Pub Date : 2019-02-19DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00501001
Liulin Zhang
Trying to situate Chinese into the typology of labile verbs (verbs that may be used transitively or intransitively), this paper analyzes Chinese labile verbals under the framework of cognitive construction grammar. By exhaustively looking at labile verbals in a small corpus, it is found that as an isolating language in which causative (transitive use) or anticausative (intransitive use) is not morphologically marked, Chinese is particularly rich in labile verbals. After estimating how often several target verbals are used transitively and intransitively, two factors grounded in human cognition are revealed determining verbal lability in Chinese: change of state and spontaneity of the event. Change-of-state events give way to two competing profiling strategies, realized as a transitive construction and an intransitive construction, respectively. The degree and direction (transitive-dominated or intransitive-dominated) of verbal lability are sensitive to the likelihood of spontaneous occurrence of the event.
{"title":"A Study into the Prototypicality of Chinese Labile Verbs","authors":"Liulin Zhang","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00501001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00501001","url":null,"abstract":"Trying to situate Chinese into the typology of labile verbs (verbs that may be used transitively or intransitively), this paper analyzes Chinese labile verbals under the framework of cognitive construction grammar. By exhaustively looking at labile verbals in a small corpus, it is found that as an isolating language in which causative (transitive use) or anticausative (intransitive use) is not morphologically marked, Chinese is particularly rich in labile verbals. After estimating how often several target verbals are used transitively and intransitively, two factors grounded in human cognition are revealed determining verbal lability in Chinese: change of state and spontaneity of the event. Change-of-state events give way to two competing profiling strategies, realized as a transitive construction and an intransitive construction, respectively. The degree and direction (transitive-dominated or intransitive-dominated) of verbal lability are sensitive to the likelihood of spontaneous occurrence of the event.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00501001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48270413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-19DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00501004
Krista Teeri-Niknammoghadam
Human beings often discuss their priorities in terms of spatial language (I put my needs ahead of yours). When describing order of importance, the Finnish language predominantly uses motion-implying front grams, that is, grammatical words that code spatial relations on front-region, and indicate in-tandem motion of Figure and Ground. In such scenarios, the mover ‘ahead’ on the so-called path of importance is regarded as more important than the mover ‘behind’. In this corpus-based cognitive-semantic study, I explore the ways Finnish uses motion-implying front grams and gram constructions in spatial metaphors of importance by conducting a grammatico-semantic analysis on my data. As a result, I present four grammatically and semantically distinctive but related spatial metaphors of importance: important moves ahead, important is placed ahead, unimportant is moved away from ahead of important and important leads movement; these all use the notion of ‘ahead’ to define the importance of an entity.
{"title":"When Important Is ‘Ahead’: the Use of Motion-Implying front Grams in Spatial Metaphors of Importance in Finnish","authors":"Krista Teeri-Niknammoghadam","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00501004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00501004","url":null,"abstract":"Human beings often discuss their priorities in terms of spatial language (I put my needs ahead of yours). When describing order of importance, the Finnish language predominantly uses motion-implying front grams, that is, grammatical words that code spatial relations on front-region, and indicate in-tandem motion of Figure and Ground. In such scenarios, the mover ‘ahead’ on the so-called path of importance is regarded as more important than the mover ‘behind’. In this corpus-based cognitive-semantic study, I explore the ways Finnish uses motion-implying front grams and gram constructions in spatial metaphors of importance by conducting a grammatico-semantic analysis on my data. As a result, I present four grammatically and semantically distinctive but related spatial metaphors of importance: important moves ahead, important is placed ahead, unimportant is moved away from ahead of important and important leads movement; these all use the notion of ‘ahead’ to define the importance of an entity.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00501004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47166897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-19DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00501006
F. J. R. D. M. Ibáñez, Inés Lozano-Palacio
This article argues for the need to strengthen the dialogue between linguistics and literary criticism to enhance existing accounts of irony in both camps. The analytical categories arising from this work allow for a more systematic study of the ins-and-outs of ironic discourse. Our proposal starts from the cognitive-linguistic view of irony, based on the activation of an echoed and an observable scenario, which are mutually exclusive. The clash between them gives rise to an attitudinal element. To this analysis, our proposal adds, on the basis of the more socio-cultural view of literary criticism, a consideration of felicity conditions and a distinction between two basic types of ironist and interpreter, together with a discussion of the communicative consequences of their possible ways of interaction. With these tools the article introduces a degree of homogeneity in the account of the relationship between irony and its socio-cultural context across different time periods.
{"title":"Unraveling Irony: from Linguistics to Literary Criticism and Back","authors":"F. J. R. D. M. Ibáñez, Inés Lozano-Palacio","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00501006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00501006","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues for the need to strengthen the dialogue between linguistics and literary criticism to enhance existing accounts of irony in both camps. The analytical categories arising from this work allow for a more systematic study of the ins-and-outs of ironic discourse. Our proposal starts from the cognitive-linguistic view of irony, based on the activation of an echoed and an observable scenario, which are mutually exclusive. The clash between them gives rise to an attitudinal element. To this analysis, our proposal adds, on the basis of the more socio-cultural view of literary criticism, a consideration of felicity conditions and a distinction between two basic types of ironist and interpreter, together with a discussion of the communicative consequences of their possible ways of interaction. With these tools the article introduces a degree of homogeneity in the account of the relationship between irony and its socio-cultural context across different time periods.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00501006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45306477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-19DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00501002
E. Abdelzaher
This study adopts a lexicon-based approach to address violence on social media. It uses FrameNet 1.7 (fn) and WordNet 3.1 (wn) to build a hierarchical domain-specific language resource of violence. The proposed lexicon tethers fn’s innovative integration of linguistic and paralinguistic knowledge to wn’s hierarchically-organized database. This tether alleviates the need to gather all paralinguistic violence-associated scenes and organize their linguistic realizations hierarchically. The proposed methodology can be internationally applied, given the multilingual availability of fn and wn, to cognitively and quantitatively explore a concept or a phenomenon. The lexicon is applied, then, to a corpus representing posts and comments retrieved from Donald Trump’s Facebook public page. Results reveal that the proposed lexicon recalls 92.68 of the total violence-related words in the corpus with a 76.31 precision (F-score= 83.7). More important, relating wn to fn inspires the creation of new frames, suggests slight modifications to existing ones and advocates promising mapping between some frames and synsets.
{"title":"Lexicon-based Detection of Violence on Social Media","authors":"E. Abdelzaher","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00501002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00501002","url":null,"abstract":"This study adopts a lexicon-based approach to address violence on social media. It uses FrameNet 1.7 (fn) and WordNet 3.1 (wn) to build a hierarchical domain-specific language resource of violence. The proposed lexicon tethers fn’s innovative integration of linguistic and paralinguistic knowledge to wn’s hierarchically-organized database. This tether alleviates the need to gather all paralinguistic violence-associated scenes and organize their linguistic realizations hierarchically. The proposed methodology can be internationally applied, given the multilingual availability of fn and wn, to cognitively and quantitatively explore a concept or a phenomenon. The lexicon is applied, then, to a corpus representing posts and comments retrieved from Donald Trump’s Facebook public page. Results reveal that the proposed lexicon recalls 92.68 of the total violence-related words in the corpus with a 76.31 precision (F-score= 83.7). More important, relating wn to fn inspires the creation of new frames, suggests slight modifications to existing ones and advocates promising mapping between some frames and synsets.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00501002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43833929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-19DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00501003
Ye Yuan
On the basis of Goldberg’s (1995) Construction Grammar (CxG) and Östman’s (2005) Construction Discourse perspectives, and by incorporating the theories of genre, register and cohesion from Systemic Functional Grammar, this research attempts to set up a construction grammar framework for discourse analysis, namely the discourse construction grammar (dcg) model. With dcg, we see a discourse first as an overarching abstract discourse construction, which consists of and integrates a number of ever smaller schematic constructions. Moreover, in order to account for the nexion of clauses into sentences and sentences into cross-sentential discourse chunks from a dcg perspective, this paper also resorts to clause conjunct construction and inter-sentential conjunction construction conceptions. Alongside establishing our dcg model, we have analyzed a trendy microblog templatic parody as well as a piece of dialogic instant messaging to exemplify our multi-layered and multi-faceted construction treatment of a piece of discourse.
{"title":"A Discourse Construction Grammar Approach to Discourse Analysis: Microblog Parody and Instant Messaging","authors":"Ye Yuan","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00501003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00501003","url":null,"abstract":"On the basis of Goldberg’s (1995) Construction Grammar (CxG) and Östman’s (2005) Construction Discourse perspectives, and by incorporating the theories of genre, register and cohesion from Systemic Functional Grammar, this research attempts to set up a construction grammar framework for discourse analysis, namely the discourse construction grammar (dcg) model. With dcg, we see a discourse first as an overarching abstract discourse construction, which consists of and integrates a number of ever smaller schematic constructions. Moreover, in order to account for the nexion of clauses into sentences and sentences into cross-sentential discourse chunks from a dcg perspective, this paper also resorts to clause conjunct construction and inter-sentential conjunction construction conceptions. Alongside establishing our dcg model, we have analyzed a trendy microblog templatic parody as well as a piece of dialogic instant messaging to exemplify our multi-layered and multi-faceted construction treatment of a piece of discourse.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00501003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44974200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-08-02DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00402002
Patrick Duffley
The goal of this study is to build on the Cognitive Grammar analysis of full-verb inversion (FVI) and existential structures proposed by Chen (2003, 2011 and 2013). Close attention will be given to two characteristics of these constructions not discussed by this author – lack of subject-verb agreement and the type of pronominal forms that occur in them – and their consequences for FVI’s cognitive structure will be worked out. Further parallels between FVI and the existential there-construction will be brought to light concerning the type of verbal predicate allowed, negation, transitivity, agreement patterns, presentational function, pronominal forms and heaviness of postverbal NPs. The cognitive structure of FVI with lack of S-V concord is argued to be: (1) ground-setter, (2) verb heralding presence/appearance of a generic third-person figure in the ground, (3) nominal identifying the generic figure. Chen’s Invertability Hypothesis is shown to generate false predictions with fronted adjectives and adverbials, and the claim that the preverbal element is in focus is shown to be problematic in the light of its usual status as given information. FVI is argued to be a construction in Goldberg’s (2006) sense of the term, although it does not constitute a meaning-form pairing which is completely independent of the lexical items that instantiate it.
{"title":"The Cognitive Structure of Full-Verb Inversion and Existential Structures in English","authors":"Patrick Duffley","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00402002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00402002","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this study is to build on the Cognitive Grammar analysis of full-verb inversion (FVI) and existential structures proposed by Chen (2003, 2011 and 2013). Close attention will be given to two characteristics of these constructions not discussed by this author – lack of subject-verb agreement and the type of pronominal forms that occur in them – and their consequences for FVI’s cognitive structure will be worked out. Further parallels between FVI and the existential there-construction will be brought to light concerning the type of verbal predicate allowed, negation, transitivity, agreement patterns, presentational function, pronominal forms and heaviness of postverbal NPs. The cognitive structure of FVI with lack of S-V concord is argued to be: (1) ground-setter, (2) verb heralding presence/appearance of a generic third-person figure in the ground, (3) nominal identifying the generic figure. Chen’s Invertability Hypothesis is shown to generate false predictions with fronted adjectives and adverbials, and the claim that the preverbal element is in focus is shown to be problematic in the light of its usual status as given information. FVI is argued to be a construction in Goldberg’s (2006) sense of the term, although it does not constitute a meaning-form pairing which is completely independent of the lexical items that instantiate it.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00402002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42996689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-08-02DOI: 10.1163/23526416-00402001
L. Talmy
For early pre-language hominins, the vocal-auditory channel of communication as then organized may have been unable to accommodate any enhancement in the transmission of conceptual content due to three limitations: comparatively low degrees of parameter diversity, iconicity, and fidelity. We propose that these limitations were overcome by an evolutionary development that enabled an advance from the fixed holophrastic calls of earlier species to the open-ended spoken language of our own species. What developed was a “combinant” form of organization.Such combinance is a system in which smaller units combine to form larger units. At its smallest scale, this process yields a “clave”. In a clave, generally, units from an inventory at a lower tier combine to form the units of an inventory at the next higher tier in accord with a particular set of constraints. In turn, such claves function as the smaller units that combine to form a larger unit, a concatenation, where the higher tier of one clave serves as the lower tier of the next. The longest such concatenation in language consists of six successive claves. Phonetic features combine to form phonemes under the constraints of feature assembly; phonemes combine to form morphemes under the constraints of phonotactics; morphemes combine to form complex words under the constraints of morphology; morphemes and complex words combine to form expressions under the constraints of syntax; expressions combine to form a single speaker’s “monolog” under the constraints of discourse rules; and such monologs combine to form an exchange between speakers under the constraints of turn-taking.Our analysis characterizes communication at its most general and contrasts different channels of communication. In particular, the vocal-auditory channel of spoken language is extensively contrasted with the somatic-visual channel of signed language, whose classifier system largely lacks the three limitations of the former. To show this difference, the limitations are analyzed in detail (e.g., iconicity is shown to be based on six properties: prorepresentation, covariation, proportionality, proportional directness, cogranularity, and codomainality). In accord with this difference, the signed classifier system demonstrates the cognitive feasibility of communicating advanced conceptual content with little combinance, but the vocal-auditory channel is seen to have needed the incorporation of combinance for spoken language to evolve.
{"title":"Combinance in the Evolution of Language: Overcoming Limitations","authors":"L. Talmy","doi":"10.1163/23526416-00402001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-00402001","url":null,"abstract":"For early pre-language hominins, the vocal-auditory channel of communication as then organized may have been unable to accommodate any enhancement in the transmission of conceptual content due to three limitations: comparatively low degrees of parameter diversity, iconicity, and fidelity. We propose that these limitations were overcome by an evolutionary development that enabled an advance from the fixed holophrastic calls of earlier species to the open-ended spoken language of our own species. What developed was a “combinant” form of organization.Such combinance is a system in which smaller units combine to form larger units. At its smallest scale, this process yields a “clave”. In a clave, generally, units from an inventory at a lower tier combine to form the units of an inventory at the next higher tier in accord with a particular set of constraints. In turn, such claves function as the smaller units that combine to form a larger unit, a concatenation, where the higher tier of one clave serves as the lower tier of the next. The longest such concatenation in language consists of six successive claves. Phonetic features combine to form phonemes under the constraints of feature assembly; phonemes combine to form morphemes under the constraints of phonotactics; morphemes combine to form complex words under the constraints of morphology; morphemes and complex words combine to form expressions under the constraints of syntax; expressions combine to form a single speaker’s “monolog” under the constraints of discourse rules; and such monologs combine to form an exchange between speakers under the constraints of turn-taking.Our analysis characterizes communication at its most general and contrasts different channels of communication. In particular, the vocal-auditory channel of spoken language is extensively contrasted with the somatic-visual channel of signed language, whose classifier system largely lacks the three limitations of the former. To show this difference, the limitations are analyzed in detail (e.g., iconicity is shown to be based on six properties: prorepresentation, covariation, proportionality, proportional directness, cogranularity, and codomainality). In accord with this difference, the signed classifier system demonstrates the cognitive feasibility of communicating advanced conceptual content with little combinance, but the vocal-auditory channel is seen to have needed the incorporation of combinance for spoken language to evolve.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/23526416-00402001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49607346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1163/23526416-20201188
P. Harder
One of the challenges for Cognitive Linguistics in charting the role of conceptualizations in the human world is how to address the frontier between social and cognitive dimensions of those processes that depend on conceptualization. The case that forms the topic of this paper is the conceptualization of rationality, including specifically rational decision-making in relation to economic dilemmas. I am going to take up the concept of rationality with a view to highlighting the connections between on the one hand its complex conceptual structure and on the other hand its complex societal role, focusing on a crucial context, that of determining and implementing economic policy.
{"title":"Rationality in Economics and Politics: A Case Study in the Importance of Adequate Conceptual Analysis","authors":"P. Harder","doi":"10.1163/23526416-20201188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-20201188","url":null,"abstract":"One of the challenges for Cognitive Linguistics in charting the role of conceptualizations in the human world is how to address the frontier between social and cognitive dimensions of those processes that depend on conceptualization. The case that forms the topic of this paper is the conceptualization of rationality, including specifically rational decision-making in relation to economic dilemmas. I am going to take up the concept of rationality with a view to highlighting the connections between on the one hand its complex conceptual structure and on the other hand its complex societal role, focusing on a crucial context, that of determining and implementing economic policy.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64618932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1163/23526416-20201199
T. Huumo
Degree modifiers (DM) are intensifying words that typically modify adjectives or adverbs. Some DMs (e.g., ‘rather’, ‘very’) indicate an open scale, which is unbounded and has no maximal or minimal boundaries, others (e.g., ‘quite’, ‘almost’) a closed scale, which has either or both. In Finnish, many spatial grams, i.e., adpositions and adverbs, accept DMs. Such grams have a scalar meaning, which the DM then elaborates. I analyze three groups of grams: 1) topological luona ‘at; by’, lähellä ‘near’, and kaukana ‘far’; 2) directional kohti ‘towards’ and ohi ‘past’; and 3) targeting keskellä ‘in the middle of’. I argue that the scalar meaning of the grams may relate 1) to the distance between Figure and Ground; 2) to the direction of Figure’s motion or orientation with respect to Ground; 3) to the precision of Figure’s location at (or deviation from) a targeting point specified with respect to Ground. Most of the grams accept only closed-scale DMs, while some accept open-scale DMs, and yet others both. The compatibility of closed-scale DMs with most of the grams indicates that the search domain of the grams is typically bounded and has at least a maximal-degree boundary and often also a minimal-degree boundary.
{"title":"On the Gradable Nature of the Search Domain: A Study of Degree Modifiers and the Scalar Semantics of Finnish Spatial Grams","authors":"T. Huumo","doi":"10.1163/23526416-20201199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/23526416-20201199","url":null,"abstract":"Degree modifiers (DM) are intensifying words that typically modify adjectives or adverbs. Some DMs (e.g., ‘rather’, ‘very’) indicate an open scale, which is unbounded and has no maximal or minimal boundaries, others (e.g., ‘quite’, ‘almost’) a closed scale, which has either or both. In Finnish, many spatial grams, i.e., adpositions and adverbs, accept DMs. Such grams have a scalar meaning, which the DM then elaborates. I analyze three groups of grams: 1) topological luona ‘at; by’, lähellä ‘near’, and kaukana ‘far’; 2) directional kohti ‘towards’ and ohi ‘past’; and 3) targeting keskellä ‘in the middle of’. I argue that the scalar meaning of the grams may relate 1) to the distance between Figure and Ground; 2) to the direction of Figure’s motion or orientation with respect to Ground; 3) to the precision of Figure’s location at (or deviation from) a targeting point specified with respect to Ground. Most of the grams accept only closed-scale DMs, while some accept open-scale DMs, and yet others both. The compatibility of closed-scale DMs with most of the grams indicates that the search domain of the grams is typically bounded and has at least a maximal-degree boundary and often also a minimal-degree boundary.","PeriodicalId":52227,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Semantics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64618941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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