) requisite for the integration of the verb into the resultative use of the caused-motion construction. - With the conversion the receiver of the message is seen as if directly affected by the action rather than as the goal of the message.

figure 19

we reason about reality from a different perspective, thanks to high-level metaphor, which allows us to incorporate some lexical items into constructions. So, the coercion process is a principled process. It’s not something that just happens. It happens because there are principles that allow it to happen. And I think the principle is metaphorical. Let’s take one case. The first transitivity type shift that I want to discuss is called valency extension. That’s Functional Grammar terminology. It is not Cognitive Linguistics terminology. It simply means that you can have, for example, an intransitive verb and make it transitive. So, instead of having just one argument, it has two. An interesting case is the verb to talk: John talks, and talks, and talks, and never stops. One argument: John. John talked to Peter: Peter is not an argument, because this is introduced by to. So, [[there’s only]] one argument: he talks, and then, of course, there is a target of John’s talking, which is Peter. That’s the way in which English people conceptualize the idea of talking. But look at this example: He talked me into it. We have: he, one argument; me, second argument. All of a sudden talk is no longer intransitive; it is transitive. Now if you dispense with into it—if you remove that—you have *He talked me, which is not English. It is ungrammatical; you can’t say that. You have to say He talked to me. This suggests that there is coercion. The transitive construction is telling us: I need an object without to. So, He talked me … (in fact, this is a development of the transitive construction, right?), He talked me into it suggests that we have like motion across space, which is a figurative, because you are not going anywhere. He talked me into it: I do not move when they say that. Nobody moves, but you know that there is a metaphor whereby states are seen

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Grammatical phenomenon Transitivity type shift: valency extension (based on subcategorial conversion of intransitive form/sense of verb denoting an activity into causal transitive verb)

Example He drank himself into a stupor ‘He caused his level of consciousness to decrease by drinking’ -Intransitive ‘drink’ in treated as a transitive predicate whose object is reflexive. -Subcategorial conversion is a prerequisite for the integration of the verb into the fake-reflexiveresultative use of the causedmotion construction.

Metaphor

AN ACTIVITY IS AN

EFFECTUAL ACTION (CAUSED

MOTION)

figure 20

as locations, and changes of state are seen as changes of location. When someone “talks me into something”, I am changing state, not changing location. I am persuaded. It is an internal intellectual state, but it’s a state. So, we have a combination of STATES ARE LOCATIONS and CAUSED MOTION used figuratively (metaphorically). So, what we have is simply the famous old phenomenon of sub-categorial conversion of a target-oriented intransitive verb into a causal transitive predicate, which is a formalist/functionalist technicality. We have an explanation of this grammatical process in formal and functional accounts of language in terms of metaphor: we see a target-oriented communicative action as if it were caused motion, which is a type of effectual action. An effectual action is defined as an action that has a physical impact, a visible, measurable impact on an object, in the same way as, when we move an object, there is physical impact. But in He talked me into it, there is no such physical impact. If we want to talk about coercion, we could say: well, the figurative use of the caused-motion construction coerces talk. And I would say yes, it is true. But what allows that construction to coerce talk and not any other verb? Would you be able to coerce the verb own?: *He owned me into it?, *He possessed me into it? No. We can coerce talk, because talk falls within the paradigm of communicative action verbs. This is regulated by the metaphor. Without the metaphor, we can’t say that it is possible to coerce talk. With the metaphor, we can say that we have a licensing factor to coerce talk. Another example. Again, we have another transitivity shift. It is slightly different, but related to the previous one with the verb drink, as in the sentence He drank himself into a stupor. You drink drinkable things, or you simply

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drink: He was drinking and drinking the whole day (and he got drunk obviously, unless he was drinking just water, but I get drunk with water, so, who knows?). Ok. In He drank himself into a stupor, we have the same type of valency extension that we had with the verb talk. We add an object that is, of course, not drinkable. So, from the point of view of selection restrictions, this would be wrong, wouldn’t it? You cannot drink yourself. You cannot drink a person. You drink water, you drink wine, but you don’t drink people. But you can say He drank himself into a stupor, again, because CHANGES OF STATE ARE CHANGES OF LOCATION. By drinking, you become drunk, you go into a stupor of thought; you cannot control your thinking. This is the change of state indicated by into, which is a preposition involving motion to a location. What we have, again, is a metaphor: AN ACTIVITY IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION. Because we can see an activity as an effectual action—in this case AN EFFECTUAL ACTION IS CAUSED MOTION, as in the previous example— the verb drink can go into that construction, expressing a change of state. In formalist jargon, we would say this is valence extension based on the subcategorial conversion of the intransitive form [[…]] of a verb denoting an activity into a causal transitive verb. But basically, this means nothing. It simply describes what goes on. It simply tells you that you are extending the values. You’re giving the verb, drink, an argument that has different selectional properties. It doesn’t say much. It’s like “Ok, thank you, thank you for telling me, but what I want to know is why”. The reason why is metaphorical, and the construction is embodied, and coercion is embodied.

Grammatical phenomenon Example Transitivity type shift: Peter loved Mary back into life valency extension (through ‘Peter caused Mary to feel alive role re-construal) again by loving her’ (in predication based on a mental process predicate, the sensor is treated as an effector and the phenomenon as an effectee as a pre-requisite for integration into the resultative use of the caused-motion construction)

figure 21

Metaphor

A CAUSED CHANGE OF EMOTIONAL STATE IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION (CAUSED MOTION)

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Another grammatical phenomenon [[is]] valence extension through role re-construal. Here we are simply going to juggle with semantic roles. My example is Peter loves Mary back into life. I came across this example quite some time ago and I simply loved it, because no one that I could talk to could explain to me why you can love someone back into life. Everyone understands this: by loving Mary, she comes back to life, but this is not of course, real life. She feels alive again. We could paraphrase this as follows: ‘Peter caused Mary to feel alive’. That’s the idea of coming back into life, to feel alive again by [[being loved]]. Again, we have a problem. We have caused motion. And we have a verb that should be completely unwilling to take part in the caused-motion construction: the verb love. It’s a stative verb. It reflects inner processes. It has nothing to do with motion. This is even worse than talk and drink. With talk and drink, we have some activity which is physical. But with love, we have an inner state. So how on earth can I say that Peter loved Mary back into life, with motion? Again, we have this idea that changes of states are changes of location. So, we have metaphorical thought and a caused change of an emotional state is seen in terms of caused motion. Why is there role re-construal? If you think of the semantic roles associated with love, this is a mental process predicate that has a sensor and a phenomenon. The sensor is the person that loves the phenomenon. This terminology is not mine. It is brought into this explanation from Michael Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (I found that he had a very good description and classification of most intellectual and inner state verbs). So, we have a sensor and a phenomenon. [[They are]] more or less the semantic subject and the semantic object for a verb like love. The sensor is treated as an effector, the role of the agent that has an impact on an object. The phenomenon is the effectee, the receiver of the physical impact. So, we see the sensor, which has nothing to do with physical impact, as having physical impact, which is metaphorical. And we see the phenomenon as receiving the physical impact of a caused-motion action. That’s what licenses a stative verb into the caused-motion construction with this special resultative meaning based on figuration. Here you have the correspondences between the domains of caused motion and different types of effectual action. If you say He sent me into despair, the idea is that I am forced into a different state. And being forced into a different state is seen as being forced into a different location: the causer of motion is the effector; causing motion is effecting; the object of motion is the effectee; and the destination of motion is the resultant state. In the case of AN EXPERIENTIAL ACTION IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION, an experiential action is a target-oriented action; for example, The audience

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AN EFFECTUAL ACTION IS CAUSED MOTION (He sent me into despair ‘He caused me to be despaired’) SOURCE

TARGET

Causer of motion

ç=è

Effector (‘he’)

Causing motion

ç=è

effecting (‘caused to become’)

Object of motion

ç=è

effectee (‘me’)

Destination of motion

ç=è

resultant state (‘in despair’)

figure 22

AN EXPERIENTIAL ACTION IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION

(The audience laughed the actor off the stage ‘The audience caused the actor to go off the stage by laughing at him’) SOURCE

TARGET

Effector

ç= è

actor

Effectee

ç= è

goal/experiencer

Effecting

ç= è

acting

Instrument

ç= è

ø

Purpose

ç= è

purpose

figure 23

laughed the actor off the stage. This is a very nice example. How can you laugh a person out of a place or off a place? You simply laugh at a person and the person moves by him/herself. It’s because of this metaphor. We have an effector in the source, and we have an actor in the target of self-instigated motion. The actor decides to leave because the actor feels embarrassed. It’s an emotional issue. The effectee is the goal of laughter. Effecting is acting. There is no instrument here, and the purpose maps onto the purpose. So, we have a metaphor allowing us to use the word laugh in a sentence like The audience laughed the

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actor off the stage. So, again, we have coercion of the verb laugh into a construction for which laugh is not equipped. And it is possible because we have this metaphor, AN EXPERIENTIAL ACTION IS EFFECTUAL ACTION, as a licensing factor, something that allows me to perform the coercion operation. 4

Metaphoric Complexes in Grammar: Motivating Syntactic Alternation on the Basis of Metonymic Elaboration and Complementary Event Structure Re-construal

Metaphorical complexes. We will see metaphorical complexes again this afternoon, but from a different perspective, within a global theory of conceptual complexity. Here I’m only interested in one aspect of metaphorical complexes. A metaphorical complex is a combination of metaphors that create a single conceptual package once they have been fused. And they can also affect grammar and they can combine with metonymy and create really complex conceptual structures—in our minds—that have an impact on the way in which we handle constructions. This brings in the issue—that I promised at the beginning—of syntactic alternations. What is an alternation? You have an example here: The wind opened the door. I mentioned this example in previous talks. This is a case of the socalled causative construction, compared with The door opened, which is an example of the inchoative construction. Now, if you say The door opened, the state of affairs that you designate is the same state of affairs as with The wind opened Syntactic alternations and lexical projection • Sometimes alternations are a question of the projection of lexical properties into syntax: The wind opened the door/The door opened > presenting a caused action as if it were a non-causal process or event. • But other factors play a role too: • The child broke the vase/The vase broke => ‘break’ is a change of state verb • The enemy destroyed the city/*The city destroyed => ‘destroy’ is a cessation of existence verb. • The cat killed the mouse/*The mouse killed => ‘kill’ has a suppletive predicate (i.e. ‘die’) expressing the inchoative meaning • There are alternations which require event re-construal; e.g. John kicked Peter focuses on the action, while John gave Peter a kick focuses on the effects of the action. The reason for this goes beyond the meaning structure coded in the verbal predicate and its associated syntactic configuration. A non-lexicalist solution is needed.

figure 24

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the door. You only omit the wind. You don’t want to specify that it was the wind that opened the door. But why do we say that the door opened? We mention that because we want to present a caused action as if it were non-causal. It just happened. We don’t know why, or we don’t want to know why, or if we know why, we don’t want to specify why. That’s the idea behind the use of this inchoative structure. This is a syntactic alternation because it designates the same state of affairs. The two members of the alternation are somehow synonymous to some extent in designating the same state of affairs in the real world. We will see that there is metaphorical activity behind some alternations. Yesterday, this alternation was discussed in terms of PROCESS FOR ACTION, which is a metonymy. There is metonymy underlying the possibility of expressing ourselves like this. Today, we will talk about metaphor underlying other alternations. We have other factors, of course, that are not metaphorical or metonymic. Think of these sentences. You say: The child broke the vase/The vase broke. What we have is a change of state verb. And when we have a change of state verb, we can perform this change from the causative to the inchoative. So, the type of event structure of the verb is a licensing factor for the alternation to be possible. Look at the following sentence: The enemy destroyed the city, but we can’t say *This city destroyed. My question is why can’t I say *The city destroyed?, but I can say that The vase broke? Destroy and break are very similar in meaning. The reason why is that the event structure is different: break is a change of state verb; destroy is a cessation of existence verb. We have different event structures for the two verbs. The cat killed the mouse, but we can’t say *The mouse killed in English. In other languages, you may be able to say that, but not in English, because English has the verb die, which is a suppletive predicate. So, because it has coded the idea of intransitive killing, you don’t need to use intransitive killing. You already have a lexical item that is available. You can say: The mouse died. Why would you intransitivize the verb kill? This is not the same with other cases of intransitivization, as with break. We don’t have another verb for the meaning of The vase broke. So, we change break from transitive to intransitive. But here, it is not necessary because we already have the lexical item die that designates a process. This is more or less the same as inchoative meaning. Imagine that English didn’t have the verb die. We would be able to say that The mouse killed. The mouse is the object of kill in the same way as here, in The child broke the vase, the vase is the object of break. So, it should be possible to intransitivize the verb kill following the rules of the English language if we didn’t have the suppletive

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predicate die, which is a blocking factor for the intransitivization and the use of the verb in the inchoative construction. There are alternations that require event re-construal: John kicked Peter focuses on the action; John gave Peter a kick focuses on the effects of the action. Sometimes the reason why we have an alternation is that it is necessary from the point of view of the type of meaning that we want to get. John kicked Peter is pretty neutral. But John gave Peter a kick is not neutral. It doesn’t simply designate the action of kicking Peter. It tells us that Peter had the kick with him figuratively and suffered from being kicked. He gave Peter a kick: that really hurts. But if you say He kicked Peter, we can think: ‘Yeah, that really hurts’, but the focus of attention is not on that component. It’s more neutral. So syntactic alternations can have something to do with metonymy and metaphor. Sometimes there are factors that go beyond metonymy and metaphor, like the event structure of the predicates which will give us the possibility to create an alternation or not to create it. And sometimes, we use alternations because we want to achieve slightly different meaning effects. Let’s go now into diagrams with the real cases. This is a diagram of give a kick. In give a kick, we have the giver, in the source, the receiver, the object, giving, and the possession element. And if you think about it, very interestingly, the possession element maps onto the effects of kicking. But the effects of kicking are an elaboration of the notion of kicking in the target. We go from The ACTIONS ARE PROCESSES metaphor does not require a causal agent that triggers off a kicking, the cause, to the effects of kicking: a cause-effect connection, which is change of state. ACTIONS ARE TRANSFERS + CAUSE FOR EFFECT 5. Metaphoric and metonymic complexes (John kicked Peter / John gave Peter a kick)

High-level metaphor-metonymy combination '

Giver

Kicker

Receiver

Kickee

Object

Kick

Giving ' '

Possession

'

Kicking

Effects of kicking

AN ACTION IS A TRANSFER OF POSSESSION (‘give a kick’) figure 25

High-level metonymic complexes: double metonymy (Assessed) process > action > result This bread cuts easily (cf. *This bread cuts) [It is easy to cut this bread] This new machine sews nicely (cf. *This new machine sews) [It is nice to sew with this new machine]

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metonymic. So, the giver maps onto the kicker, the receiver onto the kickee, the object onto the kick, giving onto kicking, and the possession element onto the effects of kicking. We have a metaphtonymy. We mentioned metaphtonymies yesterday. We will go back to them today again, in more detail, in the afternoon session. 5

She Beat Me into Silence / She Beat Silence into Me

Another alternation: beat into silence versus beat silence into me. You can beat someone into silence or you can beat silence into someone. Roughly, the conceptual makeup of this is the following. You have a person here, and you push the person figuratively, so that the person, in changing location, will change state. That’s one form of metaphorical thought. In the other member of the alternation, what we have is silence, the property, and silence is seen as an object. We take the object and we move the property into the sphere of the receiver of the object, so that the object will affect the receiver of the object. Those are the two forms of conceptualization. Now, for He beat me into silence, the case in which the person moves into the sphere of silence, we have two metaphors at work. One is built into the other. Of course, we have A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION, which is the lower one, and this one is built into AN EFFECTUAL ACTION IS A CAUSED MOTION. In the [[latter]]—in what I call the “matrix metaphor” that subsumes the other—we have the ‘causer of motion’ mapping onto the ‘effector’, [[and]] ‘object of motion’ mapping onto the ‘effectee’. In the [[former]], the ‘source of motion’ is the ‘initial state’ and the ‘destination of motion’ is the ‘resultant state’. I call this a single-source, high-level metaphorical complex (“single-source” because there is only one source domain). We will see now that we have another possibility, which is a double-source metaphorical complex. We have two source domains and only one target. In the previous example, we had two sources and two targets, and the incorporation of one metaphor into another. The receiver metaphor is called the matrix metaphor. In this other example, we don’t have that situation. We have one common target and two sources that are complementary to each other. In what way? Okay, in the target of He beat silence into me, we have someone that does something to someone else: we have an ‘effector’; we have ‘effecting’, which is ‘causing someone to acquire a new property’; we have the ‘effectee’, which is the person that is going to acquire the property; we have a ‘new property’, which is silence, and the ‘resultant state’ (acquiring the new property of silence); and finally, the ‘manner of effecting’, which is beating.

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Single-source high-level metaphorical complex: He beat me into silence SOURCE (CAUSED MOTION)

TARGET (EFFECTUAL ACTION)

Causer of motion

Effector

Object of motion

Effectee

Source (change of location)

Target (change of state)

Source of motion

Initial state

Destination of motion

Resultant state

figure 26

Double-source high-level metaphorical complex: He beat silence into me Source à (caused motion)

ß Source (possession)

Target

Causer of motion

Effector (‘he’)

Causing motion

Effecting (‘caused acquire’) Effectee (‘me’)

Destination of motion

to New possessor of an object

Object of caused-motion New property (‘silence’) (moving object) Resultant state (‘acquiring Gaining possession of an the new property of silence’) object Manner of causing motion

Manner (‘beating’)

of

effecting

figure 27

In the first source, we have ‘caused motion’. In the second source, we have ‘possession’. And ‘caused motion’ and ‘possession’ complement each other: the ‘causer of motion’ maps onto the ‘effector’, ‘causing motion’ onto ‘effecting’, the ‘destination of motion’ onto the ‘effectee’ (the person that is going to receive the property), [[and]] the ‘object of caused-motion’ onto the ‘new property’. And then there is nothing for the ‘resultant state’, but there is ‘manner of causing motion’. In the second source domain, the domain of ‘possession’, we do not have ‘motion’. What we have is the ‘new possessor of an object’ and ‘gaining possession of the object’. The ‘new possessor’ maps onto the ‘effectee’, so

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High-level metaphor as a constraint on lexical-constructional integration • He laughed/stared/talked/persuaded (*described/*owned/*told) me out of the room => self-instigated change of location: physical impact maps onto psychological impact so the caused-motion construction cannot take verb classes that cannot be interpreted as involving psychological impact. • He slapped/shouted/stared (*described/*owned/*told) me into silence • => self-instigated change of state: ‘slapping’, ‘shouting’ and ‘staring’ can have psychological impact thus leading a person to change from one state to another; ‘describing’, ‘owning’ and ‘telling’ do not have such an impact. • He slapped/shouted/stared (*described/*owned/*told) silence into me => ‘slapping’, ‘shouting’ and ‘staring’ are ways of leading a person to change by incorporating in them any relevant attribute of the intended resultant state; ‘describing’, ‘owning’ and ‘telling’ do not have the same effect.

figure 28

that the ‘effectee’ is seen both as the ‘destination of motion’ and as the ‘new possessor of an object’. When you receive the object, the object comes to you. You are the destination of motion, but at the same time, you have the object [[and]] you’re going to be the new processor of the object. The ‘resultant state’ is seen as ‘gaining possession of an object’ and this element has no corresponding element in the caused-motion structure. So, [[there is]] one single target, but two sources, and that’s why I call this “double-source” high-level metaphorical complex, because it has two sources. The previous one was “single-source”, a single-source metaphorical complex. Can high-level metaphor of this kind, or whatever kind, simple or complex, constrain lexical-constructional integration? Remember the example about laughing people out of a place? You can say He laughed me out of the room. He laughed at me. I felt bad, and I left. That’s idea. Can we say He stared me out of the room? Yes. By staring at someone, that person may feel uncomfortable and leave. Can we say He talked me out of the room? Yes. He talks to me and persuades me to leave the room. Makes sense. He persuaded me out of the room [[works]] in much the same way: he uses his speaking skills to convince me that I have to leave. But we can’t say *He described / *He owned / *He told me out of the room. The reason why is that these verbs with the asterisk do not match the type of verbs that we have here: laugh, stare, talk, persuade, which are target-oriented. I laugh at people, I stare at people, I talk to people, I persuade people, I have a target. A target-oriented activity can be seen as caused motion. But other types

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Conclusions • Metaphor is a source of inferences based on low-level or high-level resemblance. • Low-level resemblance occurs when objects, situations, or events share similar attributes (simile, resemblance metaphor), or when two objects, situations, or events, bear structural resemblance to each other within a system of such similarities (analogy). • High-level resemblance occurs when two situations or events have generic structure in common. • High-level resemblance (i) underlies both situation/event-based resemblance metaphor and correlation metaphor; and it (ii) motivates constructional coercion resulting in transitivity type shifts and some syntactic alternations. • This view of metaphor places apparently unrelated grammatical phenomena within the broader picture of cognitive modeling involving event-structure reconstrual.

figure 29

of relational predicates like describe, own, tell, and many others, do not fall into that pattern. So, the metaphor cannot license them into the construction. Not anything can be coerced into a construction, only licensed elements. They can be licensed by re-construal or re-perspectivization. Changes of perspective are metonymic [[but]] re-construal is metaphorical. Go to the second set of examples: He slapped/shouted/stared me into silence. No problem. But He *described / *owned / *told me into silence is impossible. Again, we have basically the same constraints. We have a self-instigated change of state, and these verbs—slapping, shouting and staring—can have psychological impact. They are not target-oriented in the same way as laugh, stare, and talk, but they can have psychological impact. And because they can have psychological impact, they can lead a person to move out of a place. And the third set is He slapped/shouted/stared silence into me, but not *described/ *owned/ *told silence into me. The same. Because slapping, shouting, and staring are ways of leading a person to change by incorporating in them any relevant attribute of the intended resultant state. So, this is not a case of I will move out of here, figuratively, but something will move into my perceptual or into my sensory or intellectual space. It doesn’t really matter if it is objective or subjective; it will move “into me” in some way. And because it will be moving “into me”, it will affect me and change me. So, because we have this conceptual configuration underlying the idea of changing states and changing locations, we can have different constructions absorbing different lexical predicates, but not others. The constraints are going to be metaphorical.

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By way of conclusion, metaphor is a source of inferences, as Lakoff and Johnson said. But those inferences can be based on low-level or high-level resemblance. Low-level resemblance occurs when objects, situations, or events share similar attributes. That’s the case of resemblance metaphor, and also the case of simile. You can say: Your teeth are pearls or Your teeth are like pearls. Or [[low-level resemblance also occurs]] when two objects, situations, or events bear structural resemblance to each other within a system of such similarities (the different types of analogy that we have discussed). High-level resemblance occurs when two situations or events have generic structure in common. High-level resemblance underlies both situation or event-based resemblance metaphor and correlation metaphor. And it motivates constructional coercion, resulting in transitivity type shifts and some syntactic alternations. If you realize what I’m doing is I’m bringing together everything into the same framework: any low-level metaphor based on resemblance with high-level thinking of different kinds, whether situational, eventive or even resulting in grammatical phenomena. Everything belongs to the same picture. So, this view of metaphor places apparently unrelated grammatical phenomena within a broader picture of cognitive modeling that involves event structure re-construal. So, this is my talk for this morning.

lecture 4

Conceptual Complexes I’m going to talk about conceptual complexes and some of the ideas that I’m going to bring together here were scattered in the previous talks. So, some of the ideas that I’m going to put forward you have already heard from my lips. But the analysis that I’m going to give you is slightly different, [and] it’s going to be a little broader. It belongs to a framework. We have talked about double metonymies, for example, and we have talked about metaphorical complexes or metaphorical amalgams. We have talked about metaphtonymy, mainly in passing, to make some points about coercion in constructions—Construction Grammar—to make some points about the complexity of conceptualization in connection with metonymy and metaphor. Now we’re going to deal with all of these in a little bit more detail.

What is a conceptual complex? • It is a combination of cognitive models whose existence can be detected from a careful examination of the meaning effects of some linguistic expressions. • There are two types of conceptual complexes: • Those that integrate non-operational cognitive models (frames, image schemas) • Those that integrate operational cognitive models (metaphor, metonymy).

figure 1

All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555719

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_005

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First of all, the first question that I want to address is what “on earth” is that? What is a conceptual complex? It is a combination of cognitive models whose existence can be detected from a careful examination of the meaning effects of some linguistic expressions. So, the methodology here is that we accumulate linguistic evidence, we find patterns, and we try to find explanations that motivate those patterns (explanations for those patterns). By looking at the meaning effects of sentences [[or]] utterances in context, we derive some conclusions. And, of course, they are to some extent speculative. Psycholinguists and other people in the brain sciences should also have a say about whether these ideas are correct or not. But in the meantime, I think that this is all plausible. And it’s an analysis that holds water because it applies to a whole range of classes of utterances in context. So dealing with a lot of material and previous literature by other authors, I believe that there are two types of conceptual complexes, or cognitive models in combination: those that integrate what I call non-operational cognitive models, that is, frames and image schemas, and those that integrate operational cognitive models, those that are grounded in the cognitive operations that I talked about in my first talk, like, for example, metaphor (the different types of metaphor) and metonymy. I will begin with the notion of frame. The title for this slide is “A frame within a frame”. How can we develop frame structure? This is very simplified, but I think that it will be clear to most of you. There are two ways in which we can develop a knowledge frame. One is conventional and the other is unconventional. We can use our imagination to the extent that it is possible, given some

A frame within a frame • There are two ways to develop a knowledge frame: conventional and unconventional. • Conventional elaboration occurs when the elements of the schematic framework (agent, action, instrument, purpose, condition, etc.) are specified according to preset values. • The ski frame includes the shape of the skis, the use of additional equipment, the type and speed of movement depending on the terrain (steep hills, gentle slopes or flat plains) and the type of snow. Each of these elements is subject to limited-scope modification. • Unconventional processing occurs not through modification but through the integration of elements from another frame with which it shares part of its primary structure (usually image schematic). figure 2

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principles of conceptualization that we all follow. Conventional elaboration occurs when the elements of the schematic framework, the agent, the action, the instrument, the purpose, the condition, and so on, are specified according to preset values. So, there is little imagination here. We simply have two cognitive models, or more, and we bring them together because they have a lot of things in common, like the agentive structure, the actional structure, or causeeffect connections. Think of the ski frame now. The “ski frame” includes the shape of the skis, doesn’t it? Have you done that? Have you skied, ever? I haven’t. I don’t know much, but that’s what I learned from the Internet—that we can use skis to ski! [[chuckle]]. So, it includes the shape of the skis, the use of additional equipment, the type and speed of movement, depending on the terrain. You can have steep hills, you can have gentle slopes, you can have flat plains, and the type of snow. Each of these elements is subject to limited-scope modification. So, when we’re talking about this frame, these elements are going to be fairly stable. Can there be unconventional processing? Yes, there can be unconventional processing. It occurs not through the modification of these elements that are stable, but through the integration of elements from another frame with which it shares part of its primary structure, which is usually image-schematic. So, what we have is something like the following. Can you see the clown? No, it’s a person skiing. But what can you see? Can you see the shoes? The shoes are so long that they functionally serve the same purpose as the skis. And then the face of the clown is compatible— conceptually consistent—with the types of shoes. A frame within a frame: non conventional elaboration

Matrix frame (receiver): ski scene Imported frame (partial structure of a donor frame): clown clothes and shoes Outgoing element by replacement: clown shoes by skis Substitution basis: partially shared image-schematic structure

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Image-schematic complexes • They come from the integration of two or more image schemas. • In the sentence The ship goes aimlessly, MOVEMENT and DIVERSION (subsidiary schemas) are integrated into PATH (matrix schema). • Unlike frames, image schemas have no unconventional developments, because their conceptual structure is the most basic possible and cannot be violated (Lakoff's Principle of Invariance). That structure supports frames.

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In this scene, we have a receptor frame, which I call matrix frame. And then we have an imported frame, which is the clown clothed with the clothes of a clown and the shoes. Because we import structure from another frame, which I call the donor frame, what we have is a replacement of the structure. In this case, the skis have been replaced by the shoes. And the basis for substituting the shoes for the skis is that they share in part—not completely, but they share— some relevant image-schematic structure. If the shoes and the skis did not share much structure, the substitution process would be impossible; it would be filtered out. Now, let’s go to the notion of image schemas. We have been talking about them in the previous talks. Can we have image-schematic complexes? Yes, they are in fact very frequent. We combine image schemas. In fact, image schematic thinking is a result of the combination of image schemas. Very rarely do we use image schemas in isolation. Take a sentence like The ship sails aimlessly. We have here at least, of course, motion, we have the path for motion, and we have the diversion schema, and maybe other subsidiary schemas. So, the matrix schema would be the path schema. And then motion and diversion would be subsidiary to the path matrix schema. Unlike frames, image schemas have no unconventional development as far as I have been able to detect, probably because their conceptual structure is the most basic that is possible and it cannot be violated. This was stated by George Lakoff a long time ago with his famous Invariance Principle. We cannot violate the image-schematic structure of the target and of the source in a metaphorical mapping. This image-schematic structure, of course,

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An image schema within an image schema

A craft lacking direction in rough seas: the PATH schema incorporates the MOTION and DIVERSION schemas

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Metaphtonymy (cf. Goossens 1990) a) Metaphor from metonymy: chanted the “mea culpa” (as a sign of penance) => "mea culpa" represents feelings of regret for sins, applicable to situations in which the speaker makes an open show, perhaps feigned or excessive, of feelings of guilt b) Metaphor within metonymy: to rise in arms (‘rebel against an authority or power even without war action’) => “(be/rise) in arms” can be applied metaphorically to any moment of non-war confrontation; ”rise" represents the initial moment of the war, which is the basis of the metaphor. c) Metonymy within the metaphor: to bite one’s tongue ('refrain from expressing what is really thought') => the tongue represents the ability to express oneself, but the action of biting one’s tongue is mapped metaphorically onto that of keeping silent on a subject. d) Demetonymization within a metaphorical framework: to pay lip service ('expressing support without real intention to give it') => loss of the metonymy whereby the lips stand for the ability to speak with a change of meaning into 'support with promises’ (as opposed actions).

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supports the frame structure that enriches the image-schematic structure, or we make sense of frame structure a lot better if we take into account imageschematic or spatial structure. You have here another image. This tries to represent an image schema within an image schema. This is a ship and it is sailing aimlessly. Then, can we incorporate metonymy into metaphor or, the other way around, metaphor into metonymy? There is a study that caught my attention in the 1990s, by Louis Goossens, from Antwerp University. He entitled his

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paper “Metaphtonymy”. He argued that we could have different combinations of metaphor and metonymy, where sometimes metaphor predominates, and sometimes metonymy predominates (sometimes metonymy is more prominent). And he argued for four different types of interaction between metaphor and metonymy. These four types of interaction are patterns of interaction that arise from his study, [[carried out]] together with some colleagues at his university on a limited corpus of examples. They were speech action verbs and they also were body-part metaphors and metonymies. Here are some examples and some of them are my own, but I think that they reflect a little bit better Goossens’ argumentation than the ones that he gives in his own paper, or they’re easier to process. For the first one, you have to chant the mea culpa. Now mea culpa is Latin, it means my guilt, my fault. It was customary in some European countries to hit your chest [[hitting his own chest]] like this and say mea culpa, mea culpa when you felt guilty; it’s an open show of sorrow and of repentance. You want to be forgiven. So, chanting the mea culpa is a sign of penance, and it represents the feelings of regret that you have about your mistakes, about your sins. And it is applicable to situations in which the speaker makes any open show of sorrow without actually saying mea culpa, mea culpa, or without beating his chest. So there is a metaphor, but Goossens observed that because mea culpa stands for those feelings of regret, this is a metaphor developed from a metonymy. Mea culpa would be the metonymy. [[The]] second example [[is]] to rise in arms, which means to rebel against an authority or power even without war action. So, you can rise in arms figuratively; you don’t need to go to war. It can be applied metaphorically to any moment of non-war confrontations where “rise” represents the beginning, the initial moment of the war, which is the basis of the metaphor. Again, we have interaction between metaphor and metonymy. To rise in arms is simply one small part of something bigger. We have metonymic access to a situation or to a scenario. And Goossens classified this as an example of metaphor within metonymy. We have a metonymy, a metonymic framework: to rise in arms gives access to this idea of rising in arms to rebel against authority, and so on. And then, there is a metaphor inside, because you actually do not use any arms. You are simply rebelling in a generic sense. Then, another example is to bite one’s tongue. This expression indicates that you don’t want to express what you really think. So, you bite your tongue, thus avoiding speaking out of turn. The tongue represents the ability to express yourself. But the action of biting your tongue is mapped metaphorically onto that of keeping silent on the subject. Again, we have metonymy, and we have metaphor. For Goossens, this is a case of a “metonymy within the metaphor”.

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Metaphor + metonymy combination patterns • Metonymic expansion of the source domain of a metaphor: cases (a), (b) and (c) in Goossens. • Metonymic reduction of the meta domain of a metaphor: case (d) in Goossens. • Cases not identified by Goossens: • Metonymic expansion of the target domain of a metaphor. • Metonymic reduction of the source domain of a metaphor. figure 7

We have a metaphorical framework, and then the notion of ‘tongue’ affords access to the idea of speaking, and ‘biting the tongue’ is refraining from speaking. The fourth pattern that he distinguishes is demetonymization [chuckles]. I don’t know if I want to say that word again: demetonymization within a metaphorical framework. He gives the example of pay lip service. To pay lip service means to express support without a real intention to give any support. So, when you pay lip service, you’re not actually telling the truth. You are simply saying I’ll give you a hand, I’ll do that for you, but you don’t mean it. Goossens argues that here there is a loss of metonymy—the metonymy is the lips standing for the ability to speak—and that metonymy, somehow, is lost in the process of creating the metaphor, because the meaning of the sentence is ‘to support with promises’, and it has little to do with the lips. That is Goossens’ argumentation. My own belief about this is that the study is very interesting. But the first three types, (a), (b) and (c)—metaphor from metonymy, metaphor within metonymy and metonymy within metaphor—can be summarized into a combination of metonymic expansion of the source domain of a metaphor. So, what the three cases (a), (b) and (c) have in common is that they produce a metaphor by affording access to a more complex concept that serves as a metaphorical source that will map onto a target. You will see that through a reanalysis of the examples—with diagrams—in a minute. Then the famous “demetonymization” example would be a case of metonymic reduction of the target domain of the metaphor, which means that we can simplify Goossens’ proposal by grouping together three of his cases into one, and then reanalyzing the last one.

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Metonymic expansion of the source domain of a metaphor • The cases (a), (b) and (c) in Goossens (1990) are but variants of the same, more general pattern, in which part of a scenario stands for the entire scenario that is then applied metaphorically to the understanding of another scenario. • To sing the "mea culpa" < to sing the traditional liturgical prayer as a sign of regret (applicable to any situation in which public ostentation of grief is done without the need to sing the prayer). • Get up in arms < get up in arms to start a war (applicable to any situation of non-war confrontation between individuals) • Bite your tongue < bite your tongue to avoid speaking (applicable to any situation in which you maintain voluntary silence without literally biting your tongue). figure 8

And then there are some cases that were not identified by Goossens: metonymic expansion of the target of a metaphor and metonymic reduction of the source of the metaphor. We can have expansion and reduction of both the source and the target. Let’s see how this works. For example, To sing the “mea culpa”, [[or]] to chant the “mea culpa”; this gives access to the singing of the traditional liturgical prayer as a sign of regret, and that is the source domain. So, singing the “mea culpa” gives access to a more complex conceptual domain that acts as the source of the metaphorical mapping. And once you have access to that source domain, that maps onto any situation in which there is public ostentation of grief without the need of doing any singing. There is no need to sing any prayer. You go to the second one: get up in arms or rise in arms to start a war. That is applicable to any situation of non-war confrontation. Get up in arms stands for get up in arms to start a war and then that maps onto any other situation where there is no war. And finally, in bite your tongue, bite your tongue gives access to biting the tongue to avoid speaking, and that is applicable to any situation in which we maintain voluntary silence without literally biting our tongues. So, in the three cases, what we have is metonymic expansion of the metaphoric source. We create the metaphoric source through metonymic activation by expansion. We go to the diagram and you can see what I just explained diagrammed here: Bite one’s tongue gives access to bite one’s tongue to avoid speaking and

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Metonymic reduction of the metaphoric target domain • Case (d) in Goossens (1990): Pay lip service • Promise support without a real intention to give it. • “Lip” is not demetonymized: “lip service” (‘service paid with the lips’) contrasts with service paid with actions (which result from the speaker’s sincere intention to act). • Source domain: a giver gives an object/ service to someone (a receiver/beneficiary). • Target domain: someone promises support to someone else (+ “(with the lips)” ‘insincerely’, which defines the type of support).

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then you map that metaphorically onto any situation in which a person doesn’t want to speak voluntarily, without necessarily biting his or her tongue. We go to the next: metonymic reduction of the metaphoric target domain; and that is case (d), the famous pay lip service sentence with the purported demetonymization of lip, which I don’t think is the case. The idea of pay lip service, as I said before, is that you promise to give support, but you have no intention to do it. Lip is not demetonymized. The expression lip service contrasts

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Metonymic expansion of the metaphoric target domain Knit one’s eyebrows (‘frown’) • Source domain: knit an article of clothing thus bringing its parts closely together (i.e. intertwining them). • Target domain: bring the eyebrows together so that the forehead is wrinkled < as a sign of displeasure, sadness, worry, or concentration.

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with service paid with actions. So, what you do is that you pay service by using the lips as an instrument to speak. That’s the idea. The actions, of course, result from the speakers’ sincere intention to act. So, we have a contrast between lip service and true service. In the source domain of the metaphor, we have a giver that gives an object or gives service to someone that is a beneficiary (or the receiver). Then the target domain has someone promising support to someone else with the lips, meaning insincerely. And that’s where the metonymy goes. So, there is no process of losing the metonymy. The metonymy stands. It has its

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value in the expression. And it cooperates with the metaphor in the way that I have explained. This could be the diagram. The source has the domain of paying for a service or for an object; and the target, the idea of promising support without meaning to. But I have other examples to add. Take this one: to knit one’s eyebrows—we mentioned this one in a previous talk—meaning ‘to frown’. In the source domain, what do we have? We have knitting, we knit articles of clothing. By knitting articles of clothing, we bring their parts closely together. We intertwine them. In the target domain, what we have is bringing the eyebrows together so that the forehead is wrinkled. As we frown, there are wrinkles in the forehead and the wrinkles—the frowning—are a sign of displeasure, sadness, worry, concentration, and so on. So, what we have in the target is a metonymic development of the idea of frowning. Why do we frown? Because we want to show that we are emotional about something. We are sad, we are worried, or simply we need to focus, we need concentration. And this would be the diagram. Well, we have a metonymic development— by expansion—of the target. I go to the next one, metonymic reduction of the metaphoric source domain. And I will use an example that is similar to one that I gave this morning. Remember the Tagore example? Shakespeare, Tagore? This one is about Steven Pinker or Steve Pinker, who is the Einstein of psycholinguistics. This is not my example. Someone said that. I’m not really sure if that is true, but let’s take it

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Metonymic reduction of the metaphoric source domain • Steven Pinker is the Einstein of psycholinguistics (paragon) • Source domain: Einstein > higher intellect in the domain of theoretical physics (above other attributes such as his sense of humor, musical talent, anti-warmongering, etc.) • Target domain: Pinker as a great intellect in the domain of psycholinguistics.

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for granted. What matters here is that we use Einstein as the paragon of high intellect (an incredibly smart guy) in the domain of physics (maybe he was very bad at arts, but he was a great physicist). So, Einstein stands for a higher intellect in the domain of theoretical physics. Of course, he has other attributes: his sense of humor, his musical talent, [[and]] he was an antiwar guy. He has other features that we know about. But his higher intellect stands out and that’s a metonymic connection. That’s why we use Einstein in this example.

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Metonymic chains • They occur when a single linguistic expression requires more than one metonymic activation to fully account for its meaning and denotation. • They fall into four patterns: 1. Expansion + Expansion 2. Expansion + Reduction 3. Reduction + Expansion 4. Reduction + Reduction

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What do we have in the target domain? Well, we have Pinker, who has a great intellect, but in the domain of psycholinguistics, and then we map the source onto the target after doing the “metonymic elaboration” of the source. So, Einstein stands for his superior intellect and that maps onto Pinker’s superior intellect in his own domain of research. Another topic is metonymic chains. I will be brief with this one. What we have is basically four patterns. Since we have these two basic operations of expansion and reduction, well, we can have “expansion + expansion”, “expansion + reduction”, “reduction + expansion”, and “reduction + reduction”. That’s easy. It’s mathematics. Let’s explain “expansion + expansion”. This example I already gave you. Let’s look at it in more detail. The verb to head means ‘to lead’, as in He headed the rally. This is connected to the idea of to be at the head, which is a position in space, which means to be a head as a sign of leadership based on the experience of leading human groups, for example, battalions, team runners, demonstrations, and so on. The head stands for the relative position of the head with respect to the body when running, and the position of the head when running stands for the position of the head when running in order to guide a human group towards the target. That’s a second metonymic development. So, if you look at this picture, you will see that, when you run, the head is in a more advanced position than the rest of the body. And probably this is the experiential grounding—the perceptual grounding—for using the notion of head in the sense of leading, with two metonymies.

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Expansion + Expansion • To head ‘to lead’ (He headed the rally) • To be at the head = to be ahead, as a sign of leadership based on the experience of leading human groups (e.g. battalions, team runners, demonstrations, populaces, etc.) • Head Copleston’s work < the means of presentation/transmission of Copleston’s work

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combined conceptualization in which a surgeon operates a living patient as a butcher cutting dead meat would. • This inconsistency gives rise to the central inference that the surgeon is incompetent (emergent property).

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could be an example of single-scope blend. It applies to some simple metaphors based on analogy. For example, we can say that a person’s long nose is a trunk. Why? Because the image-schematic structure and the topological relationship between the nose and the human head is preserved in the relationship between the trunk and the head of the elephant, so that the length of the nose can be evaluated in terms of the length of the trunk of an elephant. So, the analogy works well, because we have a single-scope blend. A more complex case of blend is the double-scope blend. Here we have input spaces that provide selected structure, which is then integrated into the blended space. And the blend—this is the interesting point in Fauconnier and Turner’s theory—produces its own structure. There is meaning that is not necessarily derived from the input spaces. Think about the person that was skiing on the mountain, and he had clown’s shoes. That would be a case of blend. We’re integrating structure from a clown into the structure of a skier. Can we have the double-scope blends in the case of metaphor? Yes, an example would be the sentence My surgeon is a butcher. That’s something that nobody wants, right? We want to have a good surgeon, not a butcher. The point of view of blending theorists with respect to this example is that, when you say that your surgeon is a butcher, the means-end relationships [[change]]. In the case of the butcher, the butcher has the goal to kill an animal and to prepare the meat as food. And of course, the goal of the surgeon, we hope, is not to kill the patient, but to heal the patient. And [[blending theorists]] also point out that in spite of this incompatibility, there is still some common structure. So, the connection between ‘surgeon’ and ‘butcher’ is possible, because, for

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Figure 2.4.3 Cross-space mapping (adapted from Fauconnier Birdsell (2014) (and basTurner, ed Fa2002: ucon41) nier & Turner 2002) input space 1

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Figure 2.4.4 Blended space (adapted from Fauconnier and Turner, 2002: 43)

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blend; this is called completion. These input spaces selectively project into a blended space (see Figure 2.4.4). In the blend, a single monk becomes both the ascending monk (a1’) and the descending monk (a2’) on the same mountain and is therefore able to accomplish the impossible, namely, he can meet himself. It is in this blended space where the answer to the riddle emerges. This final process, which is called elaboration involves the selected projection of elements in the two input spaces and the fusion of them in the blend. This is the ‘running’ of the blend, where the reader simulates and creatively imagines the ascending and descending monks meeting each other on the mountain path.

example, both use a sharp instrument to cut the meat. In the blended space, the means of the butchery is combined with the purposes of the surgery. There is a combined conceptualization in which a surgeon operates on a living patient as a butcher cuts the dead meat of an animal. And there is an emergent property. This inconsistency between means and ends, and all the cognitive activity that happens in the blend, gives rise to the 75 central inference that the surgeon is incompetent. This summarizes the idea of double-scope blends. There are some mismatches between input spaces. There may be some common structure, and there is an emergent property at least. This is a diagram of the idea. We have input one, input two, and then structure that is projected into the blend. Not all of the structure of the input is projected into the blend, only part of the structure, and then the blend produces its own structure. I have a question. Is it necessary to postulate blends to explain metaphor? So, can we integrate structure as in the example of the clown and the skier? Yes, we can do that. Can we integrate structure, for example, by imagining a tree that has eyes, and that has ears, like a person? Yes, and the branches would be the arms. Yes, and the feet would be the roots of the tree. Yes, we can do that. We can blend concepts. But is it necessary for all cases of metaphor to postulate a blend? I don’t think that it is necessary. We could argue, for example, that in the case of the surgeon-butcher connection, the central inference does not necessarily arise from integrating the butcher’s way of cutting into the way of cutting that the surgeon has. That is not necessary. We have a connection and we have similarity in the performance of

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Is it necessary to postulate blends to explain metaphor? • It can be argued that the central inference does not need any integration of conceptual structure, since this inference arises from seeing a mode of action (making precise surgical incisions) as if it were another mode of action (cutting meat without precision), each in its domain. • In fact, for the expression My surgeon is a butcher, not postulating the integration of concepts, but only their relationship by similarity when comparing them, allows us to identify an additional hyperbolic element centered on the source domain of the metaphor. A bad surgeon can be inaccurate when making surgical incisions but never as inaccurate as a butcher when cutting meat. • But blends can be postulated for phenomena such as the elaboration of a framework by integration of elements of another framework.

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Differences between amalgams and blends • In any case, amalgams are not blends. These combine partial structure of the input spaces (source and goal), but do not combine two metaphors into one. • Metaphorical amalgams always involve a primary metaphor, even in cases where a similarity operation is performed, as in the example of the "boss-like-pig" discussed above. Thus, if this metaphor referred only to physical dirt, it would act by resemblance and not by experiential correlation; then, there would be no amalgam. • Since they are grounded in primary constructs, amalgams, although conceptually complex, are more cognitively more basic and, therefore, prior to the derivation of meaning implications that Fauconnier and Turner assign to the blends.

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both the butcher and the surgeon. And there is also a hyperbolic element that has to be added when we think of the butcher cutting meat and then of the surgeon doing surgery on the patient. If the surgeon behaves like the butcher in his manner of operating on the patient, then it’s an exaggeration. Probably he’s not as incompetent and he doesn’t really behave as the butcher behaves when cutting meat. So, there is this element of hyperbole that would be missing in the blending account. Perhaps it could be added in some way, but the idea is the central inference arises from understanding one item in terms of the other. And that gives rise to reasoning, which is not necessarily a case of integration.

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Differences between metaphorical amalgams and composite metaphors

• Grady (1997) proposes that there are primary and compound metaphors. The former are based directly on our motor-sensory experience and the latter are only convenient descriptive constructs. • For example, THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS is composed of THE ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE and PERSISTING IS REMAINING ERECT. • In compounds, but not in amalgams, linguistic expressions profile one of the metaphors of the compound, while the other is in the background. • His theory has firm foundations: it focuses on the notion of persistence, reducing the notion of organization to a mere cancelable implication. • His theory has many loose ends: the lack of organization is highlighted, implying the notion of persistence. • In compounds, unlike amalgams, there is no real integration or fusion between the source and target domains of the contributing metaphors. In compounds, one of the metaphors simply implies the other.

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Are there differences between amalgams and blends? Well, even if we accept that the surgeon example is a case of blending, amalgams are not necessarily blends or types of blend. For one reason: blends combine partial structure from input spaces, but they do not combine two metaphors into one. Also, metaphorical amalgams,—remember this—always involve a primary metaphor, even in cases where we have similarity, as the case of the My boss is a pig example. If the metaphor referred only to physical dirt, in that case, it would act by resemblance, and not by experiential correlation and we would have no amalgams. So, we have amalgams when we have a combination of a primary metaphor, and then another metaphor. And yes, these combinations are grounded in primary constructs. So, amalgams, even though they are conceptually complex, are more basic cognitively, and therefore, prior to the derivation of meaning implications, as is the case with blends. So, in any way, even if we can postulate a blending process to explain an example of metaphor, we have to be careful. We have to understand that amalgams of metaphors would be prior to the integration of concepts. What about the famous compound metaphors? We talked about Grady, his distinction between primary and compound metaphors. I think we gave the example of THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS, which is a combination of ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE and PERSISTING IS REMAINING ERECT. THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS would be a compound metaphor. In compounds, note, linguistic expressions profile one of the metaphors of the compound, but the other is in the background. Take an example: His theory has firm foundations. The focus is on the notion of persistence, while the

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Conclusions • Conceptual interaction requires a greater depth of study than achieved so far. • In the field of metonymy, it is still necessary to delve into the study of how it contributes to the creation of metaphors. • The interaction patterns found by Goossens can be summed up in two great types to which others are added. • In general, metonymy seems to act by developing aspects of the source or goal domains of a metaphor, by way of expansion or reduction (targeting). • In the field of metaphor, more attention should be paid to combinations of metaphors with metaphors forming integrated conceptual packages. • The combinations of self-standing metaphors into amalgams is carried out on the basis of a primary experiential schema. This fact has implications, pending exploration, for the empirical understanding of the embodiment of metaphor (Gibbs 2006).

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notion of organization, which belongs to the other elements of the compound, has a secondary role. It can be canceled out. In His theory has many loose ends the focus is on the lack of organization. And the notion of persistence could be implied. And of course, it can be canceled out. So, in compounds, but not in amalgams, the linguistic expressions profile one of the metaphors of the compound and the other remains in the background. Another difference is that in compounds, but not in amalgams, there is no real integration or fusion between the source and target domains of the contributing metaphors. In the case of amalgams, we have real fusion. We have an integration. But not here: in compounds, one of the metaphors simply implies the other. If we have ORGANIZATION IS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE, then, probably, we have some sort of persistence that is understood as remaining erect. Or the other way around, if we have an entity that persists in time, maybe it’s because it has physical structure. It is well organized. So, one of the metaphors implies the other. But they do not fuse; they do not combine. By way of conclusion, conceptual interaction is still to be studied in greater depth. I would argue for the need to understand the notion of blending, for example, in connection with the notion of chains and amalgams with respect to metaphor and metonymy. Then, as you saw, the interaction patterns between metaphor and metonymy can be simplified, and we can add a couple of patterns that were not identified in the previous literature. Metonymy seems to act by developing aspects of the source or the target of the metaphor, by way of expansion or reduction.

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In the field of metaphor, more attention should be paid to combinations of metaphors with other metaphors forming integrated conceptual packages. And, as I mentioned in this morning’s talk, we need to understand how that happens to better understand constructional coercion, or some cases of constructional coercion. And finally, the combination of self-standing metaphors into amalgams is carried out on the basis of a primary experiential schema. And this has implications, which are pending exploration, for the empirical understanding of the embodiment of metaphors. If we have a primary metaphor at the root of an amalgam, that has very strong implications for the understanding—in terms of psycholinguistic experimenting and the brain sciences—of how mental activity works in connection with conceptual complexity. So, this is all for now.

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Constraining Lexical-Constructional Integration through Metaphor and Metonymy Thank you. This morning’s topic is about how we combine lexical structure, argument-structure constructions, and the role that metaphor and metonymy play in this respect. Now, you already had some insights into how this happens when we talked about high-level metaphor and high-level metonymy. I told you that both [[processes]] motivate some grammatical phenomena. And I also explained how combinations of metaphor and metonymy—called amalgams—also motivate grammatical phenomena. This is connected to the previous talks. And I will repeat some of the slides for the sake of convenience, so you will not have to be remembering everything. Some of the slides that we have already seen, you will see here again, and a lot of the other, the rest of the information is going to be new. By “constraining”, what I mean is placing limitations; so not every construction can take in any lexical item. We have to select what is possible and what is not. Metaphor and metonymy—you have already seen from previous talks— play a role in this. This talk is going to be a bit more systematic in addressing the way in which this happens. By way of introduction, I want to draw your attention to a distinction between projectionism in linguistic theory and constructionism. In Cognitive Linguistics, we do constructionism; projectionism belongs to functional linguistics, and to formal linguistics. The assumption of projectionists is that the verb is central to the creation of the sentence. The verb has argument structure. It has a valence structure with a number of participant entities. If I say give, X gives something to Y. It has three arguments. It is ditransitive. The idea is that give is going to be ditransitive, unless we—let me say it this way—we “mess up” with it: I don’t want to give. I could stop there. But that is a pragmatic or a discourse phenomenon. All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555722

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_006

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Projectionism vs. constructionism • In projectionist accounts of grammar, lexical structure is projected into various syntactic configurations, whose meaning is derived compositionally from the meaning of their constituent parts; e.g. The cat killed the mouse [the cat caused the mouse to become dead, since kill = cause to become dead] • In constructionist accounts lexical structure is built into constructions. This incorporation is regulated by constructional coercion. This means that lexical structure is changed as necessary to be adapted to constructional requirements (Michaelis 2003: 268). For example, the verb sneeze, which is intransitive, can be transitivized when used in the caused-motion construction: She sneezed the napkin off the table (Goldberg 1995). • A projectionist approach cannot deal with examples of this kind: the verb sneeze has the structure [X sneeze], but not [X sneeze Y Z]. • In constructionist accounts verbal predicates and argument-structure constructions consist in a set of semantic conditions that range over variables; i.e. both have the same overall configuration.

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Think of the verb kill. Kill has two arguments: X kills Y. And I could say, Well, he’s a killer; he kills, and omit the second argument. But that has nothing to do, according to the projectionist perspective, with the inherent argument structure of kill. It’s simply a pragmatic phenomenon. From a constructionist perspective, that is not only a pragmatic phenomenon; it has pragmatic consequences. But it is something that we can do with language, if we subsume the verb kill into a construction that “de-profiles” the object; that’s the case of kill. So, when I say He kills, I am de-profiling the object. And that’s a constructional phenomenon. Yep, that’s why I can omit the object. In projectionist accounts of grammar, lexical structure is projected into different syntactic configurations, and the meaning that arises from those configurations is compositional. That means that, if you sum up the parts you obtain the whole. In the case of the sentence The cat killed the mouse, you only need to know that kill is a causative verb that can be broken down into ‘cause an entity to become not alive or to become dead’. And we could paraphrase The cat killed a mouse as ‘the cat caused the mouse to become dead’. The idea is that you only need to work out the combination of ‘cat’, ‘kill’, and ‘mouse’, in this way, through the idea of ‘caused change of state’ and you obtain the meaning of the sentence. This is compositional. One plus one equals two and two plus two equals four. No way out of it. But in constructionist accounts of language, as you already know from some of the talks by Martin Hilpert, we think differently. We know that sometimes the construction adds meaning that is not derived from lexical items. It has meaning of its own. And it is the combination of the construction and lexical

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What is a construc3on? • “C is a CONSTRUCTION iff def n is a form-function pair, such that some aspect of the form or some aspect of the function is not strictly predictable from C’s component parts” (Goldberg (1998: 205)

• Note: sentence patterns, idiomatic expressions (e.g. let the cat out of the bag), single lexical items, and even morphemes are constructions. The meaning of content lexical items and morphemes is not predictable from its form and vice versa.

• “Any linguistic pattern is recognized as a construction as long as some aspect of its form or function is not strictly predictable from its component parts of from other constructions recognized to exist. In addition, patterns are stored as constructions even if they are fully predictable as long as they occur with sufficient frequency (see Ch. 3 for discussion).” (Goldberg 2006: 5) figure 2

structure that provides us with a final meaning representation, at least at the argument-structure level. Of course, we can add other levels, which are pragmatic and discourse levels of semantic representation. The idea in constructionism is that lexical structure is built into constructions, and lexical structure is incorporated if allowed by the construction. And that’s the phenomenon called coercion. So, the construction overrides lexical meaning when it is necessary. You have work by Michaelis that was mentioned in Hilpert’s first talk on the notion of coercion. As an example here, take the verb sneeze. This verb is intransitive: X sneezes; but it can be transitivized if you want to use it in the caused-motion construction. So, sneeze, [[which]] is inherently intransitive, becomes transitive because the caused-motion construction requires a transitive verb: She sneezed the napkin off the table, which is a very famous example in Adele Goldberg’s book, 1995. A projectionist approach cannot deal, however, with this kind of example, because you have, not X sneezes, but an augmentation of the number of arguments: X sneezes Y Z. In constructionist accounts, verbal predicates and argument-structure constructions consist in a set of semantic conditions that range over variables and both have the same overall configuration. Let’s go into this in more detail. This is the standard definition of “construction” in Goldberg’s version of Construction Grammar. A construction is described as a form-function or a form-meaning pairing, such that some aspect of the form, or some aspect of the function, is not strictly predictable from the component parts of the construction. The idea is that the construction, in this formulation, can

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add some meaning and make the overall composition of lexical items noncompositional. In 2006, Goldberg refined her definition of construction and she acknowledged that any linguistic pattern can be recognized as a construction, independently of whether the result of combining the construction with lexical items was predictable or not. So, we don’t care if the meaning of the whole is going to be larger than the meaning of the parts. As long as we have a meaningful connection between form and meaning, a relevant connection between form and meaning, and there is sufficient frequency in the use of that connection, we have a construction. It’s not on the slide, but I will refine this idea and I will replace the criterion of frequency by the criterion of “replicability”. That was in 2008. I can send you the papers on this topic. The idea is that frequency is a very slippery criterion. We can’t be sure: where do we set up the limit for frequency? What do we consider frequent? The construction is used a thousand times? Ten thousand times? It has to be used fifty thousand times? Or only twenty times? What is frequent? Frequency is a relative criterion. It looks OK, but what if we fall back on an old formalist idea, which is linguistic intuition, [[which]] we seem to “hate” in Cognitive Linguistics, but sometimes it may be scientifically valid. Think about it. We have a native speaker of English, and you use a construction that may not be frequent according to these standards, but however, is taken as natural by the addressee, and the addressee—if the addressee is another competent speaker of the language—accepts the construction, the form-meaning pairing. In other words, what if the addressee could replicate the construction,—that constructional use—and feel OK with it? That would be a construction! It is accepted by [[the]] speaker, [[the]] hearer, [[and the]] community. They get along together with that use of the language. That’s the replicability criterion that has to be added to this: as long as it is frequent, or at least replicable in this sense, that is to say, it is accepted by the speaker and hearer. If they’re competent speakers, native speakers of the language, [[it is]] accepted as normal usage, or as possible usage if it makes sense to them. And of course, this comes in degrees. There can be degrees of oddity. A native speaker [[…]], upon hearing a constructional use, could think: “OK, yeah, it sounds OK, but maybe I wouldn’t say it”. So, this comes in degrees of felicity, but we accept that in Cognitive Linguistics. We have degrees rather than sharp categorization. So, it is consistent with the basic assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics and it adds a little bit more of strength to Goldberg’s formulation. Verbs and constructions. This is so important. We are so obsessed in Cognitive Linguistics with the construction that, well, we have neglected the verb and the rest of lexical items, because, of course, the idea is that verbal meaning is going to be canceled out, overridden, so why bother too much

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Verbs and constructions • Some verbs have the same structure as the construcXons in which they take part: obreak: X causes Y to become Z oResultaXve construcXon: X causes Y to become Z => The child broke the vase ‘the child caused the vase to become broken’ • But this is not always the case: opaint: X puts paint on Y oResultaXve construcXon: X causes Y to become Z by means of A => John painted the wall red (‘John caused the wall to become red by pu_ng paint on it’)

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about lexical classes, the event structure of lexical items, and so on so forth? Well, that’s not a good idea, and I will give you some examples in this talk that it is not a good idea, that we need to take into account both verbal meaning and constructional meaning to see how verbal meaning and constructional meaning can be combined in a meaningful way. I already gave you some insights into this in another talk, but I need to add a little bit more. Take the verb break. This is a very easy one, right? The verb break can be decomposed into ‘X causes Y to become Z’. So does it sound like this is the resultative construction in Goldberg’s definition? Yes, ‘X causes Y to become Z’ is the resultative construction, which means the verb break in its event structure layout encapsulates this constructional meaning. So, when you are going to use the verb break with the resultative construction, there is no problem. Constructional meaning doesn’t need to coerce verbal meaning, because there is a perfect match. The child broke the vase would mean the child caused the vase to become broken. There is no problem. That is a perfect match. But, of course, sometimes we have imperfect situations. One of them is with the verb paint, another very easy verb. But this verb is defined as, [[or]] broken down into, ‘X puts paint on Y’. The resultative construction has this format, ‘X causes Y to become Z’, but now you have to add ‘by means of A’, and this ‘by means of A’ arises from the idea of painting. So, when you say John painted the wall red, the paraphrase that would capture this extension of the construction would be ‘John caused the wall to become red by putting paint on it’. And this is the extra addition, which is why we need to take into account verbal meaning,

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English verbs coding argument-structure meaning (cf. Goldberg 1998: 207) Put

X causes Y to move Z

Caused Motion

Make

X causes Y to become Z

Resultative

Go

X moves Y

Intransitive Motion

Do

X acts on Y

Transitive

Get

X acquires/possesses Y

Possessive

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because this addition, ‘by means of A’, is not part, in general, of the layout of the constructional configuration. Can you see that? We need to take into account verbal meaning. Sometimes we have perfect matches and sometimes we have imperfect matches, and, interestingly, the verb adds to the construction. So, I don’t see much of a coercion phenomenon here. What I see is that paint is forcing the construction to add this idea of the specification of means. It is not a very strong case of influence of the verb on the construction. We have other cases and we will see a few of them. Well, these are the classical constructions that have been handled in Constructional Grammar over and over again: Caused Motion, Resultative, Intransitive [[Motion]], Transitive, Possessive. Of course, these constructions, as Goldberg points out, have to do with verbal structure. So, out of the verb put, we obtain ‘X causes Y to move Z’—or out of verbs like put, [[which]] involve caused motion. The same with the verb make. Make is resultative. Make means that ‘X causes Y to become Z’. Intransitive motion is represented by go: X moves Y. The transitive construction is illustrated by the verb do: ‘X acts on Y’. And the possessive by get, and it would be broken down into ‘X acquires or possesses Y’. If you look at argument-structure constructions, this is a small list of them (there are many more): transitive, ditransitive, dative, benefactive, resultative, instrument-subject, caused motion, way, reciprocal constructions, with examples like: The cat chased the mouse, the transitive; The child gave me the toy, ditransitive; The child gave a toy to me, dative; Mum fixed waffles for us, benefactive; Ron kicked the door open, resultative; The crane lifted the beam: we use the

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Argument-structure constructions

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Lexical-constructional integration • It is a constrained process. There are two broad kinds of constraint: • Internal constraints: they work on the basis of the compatibility between the conceptual characterizations of lexical predicates and argument-structure constructions. • External constraints: based on how lexical structure can be reconstrued to make it fit into a non-lexical construction.

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crane to lift the beam, so this is the instrument-subject construction; He tossed the coin into the air, caused motion; He elbowed his way into the ballroom, the way construction; and James and Carla kissed, which is the reciprocal construction, because we understand that James kissed Carla and Carla kissed James. Let’s talk a little bit more about lexical-constructional integration now. I assume that this is not an ad hoc process, which means that we don’t improvise. It’s not something that we produce without the guidance of some principles. So, it is a constrained process. It is guided by principles. It doesn’t just happen.

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And I distinguish—from the observation of quite a few examples of lexicalconstruction integration—that we can explain this phenomenon on the basis of two sets of constraints. Some are internal to the integration process. And others are external. You may already be guessing that the external constraints are based on how lexical structure can be re-construed to make it fit into the construction, which brings in metaphor and metonymy, because metaphor and metonymy allow us to put things into different perspectives and to reason about them from [[these]] different perspectives. And internal constraints have to do with the low-level structure and high-level structure of lexical predicates. If we have a mismatch in the high-level structure—for example, the event structure of the lexical predicates and the construction—we need to sort that out for lexical-constructional integration to be possible. If the match is perfect, there is no problem. We saw the example of the verb break (broke the vase) and all the cases of the verb kill (He killed Mary). There is no problem usually. But if I want to say *He killed, well, then, there is no such consistency. That is some mismatch and I need to sort it out. And there are some principles that guide us in that process. So, internal constraints are simply constraints of conceptual consistency. It doesn’t matter at what level of genericity or abstraction. It can be the lowest or the highest level. There has to be consistency. I think I gave you an example of how this works with the verb destroy in the example *The city destroyed, which is impossible. You can say The enemy destroyed the city, but you can’t say that *The city destroyed, by contrast with the sentence[[s]] John broke the glass/ The glass broke. So why can’t I intransitivize destroy, when its low-level meaning is so close to the meaning of break? Destroy and break seem to be so similar. But that’s at the low level. If you look at the event structure of both words, we have a different thing: the verb destroy involves cessation of existence; it is not a change-of-state verb. And the inchoative construction that brings about intransitivization only works with verbs that are change-of-state verbs. That’s all. It doesn’t work with verbs that have a different type of event structure layout. So, those would be internal constraints, whether working at the high or low level of genericity. Now a case study, the “subjective-manipulative” construction. This is a construction that might be foreign to you—you will have to give me some input on this—but it is not foreign to my own native tongue, which is Spanish. We use it a lot and with some differences, if we compare it with English. It works in English to a more limited extent. I bring in some examples, and I would like to mention the work of Francisco Gonzálvez. He is a professor of linguistics in Spain at the University of Almería. In 2009 he published in Language Sciences a tremendously long paper with a very detailed analysis of this

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The subjec*ve-manipula*ve construc*on: descrip*on • The first participant (the syntactic subject): it is prototypically human or it can be metonymically interpreted as such: We want you here tomorrow morning; The BBC wants the audience happy. • The predicative complement of the object must be characterizing but not identifying: I want you happy/*Marilyn Monroe. • The state, situation, or event denoted by the predicative complement must be sensitive to either direct or indirect manipulation by the speaker: I want you out of my house / *tall / *old. • To take part in the construction, the verbal predicate needs to combine ‘desire’ and ‘compulsion’, with different degrees of prominence, whether directly or implicitly (need, want, but not demand). Require is possible to the extent that it involves a degree of subjectivity. figure 7

subjective-manipulative construction, and he adopted a constructionist approach. Here, I give only a summary of some of the main aspects of his very lengthy paper. Just a few ideas that I think will allow us to make our case. Professor Gonzálvez observes that this construction has some characteristics that cannot be violated. If we violate these characteristics, we don’t have a good case of the subjective-manipulative construction. Take the first example, We want you here tomorrow, and compare that with The BBC wants the audience happy. In this construction, what we use is a secondary predication. If you look at the word happy, the adjective, it is in a predicative position, not in an attributive position. The audience is going to be happy, but we don’t say *The BBC wants the happy audience. That would not work. The BBC wants the audience happy, which means that the BBC wants the audience to be happy. But the idea of presenting happy and audience together, so near to each other, is an iconic formulation of the notion. So, when we say The BBC wants the audience to be happy, there is more distance between happy and audience than when we say The BBC wants the audience happy, which means that the audience is actually going to be happy. My focus of attention is on the audience being happy, on the happiness of the audience. So, there is a greater degree of prominence in the connection between the audience and happiness when I use the secondary predication audience happy than when I simply say the audience to be happy, [[which]] separates the two concepts. This is a very simple case of iconicity in language, which is a motivating factor of how we sometimes express ourselves. In the other sentence, We want you here tomorrow, you and here, and you and tomorrow morning are connected in much the same way. Iconically, they’re very close. And here and tomorrow, even though they are not adjectives like happy,

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somehow play a very close syntactic and semantic role to the one played by happy: We want you here, I want you happy, I want you to be happy. So, look at this example: I want you happy. The second one. So, in I want you here, here is not, strictly speaking, a secondary predication of you, but it brings the location parameter so close to you that you is locationally connected in an intrinsic way with here after we produce the example of the manipulative construction. Do these constructions work in Chinese?: I want you here tomorrow. Do you say that in this very same way? You use a marker? Okay, you have to be explicit through a marking mechanism. In English they use—simply—secondary predications or they use syntactic mechanisms that are close to secondary predications—when we have caused motion—rather than simply a predicative use of the adjectival predication. Well, [[Gonzálvez]] observed that when we have a construction like this, the first participant, which is going to be the syntactic subject, has to be prototypically human. Or if it is not human, it has to be metonymically interpreted as human. In the case of We want you here, we is human. In the case of The BBC wants the audience happy, the BBC is not human by itself. But of course, this is a metonymy. It is not the BBC, but people that work for the BBC that want the audience to be happy. So, either metonymically or not, the first participant needs to be prototypically human. He also observed something about the secondary predication. He said that the predicative complement of the object must be characterizing, not identifying. So, we can say I want you happy meaning ‘I want you to be happy’. But we can’t say *I want you Marilyn Monroe. We could say I want you to be Marilyn Monroe. That would be metaphorical—to play the role of Marilyn Monroe. But we can’t say *I want you Marilyn Monroe in the sense of you’re going to have the identity of Marilyn Monroe. That’s impossible. A third feature is that the state, the situation, or event denoted by the predicative complement must be sensitive to either direct or indirect manipulation by the speaker. If there is no possibility of [[…]] bringing in the idea of manipulation, then we can’t use the construction. I want you out of my house is possible because you, the addressee, can actually do this action. But what about I want you tall? What can I do to be taller? I want you old. Well, I get old without willing, but I do not control that. So, if it is beyond the control of the object of the verb, then the construction will not be valid. And finally, the fourth feature is that the verbal predicate needs to combine these two notions. Please, keep them in mind. We are going to refer to them again: ‘desire’ and ‘compulsion’. So, yes, this construction combines these two ideas. This is constructional meaning: ‘desire’ and ‘compulsion’, with different degrees of prominence. Sometimes we may be focusing our attention more on desire, sometimes more

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Conceptual (im-)compatibility: ‘require’ • In its central sense ‘require’ involves obligaWon imposed by someone in authority and it is compaWble with the subjecWve-manipulaWve construcWon to the extent that the text or the context provides for a desire component. • I require you here tomorrow. • I require him dead. • We require them back. • However: • *We require you happy [we can’t compel someone to be happy] • #The law requires you out of the country [it is be^er to say “The law requires you to go out of the country”, since ‘require’ lacks an explicit desire component and there is no well-defined context that will introduce this ingredient] figure 8

on compulsion. That has to be implicit or explicit. It doesn’t really matter. Think about it: I need you here. I want you here, but not *I demand you here, because ‘demand’ is pure compulsion, which has no desire component. So, this will tell us which verbs can go into the construction and which verbs can’t go into the construction. And then require would be possible: I require you here, but only to the extent that we can add the desire component involving a degree of subjectivity. In fact, because of this combination between desire and compulsion, the label subjective-manipulative becomes an adequate label: subjective construction because of the desire component, [[and]] manipulative construction because of the compulsion component. Well, let’s look at conceptual compatibility and conceptual incompatibility, and we will refer to the word require, because we have to play with, we have to toy with the meaning of require. If we go to the central sense of require, require involves obligation imposed by someone that has authority, and it is compatible with the subjective-manipulative construction only to the extent that the text or the context provides for the desire component. So, intrinsically, require has a compulsion element. It doesn’t have the desire element, but if it can be derived from the text or the context and added to it, well, then require can be used. This is a very interesting thing. It means that it is not only verbal meaning, but what we can add from a pragmatic perspective to verbal meaning that will license a verb into the subjective-manipulative construction. This is not simply a matter of “we have constructions that override lexical meaning”; no, not at all. We have lexical meaning, and maybe we have

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Conceptual compatibility through lexical meaning extension: the case of ‘want’ • The predicate ‘want’ is canonically used to express a desire that something will be the case (I want John to marry Mary). • In order to be used in the subjective-manipulative construction, ‘want’ needs re-construal. This takes place through metonymy whereby a desire for X can stand for a compelling instruction for someone to cause X to happen. This is possible since one way to achieve a desire is to compel others to make it happen. This requires a position of authority. • Metonymy thus acts as a licensing factor that allows ‘want’ to be fully compatible with the subjective-manipulative construction.

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to work on lexical meaning a little bit, make it more flexible, if we are allowed to by contextual and textual factors. A very important point. We can say I require you here tomorrow, I require him dead, and We require them back, because it is clear that the speaker wants the hearer to be here tomorrow or the speaker wants somebody to be dead, or the speaker really wants someone to be back and will require them back. But look at these examples. This one is odd or impossible. This one is impossible: *We require you happy. We can’t compel someone to be happy. So, here there is a problem with the compulsion element. In *The law requires you out of the country, this sentence is usually evaluated as odd, not impossible, but it’s odd and infelicitous. Why? It is better to say something like The law requires you to go out of the country. So, out of the country can’t play this simulation of [[taking]] the secondary predicate role. Require lacks an explicit desire component. There is no welldefined context that will introduce this ingredient. So, because we lack the desire component—this is simply neutral about the law—it is difficult to work it out. So, this is a constructional requirement. The construction tells us that we need the desire component and this time it is impossible to derive it from the context. It is possible to do it in the case of I require you here, I require him dead, and We require them back. It is impossible to do it with *We require you happy because of the nature of the lack of control over happiness. And in the case of *The law requires you out of the country, it is not possible, because the desire component, unless we have a very clearly defined context, cannot be brought in easily.

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lecture 5 Re-construal through high-level metaphor and metonymy • Metaphor allows us to re-construe the meaning of predicates and predications: You are killing me! (‘I find what you say/do overwhelming’). • Metonymy: You = ‘what you say/do’ (PEOPLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS). • Metaphor: ‘killing’ maps onto ‘causing a great impact’. • Metaphor and metonymy can also work on the event-structure characterization of verbal predicates. They can then be referred to as high-level metaphor and metonymy. • High-level metaphor and metonymy, unlike the case of “want” in the subjectivemanipulative construction, do not extend the meaning of a verbal predicate. They reconstrue the predicate in such a way that it meets the event-structure requirements of an argument-structure construction thus becoming potentially ascribable to the latter. • High-level metaphor: Peter laughed Mary out of the room: Laugh denotes a goaloriented activity having psychological impact that is treated as a physical action causing motion (i.e. having physical impact). • High-level metonymy: Somehow, the vase broke: this construction draws our attention to the change of state resulting from an action, which stands for the action itself.

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What about the verb want? Here we need to make use of lexical meaning extension. Again, we’re going to see that there would be lexical-constructional incompatibility, but there is a way out if we can extend the meaning of the verbal predicate, so that the verbal predicate will match constructional requirements. So, take this verb, the predicate want. It is canonically used to express a desire that something will be the case; for example, I want John to marry Mary (‘I really desire that they will be married’). To use it in the subjective-manipulative construction, we need to re-construe the verb want, and this takes place through metonymy. Look at this metonymy: the desire for X to happen—this is deontic modality, by the way—can stand for a compelling instruction for someone to cause X to happen. Think of real-life scenarios, when you’re eager for something to happen, and in your eagerness, you may be forcing someone to do something that you actually desire. So, this is the idea. We have a scenario in our minds that licenses this metonymic extension. It is experience, everyday experience, allowing us to perform the metonymic operation. And this metonymic operation is going to allow us to use the verb want in this construction, because we bring in the element of authority. So, unlike the other verb, the verb require, the focus of attention of the verb want is on the desire rather than the compulsion. But we can add the compulsion element through metonymy because that is licensed by our daily experience with wanting as desire and the compulsion that is brought in when we activate the right scenario. So, metonymy becomes the licensing factor that allows want to be compatible with the construction and we can integrate this verb into the construction. And now we can say I want you here.

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Well, you know what metaphor or metonymy is. Sometimes we have to use metaphor and metonymy in a different way. These are examples of how metaphor and metonymy work. I will skip that. But one thing that is interesting for you to remember from my previous talks in this forum is that metaphor and metonymy can work on the event-structure characterization of verbal predicates. Metaphor and metonymy do not simply work at the low-level like hand for worker. They all also work at a higher level, with the event structure of the predicate. High-level metaphor and metonymy, unlike the case of want in the subjective-manipulative construction, do not extend the meaning of a verbal predicate. They re-construe the predicate in such a way that it meets the event-structure requirements of the argument-structure construction, thus making [[its]] argument-structure [[characterization]] potentially ascribable to the construction. So, the idea is that we have the verbal predicate that has an event-structure configuration and we work on the event-structure configuration to make it compatible with the one that the construction requires. Take Peter laughed Mary out of the room, which is an example that we’ve already discussed, and think about it. The verb laugh denotes a goal-oriented activity that has psychological impact. And we can treat psychological impact as if it were [[the result of]] physical action causing motion, that is, physical impact. I laugh people out of places or I can laugh them out of places because that has impact on them. It is not physical, but it is possible to see, metaphorically, psychological impact in terms of physical impact, and that licenses the use of laugh in this construction. Take high-level metonymy now. When you say The vase broke; somehow the vase broke, which means I don’t know what happened, of course, I understand that there is an agent of the action, but I can’t identify the agent; so, “it broke”. And this construction draws our attention to the change of state resulting from the action that stands for the action itself. We have a high-level metonymy. Because we have a high-level metonymy, it is possible to use the verb break in this inchoative form. So, we can re-construe the event structure of predicates through high-level metaphor and high-level metonymy. And now let’s see how this works. This is a diagram of laughing people out of places. I have termed this metaphor A GOAL-ORIENTED ACTIVITY—you saw the previous label in another talk—(AN EXPERIENTIAL ACTION) IS AN EFFECTIAL ACTION. The true idea is here: that if you have a target, the target functions as the object of an effectual action: you have correspondences from the effector to the actor, the effectee to the goal or experiencer, effecting to acting; the instrument and manner are conflated in our minds and they are the manner of performing the activity; and the purpose is the purpose.

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High-level metaphor SOURCE TARGET Effector = actor Effectee = goal/experiencer Effecting = acting Instrument/manner = manner (conflated) Purpose = purpose A GOAL-ORIENTED ACTIVITY (AN EXPERIENTIAL ACTION) IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION

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Lexical template external to the construction: laugh-at' (x, y)

Abstract semantic representation of the Caused Motion construction: [Lexical template] CAUSE [BECOME *NOT be-LOC' (y,z)] Constructionally coerced modification of the lexical template laugh’ (x, y)

Unification of the modified template with the construction: [laugh’ (x, y)] CAUSE [BECOME NOT beLOC (y,z)] Fully specified semantic representation: [laugh’ (Peter, Mary]) CAUSE [BECOME NOT be-LOC (Mary, room)] Simplified representation of Peter laughed Mary out of the room

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This other diagram tries to spell out the integration process in different stages. Now, this may not be psychologically valid. There is no claim about its psychological plausibility. We have so many shortcut mechanisms in our minds that probably this is not psychologically plausible or psychologically real, but it is analytically real. And let’s address it in a couple of minutes. Take the verb laugh in the sentence John laughed Peter out of the room. “Laugh at” has two arguments x and y. That is incorporated into the caused-motion

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High-level metaphor licensing lexical integration into the caused-motion construction • All target-oriented activity predicates are allowed to take part in the caused-motion construction since the target can be seen as the object of actual physical impact and change. • Some uses denote real motion, while others are a matter of figurative motion denoting a change of state: (a) Finally, I felt like I was being listened into existence. (b) She winked her away through Picadilly. (c) He waved me into the kitchen. (d) I felt dead, but she loved me back into life. (e) The teacher stared me into the classroom. (f) She smiled me out of my past memories.

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construction, [[which]] has this abstract characterization with a causal element and a ‘become’ element: X CAUSES Y TO BECOME Z, if you remember. This is a more technical description. Then the lexical item laugh has to be constructionally coerced. It still has two arguments, x and y, like here, x and y, but the at element is lost. You don’t say *John laughed at Peter out of the room. You say John laughed Peter out of the room, because you have transitivized the verb. And once you have performed this coercion of the lexical predicate, you unify the lexical structure and the constructional structure. And you obtain something like this. Laugh has two arguments, x and y, and causes someone, y, to become z, that is, to ‘become not here’. To go out of the room is to ‘become not in the room’ in this representation. And, finally, you obtain the full lexical representation, when you insert the arguments Peter and Mary, or Peter and John, whoever: Peter laughed Mary out of the room. Peter, by laughing, Peter laughed and caused Mary to become not in the room. That’s the final meaning representation. So, this is a stepwise description. It is analytical of how lexical and constructional meaning combine at different stages. What about the licensing of lexical integration into constructions through high-level metaphor? Like the example of laughing people out of places, we have others if you want to look at them: I felt like I was being listened into existence, where there may not be motion, real motion. You’re “listened into existence”, but you use into, which usually indicates motion because of the cooperation of the metaphor A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION. I felt like I was listened into existence means that I felt like I existed. So, you change your personal state from feeling bad to feeling good.

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High-level metaphor blocking lexical-construc>onal integra>on • It is not possible to make use of the instrumental role in the metaphor since experiential actions, unlike effectual actions, do not have such an element: (a) *They laughed him out of the room with laughter (but cf. with a hearty guffaw, which specifies manner). (b) *John laughed him out of the room with his mouth and lips. • The metaphor also rules out expressions with activity predicates without an object (e.g. ‘shiver’) or whose object is not a target-oriented one experiencer (‘dress’): (c) *Sharon shivered me into the room. (d) *My mother dressed me into the room. figure 14

She winked her away through Picadilly. By winking, she caused her to go away through Picadilly. [[This is]] caused motion, but there is no physical impact. So, the metaphor would be PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT IS PHYSICAL IMPACT, very much like with the use of the verb laugh. She laughed her way through Picadilly would also be possible. The same pattern, the same sentence; only change the verb. He waved me into the kitchen. Here there is motion also, physical motion, but it is self-instigated as in the other examples: by waving at me, he caused me to get into the kitchen. I felt dead, but she loved me back into life. We had a similar example yesterday. I felt dead but she loved me back into life. This is a change of state, so this is a figurative use of the motion element of the construction. The teacher stared me into the classroom. This is literal motion. I went into the classroom when the teacher stared at me, but this is PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT IS PHYSICAL IMPACT. And finally, She smiled me out of my past memories. This is not physical motion. But I was “immersed” in my memories, and by smiling, she caused me to “leave” my memories. So, I went out of my past memories in the same way as I can get out of a container. For those of you who are working with the idea of containers, this is a very good example, right? But it is not a physical container. It is a figurative one. Can high-level metaphor block lexical-constructional integration? In the previous examples, we had licensing of the verbal predicate into the caused

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High-level metaphors licensing lexical-constructional integration • A communication verb with the caused-motion construction (involving a change of event-structure type in the verb): He talked/tricked/blackmailed them into buying the product (A COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITY IS AN EFFECTUAL ACTION). • Zero derivation nominalization: How was your run this morning?; It has had a big impact; That’s really a smart buy (EVENTS ARE OBJECTS). • Conversion of a verb into an idiomatic phrase: They gave the thug a big beating (cf. give a kick/punch/slap) (ACTIONS ARE TRANSFERS). • Use of the object construction to express states: She has a lot of fear/pain/anger, etc. (STATES ARE POSSESSIONS) figure 15

motion construction either for physical motion or for figurative motion, which is, in fact, a change of state. But here we’re going to have a couple of examples, a few examples of cases in which the metaphor will tell you: no, you can’t do that. The sentence They laughed him out of the room would be possible. But if you want to say *They laughed him out of the room with laughter, that is impossible. Isn’t that interesting? However, compare this. You can say: They laughed him out of the room with a hearty guffaw, which specifies manner. So, if you specify manner, it’s okay, but if you specify the instrument of the action, it is not okay. Can we go back to this diagram? You will see that we have the ‘manner’ component in the target. And if we can have manner in the source, that will be fine. But if we can’t have manner, we have the instrument, that will not work. The metaphor is telling you that it is impossible to add this element of with laughter in a sentence like They laughed him out of the room. Or take the second example, *John laughed him out of the room with his mouth and lips. It’s also impossible because we can’t have that instrumental role at work in the mapping; only manner, but no instrument. And the metaphor also rules out expressions with activity predicates that have no object or whose subject is not a target-oriented experiencer. Take the case of *Sharon shivered me into the room. There is no object. And *My mother dressed me into the room. There is no target-oriented experiencer in the case of dress. The metaphor tells us not only what we can do, but also what we can’t do. And the second idea is revealed by the impossibility of these sentences.

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Another example that I would like to draw your attention to is this one. You will see that there are quite a few verbs here. He talked/he tricked/he blackmailed them into buying the products. I think that what these verbs have in common is that there is some form of communication. It is very clear in talk. It is implicit in the case of trick, but you trick someone by talking to him or her. And the same with blackmail, you have to talk to people to blackmail them. You have to communicate your intentions to them. So, in the target, what we have is a communicative activity of some kind. And we see the communicative activity as an action that has physical impact, an effectual action. He talked them into buying suggests physical motion, but this is a figurative use. There is no physical motion, there’s simply a persuasion process: “I will buy the product”. There is a change of state. Again, we have the same metaphor that is pervasive in these examples that involve changes of state. So, a high-level metaphor here, this one, licenses the integration of these verbs, talk/trick/blackmail, into the figurative use of the caused motion construction. What about zero derivation nominalization? This is the situation of the EVENTS ARE OBJECTS metaphor. Why can we say in English How was your run this morning? Focus on run. Or It has had a big impact. Well, That’s really a small but smart buy. Can impact be big? Physically big? No. Can a buy be smart? No. People are smart, not the buy. What about the run? These nominalizations derive from the verb. We can treat events as if they were objects, and that allows us to accommodate run, impact, and buy into the construction. We can have, also, the conversion of the verb into an idiomatic phrase, another phenomenon licensed by high-level metaphor. This is the case of ACTIONS ARE TRANSFERS. We saw an example of that with He gave John a cake or something like that. These are similar. They gave the thug—the thug is a bad person—a big beating. Compare with give a kick, give a punch, give a slap: we can see an action as if it were a transfer of possession. You give someone a kick. Of course, the person will not have to kick but he will have the effects of the kick. Remember that we postulate the existence of a cause-effect metonymy from the kick to the effects of the kick. And another one. You can use the object construction to express the states: She has a lot of fear; She has a lot of pain; She has a lot of anger, and other emotional states. This is the metaphor STATES ARE POSSESSIONS. So, high-level metaphor is really useful to re-construe predicates, allowing us to incorporate those predicates into different types of construction. Here we have different types of construction, and different types of manipulation of the verbal predicates.

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Metaphoric Amalgams as External Constraints on Lexical-Constructional Integration1

We go back to metaphorical amalgams. These are the same slides that I said you would have, for you to have an integrated picture of the whole process. We talked about these examples yesterday when we dealt with conceptual complexity. But here we will realize that it would be impossible to use the verb beat in the sentence He beat me into silence, unless we have the combination of A CHANGE OF STATE IS A CHANGE OF LOCATION with AN EFFECTUAL ACTION IS CAUSED MOTION. Unless we have that amalgam, it would be impossible to use the verb beat with this construction. And, of course, this is a figurative use—like the other examples that we have examined—of the caused motion construction. You are not pushing anyone anywhere when you “beat them into silence”. It is simply a change of the state, which is seen as a caused change of location. The famous double-source metaphorical amalgam, where you have, in the target domain, a person that acquires a new property, in this case ‘silence’, for the example He beat silence into me. Remember? We see silence as an object that moves into my sphere of control. [[…]]. In the target, we have the effector, effecting, the effectee, the new property, the resultant state, and the manner of

SOURCE (CAUSED MOTION) TARGET (EFFECTUAL ACTION) Causer of motion Effector Object of motion Effectee Source (change of location) Target (change of state) Source of motion Initial state Destination of motion Resultant state Single-source high-level metaphorical amalgam in He beat me into silence ! figure 16 1  Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014.

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Source (change of location) Target (change of state) Source of motion Initial state Destination of motion Resultant state Single-source high-level metaphorical amalgam in He beat me into silence lecture 5

Source  (caused motion) Causer of motion Causing motion

 Source Target (possession) Effector (‘he’) Effecting (‘caused to acquire’) Destination of motion Effectee (‘me’) New possessor of an object Object of caused-motion New property (moving object) (‘silence’) Resultant state Gaining possession of an (‘acquiring the new object property of silence’) Manner of causing Manner of effecting motion (‘beating’) Double-source high-level metaphorical complex in He beat silence into me

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effecting. And the crucial correspondence is this one: the destination of motion maps onto the effectee, and the effectee is also the new possessor of an object. So, we have this central mapping that is absolutely crucial to understand the meaning of the sentence and also to license the use of the verb beat with this figurative use of the caused-motion construction. Unless we have this mapping, it would be impossible to introduce this verb here. So, this is again a licensing of the verbal predicate into the construction. Without the amalgam, the licensing would be impossible, and the constructional ascription would be avoided. It would be discarded. 2

High-Level Metonymies as External Constraints on Lexical-Constructional Integration2

With respect to metonymies, we also dealt with some of these. I will review them with you again. We can use a resultative predicate in an action slot? That should be incompatible, right? [[However, take this]] example: I want to know how to be rich. This doesn’t mean that I want to know [[about]] richness or the manner of being rich. What I want to know is “what to do” to become rich. So, we need to develop how to be rich metonymically into ‘what to do to become rich’, the manner of doing things for doing things: MANNER FOR ACTION. Without 2  Ruiz de Mendoza & Pérez 2001, Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014.

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• Use of a resultative predicate in an action slot: I want to know how to be rich (‘what to do to become rich’) • Intransitivization with object-to-subject promotion (inchoative construction): The door opened (PROCESS FOR ACTION) • Categorial conversion: hammer (n) > hammer (vb) (He hammered the nail into the wall) (INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION) • Subcategorial conversion: There is a lot of America in what she does (AN ENTITY FOR ONE OF ITS PROPERTIES); There were three Johns at the party (AN INDIVIDUAL ENTITY FOR A COLLECTION INCLUDING THAT ENTITY) • Enriched composition: She enjoyed/began the dance (AN OBJECT FOR AN ACTION IN WHICH THE OBJECT IS INVOLVED) • Parameterization: This week, he’ll do the carpet and I’ll do the dishes (GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC ) figure 18

the metonymy MANNER FOR ACTION, it would be impossible to use the resultative predicate, how to be rich, with a verb that will not have the possibility of combining—with a verbal structure that will have no possibility of combining—with any other thing than an action predicate: I want to know what to do, that’s what we say, but not *I want to know to become, which is a result; what to do to become, but not *I want to know to become. *I want to know to become is impossible; I want to know what to do to become is possible. But can we say I want to know how to be rich? Yes, it is possible because how to be rich stands metonymically for ‘what to do to become rich’. The door opened, a recurring example in these talks because it’s so useful. Someone opened the door, of course. It is PROCESS FOR ACTION. It is impossible to use this verb here with the door, which is the actual semantic object, but [[taking]] the syntactic role of subject, unless we re-construe the verb open in terms of the PROCESS FOR ACTION metonymy. Then, an example of categorial conversion, which is the use of hammer, which is an instrument, to perform the action of hammering in He hammered the nail into the wall. And that’s the metonymy INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION. Subcategorial conversion, which is this example: There is a lot of America in what she does, where an entity stands for one of its properties. There were three Johns at the party, where an individual entity, John, stands for a collection of entities like John: AN ENTITY FOR A COLLECTION THAT INCLUDES THAT ENTITY. The case of enriched composition, which is so problematic. Yes, it is not problematic from my point of view, if we think of it as a metonymy. You say

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She enjoyed the dance or She began the dance. And then formal linguists argue: “Well, this is not possible, so, we need to accommodate this into some special syntactic layer between semantics and syntax”. Things like that. Now, that is not necessary. If we understand that the dance can stand for the action of dancing, so ‘she enjoyed being involving in the dance’; or we had the example of She enjoyed the beer ‘she enjoyed drinking the beer’. We mean the action. The object stands for the action. And remember that when you say She enjoyed the beer, it could also mean something else; [[it]] could mean ‘canning the beer’, ‘selling the beer’, ‘distributing the beer’, depending on contextual variables. And finally, parameterization: do. It is very common to use this generic verb to make it stand for something more specific, when we are “lazy” about [[reproducing]] the exact lexical item. It is unnecessary. And probably it is cognitively economical to say He’ll do the carpet rather than He will clean the carpets. And so, We have our hair done, People have their hair done, which means that they have their hair trimmed, or cut, or washed, and so on. We parameterize in context the [[…]] meaning of these generic verbs. But we can use do. It is licensed here. It would be impossible to say do the carpet. There is an incompatibility unless we perform the metonymic operation. So, the GENERIC FOR SPECIFIC METONYMY licenses this use of the verb do. We move forward now to another phenomenon. This is about fictive motion and I want to pay homage to Professor Leonard Talmy. I think this is a very old and well-known notion in Cognitive Linguistics, or in Cognitive Semantics, and I think it is a truly amazing discovery. And I’m very thankful that he did The metonymic grounding of fictive motion • According to Talmy (2000), ficXve moXon is based on percepXon: we say that a road “runs” because we scan space with our eyes longitudinally as we see a road: a. Where does this road go? [the road is a path] b. The fence runs along the coastline [our minds interpret the space along the fence in terms of a path] c. The gate leads into the inner court [we need to think of an imaginary pathway connecXng the outer and inner parts of a building through the gate] • The existence of an actual path, as in (a), is not necessary for ficXve moXon to be the case. • Richardson and Matlock (2007) have provided experimental evidence that ficXve moXon descripXons affect eye movements by evoking mental representaXons of moXon. Speakers are unaware that their ficXve-moXon descripXons do not express a literal fact.

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that. So, he wrote about that many, many years ago. But I borrow the examples from Talmy (2000), which is the compilation of a number of lectures and papers that he produced. So, well, Talmy separates fictive motion from metaphorical motion. IDEAS ARE OBJECTS is a case of metaphorical motion. If you grab an idea that is moving or you grab it, you catch the idea. The idea is a moving object. Treating the idea as a moving object is a case of metaphorical motion. Or ideas come into your head or go out of your head; that could be metaphorical motion. But we have something that scholars might mistakenly think is metaphorical, and it is actually not metaphorical at all, because there is another perceptual mechanism licensing the use. Take the examples of Where does this road go?, The fence runs along the coastline, The gate leads into the inner court. And think for a minute about them. Roads go nowhere, fences do not move, so they can’t run along the coastline, and gates do not lead anywhere. So why are we saying that the road moves, the fence moves, and the gate moves? Talmy argues, very reasonably, that this is a perceptual process. There is a perceptual phenomenon behind this. If you look at a fence and go from one end of the fence to the other end, you are moving your perceptual mechanisms. You are moving your eyes at the same time as you look at the fence. The same with a road. You see the road, and it gives you the false impression of motion, because you’re scanning space all along. And the same with the other examples. And sometimes there is not even a path, but the mind creates the path, which would be the case of the fence [[example]]. In the case of the fence, there is no path. In the case of the road, there is a path. In the case of The gate leads into the inner court, yes, there is a path, but the second example has no path. So, if the path does not exist, that’s not a big problem, because the mind will impose the path on the basis of the perceptual mechanism of scanning space. And there have been psychological experiments on this. For example, Richardson and Matlock have given evidence that fictive motion descriptions affect eye movements by evoking mental representation of motion. So, when you are thinking fictively, your eyes move in a different way. And, of course, speakers are not aware that they’re using fictive motion descriptions. They think this is literal. When you say something like Where does the road go? Where does it take me? Where does it lead? you think you are being descriptively accurate. Of course, you’re not metaphorical, but you do not realize that this is not descriptive in a literal sense of the notion of descriptive. You’re being fictive. I wouldn’t like to say figuratively, because it would not be true. It is not figurative, because the brain does believe that something—that motion—is happening. But a couple of observations might make a connection between fictive motion and metonymy.

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• For fictive motion the linguistic expression needs to supply sufficient descriptive elements for a scenario to be mentally built such that all its elements (whether explicit or not) are conceptually compatible with a mental simulation of motion along a path: • Where does this road go? => ‘If I were to travel along this road all the way to the end of it, what would be the destination?’ • The fence runs along the coastline = > ‘There is a fence parallel to all (or an observable portion) of the coastline’. • The gate leads into the inner court => ‘By walking across the gate (from the outer court along an imaginary path), one comes to the inner court’ • These examples are metonymic exploitations of an image-schematic complex consisting of objects in motion from a source to a destination along a path. • Fictive motion licenses constructional coercion over nominal expressions rather than verbal predicates: a nominal expression designating a non-dynamic entity is built into a motion predication requiring a moving first participant.

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For fictive motion, the linguistic expression needs to supply sufficient descriptive elements for a scenario to be mentally built such that all its elements, whether it’s written or not, are conceptually compatible with a mental simulation of motion along a path. So, the idea is that the brain is doing all of this in the same way with correlations of experiences. The brain believes that ‘more is up’, for example. In the same way, the brain believes that there is motion, and it makes a simulation of motion. And what the linguistic expression does is provide you with a point of access to that mental simulation. In a sense, in its essence, these linguistic expressions are metonymic points of access to the whole mental simulation that allows you to work out the meaning of fictive motion expressions. I have spelled out the mental simulation in the form of paraphrases for each of the previous examples. Where does this road go? could be paraphrased trying to capture the mental simulation as: ‘If I were to travel along this road all the way to the end of it, what would be the destination?’ Or you think of yourself, or any object in motion, any traveling entity. If you were to travel along the road all the way to its end, what would be the destination? And that would capture to some extent the meaning that is derived from Where does this road go? With The fence runs along the coastline, we would have a description like ‘there is a fence that is parallel to all, or an observable portion of the coastline’; for The gate leads into the inner court, ‘by walking across the gate from the outer court along an imaginary path, one finally ends up in the inner court’. These examples are metonymic exploitations of an image-schematic complex that we discussed yesterday. I need a combination of motion and path. It consists

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The metaphoric or metonymic grounding of image-schema transformations • Image-schema transformations (Lakoff 1987) involve changing the way in which we envisage a topological construct. Either metaphor or metonymy (both grounded in perception) may be involved: • Multiplex to mass: Imagine several objects and then move away from them in your mind until they look like a single homogenous mass; e.g. Fans poured through the gate ‘Fans made their way through the gate as if they were a substance’: A COLLECTION IS A MASS • Path-focus to end-point focus: Imagine the path of a moving object and then focus on the point where it will come to rest; e.g. She lives over the bridge ‘She lives at the end of the path that one can trace by walking over the bridge’: END OF PATH FOR MOTION ALONG THE PATH (cf. Peña & Ruiz de Mendoza 2009). • Metonymy-based image-schema transformations license (argument-structure) constructional coercion over verbal predicates: e.g. live is used with a motion construction. Metaphor-based image-schema transformations are a lexical phenomenon.

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of motion from a source to a destination along the path. That’s the imageschematic complex. And you may have already realized that fictive motion does not work on the verb. It works on one of the participant entities, expressed by a noun. So fictive motion licenses constructional coercion over nominal expressions, not on verbal predicates. You have a nominal expression that designates a nondynamic entity, and the non-dynamic entity is built into a motion predication. It should be a dynamic entity. So when you say Where does this road go?, this road is non-dynamic, but you take it as dynamic just because you have the fictive motion process at work, licensing the use of the nominal predicate in that way with a verb of motion like go. This is a very interesting phenomenon. There is a metonymic licensing of the phenomenon at two levels: one level is the metonymic exploitation of an image-schematic complex, and the other one is the licensing of the use of the non-dynamic nominal with a verb that is dynamic, that involves motion. And another phenomenon that I would like to talk about is image-schema transformations. This, I think, has been neglected in Cognitive Linguistics. It’s an amazing proposal made by Johnson and by Lakoff. That’s about the same time; they were working together a lot. So, you find this idea in Johnson’s book in 1987 and in Lakoff’s 1987 book and I want to go back to this idea. You may not know what an image-schema transformation is. I will explain [it] in a minute. A transformation of this kind involves changing the way in which we see, in which we envisage, a topological construct. that is to say, an image-schematic configuration. We can see the image-schematic configuration from different

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perspectives, and metaphor and metonymy may be involved. I will give you a couple of examples. There are many more given by Lakoff, but one of them, I think, is connected to a metaphor and the other one to metonymy. So, Lakoff’s example talks about the multiplex to mass transformation. And how can we describe this transformation? Lakoff points out that we can imagine several objects and then move away from them in our minds until they look like a mass, a homogeneous mass. For example, in the sentence Fans poured through the gate, what we mean is that the fans made their way through the gates as if they were a substance. So, you have a gate and the fans are moving and get through the gate. But from a distance, we see the fans as a mass. This involves the re-conceptualization of the collection of individual entities, which is the multiplex image schema. That is converted into the mass image schema that is associated with liquids, for example, with substances in general. So, the metaphor would be A COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUAL ENTITIES IS A MASS. Another transformation is the ‘path-focus to end-point focus’. Take the example She lives over the bridge, and you will see it clearly. Why can we use the verb live, which is stative, with the preposition over that suggests motion in this way? Interesting, right? We go from one end to another, but we have to go up and down, forming a curve, right? But this is a motion thing. And this is not a motion predicate. So why is it possible to say She lives over the bridge? Lakoff says that we can imagine the path of a moving object, and then focus on the endpoint of motion. And that’s all. So, the transformation would be from focusing on the path to focusing on the end of motion, instead of thinking of the path of motion, we look at the end. That’s all. And that allows us to say She lives over the bridge. But when I said allows us, what I meant is that it licenses the use of the predicate live with the construction with over, which requires motion, which means that the path-focus to end-point focus image-schema transformation is a licensing factor for the incorporation, the integration, of a verbal predicate that is stative into a construction, one of whose requirements, one of whose central requirements, is motion. So, this is a phenomenon of lexical-constructional integration with a licensing factor in very much the same way as others that we have examined before. We could paraphrase She lives over the bridge as ‘she lives at the end of the path that one can trace by walking over the bridge’. And this, from my point of view, would capture the essentials of She lives over the bridge. Now, can we deal with this metonymically? Yes, because here, the end of the path stands for motion along the path. We focus our attention on the end of the path, but, of course, we know that to reach the end of the path, motion along a path was needed. So, the end of the path, the result of motion, stands for all the motion

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process: the end of the path for motion along the path. In other words, we can have metonymy-based image-schema transformations licensing constructional coercion over verbal predicates. That’s the case of live. Or we can have metaphor-based image-schema transformations licensing, also, the integration of predicates into constructions: the use of fans as fans could pour like a liquid. 3

High-Level Metonymic Chains and Lexical-Constructional Integration3

These two are coercion phenomena, but there is a licensing factor, something that motivates, something that allows us to do that. We saw this example yesterday: head > leader > action of leading. So, I will skip that. I just wanted you to be aware that we have these two types of metonymic chain. In one of them, we have double domain expansion. In the other one, too much lip, we have expansion and reduction. And to end, have a look at the evaluative middle construction. We have metonymic chains at work in the evaluative middle construction. This is a type of middle construction where what we have is an evaluative element after the verbal predicate: This bread cuts easily. You cannot say *This bread cuts, right?, with the meaning of ‘it is easy to cut this bread’. When we are evaluating the process of cutting, It is easy to cut the bread, we can use the paraphrase with Double domain expansion

action of leading

leader/agent head

Head > leader: He is the real head of the committee Head > leader > leading: He heads the committee

figure 22 3  Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014; Ruiz de Mendoza 2014.

!

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ACE FOR INSTITUTION FOR PEOPLE HEAD FOR LEADER FOR ACTION OF LEADING ELATED TO THE INSTITUTION) Domain expansion and reduction in lexical metonymy:

He has too much lip

UTHOR FOR EDIUM/FORMAT

WORK

FOR INSTRUMENT FOR ACTION FOR ABILITY (TO PERFORM THE ACTION)

figure 23 D) High-level metonymic chains Domain expansion + domain reduction:

Evalua5ve middle construc5on

(Assessed) process > action > result This bread cuts easily (cf. *This bread cuts) [It is easy to cut this bread] 1) (Assessed) process > action > result This new machine sews nicely (cf. *This new machine sews) [It is nice to sew with this newbread machine] This cuts easily (cf. *This bread cuts) [It is easy to cut this bread]

This >new machine Process > action (assessed) resultsews nicely (cf. *This new machine sews) [It is nice to The bread cut well (cf. *The bread machine] cut) [*It was well to cut the bread] sew with this new This soap powder washes whiter (cf. *This soap powder washes) [*It is white to wash with this soap] 2) Process > action > (assessed) result The bread cut well (cf. *The bread cut) [*It was well to cut the bread] 11 This soap powder washes whiter (cf. *This soap powder washes) [*It is white to wash with this soap]

figure 24

the construction it is and the adjective. But, well, we have the same with This new machine sews nicely. We have, again, an evaluative element here: nicely. We can’t say *This new machine sews. And we can paraphrase this as ‘it is nice to sew with this new machine’. I postulate the metonymy: ASSESSED PROCESS (OR EVALUATED PROCESS) stands FOR THE ACTION that stands FOR THE RESULT. Now go to the second set of examples: PROCESS FOR ACTION FOR (ASSESSED) RESULT. The evaluative element here is not going to be the

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process. It is going to be the result, and this is evidenced by the impossibility of using the same type of paraphrase that we had before. You can say The bread cut well. You can’t say *The bread cut. So, the evaluative element is necessary, but the scope of the evaluative element is different. It is not the process as before. It is the result of the action. And that’s why you can’t say *It was well to cut the bread. In the same way with This soap powder washes whiter, which is an instrument-subject construction, and it is also evaluative middle: whiter is the evaluative element—whiter than other washing powders or soap powders. You can’t say *This soap powder washes, which means that the evaluative element is necessary and you can’t paraphrase this as *It is white to wash with this soap. So, we have apparently similar structures, but we have a different conceptual characterization behind these formal structures. In one case, what we have is a metonymy that will focus attention on and evaluate the process. I mean, in the second case, what we have is a double metonymy again, almost of the same kind, but the evaluative element is the result and it is focused on as the result element of the construction. You have a diagram here. This one would correspond to the example with easily: It is easy to do something. And this one would correspond to the one where the it is paraphrase is impossible, because the focus is on the result, not on the process. By way of conclusion, meaning construction is based on cognitive modeling. I think I have already brought in enough examples of this phenomenon. We have to examine language in actual use, and that provides a reasonable input to distinguishing among the various types of cognitive models. We need

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Conclusions • Meaning construction is based on cognitive modeling, i.e. on the activity of cognitive operations on conceptual structures of different kinds. • An examination of language in actual use provides a reasonable input to distinguishing among the various cognitive model types. • An account of cognitive model types is in turn essential to determine and define the various descriptive levels of a meaning construction account. • Lexical-constructional integration is a constrained phenomenon regulated by two kinds of process: (i) conceptual compatibility (which may affect either the event-structure or the semantic module); (ii) sensitivity to re-construal (e.g. through high-level metaphor or metonymy), which can integrate into one single explanatory paradigm apparently disparate phenomena. • Re-construal may involve complex cognitive operations, such as metaphoric amalgams or metonymic chains.

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an account of the types of cognitive models that underlie meaning construction, and that affects the way in which we integrate verbal items into constructions in two ways: through conceptual compatibility (internal constraints), and through re-construal (external constraints). And of course, re-construal may involve complex operations, like amalgams or metonymic chains. Thank you.

lecture 6

Implicational Constructions and Cognitive Modeling All right, so the topic for this session is going to be what I call implicational constructions. And I’m going to look at these constructions from the point of view of cognitive modeling, so you are all aware of the principles of cognitive modeling that we have been [[exploring]] during these sessions. You will be able to understand this talk much better. Just in case I have repeated two or three of the slides, so that you have the background for some of the explanations that I’m going to give. By way of introduction, this talk is going to be somewhere in the middle between pragmatics and cognition. In inferential pragmatics, they talk a lot about implicational meaning. In fact, the technical term is not implicational

Introduction • In inferential pragmatics, implicational meaning (or conversational implicature) has been associated with the application of communicative principles like Grice’s Cooperative Principle or Sperber and Wilson’s Principle of Relevance within Relevance Theory. • There is controversy surrounding the different accounts, but only Relevance Theory acknowledges explicitly the importance of incorporating world knowledge into inferential pragmatics. • However, in practice, inferential pragmatics has not given enough consideration to the principles that model knowledge organization. These principles are a matter of cognitive modeling. This is a term inspired in Lakoff’s (1987) account of Idealized Cognitive Models: frames, image schemas, metaphor, metonymy. • Following upon Lakoff’s original idea, Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera (2014) have developed a fully-fledged account of cognitive modeling. • This account determines the nature of the kind of cognitive operations and cognitive models involved in any meaning-making activity based on language. • It proves useful to understand the cognitive grounding of linguistic expressions noncompositionally conveying speaker’s emotional reactions.

figure 1

All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555767

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_007

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meaning or implicational structure. That is my own label. They talk about conversational implicature, and everyone in the audience is aware of Grice’s work and then post-Gricean work on implicature. Implicational meaning has been associated with the application of communicative principles: the famous Cooperative Principle postulated by Grice in the 1970s, and then developments. I would like to highlight the Principle of Relevance proposed by Sperber and Wilson within Relevance Theory. Although it is clear to everyone that we have implicated meaning that is derived on the basis of some kind of reasoning process from what people say in connection with previous sets of assumptions or the context giving rise to implicature, right?, although we are all aware of that, what we do not agree upon is on what pragmatic tasks and mental mechanisms underlie the production of implicature. There is controversy surrounding the different accounts of implicature, and only one theory that I’m aware of, which is Relevance Theory, and that’s why I bring it here, acknowledges explicitly the importance of incorporating world knowledge into inferential pragmatics. The rest of the theories seem to take world knowledge for granted, and Relevance Theory, at least, tries to formulate what types of world knowledge are relevant or important for the production of implicated meaning. In practice, however, from my point of view, as a cognitive linguist, what they offer in terms of cognitive modeling or a theory of knowledge is very, very small. And for some unknown reason, they are reluctant to develop their theories along the path of a more cognitively-oriented approach. I suppose that they feel so enthusiastic about their discoveries within inferential pragmatics that they want to be pragmatists all the way along without touching other fields. But that is simply a personal assumption. The notion of “cognitive modeling”—we have already explained in previous talks—is a term inspired by Lakoff’s account of Idealized Cognitive Models, [[which include]] his explanations on frames, image schemas, metaphor, [[and]] metonymy. You can add the developments by other authors including myself. So, I will here follow up on the principles that I set out in the first talk. Most of them you will find in the book published in 2014 by myself and Galera called Cognitive Modeling: A Linguistic Perspective, and you have there a fully-fledged account of cognitive modeling. Remember that cognitive modeling is based on the activity of cognitive operations (cognitive processes of different kinds, sometimes in combination) on cognitive models, [[which]] sometimes are combined too. I will try to make it evident to you that this approach is useful to understand the cognitive grounding of linguistic expressions non-compositionally conveying speakers’ emotional reactions. And that

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Cognitive models: basic typological parameters • There are three basic typological parameters: 1. Level of genericity (primary/low/high level): it allows us to distinguish perceptually accessible objects, situations, and events (whether arising from sensorimotor experience or not) from more abstract characterizations. This parameter is useful to understand the impact of metaphor and metonymy on grammar. 2. Situationality (situational/non-situational): it allows us to differentiate objects and events from situations. In the latter, there is intentional interaction. 3. Scalarity (scalar/non-scalar): it allows us to determine which the extent to which an object is ascribed an attribute (useful to account for hyperbolic meaning). 1. Only parameters 1 and 2 are of relevance for implicational meaning.

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will be the topic today. The last paragraph here—linguistic expressions that non-compositionally convey a speaker’s emotional reactions—that’s the central issue. What do I mean by that? You will see that in a minute. First, a very quick review of some of the insights that I laid out before you the first day on the classification of cognitive models. Remember that I gave you a whole table with a lot of detail. Here you will not get the same degree of detail. I will discuss simply the parameters. One of the parameters to classify cognitive models is their level of genericity: whether the cognitive model arises directly from experience (for example image schematic thinking); that would be a primary cognitive model. But we can also have low and high-level of characterization, and remember that there are degrees, that these categories are not to be understood as having very clear-cut boundaries. And the level of genericity allows us to distinguish perceptually accessible objects, situations, and events, whether arising from sensorimotor experience or not, from more abstract characterizations. We have made a lot of emphasis on that as we discussed high-level metaphor, high-level metonymy, and their chains and amalgams. This genericity parameter is going to be useful to understand the impact of metaphor and metonymy on grammar. Then, we have another parameter, the second one, which is the situational or non-situational status of the cognitive model. And to some extent this is slippery ground because it’s difficult sometimes to say: “Well, what is situational? what is non-situational?” Again, I take it for granted that this is all a matter of degree. There are degrees of situationality. But if we want to find a clear contrast between what is situational and what is not, we can differentiate

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Cognitive model types and meaning construction • For any descriptive level in a meaning construction account, the same cognitive model types underlie the semantic base of: (1) lexical/constructional characterizations; (2) language users’ inferential ability. • Because the same cognitive models underlie both constructional and inferential behavior, a correct account of cognitive model types is essential to understand language-based meaning-making activity.

figure 3

objects and events from the situations in which those objects and events take place. For example, we are here, in the context of our lecture, and this is a situational cognitive model. And, of course, there are objects here in this room, like the overhead projector or the microphone, the loudspeaker, the camera. Then, each of us is a participant in this context, in this situation. And we interact. To the degree that there are participants, entities, and objects that have some degree of interaction, we can have a situational cognitive model. And the third parameter that I find very useful for some aspects of grammar and also to understand figures of speech, like hyperbole, is scalarity. We can have scalar and non-scalar concepts. And this parameter allows us to determine the extent to which an object is ascribed an attribute. This will be useful when we have a lecture—which is one is the last ones—on hyperbole. But for today’s talk, only parameters one and two are going to be relevant to understand implicational meaning. With respect to the difference between constructional meaning and inferencing, the account that I gave you the first day on cognitive models and cognitive operations is supposed to underlie not only constructional meaning, but also inferential meaning. So far, we have been dealing with a lot with constructions, with constructional phenomena. And today, we’re going to deal with inferences, but they have a common engine, and this common engine is the idea of cognitive modeling understood as the activity of cognitive operations on cognitive models, which, I think, brings some unification into a theory of meaning construction. It brings unity into it because we have this common factor. Of course, when we

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Parameter 1: Primary vs. low vs. high level cogni:ve models • Primary: knowledge constructs that arise directly from sensorimotor experience, which can be topological (‘in/out’, ‘front-back’, ‘part-whole’, etc.), involve motor programs (‘push’, ‘walk’, ‘jump’), or have some sensory input (‘soft/coarse’, ‘hot/cold’, ‘heavy/light’). • Low: non-topological knowledge constructs created on the basis of our experience with objects, situations, events and their properties and relations (‘tooth’, ‘dog’, ‘kill’, ‘breathe’, ‘die’) • High: non-topological knowledge constructs created by deriving properties and relations common to low-level cognitive models (‘action’, ‘process’, ‘goal’, ‘result’, etc.).

figure 4

deal with constructions, we have conventionalization, we have entrenchment; and with inferences, we have degrees of conventional inferencing, so inferencing can be limited. But we may also have very imaginative uses of language that are fully inferential. This all comes in degrees when we are in the world of inferencing. So, we will talk today about how speakers use their inferential abilities on the basis of language in the domain of implicational structure. You have some examples here in the next slide on parameter one and they were in a previous handout: primary knowledge, low-level knowledge, highlevel knowledge, and different types of concepts that would be ascribed to one category or the other. For example, image schemas like in/out, front/ back, part/ whole and so on, topological constructs, would be primary knowledge; and also those involving motor programs like push, walk, jump or those that are connected to some sensory input like soft and coarse, hot and cold, heavy and light. At the low level, we have entities in the world, and processes and actions that relate to those entities. For example, tooth, dog, kill, breathe, die. High-level cognitive models would be such abstract notions as ‘action’, ‘process’, ‘goal’, and ‘result’. They are non-topological knowledge constructs created by deriving properties and relations that are common to low-level cognitive models. The second parameter, situationality, is described in more detail here. Situational models focus on sequences of actions that relate entities to other entities in terms of their attributes; for example, ‘going to the dentist’, ‘teaching a class’, ‘sitting an exam’, ‘riding a bicycle’. Non-situational cognitive models focus on the structure and properties of the entities: the properties of a tooth, the properties of any other entity or thing in the world.

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lecture 6 Parameter 2: Situational (“scenarios”) vs. non-situational cognitive models • Situational models (“scenarios”) focus on sequences of actions relating entities to other entities in terms of their attributes (e.g. ‘going to the dentist’, ‘sitting an exam’, ‘riding a bicycle’). • Non-situational models focus on the structure and properties of entities (e.g. ‘tooth’, ‘bright’). • Scenarios can occur at different levels of genericity: • Low-level: they deal with objects, their properties and relations in our perceptually accessible experience. • High-level: they are not directly derivable from perceptual access. Rather they are constructed on the basis of generalizations over elements shared by low-level situational models or scenarios.

figure 5

And scenarios, which are situational cognitive models, can occur at least at these two levels of genericity: the low level of characterization and the high level. At the low level, they deal with objects, their properties, and relations in our perceptually accessible experience. And at the high level, they are not directly derivable from perception, but they are constructed on the basis of generalizations over elements shared by low-level situational models or scenarios. They are higher-level abstractions. When we deal with illocutionary force, in a future talk, we will see that illocutionary force is based on high-level scenarios or high-level situational cognitive models. But today we will focus our attention on the low level for implicational structure. At both the low and high level of situational organization of knowledge, we can have a threefold distinction. This distinction is a distinction between different types of scenario. We can have descriptive, attitudinal, or regulatory scenarios. Descriptive scenarios would be those like the ones I mentioned before about teaching a class, going to the dentist, and so on. They are based on scripted sequences of low-level actions, that is, actions that are based on concrete experience with objects, situations, and events. But we can have, interestingly, attitudinal scenarios, for example, showing anger when a situation goes wrong. They are also low-level characterizations and they capture someone’s emotional or otherwise attitudinal response to concrete situations and events. And finally, we have regulatory scenarios. These have to do with illocutionary meaning, like expressing gratitude, making promises, asking for something.

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Types of scenario (low and high-level situational cognitive models) • Descriptive (e.g. ‘going to the dentist’, taking a taxi’, ‘washing dishes’): they are based on scripted sequences of low-level actions, i.e. actions based on concrete experience with objects, situations, and events. • Attitudinal (e.g. ‘showing anger when a situation goes wrong’). They are low-level characterizations that capture S’s emotional or otherwise attitudinal response to concrete situations and events. • Regulatory (e.g. ‘asking for something’, ‘expressing gratitude’). They are high-level characterizations that regulate either H’s behavior or S’s own behavior. Based on social conventions, which take the form of high-level generalizations over low-level scenarios.

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They are high-level characterizations and they regulate either the speaker’s behavior or the hearer’s behavior. And they are based on social convention, so they’re highly cultural and they take the form of high-level generalizations over low-level scenarios. So, for example if I’m thinking of requesting something, which is illocutionary meaning, the idea of requesting arises from many experiences of requesting which would be low-level, but we derive the higherlevel social convention that regulates their requesting behavior in different cultures. The same with ‘begging’, ‘promising’, ‘offering’, and the other types of illocutionary meaning. We have a whole talk on those regulatory scenarios and the social conventions. And I briefly mentioned in a previous talk the existence of a cognitive model that I call the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. We simply examined one of the entries of the model, which was about helping people when they are in need, if you can remember that. So that will be the topic for a future talk. Our focus today is going to be here, on the attitudinal scenarios, the low-level characterizations that capture emotional and attitudinal responses of individuals in connection with concrete events or situations. So, this is the focus, the area in blue. Descriptive and attitudinal scenarios lie at the basis of implicational meaning. Regulatory scenarios will be also termed “illocutionary scenarios” in the future talk that I mentioned. So, let’s start first with the easiest, which are the descriptive low-level scenarios. We are very much used to these ones from inferential pragmatics. So, there’s not much of a secret in them. These scenarios are internally coherent characterizations that contain participant entities, their properties, and

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ØDescriptive and attitudinal scenarios lie at the basis of implicational meaning. ØRegulatory scenarios (also termed “illocutionary scenarios”) underlie illocutionary meaning (lecture 7)

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Descriptive low-level scenarios • They are internally coherent characterizaIons containing parIcipant enIIes, their properIes, and relaIons. • These elements are sensiIve to generalizaIon thereby giving rise to what grammarians have tradiIonally called parIcipant roles and modes of acIon (i.e. event-structure or AkIonsart categories): • ‘building a house’: builder, materials, building acIons (e.g. laying bricks, plastering ceilings, installing the electrical wiring), building tools, a building and its parts. • ‘painIng a picture’: painter, materials, painIng acIons (preparing the canvas, mixing paints, etc.), painIng instruments (brush, paleNe), a painIng. • Common structure: agent, acIon, instrument, object, result, etc.

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their relations. So, the teacher interacts with the students in the context of a classroom, and the classroom has a blackboard, an overhead projector, and so on. That’s the idea about this type of scenario. And these elements, of course, are sensitive to generalization, thereby giving rise to what grammarians have traditionally called participant roles and modes of action; for example, eventstructure or Aktionsart categories. So, from building a house, which is a descriptive low-level scenario, we know that building a house involves the builder, the materials, building actions like

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Inferences based on low-level descriptive scenarios A: Did you have a good hunt? B: Jim is an excellent marksman

ÞThe hunt was successful Hunting “scenario”: a hunter, hunting gear (apparel, weapons, etc.), game, etc.

figure 9

laying bricks, plastering ceilings, installing the electrical wiring, you require building tools, a building and its parts. From a ‘painting a picture’ scenario, we have elements like the painter, the materials, the painting actions like preparing the canvas, mixing the paints, and then the painting instruments like the brush, the palettes, and of course the result of the action, which is painting. They are different. Building a house is not like painting a picture, but in both of them, we have agent, action, instrument, object, result. They have these elements in common, which are higher-level abstractions, and are commonly called semantic roles in many linguistic theories. Inferences based on low-level descriptive scenarios. This is an example that we examined previously. A and B are speaking and A says: Did you have a good hunt? And B says: Well, Jim is an excellent marksman. B doesn’t say whether the hunt was good or not. But what he says seems to implicate that the hunt was good—was probably good (we are not certain; this inference can be canceled out). This is a typical inferential-pragmatic analysis of this brief exchange. So, the idea is that we make the inference that the hunt was successful, and we take the risk about it. And maybe if we go on with the conversation, we will discover that we were wrong, that it can be canceled out. That’s not a big problem. We take it for granted that it can be canceled. Of course, there is world knowledge associated with this inference. We have the hunting scenario in the same way as we have other scenarios like the painting scenario, the building scenario, or the teaching-a-class scenario. And we know about the hunting scenario. We know

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that there has to be a hunter, and hunting gear like the weapons, the apparel, and there has to be game, and other elements. So that’s knowledge of the world that we bring to bear upon the interpretation of Jim is an excellent marksman. The question is, before we go into that, in inferential pragmatics, they tend to assume that there is some pragmatic principle that is guiding our inferential work, that is telling us that, OK, because B said he’s an excellent marksman, he didn’t go to the point, he just avoided answering directly the question. So, probably this is a breach of the idea that we have to cooperate. To be fully cooperative, B should have said something like Oh yes, we had a very successful hunt. So, why don’t you go to the point, speaker B? “Because I didn’t want to, because maybe there are some contextual reasons that make me feel shy about saying that the hunt was successful”. But yes, those are implications. But what is their origin? What’s their source? Simply saying that you have been consistent or not with the idea of cooperation, that you have broken a principle of conversation intently and clearly, but without hiding your breach from the addressee, which is what Grice called a flouting of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle, if you remember that. Or is there something else? What about world knowledge? What about the hunting scenario? What can we do with that? Okay, maybe cognitive linguists can offer something to inferential pragmatists. Go to the next slide. In fact, this is the layout, the characterization of a reasoning schema in pragmatics. Relevance theorists have postulated some of these reasoning schemas. They argue that, to produce an implicature, there is some if-then judgment, Reasoning schema (metonymy-supported chained inferences) Ø FOCUS ON ABILITY: Premise 1 (implicit assumption retrieved from world knowledge): An excellent marksman is likely to kill much game while hunting. Explicit assumption: Jim is a great marksman. Conclusion 1 (implicated assumption): Jim probably killed much game while hunting. Ø FOCUS ON ASSESSED RESULT Premise 2 (implicit assumption retrieved from world knowledge): Killing much game makes a hunt successful. Previous implicated assumption: Jim probably killed much game while hunting. Conclusion 2 (new implicated assumption): The hunt was successful.

figure 10

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and the linguistic expression will activate one part of the if-then judgement, and then you will come to a conclusion. Okay, let’s apply the reasoning schema to the previous brief exchange where the hunt was implicated to be successful. The premise, which is hidden and retrieved from world knowledge, would be that ‘An excellent marksman is likely to kill much game while hunting’. What the sentence said was that Jim is a great marksman. That’s the explicitly communicated assumption, the explicit assumption. And the conclusion is an implicated assumption, which in pragmatics is called an implicature, that Jim probably killed much game while hunting. Now this is where I think most inferential pragmatists would stop, but this doesn’t convey all the meaning of what the second speaker said. It falls short of dealing with all the meaning implications of what he said. We need a second reasoning schema that is connected to the first one. How is it connected? The conclusion, that is, the implicated assumption of the first schema, which on the slide is in blue, becomes one element of the second reasoning schema. So, these two reasoning schemas are chained, they are linked to each other. The conclusion of the first schema plays the role of the “explicit assumption” part of the second reasoning schema. But of course, because it is implicated knowledge, we can’t say that this is an explicit assumption. It is simply the previous implicated assumption that plays the same function as the explicit assumption of the first reasoning schema. In the second reasoning schema, it plays that role, and it will allow us to retrieve the second implicated assumption. Let’s see how it works. The second premise, again, to be retrieved from world knowledge, is that killing much game makes a hunt successful. If Jim probably killed much game while hunting, which is the previous conclusion, then the hunt was successful, which is the final meaning implication arising from the brief exchange. You will have noticed that the linguistic expression only provides part of the final meaning representation. There is complex thinking, because we have two reasoning schemas at work, and they have to be combined perfectly. Of course, because we do this over and over again, as speakers of a language, we get used to it and we do it very, very fast. But the process exists. And we only have partial structure invoked by the linguistic expression. The rest of the structure has to be derived. And when we have part of the structure of a representation standing for the whole representation, in Cognitive Linguistics we call that a “metonymy”. Now, of course, we need to have a broad conception of metonymy. We have to go beyond the idea of lexical metonymy. Metonymy is not simply saying THE HAND FOR THE LABORER. This is a case in which metonymy plays an inferential role of greater magnitude than in the case of simple lexical connections.

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figure 11

But what we have is the scenario, which is the hunting scenario, which is an action frame. In fact, it is a type of action. And we have access to the hunting scenario by mentioning someone’s skills as a hunter. And through the inferential chain, we obtain the result of the hunt, [[which is that]] the hunt was successful probably because a lot of game was killed. So, ABILITY FOR ACTION FOR RESULT, which is a double metonymy, or as in the terminology that I used in a previous talk, it is a case of metonymic chaining. But this metonymic chaining is not like the example of too much lip, where the ability stands for the action of speaking, then for the result of the action. It is not exactly like that. It’s very similar but not exactly like that because this is not lexical. It is situational. That’s all. But lexical items give access to lexical concepts. And here what we have is whole situations. We simply have a different type of cognitive model. We have the same operational mechanism, which is a double metonymy, but the difference is that we have a different type of cognitive model. We have a low-level situational cognitive model of the descriptive kind. Let me now talk very briefly, and also in a simplified way, of the idea of linguistic profiling of a concept. I want to make a connection between the analysis that I just made and the notion of linguistic “profiling”. Just for some of you that may not be acquainted with the notions of “profile” and “base” in Cognitive Linguistics, the “profile” of a concept has been defined as its inherent content, and the “base” as the conceptual structure against which the concept is profiled. This is work by Langacker. To give you an example that is not Langacker’s—so my analysis might not be accepted by Langacker, but I think it follows his ideas—profiling a concept

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Linguistic profiling of a concept • The profile of a concept is its inherent content; the base is the conceptual structure against which the concept is profiled (cf. Langacker 1987, 1999). • Profiling a concept against one base or another gives rise to different ways of construal; for example: • An airplane designates (profiles) a powered flying vehicle with wings. • It has different base domains: shape, motion, size, weight, etc. If we think or talk about an airplane during a flight, a relevant base domain will be determined by the atmospheric conditions at cruising altitude. • Profile-base relations provide different perspectives from which a concept can be construed. figure 12

against one base or another gives rise to different ways of construal. And here we have an example. Think of an airplane. An airplane designates or profiles a powered flying vehicle with wings. We all agree on that. That’s what the word airplane designates. But you can have different base domains. Here are some of them: shape, motion, size, weight. So, if we think or talk about an airplane during a flight, a relevant base domain will be determined by the atmospheric conditions at cruising altitude. But if we think of a plane on the runway, we activate different knowledge from the knowledge that we activate when it is flying, or if we are passengers inside the plane, we do not think much of these elements of the atmospheric conditions or the cruising altitude. We think of our relationship with the flight attendants, for example, or with the messages that the captain issues during the flight. So, different profile-base connections will allow us to interpret concepts from different perspectives. The profile is going to be stable. It’s going to be the same, the inherent content of the word. But the base will give us a different perspective on that profile. Can we profile a scenario? Because that was profiling an airplane, which is an object. Can we profile something more complex? I think so. We go back to the hunting scenario. We can talk about it in different ways. That is to say, we have different linguistic materializations of parts of the hunting scenario. You will see here some examples. Jim is an excellent marksman is one possibility, and that profiles the ability of Jim as a hunter, and it implicates success based on Jim’s ability. If you say Jim killed much game, that profiles the successful result of Jim’s hunting and implicates a globally successful hunt

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Linguis:c profiling of the hun:ng scenario • The low-level scenario that we label “hunting” can be partially or fully realized linguistically. • Each linguistic realization designates (i.e. profiles) one or more elements of the high-level scenario, which acts as an implicit conceptual base. • It is the base domain that speakers use to afford access to implicated meaning: • Jim is an excellent marksman > profiles the ability of the hunter > implicates success based on Jim’s ability • Jim killed much game> profiles the successful result of Jim’s hunting > implicates a globally successful hunt judging by the results • We had fun > profiles the speaker’s subjective perception of the event in terms of its ludic component > implicates possible lack of success in terms of results figure 13

Inferences based on low-level attitudinal scenarios What’s your sister doing in the lab? ÞH’s sister is doing something that somehow bothers S. Attitudinal “someone is doing something wrong” scenario: a. The speaker is aware of (e.g. by being a witness to) what the actor is doing. b. The speaker believes that the actor is doing something wrong. c. The speaker believes that the hearer either shares assumption (b) or should share assumption (b) with him. d. The hearer believes assumptions (a)-(c) to be the case. figure 14

judging by the results. If we simply say, Well, we had fun during the hunt, that profiles the speaker’s subjective perception of the event in terms of its ludic component, and it implicates possible lack of success in terms of results. If we simply had fun, maybe we didn’t kill many animals, which could be a good idea. Let’s turn our attention to low-level attitudinal scenarios. And I want to use an example that comes from the constructionist literature. It’s a very wellknown example. It’s a case of the so-called What’s X doing Y? construction that was popularized by Kay and Fillmore in the 1990s. The idea about sentences

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making use of that construction is that the construction is not compositional, so native speakers of English will generally not understand a sentence like What’s your sister doing in the lab? as a real question. They will understand that not as a question, but as the speaker conveying the idea that he already knows—and that probably he knows that the addressee knows—what the addressee’s sister is doing in the lab, but that the speaker evaluates negatively whatever the addressee’s sister is doing. So, we have an attitudinal element. The idea that the hearer’s sister is doing something that somehow bothers the speaker. So, What are you doing here in this classroom? it means that there is something wrong about what you’re doing. What is the child doing in the kitchen with the scissors? There is something wrong about what the child is doing. What is Jane doing knowing Chinese? She shouldn’t know Chinese. So, it has this negative implication: ‘it bothers me; I don’t like it as a speaker’. Can we postulate the existence of an attitudinal scenario by the label “someone is doing something wrong”? Yes. Why not? Because we have knowledge about that. That comes from our experience. We know that sometimes people do things that we don’t like. “Someone is doing something wrong” could be that kind of scenario. Can we describe that scenario? Yes, of course, we can. We will give you at least these elements and probably we could be more detailed about it, but this will be enough. One element is that the speaker is aware of—for example, by being witness to it—what the actor is doing. If you are not aware of what the actor is doing, then you will not have an attitude about it. [[The]] second item: that the speaker believes that the actor is doing something wrong. [[The]] third item: that the speaker believes that the hearer either shares the second assumption, that is, that the actor is doing something wrong, or should share that assumption with him. And finally, the fourth item: that the hearer believes the three previous assumptions to be the case. This could be, it sounds technical, but it is a very clear description of what people have in mind when they activate this type of scenario: “someone is doing something wrong”. Are there inferences based on this type of scenarios? Yes, there are. Against the background of assumptions of this scenario, we can evaluate what your sister was doing. Now, let me draw your attention to an interesting phenomenon. If you say, What’s your sister doing?, that could be an information question. Probably not, but it could be simply that you are the speaker, you want to know, and you say, Hey, what’s your sister doing now? There is an intonation factor also at work, but even without the intonation factor, well, this could be taken simply as an information question. But if you want to convey the idea that the sister is doing something wrong, some contextual factors have to be

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Inferences based on low-level attitudinal scenarios • Against the background of assumptions of the ‘someone is doing something wrong’ scenario]: • What’s your sister doing? => The hearer’s sister is doing something wrong [but it could be a mere information question] • But the scenario can be called upon by specifying the question in either of two ways: • Detailing the context: • What’s your sister doing in the lab? Is she still working? • What’s your sister doing in the lab at midnight? Is she still working? • What’s your sister doing in the lab at midnight with her boyfriend? Is she still working? • Parameterizing the generic value of ‘doing’: • What’s your sister doing working (in the lab)/messing with my iPhone/dancing (a polka), etc.? figure 15

combined and they will play a role in your decision as to how to interpret it. So, if it is evident that you are not asking, because you already know—if the addressee is aware of that—, then What’s your sister doing? is going to be a clear example of the What’s X doing Y construction with the attitudinal element. We can call upon the scenario, the attitudinal scenario, in many ways. I would group those ways into two broad patterns. One is by detailing the context and the other one by parameterizing the generic value of the word doing. Let me give you examples of that. Let’s elaborate on What’s your sister doing? and convert it into What’s your sister doing in the lab? Is she still working? Because we are elaborating and giving more details about what she’s doing, the addressee is cued into thinking that the speaker is probably upset about whatever is happening. You’re giving me so much detail that you probably already know as a speaker what is going on, because you have all the details. So, if you even elaborated more, What’s your sister doing in the lab at midnight? Is she still working, the default assumption is going to be, almost for sure, that the speaker is using the What’s X doing Y construction, that there is a negative evaluation. And take the last one, which is really elaborated: What’s your sister doing in the lab at midnight with her boyfriend? Is she still working? Here we have not only the elaboration, of course, but also world knowledge about what people can do in a lab with a boyfriend. This was detailing the context. Another way of calling upon the attitudinal scenario would be simply by parameterizing the generic value of doing. Doing is part of the construction: What’s your sister doing?. And then we have the Y

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Reasoning schema (chained inferences) ØFOCUS ON PRELIMINARY EVENT: Premise 1 (implicit assumption): People do not ask for information they have. Explicit assumption: S asks about H’s sister’s behavior, which is evident to both. Conclusion 1 (implicated assumption): S is not asking about H’s sister’s behavior but likely drawing attention to it. ØFOCUS ON THE RESULT Premise 2 (implicit assumption): People draw attention to other people’s behavior when they find it worth someone’s attention. Previous implicated assumption: S is likely drawing H’s attention to H’s sister’s behavior. Conclusion 2 (implicated assumption): S finds H’s sister’s behavior worth H’s attention > activate a plausible scenario that will account for why H’s sister’s behavior is worth H’s attention; e.g. the “someone is doing something wrong” scenario.

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element that can be short or nonexistent, or it can be elaborated, or it can be filled in contextually. Here we don’t need to do that. In the case of the doing variant where the doing [[element]] is associated with another verb in gerund, the value is always going to be ‘something is going wrong’. So, this is more heavily conventionalized. And we will go into this again in a few minutes. Take this sentence: What’s your sister doing working? What’s your sister doing working means ‘that’s wrong’. And of course, if you elaborate on the Y element, it will be clearer that there is this attitudinal component: What’s your sister doing working in the lab? Or what’s your sister doing messing with my iPhone? What’s your sister doing dancing a polka? It means ‘I don’t like the situation’. So, we have these two ways of specifying the question in such a way that the attitudinal scenario will be called upon. And what about the chained inferences, the reasoning schema underlying all this? I think that we have two cases of focus. One is focus on the preliminary events, and the other is focus on the result. So, the first reasoning schema is going to be about focusing on the preliminary event. The premise, which is taken from world knowledge, is an implicit assumption. And it would take the following form: ‘People do not ask for information that they already have’. The explicit assumption is that the speaker is asking about the hearer’s sister’s behavior, which is evident to both. And the conclusion, which is an implicature in the traditional terminology, or an implicated assumption, is that the speaker is not asking about the hearer’s sister’s behavior, but likely simply drawing attention to it. And the focus is on the preliminary event because the speaker

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S!believes!that!X’s!doing!A!is! wrong,!so!X!doing!A!is!worth! H’s!attention! ATTITUDINAL' SCENARIO/' REASON'

!

S!becomes!aware! that!X!is!doing!A! PRELIMINARY' EVENT/' ATTITUDINAL' TRIGGER'

S!draws!H’s! attention!to! X!doing!A! ! RESULT'

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is simply asking about what she’s doing. He’s not asking about anything else, but the focus on the result comes from the second reasoning schema. A second premise, drawn from world knowledge, is: ‘People draw attention to other people’s behavior when they find it worth someone’s attention’. The previous implicated assumption, which is the previous conclusion, is that the speaker is likely drawing the hearer’s attention to the hearer’s sister’s behavior. And then, the second conclusion, which is the final one, an implicated assumption, is that the speaker finds the hearer’s sister’s behavior worth the hearer’s attention. Now, this second implicated conclusion can activate a plausible scenario that accounts for why the hearer’s sister’s behavior is worth the hearer’s attention. And one possibility, among others, is the activation of the “someone is doing something wrong” scenario. So, the “someone is doing something wrong” scenario underlies all this conceptual activity and it can be linked to the final conclusion of the chained reasoning schemas. You will ask me now about metonymy on this. In the same way as we had some metonymic backup for the other example, the “hunting” example, we have metonymy at work here. Remember the three components, the three main components, that range over the two reasoning schemas that were spelled out before. The first one, the speaker becomes aware that X (someone) is doing something, doing an action. That’s the preliminary event. That’s the preliminary focus. If you go back, the focus on the preliminary event reasoning schema is captured by this sub-domain of the following knowledge domain where we have an attitudinal scenario. So, ‘the speaker becomes aware that someone is doing something’ gives access metonymically to the speaker

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LinguisFc profiling • Expressions taking the form What’s X Doing Y? profile the idea that the speaker is aware that someone is doing something wrong. • What’s X Doing Y? is an abstraction over a number of linguistic profiles of the “someone is doing something wrong” attitudinal scenario (cf. Who’s been messing with my laptop?, What do you think you’re doing?, Why’s she laughing like that?). • Because it regularly activates the scenario, it is an “entrenched” configuration, i.e. a stable form-meaning pattern or a construction. • The construction What’s X Doing Y? has a number of formal properties whose motivation can found in the inferential exploitation of the lowlevel attitudinal scenario.

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believing that someone is doing something that is wrong. So, ‘someone doing something wrong’ is worth the hearer’s attention. And that would be the attitudinal scenario, captured in different words. The preliminary event affords access to the attitudinal scenario. Now, the preliminary event is but an attitudinal trigger. We can say that the preliminary event, or attitudinal trigger, affords access to the attitudinal scenario. And the attitudinal scenario is the reason why the speaker draws the hearer’s attention to someone doing something, which is the result. So, we have a recent result connection for the second metonymic link. This is a double metonymy, very much like the previous one, where we have domain expansion and domain reduction. It is parallel to the example of the hunting implicature. Now, let’s talk about linguistic profiling. We will bring this into the picture. What can we do with expressions that take the form of What’s X doing Y? in terms of profiling? This construction profiles the idea that the speaker is aware that someone is doing something wrong. And in fact, this What’s X doing Y? formulation is simply an abstraction over a number of linguistic profiles of the same “someone is doing something wrong” attitudinal scenario. Compare with other possible linguistic profiles that we have for other constructions that belong to the same family. Sister constructions with What’s X doing Y? would be exemplified by Who’s been messing with my laptop?, What do you think you’re doing?, Why’s she laughing like that? Basically, what we have is rhetorical questions, and we are actually not asking anything about who’s been messing with my laptop. It’s an accusation. I know that it has been you. What do you think you’re doing? It is another accusation and it shows anger. Why’s she laughing

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What’s X Doing Y?: formal properties (Kay & Fillmore 1999) • It needs the verb do in gerund (cf. *What’s your sister working for the state?; What will your sister do working for the state?) • Doing has no inherent progressive aspect (cf. What’s your sister doing knowing the answer?, *She is knowing the answer). • It cannot take the modifier else (*What else is your sister doing working for the state?) • The main verb is be (*What does your sister keep doing working for the state?). • Doing cannot take the negative form (*What’s your sister not doing working for the state?), but its complement can (What’s your sister doing not going to work today?)

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like that? It also shows that the speaker is upset. These constructions are sister constructions to What’s X doing Y?. They share many of its characteristics and they offer different linguistic profiles. Now, because What’s X doing Y? regularly activates the attitudinal scenario, it is an entrenched configuration. There is a stable form-meaning pattern. So, we have a construction. The construction What’s X doing Y? has a number of formal properties that I would like to discuss with you. Their motivation can be found, from my point of view, in the inferential exploitation of the low-level attitudinal scenario. These formal properties are motivated by the attitudinal scenario. Which are those properties? Well, Kay and Fillmore gave us those properties in the 1999 paper. They said, well, What’s X doing Y? needs to have the verb do in gerund. So, you can’t say *What’s your sister working for the state?, What will your sister do working for the state? You need to have doing in gerund, and that’s one formal property. Another one is that doing has no inherent progressive aspect. So, you can say, What’s your sister doing knowing the answer?, which is not progressive. And the test to know that that is not progressive is that you can’t have an answer like *She is knowing the answer. What’s your sister doing knowing the answer is ‘Yes, I know she knows the answer’, so you would not use knowing in your response. The construction cannot take the modifier else. So, you can’t say, What else is your sister doing working for the state? The main verb is be. You can’t say, What does your sister (instead of using be, use here keep) *What does your sister keep doing working for the state? You can’t say that. And finally, doing cannot take the negative form. You can’t say, What’s your sister not doing working for the

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The verb do in gerund • Specific verbs in a question with “what” generally give rise to information questions: A: What’s your sister working on in the lab? B: She’s just mixing chemicals. • Generic “do” directs H’s attention to the general nature of the event being described: What’s your sister doing working in the lab? • In origin, the gerund is necessary to make H aware that S is either a present witness of the action or can make a picture of it in his mind as if taking place.

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state? That doesn’t make sense. But the complement can be negative. So you can say What’s your sister doing not going to work today?. Let’s go on into the details of these formal properties, and let’s connect them with the attitudinal scenario. The first one is about the verb do in gerund. Why is the word do in gerund? The verb do is a generic verb, so focus on that first of all. It is not a specific verb. If we use a specific verb, the construction is not activated. And that’s because specific verbs in a question with what generally give rise to information questions. So, if you get something like What’s your sister working on in the lab?, that’s a specific question. It is not a generic question. And the answer would be something like She’s just mixing chemicals. This is not an example of the construction. When you ask What’s your sister working on in the lab?, there is no assumption that you’re upset about what the hearer’s sister is doing. Generic do directs the hearer’s attention to the general nature of the event that is being described. That’s the reason why, and that’s why you need generic do in the construction. And what about the gerund? Well in origin, the gerund is necessary to make the hearer aware that the speaker is a witness to the action, or at least that he can picture the action in his mind as if it were taking place. So, by being a witness to the action, you can’t use other forms of the verb do. Then, the second observation made by Kay and Fillmore was that doing is not necessarily progressive. You have examples like this: What is your sister doing knowing the answer? And you can’t answer *She is knowing the answer. The construction holds not only for actions taking place, you have to keep that

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Doing is not necessarily progressive in aspect • The construction holds not only for actions taking place but also for any state of affairs, whether dynamic or not: A: What’s your sister doing knowing the answer? B: *She is knowing the answer • This meaning arises from a metonymic shift from the core action meaning of the construction, which is progressive (‘you are doing something wrong > something that bothers me’) to a result-of-theaction meaning, which is not progressive (‘you are involved in a situation that bothers me’).

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in mind, but also for any state of affairs, whether the state of affairs is dynamic or not. In examples, like What is the child doing in the kitchen with a knife?, yes, we have action, but in the example What’s your sister doing knowing mathematics, or knowing the answer, or knowing Chinese?, no, there is no action taking place, but simply a non-dynamic state of affairs. This meaning arises, from my point of view, from a metonymic shift from the core action meaning of the construction, which is progressive (that is, the idea that you are actually doing something wrong, something that I am a witness to, and that I can picture in my mind) to something that bothers me and then to the result of that, which is the idea that you are involved in a situation that bothers me. So, we have a metonymic shift from the core action meaning of the construction, which of course is progressive, to a result-of-the-action meaning, which is not progressive. The result of the action is simply a result, the idea that you are involved in a situation that I find upsetting. We go to another feature of the construction. The construction cannot take the modifier else. Why not? Well, probably, because, when we use else, that indicates the presence of another situation; so you can’t say something like What else is your sister doing working for the state? or What else is your sister doing in the lab? Because the speaker’s focus on one activity that holds at the time of speaking is what matters, the situation that you witness as a speaker, and mentioning another one has to be ruled out. It’s simply a focus of the expression on the activity that holds at the time in which the sentence is uttered. The following characteristic is that the main verb is the verb to be. Why can’t I say What does your sister keep doing working for the state? Or why can’t I use

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The construc:on cannot take the modifier else • This construction cannot take the modifier else, which indicates the presence of another situation. • Since the speaker’s focus on the one activity that holds at the time of speaking (i.e. the one being witnessed), mentioning another activity is ruled out: *What else is your sister doing working for the state? *What else is your sister doing in the lab?

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The main verb is be • The verb “be” is neutral in terms of ingressive, egressive, and continuative aspect. • This feature of the construction relates to the fact that the “rhetorical” question reflects the speaker’s attitude on the whole event, not just one part of it: *What does your sister keep doing working for the state? *What does your sister start/finish doing working for the state?

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ingressive or egressive verbs like start and finish?: *What does your sister start or finish doing working for the state? The reason is that the verb be is neutral in terms of aspect. It is not ingressive, or egressive, or continuative, and the construction, as a rhetorical question, reflects the idea that the speaker’s attitude is an attitude about the whole event, not the beginning, the middle, or the end. So, because there is no focus on any of its aspectual elements, you need to use the verb be, which is neutral. You can’t signal the beginning, the continuation, or the end of the action. You have to refer to all of it. So, you would say What

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Doing cannot take the negative form but its complement can Negating “doing” would be equal to S denying that there is a (positive or negative) state of affairs (being witnessed) about which he has an attitude: *What’s your sister not doing working for the state? The complement can be negated because it is part of the state of affairs described. What’s your sister doing not going to work today?

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is your sister doing working for the state?, not What does your sister keep doing working for the state? And the same with start and finish. One more feature of the construction is that doing cannot take the negative form, but its complement can. This may be striking to us, but there is a reason behind it. Negating doing would be the same as the speaker denying that there is a state of affairs that he is a witness to and about which he may have an attitude. So that’s why you can’t say *What’s your sister not doing working for the state? In other words, you would be saying: “There is nothing, there is no state that I can have an attitude about”. So, why ask about it? Why show your attitude about it? Impossible, because it doesn’t exist. But what about the complement? The complement can be negated precisely because the state of affairs that you describe can be positive or negative. So, if she’s working today, it’s Ok. If she’s not working today, it’s Ok. I can ask about it with the What’s X doing Y? construction. I can say What’s your sister doing going to work today? It’s a holiday; or What’s your sister doing not going to work today? It is a Monday and she has to go to work. So, we don’t care about the complement. We only care about doing. You can’t say *What’s your sister not doing working today or not doing going to work today? Let me [[make]] some remarks. All these formal features of the construction respond to the “logic” and the structure of the low-level attitudinal scenario that underlies this construction, which means (for a cognitive linguist, this is essential) that grammatical form is motivated by meaning. Or if you want to put it in different words, grammatical form is motivated by the inherent “logic” of the conceptual scenario underlining that grammatical form.

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Remarks • All formal features of the construction respond to the “logic” and structure of the low-level attitudinal scenario underlying it; that is, grammatical form is motivated by meaning or, to be more accurate, by the inherent “logic” of conceptual structure. • The linguistic profiles of a scenario can become part of grammar when their underlying formal configurations (e.g. What’s X Doing Y?) become stably associated with the meaning implications underlying them. • Thus, from the point of view of content, the meaning implications arising from the metonymy-based premise-conclusion reasoning schemas are part of the entrenched meaning of the construction.

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Then, a second remark, that the linguistic profiles of a scenario can become part of grammar when their underlying formal configurations become stably associated with the meaning implications underlying them. We can have entrenched form-meaning pairings and bring into the understanding of this entrenchment the idea of the profile and base distinction. And from the point of view of content, the meaning implications that arise from the metonymy-based premise-conclusion reasoning schemas are part of the entrenched meaning of the construction. So, once we work on those reasoning schemas over and over again, once they are entrenched in our cognitive systems, we get used to them, and they are part of the constructional meaning. So that’s why the What X is doing Y construction, even though in origin it has an inferential support, is interpreted without that inferential support by speakers of English. Probably we can do it, but it is not necessary. As soon as we get that structure, we identify the attitudinal scenario, and we know that this is a construction conveying the idea that something is wrong. We don’t need to go through all the inferential chains that I have described. Can we go through them? Yes, of course, we can. And if we find novel examples or examples that do not match the context well, we may have to do all that work. We are equipped to do that. We have the mechanisms in our minds to activate the reasoning schemas and the underlying metonymies. They’re part of our conceptual systems. They are part of our cognitive equipment. To conclude, this talk was about implicational meaning, and there was a parallel between descriptive and attitudinal inferencing. Implicational meaning is based on the metonymic exploitation of low-level situational cognitive models,

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Conclusion • Implicational meaning is based on the metonymic exploitation of low-level situational cognitive models (or scenarios). Such models can be descriptive or attitudinal. • Such metonymic exploitation takes the form of metonymic chains based on domain expansion and reduction. • When one such exploitation becomes conventional and is entrenched in speakers’ minds, it gives rise to an implicational construction. • From the point of view of content, the meaning implications arising from the metonymy-based premise-conclusion reasoning schemas are part of the entrenched meaning of the construction. • All formal features of the construction respond to the logic and structure of the lowlevel attitudinal scenario underlying it; i.e. grammar is motivated by meaning or, to be more accurate, by the inherent logic of conceptual structure relations. • The linguistic profiles of a scenario can become part of grammar when their underlying formal configurations (e.g. What’s X Doing Y?) become stably associated with the meaning implications underlying them.

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or scenarios. And such models can be descriptive or attitudinal. Remember that we also have regulatory models that are associated with illocutionary activity. Then such metonymic exploitation takes the form of metonymic chains based on domain expansion and reduction, both for the descriptive and the attitudinal scenarios. When one such exploitation becomes conventional and is entrenched in speakers’ minds, it gives rise to an implicational construction. So, this is an inferential process, but it can become constructional through a conventionalization procedure (or an entrenchment procedure). I associate the idea of conventionalization with the social system, and the idea of entrenchment with the mind. So saying that a form-meaning pairing has become conventional or entrenched, it’s about the same, but from two different perspectives: conventional, from the point of view of the speakers, the speech community, and entrenched, from the point of view of the number of times that you have used the form-meaning pairing and it has become part of your mental equipment. Then, from the point of view of content, the meaning implications that arise from the metonymy-based premise-conclusion reasoning schemas are part of the entrenched meaning of the construction. So we can’t explain the meaning of the construction, if we do not have in mind that we have metonymy at work and that we have the premise-conclusion patterns at work. This combines cognition and inferential pragmatics in a very simple way, and provides us, as linguists, with a unified theoretical framework for the explanation of so-called implicature at two different levels. By the way, in inferential pragmatics, it is not usually the case that they will go into these meaning implications of the kind illustrated by the What’s X doing Y? construction.

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They’re always working at the descriptive level. They rarely work at the attitudinal level. So, I think that this is also another addition that we can make, that we can offer to the community of pragmatists. Then, all the formal features of this construction respond to the logic and the structure of the low-level attitudinal scenario that underlies the construction. That is, grammar is motivated by meaning, or to be more accurate, by the inherent logic of conceptual structure relations. And finally, the linguistic profiles of a scenario can become part of grammar when their underlying formal configurations, for example, What’s X doing Y?, become stably associated with the meaning implications that underlie them. And this is the end of the talk.

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Illocutionary Constructions and Cognitive Modeling This morning’s talk is going to be about illocutionary meaning and illocutionary constructions. I will try to motivate illocutionary constructions from the point of view of a scenario-based approach. In previous talks, I have been dealing with the notion of scenario. A scenario is simply a cognitive model. It can be defined as a situational cognitive model, and we can have low-level and high-level situational models, if you can remember that. If I have a sentence like The blacksmith hammered the metal flat, that is a resultative construction. It makes use of argument-structure configurations. It’s a construction that is based on connections that we establish between different semantic primitive elements, like ‘causing something to become something else’. That’s argument structure. At the situational level, what we have is something different. We have—rather than simply this type of abstract connections between argument participants in a construction—what we have is an enrichment of those connections that are based on reality, on how we experience the real world. In a situation, you have participant entities in their interaction, and their interaction follows a scripted sequence. That’s organized in time: something happens first, then something happens second, then third. For example, if a teacher is going to teach you a class, he will first get into the classroom, then he will address his students, use a PowerPoint projection—or he may use the chalkboard—and teach the lesson. The students may raise their hands and ask questions. The teacher will answer the questions. That’s a scripted sequence. This is what we are going to get, but we are going to get this in a different way than the one that I have described. The type of scenarios that we have in the world of illocution are of a slightly different kind. They are based on cultural and social convention. They’re scripted sequences like the other ones, but they are based on cultural conventions about social norms: how we have to behave. All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555773

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_008

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Illocutionary meaning in Cognitive Linguistics Panther & Thornburg (1998): Illocutionary meaning is based on the metonymic activation of illocutionary scenarios. • Illocutionary scenarios: cognitive models based on Searle’s well-known satisfaction conditions for speech acts consisting of three components: BEFORE, CORE, and AFTER. • The request scenario: oBEFORE: it specifies pre-conditions like the hearer’s ability to perform the required act (Can/can’t you answer the phone?) or the speaker’s or the hearer’s desire that the act is carried out (I would like you to answer the phone; Would you (like to) answer the phone?). oCORE: the speaker puts the hearer under the obligation to perform the act (Give me your newspaper). oAFTER: it contains the expectation that the act will be carried out (Will you open the door?, You will open the door).

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They are not descriptive; they are regulatory. Yesterday, I made a three-fold distinction between descriptive, attitudinal, and then regulatory. Now we are with the regulatory kind. Let’s go into it: illocutionary meaning and the treatment of illocutionary meaning in Cognitive Linguistics; this is the first thing. What are the approaches that we have to illocution in Cognitive Linguistics? Not very many scholars have gone into illocution. It’s something that we always take for granted. It’s like “Well. we know about illocution. It is pragmatics, pragmatic thinking. We have some rules and principles that guide illocutionary meaning. Let’s focus on another aspects of linguistics”. But at least, there are two scholars, Panther and Thornburg, that in the late 1990s, decided to come to terms with the problem of illocutionary meaning from a completely cognitivist perspective. So, rather than simply assume that there was pragmatics around and they would deal with that, they said, Ok, what if there are cognitive principles behind the derivation of illocutionary meaning? They made the proposal—in a paper that they wrote for the journal of Pragmatics in 1998—that illocutionary meaning is based on illocutionary scenarios and metonymy: the metonymic exploitation of illocutionary scenarios. What is an illocutionary scenario? Remember that I talked before about low-level situational cognitive models and high-level situational cognitive models? They did not use that terminology, but basically, when they define the notion of illocutionary scenario, that was an abstraction over a number of concrete experiences. So, it was a high-level model. And because it was a scenario, it was situational. I would say that the proposal that they made with the label

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illocutionary scenarios can be described in terms of the labels that I have been using for these talks. An illocutionary scenario would be a high-level situational cognitive model. In their proposal—of course, they were not thinking about high-level or lowlevel things, nothing like that—they were simply thinking about experience in the world, and they went to John Searle’s work on illocution. They realized that the way that John Searle addressed illocution in terms of satisfaction conditions for speech acts to be possible could be somehow reworded in a cognitive-linguistic way. They said that illocutionary scenarios are cognitive models. They [[described]] illocutionary scenarios [[as consisting of]] three parts, three chunks, or three sub-domains of what each speech act category would be. Here we have an example of the request scenario. But you can have the same for promises, offering, and any other speech act. For the case of the request scenario, the three components we would have would be the BEFORE, the CORE, and the AFTER. They borrowed from Searle’s ideas to construct these pieces of scenario. The BEFORE component is simply John Searle’s preconditions for the illocution to be possible. If you remember, John Searle said that it was necessary for the act of requesting to have an ability condition: you can’t request people to do things that they can’t do. If I ask you to reach up to the ceiling, you will say: “No, thank you. I don’t think I have … I would need a ladder or something like that. So, I can’t do that”. But if I ask you to give me a little bit of water, probably you can do that. It makes sense for me to say Could I have some water? but it would not make sense for me to ask you to reach up to the ceiling. You would think that I’m joking or that I’m crazy. So, the BEFORE component specifies an ability condition, but in a different way. The idea is that the hearer, of course, has to be able to perform the act that is required. But that is not simply a pragmatic condition; it is knowledge that I have in the mind. So, it’s part of a cognitive model. That’s illustrated by questions like Can you do that for me?, Can you do this?, Can you do that?, or You can do that for me. Also, there is a desire condition. It would be foolish for me to ask you to do something that I don’t want you to do. So, it makes sense to have this second precondition; for example, in I would like you to answer the phone (it means ‘I want you to answer the phone’), Would you like to answer the phone?, and so on. Thus, we need the speaker’s or also the hearer’s desire as preconditions for the act of requesting, and they can be modeled cognitively. We have concepts, we have notions about them. They are stored in the mind. Then, they proposed another component of the request scenario, a second ingredient, which is the CORE. The speaker puts the hearer under the obligation to perform the act. This is very much the same as the essential condition

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auxiliary will, plus its associated tag, points to the willingness to perform the action. Figures 2 and 3 ABILITY FOR REQUEST PERFORM illustrate the metonymic activation of the TO request scenario THE basedACTION: on the ‘ability’ and ‘willingness’ component; 4 illustrates elements of the BEFORECan you X?,figure Can’t you X?, the Youmetonymic can X use of the AFTER component.

Target

REQUEST TO PERFORM AN ACTION

(Request scenario) Source ABILITY TO PERFORM AN ACTION (BEFORE component)

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Figure 2. Ability for request to perform an action Target

REQUEST TO PERFORM AN ACTION in traditional speech act theory. When you request someone to do something for you, you’re putting pressure on the person, and the person can say no. But (Request scenario) that is challenging to the speaker. So, there is a degree of pressure; there is a degree of obligation, as in, for example, Give me your newspaper! That is very strong, right? You wouldn’t like to say that. Could I have your newspaper?; that Source would be a more polite request with aTOsmaller degree of intensity. PERFORM THE ACTION WILLINGNESS Then, they propose the AFTER component, (BEFORE component)the third component. That contains the expectation that the act will be carried out, as in Will you open the door?, or You will open the or Open the door, will you? Figure 3. door, Willingness for request to perform an Even actiontag questions like Will you? and Can you? have to do with these conditions. If you think about it, when you say Open the door, can you?, can you activates the BEFORE condition. If you say Open the door, will you?, it’s the expectation that the action will Target REQUEST PERFORM AN ACTION be carried out. Or you could alsoTOthink about it from a different perspective, because will is ambiguous between desire and future. Will you means Do you (Request scenario) want to do it? and Do you want to do it? would be the desire precondition. This was more or less Panther and Thornburg’s idea. I think it’s a very good one. But before we talk about the strengths and weaknesses, look at the diaSource grams. These are diagrams inspired in Panther FUTURE ACTION and Thornburg’s proposal. You (AFTER component) of the whole scenario. The have the metonymic support for the activation BEFORE component, like Can you do that? or You can do that, specifying the Figure 4. A future for the that request to perform the metonymically action ability to perform an action or action addressing ability, stands for the whole request to perform an action. The explicit mention of one of the components of the scenario affords access for the hearer to the It isillocutionary the same with will you?, won’t you?: in thesuch willingness to perform the action whole category of ‘requesting’, a way that the utterance is effortlessly can stand for the whole scenario.

4

(Request scenario) Target

REQUEST TO PERFORM AN ACTION

Source (Request scenario) ABILITY TO PERFORM AN ACTION (BEFORE component)

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Source

ABILITY TO PERFORM AN ACTIONTHE ACTION: WILLINGNESS FOR REQUEST TO PERFORM (BEFORE component) Will you X?, Won’t you X? Figure 2. Ability for request to perform an action Target

TO PERFORM ANperform ACTION an action Figure 2.REQUEST Ability for request to

(Request scenario)

Target

REQUEST TO PERFORM AN ACTION

Source (Request scenario) WILLINGNESS TO PERFORM THE ACTION (BEFORE component)

Source

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Figure 3.WWillingness for request to perform an action ILLINGNESS TO PERFORM THE ACTION

(BEFORE component) Target

A FUTURE ACTION THE TO REQUEST TOANPERFORM THE an ACTION: FigureFOR 3. Willingness for request to perform action You will REQUEST PERFORM ACTION X, You are going to X (Request scenario)

Target

REQUEST TO PERFORM AN ACTION

Source

FUTURE scenario) ACTION (Request

(AFTER component) Figure 4. A future action for the request to perform the action

Source

FUTUREof ACTION The explicit mention of one of the components the scenario affords access for the hearer to the (AFTER component) whole illocutionary category of ‘requesting’, in such a way that the utterance is effortlessly

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4

Figure 4. A future action for the request to perform the action

The explicit mention of one of the components of the scenario affords access for the hearer to the the future action canofalso stand for the in the expressions wholeAnd illocutionary category ‘requesting’, in whole such ascenario way that utterancelike is effortlessly

You are going to do that and You will do that. 4 what we have is a scenario that is In Panther and Thornburg’s formulation, based on the Searlean conditions for speech acts to be possible. And then, we have the metonymic exploitation of those scenarios. It is the metonymy that provides the underlying inferential schema for us to derive the illocutionary meaning. And then, the assessment. The idea is a very good one, but of course, they didn’t claim that they had exhausted all the theoretical possibilities. They

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Assessment of the initial scenario-based approach to illocutionary meaning • It is a pioneering effort in dealing with illocutionary meaning from a CL perspective. • Beyond communicative needs, it introduces new motivating factors into the study of illocutionary meaning: • Conceptual organization in the form of scenarios. • Metonymy-supported inferencing. • It brings together research into pragmatics and cognition. • However, the initial approach does not take into account a host of factors that relate to how and why speech meaning is constructed, among them the inherent politeness or impoliteness of speech acts and how speech acts both regulate and depend on power relationships. figure 5

didn’t claim that they had solved the problem of illocutionary meaning from a cognitive-linguistic perspective. It was a sketchy proposal. Because it was like that, even though it was such a very interesting and pioneering effort, still, there were some problems. We are going to deal with some of them. As I said, it is a pioneering effort in dealing with illocutionary meaning, the first one that I know about in Cognitive Linguistics. It introduces new motivating factors into the study of illocutionary meaning: [[…]] the problem of conceptual organization is fixed, and [[we also have]] the idea of metonymysupported inferencing. Another strength of their account is that it brings together research into pragmatics with research into cognition. The two worlds are married. But there are many factors that they don’t take into account. For example, the inherent politeness or impoliteness of speech acts. If I say Can you do that for me?, that’s more polite than saying Do that for me! And I can be more polite if I use a more indirect expression like Do you think you could do that for me? or Would you mind doing that for me?. So, politeness phenomena were not contemplated in their theory, and other social factors were not contemplated either, so there’s something that is missing, and because those problems could be easily identified, a colleague of mine and myself tried to fix some of these problems. In a study that was published just a few years after Panther and Thornburg’s paper, also in the Journal of Pragmatics, in 2002 (Pérez & Ruiz de Mendoza 2002), we enriched their original account by introducing into it remarks on the power relationships between interlocutors, and introducing the

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The extended scenario-based approach • Developed in two stages: • In the first stage, Pérez & Ruiz de Mendoza (2002) specifically referred to the following variables in relation to directive speech acts: • The power relationship between interlocutors. • The degree of optionality conveyed by the illocutionary act. • The degree of politeness. • The degree of cost-benefit of the requested action. • These variables were postulated to interact with elements of the BEFORE, CORE, and AFTER components in the creation of speech act meaning.

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The first stage: interrelations between variables

• A speaker’s power determines his or her capacity to act in a way that is costly to the addressee and beneficial to the speaker. • The forcefulness of a directive act increases with the amount of power of the speaker over the addressee. • At the same time, the greater the forcefulness of a directive act, (i) the smaller the degree of choice for the addressee to avoid acting as directed without directly challenging the speaker. These interrelations have two interdependent pragmatic effects, which hinge on the choice variable: • Directivity effect: it arises from the degree of choice the hearer is given to refuse. A lesser degree of choice produces greater directivity, while greater choice lowers directivity: commanding has greater directive force than requesting than pleading. • Politeness effect: Politeness (or the lack thereof) arises from the degree of directivity of an utterance: greater directivity involves less politeness, while smaller directivity involves more politeness.

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optionality scale, which is very well known in pragmatic theories. We talked about politeness and the connection between illocutionary scenarios, degrees of politeness, and also the notion of cost and benefit, which was borrowed from work by Geoffrey Leech in pragmatics. We thought cost-benefit, which is a pragmatic scale from Geoffrey Leech’s point of view, from our point of view [[…]] could be a cultural convention of some sort, and therefore, the object of cognitive modeling. We introduced those components, and we respected the idea that we have these BEFORE, CORE, and AFTER ingredients in the creation of speech act meaning.

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So, we extended the scenario approach, and we created the extended scenario approach. Now this is simply a first stage; then there was a second stage that I first carried out by myself and then with the help of other colleagues. In the first stage, we had the notions of power, choice, and directivity (in connection with power) brought into the picture. So, think about it, how can we interrelate all those variables that we’re missing from Panther and Thornburg’s account? Think of “power”. A speaker’s power determines his or her capacity to act in a way that is costly to the addressee and beneficial to the speaker. So, there is a connection between “cost-and-benefit” and “power”. If I am a powerful person, I can probably say Do that for me! If I am not a powerful person, maybe I shouldn’t say that and use a more indirect approach, like Could you please help me?, Could you please do that for me?, or It would be a good idea if I could so and so. The idea is that “cost-and-benefit” and “power” are somehow interrelated. Second one: the forcefulness of a directive act increases with the amount of power of the speaker over the addressee. Again, a person in power—I think, for example, of a military context—can produce a command without any problem and everyone will stand to orders. [[There will be]] no problem about that. But in a context where you are with, for example, your friends, the power relationship does not really exist. There is solidarity rather than power. Because there is solidarity, an imperative is out of place. If you are with friends, you will not produce a command, you will not use the imperative; you will use other more informal approaches to get people or your friends to do things for you. You can use requests, of course, but very rarely commands. At the same time, the greater the forcefulness of the directivity of the act, the smaller the degree of choice for the addressee. Because we have a lot of power, if directivity goes up, the degree of choice of the addressee goes down. There is a balance, right? Those were observations that we made in the first stage of development of the scenario approach. And these interrelations here have two interdependent pragmatic effects which I think are important. They hinge on the choice variable. One is the directivity effect and the other the politeness effect, which are central to speech act theory. Directivity arises from the degree of choice that the hearer is given to refuse. In the military context, for example, there is no choice to refuse. In the context of a person being with his colleagues, friends, or his peers, there is a greater choice to refuse. A lesser degree of choice produces greater directivity, while greater choice lowers directivity. Commanding has a greater directive force than requesting, and requesting than pleading. So, we can have degrees of directivity, and those will be reflected by different categories of speech act. Then the politeness effect, or the lack of politeness (that is, impoliteness), arises from the degree of directivity of an utterance. Greater directivity involves

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lecture 7 The second stage: the centrality of cost-benefit relations • In the second stage, it was determined that: (1) Power and optionality (and consequently directivity and politeness effects) were ultimately dependent on cost-benefit relations, which were determined through socio-cultural convention. This gave rise to the formulation of a sociocultural cognitive model termed the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. (2) Besides directive scenarios, commissive and expressive speech acts were also conditioned by cost-benefit relations and as such they should be captured by the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. • The Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model is built by finding elements that illocutionary scenarios have in common and grouping them together into generalization patterns. • The Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model is exploited through metonymy-based reasoning schemas to give rise to illocutionary meaning effects. • The result is an integrated theory of illocutionary meaning construction that uses cognitive modeling to understand pragmatic inferencing.

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less politeness, and smaller directivity involves more politeness. That’s why imperative forms are usually impolite in directive speech acts, while indirect forms of approach are more polite, because indirect forms lower the degree of directivity: the lesser the directivity, the greater the politeness. This is the first development of Panther and Thornburg’s initial proposal. But there was a second stage of development, which I undertook by myself (almost). In this second stage, it was determined that we were going to discard power and optionality, not completely, but we were going to make them secondary variables rather than primary. In the first approach, everything was at the same level of importance, and then there were interrelations. But then, we realized that, because of the interrelations—because of the connections that we could make between the different variables—[[…]], some of the variables seemed to be a little bit more prominent. That’s the case of the notion of “costand-benefit”. If you think about it, directivity and politeness, which correlate with power and optionality, ultimately depend on cost and benefit. So, the greater the cost for the hearer of a speech act, and the greater the benefit for the speaker, the greater the directivity. For Do that for me! there is no way out, and you have no choice. My benefit goes up, and the cost to the hearer also goes up. They are equals and it depends on the relationship between speaker and hearer. If I ask a subordinate to do something for me and the subordinate has no choice to say no, I will get what I want. So, the benefit goes up and the cost goes up at the same time. But it depends on the speaker-hearer relationship. I don’t need to talk about power and optionality, because they are implied by the cost-benefit relationship. There is power, of course, and there is optionality.

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There is choice. But it can be deduced from the cost-benefit relationship in a communicative framework between speaker and hearer. So, from a theoretical perspective, I can dispense with those variables in the account and give them a secondary role. I also observed that besides directive scenarios, commissive and expressive speech acts were also regulated by cost-benefit relations, and this is a very important thing. It will be more evident later on as we examine more examples. But just to give you an idea, think of promises. In the case of promises, if I promise someone to do something for him or for her, [[for example,]] if I promised my son to buy him a new bicycle as he loves bicycles: You shall have a bicycle. Inherently, my promise is going to be costly for me, but beneficial for my son if he gets a bicycle, if the promise is fulfilled, of course (if I’m not a liar). So I’ll buy you a bicycle. or You shall have a bicycle, again, hinges on the idea of cost and benefit, and I can use Cost and Benefit, this cognitive model, to understand a commissive speech act like ‘making a promise’. And also, with respect to expressive speech acts, we have about the same. Expressive speech acts are attitudinal, but by expressing attitudes, I express how I feel, and people also have feelings about how I feel or about what I say. Imagine that I congratulate someone. I have a friend who got a promotion and I say: “Hey, I’m so glad. Congratulations on your promotion in your work.” That is psychologically good for the addressee. And I also feel good about it because I’m congratulating. So, the idea of “cost-and-benefit” is there: cost goes very low; it is all benefit, but in motivational, in psychological, in attitudinal terms, not in descriptive terms. If we go into that dimension, then expressive speech acts can also be explained, to a large extent, on the basis of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, which is already pointing us in that direction. Rather than talk about all those variables that we had in the extended scenario-based approach, why not simply postulate a Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model and see how it works?: the ins and outs of the cognitive model, a detailed description of how it works; and, of course, we have to understand that this is culture-bound. The cost-benefit idea changes with cultures, so this is more a description for an Anglo-oriented understanding of directivity, expressiveness, commissiveness, politeness, and so on. So, it is culture-bound, but I would say that, in general, [[despite]] the way of realizing—or the way of materializing—the Cost-Benefit Model, probably all cultures work on the basis of that variable, because in all cultures, we have power relationships. Thus, we put pressure on people. That’s simply universal human interaction. Probably, it is universal and then there are specific adaptations to cultures. Because you come from a different culture from my own, you will be able to see some differences, probably in the way you handle these variables from the way I handle them. But because

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you are conversant with the Anglo-Saxon world, you probably will understand the examples that I will give (all of them are in English). Now the result of reducing everything to the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model gives us an integrated theory of illocutionary meaning construction, because it uses cognitive modeling to understand pragmatic inferencing. What I’m doing here is not very different from what I did yesterday with attitudinal scenarios, not very different from what I did with descriptive scenarios, and not very different from what I did in my first talk when I discussed cognitive modeling. We have one single engine, one single set of mechanisms that allow us to deal with a broad range of different phenomena pertaining to the world of meaning construction. So, my actual goal is a unified theory of meaning construction which can be, of course, cross-linguistically valid too, and so on and so forth. But for the time being, I will restrict it to the examples that I use, which are mostly in English, or Spanish, or a few European languages. Occasionally, I have examples from other languages, but mainly European languages. I do not make any typological claim. I know that some of you may have that question in mind. I do not make any typological claim, but I can make some very specific local cross-linguistic claims on the basis of the work that we have been doing at the University of La Rioja. Now, let’s see how we can create this Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. I will tell you how it was created. We went through thousands of examples of sentences in context, and we manually annotated their illocutionary force, what we thought, as analysts, was their illusionary force. To analyze illusionary force, we

Illocutionary scenarios for requesting

Scenarios 1. A needs something. A makes this situation manifest to B. B takes care of A’s need. 2. A needs something. A makes B aware that he has the capacity to provide A with what he needs. B ignores A’s need. 3. A is asking for something from B, who is in a position of authority, by appealing to B’s willingness to help. B is moved to help. 4. A, who is not in real need, is asking B for help while pretending that he is in a needful situation. B is deceived and is moved to help.

Common elements (a) A person appears to be in need of something.

Examples I am cold, I have fear, I think I left my purse in your home, I wish I could find a way to solve this Mathematics problem.

(b) The person asks about the ability of the addressee to supply his needs.

Can you give me a sweater? Do you think I could have a sweater?

(c) The person makes other people aware of their ability to supply for his/her needs.

You could give me a sweater, couldn’t you?

(d) The person appeals to the Will you give me sweater? addressee’s willingness to help. (e) The addressee may be persuaded to help or not.

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You will give me a sweater, won’t you?

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do not have the same mechanisms that linguists have in other areas of research, so we need a lot of manual work. This is the same with metaphor, metonymy, and hyperbole. You can go through hundreds and sometimes thousands of examples, but ultimately, you have to decide as an analyst what is going on, on the basis of intuition. And some people have produced some alternative approaches. They are Ok, but from my point of view, we can go further with this approach than we could go with a more statistical approach. So, the research that we do is mainly qualitative. It is not quantitative. But, of course, complementary quantitative approaches that fix some of the problems here are welcome. Keep that in mind for those of you that are concerned with methodology: this is not quantitative even though we have used thousands of examples over three decades of research. We went to examples like these, and we tried to group the examples in ways that common patterns could emerge. Of course, we worked on the basis of trial and error very many times: this sentence is an example of what? And [[we]] tried to adapt the sentence and categorize it. Sometimes, it is a matter of debate. After struggling with examples for quite some time and a lot of debate, we grouped them from the point of view of the things that they reveal in terms of scenarios. If you take these examples, I am cold, I have fear, I think I left my purse in your home, I wish I could find a way to solve this mathematics problem, they all have something in common. There is someone that needs something. Someone is in need. And you have hundreds of examples like this with, of course, completely different syntactic configurations. We are not thinking of the syntax right now, we are thinking only of the meaning in context. In context, these examples show that someone needs something. Look at the second set: Can you give me a sweater?, Do you think I could have a sweater? Examples like these are connected to the ability condition. After all, John Searle and Panther and Thornburg—with the famous BEFORE component—were right. Sometimes, we request by making emphasis on someone’s ability to perform an action. Or we had examples like this: You could give me a sweater, couldn’t you?, which is a way of raising awareness about someone’s ability to supply for your needs as a speaker. You need a sweater as a speaker, and you say: You could give me a sweater, couldn’t you? (‘are you aware that you can provide for my need?’). Or in Will you give me your sweater? we have the willingness condition, and in very many examples like this. Then, You will give me a sweater, won’t you? is a case of ‘I want to persuade the addressee to help, but I’m not certain whether the addressee will help’. That is activated by that sentence.

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Illocutionary scenarios for ordering Scenarios Common elements 1. A needs something. A makes this (a) A person appears to be in situation manifest to B in such a need of something compelling way that B cannot refuse to perform the required action. (b) The person compels the addressee to perform the action 2. A, who has power to compel B to which satisfies his need do as he wishes, expresses his wishes to B in an authoritative way. (c) The addressee is under pressure to satisfy the speaker’s 3. A, who has authority over B, need directly urges B to act in a specified way. B performs the action.

Examples Don’t be told what to do. Make your bed at once.

You mind your own business, and leave this to me!

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These are the elements that they have in common, and they arise from context—over which we generalize a little bit—but they were very specific contexts in the texts from which we took the examples. So, in some contexts, which we call scenarios, we have: A needs something and makes the situation manifest to B, and B takes care of A’s need; or A needs something and makes B aware that he has the capacity to provide A with what he needs, and B—in that specific example—ignores A’s need; A is asking for something from B, who is in a position of authority, by appealing to B’s willingness to help; B is moved to help (but B could have not been moved to help; that was the example that we handled). And then in another one: A, who is not in real need, is asking B for help while pretending (a bad person) that he is in a needful situation, and B is deceived and moved to help. This is a case of a pretense request, and it has an effect. B helps and there was no need for help. We have many more scenarios. These are simply three that I give for the sake of illustration. There are very many. Out of those very many, we find these common elements and these realizations. What about ordering, the illocutionary scenario for ordering? We have some real-life scenarios: Someone needs something and makes the situation manifest to somebody else in a compelling way. So, B cannot refuse to perform the action. That is a possible scenario. Another possible scenario: A, who has power to compel B to do as he wishes, expresses his wishes to B in an authoritative way. And another one: A, who has authority over B, directly urges B to act in a specified way and B performs the action. And you can have very many more elements that these and others have in common (at least these three): a

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Illocutionary scenarios for advising Scenarios 1. A has a problem that he wants to solve but does not know how. A asks B, a friend of his, who gives A a viable option. 2. There is a situation that A believes is negative for B, a friend of his who is unaware of this. A warns B and gives him what he thinks is a viable solution.

Common elements a. A person appears to be in need of something.

Examples Why don’t you take an aspirin for your headache?

b. The person communicates to the hearer that there is a state of affairs which may be beneficial for him c. The hearer is expected to perform the action which is beneficial to himself.

I’d buy that house if I were you. Don’t be deceived by his elegant clothes.

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person appears to be in need of something, the person compels the addressee to perform the action which satisfies his need, and the addressee is under pressure to satisfy the speaker’s need. Do we have linguistic realizations of this scenario? Yes. For the first one: Don’t be told what to do. For the second one (the person compels the addressee): Make your bed at once. For the third one: You mind your own business, and leave this to me. This goes a little bit beyond the traditional approaches to speech acts, because, if you realize about it, when you say Don’t be told what to do, that looks like an order, but it is not a prototypical order in which you are going to compel someone to act in a certain way. It looks more like a piece of advice: ‘If I were in your shoes, that’s what I’d do. Please don’t be told what to do, act as I would act’. This is an order that shades off into a piece of advice. It is simply counseling. But I don’t need to classify the act as one of ordering or advising. I simply go to the scenario and find the elements of the scenario that I can activate linguistically, and that’s all. This approach is a way of dispensing with the classical traditional labels for speech acts. They’re useful and they’re convenient, but theoretically they don’t hold water. They are not necessary. You will see that more clearly when we see more examples. Let’s go forward to advising. We have a number of possible real-life scenarios. In one of them (I selected these only for convenience), A has a problem that he wants to solve but doesn’t know how to. A asks B, a friend of his, who gives A a viable option. Another one: there is a situation that A believes is negative for B, a friend of his, who is unaware of this; A warns B and gives him what he thinks is a viable solution. In general, these scenarios would call for the idea of

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Illocutionary scenarios for offering Scenarios 1. From A’s perspective, B is in need of something. A tells B that he will provide him with what he needs. 2. A tells B that he needs help. B tells A that he will help him. 3. A learns from a third party that B needs something. A tells B that he will provide him with what he seems to need.

Common elements A person is in need of something

Examples Do you want another cup of coffee? Have some more coffee.

The speaker shows his commitment to perform the action which satisfies the addressee’s need

I’ll do that for you.

The speaker shows his willingness to help

I would like to do that for you.

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advising. Which are the elements that these scenarios have in common? When a person appears to be in need of something, the person communicates to the hearer that there is a state of affairs that may be beneficial for him. And the hearer is expected to perform the action which is beneficial to himself. Concrete examples that activate these ideas [[can be]]: Why don’t you take an aspirin for your headache?, for a person appears to be in need of something (‘You appear to need something for your headache. Why don’t you take an aspirin?’). For the second one, the person communicates to the hearer that something is going to be beneficial: I’d buy that house if I were you, why not?. For the third one, where the hearer is expected to do something that is going to be good for himself: Don’t be deceived by his elegant clothes (don’t act in a way that will not benefit you). The case of offering. We have some specific scenarios like: from A’s perspective, B is in need of something. A tells B that he will provide him with what he needs. Another one: A tells B that he needs help, and B tells A that he will help him. Another one: A learns from a third party that B needs something. A tells B that he would provide him with what he seems to need. Common elements: A person is in need of something, realized by sentences like Do you want another cup of coffee? or Have some more coffee. The speaker shows his commitment (the second common element) to perform the action that satisfies the addressee’s need; for example, I’ll do that for you. The third common element is that the speaker shows his willingness to help: I’d like to do that for you. We go to warning. We have some scenarios: the speaker realizes that the hearer is going to act in a way that could be harmful to the hearer; the speaker

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Illocutionary scenarios for warning Scenarios 1. The speaker realizes that the hearer is going to act in a way that could be harmful to the hearer. The speaker tells the hearer about the potential harm of acting in such a way. 2. The speaker realizes that the hearer is going to act in such a way that he could do unintended harm to a third party. The speaker makes the hearer aware of this situation. 3. The hearer is involved in a situation that is doing harm to him, but he is surprisingly unaware of this. The speaker attempts to make the hearer aware.

Common elements Examples A person appears to be in That wire that you want to danger. touch is an electric wire. Be careful! Watch out! Stop drinking; it’s going to kill you. If you touch that wire, you’ll get a shock. The addressee is expected not You should stop drinking. to become involved in the non- I don’t think it is wise to beneficial state of affairs. shell out that much money when you’re still in debt. The speaker makes the addressee aware that there is a state of affairs that is not beneficial to that person.

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tells the hearer about the potential harm of acting in such a way; the speaker realizes that the hearer is going to act in such a way that he could do unintended harm to a third party; the speaker makes the hearer aware of this situation; then, the hearer is involved in a situation that is doing harm to him, but he is surprisingly unaware of this; the speaker attempts to make the hearer aware. Common elements: a person appears to be in danger; [[the]] second common element is that the speaker makes the addressee aware that there is a state of affairs that is not beneficial to that person; the third one is that the addressee is expected not to become involved in a non-beneficial state of affairs. Examples: That wire that you want to touch is an electric wire (there is a danger). The second one: Be careful! Watch out, Stop drinking! It’s going to kill you! If you touch that wire, you will get a shock. The third one: You should stop drinking (you’re doing something that is not beneficial for you and that is going to be a cost to you, that’s going to do you harm); I don’t think it is wise to shell out that much money when you are still in debt. The case of thanking. We have a couple of examples of scenarios: a person acts intentionally in a way that turns out to benefit the speaker, and the speaker expresses his gratitude to that person. Another scenario: the speaker feels that he has not been benefited by the hearer’s actions, but that it was his intention to act in his benefit, so the speaker acknowledges his positive feelings about the hearer’s intentions. Elements that these and other scenarios have in common: A has done his best to act in a way that is beneficial to B, as exemplified by Your work has been a great asset to our project. Then, B acknowledges that he has positive feelings about A’s efforts: I feel so good for all you’ve done for

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Illocutionary scenarios for thanking Scenarios 1. A person acts intentionally in a way that turns out to benefit the speaker. The speaker expresses his gratitude to that person. 2. The speaker feels that he has not been benefited by the hearer’s actions but that it was his intention to act in his benefit, so the speaker acknowledges his positive feelings about the hearer’s intentions.

Common elements A has done his best to act in a way that is beneficial to B

Examples Your work has been a great asset to our project in many ways.

B acknowledges that he has positive feelings about A’s efforts

I feel so good for all you’ve done for me.

B makes his positive feelings manifest to A.

All you’ve done for me has been great.

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Illocutionary scenarios for apologizing Scenarios 1. A feels that he has done harm to B. He is sorry about it and makes this manifest to B. B tries to play down the importance of the harmful event. 2. A knows he has hurt B’s feelings. A does not regret what he has done, but still prefers to make B believe that he regrets what he has done. B, who does not trust the sincerity of the offender's repentance, ignores the expression of regret. 3. A is not really sure if B has taken offence from his behavior and decides to express regret just in case. B reveals to A that no offence was taken.

Common elements A person detects the possibility of having done harm to another person.

Examples Maybe this was all wrong, was it?

The person shows his regret about what he has done.

I’m awfully sorry I couldn’t come.

The person’s sorrow may or may not be sincere.

Honestly, I regret it.

The other person may or may not accept the expression of regret.

It was nothing; don’t worry about it. Yes, sure, sure as shooting. When will you stop acting like a child!

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me; and B makes his positive feelings manifest to A by means of All you’ve done for me has been great. Apologizing. We have some scenarios. In one of them, A feels that he has done harm to B. He is sorry about it and makes this clear to B but B tries to play down the importance of the harmful event. Another one: A knows that he has hurt B’s feelings. A doesn’t regret what he’s done (another bad person), but still prefers to make B believe that he regrets what he has done (he’s pretending.). And B, who doesn’t trust the sincerity of the offender’s repentance, ignores the

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expressions of regret. That is a typical scenario. It happens. It’s a very frequent one. Another possibility: A is not really sure if B has taken offence from his behavior and decides to express regret just in case, but B reveals to A that no offense was taken anyway. Are there are elements that they share? Yes, there are. You always have a person that detects the possibility of having done harm to another person. Then the person shows his regret about what he’s done, and the person’s sorrow may or may not be sincere. And the other person may or may not accept the regret. Examples: for the first one, where you detect that you may have done harm to someone: Well, maybe this was all wrong, was it? The second one, I’m awfully sorry to show your regret about what you’ve done. The third one, expressing insincere sorrow (this is in context): Honestly, I regret it (out of context, it is impossible to know). And finally, the acceptance of the expression of regret: Okay, it was nothing; Don’t worry about it. Yes, sure as shooting, which is ironic. When will you stop acting like a child! Come on. They belong to the scenario of apologizing [[…]]. So, we are combining traditional speech of categories again, which means that categorizing, in terms of apologizing, offering, and so on, might not be a good idea after all, because there is a crisscross of categories. That will be sorted out. So, don’t worry, this is simply the stages. 1

Characteristics of Illocutionary Scenarios in the Extended Approach

It makes sense to work this way because you give analytical support to the theory, and at the same time you examine real data in context. You come up with generalizations, and then you try to match the generalizations with specific realizations. On doing that, you become aware that the starting point, the production of scenarios, according to the classical categorizations—like requesting, offering, commanding and so on—is probably not the best idea from a theoretical perspective, because a single utterance can [[instantiate]] several categories [[…]]. What are the characteristics of illocutionary scenarios in this extended approach? This refers to all the examples that we have examined. They are regulatory. Do you remember the labels, when we said we have descriptive, attitudinal, and regulatory scenarios? They’re all regulatory, and they are high-level, because we work at the level of abstractions over reality. And they are situational, because they involve interaction between participants. If we want to define

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• They are regulatory high-level situational cognitive models: based on social conventions, they are hearer-oriented and they specify how the speaker feels that speaker-hearer interaction should develop. • They have a socio-cultural grounding, although some of their socio-cultural characteristics may ultimately be grounded in bodily experience (e.g. refraining someone from doing something may involve either verbal or bodily action). • They are constructed by generalizing over a number of lower-level situational cognitive models depicting specific aspects of human interaction. For example, the notion of ‘offer’ derives from multiple experiences in our lives in which people identify other people’s needs and show their willingness to alleviate them. • They are formally “realized” by means of lexico-grammatical configurations. When a given illocutionary scenario is stably associated with a formal realization, an illocutionary construction emerges. • Their formal realization only exploits part of the conceptual structure of the scenarios. As a consequence, the conceptual material called upon by formal expression supplies a metonymic point of access to the rest of the scenario.

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these scenarios, we would have to say illocutionary scenarios are regulatory high-level situational cognitive models. And that could be an adequate description. They’re based on social conventions. They’re hearer-oriented. They specify how the speaker feels that the speaker-hearer interaction should develop. So, we take the point of view of the speaker to understand the speakerhearer connection. They are grounded in culture. They are socio-culturally grounded. And we know that socio-cultural grounding can be traced back to bodily experience. So, we have a grounding of the grounding. Our culture is connected to bodily experience. For example, we understand compulsion in terms of force dynamics: we put pressure on people. So, it is image schematic thinking. For those of you who want to go into that, there is a possibility of making a connection between this type of analysis and force dynamics, image-schematic thinking, and bodily experience. Of course, this goes way beyond what Searle and scholars doing speech act theory would have ever proposed, but it is an interesting connection. If you read Johnson’s book on image schemas, he makes a few passing remarks—if I remember rightly—about this idea. They are constructed by generalizing over a number of lower-level situational cognitive models. Those were in the diagram, [[on]] the left. Those were concrete situations; you draw from them generic-level structure, and then you look for specific realizations of that generic-level structure. So, the notion of ‘offer’, for example, derives from multiple experiences in our lives in which people identify other people’s needs and show their willingness to alleviate them. That is common to all cases of offering.

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They are formally realized by means of lexico-grammatical configurations. When a given illocutionary scenario is associated in a stable way with a formal realization, what do we have? A construction. This approach underlies the notion of construction. But we need a high-degree of conventionalization of the form-meaning pairing. And, interestingly, there is a metonymic component. You will see that more clearly in more detail in a minute. Their formal realization only exploits part of the conceptual structure of the scenario. The linguistic expression only gives you part of the conceptual representation that affords access to the rest of the scenario. So, we have metonymy. 2

Advantages of the Scenario-Based Approach

These are some of the advantages of the scenario-based approach over previous approaches including the development by Panther and Thornburg. If you think about the conditions postulated by John Searle in the 1970s for speech acts, the satisfaction conditions, these were labeled preparatory, sincerity, propositional content, and essential conditions. The preparatory condition was that the hearer has to be able to do the action; the sincerity condition is that the speaker wants the hearer to do the action; the propositional content condition is that the speaker predicates a future act of the hearer. This is for the case of requests. And the essential condition is that the utterance counts as an attempt by the speaker to get the hearer to do the action. Avoiding circularity and overlaps • It avoids circularity and overlaps in the Searlean approach, e.g. satisfaction conditions for requests: (i) Preparatory condition: H is able to do A. (ii) Sincerity condition: S wants H to do A. (iii) Propositional content condition: S predicates a future act A of H. (iv) Essential condition: The utterance counts as an attempt by the speaker to get H to do A. o Circularity in saying, on the basis of the essential condition, that an utterance is a felicitous request (i.e. asking someone to do something), if it counts as an attempt to get someone to do something. o Overlap: the satisfaction conditions are shared by other directive acts; e.g. ordering is also absurd if the hearer is unable or does not want to perform the action, or if the act is not a future one. The satisfaction conditions are unable to actually discriminate among different illocutionary values.

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A unified framework for direct and indirect speech acts • Indirect speech acts (Searle): conventional linguistic exploitations of one of the conditions; e.g. indirect requests: • Preparatory condition: Can you pass the salt?, You can pass the salt. • Propositional content condition: You will help me, won’t you? • Essential condition: e.g. by making H aware that there are good reasons for a state of affairs to obtain (We all feel his contract should be terminated), or by directly expressing a desire (I would like that task finished tomorrow). • However, the range of utterances that can qualify as requests is broader; e.g. I think I left my purse in your home. I wish I could find a way to solve this Mathematics problem. Ø S points to a need in the hope of getting some help. • The request scenario contains this element too and can thus be argued to underlie the preferred (or default) illocutionary interpretation of these two sentences.

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Now, there is a problem of circularity, if you focus on the essential condition. The essential condition for requesting is that what you say is an attempt by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. You’re asking someone to do something, which is requesting. So, you’re going circular by including in the definition what you define. You request by requesting. But, if what you have is a scenario-based approach, you simply make a connection between what people say and the scenario. That’s all. You don’t need to specify these conditions. And then there is a degree of overlap. Think, for example, of the act of ordering. It is so close to requesting that it has the same preparatory, sincerity, propositional content, and essential conditions. There is no difference. If I want someone to do something, that person has to be able to do it. When I ask things that I want people to do, it has to be a future act: do something in the future. And of course, it counts as an attempt by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. So, there is no difference between the conditions for requests and the conditions for ordering, or the conditions for begging, or many other directive speech acts. So, we avoid the overlap by, again, linking linguistic expressions up with illocutionary scenarios. Another benefit of the scenario-based approach is that we can unify, and clarify also, at the same time, the famous distinction between direct and indirect speech acts. There are several approaches to the distinction between direct and indirect, but what John Searle said is that the grammar will activate a given speech act, but then, you can transform that into something else, and that would be an indirect speech act. So, for John Searle, Can you pass the salt? would be indirect, because it is a question, and you’re building a request on the basis of a question. Well, some other scholars have argued that

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[[it is not]], because this is conventional: Can you pass the salt? and Can you X? Please! convey directly the speech act meaning. But this is the Searlean approach. And closer to this idea that Can you pass the salt? is not an indirect speech act is the proposal that we have a form-meaning pairing that is stable and can you requests are constructions. So, a can you form generally gives you access to a requestive meaning, and there is no problem. That is clearer when you add please, for example, or tags: Can you do that, please? There is no way out. That has to be a request. With can you, it could be an information question. Sometimes, there is ambiguity. But in the same way as with lexical items, if I say bank, you don’t know if I’m talking about the financial institution or the bank of a river [[…]]. But in context, there is no problem. I use bank in a sentence and you know what I’m talking about. Well, the same with can you. I can say Can you open the door? You know that is a request. But Can you speak English? That’s not a request. But in context, it could become a request if I want you to show off your ability to speak English: Can you speak English just for a while? I want to listen to you speaking in English. Sometimes, we have this ambiguity, but there is no problem for it in the same way as we accept that there can be a degree of ambiguity with lexical items. I think that a scenario-based approach has no problem in making a distinction between direct and indirect [[speech acts]], because everything is the same. There is no such distinction. You use linguistic form to afford access to a scenario, and then you know the speech act category that you have (if you want to talk about speech act categories, which is not necessary, as I pointed out before). The scenario-based approach also solves the problem of making a clear distinction between these constructions, and non-constructional approaches which are based on using our imagination. We are more original when we say something like I think I left my purse in your home, if what you want is someone to solve the puzzle for you and tell you: Yes, it’s here; I have it; let me give it to you. It’s like Please give me my purse back, because I think I left it there; and this is indirect, but from the point of view of a scenario-based approach, you’re talking about a problem you have and people will help you. You don’t need to say that there is a difference between saying Can you give me my purse? I think I left it there, or simply I left it there; I have a problem. There is essentially no difference other than the fact that, when you use can you or could you, you’re using a construction that is specifically designed for that purpose by speakers. And when you say something like I left my purse in your home, you don’t use a construction that is directly associated to a requestive meaning. The other example: I wish I could find a way to solve this mathematics problem, where you point to a need in the hope of getting some help. The idea of having scenarios shows the differences. It solves the problem of trying to draw

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the borderline between direct and indirect speech acts. It is simply a matter of “do we have constructional meaning directly designed for this or do we not?” If we don’t, that’s what some people call an indirect speech act, that’s all. And if we do, we have a conventional mechanism. 3

The Cost-Benefit Idealized Cognitive Model1

Then, the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, I hope you will be able to “digest” this. I have a technical description of each item of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, and also, for the sake of easiness, I have an informal description. And you will love the informal description, right? Because it’s clearer. This is simply social convention—social and cultural convention. Do we have a rule in the English world that says “change the world for good if you can?” Well, at least we have linguistic evidence that we have that rule. Can we express that formally? Yes, of course, we can. By using the right terminology with an if-then schema,—it is a condition-consequence schema—we can formulate all the items that make up the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, and we can see how they’re exploited linguistically on the basis of this longer formulation: “If it is manifest to A that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B, and if A has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then A should do so”. And this

Change the world for good if you can (a) If it is manifest to A that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B, and if A has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then A should do so. Why didn’t you help her when you knew she was in real trouble. You should have helped her; she was having a hard time. But couldn’t you just give a hand? You could have helped her, couldn’t you? Don’t you feel that you could have looked after your parents better?

figure 19 1  Ruiz de Mendoza & Baicchi 2007, Baicchi & Ruiz de Mendoza 2010, Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014.

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Don’t do harm (b) If it is manifest to A that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to B, then A is not expected to bring it about. Why did you hit your little sister? So you just had to pull a dirty trick, right? Do you know what you just did to me? You have broken her heart, did you know that? Please, don’t do any harm to her again, I beg you You may think I’m bulletproof, but I’m not.

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covers any possibility of “change the world for good if you can.” Examples like Why didn’t you help her when you knew she was in real trouble? are based on this idea that A should do so. You didn’t do it. Come on! You should have helped her; she was having a hard time: you detected a problem, you had the capacity to solve the problem and you didn’t do it; you should have done it: But couldn’t you just give a hand? (wow, recriminating someone!): he could have helped; he had the ability to do it; he didn’t do it; he should have. You could have helped her, couldn’t you?: the same; he should have done it because he knew he could, and so on. Don’t you feel that you could have looked after your parents before? (think about the consequences): you should be aware that you should have looked after your parents better, but you didn’t do it; don’t you feel that you should do it? This sentence hinges on the specification that you have to do things that are good for others if you are able to do them. Another item. I call it informally the “don’t do harm” element. Technically, the definition is: “If it is manifest to A that a potential state of affairs is not beneficial to B, then A is not expected to bring it about”. In other words, you’re not going to do harm to people, or you are not going to do things that are costly to people: Why did you hit your little sister? So, you just had to pull a dirty trick, right? Do you know what you just did to me? You have broken her heart; did you know that? Please, don’t do any harm to her again, I beg you. You may think I’m bulletproof, but I’m not. These are clear examples of the idea of “don’t do harm”. Sometimes, when we do harm, we are challenged by the speaker. At other times they simply make us aware that we did harm. They exploit the same idea. .

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Do good (c) If it is manifest to A that a potential state of affairs is beneficial to B, then A is expected to bring it about. Sorry, I didn’t know you needed the blanket I shall buy you a diamond ring Have some more cake; it’s tasty! Look what I have done for you. I hope you’ll enjoy this song I’ve composed for you. You sure will like this one; listen to it! figure 21

We go ahead with “do good”: “If it is manifest to A that a potential state of affairs is beneficial to B, then A is expected to bring it about”: Sorry, I didn’t know you needed the blanket (if I had known, I would have done you good). I shall buy you a diamond ring (promise). So, we have an apology here, and we have a promise here. And it hinges on the same part of the cognitive model. Have some more cake (an offer); it’s tasty (it’s going to be good for you). Look what I have done for you (the same). I hope this reminds the addressee that you have done good for the addressee. This is not a promise. This is not an offer. You’re simply making the addressee aware that you have been acting according to the social rules. I hope you’ll enjoy this song I’ve composed for you (I’ve been doing good. I boast about it, right? I’ve been doing good for you). And You sure will like this one; listen to it. All of these exploit the same idea. “Tell others what you need”: “If it is manifest to A that it is not manifest to B that a potential state of affairs is, or is regarded as, beneficial for A, A is expected to make this manifest to B”. In other words, tell people that you have needs, right? Sentences like You know, I do need your help to make this business go, It could be good for me, I really need someone to buy these stocks for me, People think that’s what I need, and That would make me rich. Those are very clear examples. Another item: “Tell others what is good for them”: “If it is manifest to A that it is not manifest to B that a potential state of affairs is beneficial for B, A is expected to make this manifest to B”. This remedy will cure your acne exemplifies this; also, I’d buy those stocks if I were you, Don’t mess around with those guys

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Tell others what you need (d) If it is manifest to A that it is not manifest to B that a potential state of affairs is (regarded as) beneficial for A, A is expected to make this manifest to B. You know, I do need your help to make this business go. It could be good for me. I really need someone to buy those stocks from me. People think that’s what I need. That would make me rich. figure 22

Tell others what is good for them (e) If it is manifest to A that it is not manifest to B that a potential state of affairs is beneficial for B, A is expected to make this manifest to B. This remedy will cure your acne. I’d buy those stocks if I were you. Don’t mess around with those guys or you’ll be in trouble. You will definitely benefit through that program.

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or you’ll be in trouble, You will definitely benefit through that program. So, this is connected to the traditional idea of giving advice in different ways. “Tell others you feel good for them”. The technical description is: “If it is manifest to A that a state of affairs is beneficial to B, and B has brought it about, A should feel pleased about it and make this feeling manifest to B”. Congratulating people: I’m so glad you passed all your exams, It’s good to hear you got it working, Congratulations!, Good job!, and many other examples.

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Tell others you feel good for them (f) If it is manifest to A that a state of affairs is beneficial to B and B has brought it about, A should feel pleased about it and make this feeling manifest to B. I’m so glad you passed all your exams! It’s good to hear you got it working. Congratulations! Good job!

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Tell others you are thankful for what they have done (g) If it is manifest to B that A has changed a state of affairs to B’s benefit, B should feel grateful about A’s action and make this feeling manifest to B. Thank you for what you’ve done for me! I really appreciate all your efforts. I feel you are a blessing in my life.

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“Tell others you are thankful for what they have done”: “If it is manifest to B that A has changed the state of affairs to B’s benefit, B should feel grateful about A’s action and make this feeling manifest to B”. These are all expressive acts, but they fall under the idea of cost-and-benefit: Thank you for what you’ve done for me, I really appreciate all your efforts, I feel you are a blessing in my life. So, you were beneficial to me and I feel thankful for that. It is my emotional reaction to one element of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model.

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Tell others you regret what you have done wrong (h) If it is manifest to A that A has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b), and (c) of the ‘cost-benefit’ model, A should feel regretful about this situation and make this feeling manifest to B. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize! I regret all the harm I did to you. I really feel bad about what I said. I promise I won’t do something like that to you again.

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Tell others you forgive them for doing wrong to you (i) If it is manifest to B that A has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b), and (c) of the ‘cost-benefit’ model and A has made his regret manifest to B, B should feel forgiveness for A’s inaction and make this feeling manifest to A. OK, forget about it. I know it won’t happen again. That’s fine, that’s fine, I know you’re really sorry. OK, I forgive you, but don’t do it again.

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“Tell others you regret what you have done wrong”, as in I’m sorry!, I regret all that I did, I feel really bad, I promise I will not do it again. The technical description is: “If it is manifest to A that A has not acted as directed by parts (a), (b) and (c) of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model (in other words, the parts that tell us that we have to do good to other people or to solve problems that other people have), A should feel regretful about this situation and make it manifest to B”.

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Tell others how bad you feel for their challenges (j) If it is manifest to A and B that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B but A has no power to change it to B’s benefit, still A should feel sympathy with B over the non-beneficial state of affairs and make this manifest to B. I know how you feel, but you know I can’t help you this time. Sadly, that’s way beyond my power. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. It’s a terrible situation, I’m sorry!

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We’re coming to the end: “tell others you forgive them for doing wrong to you”, as in No problem, Forget about it, It won’t happen again; things like that: “If it is manifest to B that A has not acted as directed, again, by those parts about doing good to people of the Cost-Benefit model, and A has made his regret manifest to B, B should feel forgiveness for A’s inaction and make this feeling manifest to A” (“I forgive you” is the idea). Then, “tell others how bad you feel for their challenges”. This is sympathizing, right?: I know how you feel, but you know I can’t help you this time; Sadly, that’s way beyond my power; I wish I could help you, but I can’t; It’s a terrible situation, I’m so sorry! “If it is manifest to A and B that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B, but A has no power to change it to B’s benefit, still A should feel sympathy with B over the non-beneficial state of affairs and make it manifest to B”. “Tell others how good you feel for the good things you have done” (expressing pride): “If it is manifest to A that A is responsible for a certain state of affairs to B to A’s benefit, A may feel proud about the situation and make it manifest to B”: I have passed all my exams, all of them!, I have convinced my boss and this time I’ll have a salary raise!, I feel so good I could finish the marathon (expressing our pride). Which are the characteristics of this Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model? These characteristics are an improvement—show evidence of an improvement— over the previous formulations. One is that it generalizes over specific characteristics of illusionary scenarios. So, we can dispense with the idea of classical categories for scenarios, like requesting, offering, and so on, but, at the same

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Tell others how good you feel for the good things you have done (k) If it is manifest to A that A is responsible for a certain state of affairs to be to A’s benefit, A may feel proud about this situation and make it manifest to B. I have passed all my exams, all of them! I have convinced my boss and this time I’ll have a salary raise I feel so good I could finish the marathon!

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Characteristics of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model • It generalizes over specific characteristics of illocutionary scenarios of different kinds. • It finds common structure, logical implications, and interactional connections among such scenarios. • It cuts across traditional speech act categories; e.g. some directive and commissive acts respond to part (a) of the ICM ) (’change the world for good if you can’): (1) Help your sister > order (2) Do you think you could help your sister? > request (3) Have some more cake! > offer (4) I shall help you tomorrow > promise (5) You should have helped your sister > opinion > reprimand (reproving) (6) Why didn’t you help your sister? > question > reprimand (reproving) • Examples (5) and (6) are not respectively the expression of an opinion or a simple informative question but a challenge to the addressee because he has not acted in a way that benefits his sister.

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time, for convenience, if we want to use one of those categories, we are capable of identifying the elements of the illocutionary scenario in any way. Remember that we have this preliminary stage where we analyze different contexts, then things in common, and linguistic realizations. That is more or less connected to the traditional categories. It is only when we take one step into further abstraction and postulate the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model that we discard the traditional categories altogether. So, we can take one step back into the origin of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive model, how it was constructed, and we will still

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lecture 7 Metonymy-supported inferencing based on the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model • The Searlean distinction between direct and indirect speech acts does not represent a real analytical situation: • For Searle, an indirect act is one that arises from changing the illocutionary value of a direct act; e.g. Can you do that for me? is indirect since it converts a question into a request. • This claim misses the fact that Can you X for me? is a highly conventional, cognitively entrenched constructional form to express a request. • A more realistic approach differentiates degrees of conventionalization or entrenchment of linguistic expressions to convey certain speech acts values. • When a formal expression does not afford direct access to an illocutionary value, the hearer falls back on the use of reasoning schemas, which are parallel to those used for the production of low-level implicational meaning.

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have the traditional categories. They are not theoretically a great idea, but they can be preserved in the account, because they are at that stage of the postulation of the cognitive model. And it finds common structure, logical implications, and interactional connections among those scenarios. That’s what we did before when we analyzed concrete scenarios, elements in common, and realizations. It cuts across traditional speech act categories. This is an essential point. Note that some directive and commissive acts respond to part (a) of the ICM: the part that said “change the world for good if you can”. Help your sister! would be part (a), but it’s an order. Do you think you could help your sister? It’s a request. Have some more cake. It’s an offer. I shall help you tomorrow. It’s a promise. You should have helped your sister. It is an opinion, and it can be converted into reproving (a reprimand). Why didn’t you help your sister? It is a question, but it is also a way of reproving. So, we can dispense with the traditional categories and simply make connections between the relevant part of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model and specific linguistic expressions. What about “metonymy”? Remember that we had metonymy in the first approach by Panther and Thornburg. And I think that we can bring metonymy into the picture here too. I first need to mention something about the Searlean approach and the distinction between direct and indirect speech acts. I already mentioned this to some extent. I already discussed this. It is not a real analytical situation. This is what Searle said: “an indirect act is one that arises from changing the illocutionary value of a direct act” as in Can you do that for me? He would say this is an indirect act. But this claim misses the fact that Can

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Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model (high-level situational)

• If it is manifest to A that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B, and if A has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then A should do so (You should have helped your sister)

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you do that for me? is highly conventional. It is a cognitively entrenched constructional form to express requests. And what is a more realistic approach?: one that differentiates degrees of conventionalization or entrenchment of linguistic expressions to convey certain speech acts values. And I would say that Can you X for me?, from the data that we have handled, is almost necessarily always a request. The degree of entrenchment is close to a hundred percent. When a formal expression, however, does not afford direct access to an illocutionary value, what does a hearer do? The hearer uses reasoning schemas, which are parallel to those that we use in implicature. Let’s see how that happens. I take simply one part of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. It is the part where you say that you should do good things for people: “If it is manifest to A that a particular state of affairs is not beneficial to B, and if A has the capacity to change that state of affairs, then A should do so”, as in You should have helped your sister. And we work out the reasoning schema. And this looks very much like the one that we had yesterday for implicature and also for other implicated forms of meaning of an attitudinal kind. Do we have a premise? Yes, the premise is drawn from the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model: “If B is in need, and A has the capacity to satisfy B’s need, then A should do so”. This is a simplified version of one of the items of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. What is the explicit assumption? Imagine that you need water and you say: Ah, I’m thirsty. I am in need of water. The [[explicit assumption is the]] idea that B is in need of water. The conclusion [[is]] that A should cater for B’s need by giving him some

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Reasoning schema based on part of the ability stipulation of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model Premise (implicit assumption): If B is in need, and A has the capacity to satisfy B’s need, then A should do so. Explicit assumption: B is in need [of water] Conclusion (implicated assumption): A should cater for B’s need [by giving him some water].

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Ability!stipulation!of!the! Cost9Benefit!Cognitive!Model! The! speaker!is! in!need![of! water]!

The! addressee! should! satisfy!the! speaker’s! need![of! water]!

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water, because if you have the capacity to do it, you should do so. If A is in need, then do it, which is the conclusion, do it. So, we have a reasoning schema behind it, and we also have metonymy support for that inferential schema. In the metonymy, “the speaker is in need” activates the relevant item of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, which is the ability stipulation in this case, and then that gives further access to the idea that “you have to satisfy the speaker’s need”. The linguistic expression only gives you part; then the rest is derived metonymically. And it follows the same expansion-reduction pattern that we are familiar with now.

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Conclusions • It is possible to study illocutionary meaning in terms of cognitive modeling as the result of the metonymic activation of illocutionary scenarios on the basis of the point of access provided by the content of linguistic expressions. • Illocutionary scenarios are high-level situational cognitive models constructed by drawing common conceptual structure from lower-level every-day situations. • Illocutionary scenarios contain expectations about social behavior that can be abstracted away and grouped into even higher-level configurations such as the stipulations of the Cost-Benefit Idealized Cognitive Model. • The stipulations of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model can be exploited linguistically in order to produce expressions with a given illocutionary value. • Such expressions typically provide partial access to the stipulations of the CostBenefit Cognitive Model, which means that metonymic expansion activity is necessary for full understanding of the intended illocutionary value.

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Conclusions. It is possible to study illocutionary meaning in terms of cognitive modeling as the result of the metonymic activation of illocutionary scenarios, on the basis of the point of access provided by the content of the linguistic expressions. So, what we have in mind is not the syntax, except in cases of very well-entrenched constructions, but what we have in mind is more the content. And we make connections between the content of the expression and the context, and with that information put together, we activate the relevant part of the illocutionary scenario. That’s a metonymic operation. Illocutionary scenarios are high-level situational cognitive models. They are constructed by drawing common conceptual structure from lower-level everyday situations. Illocutionary scenarios contain expectations about social behavior that can be abstracted away and grouped into even higher-level configurations, such as the stipulations of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model. So, the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model is at the highest possible level that we have been able to produce. The stipulations of this model can be exploited linguistically to produce expressions with a given illocutionary value, which is the case of illocutionary constructions or other expressions that are on the way to becoming illocutionary constructions. Such expressions typically provide partial access, this is crucial, only partial access to the stipulations of the Cost-Benefit Cognitive Model, which means that we need metonymic expansion to have access to the whole cognitive model and then focus on the part of the cognitive model that is going to yield the relevant meaning interpretation, which is a reduction process.

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References • Baicchi, A., & Ruiz de Mendoza, F. J. (2010). The cognitive grounding of illocutionary constructions within the theoretical perspective of the Lexical Constructional Model. Textus. English Studies in Italy, 23(3), 543– 563. • Panther, K.-U., & Thornburg, L. (1998). A cognitive approach to inferencing in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 30, 755–769. • Ruiz de Mendoza, F. J., & Baicchi, A. (2007). Illocutionary Constructions: Cognitive motivation and linguistic realization. In I. Kecskes, & L. Horn (Eds.), Explorations in pragmatics: Linguistic, cognitive, and intercultural aspects (pp. 95–128). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. • Ruiz de Mendoza, F.J., Galera, A. (2014). Cognitive Modeling. A Linguistic Perspective. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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And this is all. We have some references here. Some of the work that was carried out for this research was done in conjunction with Annalisa Baicchi, previously from Pavia University and now she is in Geneva, and Alicia Galera Masegosa, who is at the University of Almería. She’s a former doctoral student of mine, and she’s the co-author of the Cognitive Modeling book that I recommended you to read. So, thank you, this is all.

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Discourse Constructions and Cognitive Modeling Thank you. It’s a privilege to be here in this hall at this university and to go on with one more lecture on cognitive modeling. And this is another area of cognitive modeling that I have been exploring with the help of one of my doctoral students, whose name is Aneider Iza, from the University of La Rioja. She wrote a whole thesis on the topic of discourse constructions, and she went into some details that of course I can’t go into today, but I’m going to [[deal with]] the basics. I have a word of caution to give. One is that the understanding of discourse that I am going to use is slightly different from what you will find in general in discourse studies. I am going to ignore intently the distinction between connectivity in syntax and discourse marking. I am going to level out the differences, because what the data that we have collected show is that, when we come to logical relationships between predications, it doesn’t really matter if we realize them, by means of, for example, coordination or subordination in syntax, or if we use some form of discourse marking. To give you a very simple example of this, think of the contrast between however (or nevertheless), which some people consider has to be used at the beginning of a sentence, or in the middle of a sentence between commas, separated off by a comma with a different prosodic contour, and the conjunction but. They convey roughly the same meaning. Of course, there is a different syntactic relation, but the meaning they convey, what they designate, is essentially the same. So, I’m going to level out that difference on purpose. And of course, I don’t want to say that syntax doesn’t have to be taken into account. But what I want to say is that when we go into studying “connectivity” and therefore discourse constructions, it doesn’t really matter how we realize them as much as what underlies such realizations.

All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555785

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_009

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Organizing the constructicon • The constructicon is the set of all constructions of a language. • It can be organized from at least two perspectives: • Levels of description; e.g. argument structure, implicational structure, illocutionary structure, discourse structure. • Formal or meaning resemblance relations within the same level, which give rise to constructional families or networks. For example, the causedmotion and the resultative constructions are sister constructions as extensions of the transitive and telic instransitive constructions: • The blacksmith hammered the metal > The blacksmith hammered the metal flat / into different shapes (RESULTATIVE) • The river froze > The river froze solid (RESULTATIVE) • The blacksmith hammered the metal into the hose (CAUSED MOTION) • The climbers hammered the metal into the rock (CAUSED MOTION) • Each descriptive level arises from the use of a basic cognitive model type: low or high level situational or non-situational cognitive models.

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So that is for the starting point. And I will try to make connections between the notion of discourse construction—but remember, this is a broad notion of discourse construction—and the notion of cognitive modeling. We will begin by talking about the constructicon. What is the constructicon of a language? If you go into construction grammar and all the construction grammar literature, you will come across the term constructicon quite a few times. The idea is that, in the same way as we store lexical information [[and]] morphological information, we store other types of information that are also constructional in nature. If you think of argument structure constructions, they form a network of relations among one another and they are stored in our minds in some way that they can be retrieved for purposes of communication in much the same way as lexical items and other forms of structure. The constructicon is the set of all constructions of a language. The problem is that the constructicon cannot be a “rag bag” where you put everything and anything can happen. The constructicon needs to have some form of organization, and we will look into that a bit later. I think that, in general, there are two perspectives from which we can organize the constructicon. One is the level of description and you know about the traditional levels of description in linguistics. If we go to meaning construction, the levels of description would be argument structure (and my assumption is that lexical structure and an argument structure are about in the same area, the same domain of investigation or research), and then we have implicational structure, illocutionary structure, and finally we can have discourse structure.

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You may remember that I talked about several types of basic cognitive modeling. There are connections between those types of cognitive models and these four levels of description, which are also basic. Argument structure has to do with the low-level non-situational cognitive models that we have been talking about. Implicational structure has to do with low-level situational cognitive models. Illocutionary structure has to do with high-level situational cognitive models. And what about discourse structure? Can you make a guess about it? Well, you have the notes, so you have the solution (if you have the handouts). But the idea is that at least one aspect of discourse structure (because discourse structure is much more complex than what I will show today), at least one essential aspect of discourse structure—that has to do with logical connectivity—makes use of the same resources as the first-level, argument structure. So, what we have is simply non-situational cognitive models, but this time they’re going to be high-level. With lexical structure, we have low-level [[non-situational cognitive models]]. With argument structure constructions, we have high-level non-situational [[cognitive models]], and here in the case of discourse structure, we have high-level cognitive models, and they are nonsituational too. So, we have a very neat relationship between the different levels of analysis and the different basic types of cognitive models that we have discussed in previous lectures. Now, this is one of the perspectives, the levels of description. This perspective is connected, remember this, with the basic types of cognitive models. But we have another form of organizing the constructicon which is through formal or meaning resemblance relations within one of these levels. And this gives rise to constructional families or constructional networks. This is connectivity across one domain of inquiry. You may take as an example the very well-known caused-motion construction in connection with the resultative construction. These are sister constructions. They are very similar to each other. They share a lot. They are either transitive or intransitive. And they have a component of telicity, an end point. And the end point of these constructions is going to be the result, whether the result takes the form of a change of state, or it takes the form of a change of location. But we have a result. Take these few examples, which are stock examples in the literature: The blacksmith hammered the metal would be transitive. We can extend The blacksmith hammered the metal into The blacksmith hammered the metal flat, or, by making use of a metaphor, The blacksmith hammered the metal into different shapes. Into different shapes and flat play the same function. From a conceptual perspective, they are different, but they play the same constructional function. They are the result of the action of hammering the metal. This is an example of

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the figurative use of the caused-motion construction, the case of into different shapes, and the other one is a stock example of the resultative construction using an adjective. In the case of the second one, The river froze, that’s intransitive, isn’t it? We can say The river froze solid and specify a little bit further the type of result that we get when the river freezes. If we simply say The river froze, we take it for granted that at least most of it is frozen. But if we emphasize that The river froze solid, and we specify the result, we make it clear that there is no part of the river that has not frozen. The blacksmith hammered the metal into the hose: that’s a case of physical caused motion. The climbers hammered the metal into the rock: another case of physical motion. These four [[or]] five examples of resultative and caused motion uses belong together, and we could say that they create some sort of network. There is some sort of connectivity among them. We could say they are sister constructions. They resemble each other a lot. They could be a family of constructions. The interesting thing is that these four constructions that relate to one another, because they have important similarities, work at the same level. They are argument structure constructions. Do you remember that yesterday we talked about the What’s X doing Y? construction? That construction belongs to the implicational level. And that construction could be considered sister to other constructions like those illustrated by sentences like Who’s been messing with my laptop?, or Who do you think you are?, What have you been doing here?, and so on. We have different formal realizations of a common core concept. And because we have that common background, then these formal realizations may profile differently against that base or that background. That’s the idea about creating families of constructions. We may have different profiles against different combinations of bases, maybe one base, maybe more than one base. And then we can see the profile in terms of those bases. We will see that that happens also at the discourse level. By discourse level, I remind you that I understand connections between predications, whether they’re marked syntactically or by means of discourse connectors. Next slide, here. So. this is a summary of what I just said. The argumentstructure level is based on high-level non-situational cognitive models like, for example, X causes Y to move Z. He pushed the table into a corner would be a nice example. Implicational structure: the example that I just cited Who’s been messing with my computer/my laptop? is based on a low-level situational cognitive model. Illocutionary structure, based on high-level situational cognitive models: If I were you, I would do something; If I were you, I would wait a bit longer.

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Levels of description of constructional families • Argument structure => based on high-level non-situational cognitive models; e.g. X causes Y to move Z (e.g. He pushed the table into a corner). • Implicational structure => based on low-level situational cognitive models; Who’s been Ving X? (e.g. Who’s been messing with my computer?). • Illocutionary structure => based on high-level situational cognitive models; If I were you, I’d X (e.g. If I were you, I’d wait a bit longer). • Discourse structure => based on relationships between high-level nonsituational cognitive models; X Let Alone Y (e.g. I won’t eat that garbage, let alone pay for it).

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And our focus of attention in this lecture, discourse structure, [[is]] based on relationships between high-level non-situational cognitive models. In much the same way as we have at the argument-structure level, we use high-level non-situational cognitive models, but here we will pair those high-level nonsituational cognitive models. So, this is about the connectivity of the elements that we find at the argument-structure level. A nice example that comes from the literature is the X let alone Y construction, as in the sentence I won’t eat that garbage, let alone pay for it. The idea conveyed by this construction, which is idiomatic, is that, well, I am not going to do X and of course, I’m not going to do Y; and the likelihood that I fall into the temptation of doing Y is smaller than the likelihood that I do X. I won’t eat that garbage, much less pay for it could be another sister realization of this idea. To understand discourse constructions, or discourse connectivity in this way, we need to first understand the notion of relational meaning. What is relational meaning? Because these discourse constructions profile against relations that we can set up across different types of concepts. Relational meaning results from bringing together, into a coherent frame, different but related assumptions, each of which can be construed as being self-standing, or different aspects or elements of the same assumption that are thus given prominence against the background of other assumptions. If we look at the examples, we will understand what I just said. Take She came home late; her parents punished her. This is a cause-consequence connection. She came home late is the reason why her parents punished her.

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• Relational meaning results from bringing together into a broader coherent frame: (i) Different but related assumptions each of which can be construed as being selfstanding. She came home late; her parents punished her (cause-consequence). She must have come home late; her parents punished her (conclusion-evidence). She came home late, but her parents didn’t punish her (contrast). (ii) Different aspects or elements of the same assumption that are thus given prominence against a background of other assumptions: He is old but strong (exception) He doesn’t feel good; in other words, he is ill (restatement by specification) He wore a white shirt and a tie (complementary contrast) • When two or more assumption types are brought together on a systematic basis, a steady discourse relation arises. • Discourse constructions code selected aspects of conventional discourse relations.

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Take the second one: She must have come home late; her parents punished her. ‘She must have come home late’ is the conclusion and ‘her parents punished her’ is the evidence for that conclusion. We have a conclusion-evidence connection. She came home late, but her parents didn’t punish her. This is a matter of contrast between She came home and the expectation that we would have that her parents would punish her, following world knowledge conventions. But that breaks our expectations and but indicates it is a warning. It is like a signal that something that is going to counteract our expectations is going to be provided for us by way of information. The idea is that her parents should have punished her, [[but]] they didn’t. So, there is a contrast between the information that we have in the first clause and what actually happened. These are different assumptions, but they are related. And each of those assumptions could be self-standing. She came home late can stand by itself. There is no problem about that. Or Her parents punished her [[can do the same]]. Then the second way of creating relational meaning is not by relating full assumptions, but by relating aspects or elements of the same assumption. Take the example He is old but strong, which is a case of exception. Then, He doesn’t feel good. In other words, he is ill. This is a case of restatement by specification. And then, He wore a white shirt and a tie. This is a case of complementary contrast. We have one same assumption in each of these three examples, but different syntactic realizations and different types of connectors. One is a conjunction; the other one is a discourse marker. And then we have in the third one another conjunction. So, I will ignore the difference between conjunctions

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and discourse markers, as I said before, and focus on the type of connection, the type of relational meaning. What happens when two or more assumption types are brought together on a systematic basis? We obtain steady discourse relations: cause-consequence, conclusion-evidence, and contrast. If they happen across multiple cases of discourse connections, we can say that these are discourse patterns. These are patterns of connectivity. And we may think that because they happen a lot (they are frequent), they are entrenched in our minds. And if they are frequent and entrenched, we are probably going to use them constructionally. We will have formal realizations for those relational patterns. Discourse constructions, what they do is they code selected aspects of conventional discourse relations. [[As for]] the discourse connection that I just mentioned, even [[though]] the labels have been produced intuitively, by looking at some examples, they may make sense. They look very traditional labels. They may not come as a shock to anyone. You understand contrast, conclusion, evidence, cause, consequence, specification; no problems about the labels. But there are so many types of discourse connections. When we categorize linguistic phenomena, we may fall into the trap of creating redundancies and overlap. That’s a problem. We should avoid that. And one way to try to avoid it is to be systematic in handling tons and tons of examples. And well, we have been doing that in my research team. And there was overlap, anyway, in all our categorizations. So, we decided to try a complementary approach to avoid those redundancies, because we didn’t want to go crazy because of our work. So, what we did is that we said, “OK, let’s look at other accounts of connectivity and see the labels and categories that they have used and see if we can come up with something that will satisfy both approaches, both parties”. We found some work in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Could you imagine that? In Systemic Functional Linguistics, they do not have a typology of discourse relations, but they have a typology of what they call clause complexes, which is coordination and subordination, and also juxtaposition. We found that Michael Halliday and his collaborators, probably by going through quite a few examples of the English language, had come up with at least three broad areas of organization of data that made a lot of sense and were consistent with the patterns that we had been working on. Halliday provided us with a framework where we could fit all of our data in a very nice way without creating any sharp discrepancy or inconsistency. But it introduced a further level of organization, of improvement in the organization of our data. Halliday and Matthiessen of course deal only with what we call discourse logical-semantic relations. The label “discourse” is not in Halliday’s account of these connections. Of course, it doesn’t deal with other aspects of

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Information-based discourse relations • The grounds for a typology of discourse relations has been provided by the logico-semantic relations distinguished in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) for the description of clause complexes. • This extension is possible for the discourse logico-semantic relations (then, because, but), but not for other aspects of discourse marking such as interpersonal (e.g. look, exactly, wow) or metacognitive (e.g. oh!, indicating realization) relations. • Following Halliday & Matthiessen, three broad areas can be distinguished: • Elaboration: they make the information in the second element address all or part of the information in the first element. • Extension: the information in the second element either adds to or takes away (partially or totally) from the information in the first element. • Enhancement: the information provided by the second element qualifies the information in the first.

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discourse marking, like interpersonal uses, as when you say exactly, wow, look, or metacognitive expressions like oh, indicating that you realize that something has happened. It has nothing to do with that interpersonal or personal dimension of language. The account that we were interested in was one of connectivity, so, it had to refer to the logical semantic relations that he establishes for connectivity in grammar, but that we think can be carried over to any type of discourse connectivity in so far as we remain within the logical semantic relations domain. So, following Halliday and Matthiessen, we distinguish with them three broad areas of organization of connectivity. One is called elaboration, another one is the extension, and the third one is enhancement. The first one, where we have two elements, X and Y, is about making the second element Y address all or part of the information that we have in the first element. [[For]] the second one, you will have examples in a minute. [[The]] second one, you have again, X and Y, and Y, the second element, adds information to the first element X, or takes away from the first element, either partially or totally. And then, enhancement is about providing information that qualifies the information in the other element. So, we have Y saying [[that]] the information in the first element has these other parameters, and it’s simply a further specification or qualification of the information in the first element. With these three ideas in mind, we are going to go to some examples. We have to define discourse constructions, which is a task that I hate to do. It’s so difficult to come up with the right definition. Even if you have a clear idea in mind of what it is like, it’s still complex.

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Discourse constructions • They are idiomatic constructions with fixed and variable elements where the fixed elements capture relational meaning grounded in high-level cognitive models (e.g. addition, exemplification, contrast, cause-consequence, etc.). • Examples: X Let Alone Y (e.g. I won’t eat that garbage, much less pay for it) => X either expresses or implicates a negative situation and Y is considered less likely to happen than X. X as is evidenced by Y (e.g. This threat is continuing to this day, as is evidenced by the recent attacks in Indonesia and Israel); X on condition that Y (e.g. She said she'd help with the costumes on condition that she would get ten free tickets).

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Now be careful about this. We use the word “idiomatic” in a very special way. Idiomatic is [[used]] in the sense of non-compositional, not only in the sense of non-transparent. It’s when you have X and Y and they relate in such a way that “X and Y” is not “X and Y”, [[but]] there is something else. So, it is this idea. We would define them as idiomatic constructions, if we understand idiomatic in that sense, with fixed and variable elements, where the fixed elements capture relational meaning grounded in high-level cognitive models. By way of illustration of relations grounded in high-level cognitive models of this kind, we have addition, exemplification, contrast, [[and]] cause-consequence. So the labels that we have used before in an intuitive way, yes, would fit this description perfectly. They are idiomatic constructions, like let alone or much less. They say that X and Y relate in a specific way. And they say something else that you cannot derive from X and Y, and they capture relational meaning. This relational meaning is grounded in high-level cognitive modeling of a nonsituational kind. One example is the X Let Alone Y construction that we already mentioned or the X much less Y construction, which is close to [[the former]]. And the idea is that X either expresses or implicates some negative situation, and Y is considered less likely to happen than X. You’re not going to eat the food and you are not going to pay for it, but it is even less likely that you will pay for it than that you eat it. Another example could be X as is evidenced by Y, which is a case of exemplification. For example, This threat is continuing to this day, as is evidenced by the recent attacks in Indonesia and Israel (or as is exemplified by).

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Another one, which is a conditional construction, is X on condition that Y or X if Y: She said she’d help with the costumes on condition that she would get ten free tickets. 1

Elaboration

So, you have a definition and some examples of relations, and also some examples of constructions that are based on those relations. Remember that we talked about these three broad areas? Elaboration is the first one in Halliday and Matthiessen’s account. Let’s go into the first one: elaboration. You have a chart here [refers to Figure 6] of discourse relations that would fall within this generic notion of elaboration. The first relation is restatement. Some basic constructional layouts for restatement are X, In Other Words Y (for example, She has run out of money; in other words, she is broke, which means that X and Y are kind of synonymous, at least to a degree), or X That (Is To) Say Y. How can we define this relationship? Well, the information in Y is fully or partially equivalent to the information in X. [[The]] second one is comment, with the basic constructional layout of X which Y. The example: Only the driver survived the accident, which is still under investigation. Here the information in the Y element addresses all or part of the information in the X element. That is what we understand by a remark or a comment. Discourse relation Restatement

Some basic constructional layouts X, In Other Words Y; X, That Is (To Say) Y

Comment

X, Which Y

Specification

X V know/say/think. That Y

Exemplification

X As Is Illustrated/ Evidenced/ Exemplified By Y

Contrast

X But Y/ X, however Y/ X

Comparison X, Y Too; X, So Is/Does Y

figure 6

Description

Example

The information in Y is fully or partially equivalent to the information in X The information in Y addresses all or part of the information in X

She has run out of money; in other words, she is broke

The information in Y is totally or partially in conflict with the information in X The information in Y is similar to the information in X

He has a New York accent; however, he was born in Texas Mary is careless and so Jane

Only the driver survived the accident, which is still under investigation The information in Y gives details on We all knew that a cyclone the kind of state of affairs that the was coming cognizer in X has represented in his mind The information in Y exemplifies the Our cultural diversity is under information in X threat as is illustrated by language loss

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[[The]] third one is specification, like X Vknow/say/think That Y. For example, We all knew that a cyclone was coming, which is about the same as saying We all knew something: a cyclone was coming. We have the same type of mental connectivity. So, we don’t really need the ‘that clause’. It is simply a matter of specification. If you say We all knew something, something is generic. It is vague. We have to parameterize the meaning of something. And the following clause that gives access to a whole predication specifies the first clause. The information in Y gives details on the kind of a state of affairs that the cognizer in X has represented in his mind. Remember that this works when the verb, after the X part of the construction, is a verb of knowing, saying or thinking: know that, say that, think that. [[The fourth one is]] exemplification: X As Is Illustrated/ Evidenced/ Exemplified By Y. [[For]] example, Our cultural diversity is under threat as is illustrated by language loss. The description: the information in Y exemplifies the information in X, not the other way around. Then contrast: X But Y/X, however Y/X. The information in Y is totally or partially in conflict with the information in X: He has a New York accent; however, he was born in Texas. You could say He has a New York accent, but he was born in Texas. [[The last one is]] comparison: X, Y Too; X, So Is/ Does Y. For example, Mary is careless and so is Jane. And with another word, you would have and so does, right? The information in Y in the second clause is similar to the information in X and that’s why you find similarities between them. This is not the same as restatement, where what you do is simply reformulate a thought in a different way. Here you say that X and Y can be compared, [[because]] they’re similar. 2

Extension

The second set of relations fall under the label of extension. That was the second broad category in Halliday and Matthiessen’s account. We have these three discourse relations connected to this idea. One is the relation of addition, illustrated by the construction X And Y which is a very simple construction. And there is a caveat about this description of the construction. This is simply the constructional description, if we take into account the argument structure meaning of the predications that we relate. But the word and—I can give you an example—can have a whole range of meanings that depend on how you understand and in context. So, this is simply the most basic addition meaning of and, and of course we can give it further pragmatically motivated shades of meaning. Consider the example I wore a hat and sprayed my scalp every few hours. This combines two items of information. But

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Some basic constructional layouts

Description

Example

The information in Y is added I wore a hat and sprayed to the information in X in a my scalp every few hours way that preserves conceptual consistency

Addition

X And Y

Exception

X Except (For)/ With The The information in Y cancels I like the new candidate Exception of Y out part of the information in except for his foreign X policy

Alternatio Either X Or Y n

The information in Y cancels out all of the information in X (contrastive alternation) or complements it (complementary alternation)

Either he's evil, or he's a fool (contrastive) He is neither evil nor a fool (complementary)

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of course, you could say something like John came and Mary left, with the suggestion that because John came, Mary left. So, and would be causal in a specific context. You have to be careful about and. This is a form of realization construction when you simply bring together two pieces of information at the predicational level, but you can add further pragmatic meaning to it. And is one of the items that changes a lot, depending on the context. It’s very generic. So, it has a great ability to be parameterized or specified in different ways. But did I give the description? The description is that the information in the second element has to be added to the information in the first element in a way that preserves conceptual consistency. Then, we have another discourse connection, which is the relationship of exception, exemplified by X Except For Y or X With The Exception of Y. Here the information in Y, the second element, cancels out part of the information in the first X element, as in the sentence I like the new candidate except for his foreign policy. Then finally, the alternation discourse relation. Either X Or Y is one of the ways of realizing this alternation. You will see at the end of the talk that we have very many others, because I will focus on that. Here the information in Y cancels out all the information in X. That’s the case of contrastive alternation. Or it can complement the information in X and that would be a variant called the complementary alternation construction. To give a couple of examples: Either he is evil or he’s a fool. That’s contrastive, and one excludes the other. But

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in the case of He is neither evil nor a fool, they are complementary. One does not exclude the other, because neither works. 3

Enhancement

Let’s look at enhancement now, the third one. We have these four discourse relations connected to enhancement. Remember that enhancement is about qualifying further what was said. So, we have constructions of time, location, cause, and condition. Time: After X, Y/ Y After X; Before X, Y/Y Before X; When X, Y/Y When X; X At The Same Time as Y. One simple example: After he had walked for another hour, he felt unbearably thirsty. But you could relate this by means of before. Or you could relate this by means of when and so on. You only have to change the order of the clauses. And that’s all. The information in Y relates temporarily to the information in X. That’s the description. Location: X Where Y or X Exactly/Just Where Y. The information in Y relates spatially to the information in X as in He found the map exactly where he had left it many years before. Cause: X Because/Since Y, X Because of Y. The information in Y, the second element, is the reason why the information in X is true: Many teenagers join Discourse relation

Some basic constructional layouts

Description

Example

Time

After X, Y/ Y After X; Before X, Y/ Y Before X; When X, Y/Y When X; X At The Same Time as Y

The information in Y relates After he had walked for temporally to the information another hour, he felt in X unbearably thirsty

Location

X (Exactly/Just) Where Y

The information in Y relates He found the map spatially to the information in exactly where he had left X it many years before

Cause

X Because/Since Y X Because of Y

The information in Y is the Many teenagers join reason why the information in gangs because they need X holds to fill emotional needs

Condition

X On Condition That /(Only) The information in Y is a Entry is granted on If Y condition for the information condition that you do in X to hold not work full time

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Profiling in language • Profile/base relations are part of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar. Consider three different ways of understanding the notion of ‘plane’ within different contexts: • Stationed on the runway > we either expect the plane to be about to take off or to have just landed after flying between locations, setc. • Flying > we envisage the passengers in their seats reading, sleeping, having a light snack, etc. • On the assembly line > the plane is not a plane yet: it is being built on the basis of a blueprint; we think of workers and engineers taking part in the process, each with a specific role. • Each context provides a different base domain for the notion of plane to be understood. The plane is the profiled entity, i.e. the designated entity, in each of these conceptual contexts or base cognitive domains. The way we picture this designated entity in our minds is different for each base domain. • A given profiled domain (what is designated) can have active zones: in a flying plane, the active zone can be the interior of the plane if we think of the passengers and crew.

figure 9

gangs because they need to fill emotional needs. The reason why they join the gangs is that they have to fill these emotional needs. And finally, condition: X On Condition That/(Only)If Y, which is a variant. Example: Entry is granted on condition that you do not work full time. The information in the second element, in Y, is a condition for the information in the first element to hold true. Now let’s go back to a notion that I brought up yesterday. By way of reviewing this notion, it’s again the notion of profiling in language. We talked about profiles and bases. We hope you’ll remember (some faces here are new). So, it could be good to have this very brief review of the idea of profiling. This comes from Cognitive Grammar, the idea of profile/base relations, and an example will help. Think of the notion of ‘airplane’ and think of it within three different contexts: one context, the plane stationed on the runway; another context, the plane flying; another context, the plane on the assembly line, so even before it is a plane. If we activate the scenario of the plane stationed on the runway, we either expect the plane to be about to take off or to have just landed after flying. If we think of the flying context and we are inside the plane, we think of the passengers, their seats, and we think of the flight attendants. Maybe the passengers are reading, sleeping, watching a movie, or having a snack. If we think of the plane on the assembly line, the plane is not a plane. But it is a plane [[since]] we call it a plane. It is being built on the basis of a blueprint. And we think of workers and engineers taking part in the process, each with his or her specific role. So, we have different contexts that allow us to look at the same concept

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from different perspectives. You can say that the concept of plane profiles the flying machine. But we think of that concept differently, depending on what base concept we have. There is one further idea that was introduced by Langacker in Cognitive Grammar, which is the idea of active zones. For any designated concept, there can be active zones. In a flying plane, the active zone can be, for example, the interior of the plane, if we think of the passengers and the crew. But it could be the exterior of the plane, if we look at the flying plane from the ground. So, we can have different active zones. If I’m drinking out of this bottle of water (I’m holding the bottle now), the active zone is this part of the bottle. And when I drink out of it, the neck of the bottle and my lips are more prominent, so they become active zones. We will use these three notions, profile, base, and active zone, to clarify some issues in the way that we handle constructional variability at the discourse level. You will have observed that we have for one same relationship more than one construction, and even within one construction, we may have some variants. I think that, if we understand the constructions as profiles, the discourse relation that underlies them as bases, and the small differences within one same construction as active zones, we have a good account of how conceptualization takes place at this level of constructional organization. The basic ideas are here on this slide of what I’m going to talk about next. One is that discourse relations underlie the meaning part of discourse constructions. That is essential. I have called them the base structure. At the level of form such relational meaning is realized by the fixed elements of the Constructional discourse profiling

• Discourse relations underlie the meaning part of discourse constructions. • At the level of form, such relational meaning is realized by the fixed elements of the construction. • In turn, each fixed element profiles the specific way in which the relational meaning in question is to be understood: • E.g. both only if and on condition that set up a condition connection between the constructional variables in their corresponding constructions. However, Only if profiles the conditional discourse connection in such a way that exceptions area impossible, while on condition that leaves the door open for exceptions: Admission to the program is granted only if the applicant has a university degree. ??Exceptions to this regulation are stated by individual departments. Admission to the program is granted on condition that the applicant has a university degree. Exceptions to this regulation are stated by individual departments.

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Families of conceptual categories • A constructional family is set up on the basis of the Wittgensteinian notion of family resemblance relationships. • Family resemblances are set up on the basis of partial overlapping similarities among conceptual items. They are easy to determine for lexical categories: oA robin is a good example of bird, i.e. it is a prototypical bird (“S” shape, beak and feathers, relatively small, can fly, perches on trees). oOstriches are also birds, but they cannot fly, they can run fast and are very big. oA penguin is also a bird, but it cannot fly and has no feathers. It is also relatively big. • There are overlapping similarities between ostriches and penguins, but there are also differences; i.e. there are family resemblances between them, which allow us to categorize them as birds. figure 11

construction. That would still be the base. In turn, each fixed element profiles the specific way in which the relational meaning is going to be perspectivized (it is going to be understood). A couple of examples may shed some light on this idea. Consider only if and on condition that. Both of them work on the basis of the condition connection that we saw before. We have a discourse relation underlying their use. However, there is a difference between them. Only if, this one, profiles the conditional discourse connection in such a way that exceptions are impossible. Look at this example: Admission to the program is granted only if the applicant has a university degree. So, that excludes any other possibility. If you want to add something like Exceptions to this regulation are stated by …, no, you can’t do that. It doesn’t make sense. It’s inconsistent. But with on condition that we don’t have that restriction. It leaves the door open for exceptions. Look at this. Admission to the program is granted on condition that the applicant has a university degree. Exceptions to this regulation are stated by individual departments. There is no problem. Then, the notion of families, which I mentioned before, is needed now. A constructional family can be set up on the basis of the notion of family resemblance relationships, which is a very old notion in the philosophy of language. And cognitive linguists love this notion. It’s very useful analytically. How do we set up family resemblances? We do that on the basis of the partial overlap of similarities among conceptual items. It is very easy to do that for lexical categories. It is not as easy to do that when we are dealing with constructions from the perspective of the analyst. In the case of the lexicon, you

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Constructional families

• Constructions can be grouped in families if there are degrees of resemblance among them. • A well-know example is the resultative family, which is a family of argument-structure constructions (Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004) • intransitive resultative (The pond froze solid), • the transitive resultative (The gardener watered the flowers flat), • the unselected transitive resultative (They drank the pub dry), • the fake reflexive resultative (We yelled ourselves hoarse) > these constructions have in common their intrinsic telicity, but other properties change: the result can be seen as the end-point of a process, of a controlled activity or of an instigated action figure 12

will see that there is no problem. You take the case of a robin, an ostrich, and a penguin. And well, a robin is a very good example of bird, a prototype of bird. The robin has the S shape, the beak and feathers. It is relatively small. It can fly, perches on trees, and so on. Ostriches are also birds, but they cannot fly. So, one of the features here is missing. And they can run fast like other animals other than birds, on ground. And they are very big, unlike prototypical birds. And then the penguin is also a bird, but it cannot fly and has no feathers. And it is also relatively big. So, it’s less prototypical. There are overlapping similarities between ostriches and penguins, but there are also differences. That is to say, there are some family resemblances between them, and that allows us to talk about them by the label “birds”. So, this is the idea of family resemblance in the case of lexical categories. What about constructions? Well, we talked before about constructional families and we have here some examples of members of a family of constructions. These labels and the examples are borrowed from Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004), a very nice paper on resultative constructions. And we have the intransitive resultative. We saw before the example of The pond froze solid or The river froze solid. The transitive resultative: The gardener watered the flowers flat. The unselected transitive resultative: They drank the pub dry. It’s “unselected” because you don’t drink pubs, you drink water; so drink selects water. That is the idea behind the label “unselected”. And the [[next is the]] fake reflexive resultative. When you say We yelled ourselves hoarse, ourselves is a fake reflexive: you don’t yell at yourself. You yell, and by yelling over and over again, you become hoarse. So, it’s a fake reflexive.

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Realizational variability: the exemplification family • Discourse constructions have broad realizational variability for a same profilebase relationship; e.g. A further example of this phenomenon is provided by the recently discovered trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea. ([Previous topical texti]; A (further)/An additional/One more example of Xi is provided/supplied by/found in (connection to) Y) => exemplification is topical This phenomenon is further exemplified by the recent discovery of the transNeptunian dwarf planet Haumea [Previous topical texti]; Xi is (further/additionally) exemplified by Y) => exemplification is topical The recent discovery of the trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea further exemplifies this phenomenon. [Previous topical texti]; Xi (further/additionally) exemplifies Y) => exemplification is focal

figure 13

Now these constructions seem to be different, but at the same time, they have some elements in common. There is a degree of overlap among them. I would assume that, first, we have their intrinsic telicity. And also, there are other properties. So, the result can be seen as the end point of a process, as in the case of The pond froze solid. Or, the result can be the endpoint of a controlled activity: They drank the pub dry; or of an instigated action: We yelled ourselves hoarse. So, we have an overlap. And also, we have divergences. We have similarities. We have differences. And because we have the similarities and differences, we have some reason to say they may belong together to some extent. They could be part of a constructional family. We go to discourse constructions and we think of, for example, the let alone, the much less construction [[and]] either or, all these constructions that I have exemplified before. We’re going to take one case, the case of exemplification. With these constructions, what we find is that interestingly, in the case of discourse, discourse constructions have a very broad realizational variability for the same profile-base relationship. Take this example. I have manipulated the example on purpose. The example is not mine, but then I have manipulated it. I must confess that. The original example is A further example of this phenomenon (this is a science paper) is provided by the recently discovered trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea. This is simply exemplifying further a phenomenon that had already been exemplified before. You see that? And the invariant element in my manipulation

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is going to be what you see in bold typeface on the screen, that is, the recent discovery of the trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea. And I have discovered that I have not kept the same. No, I have changed the phrase. I’m sorry, but the content is the same. You have the recently discovered dwarf planet or the recent discovery of the dwarf planet, but it’s about the same. So, ignore that small difference, which is a mistake in manipulating the sentence and focus on the part here that is in italics, namely a further example of this phenomenon is provided by. I want you to focus your attention on that, not on the bold typeface part. Below the sentence, you have a dissection in discourse-analytic terms of how topic and focus work for this utterance. There is some previous topical text that is not provided here and it is indexed as i. And then, we have, the connector, a further/ an additional/ one more example of X (coindexed with the previous topical text) is provided / supplied by / found in (connection to) Y. What does this mean? That exemplification here is topical in the same way as whatever came before. Some examples have been provided, and then one additional example, one more example, and a further example is provided or supplied or found in, and then we provide the example in the variable Y. So, keep this in mind, exemplification, in this use of the construction is topical. Now go to the second variant of a sentence: This phenomenon is further exemplified by the recent discovery, and so on and so forth. This phenomenon is further exemplified by has, again, previous topical text: X (which is coindexed with the previous topical text) is further/additionally exemplified by Y. Again, exemplification is topical. But now we go to the third example. I have changed the order of the elements and we have: The recent discovery of the trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea further exemplifies this phenomenon. Again, we have previous topical text with the previous examples on the phenomenon, and then X (co-indexed with the previous topical text) and further/additionally exemplifies Y. And now the quality of further exemplifies this phenomenon is one of a focal element of the utterance. So, we have changed the order [[and]] we have changed the focal element of the utterance. What happens when we play with the topical and focal status of an utterance with respect to the previous discourse? In the case of discourse constructions, my assumption is that if we have a change in the topic/focus arrangement of the utterance by means of a constructional arrangement, we may have a constructional variant. This is expressed

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Are all realizational variants constructions? • If a realizational variant brings about changes in focus, the variant is a construction in its own right: A further example of X is provided by Y, X is further exemplified by Y, and X further exemplifies Y are constructional variants within the same exemplification family. • This is not so when changes are irrelevant, like the choice between further/additional in (1), which does not affect either the profile-base exemplification relationship or its focal structure. Therefore, it does not give rise to a new construction.

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here. If our relational variant brings about changes in focus, the variant is a construction in its own right. So, A further example of X is provided by Y, X is further exemplified by Y and X further exemplifies Y are constructional variants within the same exemplification family. However, sometimes we have other changes that do not affect the topic/ focus status of the elements of the utterance. Let me call those changes irrelevant from the point of view of discourse arrangement. When those changes are irrelevant from that perspective, maybe not from other perspectives, but from the perspective of how we handle discourse information (for example, the choice between further and additional in the first sentence: additional evidence, further evidence), this doesn’t affect either the profile-base exemplification relationship or the focal structure and we do not consider that a new construction. And now we’re going to go, in some detail, into the complementary alternation construction. We have an alternation, for example, when we say X or Y, [[or]] either X or Y. Now, think again of the sentence I won’t eat that garbage; let alone pay for it, or much less pay for it, or still less pay for it, or not even pay for it, or never mind pay for it. We have quite a few choices. Right? What happens when we set up the connection between X and Y in this way? This is not a matter of either … or only. We have an alternation, as in either … or, but either … or negative, of course (I will not do X; I will not do Y). But there is something else. There is some degree of contrast between X and Y. When you say I won’t eat that garbage, you are emphatic about what you don’t want to do, but you

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Complementary alternation (Iza 2015) • X much less Y; X let alone Y; X still less Y; X never mind Y; Not X even less Y; X in particular Y; X leave alone Y • I won’t eat that garbage; let alone/much less/still less/not even/never mind/etc. pay for it.

• The base domain for this profiled relation: a complementary alternation, i.e. X and Y are two different states of affairs such that Y adds to X on the basis of a subjective speaker’s judgment. • Profile: a complementary alternation according to which X and Y are two situations such that Y is less likely to happen than X . • Other nuances of meaning arise from different active zones within the same profile/base relationship.

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still admit that there might be a remote chance that you ate the garbage, trash food, for example. When you add let alone pay for it, you’re certain that you’re not going to pay for it. So, the likelihood of eating the garbage is a bit higher, even though only slightly, a bit higher than the likelihood that he will pay for the food. Isn’t that interesting? This is not only a matter of either … or, whether positive or negative. It is a matter of either … or and something else. And, and a contrast between the likelihood of X and Y. The base domain for this profiled relation is what we can call the complementary alternation: X and Y are two different states of affairs, such that Y adds to X on the basis of a subjective speaker’s judgment. The profile is a complementary alternation according to which X and Y are two situations such that Y is less likely to happen than X. There can be other nuances of meaning. Yes, there can. Look at this. We have let alone, we have still less, never mind. So, we may have different shades of meaning arising from the use of different connectors here. But they can be attributed to active zone activation within the profile, in connection with the profile-base relationship. Let’s look at this in some more detail. Compare, for the sake of simplicity, only these two, let alone and never mind. Think about it. Let alone and never mind draw our attention to the idea that whatever Y adds to X is specifically set apart as unique. So, they have this feature in common. But with let alone, I would say that we have [look at me] this idea of “Okay, we will leave this alone” (let alone, it’s aside). With never mind is “We don’t think about it”. So, it’s two different roads that lead to Rome, two different ways of achieving the same

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Let alone/never mind vs. much less • Let alone and never mind draw our attention to the idea that whatever Y adds to X is specifically set apart as unique. • Much less and still less are focused on the possibility of going up or down on a scale of probability. • But let alone and never mind have different active zones: let alone implies that Y should be separated from X; never mind suggests that the hearer should disregard Y. (1) It is impossible to change the way Australians think about poverty, let alone/never mind/much less extreme poverty => Much less is possible because the context of the sentence is one of assessing probability. (2) How do you change the way Australians think about poverty, let alone/never mind/*much less extreme poverty? => Much less is not possible because there is no probability assessment.

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meaning. What about much less and still less? Those focus on the possibility of going up or down on a scale of probability, but still makes sense as it’s on contrast and much simply on quantity. So again, we have two different roads that lead to the same meaning (lead to the same place). Let alone and never mind seem to be closer to each other, and much less and still less are also closer to each other than let alone and much less, because let alone and never mind work on the basis of setting something apart as unique and much less and still less work on the basis of a scale of probability. So, they have much more in common. Now compare let alone and never mind. They have different active zones. Let alone implies that Y should be separated from X and never mind suggests the hearer should disregard Y. Examples one and two: It is impossible to change the way Australians think about poverty, let alone/never mind/much less extreme poverty. It’s Ok to use let alone, never mind, and much less. It is possible to use much less because the context of the sentence is one of assessing the likelihood of this happening. Take sentence (2), however. How do you change the way Australians think about poverty, (let alone is possible) let alone extreme poverty; never mind extreme poverty [[is also possible]]; but you can’t say *much less extreme poverty. Much less is not possible because here there is no probability assessment. In (1), there is: It is impossible to change the way they think. In the second one, How do you change?, you don’t (maybe by remote implication, but you don’t mention the idea of that being impossible). So much less is excluded. This is another table (so large that it has three slides). What the chart gives you is a number of constructional profiles within this idea of complementary

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CONSTRUCTIONAL DESCRIPTION PROFILES Neutral complementary They link two or more alternation negative alternatives that constructions complement each other or one another.

Reinforcement constructions

CONSTRUCTIONS Not X nor Y Neither X nor Y X never mind Y

They add extra reinforcing X even Y information about the state of X in fact Y affairs that the previous statement applies to, thus making the extra part of the construction (Y) surprising because it was not expected/likely to happen.

EXAMPLES He has not resigned, nor has he been sacked. I always cry watching sad films, never mind reading their scripts. All the time I was there, I stayed inside the house. In fact, I never left my room. The hotel had everything. There was even a swimming pool.

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alternation. Then a description of the constructional profile, or a definition if you want it. And then a few identified constructions and some examples. So, these are constructions whose [[basic meaning]] is designated by that profile. And of course, there is the basic discourse relation as the base. The first [[constructional profile]] is called neutral complementary alternation. It has to be X and Y connected negatively, Not X nor Y, not positively, of course; otherwise, there would not be complementary alternation. So here, what we do with Not X nor Y, or Neither X nor Y is to link two or more negative alternatives that complement each other or one another. The example, He has not resigned, nor has he been sacked. The idea is that this has not happened: he has not resigned. And this [being sacked], by the way, has not happened either. This is the most neutral case of complementary alternation. Then, another constructional profile would be [[provided by]] reinforcement constructions [[…]]: X even Y, [[where]] X and Y [[are]] connected by even, or by in fact: X in fact Y. [[…]] This constructional profile is used to add extra reinforcing information about the state of affairs that the previous statement applies to, thus making the extra part of the construction (which is the Y part) surprising, because it was not expected to happen, or it was not likely to happen either. The example here illustrates this idea: All the time I was there I stayed inside the house. In fact, I never left my room. So, it would be surprising, right? It is unexpected: ‘at the same time I was here, I stayed inside the house. In fact, I never left the room’. [[Consider also]] The hotel had everything. There was even (you don’t expect that, right?) a swimming pool. So that’s a reinforcement construction.

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Probability judgment alternation constructions

One state of affairs is or should be less likely to happen than another state of affairs.

• • • • • • •

Enhancing constructions

What has just been said could be greater or more surprising than what has just been suggested.

• (Not) X not to mention Y • Not X not even Y • Never X to say nothing of Y • X let alone Y • X never mind Y • X not to say Y • X still Y • X to say nothing of Y • X to say the least Y

Not X even less Y Not X let alone Y Not X much less Y Not X never mind Y X in particular Y X leave alone Y X still less Y

I wouldn't call him, let alone invite him to my house. There should be no corporal punishment anymore, in particular against children.

Until the accident, I led the very busy, not to say frantic, lifestyle of a criminal lawyer. I'd be terrified if I found myself alone in London, never mind New York

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Then, another constructional profile is the probability judgement alternation: [[these are]] constructions that express a probability judgement. They are used to emphasize that one state of affairs is or should be less likely to happen than another state of affairs. So, we have formulations like the following: Not X even less Y; Not X let alone Y; Not X much less Y; Not X never mind Y. You will ask me: what about the use of let alone, much less and never mind? These connectors have more than one single meaning. So, they can be used for different profiles in much the same way as lexical items can be adapted to different contexts with different meanings. Look at the examples: I wouldn’t call him, let alone invite him to my house or There should be no corporal punishment anymore, in particular against children. This emphasizes that the Y element is less likely to happen than the X element. Then, enhancing constructions. These emphasize that what has just been said could be greater or more surprising than what has just been suggested. Again, we have let alone here in this group and never mind and not to say, but because they are polysemic to some extent. [[Two]] examples [[are]]: Until the accident, I left the very busy, not to say frantic lifestyle of a criminal lawyer; I’d be terrified if I found myself alone in London, never mind New York. The idea here is that rather than something negative, ‘I would not do X and much less something else’, what I add is more surprising than what could be expected or suggested. So, you could expect that I should be terrified in London. But you can also expect that I will be terrified if I am in New York (because of the crime rate, or for whatever other reason). Go [[now]] to demonstrative alternation constructions.

Discourse Constructions and Cognitive Modeling

Demonstrative alternation constructions.

They add more information on (or examples of) the X part of the construction in order to emphasize that something is self-evident

• (Not) X to say nothing of Y • X it goes without saying that Y • X let alone Y • X needless to say Y • X never mind Y • X not to mention Y

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A free fall from 130 feet will most probably kill you, not to mention from 13.000 or 130.000. With this knee injury I can't walk, never mind run.

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These add more information on (or examples of) the X part of the construction in order to emphasize that something is self-evident. For example, (Not) X to say nothing of Y, or X it goes without saying that Y, X let alone Y, also, X needless to say Y, X never mind Y, X not to mention Y. Examples are: A free fall from 130 feet will most probably kill you, not to mention from 13.000 or 130.000, and, With this knee injury I can’t walk, never mind run. So, it is impossible for me to walk and it is even less possible for me to run. This is an extension of the meaning of the former complementary alternation construction. The idea here, the emphasis, is that you convey the idea that it is self-evident: ‘can’t you see that this is self-evident, that if I can’t walk, I won’t be able to run?’, which is a different shade of meaning from what we had with the other, more canonical, use of the X let alone Y construction, or the never mind construction. All these constructional profiles have things in common. So, they belong to the same family. They have a large degree of overlap, but they [[constitute]] different uses [[…]]. And sometimes we have very small variants that are irrelevant, from a discourse perspective, in terms of how we combine items of information. So [[they]] would be listed as simply variants of the same constructional profile, but they would not produce new constructional profiles. And when we actually have new constructional profiles, we can identify them by looking at the relationship between a profile [[and a]] base and how that profile/base connection is separated from the profile/base connections of other constructional layouts. To conclude, let me summarize a few of the main ideas that I think I put forward in this talk. One of them is that discourse constructions capture

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Conclusions • Discourse constructions capture relationships between high-level nonsituational cognitive models. • Discourse relations such as restatement, contrast, condition, and others, provide cognitive base domains against which the fixed elements of discourse constructions are profiled. • Different constructions that profile the same base domain are members of the same family. • Meaning nuances and the degree of interchangeability of connectors in discourse constructions depends on the nature of profile/base relations (what the construction designates in terms of a basic discourse relation) and ultimately on active zones within a given profile (e.g. scales of probability for much less vs let alone).

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relationships between high-level non-situational cognitive models. I hope that is clear at this point after I have made so much emphasis on it over the last hour. Then, discourse relations such as restatement, contrast, condition, and others, provide the cognitive base domains against which the fixed elements of discourse constructions are profiled. So, keep this in mind. We have discourse relations in this case. It’s not single isolated concepts, but concepts or assumptions created out of the combinations of concepts that are connected from different perspectives. And those are the discourse relations. Then, different constructions that profile [[against]] the same base domain are members of the same family. So, what do they have in common to be a family? They have the same base domain, that is, the same discourse relation, and they simply allow you to look at that discourse relation from different perspectives. And then, the shades of meaning, and also the degree of interchangeability of connectors in discourse constructions, depend on the nature of profile/base relations, that is, what the construction designates in terms of basic discourse relations; and ultimately on active zones within a given profile, for example, the [[different ways of activating]] the scale of probability for much less versus let alone that we analyzed before. And to add one more item to this list, we have to keep in mind that I have been talking only about how we handle information. There are other aspects of discourse that are not contemplated in this lecture, like the personal and interpersonal aspects. Please, keep that in mind. I’m not talking about interjections, expressions like wow, hi, and so on. I am only talking about logical connections between different predications arising from clauses and utterances. So, this is the end of the talk.

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Irony and Cognition This microphone, this loudspeaker system is interesting and very adequate for this talk because it has an echo. Can you hear that? And I’m going to talk about echoing today. I feel it is a privilege to be here and very thankful to be part of this series of lectures and to be at this university, which is absolutely magnificent. I really love it, with the [[surrounding]] forest and all the [[architectural]] motifs. I would like you to use your imagination for a few minutes, and let’s see how we can work on this. Imagine that you see a fire station, and all of a sudden, you see flames coming out of the fire station. So, the fire station is on fire. Don’t you find it interesting? How can a fire station, which has to be one of the safest places on the earth, be in flames? You would find it paradoxical. But at the same time, you might have a chuckle about it and say: “Huh, how ironical! The fire station is burning.” Now imagine that, you live by the police station, and from your window, you can see that there is a thief that is getting into the police station, undetected, and steals something from one of the police officers. Again, from one perspective, that’s paradoxical. From a different perspective, it is ironical. It is ironical when you laugh about it, or when you think: “This shouldn’t be like that, and the world should not be like that.” A fire station should not be in flames, and a police station should be safer than it actually is. Those are two possible examples of irony and I have only described the irony. I have narrated the irony in them. This is not a case of verbal irony or communicating ironically, but you will find, in your lives, in your experience, situations that you will identify as possibly ironical. Irony is an attitude in fact. What we call irony is like [[saying]] “I don’t think that should be the case”, and then [[showing]] your personal attitude about it. It’s like [[thinking]] “Ah, this is laughable”. Or sometimes you can be more than simply ironical. You can be sarcastic, which is a very negative response to a situation. So, there is a range of attitudes about situations in the world that we would identify as ironical. When I say a range of attitudes, I say that very All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555788

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_010

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intently. It means that there is not only one attitude. At a very generic level, what we do is that we think in terms of personal dissociation from whatever is happening, from a state of affairs. And then we can parameterize that. Does this ring a bell when I use the word “parameterize”? It was one of the cognitive operations, the formal cognitive operations of the first talk. Then I parametrize that very generic meaning into more specific meanings, depending on my personal bias, or my culture, or whatever clues I have in the context. So, remember this, we have a general attitude of dissociation from a state of affairs. And then, that general attitude of dissociation, depending on other factors that are usually contextual, will be parameterized into something more specific, which is what we call “irony”. This is ironical. I stand away from it and I don’t want to be involved in that kind of situation. It is ironical. That’s the general idea. So, there is something very subjective about irony. What about when we use words ironically? This was simply the description of a couple of ironical situations and we can have many more in life. But what about imagining this. I’m going to give you two examples. [[First]], It was nice of her to do that. If you could detect in the intonational pattern that I used, It was nice of her to do that, it’s like I feel upset about it. Can you realize through the tone of my voice? It was nice of her to do it, it was nice of her, but it was not nice of her. So, there is something in what I’m saying that is opposed to the real world or to my real feelings. That’s also classified as irony. Or another example. Imagine that I have a neighbor and he has a daughter, and I think my neighbor’s daughter is a wonderful and amazing girl. She’s kind, obliging, and so on and so forth. So, imagine a great girl, and I tell my wife about that. My wife always knows better than I do and she says: Yeah, right. It’s like she’s skeptical about what I’m saying. So, she has an attitude about what I’m saying. She simply said Yeah, right and she could have used only yeah, or right, or sure: -She’s a great girl, she’s amazing. -Sure. [[This use of]] sure is ironical: she has pretended to agree with me, but she doesn’t agree with me. So, there is a clash—but that’s usually the case—there is a clash between what she says and what she thinks. There was a clash before, in the other example: Very nice of her. No, it’s not very nice of her, I don’t like it. With irony, there seems to be some sort of pretended agreement and at the same time, a clash with what is the case in the world, or with what someone thinks is the case in the world. Let’s elaborate on the first example a little bit more. So, I say, Oh, my neighbor’s daughter is wonderful, amazing. And instead of saying Yeah, right, she says: Wonderful, amazing. Again, she’s being ironical, but now the irony has been conveyed through a different linguistic resource. On the previous occasion, she said Yeah, right / Sure, which means ‘I agree with you’, even though she didn’t agree with me. On this occasion, what she’s doing is repeating part

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of my message. It could be with her own words. If I say Oh, she’s wonderful, [[a response could be]]: Sure, wonderful. You could combine both or simply say: Wonderful, yeah, like ‘I don’t believe it’. Imagine that I say Oh, our neighbor’s daughter is an angel, [[and my wife responds]]: Yeah, right, an angel. Or she could say: Yeah, right, our neighbor’s daughter is an angel. She could repeat what I said to the letter or simply capture the essentials of what I said and produce her own representation, which somehow matches what I said. Now, this second strategy, where pretended agreement is realized by means of an echo, that is, an utterance that resembles what someone said or thought, in this second situation, we have a different strategy, but basically it is a way of showing agreement that is not true. It is, again, pretended agreement. So, when she says An angel, a real angel, she is again pretending to agree with me by repeating what I said, even though what she says is not exactly what I said, but she gets the idea. Irony of this type, which is verbal irony, allows us to be highly original, [[or]] highly imaginative about situations. So, imagine that I say again She’s an angel and she goes An angel, a treasure. She’s using the word treasure, which is metaphorical, like angel, to add more emphasis to the idea that she’s an angel, but she is not at the same time. [[Take now]]: An angel. Yes, right, a real angel/ Yeah, a treasure, a real treasure. We can elaborate on the message, but there’s no problem about that. And the irony will be kept intact. The difference with the previous examples is that it is enhanced. So ironic effects are scalar and they can be increased or decreased, depending on our communicative intentions. Probably this is the reason why irony is pervasive in the world of communication, when communication has the intention to teach, when we have pedagogical communication. You will be aware that the classics, like the ancient Greek, used irony to convey a message. In literature, we find irony, also, when we want to make the audience aware that something is going wrong and that we have an attitude about it, and that maybe that should be changed, and we use irony, with that purpose. OK, so today’s talk is going to be about echoing in irony, and I want to make my ironic account part of a more general cognitive modeling framework. I suppose you already guessed that, that this was going to be about cognitive modeling again. So, these are some of the goals. First of all, verbal irony has been studied in a lot of detail in rhetoric, in literary studies over the centuries, because it can be used for rhetorical purposes and for persuasion, to teach a moral, [[and]] to arouse awareness in the audience. More recently in the philosophy of language and in pragmatics, we have also had other scholars that have been studying irony in quite a lot of detail

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Goals • Verbal irony has been studied in rhetoric and literary studies as an artifice that can be used for persuasive purposes, to teach a moral, or to arouse awareness in the audience. • In pragmatics it has been studied as a communicative phenomenon carrying a predictable meaning import (skeptical, critical, wry, etc.). • Unlike metaphor and metonymy, irony has received little attention in Cognitive Linguistics (Coulson 2005 is one of very few exceptions), which demands a fully-fledged account of irony within this framework. • A comprehensive approach to verbal irony must be capable of accounting for the relationship between its cognitive and communicative aspects.

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and there are different accounts. I will give you an overview of several different accounts. There are quite a few. What I will try to do for you is to incorporate some of the insights that come from this account into the more general framework that is grounded in cognitive modeling. It is interesting, and sad at the same time, to realize that irony has not been the object of a lot of study in Cognitive Linguistics. Try and find literature on irony in cognitive linguistics; you will see that there is almost nothing, although there’s some literature, some work in the field of psycholinguistics that is pretty much consistent with the notion of cognitive modeling and could be incorporated into a cognitive modeling account. And in fact, my talk is going to benefit a little bit from some of those findings in the world of psycholinguistics. And in the case of Cognitive Linguistics, one of the big names that has dealt with irony is Seana Coulson, and she wrote about irony in 2005. But I don’t think her account is the kind of account that we want for a framework like the one that I put forward in my first talk: cognitive models and cognitive operations. Some of her insights are compatible with this account, but there are some details that are missing in hers that we would like to add from this other perspective. So, my ultimate aim is to provide you with a comprehensive approach to the notion of verbal irony that is capable of accounting for the relationship between its cognitive and communicative aspects. You will probably have realized that this is what I have been doing with implicature, with illocution, with discourse. I try to match cognition and

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Pragmatic approaches to irony • Attardo (2000): “relevant inappropriateness” (a violation of felicity conditions in combination with social norms or expectations that is consistent with communicative goals). This proposal supersedes Grice’s account in terms of flouting the maxim of truthfulness, which requires reinterpretation in compliance with the Cooperative Principle. • Clark and Garrig (1984), Pretense Theory: irony results from the speaker pretending to perform a given speech act. • Allusional Pretense Theory (Kumon-Nakamura et al. 1995): the speaker pretends to perform a speech act (pragmatic insincerity) on the basis of a statement that males allusion to an expected state of affairs that has been somehow been violated (violation of expectations). • Relevance Theory (Wilson & Sperber 2012): ‘echo’ or repetition of someone’s (including the speaker’s) previous words or their attributed thoughts or beliefs combined with a dissociative attitude (wry, skeptical, bitter, mocking) to them. figure 2

communication. So, both the traditional field of pragmatics and the cognitivelinguistic enterprise are brought together in this series of lectures. The question now is, what’s the literature? And the literature on irony is immense. If you go to any of the repositories of papers on linguistics, for example, you go to Academia or Research Gate, one of my students found out that there are 37,000 articles only in one of these repositories. She didn’t take into account the rest of them. And she told me, “How can I read all of that?” And I said, “Well, I don’t think you will be able to.” So, we will have to make a selection. Well, this is a very small selection of studies written by very prominent scholars in the field of pragmatics and I think that I have selected these, because what they say, even though I don’t think it is ultimately the answer to the question of irony, goes a long way to providing us some clues that may be incorporated into that answer to the problem of irony. One of the greatest scholars is Attardo. He has a very well-known paper. It is cited everywhere. If you look up “irony” in any search engine, Attardo is one of the names that will come up over and over again, precisely his 2000 paper. He defined irony, following up on these steps of the Gricean framework, Grice’s Cooperative Principle, as a development of Grice’s Cooperative Principle. He developed the notion of relevant inappropriateness. We will go back to this notion in a few minutes. In general, he acknowledges that irony is a violation of felicity conditions— in combination with social norms or expectations—that is consistent with communicative goals. In other words, with irony, we have social conventions

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and, at the same time, we have communicative activity that has to be measured in terms of felicitousness. That’s a good idea. And of course, he believes in the Cooperative Principle, but he doesn’t believe that the Cooperative Principle is the final solution to all the problems in inferential pragmatics. So, what he does is he adds further insights into the Cooperative Principle framework and relevant inappropriateness is one of those additions. By the way, if you go back to Grice and the Cooperative Principle, Grice talked about irony, almost in passing, in his famous seminal paper on the Cooperative Principle and its maxims (“Logic and conversation”). Paul Grice said that irony can be explained, conversationally, in terms of a flouting of the maxim of truthfulness. Well, he didn’t use the label “truthfulness”, [[but]] I’m using that label. It is the first maxim of quality in his set of maxims, which simply says you have to tell the truth. So, it’s the maxim of truthfulness. The idea of flouting is that you violate the maxim. In “irony”, you’re not telling the truth, so you’re not being truthful, you’re violating the maxim. But you’re not violating the maxim with the intention to deceive. You’re violating the maxim in a way that is ostentatious, and the addressee knows that you’re violating the maxim. That’s the idea of flouting. It’s like “making fun” of the maxim, and that’s all, and we all know—we’re all aware—that this speaker is doing that. A second account that is very popular in the world of pragmatics to explain irony, is the Pretense Theory, formulated in the 80s by Clark and Garrig. We will go into it in more detail, but basically what they say [[is that]] when you behave ironically, you’re simply pretending that what you say is the actual truth, your actually intent, but it is not. So, we have this “pretense” account. They tried to explain irony on the basis of the speaker’s pretense that something is the case when obviously it is not. There are some problems with this account; we will go into it. A development of Clark and Garrig’s idea is the Allusional Pretense Theory, developed by Kumon-Nakamura and his associates in 1995. They were a bit more specific than Clark and Garrig. They tried to incorporate Clark and Garrig’s idea into a speech act account of language. Everything that we say, every utterance, is a speech act. So why not talk about this in terms of speech acts? What do speakers do when they behave ironically? They pretend to perform a speech act that is not the real one, and that is called pragmatic insincerity. And they do that on the basis of a statement that makes “allusion” (this is a very interesting concept if you want to keep it in mind) to an expected state of affairs that has been violated or that has violated expectations. If you want to apply this idea to the She’s an angel example, you would have to say: “The speaker is performing some kind of pragmatic function. He is extolling the beauty and the kindness of his neighbor’s daughter”. That’s a

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pragmatic act and he is doing that on the basis of an allusion to what he thinks, or to what someone said before. In a sense, this notion of allusion is very close to the notion of being an echo, or echoing an idea, which I mentioned at the beginning of this talk. So, there is a connection between allusion and echoing. The only difference could be that the idea of allusion is vaguer than the idea of echo. An echo tries to be almost a perfect meaning representation of what someone said, whereas an allusion simply makes mention of it, and that’s all. I think that probably the idea of allusion is the same as the idea of a broadened notion of echo. That would be the case. And then, we go to the notion of echoing and echoing is simply the repetition of what someone said. We can have a perfect echo if we repeat what someone said verbatim or we can simply capture the essentials of what someone said and put those essentials into our own wording. Can we have echoes that are not ironical? Yes, because echoing is simply a mechanism that we use in connection with a context where it is evident that the echo will clash with something else (some information that we obtain from the context). Echoes can be of other kinds. They can be different from ironic echoes, but ironic echoes are used to convey irony. We use echoing to convey irony, but echoing can be used elsewhere. To give you a very quick example of how we can use echoing, think of reported speech. Reported speech, whether it is indirect or direct, is an echo of what someone said. So, I say: It’s a nice day today. [[Someone reports]]: Well, Paco said that it is a nice day today. And that’s echoing what I said and there’s no irony in that necessarily. But imagine that I say It’s a nice day today and it is not. And then you report on that ironically, say: Yeah, right. Paco said it’s a nice day today, and it’s raining!. So it could be ironical, but only in the right context. The interesting thing is that the echoic theory that was proposed by Sperber and Wilson within the framework of Relevance Theory, adds a component that is missing in the previous accounts, in Attardo’s account, in Pretense Theory, and in the Allusional Pretense Theory: the idea that, in irony, the speaker has an attitude, and expresses the attitude, conveys that attitude, by means of the ironical utterance. The attitude can be one of wryness, skepticism, bitterness. You can be mocking the addressee or someone else. So, this is what I said at the beginning: the attitude can be parameterized, depending on the speech event and the context of situation in general. If you think about it, those four approaches to irony, take a communicative perspective. They do not take cognitive factors into account, because they are pragmatic accounts, they are not interested in cognition per se, and they focus, very well, on speaker-hearer, interaction, the relationship between speaker and hearer within the communicative context. Attardo focuses on implicature,

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Initial remarks • The four approaches look at irony from a purely communicative perspective, i.e. what an utterance ‘does’ in terms of the S-H relationship within their communicative context: • Implicate meaning (Attardo). • Simulate a speech act (Clark & Garrig). • Allude to a (non-simulated) target act. • Make an echo of a previous belief (Wilson & Sperber). • So far, the most integrative approach is the relevance-theoretic account, which recognizes the existence of a clash and an echo, while highlighting the speaker’s dissociative attitude (usually skeptical) from the echoed thought.

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implicated meaning; Clark and Garrig’s account on simulation, the Pretense account; and then the development in Allusional Pretense Theory is about allusions to non-simulated target acts. And finally, in Sperber and Wilson’s account, we have this notion of echoing, which is “we repeat what someone else said or thought as central to the understanding of irony.” So how can we evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these four lines of research? We will do that in a minute, and what I will try to show is that [the last line] the echoing account is stronger than the others, in terms of its breadth; it covers very many phenomena, a lot more than the others, and also in terms of its accuracy. But even though the account is very strong, there is something missing in it, and you will see what is missing. I will assume and I will defend that Wilson and Sperber’s account of irony is stronger than the others. It shows fewer weaknesses, but at the same time, there are some central components of irony that are missing. They say that irony is based on echoing a thought that clashes with reality, while the speaker adopts a dissociative attitude, which is usually an attitude of skepticism. Let’s go back to Attardo, and the notion of relevant inappropriateness and the example Yeah, right, Mary is an angel, where the speaker wants to draw the hearer’s attention to Mary’s misbehavior. The idea is that the hearer will change his mind about Mary. If we analyze that sentence from Attardo’s perspective, the idea would be that what the speaker says is contextually inappropriate, because it is evident in context that Mary is not good. But, at the same time that it is inappropriate or inconsistent in terms of the context, it is very

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Relevant inappropriateness • Yeah, right, Mary’s an angel! (S wants to draw H’s attention to Mary’s misbehavior so H will change his mind about Mary). • S’s statement is contextually inappropriate since it is evident that Mary is not good. • At the same time it is relevant, i.e. it communicates something meaningful about Mary. • The combination of inappropriateness and relevance triggers off an inferential procedure about Mary’s breach of expected social norms and the speaker’s critical attitude. • Weakness: the concept of inappropriateness mixes the violation of felicity conditions and of social norms, but misses the important fact that the ironic utterance makes mention (or echoes) what S believes that H believes to be the case. figure 4

relevant from a communicative perspective, because it communicates something that is meaningful about Mary. That’s Attardo’s idea. This goes a little bit beyond the notion of flouting the maxim of truthfulness in the Cooperative Principle: you’re not telling the truth, but you’re doing that in a way that is evident to the addressee. So, what about all the other elements of irony? What about the fact that when you are using irony, there is a clash with the context and the clash is central? So, this is not simply about not telling the truth. There is something else. Attardo has a real point here, and the notion of relevant inappropriateness introduces a degree of delicacy into the Gricean framework, into the Gricean explanation, for this example, and for other examples of irony, for that matter. Attardo says that the combination of inappropriateness and relevance triggers off an inferential procedure about Mary’s breach of expected social norms and the speaker’s critical attitude. And it could be right, because, as I mentioned before, there is a clash between what you say or what is actually the case that is observable. So you have to sort it out and you do that on the basis of inferencing. So that’s another good point. There is an inferential procedure that arises from the application of your intuitions on the relevance of what the speaker says and its appropriateness to the context. If Attardo’s account is so strong, can we stop here? We have the solution. No, we can’t. The concept of inappropriateness combines the violation of felicity conditions and social norms. That is good. But it misses the important fact that the ironic utterance makes mention, that is, echoes, what the speaker believes

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Pretense • The notion of “pretense” is not a distinguishing feature of irony since any figure of speech involves the speaker “acting as if”. • However, pretense in irony works differently: the echoed thought is the “pretended” act, while the ironic implication is the “intended” act (or to be more precise the actual communicated meaning). • There is no such distinction between pretended and intended acts in hyperbole, metaphor, etc. • In the hyperbole This bag weighs a ton! only one act (complaining about excess of weight) can be identified. The pretense affects the construction of an imaginary scenario where the speaker behaves as if the bag weighed a ton. • In the metaphor, My neighbor is a pig there is also one act of complaint about the speaker’s neighbor’s behavior. The pretense affects the mapping whereby a person is treated as if he were a pig.

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that the hearer believes to be the case. So Attardo’s account fails to see the fact that there is a specific procedure, usually it is an echo, and it could be simply an expression of agreement as when we say Yeah, right, and we stop there. But very, very often, most of the times, it is an echo of someone’s thoughts, and that is missing in this explanation. What about the Pretense account? I don’t care if it is the Pretense or the Allusional Pretense account, we can consider both of them as about the same thing. What is this notion of “pretense”? When I say that Mary is an angel, am I really acting out? Yes, to some extent. I could be considered an actor and I am playing the role of a person that believes, but I do not believe, and the audience knows that I don’t believe. So, this idea of pretense could be OK. But, if I want to use the notion of pretense to explain irony, is that enough? And can pretense separate irony off from other figures of speech? Am I not pretending when I use hyperbole? Imagine that I say I want to carry a very heavy suitcase, [[and]] I feel frustrated because I can’t. I say This weighs a ton! Or I see someone that wants to carry the case, and I warn that person That suitcase weighs a ton. Am I not pretending? I am telling something that is not true and I am acting as if I believed that it weighs a ton, but it doesn’t weigh a ton, and it is evident from context. So, I cannot tell the difference between irony and hyperbole on the basis of the notion of pretense, because the notion of pretense is common to both irony and hyperbole, although in different ways. Yes, admittedly, in the case of irony, we have this clash with the context and the attitude, and the attitude is one of skepticism. In the case of hyperbole, I only want to show my emotions about it in general. There are some

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Echoic mention

• A son to his father: Son, I will be there • Context: a skeptical son, who does not believe his father will stick to his promise to attend his graduation ceremony, repeats his father’s promise, which is no longer such. • Son, I will be there echoes the father’s words; because of this, it resembles a “pretended” act of promising but it is not a promise, only an “allusion” to the broken promise. • The attitudinal element (the son is disappointed) arises from the clash (contrast) between the promise made and the real situation. • Weaknesses: (i) there is no specification of the kind of inferential procedure that S expects H to follow to derive the attitudinal implications; (ii) there is no provision for the role of the pretense element acting on the echo. figure 6

differences, but the notion of pretense is common to both of them. So, I can’t use it in a definitional way. It is not an essential feature of irony, but it is a feature of irony any way. I have to take it into account. But at the same time, I have to be careful about it, because there is something else that is missing and I need to find it. The same with metaphor. [[Take]] My neighbor is a pig. I suppose you’re already familiar with that metaphor. The previous one was My boss is a pig—in the previous talk—and now it is your neighbor. So your neighbor is a pig (and he has an amazing daughter at the same time; I don’t know if that is possible!). If you say My neighbor is a pig, you’re obviously pretending, and there is an attitude behind it, and he is not actually a real pig. So, why not say that this pretense element (acting “as if”, in your beliefs) is also common to metaphor, not only hyperbole? We have a real problem, because we cannot tell the difference between these different figures of thought. We can’t tell the difference between them, if we only handle the notion of pretense. And then the strong one, the strong account: “echoic mention”. A son says to his father: Son, I will be there. Now, the son is echoing what his father said. The context is that you have a skeptical son that has been promised by his father, over and over again, that he would attend his graduation ceremony, but the son knows that his father fails to fulfill his promises, always. So, he’s skeptical about it. The father says: Oh, yes, I will be there, hence the son repeats Son, I will be there, which means ‘I do not believe it. That is what you say, my father, but I don’t take it’. It echoes the father’s words. Because it echoes the father’s words, it resembles a pretended act of promising. But it is not a promise. It is

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only an allusion to the broken promise on the basis of a previous record of broken promises. There is an attitudinal element. The son is disappointed. And that arises from the contrast between the promise made and the real situation. Now, this is a very strong account, because it is compatible with the notion of pretense to a large extent, and it is compatible with the idea that the father is not behaving in a completely truthful way (or at least from his son’s perspective, he was not truthful, and he failed to meet his commitments). In a sense, the previous insights into irony produced by others scholars can be incorporated into this account based on echoing. It’s a broader framework. It’s also stronger in the sense that it introduces very explicitly the notion of echo and the notion of contrast with the context. And it specifies the attitudinal element. It’s really very strong because it contains the essential ingredients. So, what is the weakness? Why don’t we want to go along with this account and that’s the solution for irony? Attardo talked about an inferential procedure, which he didn’t specify well, but he took it for granted. He said that there is an inferential trigger, and that allows us to work out the meaning intent. Now, what form does this procedure take? It is not present in the echoic account, and there is no provision for the pretended agreement element that I mentioned at the beginning of this talk. So, we have two weaknesses. Even though, to some extent, it is compatible with previous ideas, it still has to be polished. And I think it has to be polished with respect to the notion of inferential procedures (these are mental processes, the result of mental activity), and also the role of pretense has to play a greater role. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there has been a controversy, over the years, between the pretense account and the echoic account, a very strong controversy. When we have controversies and accusations between different schools of thought, sometimes, rather than yield and say “Okay, some of what you say could be true”, we tend to take stronger positions. As we are adamant on our own position, we tend to neglect—and this is a psychological problem that we have as scholars—other points of view that could be beneficial for our own thinking. I think that has happened between pretense theorists and relevance theorists. Even though the pretense notion is compatible with the echoic framework, for some reason, the main proponents of the echoic framework reject the pretense notion. And the other way around, pretense theorists reject the echoic account completely. Now there are some scholars, great ones (I can give you the name of Popa-Wyatt from Birmingham University), that have noted that these discrepancies are fake, that they are not real. And they have proposed a way to reconcile the two accounts. But Popa-Wyatt also takes a purely pragmatic

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Can there be non-ironic echoes? • No all cases of “echoed” assumptions involve irony. Sperber and Wilson mention reported speech as a case in point. But there are other cases of echoic expressions: (1) Detective 1: That was a possible abduction case. Detective 2 (admitting to it as an almost inevitable deduction: Possible abduction. (Hawaii 5.0) (2) Detective 1: That was a possible abduction case. Detective 2 (in disbelief): (Yeah, right) Possible abduction. • Only (2) is ironical since the echo clashes with what detective 2 believes to be the case; (1) expresses agreement or simply the speaker’s reflective attitude. • In (2) there is an ironic attitudinal element: S’s dissociation from the content of the echoed statement. • That is, if the echoed thought does not clash with a real-world scenario, there will not be a distinguishable speaker’s attitude and no identifiable ironic effect.

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perspective as a philosopher of language. She doesn’t go into the attitudinal component seriously, and she doesn’t give her account a cognitive dimension. So, even though she reconciles [[views]], I accept the reconciliation from the pragmatic perspective, but I still think that we have to go further than that. I dropped this question before very briefly: Can there be non-ironic echoes? Yes, I said, you have reported speech, but I’ll give you an example of ironic echo and non-ironic echo. Take example (1). This is a real one. I took it from a TV series called Hawaii 5.0. Do you see that here in China? You can see it in Spain, and sometimes I see an occasional episode. And it comes from one of the episodes. It was like “Oh, this is an echo!” and I took note of it. It is a detective series. Detective 1 says That was a possible abduction case. Abduction means kidnapping, a case of kidnapping. And the second detective, admitting to it as an almost inevitable deduction, says Possible abduction. That’s the real exchange in the movie. There is repetition. It is a partial repetition, and you will not say that the second detective wants to make fun of the first detective. In the context, the second detective is simply saying “I agree with you.” Yes, he is pondering, he’s thinking about it, and he comes to the same conclusion as the first detective: ‘You say that this is an abduction case? Yes, I think it is’. So that’s the idea in the context. But we can manipulate the example. That’s what I do in (2). The first detective says That was a possible abduction case and the second one in disbelief [[answers]]: Yeah, right—[[suggesting]] ‘You are the boss always. You think you know better’—Possible abduction—[[suggesting ‘come on!’]]. It’s ironical, only by saying “possible abduction” with a different intonational contour, you

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The blending account (Coulson 2005)

• Coulson (2005) uses Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002) Blending Theory to account for irony. In blending theory conceptual structure from different mental spaces (input spaces) is integrated into a blended space or blend. The blend can bring together and reconcile asymmetries and irregularities from the contributing spaces; e.g. in the blend smoke can come out of a person’s ears, rather than water vapor, which could be the expectation provided by ANGER IS A BOILING LIQUID INSIDE A CONTAINER. • In I love people who signal, uttered by a motorist who has just been cut off in traffic, the ironic meaning arises from the convergence into a conceptual blend of the motorist’s expected reaction (chastisement of the driver’s behavior) and a counterfactual trigger (the pretended compliment). • Palinkas (2014) has argued that in Coulson’s example, the motorist does not actually signal, but the ironist pretends that he does, and that the implication arises from the speaker’s expression of irritation towards the driver’s misbehavior. In other words, the real conflict comes from the pretense that the driver is to be taken as a responsible one who is to be praised for his driving maneuver

figure 8

get the idea that there is irony behind his words. And of course, you can add yeah/right/sure to reinforce the idea that there is irony, because even though he’s using an echoing procedure, remember that irony is pretended agreement in essence: pretended agreement that clashes with the context and shows the speaker’s attitude. And that’s it. So, there can be non-ironic echoes and this one goes beyond reported speech. Then, the blending account. We’re going to go now into the territory of Cognitive Linguistics. What about the blending account of irony? Coulson, who believes in blending theory, argues that we can combine what they call input spaces, [[or]] mental spaces, and synthesize them into one single mental space that takes partial structure from the input spaces. And you can use that for a whole range of cognitive activities. You can do that in the case of, for example, metaphor, and any other kind of alignment of knowledge structures, like analogy, also makes use of blending from their point of view. And they assume, they take for granted, that blending is a general, pervasive process in human thought and it shows in language. Now, their explanation here would be based on the example that you have in the middle paragraph: I love people who signal. This has a context. I have to tell you about the context before. I love people who signal is uttered by a motorist that has been cut off in traffic (and that’s something that you don’t have to do without signaling to indicate that you are going to take it right or left). So, I love people who signal is uttered in a situation in which the other driver has not signaled and he should have. You’re critical of the way that this driver has behaved.

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Coulson argues that the ironic meaning arises from the convergence into the blend of two ideas. One is the motorist’s expected reaction, which is chastisement of the driver’s behavior: “Hey, you shouldn’t have done that”, which is one input. But then there is also another mental space, another input, that combines with this one into a blend, which is the counterfactual trigger, that is, the situation that didn’t happen. What you explicitly say is I love people who signal, but the driver didn’t signal. So that would be the pretended compliment. And the two of them are brought together. Now I do not think that we need to blend, we need to combine, the two images or the two mental spaces, the punishing of the driver’s behavior and their pretended compliment. They can stand apart from each other without any problem as long as we understand that there is an inferential procedure to come up with the meaning intention. If you talk about blending the two ideas, you are missing out on the inferential process that simply assumes that you merge the two ideas into one, and that’s all. But there is an inferential process that has to be taken into account. Now this has some virtues. The example is a very interesting one. It is difficult to talk about this example in terms of echoing. When you say I love people who signal, who are you echoing? Who said that before? These cases of irony take a route that is not clearly echoic, but still is felt to be ironic. And proponents of the echoic mention theory would assume that when you say I love people who signal, [[the reference to]] people who signal is echoic of social norms. That’s a very vague case of echoing. So, my contention is that with irony what we have is pretended agreement, and we do have that here, and not necessarily always echoing. But of course, Sperber and Wilson and their followers would say “no, there is an echo here very clearly, because this idea that people have to signal echoes a social convention”, which is called by Coulson an expected reaction or a social expectation. But this example could be explained without the notion of “echoic mention”. It could be and it could also be explained on the basis of echoic mention, if we broaden the notion of echoic mention enough. So, I want to give you these two perspectives so that you won’t think that I am too radical about the idea of echo. There is irony because someone does something that opposes what should have been the case, that opposes reality, and that’s all. And there is an attitude about it. When you say, I love people who signal, you’re upset about it in some way. We have an attitudinal element. Now Palinkas has tried to fix the problem in Coulson’s example by pointing out—and I think Palinkas is right about this—that the motorist doesn’t actually signal and that is what is missing there. Coulson talks about punishing

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Limitations of the blending account of irony • While the blending-theory approach aligns irony with other cognitive phenomena, it does not assign any role to the observable situation (the fact that the driver has broken traffic laws) and it fails to explain the attitudinal element. • The attitudinal element is at the core of irony and it deserves more careful explanation than simply recognizing its existence. • In addition, Coulson (2005), like Palinkas (2014), only deals with the conventional and counter-conventional dimensions of ironic situations. These dimensions may well be integrated into either a relevancetheoretic framework or the refinement of this framework offered herein along the lines of the conjunction of cognitive and pragmatic principles.

figure 9

the driver’s behavior [[and]] the pretended compliment, but forgets about the context. It didn’t happen. We need that element too. But Coulson could have said: “Okay, no problem,; [[let’s add]] another mental space because we can project into the blend as many mental spaces as we feel like”. So, there is a solution within Blending Theory to Palinkas’ observation. Now, the limitations of blending, clearly spelled out for you. The good thing is [[that]] the Blending Theory approach aligns irony with other cognitive phenomena: analogy, metaphor, even metonymy. But it doesn’t assign any role to the observable situation, that’s the problem: the fact that the driver has broken traffic laws. And the Blending Theory approach fails to explain the attitudinal element. So, we have two problems with it, two problems that were not present in Sperber and Wilson’s relevance-theoretic account. They are present here. Still, [the blending account]] adds the cognitive dimension. There are some elements of this [[theory]] that we need for that cognitive-communicative account of irony. Also, Coulson and Palinkas only deal with the conventional and counterconventional dimensions of ironic situations. But that couldn’t be integrated into the relevance-theoretical framework with simply a refinement. Let me go ahead: the scenario-based approach. I’ve been talking about scenarios over the past few days, because I think the notion of scenario is analytically productive if we want to deal with inferencing in language. And it’s a notion that is not accepted by scholars doing pragmatics; it is accepted by cognitive linguists. But sadly, cognitive linguists have not used the notion in an extensive way to talk about inferencing. And it is time for us, cognitive linguists, to go about that task in a systematic way.

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Irony and the scenario-based approach • Ironic expressions “echo” previously held assumptions. • Echoing is a thus a cognitive operation consisting in the reproduction of organized conceptual structure (i.e. a set of assumptions) that has been used before. The resulting expression is an “echoic” expression. • Irony requires contrasting two scenarios: an echoed scenario and an observable scenario. • As a result of this operation, there is a clash between assumptions from the two scenarios. • The speaker’s attitude on the echoed assumptions is obtained inferentially and it is triggered by the clash between the echoed assumptions and what is actually the case.

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In the scenario-based approach that I developed a few years ago, what we have is irony understood in terms of cognitive operations on cognitive models. And from now on, this is going to get a bit tough. I have to warn you beforehand, so pay a lot of attention. Echoing is given the status of a cognitive operation. You will ask me “Yes, but why?” Well, because, when we can see it from a communicative perspective, an echo is the repetition of what someone said or thought, yes, but at the same time, for me to repeat a mental representation, I need to have that mental representation in my mind. And I need to be aware that I am repeating the mental representation at least at an intuitive level. So, there is a mental operation behind this. There is a mental aspect and a communicative aspect to the notion of echoing. In much the same way as you thought that I had a right to talk about comparing concepts as a mental operation (the case of simile and of some metaphors), why not say that echoing, which is a case of extreme resemblance, is also a mental operation? I will assume that, and you will see that it is analytically highly productive. It consists in the reproduction of organized conceptual structure that has been used before. In pragmatics, they would say that it is the reproduction of a set of assumptions that somebody else is thought to have. The resulting expression from this operation is an “echoic” expression. Now, irony requires contrasting two scenarios. One of them, I will call the echoed scenario, and the other, the observable scenario. So, [[we have]] the scenario that you’re a witness to, or that you think you’re a witness to, and the echoed scenario, which is what someone said or thought, which you repeat. As a result of this operation of echoing, there is a clash between assumptions from the two scenarios. And the speaker’s attitude on the echoed assumptions

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! ECHOED SCENARIO

!

Mary!is!extremely! kind,!generous,! obliging,!etc.! Admiration of Mary’s exemplary behavior

What!is! said/belie ved:! Mary’s'an' angel'

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!

S’S OBSERVED SCENARIO CLASH!

CROSSDOMAIN METONYMIC CHAIN

Mary!is!extremely! unkind,!mean,!selfish,! etc.! Dislike of Mary’s nonexemplary behavior

is obtained inferentially and is triggered by the clash between the echoed assumptions and what is actually the case. You have this situation partially diagrammed here. I warn you that there is a second diagram. So, we will start with the first. (The two have to be combined into one. The slide was not big enough for the whole diagram to fit into it). The echoed scenario on the left has the idea that Mary is kind, generous, obliging, wonderful, amazing. That’s my neighbor’s daughter, from my point of view, not my wife’s point of view. Then, how do I have access to that echoed scenario? You can see from the diagram that there is a metonymy. What I say is! She’s an angel. But She’s an angel means a lot more than that. It means I have been observing her, I know how she behaves, I know the way she looks, [[and]] I know how she treats her parents. And because I know all of that, she’s an angel. So, She’s an angel affords access to the more complex conceptual representation. We have source-in-target metonymic thinking, or a domain expansion metonymy from what is said, which is under-determined, to what is actually the real thought that I entertain, which is the more complex idea that Mary is wonderful because of a number of reasons that I have been a witness to. Then we have a focus of attention on the fact that Mary’s behavior is exemplary. That is domain reduction. We have a double metonymy. Maybe you can remember that we have these double metonymies in implicature and in the production of illocutionary meaning; also at the lexical level, and as constraints on some forms of grammatical behavior. It is interesting that the mind uses the same processes over and over again on the basis of different types of conceptual material. That’s the only difference. Remember

!

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ECHOED SCENARIO

CLASH!

S’S OBSERVED SCENARIO

INTEGRATED!SCENARIO!! !

! SOURCE' S’S!PERSPECTIVE!

1Speaker! 1Hearer! 1Mary! 1S’s!belief!that!Mary’s!behavior!is! much!less!than!exemplary! 1S’s!belief!that!H!believes!that! Mary’s!behavior!is!exemplary! 1!S’s!dislike!of!Mary’s!non1 exemplary!behavior! ! ! S’s!skepticism!of!H’s!belief! ! ! !

TARGET' H’S!PERSPECTIVE!

CLASH!

1Speaker! 1Hearer! 1Mary! 1H’s!belief!that!Mary’s!behavior!is! extremely!exemplary! ! 1S’s!belief!that!Mary’s!behavior!is! much!less!than!exemplary! ! ! ! S’s!skepticism!of!H’s!belief! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

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these distinctions between low-level scenarios [[and]] high-level scenarios. This is low-level, a low-level scenario, and it’s going to be very close to implicature. In fact, the inferential chain is very similar to the one that we use for regular descriptive implicature. Well, there is also an observable situation, and there is a clash between the echoed scenario and the observable situation. In the observable situation that my wife knows about, Mary is unkind, mean, selfish, she doesn’t treat her parents well, so there are sharp discrepancies with the thought that I have. That triggers a metonymy to the focus of attention, which is hearer’s dislike of Mary’s non-exemplary behavior. Now, we have a double metonymy in the source. The focus of attention in the source is the admiration that the speaker has for Mary’s behavior, which he thinks erroneously is exemplary, and which maps onto the target, [[while]] in the target, the focus of attention is the dislike of Mary’s non-exemplary behavior. So, what we have is a whole inferential chain that is supported by metonymy. And in this case, the metonymic chain, which is provided by the echoed scenario, is carried over to the target domain, which is the observed scenario. So, we have a cross-domain metonymic chain. It has three items, but the three items are distributed across two different domains, the echoed and the observed scenario. Why is that connection between these two scenarios possible? Why can the metonymic activation spread over and across the two scenarios? It can do that because, as a matter of fact, as blending theorists would argue (and this is a point of agreement with them), the two scenarios, at some point, have to be the same in the speaker’s mind. So, if as a speaker, I say Yeah, right,

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she’s an angel, I already know that the addressee has the wrong idea in mind. But I have both, a representation of the wrong idea that he has in mind and I also have a representation of the right idea that I have in mind that I am a witness to, so I can synthesize—I can bring together—the two ideas. The problem is that the hearer doesn’t know about it, and I want the addressee to have the same mental configuration that I have about this situation to realize that he was wrong about it. So we bring together—let’s go back—these two scenarios. We bring them together into a single blended scenario, where what we have is not the inferences, as Coulson would argue, what we have is a combination of the two perspectives. The speaker’s perspective is a composite perspective. It contains the speaker’s thoughts and the hearer’s thoughts, which are in contradiction. That’s like a source domain, in a metaphoric mapping. But this is not a case of metaphor. It is simply a conceptual mapping. If we understand that, by mapping, what we mean is a set of correspondences; we don’t talk about the nature of the correspondences. Remember that, in metaphor theory, we used to say the correspondences can be based on resemblance or on experiential correlation. Well, here the correspondences are based on contrast. There is a clash between the speaker’s perspective and the hearer’s perspective. So, we integrate the two scenarios, the echoed and the observable scenario, into one single integrated scenario, that would be, more or less, roughly the equivalent of a blend in Blending Theory. And we use that as source conceptual material that gets mapped onto the target perspective, which is the hearer’s perspective. But this is not a case of correlation or resemblance as in metaphor. This is a case of a clash between the two scenarios. So in the source perspective, we have the speaker, the hearer, we have everything: We have Mary, we have the speaker’s belief that Mary’s behavior is not exemplary, we have the hearer’s belief that Mary’s behavior is exemplary, we have the speaker’s dislike of Mary’s non-exemplary behavior, we have the speaker’s skepticism on the hearer’s belief, and all that has corresponding elements in the target. Again, we have [[the]] speaker, [[the]] hearer, [[and]] Mary in the target, and the hearer’s belief that Mary’s behavior is extremely exemplary (that’s a point of discrepancy between the two and that’s where we have a clash). And that gives rise to this, because [[the]] speaker believes that Mary’s behavior is much less than exemplary, [[and]] that is introduced into the target perspective carried over from the source. So finally, the speaker’s skepticism on the hearer’s belief is also carried over once we have carried out that inferential step on the basis of the clash between these two items that are connected by the arrow.

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I’ve warned you that this was going to be a bit more complex, but I hope it makes sense. And this would be a full account of verbal irony, based on echoic mention, from a cognitive perspective. Now let me warn you again—I need to make emphasis on this—that irony goes beyond echoic mention. There are cases of verbal irony that are simply based on pretended agreement, right? So, this is simply a subpart of the whole field of irony. And of course, we have irony that is simply based on our observation of the world and it is not produced verbally. That’s the case of situational irony. If you allow me to talk about this for a minute, in the case of situational irony, we have about the same. ‘The fire station in flames’; remember that example? With the fire station in flames, I have knowledge about fire stations and I know that security measures in fire stations should be great, [[or]] should be the very best. So I have no expectation about a fire station being in flames, and that’s the knowledge of the world. In my own approach, I call this the epistemic scenario. It is knowledge that I have. And it clashes with the observable scenario when I see the fire station in flames. So, this echoic account, in all its complexity, can be made part of a more general account of irony, where we can bring together situational and verbal irony, because they basically contain the same elements. If you read the literature on irony, you will notice that many scholars declare that there is a sharp distinction between situational and verbal irony, and that is not true. And they say “No, we only talk about verbal irony, we ignore situational irony, because it’s a different phenomenon”. No, it is not. It’s the same phenomenon. It’s an attitude that we derive inferentially. Sometimes the attitude is verbally communicated; sometimes you come across things in life that allow you to produce that attitude. But there is no essential difference, other than the communicative factor. So, we can have an integrated account of all kinds of irony. That’s not a big problem. Now, let’s go into the [[…]] operations that we have postulated so far. Some are evident from the figure, but spelling them out could be a good idea for you. Remember that we talked about different types of operations. One type of operation that I didn’t make a lot of emphasis on (I simply mentioned it in passing), is the building operation. We build concepts. That’s one possible cognitive operation. This is a prerequisite for any other type of cognitive activity, including the types of content and formal operations that I discussed as representational operations. But we have concept-building operations because we have to build an echoed and an observed scenario. So, we build those mental structures, of course, on

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Cognitive operations involved in irony: concept-building operations • Concept building operations. These are preparatory for the ironic process to be possible: • Construction of two input scenarios: • Echoed scenario: built on the basis of what H (or someone else) has said or thought about a given situation. • Observed scenario: Built on the basis of what S believes the real situation is. • Integration of the echoed and observed scenarios. It also contains the implications arising from their contrast. The integration contains all of S’s assumptions about what is the case in the communicative situation. Relevant elements of this integrated scenario clash with H’s perspective.

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the basis of what someone thought or said in the case of the echoed scenario, and on the basis of the speaker’s observation of reality. And they can be integrated; that’s the second operation, integration, which is a formal operation. We can integrate the echoed and the observed scenarios. We can go back to that slide. You see on the left, you have the integration of the echoed and the observed scenarios into the speaker’s perspective on the ironic situation. This integration contains all of the speaker’s assumptions about what is the case in the communicative situation. And then some relevant elements of this integrated scenario are going to be in a clash, are going to be in discrepancy with the hearer’s perspective, giving rise to inferences, and the expected hearer’s modification of his own conceptual layout and the assumptions associated with it. We go now into other operations. We have, at the inferential level, echoing, contrasting, [[and]] combined domain expansion/reduction (which, remember, is carried over to a target domain; so, this is a very complex case of combined domain expansion and reduction). We have the cancellation of conceptual structure in the hearer’s perspective. When we produce the irony, we expect the hearer to modify his own assumptions. So, we have the cancellation of part of the hearer’s conceptual structure and we have the addition of conceptual structure. We go back to the diagram [[refers to Figure 12]]. Let me draw close to it. We have this addition of conceptual structure here [[refers to “S’s skepticism of H’s belief” and “S’s belief that Mary’s behavior is much less than exemplary”]], and we have the cancellation of this item here [[refers to “H’s belief that Mary’s behavior is extremely exemplary”]].

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Cognitive operations involved in irony: conceptbuilding operations • Inferential (i.e. meaning derivation) operations: • Echoing • Contrasting (giving rise to a “clash”) • Combined domain expansion/reduction (through highlighting) where reduction actually takes place across the contrasted echoed and observed scenarios. • Cancellation of conceptual structure • Addition of new conceptual structure

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Inferences on S’s attitude: chained reasoning schemas • There are two situations: • Dissociation from the echoed scenario: S dissociates himself or herself from what someone has said or thought. • Dissociation from the observable scenario: S dissociates himself or herself from someone’s behavior, which runs counter to S’s beliefs on social standards. • For each situation, we have the same inferential mechanism but different knowledge at work. • The inferential mechanism is the same as in implicature-derivation and inferred illocution: two chained reasoning schemas each of which is based on a premise-conclusion pattern where the conclusion is the part of the premise that has not been made explicit by S. • In the chain, the conclusion of the first reasoning schema plays the role the explicit meaning of the second reasoning schema.

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Now, what about the inferential aspect? There are two situations. In irony, remember, we always have “dissociation”, “speaker’s dissociation” in the case of verbal irony. In the case of non-verbal irony, we don’t have a speaker. What we have is an observer, and the observer also dissociates himself from something that is happening. So here, in this case of verbal irony, we have two possibilities. The speaker dissociates himself from the echoed scenario, that’s one; and the other, the speaker dissociates himself from the observable scenario. An example of

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Dissociation from the echoed scenario Yeah, right! Sam plays the guitar like a legend (Context: S echoes H’s previous statement praising Sam’s guitar skills when faced with Sam’s poor performance) REASONING SCHEMA 1 Premise (echoed scenario) 1: Sam plays the guitar very well. Explicit meaning 1 (observable scenario): Sam is a poor player. Implicated conclusion 1: The speaker thinks the hearer is wrong. REASONING SCHEMA 2 Premise 2: We should not contradict other people unless we want to prove them wrong or express our dissociation from what they think. Explicit meaning 2 (previous implicated conclusion 1): The speaker thinks the hearer is wrong. Implicated conclusion 2: The speaker wants to prove the hearer wrong and/or the speaker is expressing dissociation.

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the first one would be The neighbor’s daughter is an angel, and of the second one [[…]] Coulson’s example I love drivers that signal, where you simply dissociate yourself from what is evidently the case. For each situation, we have the same inferential mechanisms, but we have a different knowledge base (different knowledge at work). The inferential mechanism is the same one that we have in implicature derivation and in illocutionary-force derivation. We have two chained reasoning schemas, each of which is based on a premise-conclusion pattern. Remember that, in this form of chaining, the conclusion of one of the schemas becomes part of the following schema. We’re going to see that. Another example (it’s very similar, that is, the pattern of thinking is very similar to the ones that we have been dealing with) is: Yeah, right! Sam plays the guitar like a legend Here the context is that the speaker echoes the hearer’s previous statement praising Sam’s guitar skills, when faced with Sam’s actual poor performance. Sam is a bad guitar player. If you say Sam plays the guitar like a legend, you are not telling the truth. What is the reasoning schema here? The first reasoning schema has a premise that you retrieve from world knowledge (that’s in the case of implicature) or, in this case, that you retrieve from what someone said, which is incorporated into your world knowledge, so ultimately it is from world knowledge: Sam plays the guitar very well, because someone said that. The explicit meaning is provided by the observable scenario, not by the sentence. Remember

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Dissociation from the observable scenario I just love people who signal! (S has just been cut off by another driver) REASONING SCHEMA 1 Premise (echoed scenario) 1: Drivers have to signal when they drive or they are in breach of traffic rules and their driving behavior is unacceptable [S echoes a generally shared assumption: we like people who obey traffic rules] Explicit meaning 1 (observable scenario): Driver D didn’t signal. Implicated conclusion 1: Driver D is in breach of traffic rules so his or her behavior is unacceptable. REASONING SCHEMA 2 Premise 2 (cultural convention): If someone is in breach of traffic rules and his or her behavior is unacceptable, his or her behavior is worthy of punishment, criticism, etc. Explicit meaning 2 (previous implicated conclusion 1): Driver D is in breach of traffic rules so his or her behavior is unacceptable. Implicated conclusion 2: Driver D’s behavior is worthy of punishment, criticism, etc.

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that the sentence provides us with an echo of what someone said. Here, the explicit meaning is not what the sentence says. It is the observable scenario that Sam plays the guitar badly. And, the implicated conclusion would be that the speaker thinks that the hearer is wrong, which gives rise to a second inferential schema. The premise here (this one is derived from world knowledge, directly without the mediation of an echo), is that we should not contradict other people unless we want to prove them wrong or express our dissociation from what they think. This is a social convention. The explicit meaning is the previous implicated conclusion: the speaker thinks that the hearer is wrong. And the implicated conclusion, the final representation, [[is the assumption that]] the speaker wants to prove hearer wrong, or the speaker is expressing dissociation, or both things at the same time. If what you get is that the speaker is expressing dissociation, you get irony. Otherwise you don’t get irony. You stay at the level of ‘the speaker has proved the hearer wrong’. Now let’s take Coulson’s example, I love people who signal, in the context where the speaker has been cut off by another driver. The first reasoning schema has an echoed scenario for its premise: drivers have to signal when they drive or they are in breach of traffic rules and their driving behavior is unacceptable. The speaker echoes a generally shared assumption: we like people who obey traffic rules. The explicit meaning, again, is drawn from the observable scenario: the driver in this situation didn’t signal. And the implicated conclusion is that the driver is in breach of traffic rules,

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How about another small piece of pizza? (said to someone that has gobbled the whole pizza) (Kumon-Nakamura et al. 1995) • This would seem a case of non-echoic irony, since the question does not repeat anyone’s previous assumption. • However, it is echoic of what could be expected from a good host to say to his guests (Wilson & Sperber 2012: 46). This underlying assumption clashes with the hearer’s actual behavior.

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so his behavior is unacceptable. The second reasoning schema has a cultural convention for its premise: if someone is in breach of traffic rules and his behavior is unacceptable, his behavior is worthy of punishment or of criticism, and so on. The explicit meaning part is filled in by the previous implicated conclusion. This is the same as with implicature and illocution. The driver is in breach of traffic rules, so his behavior is unacceptable, and the implicated conclusion is that the driver’s behavior is worthy of punishment, criticism, and so on. Now, some people have argued that we can have irony without echoic mention at all. And yes, I said so myself. We can have irony by simply saying sure, and that is not a form of echoic mention but of pretended agreement. But Kumon-Nakamura and associates did not have in mind that idea of pretended agreement, and I think they were wrong. They argued that a sentence like How about another small piece of pizza? could not be echoic at all, if said to someone that has gobbled the whole pizza. So, it’s ironic, all right. Someone has eaten all of the pizza and they say Hey, how about another small piece of pizza? And you would ask, where’s the echo? But there is an echo and Sperber and Wilson themselves contended that there is an echo in this specific example. In 2012, in a paper they wrote, they say: Yes, it is echoic of what could be expected from a good host to say to his guests. So, this underlying assumption clashes with the hearer’s actual behavior. There is an echo in this example. The cases of non-echoic irony exist, but they are cases where we only show our pretended agreement. There are never examples like this. They fail because they misunderstand that we have social expectations

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Is ironic simile echoic?: X is about as Y as Z (Veale 2012) About as useful as a microscope. About as useful as buying one shoe. • Similes are generally carriers of stereotypical, culturally-shared information. • Speakers uttering an ironic simile echo the opposite of people’s stereotypical beliefs: we know that, ceteris paribus, a microscope is a highly useful instrument, while buying just one shoe is a pointless action. • Echoing the opposite of the stereotype is what creates the contrast and thus makes the simile ironic. figure 19

and that we can echo social and cultural expectations, too. Because they are forms of thought. And I think Wilson and Sperber are right in this respect. To finish just have a look at these two examples. This is a construction (I hope Martin Hilpert will like this one): X is about as Y as Z, which means that we have some constructions that can be very profitably used ironically. We could have a form-meaning pairing, and say, this could be in one of its interpretations, an ironic construction. Compare the two phrases about as useful as a microscope and about as useful as buying one shoe. The second one is ironical, [[but]] the first one is not. Because a microscope is useful, but buying one shoe is like a foolish idea, isn’t it? You would like to buy a pair of shoes, not one shoe. Okay, but do you realize that here we have simile used in an echoic way? Because similes are carriers of stereotypical and cultural information. And speakers uttering an ironic simile echo the opposite of those stereotypes. We know, other things being equal, that a microscope is a highly useful instrument, while buying just one shoe is pointless. Echoing the opposite of the stereotype is what creates this idea that something is wrong, so there is a contrast and that makes this simile ironic. To conclude, verbal irony is extensively based on echoing previous thoughts. And for an account of irony, taking this notion into account, we need to dissect the speech event into different segments, relate them in the appropriate way, and see which cognitive tasks are at work in association or in connection with each of these different segments. When we have that type of account, which is impossible without the support of a framework based on cognitive

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modeling, we will not be able to provide a complete, exhaustive explanation for this phenomenon, for irony. And [[the]] second idea is that, please keep in mind, we have verbal and situational irony as being two completely separate phenomena. And that is not true. This very same account, based on the notion of echoing, can be applied to nonverbal, situational irony. It is basically the same breakdown of concepts and the same breakdown of cognitive activity on those concepts. And thank you very much.

lecture 10

Modeling Hyperbolic Meaning Thank you very much to everybody! Thank you, Professor Gao, and thank you Professor Li, for the chance that I have to be here in this wonderful scenario, wonderful university, and wonderful lecture series. So this is the time for the last segment of my presentations. It’s going to be on “hyperbole”. And again, you know, the guiding thread, [[or]] the guiding line, of all the talks, has been the notion of cognitive modeling. We’re going to talk about cognitive modeling, now in connection with hyperbole. The idea behind this talk is that you make a connection between the type of modeling activity that I’m going to talk about, and cognitive modeling processes that we have studied in connection with implicature, illocution, and then with other figures of thought. So, you should keep in mind that cognitive modeling is not only something that underlies inferential activity, but it also underlies constructional meaning. This morning I gave you an example in the field of irony and this afternoon, I will give you another example in the field of hyperbole. But before going into those details, I would like to talk a little bit about the notion of hyperbole. And what if I tell you that “Right now, I have a problem, my mind has suddenly gone blank”? That’s not a nice thing for a talk, right? You don’t want to be in that kind of situation. Well, at least for the time being, that is not true. I flouted one of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle, [[which is]] the maxim of truthfulness, and my mind so far has not gone blank. But if you think about it, when I said that “My mind has gone blank”, I was using two metaphors in combination. [[One is]] the “going” metaphor (“my mind has gone blank”); there is A CHANGE OF STATE, which is seen in terms of A CHANGE OF LOCATION. That is a very easy one, right? What about blank? A blank wall is a wall that has no ornaments, and probably has no paint on it. It’s metaphorical. But at the same time, do you think that, even if you work out the metaphor My mind has gone all the All original audio-recordings and other supplementary material, such as any hand-outs and powerpoint presentations for the lecture series, have been made available online and are referenced via unique DOI numbers on the website www.figshare.com. They may be accessed via this QR code and the following dynamic link: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12555800

© Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Reproduced with kind permission from the author by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004439221_011

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way blank, it’s completely blank? No. I see you, and I hear you. I’m aware of my environment: there is an overhead projector, I have a laptop computer here, [[and]] there is a screen. So, my mind is not completely blank. It’s an exaggeration. I was using metaphor, two metaphors in combination (very nice example of metaphor) but at the same time, I was using hyperbole, and probably you didn’t feel that I was using hyperbole. Isn’t that interesting? Let me now give you a couple of examples that I just took from the internet. I would like to know what you think about these examples. This is about being boring. And the reason why I looked up the word boring is that I felt that I am going to be a boring guy in this talk. And probably, my previous talks have had an ingredient of being boring. So, an example of boring is, you could say This lecture that Paco is giving is as boring as watching paint dry. Have you ever done that? Did you sit to watch paint go dry? Make the mental simulation, use your imagination, think of yourselves watching things go dry for hours. Isn’t that boring? You do nothing else (well, that’s a location where your minds could go blank). Or this other one: This is as boring as counting fleas on an old hound dog, which works under the assumption that an old hound dog must have countless fleas. Now, didn’t you realize that I have been using hyperbole, even in my paraphrases: counting fleas on an old hound dog; it has countless fleas. So, we use hyperbole very often in connection with metaphor, also in connection with metonymy. We do not realize that we are using hyperbole. When I was a young child, I used to be bullied. I didn’t use that word, because it was not popular at that time, but I used to be bullied at school. And they told me I was a bookworm and I understand that is an excellent reason for being bullied, I admit that! So I was bullied at school sometimes. But I was lucky that I had a cousin, and my cousin was pretty grown up and he was very tall and frightening. So, I would say in reverence and in awe: Oh, my cousin is as tall as a tree. And I didn’t realize that I was using hyperbole, at the same time as I was making a comparison between my cousin and a tree. Of course, he was not as tall as a tree, or as tall as a mountain. Can you be as silent as a mouse? Maybe not. As hard as a rock? Maybe not. So, we are frequently using hyperbole, and we are not aware that we are using it. Do you remember the example that I gave this morning in connection with irony? The stock example She is an angel, meaning that “Yeah, right, she is an angel. We don’t believe it”. Well, it’s a metaphor from angel as a divine being to human beings, but it also contains a hyperbolic ingredient. Because if you think of the definition for angel, angels are superior beings and human beings are not that good. She’s an angel has also this exaggeration component and it is hyperbolic.

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Non-pragmatic approaches to hyperbole • Psycholinguistics (e.g. Colston and O’Brien, 2000, and Gibbs and Colston, 2012): in terms of comprehension processes. • Discourse analysis (especially conversation analysis) (e.g. McCarthy and Carter, 2004, who address purposeful exaggeration in everyday British English conversation). • Rhetoric and literary studies, with special emphasis on its definition, classification, and aesthetic effects (Johnson 2010).

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But I didn’t mention any of that on purpose because I wanted to bring it up in this session. We know what hyperbole is: it is an exaggeration, and that’s the traditional definition. The question is, can we have another definition of hyperbole, or another approach to hyperbole that will allow us to come up with a good definition that goes beyond the simplistic idea that hyperbole is simply exaggerating? I think we can do better, that we can have that kind of definition. Before we go into that, and we understand hyperbole from the point of view of cognitive modeling, let me mention, just in passing, that hyperbole has been studied a lot, in a lot of detail, by very many scholars across time. We have studies in the field of psycholinguistics, of course, in the same way as with irony, by Colston and O’Brien, Gibbs and their associates, and they focus on the comprehension process of hyperbole. Then, we have discourse analysts like McCarthy and Carter, who address the role of hyperbole in conversation. We have, of course, rhetoric, literary studies, with emphasis on the definition, classification, and aesthetic effects of hyperbole, in the same way as metaphor or irony. Hyperbole, as a figure of speech, can have a profound, deep aesthetic effect, and it has been used across centuries by writers, and it’s studied in literary theory. The standard definition of hyperbole is that hyperbole is a purposeful exaggeration that is intended to have a psychological and emotional impact on the hearer or even some kind of aesthetic effect. It can be used for rhetorical purposes, or to give pleasure to the reader. You have examples of hyperbole on the screen, like Her grandmother is as old as the hills (it’s impossible for the

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Standard definition of hyperbole Hyperbole is generally defined as a purposeful exaggeration intended to have a psychological and emotional impact on the hearer or even some kind of aesthetic effect: a) Her grandmother is as old as the hills. b) I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. c) “Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.” (William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”, Act II, Scene II) [Macbeth is filled with remorse after killing the king and feels that the biggest ocean cannot wash the blood of the king off his hands]

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grandmother to be that old), [[and]] I’m so hungry I could eat a horse (obvious exaggeration; I have seen some people getting close to that, but not the full horse!), and an example drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Neptune’ s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. The idea of these verses is that Macbeth is filled with remorse after killing the king and he feels that the biggest ocean cannot wash away the blood of the king that he has in his hands. Hyperbole has received a lot of attention within the field of pragmatics. For example, Haverkate observes that hyperbole is not a lie in a strict sense, but rather a “description of the world in terms of disproportionate dimensions”. This is very much in line with Gricean thinking, where hyperbole is treated as a violation, an ostentatious violation, of the maxim of truthfulness. Remember this morning we talked about that. We said [[that]] this is not a distinguishing feature for irony, because other figures of speech also have these effects. They can be explained in terms of an ostentatious violation of the maxim of truthfulness. The same with metaphor [[and]] with metonymy. So, it’s a feature of hyperbole in the same way as it is a feature of irony, or metaphor, or metonymy, or paradox, and so on. But it is not a distinctive feature of hyperbole. If we have a distinctive feature of hyperbole, we will go into that.

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Hyperbole in pragmatics • Haverkate (1990: 103) observes that hyperbole is not a lie in a strict sense, but rather a “description of the world in terms of disproportionate dimensions”. • Norrick (2004) discusses extreme case formulations (ECFs) (e.g. She always wins), a subcategory of hyperbole, as violations of the truthfulness maxim within Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle, while non-extreme hyperboles (e.g. He is as silent as a mouse) are treated as violations of the quantity maxim. • In Relevance Theory hyperbole is to be regarded as a loose use of language (Sperber and Wilson 1995, Carston and Wearing 2011, 2014) like metaphor. • Hyperbole is a marker of sarcasm (Kunneman et al. 2014) and it plays a fundamental role in humor, especially called scalar humor, i.e. the type of humor that is related to the manipulation of a conceptual scale (Bergen and Binsted 2003).

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Another approach is provided by Norrick. This is a very popular paper published in 2004. Norrick discusses extreme case formulations (ECFs), as for example, in the sentence She always wins, and focus your attention on always. Always is the most extreme case of frequency that is possible, and it is impossible that someone will always win, so it’s inherently hyperbolic, unless we have an imaginary world, of course, where a person always wins; or a very restricted domain where, by always, what we mean is certain amount of times, and we set up the period of time in which always will work. So only in those examples, we can take away the hyperbolic value of the sentence, but the default assumption is that always is generally going to give rise to hyperbolic meaning. Extreme Case Formulations, he argues, are subcategory of hyperbole. They are violations of the truthfulness maxim of Grice’s Cooperative Principle, but we have cases of hyperbole that are non-extreme hyperboles, as for example, He’s as silent as a mouse, and they are also treated in terms of the Cooperative Principle, but these are treated as violations of the quantity maxim, about the amount of information that we give. So, this is another approach. Then we have Relevance Theory. There is not much, and there is a lot at the same time. Most discussions of hyperbole within Relevance Theory, are connected to metaphor and metonymy, and making distinctions between metaphor and metonymy. And they focus on metaphor, they focus on metonymy, [[but]] hyperbole is like the Cinderella, and it comes along [[only]] sometimes. So, the typical argument is that metaphor in “lexical pragmatics” has to be studied in terms of the construction of concepts “on the fly”. We improvise the

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scope of the concept, and the nature of the concept, as is needed for the purposes of communication. If you take any metaphor like “the angel metaphor” that I mentioned before, because it has hyperbole, they would say “Yeah, there is something interesting about metaphor”. With metaphor, we create an ad hoc concept; and with hyperbole, we do the same, we create an ad hoc concept. Here we have a conflation of both ad hoc concepts. And both in metaphor and hyperbole, what we have is an expansion of the concept, which they call a broadening of the concept. We go from the literal or descriptive meaning of the concept to a non-descriptive meaning that we create on the fly. That’s the approach they have. They then contrast hyperbole and metaphor, which follow more or less the same cognitive process, which they don’t acknowledge is cognitive (they would say it is a pragmatic process, but they have the same underlying pragmatic, or in my view, cognitive process). And this contrasts with metonymy. In the case of metonymy, what we have is a narrowing of the concept. You will have probably realized by now that I cannot agree with this idea of broadening and narrowing in the way that is postulated in Relevance Theory, because we have metonymic expansion (or broadening), going along, which they would ascribe to metaphor. So, the notion of expansion and reduction applies to metonymy, both notions. And the notion of broadening doesn’t really apply to metaphor and hyperbole, because what we have in the case of metaphor and hyperbole is quite a different thing. You know that for metaphor, what we have is a cross-domain mapping. For hyperbole, I will postulate the existence of something very similar, but we will go into that. Also, there’s something about Relevance Theory that I like a lot in their treatment of figures of speech, and this affects hyperbole. They point out that we have descriptive and interpretive uses of language. A descriptive use is what other people would call a literal use of language. We try to come to terms with a word without going into any pragmatic elaboration, like broadening and narrowing. In the case of interpretive uses, what we have is inferential activity, allowing us to derive the [[final]] mental representation. All figures of speech are interpretive; they are not descriptive. In a sense, they have something in common. Grice would have said that they also have in common their ability to flout the maxim of truthfulness. That is also true, but neither the flouting of the maxim of truthfulness or the interpretive nature of figures of speech is truly definitional of these categories. In work that is previous to the latest postulates by relevant theorists, in the early stages of Relevance Theory, they didn’t use the dichotomy descriptive and interpretive. They referred to non-descriptive uses of languages as “loose” uses of language. They pointed out that they are pervasive, [[and]] that we

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use inferencing a lot more than we want to admit. I think they are right there. So here we have something that is concomitant to the main assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics, where we think of metaphor and metonymy have been ubiquitous and used in ordinary language, we don’t realize that we are [[using them]], and so on. Very much the same postulate, we have in Relevance Theory, where they see this from the point of view of communication. What they argue is that metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, irony, and the rest of traditional figures of speech are simply loose uses of language, that is, uses that require some inferencing, some inferential activity, rather than simply a descriptive approach. There are other scholars that have addressed hyperbole in a more incidental way, actually trying to be definitional. One case is Kunneman et al., who observe that hyperbole is a marker of sarcasm, which is true if we understand sarcasm as some form of scornful or acid irony. And they also observe that it plays a fundamental role in humor (it was evident from the two examples that I read from the internet), and especially scalar humor, because hyperbole is scalar in nature. It [[comes in]] degrees, and we will see about that. We will have a few examples that will probably make you laugh if you’re not too tired. But it is the type of humor that relates to the manipulation of a conceptual scale, and you have work by Bergen and Binsted also. Can we go beyond the descriptive and pragmatic approaches? Let’s see if that is possible. My main assumption is that hyperbole is not simply a pragmatic phenomenon. There are pragmatic effects, but these are communicative effects, and they are cued by the form-meaning composition of messages, Beyond the descriptive and pragmatic approaches • Hyperbole is not simply a pragmatic phenomenon: pragmatic effects are communicative effects cued by the form-meaning composition of messages or by the context. • In hyperbole the form of the message includes potential indicators of exaggeration such as superlatives (The briefest of meetings), frequency adverbs (He will never shut up), extreme numerical expressions (I have told you a million times) comparisons (I avoid meetings like the plague), repetitions (for ages and ages). • It might be possible to find contrived contexts where the use of such indicators is literal: • That was the briefest of meetings could be literally descriptive of a meeting that has been objectively identified as beating a record of brevity. • He will never shut up could describe in a science-fiction story a situation in which a person has been artificially manipulated so that he will keep talking independently of whatever else he is doing; • I have told you a million times could be literally true in a world where the speaker has actually repeated the same message a million times (and counted them); it may be possible for someone to abhor meetings as much a a plague; etc.

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or by the context (I admit that). But there is also another side to the story. In hyperbole, the form of the message includes potential indicators of exaggeration. These can take the form of superlatives (for example, in the sentence, the briefest of meetings), or frequency adverbs (as in He will never shut up), extreme numerical expressions (I have told you a million times not to do that), comparisons (I avoid meetings like the plague), [[and]] repetitions ( for ages and ages). So, we have some formal resources that are not uniquely connected to hyperbole, but that tend to mark hyperbole to some extent. Every time that we find constructions based on these indicators, we have a high likelihood that hyperbole will be there somewhere somehow. But of course, it may be possible (it’s always possible) to find an artificial, contrived context where the use of indicators like these does not give rise to hyperbole and they are used literally. You can take That was the briefest of meetings, and it could be literally descriptive of a meeting that has been objectively identified as beating a record of brevity. That could be possible. But that is not, of course, our default assumption when we are dealing with this kind of expression. Or you take He will never shut up. It could describe in a science-fiction story a situation in which a person has been artificially manipulated, so that he will keep talking independently or whatever else he’s doing. Or take I have told you a million times. This can also be literally true in a world where the speaker has actually repeated the same message a million times and counted them. It may also be possible for someone to abhor meetings as much as a plague, and so on. We can always find a context that overrides the hyperbolic meaning, but we know that this is not generally the case. In my research group, over the last two years, we have been working with hyperbole, and we have a corpus of about 300 examples of hyperbole now, from different sources. They are all real examples, attested examples. We have been grouping those examples and finding patterns that are truly amazing and interesting, also in collocational terms, we’re doing concordances on them. And it’s interesting for you to know that [[…]] 100% of times that we find expressions like these in our corpus, these pointers of hyperbole actually work as such. And it is very, very rarely (and maybe there are some occasional exceptions) that we have come across a literal example for one of these potential indicators of hyperbole. What about inferencing? Hyperbole has very frequently been considered an inferential issue. And it is true [[that]] it is very often inferential. In fact, sometimes, there are situations in which the reliable pointers of hyperbole do not give rise to hyperbolic meaning, because we have some counteractivity in the inferential world, and the hyperbolic meaning is canceled out. So, you take an expression like I have seen that film dozens of times; it could be literally true in a non-contrived context. I have a friend, a colleague at the University of Almeria

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Inference-based hyperbole • There may be situations where linguistic indicators of hyperbole are not reliable pointers to hyperbolic meaning; e.g. I have seen that film dozens of times (it could be literal in a non-contrived context). • On some occasions, no linguistic indicator is present, but still we have a clear hyperbolic meaning: “I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far” (Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi)

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that has seen one film literally like 36 times and that could fit the description, dozens of times; so it’s possible. But we generally assume, when we hear an expression like this, that this is an exaggeration. We don’t even think about it, but at least we derive intuitively the hyperbolic impact. When someone says I have seen that film dozens of times, if we understand that this is not a descriptive message, that it is not literal, what we know at least is that it has some impact. Maybe we don’t think “Oh, this is an exaggeration”, but we think “Wow, he is really serious about that film because he has seen the film very many times”, and instinctively we paraphrase in our minds and we adjust to reality the number of times that the film has been seen. On some other occasions, we have no linguistic indicator present, and we truly have to use all of our inferential ability to work out the hyperbolic meaning. I have a very famous example here from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi: I was helpless. I didn’t know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far. This is also metaphorical: I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far. It’s an impossibility. It is disproportionate. We understand that it is hyperbolic, but we have to work out the combination of figures of speech: metaphor [[and]] hyperbole, and also, in the humorous context, create the right connections to work out the meaning representation. In such situations, world knowledge and/or our analysis of the context of situation are the only way to know whether we have a case of hyperbole or not. The hearer needs to determine whether the unreal scenario depicted in

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Meaning derivation in inference-based hyperbole • In such situations, world knowledge and/or our analysis of the context of situation are the only way to know whether we have a case of hyperbole or not. The hearer needs to determine whether the unreal scenario depicted in the linguistic expression (based on disproportionate exaggeration) can actually match (or not) a given state of affairs, i.e. a real-world scenario. • If the match between scenarios is not possible, then a mapping of structure will occur (very much like in metaphor) between the unreal (exaggerated) scenario and the real-world one. This mapping has consequences in terms of meaning effects; e.g. seeing a film dozens, hundreds or thousands of times suggests extreme fondness of it; this maps onto a real-world situation in which someone has seen the film very many times, with the implication that he is more fond of it than could be imaginable. • This is a cross-domain conceptual mapping similar to metaphorical mappings.

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the linguistic expression based on disproportionate exaggeration can actually match or not a given state of affairs. The state of affairs is the real-world scenario. If the match between scenarios is not possible, then a mapping of structure will occur in the same way as we have for metaphor. The mapping of a structure will take place between the exaggerated scenario, which is unreal, and the real world. Please go back to the idea of metaphor. We have two conceptual domains, and connections, and a mapping across the two domains. What I’m postulating here is that to work out hyperbolic meaning inferentially, we have a mapping of conceptual structure between an unreal scenario and a real-world scenario. When I say something like—we go back to a previous example—I have told you a million times, we create in our mind a strange situation where a person is telling something to somebody else, over and over again, up to a high number of times, like a million times. And that is mapped to the real situation, where we know that it was simply maybe ten times, twenty times, on different occasions. And the impact that telling someone something an inordinate amount of times, the psychological or emotional impact that an unreal situation has or would have, is mapped onto the real-world situation. That’s why we derive that kind of psychological or emotional meaning impact from hyperbole. So, we have a cross-domain conceptual mapping. We have two domains, as in metaphor, and we have corresponding structure across the two domains and then, from the correspondences, there arises a number of meaning implications. The interesting thing about this is that, with metaphor what we have is that we work in the descriptive world. When we talk, for example, about LOVE

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Cross-domain mappings: metaphor • Traditionally, cross-domain mappings have been associated with metaphor, defined as a mapping (or set of correspondences) from a source to a target domain. The source helps us think and about the target (Lakoff 1993). • LOVE IS A JOURNEY (Lakoff 1993): We think of developing a love relationship in terms of moving forward to a destination: • lovers are travelers, • the love relationship is a vehicle, • progress in the relationship is motion forward, • difficulties in the relationship are impediments to motion, • lover’s common goals are the travelers’ destination at the end of the journey. • Examples: We are not going anywhere; We may have to retrace our steps; There are only some bumps along the way; We have made a long way. figure 7

IS A JOURNEY we have lovers, travelers, the love relationship, the vehicle, and so on. And this refers to objects, events, and situations in the world. In the case of hyperbole, we have a personal dimension of meaning. We have attitudinal meaning in very much the same way as we have with irony. One difference between this type of mapping and the mappings in conceptual metaphor is that the mapping of structure gives rise to a psychological impact effect. We’re going to go into that. First, you know about LOVE IS A JOURNEY and all these metaphors, so I’m going to skip that. But what I want you to keep in mind, to remember from previous talks, is that in cross-domain mappings, we have a reasoning system sometimes at work, something that didn’t happen in the case of metonymy, and I made emphasis on that. So, think of what you know about cross-domain mappings, as illustrated by metaphorical mappings and the logic of metaphorical mappings. For example, in We’re at a crossroads—that I think I mentioned—we reason about We’re at a crossroads in our love relationship on the basis of real crossroads as points where we have to make decisions. We need to find out which way we want to take. When we are at a crossroads, unless we have a map or some information about where to go, we feel uncertainty, we feel lost, we feel we have to make decisions and we may be unsure about the result of our decisions. So, a crossroads poses a problem and we can reason on the basis of this idea, and say: “Well, we are the crossroads, we don’t know where to go, and I feel confused. Maybe we have to retrace our steps, or why don’t we take the risk and take that road there”. We take one path at random, or we may decide to “scout out” different paths before following one of them to the end. This is

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USING SOURCE LOGIC: “We are at a crossroads”

• A crossroads is a crucial point when one has to make an important decision. It involves uncertainty about how to direct one’s course. • It displays different vital options. In the absence of clear signaling a crossroads poses a real problem, much in the same way as a figurative crossroads when one does not know for sure which option is better from the perspective of personal achievement. • When faced with a real crossroads and no clear indication of “where to go”, people may feel confused, fearful, or frustrated. They made decide to “retrace their steps” or “take the risk” of following one path at random; or they may decide to “scout out” different paths before following one of them to the end. This logic carries over to our understanding of figurative “crossroads”, thus allowing us to think about the different approaches people take when faced with a moment of uncertainty as to how to progress toward their goals. • Invariance Principle: target domain structure is preserved in a way that is consistent with the source. ØNot all elements of a crossroads (source) get mapped onto life’s decisions (target), but only those required by the target. We do not map the materials of which each road is made, the shape of the intersection or of the roads themselves, the lane design, pedestrian crossings management, the presence of medians or islands.

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some of the logic of the LOVE IS A JOURNEY conceptual mapping and the logic of travelling carries over to our understanding of figurative crossroads, whether it is in the domain of love, or life, or a career, or any other domain. Also note that—we talked about this on a previous occasion—we have a principle at work that Lakoff called the Invariance Principle, which says that target domain structure has to be preserved in a way that is consistent with source structure. And that is the case in LOVE IS A JOURNEY and in all metaphors. So, the lovers are going to be the travelers, and the love relationship is going to be the vehicle. We cannot change that; we cannot change the correspondences in the same way as with topological structure. If something is at the top, then we map that onto something that has properties like those of being at the top. We map the top onto the top, the roots onto the roots, the body onto the body, and so on. We already talked about that. Keep those ideas in mind, because we’re going to work now on hyperbole, and see to what extent these ideas apply. Take, as a context, a speaker that tries to lift a very heavy suitcase. Imagine that it weighs thirty kilograms and he can hardly move the suitcase from the floor, and he feels frustrated about that. Which are the characteristics of this scenario, in which he complains about the weight of the suitcase and says This suitcase weighs a ton. This is a stock example of hyperbole. First of all, the scenario is based on the concept of weight and the concept of weight is a scalar concept. Second, this scalar concept is moved up the scale and it’s strengthened beyond proportion into, at least, the next higher rounded-up unit of measurement. You can compare the inadequacy of saying something like This suitcase

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Cross-domain mapping in hyperbole: “This suitcase weighs a ton”

• Context: the speaker tries to lift a very heavy case (e.g. 30 kg) but he can hardly move it from the floor, which somehow frustrates him. • Characteristics of the unreal scenario: a) The scenario is based on a scalar concept (weight) b) The scalar concept is strengthened beyond proportion into at least the next higher rounded-up unit of measurement (compare the inadequacy of saying “This suitcase weights 163 kg” to convey the same meaning). c) The scenario includes the speaker’s heavily emotional reaction to the unreal state of affairs. • For each element of the unreal scenario there is corresponding structure in the real-world scenario. The central correspondence maps emotional reactions onto emotional reactions: carrying a 30 kg suitcase is seen as frustrating as it would be to carry an imaginary one-ton suitcase. figure 9

weighs 163 kilograms, to convey the same meaning. You would say a ton, but you would not use a non-rounded-up figure. And you would use an extraordinary exaggerated figure rather than a figure that is in an upper position in the scale, but it is not as high up as the other. So, 163 kilograms would be discarded for hyperbole. In fact, someone could take this as literal: “Oh, the suitcase weighs 163. No, you’re wrong; that cannot weigh as much”. And third, the scenario includes the speaker’s heavily emotional reaction to the unreal state of affairs. That’s a central point, a central issue, in the case of hyperbole, the emotional reaction. For each element of this unreal scenario, there is corresponding structure in the real-world scenario, and of course, we have a person that tries to lift a suitcase, and it weighs too much, and he feels frustrated about it. That’s in real life. And we perform the conceptual mapping. The central correspondence maps emotional reactions onto emotional reactions, following the Invariance Principle. We cannot map anything else onto emotional reactions. Carrying a 30-kilogram suitcase is as frustrating as it would be to carry the imaginary, unreal one-ton suitcase. You have a diagram here. On the left, you have the equivalent of the source domain of a metaphor. On the right, you have the target. On the left, you have a description of the unreal scenario. On the right, you have the real-world scenario, for This suitcase weighs a ton. Now what about the use of source logic to deal with the target? As in the case of the use of We are at the crossroads within the context of LOVE IS A JOURNEY.

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“ This suitcase weighs a ton” Unreal!scenario! where!the! speaker!is! frustrated!as!he! makes!vain! efforts!to!try! and!lift!a! massive! suitcase!that! weighs!a!ton!

Real9world! scenario!where! the!speaker!is! frustrated!as!he! makes!vain! efforts!to!try!and! lift!a!suitcase!that! weighs!too!much! for!him!(e.g.!60! pounds)!

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USING SOURCE LOGIC: “This suitcase weighs a ton” • A figurative suitcase that weighs a ton represents a challenge for whoever wants to lift it and carry it. • When faced with such a challenge the protagonist may feel frustrated and abandon the idea to handle the suitcase. Should the protagonist decide to handle the suitcase, special strategies would be needed (e.g. the use of heavy machinery like a bulldozer). The protagonist may also decide to do something to reduce the weight of the suitcase. • Invariance Principle ØThe target places requirements on the source as to the difficulty component and the speaker’s emotional reaction. ØThe target does not place any requirements on the source as to the actual possibility of handling the suitcase.

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A figurative suitcase that weighs a ton represents a challenge for whoever wants to lift it and carry it. When faced with such a challenge, the protagonist may feel frustrated and abandon the idea to handle the suitcase. Should the protagonist decide to handle the suitcase, special strategies would be needed; maybe the use of heavy machinery, like a bulldozer. The protagonist may also decide to do something to reduce the weight of the suitcase. And there are probably other possibilities. In terms of Invariance, the target places requirements on the source as to the difficulty component and the speaker’s

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Constraining hyperbole

• Hyperbole-specific constrains are related to the special counterfactual nature of hyperbolic source domains, at least in a default construal of them. • Counterfactuality in hyperbole is based on the use of strengthening mechanisms that result in scaling up a gradable concept. • However, not any up-scaling of a concept is workable for hyperbolic meaning effects to arise: a. This suitcase weighs a ton. b. This suitcase weighs tons. c. #This suitcase weighs a thousand/million tons. d. ##This suitcase weighs billions/trillions of tons. • There are two general constraints on cross-domain mappings: the Extended Invariance Principle (Ruiz de Mendoza 1998) and the Correlation Principle (Ruiz de Mendoza & Pérez 2011). • Then, hyperbole, because of the scalar nature of its source and target domains, is also constrained by the principle of Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment (Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014).

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emotional reaction. The target doesn’t place any requirements on the source as to the actual possibility of handling the suitcase. We can contend that, very much in the same way as with metaphor, in a hyperbolic mapping, we have source logic being used to understand target logic. We have a mapping of structure, and we also have principles that constrain the way in which we perform the mapping, like the Invariance Principle. We map emotions onto emotions, we map the suitcase onto this suitcase, we map the protagonist of the unreal scenario onto the protagonist of the real scenario, and so on and so forth. How else can we constrain hyperbole? I would say that this is not enough; we need a lot more. Hyperbole-specific constraints exist, and they are related to the special counterfactual nature of hyperbolic source domains, at least in a default construal of these domains. Counterfactuality in hyperbole is based on the use of strengthening mechanisms that result in scaling up a gradable concept. But not any up-scaling of a concept is workable for hyperbolic meaning. Compare the examples This suitcase weighs a ton/This suitcase weighs tons (both are possible), with #This suitcase weighs a thousand/million tons. They would be possible, but a bit odd or unnecessary. What about ##This suitcase weighs billions/trillions of tons? They are less felicitous as examples of hyperbole, not completely impossible. You will find that I have not marked them with an asterisk [*], but only with a mark [#] indicating that they are odd anyway. There are two general constraints on cross-domain mappings. One is the Invariance Principle, which, as you know from a previous talk, I expanded it into the Extended Invariance Principle. You remember the Extended Invariance

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The Extended Invariance Principle in metaphor • Invariance (Lakoff 1993): the image-schematic (i.e. topological) structure of the target domain is to be preserved in a way that is consistent with the image-schematic structure of the source: • Mapping a tree onto a person: the top is the head, the trunk is the body, the branches are the arms, the roots are the feet. • Extended Invariance (Ruiz de Mendoza 1998): it preserves consistency in a mapping across all kinds of generic-level structure; e.g. PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS, which can map animal behavior onto human behavior: ØYou’re a chicken maps a chicken’s elusive behavior when someone approaches to similar behavior when a person shies away from something that he should not be afraid of.

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Principle went beyond topological structure into any type of generic level structure. For example, we map behavior onto behavior. It’s not only that we map the top onto the top, and bottom onto the bottom, but also other generic level concepts. And the Correlation Principle, if you remember from a previous talk, is about finding the best possible source, in terms of the meaning implications of the target domain. So, we have these two general constraints also at work with hyperbole. We’re going to see all of these in a minute. But hyperbole has some specific constraints too, and I will postulate the existence of something, called the Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment Principle. Let’s go into Extended Invariance in metaphor for a minute. If you think of a person and a tree, how can we map a tree onto a person? The top is the head; the trunk is the body; the branches are the arms; the roots are the feet. That’s clear. The Extended Invariance Principle preserves consistency, in terms of all kinds of generic-level structure. For example, for people and animals, what we map is animal behavior onto human behavior. If we say You’re a chicken, that maps the chicken’s elusive behavior when someone approaches to similar behavior, when a person shies away from something that he should not be afraid of. The Correlation Principle regulates the selection of the best possible source domain, as I mentioned before. If we want to talk about a person’s fears, a chicken’s behavior is an excellent source domain. If we want to talk about the high intensity of a debate, the notion of “war” can also be useful. If the debate is extremely intense, we can talk about “all-out war”, but if we want to refer to a preliminary conflict, for example, over the rules of the debate before it begins,

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The Correlation Principle in metaphor • The CP regulates the selection of the best possible source domain structure in terms of the implicational structure of the target: Øif we want to talk about a person’s fears, a chicken’s behavior will be an excellent source domain. ØIf we want to talk about the high intensity of a debate, the notion of war can also be useful. If the debate is extremely intense, we can talk about ‘all-out war’, but if we want to refer to a preliminary conflict, for example, over the rules of the debate before it begins, we can talk about a skirmish.

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The EIP and CP in hyperbole: “This suitcase weighs a ton” • Extended Invariance Principle: in both the source and the target domains we map a suitcase onto a suitcase, weight and size onto weight and size, and in both we have an annoyed or frustrated person trying to lift an excessively heavy suitcase. • Correlation Principle: the counterfactual scenario has been constructed in such a way that it provides the best possible source for the range of meaning implications associated with the speaker’s emotional reaction.

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we can talk about a skirmish. So, we choose the type of source, depending on the meaning implications of the target. That’s the Correlation Principle. Now take This suitcase weighs a ton and the Extended Invariance Principle. In both the source and the target domains, we map a suitcase onto a suitcase, weight and size onto weight and size. And in both, we have an annoyed, frustrated person trying to lift an excessively heavy suitcase. So, the Extended Invariance Principle is preserved. What about the Correlation Principle? The counterfactual scenario has been constructed in such a way that it provides

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Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment • It is a specification of the higher-order principle of pragmatic adjustment, which regulates the search for conditions of consistency between conceptual representations. • For example, pragmatic adjustment is required to reconcile the apparent conceptual inconsistencies that characterize paradox and oxymoron. The expression ‘a wise fool’ is a case of oxymoron, which highlights a situation in which a person, in doing something apparently foolish, has behaved wisely. The foolish behavior has to be re-interpreted as wise, which requires an act of pragmatic adjustment of our frames of reference for foolish and wise conduct

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the best possible source for the range of meaning implications associated with the speaker’s emotional reaction. So, we also have the preservation of the Correlation Principle. I mentioned before that we have a hyperbole-specific principle, called Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment. This is a specification of the higher-order principle of pragmatic adjustment that regulates the search for conditions of consistency between conceptual representations. For example, we use pragmatic adjustment in the case of very generic words that are highly polysemous. You may take the example of the word good. How do you adjust the highly skeletal or schematic meaning of good in context? If you say Well, that was a very good football match, you are referring to good in terms of the pleasure that you derived from the football match. If you say Well, that was a rather good lesson, it may have a pleasure component, but it is also seen in terms of the amount of knowledge that you got as a pupil from the lesson. If you talk about a nurse, being a good nurse, Well, she’s a good nurse because of the way in which she works. You see her as competent. If you say He is a good pastor/a good minister in a Christian denomination (the pastor or minister is expected to visit the members of his parish), and he visits everyone, makes them feel comfortable, and gives advice and counsel, that’s the idea of good. I don’t think that we see the pastor in terms of pleasure, like the football match, or in terms of being like a nurse, in terms of efficacy, but in terms of how we feel about the way he works. Or [[take]] He is a good person, he’s so kind, we like him, seen in terms of kindness. So, we can pragmatically adjust the very schematic meaning of the word good by using our knowledge of the world

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Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment in hyperbole

• In the case of hyperbole, what pragmatic adjustment requires is scaling down a gradable concept –like ‘ton’ – in order to provide a reasonable match with the state of affairs to which the hyperbolic expression applies (e.g. 25 kg). • However, this principle is not enough as a constraint on hyperbolic source domains. It does not tell us why “This suitcase weighs a ton” is more likely to be used hyperbolically than “#This suitcase weighs a thousand/million tons” • And, while it regulates the adjustment of extreme case formulations, as in “This road is (getting) endless” and of hyperbolic absolute statements, as in “Everybody likes Paul McCartney”, it cannot rule out examples like “Almost everybody likes Paul McCartney” and “Thousands/millions of people like Paul McCartney” as non-hyperbolic. • This means that the activity of the Principle of Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment is itself dependent on higher-order principles regulating the relationship between processing economy and meaning impact. figure 17

and the context in which the word good is used. That is one case of pragmatic adjustment. There are other cases. I submit to your consideration the case of “oxymoron”, as in the example a wise fool. Can you be wise and can you be a fool at the same time? Well, if you think about it, it is possible, in a situation in which someone that is a foolish person, has for some unknown reason, behaved wisely at least once. And then you’re amazed at it, and you say: Wow, he is a wise fool. What we have done here to adjust the meaning of wise in connection with fool is to scan our knowledge of the world, or look at the context, and reinterpret the notion of wise, adjusting this notion pragmatically, so that the frames of reference for “wiseness” and “foolishness” are compatible to some extent, and the expression can make sense. So, we would also have pragmatic adjustment in the understanding of oxymoron, as in the case of a wise fool. Now that we know what pragmatic adjustment is, let’s see how it works in the case of hyperbole. In hyperbole, pragmatic adjustment is of a scalar kind, because hyperbole is scalar in nature. What we have in the case of hyperbole, in terms of pragmatic adjustment, is the scaling down of the gradable concept with which we have created the unreal scenario. If you go back to the example of The suitcase that weighs a ton, to provide a reasonable match with the real state of affairs for this hyperbolic expression, you have to take the “ton” down the scale up to a weight that is plausible from the point of view of your world knowledge and the context, maybe 30 or 25 kilograms. But this type of scalar pragmatic adjustment is not enough. There is more in the world of constraints on hyperbole. This principle doesn’t tell us why This

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suitcase weighs a ton is more likely to be used hyperbolically than, for example, #This suitcase weighs a thousand, or a million, or a billion, or a trillion tons; and we need to know why. [[There is also a problem]] when we think about extreme case formulations, those proposed by Norrick, as in This road is getting endless, or absolute statements, like Everybody likes Paul McCartney. Paul McCartney was one of the Beatles, a pop band of the 60s, that became popular all over the world. Not everybody likes Paul McCartney. In some cultures, they know who he is; in other cultures, they ignore him; and even in my own country, where the Beatles were extremely popular, I sometimes ask my students, “Do you know who Paul McCartney is?”, and they have no idea. Well, they don’t know who Mozart is, so, anyway, they don’t know about Paul McCartney, small wonder about it. So, we construe examples like these, Almost everybody likes Paul McCartney or Thousands/ millions of people like Paul McCartney, as nonhyperbolic, because they’re literally true. There are thousands/millions of people that like this musician. This means that the activity of the principle of Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment is itself dependent on other higher-order principles, and we need to know which principles they are. My assumption here is that the higher-order principle that constrains the principle of Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment is a principle that has already been discovered by scholars. It is called the Principle of Relevance. For those of you that are not acquainted with Relevance Theory, one of the essential assumptions of Relevance Theory is that speakers do their very best to optimize the efficiency of their linguistic output, in connection to the

The Principle of Relevance • According to Sperber & Wilson (1995), speakers do their best to optimize the efficiency of their linguistic output in connection to the context in which it is produced with a minimum production and processing cost. • Evidently, it is more economical to use high rounded-up figures like tons, miles, thousands, millions, etc., than more specific ones, in terms of processing cost. • In general, non-rounded figures do not add any extra meaning implication that is not provided by the rounded-up figure. But there can be exceptions: ØI have told you 1,342 times not to do that > it could be suggestive of the speaker (ironically) pretending to having actually counted and kept personal record of the number of times, so as to communicate high personal involvement and consequent irritation. figure 18

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context in which it is produced with a minimum production and processing cost. [[This]] means that, as speakers, we do our very best (it doesn’t mean that we actually achieve our aims) to keep a balance between processing costs and the number of meaning effects that an utterance will produce on the hearer. That balance is very interesting because it applies to any kind of linguistic output, and it seems to be an overarching process that is at work in the way that we construct not only utterances, but also whole texts. If you think, for example, of literature, that is usually a counterexample, right? You say: “Ok, what about literary production, where we look for aesthetic effects? The idea of processing cost is not going to be preserved”. Yes, it is, because this is a balance between effort and effects. Reading poetry may require greater effort, but it is compensated for by the greater number of meaning effects. The two items are related and are kept in balance. And now we go to hyperbole and we think of tons, or miles, or thousands, or millions. Did you realize that, as I mentioned before, these are rounded-up figures? They are not specific figures. They are economical, in terms of processing costs. The Principle of Relevance tells us that instead of saying This book/ this suitcase weighs (instead of a ton) 1,235.6 kilograms, I will say It weighs a ton or It weighs tons, because it’s easier to process. Also, if I use a specific figure, like 1,432.5, or something like that, in fact, I am drawing the hearer’s attention to the exact nature of the figure, which is not the meaning that I try to convey. I don’t want to talk about the real weight; I want to talk about the impact that the weight has on me, as a speaker. In general, non-rounded figures do not add any extra meaning implication that is not provided by the rounded-up figure; so, they are preferred. There can be exceptions, as I said before, and they could give rise to irony, by the way. In the example that you have here, I’ve told you 1,342 times not to do that, this could be suggestive of the speaker (ironically) pretending to have actually counted and kept personal record of the number of times, so as to communicate high personal involvement and consequent irritation. So, unless we have specific meaning effects that we want to achieve, the rounded-up figure is going to be used. Let’s talk now about construction-based hyperbole to end this talk. This is a highly-conventional, cognitively entrenched form-meaning pairing, which invariably describes a virtually impossible or counterfactual state of affairs based on a disproportionately magnified scalar concept. You may have realized that I have just defined hyperbole by trying to talk about the notion of hyperbole, in terms of Constructionism. The features of construction-based hyperbole are the following. It is self-standing. It doesn’t need to combine with other linguistic units in order to make sense. It consists of fixed and variable elements:

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Construction-based hyperbole • It is a highly-conventional, cognitively entrenched form-meaning pairings invariably describing a (virtually impossible) or counter factual state of affairs based on a disproportionately magnified scalar concept. • Features: • It is a self-standing: it does not need to combine with other linguistic units in order to make sense. • It consists of fixed and variable elements. The fixed elements are idiomatic (i.e. non-compositional), and the variable elements are constrained by the entrenched meaning implications arising from the fixed elements. Such meaning implications, are of a subjective, emotional nature, and take place in relation to the content of what is said. • It allows for a degree of variation intended to modulate the communicative impact of the resulting expression. figure 19

X Has a Y the Size of a Z • Examples: a. He has a brain the size of a pea/walnut/peanut/grape/grape seed/sultana/a red blood cell/a grain of rice/an eyeball, etc. b. He has a brain the size of a planet/Wisconsin/radial truck tire/ the Universe/dome, etc. • Some of these instantiations are more productive (e.g. pea, walnut) for experiential and socio-cultural reasons. • While extreme exaggeration is possible in the case of size diminution (e.g. Brain the size of a speck, of a nano particle), small objects bigger in size than a pea or a walnut are dispreferred (#Brain the size of an orange/tennis ball/closed fist/light bulb). • When size augmentation is involved, huge objects are preferred to only relatively big ones (cf. #Brain the size of a basketball). • These preferences are based on the fact that the larger the space on the scale between the source (counterfactual) and target (factual) elements, the greater the impact of the speaker’s emotional reaction.

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the fixed elements are non-compositional, and the variable elements are constrained by the entrenched meaning implications that arise from the fixed elements. Such meaning implications are of a subjective, emotional nature, and take place in relation to the context of what is said. And third, it allows for a degree of variation intended to modulate the communicative impact of the resulting expression. Let’s take an example. I would say that this is a clear example of a hyperbolic construction: X Has a Y the Size of a Z (difficult to say this; it’s easier to read

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examples). We can say He has a brain the size of a pea. So, hyperbole is a way of making a humorous utterance, right? You are laughing finally, even though you are tired. Kind of I’ve been making a fool of myself all time and you were not laughing! But now, with a true real attested example from a corpus, He has a brain the size of a pea (and I also found the following: He has a brain the size of a walnut/peanut/grape/grape seed/sultana/a red blood cell/a grain of rice/ an eyeball), we find this example humorous because of the lack of proportion. And they also have these imaginary components, so, they have these elements that make us feel that there’s something funny about the example. So, this is talking about size from one perspective, which is the perspective of very, very small size. Because we make a connection between brain size and intelligence, which is not a scientific connection necessarily, but from a popular, from a folk knowledge perspective, it is a true connection. People believe that a bigger brain is going to be more intelligent. So, when someone is actually very intelligent, we have expressions like He has a brain the size of a planet/Wisconsin/a radial truck tire/the Universe/a dome, and there are many more. These are all attested examples. In terms of frequency, some of these examples are more productive. For example, the case of pea and walnut: a brain the size of a pea, a brain the size of a walnut are very frequent. And probably this is so for experiential and also socio-cultural reasons. While extreme exaggeration is possible in the case of size diminution, we can say something like a brain the size of a speck, a brain the size of a nano particle. Small objects bigger in size than a pea or a walnut are dis-preferred: #A brain the size of an orange? I haven’t found that. I tried to find that, or #a brain the size of a tennis ball/closed fist/light bulb. So those examples are not attested, and I handle a huge corpus. In fact, I went into the internet and tried to find sentences like these and I couldn’t find them all over the internet, which means that they are dis-preferred, they’re not useful in this construction because the degree of exaggeration of orange/tennis ball/closed fist/light bulb doesn’t work for speakers. And I suppose that this is a case of the combination between Scalar Pragmatic Adjustment and Relevance. They don’t convey the meaning effects that we are looking for as speakers. To the contrary, when size augmentation is involved, huge objects are preferred to only relatively big ones, but not in the same way. In size diminution and in size augmentation, we have no asymmetry. So huge objects are preferred. And we will not say *a brain the size of a basketball, even though a basketball is bigger than a brain. These preferences are based on the fact that the larger the space on the scale between the source, which is counterfactual, and the target, which is factual, the greater the impact on the speaker’s emotional reaction.

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Conclusions

• Hyperbole needs to be studied not only from the point of view of its meaning effects but also from the perspective of the cognitive activity it involves, which allows us to understand the source of such meaning effects. • A basic distinction can be drawn between inference-based and constructionbased hyperbole. • Inferential hyperbole is based on using language to construct an impossible or at least a near impossible conceptual scenario whose structure and logic is used, as in metaphor, to think and reason about a real-life situation. As a cross-domain mapping, inference-based hyperbole is constrained by the Extended Invariance and Correlation principles. It is also constrained by the Principle of Scalar Adjustment and by the relevance criteria of economy and effect. • Constructional hyperbole arises from the use of linguistic devices that are highly sensitive to hyperbolic uses (simile, comparatives, superlatives, universal quantifiers, etc.). Those constructions that have a strong potential for hyperbolic interpretation qualify as hyperbolic constructions (I have told you a million times not to do that, He has a brain the size of a pea, He is always complaining).

figure 21

Now, to conclude, hyperbole has to be studied not only as has been done extensively, from the point of view of its meaning effects, but also from the perspective of the cognitive activity that it involves, which allows us to understand the source of such meaning effects. We can draw a basic distinction between inference-based and constructionbased hyperbole, and the distinction is not going to go along different lines than the distinction between inference-based illocution and constructionbased illocution, or implicational constructions versus inferential meaning of the implicative kind. We have this symmetry across different phenomena like implicature, illocution, irony, hyperbole, metaphor, and so on. We can have these two ways of handling hyperbolic meaning in the same way, as we can have these two ways of handling other forms of meaning. Ultimately what we have is the principles of cognitive modeling at work. Inferential hyperbole is based on using language to construct an impossible, or at least a near impossible conceptual scenario, whose structure and logic is used, as in metaphor, to think and reason about a real-life situation. As a cross-domain mapping, inference-based hyperbole is constrained by the Extended Invariance and Correlation principles, but also by the Principle of Scalar Adjustment and the Principle of Relevance, which balances economy and effect. Constructional hyperbole arises from the use of linguistic devices that are highly sensitive to hyperbolic uses, for example, similes, comparatives, superlatives, universal quantifiers. Those constructions that have a strong potential

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for hyperbolic interpretation qualify as hyperbolic constructions. That’s the case of I’ve told you a million times not to do that, He has a brain the size of a pea, or He’s always complaining. This is the end of this talk, but I would like to direct your attention to a few of the highlights of the ten talks that I have been able to deliver over this week. We started off with a talk on cognitive operations and cognitive models, where we classified cognitive operations and cognitive models. And there is a class of cognitive operations, called representational cognitive operations, divided up into formal and content cognitive operations, which combine and work on the basis of different types of conceptual material, or cognitive models, to yield different ranges of meaning effects. That is one of the essentials. Second, in connection with this first essential topic, is the idea that cognitive modeling, that is, the activity of cognitive operations on cognitive models, is at work [[…]] in very many areas of linguistic description and explanation. So, in that first talk, and then occasionally in the others, we have been talking about quite a few grammatical phenomena that are constrained in very much the same way as inferential phenomena. So, we have parallels between illocution, implicature, and some aspects of grammar. We have also been able to see that there are some phenomena that we typically associate in research with constructions and we think these are a matter of entrenchment [[and]] conventionalization, what some people would call “coding”, and they are regulated by metaphor and metonymy, and also by other cognitive operations, like mitigation, strengthening, and parameterization, which we have been mentioning over and over again in the course of these talks. And you may have got the wrong impression, and I would like to be explicit about that, so you will not get [[such an impression]], that I strongly believe that we have no transfer, no bridge, between the world of inferential activity and the world of constructional meaning. That is in no way true. I think that we have inferential activity underlying the constructional entrenchment of inferential pathways. So finally, constructions become shortcuts to give access to meaning that at some stage of the development of language was taken to be inferential. So, we have at least this connection and probably movement from the world of inferential thinking to the world of constructions and maybe also the other way around. That is something that I have not explored in detail, but you have had quite a few talks this week about that topic, although from a slightly different perspective, but I think highly compatible with all the work that I have been doing in connection with cognitive modeling. So, these are some of the highlights of these ten lessons. And I hope that they form now in your minds a consistent whole rather than a bunch of scattered parts.

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And I want again to express my gratitude for the opportunity of addressing you and giving these talks and providing you with some glimpses of my work with some of my research team members over the last twenty years. There is a lot more that we have done, but it would have been impossible to bring it here. But I would be glad to be contacted by email or in any other way. Now that I have Wechat, that is also another possibility. I am updating myself, right? And I would be very glad to be in contact with any of you that would like to be in contact with me and provide you with further insights, dialogue, materials, or whatever you may need. So, thank you very much.

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About the Series Editor FUYIN (Thomas) LI (born 1963, Ph.D. 2002) received his Ph.D. in English Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is professor of linguistics at Beihang University, where he has organized the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics (cifcl.buaa.edu.cn) since 2004. As the founding editor of the journal Cognitive Semantics (brill.com/ cose), the founding editor of International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics, editor of the series Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics (brill.com/dlcl; originally Eminent Linguists’ Lecture Series), editor of Compendium of Cognitive Linguistics Research, and organizer of ICLC-11, he plays a significant role in the international expansion of Cognitive Linguistics. His main research interests involve Talmyan Cognitive Semantics, the over­ lapping systems model, event grammar, causality, etc. with a focus on synchronic and diachronic perspectives on Chinese data, and a strong commitment to usage-based models and corpus methodology. His representative publications include the following: Metaphor, Image, and Image Schemas in Second Language Pedagogy (2009), Semantics: A Course Book (1999), An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics (in Chinese, 2008), Semantics: An Introduction (in Chinese, 2007), Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Volume Ⅰ: Concept Structuring Systems (Chinese version, 2017), Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Volume Ⅱ: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring (Chinese version, 2019); both volumes were originally published in English, written by Leonard Talmy (MIT, 2000), Semantic Typology of Events (in Chinese, 2019). His personal homepage: http://shi.buaa.edu.cn/thomasli E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers All the websites were checked for validity on 16 March 2020.



Part I

Websites for Cognitive Linguistics

1. http://www.cogling.org/ Website for the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, ICLA 2. http://www.cognitivelinguistics.org/en/journal Website for the journal edited by ICLA, Cognitive Linguistics 3. http://cifcl.buaa.edu.cn/ Website for China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics (CIFCL) 4. http://www.brill.com/cose Website for the journal Cognitive Semantics (ISSN 2352-6408/E-ISSN 2352-6416), edited by CIFCL 5. http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/16078?rskey=fw6Q2O&result=1&q=CLR Website for the Cognitive Linguistics Research [CLR] 6. http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/20568?rskey=dddL3r&result=1&q=ACL Website for Application of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL] 7. http://www.benjamins.com/#catalog/books/clscc/main Website for book series in Cognitive Linguistics by Benjamins 8. http://www.brill.com/dlcl Website for Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics (DLCL) 9. http://refworks.reference-global.com/ Website for online resources for Cognitive Linguistics Bibliography 10. http://benjamins.com/online/met/ Website for Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy

Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers 11. http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/research/cognitive/ Website for the Cognitive Program at UC Berkeley 12. https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/ Website for Framenet 13. http://www.mpi.nl/ Website for the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics



Part II Websites for CIFCL Speakers and Their Research

14. CIFCL Organizer Thomas Li, [email protected]; [email protected] Personal Homepage: http://shi.buaa.edu.cn/thomasli http://shi.buaa.edu.cn/lifuyin/en/index.htm 15. CIFCL 19, 2019 Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez [email protected] 16. CIFCL 19, 2019 Martin Hilpert [email protected] 17.

CIFCL 18, 2018 Arie Verhagen, [email protected] Website: http://www.arieverhagen.nl/

18. CIFCL 18, 2018 (CIFCL 12, 2013) Stefan Th. Gries, [email protected] http://www.stgries.info 19.

CIFCL 17, 2017 Jeffrey M. Zacks, [email protected] Lab: dcl.wustl.edu Personal homepage: https://dcl.wustl.edu/affiliates/jeff-zacks/

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Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers

20. CIFCL 16, 2016 Cliff Goddard, [email protected] https://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-humanities-languages -social-science/research/natural-semantic-metalanguage-homepage 21.

CIFCL 15, 2016 Nikolas Gisborne, [email protected]

22.

CIFCL 14, 2014 Phillip Wolff, [email protected]

23. CIFCL 13, 2013 (CIFCL 3, 2006) Ronald W. Langacker, [email protected] http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~rwl/ 24. CIFCL 12, 2013 Stefan Th. Gries, [email protected] https://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/stefan-th-gries 25. CIFCL 12, 2013 Alan Cienki, [email protected] https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/alan-cienki 26. CIFCL 11, 2012 Sherman Wilcox, [email protected] http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox 27. CIFCL 10, 2012 Jürgen Bohnemeyer, [email protected] Personal webpage: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/ The CAL blog: https://causalityacrosslanguages.wordpress.com/ The blog of the UB Semantic Typology Lab: https://ubstlab.wordpress.com/ 28. CIFCL 09, 2011 Laura A. Janda, [email protected] http://ansatte.uit.no/laura.janda/ https://uit.no/om/enhet/ansatte/person?p_document_id=41561&p_dimension_ id=210121 29. CIFCL 09, 2011 Ewa Dabrowska, [email protected]

Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers 30. CIFCL 08, 2010 William Croft, [email protected] http://www.unm.edu/~wcroft 31.

CIFCL 08, 2010 Zoltán Kövecses, [email protected]

32.

CIFCL 08, 2010 (Melissa Bowerman: 1942–2014)

33. CIFCL 07, 2009 Dirk Geeraerts, [email protected] http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/dirkg.htm 34. CIFCL 07, 2009 Mark Turner, [email protected] 35.

CIFCL 06, 2008 Chris Sinha, chris.sinha @ling.lu.se

36. CIFCL 05, 2008 Gilles Fauconnier, [email protected] 37. CIFCL 04, 2007 Leonard Talmy, [email protected] https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~talmy/talmy.html 38. CIFCL 03, 2006 (CIFCL 13, 2013) Ronald W. Langacker, [email protected] http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~rwl/ 39. CIFCL 02, 2005 John Taylor, [email protected] https://independent.academia.edu/JohnRTaylor 40. CIFCL 01, 2004 George Lakoff, [email protected] http://georgelakoff.com/

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