Publications

Publication details [#19626]

Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English

Annotation

The paper proposes a philosophical foundation for cognitive linguistics on the basis of an experimental phenomenology. It conducts analysis of the distinguishing primitives and natural categories of cognitive, natural space: distance, position, orientation, change, etc. The author argues the Aristotelian thesis that the contents and structures of the phenomenal world are transposed into language as nuclei bearing semantic and syntactic features. The essay's second main contention is that perception (spatial perception as well) is intrinsically temporal. Its third assertion is that conceptual representation is a continuum of forms comprising a series of positions in a space continuum experienced at rest or in motion according to the various modes of presentation in actual experience. Translated in terms of cognitive linguistics, these assumptions are equivalent to the base principle of construal in imagery, to which the conceptual schemes can be related.