Prof. Dr. Maria Mercedes Piñango vom Department of Linguistics der Yale University (New Haven) wird im Rahmen Ihres einwöchigen Gastaufenthaltes im SFB 1646 „Sprachliche Kreativität in der Kommunikation“ im SFB-Kolloquium vortragen.
Abstract ihres englischsprachigen Vortrags:
The meaning of a word or sentence is a conceptual construal of the human mind which reveals these properties: it can be expressed (written/signed/spoken forms); it can be combined with other meanings; its expression is not language dependent; it connects our thoughts with the world as we construe it in our mind; it serves as a vehicle for drawing inferences from what is linguistically expressed; and it is not readily available through conscious awareness. This talk is about one possible model of the conceptual structure space, the Multidimensional Space (MdS) (e.g., Piñango, 2019; 2023) as suggested by the linguistic, cognitive and neurological evidence that reflects these functions.
I motivate this approach to the neurocognitive basis of linguistic meaning by exploring two kinds of cases widely observed in lexical polysemy (1) cases where one pronunciation is associated with multiple components of the same conceptual “object” e.g., English ‘smoke’, and (2) cases where one pronunciation is associated with multiple partly dissociable senses which are nonetheless construable as a conceptual “cline” e.g., English ‘have’ in the location-possession domain.
The result of this discussion is the possibility of a system for meaning that is built of heteromodal, algebraic structures – lexico-conceptual structures – operating within a continuous space. This space, the Multidimensional Space (MdS), is built in turn as a parametrized, continuous, heteromodal cognitive construct out of which lexico-conceptual structures are generated induced from the individual’s life experience on the basis of the combination of context-independent conceptual functions. The resulting LCSs are what we understand as lexical meanings
The result of this discussion is the possibility of a system for meaning that is built of heteromodal, algebraic structures – lexico-conceptual structures – operating within a continuous space. This space, the Multidimensional Space (MdS), is built in turn as a parametrized, continuous, heteromodal cognitive construct out of which lexico-conceptual structures are generated induced from the individual’s life experience on the basis of the combination of context-independent conceptual functions. The resulting LCSs are what we understand as lexical meanings.
Now, If lexical meanings are part and parcel of a continuous space, it cannot be the case that they are bounded or discrete in any way. Instead, I argue that a consequence of this view of word meaning is that discreteness, to the extent that it is said to exist, is epiphenomenal: the experience of semantic salience brought about by real-time processing conditions which are biased towards giving rise to a specific interpretation in reference to a specific communicative situation.
Throughout, the talk brings to bear evidence from diverse methodological sources –including naturalistic, introspectional, real-time processing and imaging at both psychological and neurological levels. This is what allows us to explore linguistic meaning not only as part of an abstract mentalistic system, but also in its dynamic form, as it supports composition during real time communicative situations and in this way represents a window into how individuals construe their experience of the world.
References:
Piñango, M. M. (2019), Concept Composition during Language Processing: Two Case Studies and a Model. In: The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics. Routledge, pp. 624–644.
Piñango, M. M. (2023). Solving the Elusiveness of Word Meanings: Two Arguments for a Continuous Meaning Space for Language. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, Language and Computation. 6(1), 1– 20.