摘要： 因果关系具有普遍性和多样性。这反映到语言表达上则形成了多种多样的因果句，但其基本的概念结构则是一致的。本文在回顾因果句研究的基础上，从心理模型的角度讨论了因果句的构成情况，进而建立了一个适用于所有因果句而且能够解释因果关系多样性的因果构式。

关键词：因果关系;多样性;因果构式

1. 前言

随着认知语言学的发展，语言学家逐渐意识到：人类的认知方式为解释和分析语言现象提供了一种理论框架。认知语言学认为，语法结构同认知密切相关，语法规则是现实规则通过认知投射到语言中的结果。客观世界的图景通过人类认知这一中介投射到语言中，形成语言设计的总体框架，成为语言运用的总体理据。在人们感知世界的过程中，认知主体(如说话者)的态度、信仰、情感等都将不可避免地渗入其中，影响人们对事物以及事物之间关系的认识过程和结果。这些影响会反映到语言结构上(徐盛桓、李淑静2005)。因果构式就是客观世界事物之间的因果关系通过认知和识解投射到语言中而形成的。近年来，英语因果复句①研究已经引起较多关注(Sweetser1990/2002;沈家煊2003;廖巧云2004;徐盛桓、李淑静2005)。因果复句由主句和从句构成，由连词because等引导。因果构式并不复杂，可简单表示为BECAUSE(α,β)，但这一简单的因果构式表达的因果关系则是多种多样。正是这一看似简单的因果构式的能产性激起我们对之进行探讨和描述的极大兴趣。本文试图以心理模型(mental models)理论为分析框架探讨因果复句，说明从逻辑因果句到实据因果句构成的连续统所表示的因果关系的多样性问题。

2. 因果句的分类研究回顾

Quirk等从句法功能的角度对因果句进行了讨论，认为原因句可以分为直接原因句和间接原因句两类。表示原因分句和母句之间的直接原因(DIRECT REASON)关系主要有以下四类：原因与效果，前因与后果，动机与效果和状况与后果。间接原因句的原因分句表示的间接原因同“主句所表示的情景无关，只是作为有关的话语的言语行为的一个含蓄的动机”。(Quirk et al 1985：15.45)表示间接原因的分句均是语体外加状语。如：

(1)She watered the flowers because they were dry.(直接原因句)

(2)Vanessa is your favourate aunt, because your parents told me so.(间接原因句)

Sweetser(2002)的三域理论区分了“行、知、言”三个概念，系统地说明了各类复句所表达的语义关系。沈家煊(2003)应用“行、知、言”三域划分来说明因果复句表达的语义关系。因果关系三个域的区别可以从小句的不同性质来说明：(1)行域：小句是句法语义单位;(2)知域：小句是逻辑推理单位(前提和结论);(3)言域：小句是言语行为单位(请求、提问等)(同上)。例如：

(3)John came back because he loved her.(行域)

(4)John loved her, because he came back.(知域)

(5)What are you doing tonight, because there’s a good movie on.(言域)(Sweetser 1990/2002:77)

廖巧云(2004)根据因与果之间的关系是否符合事理逻辑，将因果句划分为逻辑因果句和实据因果句，主要探讨了二者在语义、结构、句法功能等方面的区别和实据因果句的表述机理，并就三域理论在因果句研究中的划分提出了异议。认为就因果句而言，把实据因果句的言域和知域合并在一起就称为言域。这样，可以将“逻辑因果句”同“行域”对应起来，把“实据因果句”同“言域”对应起来，使因果句的分类和解释比较简明。如：

(2’) Vanessa is your favourate aunt, because your parents told me so. → (I can say that) Vanessa is your favourate aunt, because your parents told me so.(言域)(实据因果句)

(4’) John loved her, because he came back. (实据因果句)→

(4’a) Because (I know that) he came back, (I guess that) John loved her.(知域)

(4’b) Because he came back, (I can say that) John loved her. (言域)

这里的(4’b)和(4’b)可以合并起来，称作言域，均属于实据因果句。

徐盛桓、李淑静(2005)将原因句分为客观原因句和主观原因句，并进一步将客观原因句分为普遍原因句、惯例原因句和概率原因句，将主观原因句分为推测原因句、思言原因句和强化原因句。如：

(6)Because it is raining, the ground is wet.(普遍原因句)

(7)He watered the flowers because his parents told him to do so.(惯例原因句)

(8)Deirdre must type quickly, for she has been known as a capable secretary.(概率原因句)

(4’)John loved her, because he came back.(推测原因句)

(5’)What are you doing tonight, because there’s a good movie on.(言语/思维原因句)

(9)Because you helped me with the traps , now I give you two Sleep darts. (Price)(强化原因句)

以上这些研究从不同的角度对因果句进行了分类，概括起来说，可以分为两个大类：一类是符合线性逻辑因果关系的，另一类表面上看来似乎是并不符合的。而且两大类还可以分得更细。也就是说因果句可以表示多种因果关系。那么这些多种的因果关系之间究竟是何种联系呢?这就是我们下文要探讨的因果构式问题。

3. 研究因果构式的理论基础

3.1 元理论基础

元理论是对研究某一问题时可能涉及的讨论的出发点、讨论的视角、讨论的根据的说明。这里主要涉及本质性理论、目的性理论、实体性理论和机理性理论。

本质性理论是研究研究对象的本体、实质的理论。就因果句的研究来说，本质性理论要揭示因果句反映的是世界上存在着不同情况的因与果的关系。

目的性理论是研究研究对象可以实现人类什么目的的理论，换句话讲，主要是同功能有关。对因果关系的认识，包括线性因果关系和“给出理由”的泛因果关系，需要用语言的表达确定下来和传递给别人。这就需要有一个约定俗成的表述因果关系的表达式。

实体性理论说明被研究的对象实体的构成。就因果句来说，有关的理论要说明因果句构成。

机理性理论揭示被研究对象生成机理、运作过程和功能得以发挥的机制，在本文就是要说明因果句生成、运作的机理。

前三方面是研究的基础，机理性理论是在这样的基础上建构研究的分析框架。本文的主要理论基础是“心理模型”理论，研究因果句特别是实据因果句的句式结构是如何形成的。

3.2 “心理模型”理论的基本观点

Cruise & Croft(2004)曾明确地陈述和说明了认知语言学的三个理论假说：(1)语言能力不是自主的认知能力;(2)语法就是概念化;(3)语言知识来源于语言运用。第三个假说认为，句法等的范畴和结构，是由在特定情景下运用的特定话语认知建构出来的。因果复句的形成，印证了这一假设。在认知语言学看来，所谓“语言知识”指的是人类大脑中一切同语言运用有关的抽象的语言知识。这些抽象的语言知识在徐盛桓提出的“基于模型的语用推理”理论里，体现为以抽象的相邻/相似关系纵横交错的组织起来的类知识。主要论点如下：(1)心理模型就是我们大脑中的基本知识结构，包含许多小型的心理模型，体现为小型的知识结构。(2)所谓建构和操作心理模型，就是依靠认知主体心智中建基于长期记忆和工作记忆而由抽象知识或类知识建构起来的小型知识集，进行信息的编码、组织或补偿，以期获得新知识。(3)心理模型依赖常规关系，由常规关系来体现。(4)常规关系在人们大脑里的知识结构中，是作为小型知识集分布的，分布为多层级的支系统和分系统，由相邻、相似关系把它们纵横交错地连通在一起;所有的事物之间的关系都可以用[相邻±]、[相似±]两个维度来表现。相邻的事物和相似的事物分别都倾向于被识解为一个完型整体。(5)相邻/相似性分别是从[相邻+]/[相似+]到[相邻-]/[相似-]的连续统，两事物从很相邻和/或很相似到很不相邻和/或很不相似，这两极中间还可能存在许多的不同程度的相邻/相似。(徐盛桓2006)这一理论背景是我们建立因果构式的理论基础。

4. 体现因果关系多样性的因果构式

词有词义，句子结构也有意义。语言的规则是客观外界事物之间的关系通过人们的认知在语言中的投射(mapping)。句子结构是通过认识客观世界的关系而建构起来的;从心理建模来说，就是最初的语言运用者对相关事件的认知状态抽象为相邻/相似的关系，加以概括和简化，最终形成一个结构式。

关于语言的各种语法结构是怎样形成的问题，石毓智等提出两项基本假说：语言同现实的同构性和语言系统的相对独立性，即一方面，“句法规则是现实对象的规律在语言中的投影”(2000：2);另一方面，一种语言的语法一旦形成，就是一个相对独立的系统，“是一个有机体”(石毓智、李讷2001：3)系统里不同的具体结构相互联系、相互制约，形成一个相对稳定的形式系统，并影响着原有结构的变异和新结构的形成(石毓智2000：9)。没有对客观对象的认识做基础，句法规则的形成就是无源之水、无本之木;但句法规则形成后，又获得了系统的属性，获得相对独立的地位。世界各种事件的因与果之间的关系的抽象，构成了因果句认知基础：从严格的线性逻辑因果关系(有其因必有其果)到各种泛因果关系(可以说得通的因果关系)，从而形成了从逻辑因果句到实据因果句的构式，图示如下：

BECAUSE(α,β)

逻辑 实据

线性因果关系 泛因果关系

因果关系的多样性

英语因果构式

说明：下向实线箭头表示因果构式可以具体体现为从逻辑因果关系到实据因果关系的连续统，该连续统构成了因果关系多样性;下向虚线箭头表示从原因到结果的线性因果关系;上向虚线箭头表示从结果到原因的实据因果关系。可以从下面四点来讨论这一因果构式：

第一，两个命题(α表原因和β表结果)和一个操作词(operator)BECAUSE等构成了BECAUSE(α,β)这样的因果构式，α，β的次序在构式中是可以变动的。

从逻辑原因句来说，有其因α必有其果β;从实据原因句来说，尽管不是有其因必有其果，但有关的事件β可以用事件α作为原因做出合情理的解释。这样的语义内容投射为原因句的句法结构，就形成了用表“原因”的连词引导表原因的语义内容，成为原因从句，并用另一句子表示其果作为主果，形成了BECAUSE(α,β)构式。因果构式所表达的因果关系包含了许多小型知识结构，体现为多种不同的因果关系。

第二，从以上第一点可以看出，表有其因α必有其果β的逻辑因果句是典型的因果句，是因果句的原型。用动态的眼光来看，典型的结构模式是不断发展的。为了满足人们利用结构手段表达某些情感的需要，就不断会有新的变异形式产生，例如实据因果句，从而推动语法形式的发展。因此，一个句式结构式可由多个子构式组成，句式结构句式结构以原型构式为基础，通过相邻或/和相似机制，形成从逻辑因果句到实据因果句的网络，即最初形成了典型的因果构式后，人们自觉不自觉地会将这一构式放到各种相似的具体语境中去运用，于是因果构式就在不同的语境里用于不同的说法，表现为多种形态，能够生成多种与之相关的句子。实据因果句的运用就是将典型的“原因”泛化了。

第三，心理模型所包含的小型知识集提供了相似于线性的逻辑因果关系的泛因果关系的知识，形成了从逻辑因果关系到实据因果关系的连续统，这是因果关系表现出多样性的基础。如上所述，心理模型由常规关系来体现;所有的事物之间的关系都可以用[相邻±]、[相似±]两个维度来表现。是观察下例：

a. 地湿，因为天下了雨。

(天下了雨，结果地湿了)

b. 你可能生病，因为你淋了雨。

(你淋了雨，结果你可能生病)

c. 你晚上有空去吗?因为晚上有舞会。

(晚上有舞会，结果我问你晚上是否有空去参加晚会)

d. 校长是你的好朋友，因为你妈妈告诉了我。

(你妈妈告诉我校长是你的好朋友，结果我知道了校长是你的好朋友)

(a)是典型的逻辑因果句;(b-d)是不同情况的实据因果句。可以看出，从b到d，斜体表示的两事件之间所具有的关系，同a表示的两事件之间所具有的因果关系，具有一定的相似性。正因为有相似性，所以就为可以“套用”a的表达方式来表示相类似的关系提供了基础。从这里可以看出，逻辑因果关系到实据因果关系的演变过程中，相似关系起到了十分重要的作用。

这样，我们以事理逻辑、认识、言语行为等为参照，我们将因果关系粗略地分为逻辑因果句和实据因果句，并进一步将逻辑因果句分为线性因果句、规约因果句和可能因果句，将实据因果句分为推断因果句、认识因果句和言语行为因果句。如：

(10)He is absent today because he is ill.(线性因果句)

(11)Because he cheated his firm, he has been arrested.(规约因果句)

(8)Deirdre must type quickly, for she has been known as a capable secretary.(可能因果句)

(12)He must be ill, for he is absent today.(推断因果句)

(4’)John loved her , because he came back.(认识因果句)

(5’)What are you doing tonight, because there’s a good movie on.(言语行为因果句)

虽然因果构式具体体现为逻辑因果句和实据因果句，但他们之间并没有严格意义上的分界，即可能因果句和推断因果句所表示的两种因果关系之间是十分相似的，而是构成一个从逻辑因果句到实据因果句的连续统。

第四，对因与果之间关系的把握主要依靠我们的世界经验，依赖我们对常规关系的把握，也就是创建和操作“心理模型”。不论发生何种擅变，都是在一定认知框架下的变化，受制于同一个心理模型。实际上，每一种因与果之间的关系均是以相似于逻辑事理的因果关系为导向的。“原因”是一个模糊概念，它是一个从充分原因为一端到“说得通”的原因为另一端的连续统。推衍为这一连续通的建立提供了机制。其实，任何推衍都以我们对事物的主观认定为基础。对于实据原因的认识必然依赖实据原因同逻辑原因之间的关系。对实据原因的认定依赖的主要手段就是逻辑原因和实据原因之间的相似关系;也就是说，思维都是以相邻/相似关系为基础的，离开了这一关系，我们的思维将失去应有的连续性。认知者都具有“由此及彼”，“以此代彼”的思维方式和思维能力。人们思维过程中显性信息和隐性信息之间的空缺需要依靠常规关系来补足，即依靠相邻性来补足。与逻辑因果句相比，实据因果句实质上是一种倒因为果的因果关系(廖巧云2004)。我们之所以能接受倒因为果或倒果为因的语言表达仍然属于因果关系，是因为相似关系作用的结果。这一作用过程就是：通过常规关系将逻辑因果句所隐含的因果关系来阐释和/或补足实据因果句的表述，使看来表达并不完备的实据因果句理解起来变得相对完备，从而能同当时的交际意图能建立起一定的(泛)因果关系。如，上文的例(4)，隐性信息是“我知道只要约翰回来就意味着他还爱她，而且其他没有任何理由让他回来”，这样，“John loved her, because he came back.”才能被看作可接受的表达，是一种说得通的理由。

5. 结语

本文在讨论学者们从不同角度对因果句进行的分类、说明因果句可以表示多种因果关系之基础上，从心理模型的角度提炼出了一个适合表达因果关系的结构形式，说明了从逻辑因果句到实据因果句构成的连续统所表示的因果关系的多样性问题。

反映世界上存在着不同情况的因与果的关系需要有一个约定俗成的表述因果关系的表达式。根据心理模型建立的表达因果关系的基本构式为BECAUSE(α,β)，即由两个命题(α和β)和一个操作词(operator)BECAUSE构成，其中α，β的次序在构式中(不是在具体的句子中)是可以变动的。

从逻辑原因句来说，从因到果是自然的顺序;这一语义内容投射到原因句的句法结构，自然就形成了用表“原因”的连词引导表原因的语义内容，这自然也就成了原因从句，形成了BECAUSE(α,β)构式;因果关系体现为线性因果关系和泛因果关系，或称逻辑因果关系和实据因果关系;从逻辑因果关系到实据因果关系是一个连续统，构成了因果关系表现出多样性的基础;对因与果之间关系的把握主要依靠我们的世界经验，依赖我们对常规关系的把握，也就是创建和操作“心理模型”。

与逻辑因果句相比，实据因果句实质上是一种倒因为果的因果关系。我们之所以可以接受倒因为果或倒果为因的语言表达仍然属于因果关系，是因为相似关系作用的结果。这一作用过程就是：通过常规关系将逻辑因果句所隐含的因果关系来阐释和/或补足实据因果句的表述，使看来表达并不完备的实据因果句理解起来变得相对完备，从而能同当时的交际意图能建立起一定的(泛)因果关系。

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徐盛桓. 句法研究的认知语言学视野[J]. 外语与外语教学, 2005(4): 1-7.

徐盛桓, 李淑静. 英语原因句的嬗变[J]. 外语学刊, 2005(1): 56-62.

徐盛桓. 基于模型的语用推理[Z]，全国第四次认知语言学研讨会(南京，2006.5)的主旨发言，2006.

① 本文的因果句和原因句表示的内涵相同，下文有时会互用。

廖巧云

(四川外语学院研究生部，重庆400031)

原载《外语研究》2007年第3期

Most words add s to the root forms without any change (barn – barns).

Words ending in sh, ch, ss, x, and z, usually add es to form the PLURAL (bush – bushes).

Words ending in a consonant and y change the y to i and add es (party – parties).

Some words ending in f change the f to v and add es (calf – calves).

Some singular words have different words for their plural form (man – men; mouse – mice; goose-geese)

SUFFIXES

A letter or a syllable placed after a word to form a new word is called a suffix. Some suffixes are s, es, ed, ing, er, est, ly, ful, able, ible, ment, ive, ance, ence, ion, tion, ition, ation, sion, ous, ious, less, and al. Sometimes a word will have two suffixes. For example, respectfully has the two suffixes ful and ly added to the root word respect.

Many words are formed by adding ed and ing without any change (furnish – furnished – furnishing).

Words ending in a silent e drop the e before adding ed and ing (move – moved – moving).

Words ending in a consonant and y change the y to i before adding ed, but do not make any change before adding ing (deny – denied – denying).

Words ending in a vowel and y add ed and ing without making any other change (delay – delayed – delaying).

PREFIXES

A syllable placed before a word to change its meaning is called a prefix. Some prefixes are im, un, in, co, dis, inter.

DOUBLING THE FINAL CONSONANT

Words of one syllable ending in a single consonant preceded by a single vowel double the final consonant before adding ed and ing (trim – trimmed – trimming).

Words of two or more syllables double the final consonant before adding ed and ing when these conditions are met: the last syllable ends in a single consonant preceded by a single vowel, and the accent is on the last syllable (refer – referred – referring).

POSSESSIVE FORMS

Singular nouns form the possessive by adding an apostrophe and s (pilot – pilot’s).

Plural nouns that end in s add only an apostrophe to form the possessive (aviators – aviators’).

Plural nouns that do not end in s add the apostrophe and s to form the possessive (men – men’s).

CONTRACTIONS

A word or phrase that has been shortened by leaving out some of the letters is called a contraction.

An apostrophe is used to show that the letters have been omitted (won’t – will not), (o’clock – of the clock).

CAPITALS

The beginning of a sentence is always capitalized (The day was bright and sunny.).

The names of holidays are capitalized (Christmas, Valentine’s Day).

The names of the months of the year and the days of the week are capitalized (January, Monday).

The names of countries are capitalized (United States, Great Britain).

When you write the name of a particular avenue or street, capitalize the words avenue and street (Fifth Avenue, Oak Street).

The abbreviations Mr., Mrs. and Ms. are always capitalized and followed by a period (Mr. Callahan, Mrs. Perry, Ms. Smith).

The names of deities are capitalized (God, Allah, Buddha, Saviour).

The word republican is capitalized when it refers to the Republican party (The Republicans won the election.).

When words like senator and general are used as titles with a person’s name, they are capitalized (General Herkes distinguished herself in battle.).

We capitalize the words capitol, senate, building, supreme and court when referring to the Capitol Building, the Senate, the Supreme Court of Canada.

LETTERS AND SYLLABLES

The vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w. The other letters are consonants.

Two vowels written together often have the sound of a single vowel. (In brain the ai has the sound of a. In eagle the ea has the sound of a long e, but in bread it has the sound of short e. This rule will help you with the ei and ie words: i comes before e except after c or when sounded like a, as in neighbor and weigh.

A syllable is a word or part of a word which has one vowel sound and is spoken as a unit. (boy is a one-syllable word; chil dren is a two-syllable word; or na ment is a three syllable word. In every word of two or more syllables one syllable is given more emphasis than the other. This extra emphasis is called accent, and is shown in the dictionary by an accent mark ( ‘ )

(In meet’ ing the first syllable is accented.) Most words have only one accented syllable, but some have more than one (in’ for ma’ tion). The accent that is the heavier is called the primary accent. The other accent is called the secondary accent.

In your dictionary each word is re-spelled according to its pronunciation. The vowels are marked according to their sounds, and the accented syllables are shown. The marks for the vowel sounds are called diacritical marks. These marks vary from dictionary to dictionary. Please consult the beginning of your own dictionary for the explanation of diacritical marks used in that particular publication.

The two words at the top of each dictionary page are called guide words. The guide words are the first and last words on that particular page.

SPECIAL WORDS

Compound Words are made by writing two small words together to make one larger word. (newspaper, somebody)

A root word is the root, or beginning word, from which another word is made. Play is the root word of plays, played and playing.

Derived words are words that come from other words. Suitable is derived from suit; advertisement from advertise. Sometimes the spelling of the root word is slightly changed in the derived word.

A synonym is a word having almost the same meaning as another word. (replied – answered; accurate – exact)

An antonym is a word that is opposite in meaning to another word. (private -public; good – bad)

Homonyms are words that are pronounced alike but which are spelled in different ways and have different meanings (knew – new; steel – steal; deer – dear)

学英语的朋友们对如何提高听力水平非常关心，但有些朋友尽管练的很辛苦，可是效果仍然不理想，归根到底还是在对练习听力的认识上或是方法上有问题。那么如何才能听懂英语呢?下面我们就这个问题为朋友们提供几点建议

1. 尽可能扩大你听英语的范围。这就是说尽可能多听英语母语人士的谈话(英国英语和美国英语等)。同时也要多听非英语国家人们的谈话(西班牙英语、法国英语、德国英语，等等)。英国广播公司(BBC)的面向世界的广播是听地道的英语的极好来源，观看电影录像也是如此。

2. 在听英语时(不论其来源)，先不要为个别单词的意思犯愁。一定要先抓住所听的内容的大概意思，即先听懂内容的全貌，忽略个别你没有完全听懂或理解的词。

3. 请你记住，说英语的本族人在说话时，通常省掉一些词，以求省事，你必须习惯他们的说话方式。例如：你若听到他们说Wodjasay?，那么写全了就是What did you say?

4. 对英语学习者来说，听懂英语的最大困难还有一个，即他们不能正确地辨出词与词之间的界线。这就是说当别人在快速说英语时，你不能分辨一个单词在哪儿结束，一个单词在哪儿开始。如果有人以很快的速度说You shouldn’t've done that(你本不应该做那件事)，这句话听起来就像一个词一样，但实际上它却是由六个单独的词组成的。训练你自己分辨词与词之间界线的最好方法是一边听英语录音，一边默读与之对照的课文。类似这类的材料可说是汗牛充栋，你可以以这种方法同时训练眼和耳。

这四点其实就是练习英语听力的几个原则，在平日的练习中我们应时时注意把这些方法坚持下去，提高是需要时间的，只要你能够一直做下去几个月的时间你就会取得显著的进步。

生日，婚礼，节假日，甚至一个简单的聚会：送礼的场合无处不在。PT与两位专家讨论了送礼的话题。两位专家一位是送礼顾问、Giftelan.com 的创始者总裁莎莉 Athay，另一位是生活时尚专家、http://www.alionthego.com/ 的创始者Alison Deyette。

Footwork 送礼技巧

“If you are planning to buy a gift that fits with the recipient’s field of expertise, be extra careful,” Deyette says. Don’t buy a camera for your photo-buff buddy without doing some research. Read product reviews, talk to the experts at the store, or just ask him what he wants.

Deyette说：“如果你打算买一件合行家口味的礼物，就要格外小心”。如果没有做好调查，就不要给你的摄影爱好者朋友买相机。看看产品评论，在卖场与专家多交流，或者直接问好朋友想要哪款机型。

Presenting the Present 包装你的礼物

Creativity is “a great way to make gifts more memorable,” says Athay. Deyette concurs: “Don’t just give the bouquet of flowers in its original wrapping–buy an inexpensive vase. Dress up that bottle of wine! Add a message to the cake!”

创造力可以“让礼物更加得令人难忘”，Athay如是说。同时，Deyette也认为：“不要把还包着花店包装纸的花直接送人——哪怕买个便宜的花瓶也好。给葡萄酒做点包装。在蛋糕上写点祝福!”

Bon Voyage 分享经历

What about experiential gifts, like trips? “If the experience is custom-tailored to–and enjoyed by–the recipient, it will be remembered and reflected on for years to come,” Deyette says. “If the experience is shared by the giver and recipient, it brings them closer. And these gifts don’t require storage or maintenance.”

分享体验的礼物怎么样，例如旅行的经历?“如果这种经历专为受赠人量身定制且为受赠人所喜欢，这种礼物就会被人铭记于心，甚至在未来几年内还会让人回味无穷。”Deyette说，“如果送礼人和受赠者能共同分享这种体验，那么双方的关系会更加亲密。而且，这种礼物无需储存也不用保养。”

The Quick Fix 礼物速成法

Gift cards are convenient and ubiquitous. But are they good gifts? “They are a safe choice if you are completely flummoxed,” says Deyette, “but make sure the recipient will actually use it. And always throw in something else.”

礼品卡是最便捷的也是最普遍的。但是，礼品卡真的是很好的礼物吗?Deyette认为，“如果你不知道送什么好，那么礼品卡就是最稳妥的选择。但是务必确认受礼人真的会用这些卡片。通常情况下，这些礼品卡都被随便夹在其他东西里。”

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr

Introduction

Embodiment in the field of cognitive science refers to understanding the role of an agent’s own body in its everyday, situated cognition. For example, how do our bodies influence the ways we think and speak? Consider the following narrative written by a 23-year-old woman, Sandra, who was asked to describe a recent, important life event. Sandra began her narrative by noting that she was engaged to be married to an older man who worked in the computer industry in northern California. Quite recently, Sandra’s fiancé asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement and this request evoked many feelings that Sandra struggled to deal with.

I know that I shouldn’t be so naive about this sort of thing, but when he presented me with a draft of the agreement, it was so formal and legal and felt so cold to me that I just broke down crying. I simply couldn’t stand to see our future relationship be reduced to questions of money. It seemed like Barry didn’t trust me, or that he lacked faith in our future. I had always thought that we were in this together, going forward as partners as we started dating, got serious, then engaged, and hopefully soon married. Now my parents want me to consult with a lawyer to insure I don’t get screwed by the pre-nup.

I’m trying hard to find the right balance between understanding Barry’s needs to protect himself and my own needs for emotional security…I’m trying to be flexible about the whole thing…I love Barry and I know he loves me and I wish that the feeling of love would be enough to sustain us through anything. But the idea of getting divorced, even before we have been married, makes me ill. Everyone tells me that I’ll get over this and that doing the pre-nup is probably the right thing to do. That may be so. The wedding is in August. Hopefully by that time, I’ll be mellow about what we’re going through right now.

This narrative is not particularly remarkable in terms of how Sandra described her recent experience. However, a closer look at what is said reveals how various embodied experiences help structure the narrative. For example, Sandra commented early on that “I couldn’t stand to see our future relationship be reduced to questions of money,” referring to the physical experience of standing, or failing to remain standing, to describe how she felt about her relationship becoming so centered on money issues. Later on, Sandra said, “I had always thought that we were in this together, going forward as partners as we started dating, got serious, then engaged, and hopefully soon married.” At this moment, Sandra clearly talked of her relationship in terms of being physically together with her boyfriend as they started out on a journey, beginning when they first began dating, soon traveling to the point of getting serious, and then moving forward along a path toward the eventual destination of marriage.

Sandra also noted her struggle “to find the right balance between understanding Barry’s needs to protect himself and my own needs for emotional security.” This emotional experience is referred to metaphorically, as if Sandra were physically balancing two opposing weights while trying to remain upright. As she worked to come to terms with her fiancé’s request for a prenuptial agreement, Sandra was “trying to be flexible about the whole thing,” again showing that she is conceptualizing her emotional experience as if her body must adjust to remain flexible in order not to be injured when confronted with physical burdens. Finally, Sandra hoped for her wedding that “by that time, I’ll be mellow about what we’re going through right now,” referring to the physical obstacle that she and her fiancé were struggling to overcome along the path of their relationship journey.

Sandra’s narrative illustrates how the ways we think about our experiences may be shaped by embodiment. She specifically talked of her mental/emotional experiences in terms of recurring patterns of embodied action (e.g., standing, being flexible, movement along paths toward goals, remaining balanced). Sandra was likely not conscious of the embodied character of her words, and readers probably do not think of her emotional experiences as specific embodied actions. Yet Sandra’s description of her emotional experiences in terms of embodied action is not a linguistic accident, but demonstrates how embodiment provides the foundation for how people interpret their lives and the world around them.

What must a body be like for it to support cognition, language, and consciousness? Did Sandra’s embodied experience shape the way she thought about particular topics, or did she merely talk that way? One of the traditional beliefs in the cognitive sciences is that intelligent behavior, including the ability to perceive, think, and use language, need not arise from any specific bodily form. Thermostats, computers, robots, and brains in vats may all, under the right circumstances, exhibit sophisticated cognitive skills. Under this view, cognitive systems are best characterized in terms of their functional states (i.e., their logical and computational processes) without concern for how these states are physically realized (i.e., as human brains, silicon chips, or robots). The building materials that shape the contents of mental life simply do not matter. Minds may be realized in flesh, silicon, or even cream cheese (Putnam, 1975). To be in a specific mental state is simply to be in a physical device of whatever type satisfies a specific formal/functional description.

This traditional conception of mind and body has imposed serious limitations on the scholarly study of mental life in cognitive science. Although psychologists and others readily admit that much knowledge is derived from sensory perception, few scholars, until recently, have emphasized the importance of kinesthetic action in theoretical accounts of how people perceive, learn, think, experience emotions and consciousness, and use language. This book advances the idea that the traditional disembodied view of mind is mistaken, because human cognition is fundamentally shaped by embodied experience. My aim is to describe the way in which many aspects of cognition are grounded in embodiment, especially in terms of the phenomenological experience of our bodies in action. Embodiment may not provide the single foundation for all thought and language, but it is an essential part of the perceptual and cognitive processes by which we make sense of our experiences in the world.

Why has cognitive science been so neglectful of embodiment in constructing theories of perception, cognition, and language? The denial of the body in consideration of human thought has been part of the Western intellectual tradition since the time of the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the best voice for this earlier view was Plato, as shown in the following dialogue from the “Phaedo”:

All these considerations, said Socrates, must surely prompt serious philosophers to review the position in some such way as this…So long as we keep the body and our soul contaminated with this imperfection, there is no chance of our ever attaining satisfactorily to our object, which we assert to be the truth….The body fills us with loves and desires and fears and all sorts of nonsense, with the result that we literally never get an opportunity to think at all about anything…That is why, on all these accounts, we have so little time for philosophy….It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead…It seems that so long as we are alive, we shall continue closest to knowledge if we avoid as much as we can all contact and association with the body, except when they are absolutely necessary, and instead of allowing ourselves to become infected with its nature, purify ourselves from it until God himself gives us deliverance. (Hamilton & Cairns, 1961: 49)

Plato viewed the body as a source of distraction in intellectual life that must be eradicated in the practice of philosophy. Separation of the mind and body and the hierarchical ordering of mind over body haunt the history of Western philosophical accounts of knowledge from Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine through to Descartes and Kant. For example, in early Christian writings, bodily sensations and desires were rivaled in contests against a higher form of Truth, or closeness to God. As St. Augustine wrote in the fifth century, “More and more, O Lord, you will increase your gift in me, so that my soul may follow me to you, freed from the concupiscence which binds it, and rebel no more against itself” (Augustine, 1961: 234). Augustine fixed the body as a source of sin, weakness, and the measure against which the strength of his will toward God is knowable.

In the 17th century, Rene Descartes’ struggle with a purely material body and a perfectly insubstantial mind led him to propose that the body is, in fact, an idea in the mind (Descartes, 1984, 1985). The body’s materiality, along with other objects that are impressed upon body substances, is a literalization of this idea in our experience. When we pay attention to it, the body materializes, and we become aware of the body as an object. However, as our attention centers on other things, or on thought itself, the body disappears.

Mental phenomena, according to Descartes, have no place in the quantifiable world of physics, but have a completely autonomous status: “I am a substance the whole nature or essence of which is to think, and which for its existence does not need any place or depend on any material thing” (Descartes, Discourse, Part IV). Descartes distinguished, then, between physical substances (“res extensa”), which can be measured and divided, and thinking substances (“res cogitans”), which are unextended and indivisible. The human body, including the brain and nervous system, belongs to the first group, whereas the mind, including all thoughts, desires, and volitions, belongs to the second.

Cartesian dualism arose from Descartes’ claim that he could doubt the existence of physical objects, including his own body, but not the existence of his thoughts or thinking. Although Descartes worried about possible interactions of mind and body, Cartesian dualism evolved into an epistemological tradition that separated the mind as rational, thinking, immaterial, and private from the body as an irrational, corrupt, and physical substance that merely provided public, physical exertion on the material world. This bifurcation of the person into mind and body has subsequently given rise to many other dualisms, including subjective as opposed to objective, knowledge as opposed to experience, reason as opposed to feeling, theory as opposed to practice, and verbal as opposed to nonverbal. Cartesianism has also led to the romantic view of the body as the last bastion of what is natural, unspoiled, preconceptual, and primitive in experience. Bodily movement is viewed as behavior, with little relevance to language, thought, or consciousness, and not as meaningful action.

The Western tradition since Descartes has generally assumed that the body is a solid object and the self, in particular the mind, is an ethereal subject mysteriously infused into the body object. Throughout history, the mind has been modeled as a series of different material objects (e.g., a hydraulic machine, a telephone switchboard, a hologram, a digital computer). Cognitive science, as an interdisciplinary research enterprise, came into being in the 1950s with the rise of the MIND IS A COMPUTER metaphor, which resulted from technological advances in computing machinery. Alan Turing (1950) outlined a method for assessing the question “Can machines think?” Following in Descartes’ footsteps, Turing emphasized the importance of drawing a “fairly sharp line” (p. 434) between a person’s physical capacities and his/her intellectual abilities. Turing asked us to consider a scenario that included three people – a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator of unspecified sex (C). The interrogator was in a separate room from the man and the woman, and the interrogator’s task was to determine which of the two was a man and which was a woman on the basis of their written answers to certain questions (e.g., “What is the length of your hair?”). It is A’s task to confuse the interrogator and B’s task to help. The test proper comes into play by swapping the man (A) with a machine. If the interrogator makes the same set of judgments, deductions, and guesses after the swap as before (i.e., the interrogator is unable to distinguish the machine’s answers from the man’s answers), then the machine has passed the “Turing test.” The machine whose behavior is indistinguishable from the intellect of the man is the machine that thinks.

Cognitive science models of intelligent human activity have mostly continued to assume, like Turing, that cognition is autonomous, logical, and disembodied. In his history of cognitive science, Gardner (1985) claimed that the exclusion of the body was, in fact, a benign methodological decision: “Though mainstream cognitive scientists do not necessarily bear any animus against the affective realm, against the context that surrounds any actor or thought, or against historical or cultural analyses, in practice they attempt to factor out these elements to the maximum extent possible…This may be a question of practicality: if one were to take into account these individualizing and phenomenalistic elements, cognitive science might well become impossible” (p. 41).

Some cognitive scientists question whether the exclusion of the phenomenological body, along with other aspects of experience such as emotion and consciousness, is merely a methodological issue, and not really constitutive of what cognitive scientists believe is essential about cognition. Of course, many scholars now try to avoid the strict separation of mind and body assumed by Cartesian dualism. The most popular strategy, especially in recent decades, has been to reduce mental events to brain processes and replace internal explanations with instrumental ones. In some cases, the reduction of mind to brain carries with it the reduction of body to brain. Neuroscientists, for instance, seldom acknowledge the role played by the body as a whole in the cognitive operation of the brain. The body is reduced to its representation in the somatosensory cortex and is considered important only to the extent that it provides the raw sensory input required for cognitive computations. In other cases, the body is first reduced to the mind, and then reduced to the brain. This is especially true in psychology, where the body is first treated as an intentional object (i.e., an image, a mental representation) and then reduced to neural computations.

Contemporary philosophers argue over whether a physical body is necessary for knowledge and cognition, often by considering the implications of different thought experiments in which the mind may be divorced from critical aspects of bodily experience. For instance, consider the following scenario:

Imagine a brilliant neuroscientist named Mary, who has lived her entire life in a room that is rigorously controlled to display only various shades of black, white, and grey. She learns about the outside world by means of a black/white television monitor, and being brilliant, she manages to transcend these obstacles. She becomes the world’s greatest neuroscientist, all from within this room. In particular, she comes to know everything there is to know about the physical structure and activity of the brain and its visual system, of its actual and possible states. (Churchland, 1985: 22)

Philosophers argue, based on examples like the above, over whether qualia (i.e., the phenomenal character of our experience), such as one’s subjective sensations of color, must be mental states that are causally related to the neurophysiology of the brain (see Churchland, 1984; Jackson, 1982, 1986). These scenarios, however, dramatically fail to recognize the need for a real living body in knowing about the world. There is no acknowledgment of Mary as a living person, made of flesh, blood, and bone, who moves and has awareness of the felt qualities of her own actions. Mary’s first-person experiences of her own body in relation to the environment provide knowledge that is “qualitatively incommensurate” with whatever may be happening in her own brain, or anyone else’s (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999: 167). Mary learns about qualia because she subjectively experiences them through her own bodily actions. Knowledge of a set of abstract propositions, such as Mary’s understanding of the neurophysiology of color vision, means nothing unless a person experiences in some embodied sense the physical world to which these propositions refer (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999).

Cognitive psychologists, like many philosophers, often fail to recognize the significance of embodied action in the study of human mental life. Most experimental investigations of perception and cognition occur in laboratory situations where a person passively observes stimuli and then responds in some specified manner to what has been presented. In some instances, the person is physically restricted in his or her movements (e.g., head rests are used in psychophysical experiments). In cases where the participant must move to respond to stimuli, such as having to push a button or speak aloud, psychologists work hard to eliminate the movement from their theoretical understanding of the processes involved in perception and cognition. Cognitive processes, especially, are viewed as strictly mental phenomena that have little to do with embodied experience. The body is the vessel for the mind and brain, but has negligible importance in characterizing the essence of mental life.

However, the situation is now changing. Consider just three examples of how psychologists now pay attention to embodied action when studying different cognitive phenomena. First, the classic empirical work on mental imagery investigates possible correspondences between mental imagery and visual perception. For example, participants in one classic study were presented with two-dimensional drawings of pairs of three dimensional objects. The participants’ task was to determine whether the two represented objects were identical except for orientation (Shepard & Metzler, 1971). Some of the figures required rotation solely within the picture plane, whereas others required rotation in depth (“into” the page). The general result was that, whether for two- or three-dimensional rotations, participants seemed to rotate the objects mentally at a fixed rate of approximately 60 degrees/second. For many years, psychologists assumed that cognitive abilities, such as those observed in mental rotation studies, demonstrate the tight link between visual perception and mental imagery. Although numerous studies examine people’s kinesthetic and motor imagery, scholars traditionally have not searched for explicit relations between kinesthetic activity and mental imagery.

However, recent work suggests that many aspects of visual and motor imagery share a common representational, and possibly neuropsychological, substrate. Various studies demonstrate that the ability to transform mental images is linked to motor processes, so that rotating one’s hands in the direction opposite to the required mental rotation slows down the speed of mental rotation (Wexler, Kosslyn, & Berthoz, 1998). Researchers now claim that “visuomotor anticipation is the engine that drives mental rotation” (Wexler et al., 1998). Under this view, similar mechanisms drive both visual image transformation and the production of embodied movements. The ability to plan movements as simulated actions, and not as actual motor plans, may be the common element underlying embodied action and mental imagery performance (Johnson, 2000). These new developments in cognitive psychology illustrate how correcting for a previous neglect of embodied experience in experimental studies leads to a richer picture of the importance of embodiment in human cognition.

Psycholinguists have also slowly begun to seek out the embodied foundation of linguistic structure and meaning. Recall Sandra’s earlier comment in response to her fiancé’s request for a prenuptial agreement that “I couldn’t stand to see our future relationship be reduced to questions of money.” Why is it that Sandra used the word “stand” to refer to an abstract, mental experience of her adjusting to her fiancé’s demand? Traditional studies on how people process ambiguous, or polysemous, words such as “stand” generally assume that each sense of a word is listed as part of its entry in the mental lexicon. For example, do people immediately access all the possible senses for the word “stand,” with context determining which meaning is appropriate afterward? Or does context constrain lexical access so that only the correct meaning of “stand” is accessed during immediate utterance interpretation? These empirical questions have been studied extensively (Gorfein, 2001).

Psycholinguists rarely ask whether people have intuitions about why “stand,” or any polysemous word, has the variety of meanings it does. Recent studies, however, demonstrate that people’s intuitions about the meanings of “stand” are shaped by their embodied experiences of standing (Gibbs, Beitel, Harrington, & Sanders, 1994). Thus, people tacitly recognize that Sandra’s use of “stand” has a metaphorical meaning that is related to their embodied experiences of struggling to remain physically upright when some physical force acts against them. People’s understandings of linguistic meanings are not divorced from their embodied experiences, but rather are fundamentally constrained by them in predictable ways.

Following Piaget’s early writings, developmental psychology has also started to meaningfully explore how embodied action may underlie children’s acquisition of perceptual/conceptual knowledge. For example, infants’ interest in things that move assists them in understanding some cause-effect relations in the physical world. Sophisticated studies indicated that infants 12 months old and younger are capable, in the right setting, of making causal attributions to the behavior of objects they see in the world (Gergely, Nadasdy, Csiba, & Biro, 1995; Spelke, Philip, & Woodward, 1995). The infant’s developing sensitivity to causal relations may underlie the acquisition of a concept for agency (i.e., things move because of internal forces or human intentions).

These studies, however, despite their brilliance, situate the child as a passive observer who learns to reason about the physical world by visual inspection of real-world events. Several experiments now demonstrate the importance of the child’s bodily exploration of the physical world in learning about objects and their behaviors (Adolph, 1997, 2000; Bertenthal, Campos, & Kermoian, 1994; Hertenstein, 2002; Needham, Barrett, & Peterman, 2002). This empirical work suggests that many basic concepts may arise from rudimentary bodily actions and young children’s felt experiences of them. Causation and agency, for example, may be rooted in infants’ phenomenological sense of their own bodies’ interactions with objects and other people. Even before infants possess any ability to physically manipulate objects with their hands and feet, they directly experience cause and effect from the movement of their lips, tongues, and mouths during breastfeeding, or from chewing food, which transforms it to something that can be swallowed easily. An encouraging trend in developmental psychology is greater attention given to infants’ phenomenological experience in relation to cognitive growth.

These brief examples illustrate how looking for embodied action in thought and language may provide a different picture of human cognition than has traditionally been assumed within cognitive science. Much recent work in cognitive science views embodiment as a matter of brain states and neural activity. We have indeed learned a great deal from these neuroscientific studies. However, as Roger Sperry noted over sixty-five years ago, “An objective psychologist, hoping to get at the physiological side of behavior, is apt to plunge immediately into neurology trying to correlate brain activity with modes of experience. The result in many cases only accentuates the gap between the total experience as studied by the psychologist and neuronal activity as analyzed by the neurologists. But the experience of the organism is integrated, organized, and has its meaning in terms of coordinated movement” (1939: 295).

The psychologist Scott Kelso more recently suggested, “It is important to keep in mind…that the brain did not evolve merely to register representations of the world; rather, it evolved for adaptive actions and behaviors. Musculoskeletal structures coevolved with appropriate brain structures so that the entire unit must function together in an adaptive fashion…it is the entire system of muscles, joints, and proprioceptive and kinesthetic functions and appropriate parts of the brain that evolve and function together in a unitary way” (1995: 268).

The brain is certainly part of an integrated dynamic system devoted to the moment-by-moment embodied dynamics of everyday life. Viewing the brain simply as an information-processing or computational device, as the center of cognition, ignores the centrality of animate form in human thought (Sheets-Johnstone, 1999).

This book describes the ways that perception, concepts, mental imagery, memory, reasoning, cognitive development, language, emotion, and consciousness have, to varying extents, groundings in embodiment. My strategy in exploring the significance of embodiment in the study of these topics adopts what may be called the “embodiment premise”:

People’s subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for language and thought. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical, cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action.

The key feature of this premise is the idea that understanding the embodied nature of human cognition demands that researchers specifically look for possible mind-body and language-body connections. Understanding embodied experience is not simply a matter of physiology or kinesiology (i.e., the body as object), but demands recognition of how people dynamically move in the physical/cultural world (i.e., the body experienced from a first-person, phenomenological perspective). The mind (its images, thoughts, representations) is created from ideas that are closely related to brain representations of the body and to the body’s continued activities in the real world.

Fortunately, there is an accumulating body of empirical evidence showing how embodied activities shape human cognition. In the spirit of cognitive science, this “empirical” evidence includes data collected from controlled laboratory studies, naturalistic field observations, neuropsychological case studies, linguistic research, artificial intelligence (and artificial life) modeling, and various phenomenological studies and reports. To be sure, many of the scholars whose studies are described here may not entirely agree with my interpretation of their work as support for “embodied” cognition. Some of these disagreements center around what is meant by the terms “embodied” and “embodiment.” I argue that “embodiment” may refer to, at least, three levels of personhood (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1999): neural events, the cognitive unconscious, and phenomenological experience. Although amazing advances have been made in understanding neural processes, insignificant attention has been given to people’s phenomenological experience in explaining many aspects of perception, cognition, and language. I address this problem in the pages that follow.

At the same time, special emphasis will be given in the following chapters to two important developments in cognitive science. The first is the approach to cognition known as dynamical systems theory. Dynamical approaches emphasize the temporal dimensions of cognition and the ways in which an individual’s behavior emerges from interactions of brain, body, and environment. Simple and complex behavioral patterns are higher-order products of self-organization processes. Virtually all living organisms self-assemble, or are self-organizing systems, “as emergent consequences of nonlinear interaction among active components” (Kelso, 1995: 67). Self-organized patterns of behavior emerge as stable states from the interaction of many subsystems. Yet the emerging higher-order behavior is also capable of “enslaving” lower-level components in such a way that behavioral patterns can often be described by relatively few dimensions. Much of the emphasis, then, in dynamical systems theory is on the structure of spaces of possible behavioral trajectories and the internal and external forces (i.e., couplings between brain, body, and world) that shape these trajectories as they unfold. More specifically, dynamical systems theory is a set of mathematical tools that can be applied to characterize different states of the system as these evolve in time. In this way, a dynamical view aims to describe how the body’s continuous interactions with the world provide for coordinated patterns of adaptive behavior, rather than focusing on how the external world become represented in the inner mind.

【关键词】美国俚语;语言特征;文化特征

俚语是一种特殊的语言形式，长期以来，人们对俚语的定义没有统一的标准规范。《美国传统词典》对俚语的定义：俚语是一种非正式的、游戏性的话语中的一种语言，基本由存在时间很短的派生词和修辞构成，它们被故意地用来取代标准的词语以达到生动、幽默或其它效果;《简明牛津辞典》里对俚语的释义：任何下层社会出生的集团所使用的特殊词汇;低级的和粗俗的语言;一定阶级或一定时期的用语;一种比有教养的人的常用语言更低级的口语，包括特殊意义的新词或常用词《牛津现代高级英汉双解词典》一般用于朋友或同事间之谈话，但不适于好的写作或正式场合的字词;尤指某一阶层人士的惯用语，如军队俚语，狱中俚语。由此，人们对俚语有两种截然不同的态度，有些人认为俚语是粗俗卑陋，难登大雅之堂，甚至是在污染语言，应当全盘否定;而另一些人认为，俚语是生动活泼、形象幽默、简洁明快的语言形式，应当高度肯定。对俚语持绝对否定和绝对肯定的态度都是片面的，由此本人引用《英汉词汇学教程》给俚语定位及是高度口语化的极不符合规范语言的词，由新词、新词义或某些修辞格组成，其主要特点是追求新颖，形象生动，它的本质在于分布广泛却又处于公认的语言标准范围之外。

一、俚语的构成形式

美国俚语极其新颖、活泼、形象和积极，是真正活的语言，不仅在当今美国社会的影视、广播、小说、报刊杂志，以及日常交谈中形成吸引力的磁场，而且有些俚语在全球范围内流行。

(一)源于标准词语的俚语词

语言来源于人们的劳动、需求、趣味、人和人之间的关系等等，而俚语正反映了人们摆脱呆板的语言模式，自由表达自我的愿望。在原有的标准语词汇的基础上进行语义的转换或俚语的转换，这种转换大多为标准语词汇或俚语的意义的引申。如chin为下巴，转义为闲聊或谈话;而俚语real bad原义为极坏的、糟糕的，但现可以用来指好、棒极了、极好的意思。例如，deep-six原为航海术语“测量水深是以英寻为单位，一英寻等于六英尺” 在举行海葬时有个规矩：水深要超过六英寻，因为海葬的联想，deep-six有寿终正寝、永不录用的含意，再演变为废弃之意。The project was deep-six， 就是计划被废止了。又如，ham(火腿)一字用于指演艺界人士，出自俚语的ham fatter，代表底层、表演夸张的演员。再如rap一词是拟声字，原来表示敲打，进入美国俚语后成为责怪之意，又进一步演变为谈话。到了1970年代， 在美国迪斯科舞厅中一些美国黑人DJ喜欢用手转动唱片发出刺耳的摩擦声，放手时已是另一条曲子，如此构成一个可以无止境播放的音乐大拼盘，来的DJ又以这种节奏鲜明的音乐为背景，加上押了韵的旁白(rap)就成了重节奏、重内容而不重旋律的拉普音乐。

(二)新创造的俚语词

俚语构词的最大特点就是突出的表现力、多样性和创造力，根据S.B.Flexner的研究，其中有不少起首字母是爆破音(plosives)或送气音(aspirated)，发音响亮清晰、简短有力、易于上口，社会的发展，社会生活的变化，人们思维方式的更新，新的俚语词也随之出现。如美语中的oomph意为性感、魅力，是根据拟声而新创造的俚语，类似如kook意思为怪 人，booboo意为愚蠢的错误;有的是合成词(composition)如对于与自己意气相投的朋友称为“homeboy或home girl”;还有些是混合而成 (blending)：如“wannabe lifestyle”(追星族的生活方式)，其中“wannabe”由“want to be”。

(三)源于缩略的俚语词

科技的 发展，社会的进步，大量的缩略词语应运而生，有些俚语词就是以缩略的形式出现在俚语词的行列中，如美国青少年常用defjam来称赞流行音乐，其中def 来自definitive，如cig是cigarette的缩写;VIP是very important person的缩略;nabe是neighbour的简略形式;motel是motorist和hotel的混合缩略又如journo(新闻记者)就是由 journalist的前半部加上字母。

(四)外借的俚语词

由于日益频繁的国际交流，各国语言随之也会不断地扩张，而任何一种语 言要想丰富自己，避免交流的障碍，必然要借用其它民族语言中适用于本民族的词汇，如美语中的chisel源于法语，意为从某人处诈取某物，借而不打算归 还;cinch源于西班牙语意为容易做的事情，必然发生的事;honcho源于日语，意思为老板。

(五)词性转换的俚语(conversion)

某些词的词性变换，而形成新的含义，如in原为介词，但如果用于“It’s in.”句中，in变成了形容词，意为流行;再如ace原为名词，指顶尖人物，而在口头上表示赞叹时往往用它，意为棒极了，如“He is an ace reporter.”

二、俚语的语意功能

俚语主要用于口语，它内涵丰富，具有丰富的感情色彩和表现力，能达到渲染气氛的效果，在言语中能通过比喻!委婉!夸张!借代等修辞手段，把俚语词汇中隐含的情感意义表现得栩栩如生，所以俚语使言语的含义具有时尚功能，幽默功能。

(一)比喻

在口语或文学作品中适当使用一些有比喻意义的俚语词能丰富语言，活跃气氛，避免因为使用普通词语而出现的那种死板!僵硬的局面“英语中 的dish原意为盘，碟，现比喻为美丽或性感的女子，如I Was thinking this was going to be my favorite dish.(我想这是我最中意的美人儿)[3]假如用普通词girl就不能体现出说话者的情感来”rug意思可为wig(假发)，非常形象具体。

(二)委婉

在某些场合中人们需要用含蓄的方式来表达自己，以便避免普通词汇使用得过于直露，而委婉的俚语词的使用恰好能处理这一关系，美语中关于怀孕的俚语就有不少，如：to be in the family way，to be in An interesting /certain condition，to be expecting.等等，另如对身体胖者，英语可用portliness。

(三)夸张

英汉俚语词的使用可以增强讽刺感，加大夸张的力度，来表达说话者的一种强烈的感情色彩，以达到令人震惊的效果，如英语中称懦夫为chicken;而称无性感、相貌丑陋的女子为dog;a smoker eater的意思为fireman(消防队员)。

(四)借代

主要是指借用商标或其它事物以表达言语者的意思，能达到简洁明了的效果，以此刻划言语者的性格特征，如英语中的Coke是Cocacola的商标名;wheels意思为car，如Those who can not afford wheels must Hitch ride.(买不起汽车的人得搭便车)。

三、美国俚语产生的社会文化条件

俚语在美国语言中，作为一种非标准语与标准语共存，它是一种复杂矛盾的社会文化现象，也是反映历史进程、社会变迁、文化发展的一面镜子。语言是一种社会现象，是社会生活的真实反映;语言又是文化的载体，随文化的变化而变化，社会的变迁影响着语言的发展，语言的变化又表现出社会的进程。任何一个时代的社会都分成不同阶层的社会群体和团体，在交际中他们都有属于自己的语言，其中也有不登大雅之堂的俚语，尽管如此，俚语总是与标准语一起随社会的变迁而一直延续至今，并逐渐渗透于标准语中。

(一)逆反心理的价值取向

逆反心理的价值取向为俚语的产生提供了动力，由于俚语是以亚文化的形态公开向主导文化的价值观进行挑战的，由此引起了价值观的冲突，美国人崇尚流行、革新、乐观、自由、反叛以及个人主义，在日常工作生活中，美国人往往会有一种逆反的心理，即越是禁忌的东西人们就越想去冲破、去超越，美国俚语正好顺应了这一心态。因此，它的产生是正常的社会道德规范和价值观念下思想禁忌的反向推动作用的结果。所以，语言中越是禁忌的词在俚语中的表达方式就越丰富，如美语中对死、性爱、个人隐私、贫穷等敏感话题在词的表达形式方面有不少。美国人创造俚语就是为了打破现有的语言禁忌常规，宣泄自己的情感，表达自己的个性，丰富自己的内心世界。

(二)崇尚自由追求时尚

俚语不仅能反映出创造者和使用者的个性和内心世界，而且能折射出社会和文化现象，能反映人们的价值观念，道德规范，思维方式，美国人具有较强的个性，不怕犯错误，勇于探索，充满好奇心，追求和偏爱新奇的东西，因此他们力图寻找新颖有力，绚丽多彩，富有生机盎然的词句，因此美国俚语在其形成和发展的过程中，以对常规的反叛和对新奇的追求为主要特征，以其大胆新颖的通俗形象见长，美国人在不断的试验中，在对新形式的坚定追求中体现其语言特色。美国俚语的这种喜新好奇，从某种程度上又反映出美国人不囿于传统的束缚而乐于自由创新的精神。

(三)追求喜剧效应

美国俚语以其幽默风趣，生动活泼见长，对于性格开朗的美国人来说，俚语又往往可以避免原来的标准语所呈现的拘谨和感伤，幽默和乐观正是喜剧所体现的精神，因而美国俚语有音乐喜剧之美称。美国俚语往往反映其创造者和使用者的个性，一个善于创造和惯于使用俚语的人大多是坚强，活泼和乐观的，美国人生而具有活泼的民族性格，他们在生活中以幽默诙谐的表达增强了语言的生动性，俚语的幽默轻松和乐观随处可见，例如美国海军士兵把起床号称为上厕所，因为人一早起床，通常第一件事便是小解。美国俚语生动幽默的成分与美国人的想象力，自信心，乐观主义和幽默感分不开。

语言随社会的发展而不断地发生变化，美国俚语也不例外，它与社会文化生活不可分割，它也是美国语言中不可缺少的组成部分。尽管有些美国俚语词语具有粗俗不雅，时间性强，变化较快的特点，但作为整体的俚语不仅具有强大的生命力，而且具有生动形象，表达直露，感透力强的特点。

参考文献

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[3]钟智翔.仰光俚语论[J].解放军外语学院学报，1996，(1).

[4]邓小敏.浅谈今日的美国俚语[J].山东外语教学，1990.

[5]冯建.论现代美国俚语生成的宏观模式[J].外国语，1990，(6).

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Rachel Giora and Argyris K. Stringaris

The interest in how the brain processes METAPHORS traces its origins back to a tradition which regarded figurative language as POETIC and hence the opposite of literal language. Despite its ubiquity (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), the underlying assumption has been that this difference should be reflected both in behavioral (Grice 1975; Searle 1979) and brain mechanisms. In this chapter we examine this and other long-standing assumptions, suggesting that the interactions of linguistics with empirical, neuropsychological, and neuroscientific research have drawn a far more complex and, arguably, fascinating picture, not only about metaphor but also about the brain.

Is Metaphor Really So Different?

Since the 1970s, the assumption that metaphors are processed differently from literals has come into close scrutiny. For example, on the basis of psycholinguistic experiments, it has been argued that, in the presence of rich and supportive context, metaphors and literals are processed along the same routes (Gibbs 1994; Ortony et al. 1978).

Although some metaphoric and literal expressions require similar processes (Glucksberg 2001), it has also become increasingly evident that the categories used are in themselves heterogeneous. For instance, some literals (the ring was made of tin, with a pebble instead of a gem) require more complex (metaphor-like) conceptual mapping processes than others (That stone we saw in the natural history museum is a gem; Coulson and Van Petten 2002). Others (curl up and dye) are more appealing although harder to process than metaphoric equivalents (curl up and die; Giora 2003). Metaphors are not all alike either: some are novel, having nonsalient metaphoric interpretations that are usually more appealing yet harder to process than those that are conventional and salient (Giora et al. 2004). Furthermore, some metaphoric stimuli, although relatively conventional, may still be more open-ended than others and, when functioning as a context, give rise to a wider range of associations (Stringaris et al. 2006).

In fact, recent findings indicate that notions such as degree of salience, complexity, or open-endedness may be more suitable to describe the complexity of some of the phenomena in question and span the metaphor-literal divide. Furthermore, whilst these notions may, to an extent, overlap, none of them is specific to metaphor.

Is Metaphor Processed Differently in the Brain?

Consistent with the prevailing view of the RIGHT HEMISPHERE (RH) as being more adept at CREATIVITY than the LEFT HEMISPHERE (LH), early lesion studies have been interpreted as evidence that metaphors rely more heavily than their literal counterparts on regions in the RH (Winner and Gardner 1977). However, Winner and Gardner’s study actually reveals that patients with RH lesions were “not insensitive to metaphor” (p. 725) when offering verbal explications to figurative stimuli, although they tended to erroneously select literal over metaphoric interpretations in a picture matching task. Similarly, the results of the earliest imaging study in the field (Bottini et al. 1994) were also seen as supporting a RH predominance for metaphor comprehension. However, alternative explanations may be more appropriate, given that the linguistic items used also differed on categories other than sensu strictu metaphoricity.

Indeed, subsequent studies have challenged the purported predominance of the RH by demonstrating that, when processing conventional metaphors compared to literals, the LH is more active (Ahrens et al. 2007; Lee and Dapretto 2006; Oliveri et al. 2004), perhaps reflecting retrieval from SEMANTIC stores. In fact, most recent research suggests that, in the absence of a rich biasing context, the hemispheres are insensitive to figurativeness. Rather, the RH is more sensitive than the LH to novel, non-salient interpretations and poetic associations, to complexity, and to open-endedness (Blasko and Kazmerski 2006; Giora 2007). This is corroborated by a recent FMRI study, showing that failure to recruit RH areas when processing novel metaphors distinguishes patients with schizophrenia from healthy controls (Kircher et al. 2007).

Taken together, these findings suggest that LATERALIZATION in the brain’s hemispheres is contingent upon factors such as novelty, semantic and conceptual MAPPING complexity, and evoked range of associations, all of which seem to act independently of figurativeness, thus challenging as too simplistic the notion of a preferential RH processing of stimuli solely by virtue of their metaphoricity. These factors, however, are in accordance with an alternative account – the fine-coarse semantic coding hypothesis (Beeman 1998; Jung-Beeman 2005) – which views the LH as adept at processing finely-tuned semantic relations and the RH as specialized in processing distant semantic relationships.

Novelty

Recent studies indicate that the degree of novelty of an expression is an important determinant of neural processing. For instance, lesion studies (Giora et al. 2000; Kaplan et al. 1990), studies of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (Amanzio et al. in press), as well as fMRI studies involving healthy participants (Eviatar and Just 2006) demonstrated that processing non-salient (IRONIC, METAPHORIC) interpretations relied more heavily on the RH; processing conventional (metaphoric) meanings involved the LH. Similarly, a series of fMRI, DVF, and ERP studies demonstrated increased activation of RH areas during processing of nonsalient interpretations of novel metaphors (Arzouan et al. 2007; Faust and Mashal 2006; Mashal and Faust in press; Mashal et al. 2005; Mashal et al. 2007) and literal/compositional interpretations of IDIOMS (Mashal et al. in press). And while RH advantage was demonstrated in processing nonsalient interpretations of novel metaphors during first exposure, repeated exposure benefited the LH (Mashal and Faust 2007).

Complexity

That RH recruitment increases with complex sentences has been demonstrated by a number of studies (Jung-Beeman 2005). This has also been seen as typifying conceptual mapping complexity (Coulson and Van Petten 2002), thus introducing another parameter that may determine processing and operate regardless of metaphoricity. Further work is awaited to establish this.

Range of semantic associations

Range of semantic associations, also termed degree of open-endedness, can be seen as determined by the extent to which a stimulus evokes a wide network of semantic associations (Black 1993). In a fMRI study, Stringaris et al. (2006) showed that deciding that a given probe was unrelated to a previous neutral context triggered activation of frontal RH areas following open-ended (metaphoric) contexts (Some answers are straight) but not following more restricted (literal) contexts (Some answers are emotional). In the case of the open-ended PRIMES, both negative and positive decisions elicited the same neural responses. Indeed, higher degree of open-endedness may lead to increased RH activation, probably because of the evocation of remotely related associations (Jung-Beeman 2005). As shown by Mashal et al. (in press), RH areas were uniquely involved when novel literal interpretations of familiar idioms (involving their familiar idiomatic meanings as well) were deliberated on.

Contextual information

CONTEXTUAL factors involved in processing (such as biasing information, task, mood, or experience) further argue against a specific and invariant brain locus for metaphor (Kutas 2006). They show that recruitment of neural networks depends upon factors other than metaphoricity per se. For instance, in Coulson and Van Petten (2007), RH advantage in processing novel metaphors disappears in the presence of biasing information. In Kacinik and Chiarello (2007), both hemispheres were activated by metaphors, but only the LH-response was context-sensitive, thereby restricting the range of possible alternatives. Conversely, the response in the RH indicated retention of alternatives available for processing. Findings in Rapp et al. (2007) indicate that the type of task is an additional determinant of processing. When participants had to judge the EMOTIONAL valence of connotations, metaphors elicited LH regions, despite their novelty. In Stringaris et al. (2006), familiar metaphors activated RH areas when a coherence judgment was required; however, when a meaningfulness judgment was required, same stimuli evoked LH areas (Stringaris et al. 2007). In Blasko and Kazmerski (2006), it was individual differences in experience that mattered: poets and nonpoets differed in which brain areas were recruited when reading poetry.

In sum, recent research, involving a wide range of methodologies, does not provide support for the long assumed special status of metaphor in language. Instead, it shows that the processing of metaphors in the brain depends on a great number of factors beyond figurativeness.

Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading

Ahrens, Kathleen, Ho-Ling Liu, Chia-Ying Lee, Shu-Ping Gong, Shin-Yi Fang and Yuan-Yu Hsu. 2007. “Functional MRI of Conventional and Anomalous Metaphors in Mandarin Chinese.” Brain and Language 100: 163-171.

Amanzio, Martina, Giuliano Geminiani, Daniela Leotta, and Stefano Cappa. In press. “Metaphor comprehension in Alzheimer’s disease: novelty matters.” Brain and Language.

Arzouan, Yossi, Abraham Goldstein, and Miriam Faust. 2007. “‘Brain Waves are Stethoscopes’: ERP Correlates of Novel Metaphor Comprehension.” Brain Research 1160: 69-81.

Beeman, Mark. 1998. “Coarse Semantic Coding and Discourse comprehension.” In Right Hemisphere Language Comprehension: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience, 255-284, eds. Mark Beeman and Christine Chiarello. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Black, Max. 1993. “More about Metaphor.” In Metaphor and Thought (2nd ed.), ed. Andrew Ortony. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Blasko, G. Dawn and Victoria A. Kazmerski. 2006. “ERP Correlates of Individual Differences in the Comprehension of Nonliteral Language.” Metaphor and Symbol 21(4): 267–284

Bottini, Gabriella., Corcoran Rhiannon, Roberto Sterzi, Eraldo Paulesu, Schenone, P., Scarpa, P. et al. (1994). “The Role of the Right Hemisphere in the Interpretation of Figurative Aspects of Language: A Positron Emission Tomography Activation Study.” Brain 117: 1241-1253.

Coulson, Seana and Cyma Van Petten. 2002. “Conceptual Integration and Metaphor Comprehension: An ERP Study.” Memory & Cognition 30: 958-968.

Coulson, Seana and Cyma Van Petten. 2007. “A Special Role for the Right Hemisphere in Metaphor Comprehension? ERP Evidence from Hemifield Presentation.” Brain Research 1146: 128-145.

Eviatar, Zohar and Marcel Just. 2006. “Brain Correlates of Discourse Processing: An fMRI Investigation of Irony and Metaphor Comprehension.” Neuropsychologia 44: 2348-2359.

Faust, Miriam and Nira Mashal. 2007. “The Role of The Right Cerebral Hemisphere in Processing Novel Metaphoric Expressions Taken From Poetry: A Divided Visual Field Study.” Neuropsychologia 45: 860-870.

Gibbs, W. Raymond Jr. 1994. The Poetics of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Glucksberg, Sam. 2001. Understanding figurative language: From metaphors to idioms. New York: Oxford University Press.

Giora, Rachel. 2003. On our Mind: Salience, Context and Figurative Language. New York: Oxford University Press.

Giora, Rachel, ed. 2007. Is Metaphor Unique? Neural Correlates of Nonliteral Language. Brain and Language 100/2.

Giora, Rachel, Ofer Fein, Ann Kronrod, Idit Elnatan, Noa Shuval, and Adi Zur. 2004. “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Optimal Innovation and Pleasure Ratings.” Metaphor and Symbol 19: 115-141.

Giora, Rachel, Eran Zaidel, Nachum Soroker, Gila Batori, and Asa Kasher. 2000. “Differential Effects of Right- and Left-Hemisphere Damage on Understanding Sarcasm and Metaphor.” Metaphor and Symbol 15: 63-83.

Kacinik, A. Natalie and Christine Chiarello. 2007. Understanding metaphors: Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved? Brain and Language 100: 188-207.

Kaplan, Joan A., Hiram H. Brownell, Janet R. Jacobs, and Howard Gardner. 1990. The effects of right hemisphere damage on the pragmatic interpretation of conversational remarks. Brain and Language 38: 315-333.

Kircher, T .J. Tilo, Dirk T. Leube, Michael Erb, Wolfgang Grodd, and Alexander M. Rapp. 2007. “Neural Correlates of Metaphor Processing in Schizophrenia.” NeuroImage 34: 281-289

Kutas, Marta. 2006. “One Lesson Learned: Frame Language Processing – Literal and Figurative – As a Human Brain Function.” Metaphor and Symbol 21: 285-325.

Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Speech Acts. Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3, 41-58, eds. Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan. New York: Academic Press.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jung-Beeman, Mark. 2005. “Bilateral Brain Processes for Comprehending Natural Language.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9: 512-518.

Lee, S. Susan and Mirella Dapretto. 2006. “Metaphorical vs. Literal Word Meanings: fMRI Evidence against a Selective Role of the Right Hemisphere.” NeuroImage, 29, 536-544.

Mashal, Nira and Miriam Faust. In press. “Right Hemisphere Sensitivity to Novel Metaphoric Relations: Application of the Signal Detection Theory.” Brain and Language.

Mashal, Nira and Miriam Faust. 2007. “Repeated Exposure to Novel Metaphors Affects Hemispheric Involvement.” Paper submitted for publications.

Mashal, Nira, Faust, Miriam, Talma Hendler. 2005. The Role of The Right Hemisphere in Processing Nonsalient Metaphorical Meanings: Application of Principal Components Analysis to fMRI Data.” Neuropsychologia 43 (14): 2084-2100.

Mashal, Nira, Faust, Miriam, Talma Hendler, and Mark Jung-Beeman. 2007. “An fMRI Investigation of the Neural Correlates Underlying the Processing of Novel Metaphoric Expressions.” Brain and Language 100: 115-126.

Mashal, Nira, Faust, Miriam, Talma Hendler, and Mark Jung-Beeman. In press. “Processing Salient and Less-Salient Meanings of Idioms: an fMRI Investigation.” Cortex.

Oliveri, Massimiliano., Romero, Leonor, and Costanza Papagno. 2004. “Left but Not Right Temporal Involvement in Opaque Idiom Comprehension: A Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16: 848-55.

Ortony, Andrew, Diane L. Schallert, Ralph E. Reynolds and Stephen J. Antos. 1978. “Interpreting Metaphors and Idioms: Some Effects of Context on Comprehension.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 17: 465-477.

Rapp, M. Alexander, Dirk T. Leube, Michael Erb, Wolfgang Grodd, Tilo T. J. Kircher. 2007. “Laterality in Metaphor Processing: Lack of Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging for the Right Hemisphere Theory.” Brain and Language 100: 142-149.

Searle, John. 1979. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Schmidt, L. Gwen, Casey J. DeBuse, and Carol A. Seger. 2007. “Right Hemisphere Metaphor Processing? Characterizing the Lateralization Semantic Processes.” Brain and Language 100: 127-141.

Stringaris, K. Argyris., Nicholas C. Medford, Rachel Giora, Vincent C. Giampietro, Michael J. Brammer, and Anthony S. David. 2006. “How Metaphors Influence Semantic Relatedness Judgments: The Role of the Right Frontal Cortex.” NeuroImage 33: 784-793.

Stringaris, K. Argyris., Nicholas C. Medford, Vincent C. Giampietro, Michael J. Brammer, and Anthony S. David. 2007. “Deriving Meaning: Distinct Neural Mechanisms for Metaphoric, Literal, and Non-Meaningful Sentences.” Brain and Language 100: 150-162.

Winner, Ellen and Howard Gardner. 1977. “The Comprehension of Metaphor in Brain-Damaged Patients.” Brain 100: 717-729.

Bert Peeters

There can be no doubt that structural linguistics, which flourished half a century ago on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, lived up to its name: it was structural because it considered languages to be self-contained entities that had either to be shaped into a rigorous structure, or actually possessed a structure which was real and merely waiting to be discovered. There can be no doubt either that transformational grammar, which in its heydays pushed structuralism into quasi-total oblivion, lived up to its name: it was transformational because it posited several successive strata or structures in sentence generation which were linked by means of transformations of all sorts. On the contemporary scene, there can be no doubt that functional linguistics lives up to its name: it attaches a great deal of importance to the way in which languages function and to the functions of language. The question that will be raised in the next few pages is the following: does Cognitive Linguistics, as we know it today, live up to its name?

Before I answer the main question, let me ask, and answer, another one. I mentioned structural linguistics, transformational grammar, and functional linguistics, and spelled all of them with lower case initials. Why did I use upper case initials when referring to Cognitive Linguistics (and why am I doing it again)? It is certainly not common practice. Langacker (1998: 1), for instance, points out that the “movement called cognitive linguistics [lower case, B.P.] belongs to the functionalist tradition”. He then goes on to add, quite crucially, that “although its concern with cognition hardly makes it unique, the label cognitive is not entirely arbitrary” (ibid.). The subordinate clause indicates why, in my view, the use of upper case initials is warranted. There is a lot of cognitive linguistics going on outside the movement described by Langacker. Generativists in particular have more than once expressed their annoyance regarding what they see as the “misappropriation” of the term by Cognitive Linguists. Their research interests, and that of many others, carry an equal entitlement to identification by means of the label cognitive linguistics. It is an entitlement which, in the current climate, they will find increasingly difficult to claim.3

Instead of pondering the possible implications of the terminological skirmishes that are taking place, let us return to our main question. Does Cognitive Linguistics (with upper case initials) live up to its name? At one stage (Peeters 1998), the answer (or rather, my answer) came much closer to a two-letter word than it does today. I now suspect that after all there is some room around the cognitive science table for Cognitive Linguistics. However, Cognitive Linguists must do their homework first.4

An increased commitment to certain aspects of reality (to be defined below) is likely to result in much-needed closer ties with, and increased visibility in, the cognitive science community at large (in which, it would seem, they have not as yet acquired their rightful place, in spite of the fascinating facts of language which they have been able to unearth). Only when such closer ties obtain will it be possible to change the answer to the question from `not yet’ to `yes’.

I do realise that even a more considered answer such as this one (more considered at least than the one I formulated in Peeters 1998) is likely to raise many eyebrows. Those who are twitching should recall that the Cognitive Linguistics movement as we know it today was born out of polemical opposition to Chomskyan linguistics. Cognitive Linguists, therefore, ought to be able to handle a bit of polemical opposition directed at themselves. Although possibly corrosive, my remarks intend to be constructive. I see my role as that of a gadfly, and hope that those people who are being bitten won’t ache too much.

1. Reflexions on psychological and biological reality

1.1 God’s truth from structural linguistics to the present day

I started off by saying that structural linguistics was structural because it considered languages to be self-contained entities that had either to be shaped into a rigorous (phonological, morphological, possibly lexical) structure, or actually possessed a (phonological, morphological, possibly lexical) structure which was real and merely waiting to be discovered. In his celebrated review of Zellig Harris’ Methods in structural linguistics (Harris 1951), Householder (1952:260) referred to those two ideological positions by means of the labels God’s truth and hocus-pocus.5

The details are as follows:

On the metaphysics of linguistics there are two extreme positions, which may be termed (and have been) the `God’s truth’ position and the `hocus-pocus’ position. The theory of the `God’s truth’ linguists [...] is that a language has a structure, and the job of the linguist is (a) to find out what that structure is, and (b) to describe it as clearly, economically, and elegantly as he can, without at any point obscuring the God’s truth structure of the language. The hocus-pocus linguist believes (or professes to believe – words and behavior are not always in harmony) that a language [...] is a mass of incoherent, formless data, and the job of the linguist is somehow to arrange and organize this mass, imposing on it some sort of structure (which must not, of course, be in any striking or obvious conflict with anything in the data).6

The hocus-pocus position was fairly widespread. Householder himself did not object to what he called “a certain amount of hocus-pocus” (Householder 1952: 261; emphasis added); in fact, he went on to say that in his view “all linguists indulge in it frequently, for fun; and it is the greatest fun of linguistics” (ibid.).

Just under half a century later, a bewildering variety of descriptive frameworks are doing the rounds. Even if the terms are no longer on everyone’s lips, the distinction, widely accepted by the American structuralists of the classical era (as pointed out on 23 March 1999 by Esa Itkonen on Funknet), remains valid.7

At the same time, most (if not all) contemporary linguists firmly believe in the reality or objective existence of the (sub)structures they describe. Unfortunately, this appears to be another instance where “words and behavior are not always in harmony” (Householder). The structures that are put forward in the present day and age by an ever increasing number of often incompatible accounts are so hugely different that they cannot all exist as such in the material that is being described. They are at best “interpretations” of an internal organisation which remains more or less elusive. The map, as is often said, is not the territory. In some forms of linguistics, it may be more complex (contra Hutton, this volume).

One important difference between the fifties and the nineties needs to be highlighted. For many linguists, psychological and biological reality (or at least likelihood) are more important than ever before. Behaviourism, in the crude form in which it had been imported into linguistics by Bloomfield, had little or no such reality value. With that in mind, the terms God’s truth and hocus-pocus may be redefined (and have been).8

In his Funknet posting, Itkonen presented a set of updated definitions:

The `hocus-pocus’ view (without any negative connotations) has been and is (and will be) represented by those who just want to present the facts of a given language [...] in a maximally simple (sic) and general way. Most of the time, this way has or is meant to have NO psychological or biological reality. [...] The `God’s truth’ position (without any either positive or negative connotations) is represented by those who do not merely wish to capture the psychological and/or biological reality, but who actually succeed in doing so, at least to some extent.9

Cognitive Linguistics has come a long and arduous way, but it has an even longer and more arduous way to go: to increase its chances of real integration in and recognition by the cognitive science community at large, it must engage with this new form of God’s truth, i.e. with psychological and with biological reality – the mind as well as the brain – in a way it has not done hitherto.10

1.2 Psychological vs. biological reality

Nobody would want to deny that Cognitive Linguists have made inroads into the area of the mind. They have done so by asking questions relating to psychological reality at large, and in particular to the nature of categorisation, to the issue of storage versus computation, etc. Hence, I am not saying that there is nothing cognitive about Cognitive Linguistics. However, for most Cognitive Linguists, cognitive seems to be synonymous with psychological. This is not the way the term is used, for instance, among cognitive psychologists, whose subject area is of course not “psychological psychology”. For them, cognitive means `pertaining or related to knowledge’. Just as it is wrong to reduce cognition to neurocognition (as I did more or less in Peeters 1998), it is wrong to reduce cognition to psychology. Nonetheless, when it comes to matters of the brain (i.e. biological reality), there is not a lot of interest just yet. There are certainly multiple references in the literature to the “mind/brain”, but that is often as close as one gets to the brain. In fact, mind and brain are vastly different entities: the former is psychological, the latter biological. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Peeters 1996): “The mind is what the brain does for a living”.11

I would be remiss not to mention at this point the work of scholars such as George Lakoff, Paul Deane and Terry Regier. Deane is the author of a very impressive volume called Grammar in Mind and Brain (Deane 1992), and of a paper (Deane 1996) which examines the effects of agrammatic aphasia on neurological support for Cognitive Linguistics. Regier (1996) has shown that spatial relations as expressed in language have no objective existence in the world, but depend directly upon the structure of the human brain. He is a close associate of Lakoff, who, for the last ten years or so, together with cognitive scientists Jerry Feldman, Lokendra Shastri, David Bailey and Srini Narayanan, has been working at a “neural theory of language”.12

In a recent interview with John Brockman, following the release of Lakoff & Johnson (1998), Lakoff provided the following comment (using the metaphor of neural circuitry defined by Lakoff & Johnson 1998:104, quoted by Jones, this volume; cf. note 10):

A human brain consists of a very large number of neurons connected up in specific ways with certain computational properties. How is it possible to get the details of human concepts, the forms of human reason, and the range of human languages out of a lot of neurons connected up as they are in our brains? How do you get thought and language out of neurons? That is the question we are trying to answer in our lab through the computational neural modeling of thought and language.13

Unfortunately, at this stage, Lakoff remains much better known for his equally important work in metaphor and prototype theory (Lakoff/Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987, Lakoff/Turner 1989 etc.).14

If there is one Cognitive Linguist who is widely known for having succeeded in capturing the biological reality not just to some extent, but (in my view) to a very considerable extent, and to present that reality, in its full complexity, to his fellow linguists in a relatively easy-to-follow way, it must be Sydney Lamb. According to him (Funknet, 26 March 1999), interest in “God’s truth” can be reformulated for modern times as an interest in what is in the mind and/or the brain. In his newly published Pathways of the Brain (Lamb 1999), which appears set to become a highly controversial work, he provides a fascinating neurocognitive account of the workings of language (and other cognitive abilities). Instead of isolating linguistics from other scientific endeavours, as ignorance of those other scientific endeavours often compels individual scholars to do, he builds bridges to other disciplines. Whether they will stand the test of time, only time can tell.

2. Cognitive Linguistics versus cognitive linguistics

2.1 From cognitive linguistics to Cognitive Linguistics

Just over two decades ago, it was Lakoff, not Lamb, who was taken to task by Chomsky (1979: 150) for “working on `cognitive grammar’, which integrates language with nonlinguistic systems”. Chomsky (1979) is the English version of a text originally published in French in 1977, two years after the term cognitive grammar had first surfaced in Lakoff’s writings (cf. Lakoff/Thompson 1975). Chomsky, for one, did not “see any theory in prospect there”. This flippant remark raises the interesting question of the (hidden) impact which the man from MIT may have had on the Lakoff-Langacker agreement to use a common label for their work (in replacement for Langacker’s term space grammar, which was still in use in the early eighties). In other words, did Chomsky’s criticism backfire? Did Lakoff read Chomsky (1979), and did he think that cognitive grammar was too beautiful a term not to be made use of by Langacker and himself (against Chomsky)?

Whatever the case may be, it is quite ironical that Lamb (1999) felt unable to freely use the term he too had proposed (cf. Lamb 1971), earlier than Lakoff (or Chomsky), earlier even than Lewis Sego, who in late February 1999 reported on Cogling that – I quote – “almost twenty-seven years ago (precisely 13 April 1972), when I synthesized two separate doctoral programs I had nearly completed and therefrom coined the term cognitive linguistics, I considered the underlying concept a possible source of philosophical and scientific peacemaking”.15

Lamb decided instead to resort to the more explicit term neurocognitive linguistics, for fear of being mistaken for one of the many linguists who, by the end of the eighties, had started to use terms such as cognitive linguistics and cognitive grammar in a rather different and much broader way.

Let us recall some of the evidence. Although a preprint had been in circulation since 1984, the year 1987 saw the (official) publication of the first volume of Langacker’s Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987-1991). Lakoff (1987) was published almost at the same time, and is of course another milestone, even though its title does not refer explicitly to either cognitive grammar or Cognitive Linguistics.16

This was followed in 1988 by a hefty volume on Topics in Cognitive Linguistics (Rudzka-Ostyn 1988), and in 1989 by a gathering in Duisburg (Germany), which was proclaimed to be the first International Cognitive Linguistics Conference. A selection of the papers read during that meeting was published four years later, in a volume (Geiger/Rudzka-Ostyn 1993) which became the pretext for my much-maligned (but also, in other quarters, much-applauded) review article called “Cognitive Musings” (Peeters 1998).17

In other words, what had been, until the end of the eighties, a collocation like any other one, gained the status of a proper name, an ideological label rather than a purely descriptive one, chosen in order to gain legitimacy, and to outdo other cognitivists. The term cognitive linguistics had been around for almost twenty years, but its consistent use as a name to refer to what is today a broadly defined paradigm with a very respectable following was new. It became the name adopted by one particular group of people, led by Lakoff and Langacker, to refer to the sort of work they were undertaking. It also became – quite naturally – the name used by others to identify that particular group of people.

In his interview with John Brockman (cf. section 1.2), Lakoff summarises his contribution to contemporary linguistics as follows:

I set about, along with Len Talmy, Ron Langacker, and Gilles Fauconnier, to form a new linguistics one compatible with research in cognitive science and neuroscience. It is called Cognitive Linguistics, and it’s a thriving scientific enterprise.18

The question arises whether compatibility with research in cognitive science and neuroscience is enough. I am inclined to think that it is necessary, but not sufficient. The trouble for those who think that the work they are undertaking fits Lakoff’s description is that compatibility implies (at least some) awareness. Unfortunately, large numbers of Cognitive Linguists remain unaware of what is happening in cognitive science and especially neuroscience. They practice what Sydney Lamb, in the Funknet posting referred to above, calls analytical linguistics. The latter, he says, is the familiar kind. “In this mode one is mainly concerned with accurately describing linguistic productions (without concern for the process of production or that of comprehension or the system that makes those processes possible)”. Neurocognitive linguistics, on the other hand, aims at “understand[ing] that system and those processes”.19

Geeraerts (1995: 111-112) provides the following useful summary of the sort of work in which most Cognitive Linguists today are engaged:

Because cognitive linguistics [what I call Cognitive Linguistics; B.P.] sees language as embedded in the overall cognitive capacities of man, topics of special interest for cognitive linguistics include: the structural characteristics of natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, systematic polysemy, cognitive models, mental imagery and metaphor); the functional principles of linguistic organization (such as iconicity and naturalness); the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics (as explored by cognitive grammar and construction grammar); the experiential and pragmatic background of language-in-use; and the relationship between language and thought, including questions about relativism and conceptual universals.

A broader use of the label cognitive linguistics than was originally the case (in Lamb’s earlier work) is entirely legitimate, because there is indeed more to cognition than neurocognition. The crucial thing, however, is that in the broader meaning of the label there should be a clearly visible spot for the original use. Unfortunately, for those who were expecting to find them included, neurocognitive issues are conspicuously absent from Geeraerts’ list. They are not among the “topics of special interest” to Cognitive Linguists. And yet, it cannot be denied that the study of neurocognition and of its implications for language is a legitimate part of the study of language and cognition, not something that can be left to a few individuals in the Cognitive Linguistics community (who, by the way, also involve themselves with non-neurocognitive issues).

2.2 The need for more “neurocognitive depth”

More Cognitive Linguistics research is needed in the neurocognitive arena; we must stop thinking that others will do it for us and will by themselves ensure visibility for Cognitive Linguistics outside the narrow bounds of linguistics as a scientific endeavour. Neurocognitive linguistics, the “non-analytical” counterpart to the various “analytical” issues listed by Geeraerts, is an important branch of the overall cognitive enterprise. Sadly, it is hardly even described or referred to in the increasing number of introductions to Cognitive Linguistics which are currently being released. And here, of course, we end up in a vicious circle. As long as only a handful of Cognitive Linguists are doing neurocognitive work, those with enough knowledge of the field to write introductory texts will not find it worthwhile to report on the work of that minority. The introductory texts are being read by newcomers to the field who then, typically, start doing the sort of work that is reported on, without reaching out further.

It is my personal conviction, which I know many others do not share, that the lack of “neurocognitive depth” in Cognitive Linguistics is one reason why cognitive scientists in general do not take more notice of Cognitive Linguistics than they currently do. This is easily verifiable when one inspects the contents of the most commonly used introductions to and readers in cognitive science: whereas some go as far as to ignore linguistics altogether, in any of its forms, others often limit themselves to work which Cognitive Linguists readily dismiss as ill-conceived (e.g. generative grammar, truth-conditional semantics).20

Admittedly, it could be argued that the poor visibility of Cognitive Linguistics in cognitive science texts has an altogether different reason. In his comments on the now superseded abstract which lies at the origins of this paper, Langacker referred to “the utter dominance of generative grammar for several decades and the length of time it realistically takes for a different set of ideas to become known outside (even inside) the field, especially when they depart from the `mainstream consensus’ that outsiders initially look to”. It is quite clear, though, that outside the USA generative grammar is no longer as dominant as it once was. In fact, Cognitive Linguistics itself, and many similarly oriented functional schools, have seriously undermined what used to be an almost unassailable position. There is no such thing as a “mainstream consensus” anymore, and there has not been one for a long time. Finally, whether length of time is an issue can also be questioned: it did not take Chomsky a long time to get noticed by psychologists, and his “set of ideas” was certainly very different from anything that had been heard before. As is well known, he gained early prominence with a lengthy review (Chomsky 1959) in which Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Skinner 1957) was shred to pieces.21

Skinner, of course, was just about the most respected psychologist of the day. I am reasonably confident that if anyone within the Cognitive Linguistics community were to similarly attack one of today’s outstanding cognitive scientists, the cognitive science community at large would not fail to take notice. And it would not take very long either. But it is not necessarily the best way forward. Chomsky gained prominence among psychologists, less on the merits of his own work (which many found problematical) than on the ferocity with which he destroyed one of theirs, and not just anyone. I do not think that Cognitive Linguists would want to engage in that sort of activity.

3. Whereto from here?

3.1 Innateness and modularity

In March 1999, on Cogling, a step was made in the right direction. A few weeks before, Dick Hudson had asked for suggestions for introductory readings on Cognitive Linguistics for undergraduates. On 10 March, he produced an annotated bibliography which covered not only Cognitive Linguistics, but also innateness and modularity. These were actually the three sections which, in his own words, he had distinguished “rather arbitrarily”. That judgment was wrong inasfar as it is in fact common practice for introductory textbooks in Cognitive Linguistics to refer to innateness and modularity without exploring either at great length (in contrast, there are entire chapters about prototypes, metaphor, frames, or about the traditional disciplines of linguistics such as lexicology, morphology, syntax, phonetics etc.). Hudson’s judgment was however right inasfar as both innateness and modularity are important themes in cognitive linguistics, and should figure much more prominently in Cognitive Linguistics as well. Questions to be asked include the sort of evidence, if any, that can be found in favour or against innateness, in favour or against modularity. Those who provide that sort of evidence (or theoretical justification) are not normally associated with the Cognitive Linguistics movement.22

It is to be hoped that Hudson’s bibliography will actually be put to good use, so that students who learn about Cognitive Linguistics also learn, and read, about innateness and modularity, in more detail than appears to be currently the case.

For completeness, I shall add a few comments on both. Innateness, according to widespread opinion, is a matter of belief rather than of research. It is a theoretical claim. But this, of course, depends on how much you want to assume is innate, the two extremes being the physiology to acquire a language, given appropriate circumstances, vs. an entire universal grammar. The former position is easier to research than the latter, which has indeed defied scientific scrutiny. Even so, evidence is scant and debatable, and the ethical implications of this sort of research loom large. For a recent appraisal, cf. Elman et al. (1996).

Modularity, on the other hand, is a slippery concept as well (Hilferty 2000). In discussions among linguists, the term module is used, not only with reference to language as a whole (as opposed to other presumed modules such as vision), but also – often at the same time – with reference to semantics and syntax, etc., even with reference to components within the latter, all of which according to some can be shown to be separate modules (submodules, sub-submodules). Uriagereka (1999: 268) reminds us that Fodor (1983), who is often identified as the most important catalyst for the recent modularity debate in linguistics, never intended the concept of “module” to be used in that way; he intended it as a… theoretical construct at the higher level (e.g. language, vision), where modularity, like innateness, therefore does appear to remain very much a matter of belief. At lower levels, though, some sort of (limited) modularity does seem to occur, although finding proof of more promises to be a very difficult enterprise.

3.2 Matters of the brain

I shall give another example of what, I believe, also ought to belong in Cognitive Linguistics. I remember watching a television documentary a few years ago, which had been produced in 1994 for the BBC. Its title was The man who made up his mind,23

and it focussed on work by Gerald Edelman. Edelman is not a linguist, let alone a Cognitive Linguist; he is a neurobiologist. But his work on so-called neural Darwinism (Edelman 1987) has implications for language, which I believe the documentary briefly referred to. In Peeters (1998), I report what happened after that. I asked the readership of Cogling for more information on Edelman, thinking Cognitive Linguists would know everything about him that there is to know. The results were contrary to expectation. Two or three replies came in, one of which stated in unambiguous terms that I was asking the wrong people… This left me puzzled. There is hardly anything more cognitive than the question of how language is processed in the brain. For that reason, exploration of brain processes, with special reference to language, ought to be part of the overall brief of Cognitive Linguists.24

In his comments on the abstract of this paper (cf. section 2.2), Langacker wrote as follows:

Maybe we should all study and cite Edelman, but does that tell us how to characterize the meaning of dative case in Polish or describe an antipassive construction? Should we all go work in wetlabs, or can mental spaces and blending be studied without that experience? [...] There has to be a large quantity of work that is specifically linguistic in nature, work that is specifically psychological or neurological, and work that tries to bring these together in one way or another. All are legitimate and important, requiring their own expertise, and they should all be welcomed for their contribution to what is an immense overall investigatory enterprise.

I could not agree more. In fact, we should not “all study and cite Edelman”. But a few more than are currently taking any notice should read him more attentively, in an attempt to understand the implications of his research for our understanding of how language is processed in the brain, and they should tell the rest of us what they have discovered. However, what is really needed is a book of the kind that is now invading computer stores all over the world, a book titled, for instance, Edelman for dummies. Those who have tried to read Edelman will have noticed that he is not an easy author to follow, not even in his so-called popularising account Bright air, brilliant fire (Edelman 1992), in which he approvingly quotes Lakoff, and criticises Chomsky.25

But what if Edelman has got it wrong? Or what if he is not entirely right? The latter stand is taken by Sydney Lamb, who was singled out earlier for his contribution to neurocognitive linguistics. Lamb arrived independently at the basic idea of what Edelman so appropriately calls “neural Darwinism”. In a private e-mail message dated 25 May 1999, he reports that, as he became aware of Edelman’s work, he started to read selectively (as one is often obliged to do these days) and found himself in sufficient agreement to include a few, overall favourable, references in Pathways (Lamb 1999). Later, more exhaustive, readings produced disappointment: having struggled through Edelman (1987), which was a challenging read even to him, Lamb found that Edelman “comes close”, but does not quite understand after all how the brain actually stores information. One is tempted to conclude that Lamb’s exposition of the theory of neural Darwinism may be more accurate than Edelman’s…26

Skeptics who have some idea of what is happening in the brain but do not really want to know more might at this point say the sort of thing that Aya Katz quite aptly expressed on Funknet, on 29 March 1999:

Brain configurations vary. Persons with severe brain damage in early childhood are often capable of normal language processing and production, even though the connections in their brains are very different from the norm.

What if we found that even in normal, undamaged brains, there is an immense variety of ways in which the same item can be stored and processed by native speakers of the same language? If we concentrated on the biological entity that produces it, we’d lose the generalization involved in the communicative function of language.

Speakers don’t know how their interlocutors’ brains are configured. Communication is based on the abstract system of contrasts set up in the language. We react to electronically programmed simulations of human speech just as we would to those produced by actual people, if it’s close enough. We read manuscripts written thousands of years ago, and the information is communicated, even though the brain that produced it has long ago been consumed by worms.

That’s the magic of language. The concretes don’t matter.

There was an immediate reaction from Tony Wright, who later apologised for having somewhat condescendingly referred to “those [linguists] who want to be neurologists” and for having expressed his disbelief that some people would actually “want to give up linguistics for bean counting (neuron-counting)”. Wright knew of course that neurologists do a lot more than just count neurons (otherwise he would not have apologised). He also knew that “the concretes do matter”, even though at the same time he was fascinated by the way Katz had summarised the position of a majority of linguists (including Wright himself) who feel that the brain, for them, is terra incognita.

Why do the concretes matter? First of all, because by looking at language processing in the brain we can subject the very theses that we constantly pay lip-service to but do not pursue any further to detailed scrutiny. We can begin to notice that the oft-repeated statements that we cherish are as extreme as the equally oft-repeated contrary statements heard in other circles. For instance, Cognitive Linguists like to say that there is no separate language module, that language is but one way humans use among several others to interact with the world, using general cognitive mechanisms. Langacker (1998: 1) puts it this way:

[Cognitive linguistics] contrasts with formalist approaches by viewing language as an integral facet of cognition (not as a separate “module” or “mental faculty”). Insofar as possible, linguistic structure is analyzed in terms of more basic systems and abilities (e.g., perception, attention, categorization) from which it cannot be dissociated.

Generativists, on the other hand, are generally ready to swear the exact opposite. A closer look at the brain, and at how things really work, is increasingly likely to show that neither position can be maintained in its extreme form. The truth is somewhere in the middle (Newmeyer 1999). There is a certain degree of modularity, in that language – and in fact every other cognitive mechanism – involves brain activity that is unique to it. But clearly, there is a lot of interaction as well.

The concretes also matter for another reason. There are things that they could teach us, say, about polysemy, which, according to most Cognitive Linguists, is an essential property of a majority of lexical material (see now Cuyckens/Zawada 1999). Polysemy is the norm, rather than monosemy. While I have on various occasions argued against this view, I am now ready to admit that I was looking at things from a purely systematic point of view, without any reference to real language processing. In the meantime, my awareness of storage and computation of language material in the brain has increased – or so I hope -, and I am ready to answer the question: “Is X – where X is a word of whichever language I am studying – polysemous or monosemous?” by saying: “Yes, of course”, i.e. it is both.27

It depends on the speaker. But in order to be totally sure, we might want to check whether study of brain mechanisms is able to enlighten us further. If, for instance, a word which is potentially polysemous were inserted in different disambiguating contexts, and these contexts were read out to subjects whose brain activity is being measured, could we not tell, from the chemical processes and the neuron firings observed, whether that word is more likely to be monosemous (similar firings independent of context) or polysemous (rather dissimilar firings in each context of use)? I am not aware of any work that is being done in this area right now. If there is, we ought to know about it. The aim is to reach an understanding of polysemy which is, in Lamb’s (1999) terminology, not only operationally and developmentally plausible, but also neurologically.28

The “immense variety of ways in which the same item can be sorted and processed by native speakers of the same language” (Aya Katz) is exactly one of the things we must try to understand: viz. why it is possible to have that variety of ways, without significant risk to normal communication being impeded.

Let us take another example. Many Cognitive Linguists undertake research on idealised cognitive models (i.e. cognitive simulations of reality, also known as ICMs). It would be interesting to explore whether, for instance, selling and buying should be associated with one such model (as appears to be current practice) or with two. The shift in simulation perspective may be too significant to stick with just one ICM. It appears to be more significant than the shift observed when an event is being verbalised by means of a passive rather than an active construction, or when a stealing event is looked at from the point of view of the person victimised (X was robbed of Y) rather than from that of the object taken (Y was stolen from X). Coming back to buying and selling, one could think of an experiment where subjects are asked to conceptualise either event, while having their brain activity subjected to detailed observation. I do not know the outcome, but would suggest that, perhaps, there are two models involved rather than a single complex one (or two frames, in Fillmore’s sense; cf. Fillmore 1977, 1982, 1985).29

Someone who buys always buys from a vendor or a salesperson, but someone who sells something does not necessarily sell anything to anyone. He or she may just be trying to sell, be an unsuccessful tradesperson. ??I am buying a house, but there is nobody selling theirs sounds weird in a way that I am selling my house, but I haven’t found a buyer yet does not.

And yes, there are multiple areas of research where so-called “neuron counting” is not going to be of any help. Clearly, the dative case in Polish and antipassive constructions in Australian aboriginal languages and zillions of other phenomena are unlikely to be better understood if we observe what is happening in the brain when they are being uttered or perceived. I must stress once again that not every single Cognitive Linguist is supposed to “study and cite Edelman” (or Lamb for that matter). Similarly, not every single cognitive scientist is supposed to engage in neuroscience. There is a lot of other work to be done, and lots of people are needed to do it. Still, more linguists – and especially more Cognitive Linguists – should start looking at the neurocognitive side of things. More linguists – and especially more Cognitive Linguists – should set out to explore what remains a largely unknown part of God’s truth, instead of exclusively devoting themselves to the mapping of psychological reality. And, crucially, God’s truth linguists and hocus-pocus linguists at large should keep talking to one another, in an effort to inform each other’s ventures into uncharted territory.

4. Conclusion

The relative lack of “neurocognitive depth” in Cognitive Linguistics, on the one hand, and the scarcity of coverage of Cognitive Linguistics in broadly based introductions to cognitive science, on the other hand, provide powerful arguments for a soul-searching exercise. The time has come to take stock, not only of the achievements, but also of the possible vulnerability of Cognitive Linguistics. I consider the scarcity of neurocognitive research within Cognitive Linguistics to be its Achilles’ heel (in the sense that Cognitive Linguistics has not yet engaged in it with sufficient visibility). It is reassuring to see that some Cognitive Linguists, and several onlookers, have been increasingly vocal in this respect and fully endorse the need for an open discussion.

I, for one, have argued that Cognitive Linguistics (as it currently stands) has to broaden its scope even further than it has done hitherto. For now, it is essentially just another competing linguistic model – an attractive one, for sure, but for linguistic-theoretical reasons, not because of an all-encompassing cognitive outlook (one which visibly includes neurocognitive issues). Biological reality is to be taken more seriously. I have pointed out that more Cognitive Linguists (but by no means all of them) will need to follow the lead taken by colleagues such as Lakoff, Deane and Lamb. More of us need to be doing – and to be seen to be doing – the same sort of work.

But perhaps I am missing something. To quote Langacker again:

Are we really doing so badly? I notice that the pages of Cognitive Linguistics are starting to fill up with the results of experimental investigations, and that is symptomatic of what is happening in the field in general.

If that is the case, let us make sure that this new exciting research is given increased visibility. Cognitive Linguists must combat the widespread feeling out there that all they are good at is prototype theory, conceptual metaphor, blending and other such phenomena (i.e. psychological reality). The best way to combat that feeling is by shifting attention to other (neurocognitive) issues, but without neglecting the (analytical) work that has rightly turned Cognitive Linguistics into a force to be reckoned with.30

If, on the other hand, my impression is correct and Langacker’s is premature, then those of us who feel that the connection between Cognitive Linguistics and cognitive science remains weak have a right to speak out. If my impression is correct, the worst that unconvinced Cognitive Linguists can do is put their heads in the sand and hope for the clamours and murmurs to go away. They will not. There has to be a clear recognition that neurocognitive linguistics and analytical cognitive linguistics are both valid forms of Cognitive Linguistics, but that, in the interest of outside recognition, increased visibility, and greater integration with the other cognitive sciences, and to improve the standing of Cognitive Linguistics both among linguists and in the cognitive science community as a whole, more research activity than is currently being undertaken by Cognitive Linguists is needed in the neurocognitive arena. Only then will we be able to truthfully state that Cognitive Linguistics does indeed live up to its name.

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Endnotes

1

The “cognitive musings” in this paper are a rethink of those that were published under the author’s name in the August 1998 issue of the journal Word. They owe their existence, and much of their formulation, to René Dirven, who kindly requested that I take part in the “Linguistics and Ideology” theme session at the 6th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference held in Stockholm in July 1999. I hope he does not now regret his insistence, because what I am about to say remains certain to ruffle many feathers. I am grateful to René Dirven, Dirk Geeraerts, Joe Hilferty, Ron Langacker, Sydney Lamb, Francis Steen and John Taylor for having provided me with ideas for which, of course, they do not bear any responsibility. I have also profited from discussions on Funknet, the electronic discussion forum dealing with issues in (American style) functional linguistics based at Rice University (” funknet@listserv.rice.edu “), and on Cogling, Cognitive Linguistics’ own electronic discussion forum based at the University of California San Diego (”cogling@ucsd.edu”).

2

Minimalism (Chomsky 1995), the successor of Government and Binding, itself an outgrowth of classical transformational grammar, does not. Although a lot of excess apparatus has been disposed of, the remnants of previous approaches are too numerous for the framework to be really “minimalist”.

3

Schwarz (1992) did use the label cognitive linguistics to refer to the wider field of “approaches to natural language as a mental phenomenon” (Geeraerts 1995: 112). This includes not only Cognitive Linguistics, but also approaches such as those taken by Noam Chomsky and by Manfred Bierwisch. Schwarz’s example has been followed by, e.g., Taylor (1995) and Newmeyer (1999). Geeraerts (1995) provides a brilliant summary of how Cognitive Linguistics and generative grammar differ in their commitment to cognition.

4

Rohrer (this volume) argues for a broad-based theoretical framework which would tie Cognitive Linguistics in with cognitive science. The latter is redefined as a patient-, problem- and pragmatically-centered multi-disciplinary entreprise that binds together levels of investigation ranging from the cognitive neurosciences through the computer sciences and psychology to anthropology.

5

In fact, as the following quote indicates, he claimed that the terms had been used before. To my knowledge, no earlier source has ever been identified.

6

Note that Householder, in true structuralist fashion, talks about languages and not about language. God’s truth is not that “language has a structure”, a view that most linguists nowadays, unless they believe in universal grammar, would reject out of hand. Cognitive Linguists, for instance, rightly start from conceptual structures, which can be reflected in thousands of different ways in the languages of the world, where they are shaped in part by the building blocks of those languages.

7

In the printed literature, the terms resurface (quite exceptionally for the nineties) in Houben (1993) and in Lamb (forthcoming). In the early seventies, they made a fleeting appearance in proverb studies (Krikmann 1971, Kuusi 1972; cf. Grzybek 1995). In the sixties, anthropologists became familiar with them thanks to Burling (1964).

8

I am almost quoting Householder now, not because I want to be facetious, but because this time there really is an earlier source.

9

Itkonen’s quote shows the effects that political correctness is now having on everyday discourse. Why else was it necessary to qualify those very labels that Householder used with no precautions other than the usual inverted commas?

10

Pursuing God’s truth, as defined here, is different from “taking up God’s perspective, which is impossible” (Mark Johnson apud Hutton, this volume). God’s truth does not necessarily correspond to a God’s eye view of truth, to the truth as it exists prior to any description, to the objective truth about the workings of a language. If it did, it would be unattainable, at least according to the Cognitive Linguistics canon set out in Lakoff (1987) but questioned by Jones (this volume). For reasons known to everyone, Cognitive Linguists will be among the first to recognise that Householder’s terminology is metaphorical. “Because of the pervasiveness of metaphor in thought, we cannot always stick to discussions of reality in purely literal terms” (Lakoff apud Hutton, this volume). This is true as well when we go one step further and actually set out to study the brain (cf. the quote from Lakoff in section 1.2).

11

Until the present day, it has been impossible to track down the exact source of this amazing aphorism. I would love to be in a position to claim authorship for it. As it happens, I encountered it somewhere or other, but I failed to write down who had said or written it first.

12

The team is based at the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley. There are of course other collaborators whom I have not mentioned. More information is available on the Institute’s website ( http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/NTL/ ).

13

The entire interview is a worthwhile read for those who are interested in the philosophical revolution that Lakoff and Johnson have been involved in. It can be found in the 51st issue of the electronic magazine Edge ().

14

What matters here is not what (and how much) Lakoff has produced, but what (and how much) he has produced that is actually being read and/or taken further by a majority of Cognitive Linguists.

15

Sego is now the editor of the electronically published Pedagogical Quarterly of Cognitive Linguistics ().

16

Lakoff preferred a more “commercial” title, one that would sell – and sell it did (100,000 copies, according to René Dirven, p.c.).

17

Geiger/Rudzka-Ostyn (1993) is the third volume (after Langacker 1990 and Deane 1992) in the now well-established CLR (Cognitive Linguistics Research) series published, together with the journal Cognitive Linguistics, by Mouton de Gruyter. Among the later volumes, Casad (1996) and Achard (1998) deserve special mention.

18

The upper case initials are in the original text. Work published by the three authors referred to by Lakoff includes Talmy (2000) (a revision and digest of earlier work), Langacker (1987/1991, 1990), Fauconnier (1995, 1997). Talmy introduced the principles of Gestalt psychology into linguistic analysis. Langacker, among other things, developed Talmy’s insights into a coherent overall framework. Fauconnier brought the philosophical questions of reference and mental representation to bear on Cognitive Linguistics.

19

Perhaps neurocognitive linguistics is the answer of one Cognitive Linguist (Lamb) to Givón’s (1998: 64) call for a “combined metadiscipline that is yet to be born cognitive neuro-linguistics”. This is not quite the same as what is commonly referred to as neurolinguistics (tout court). The latter predominantly looks at language disorders (agrammatism, selective language impairments and other aphasias). For a recent “tutorial overview”, see Levy/Kavé (1999).

20

In saying this, I rely on my experience with the cognitive science texts that I have seen over the last few years. I could have produced a list, and in fact tried to as I was writing this paper. But that list soon became unwieldy, even though I had set 1995 as a terminus post quem for my planned survey (which would have required a full-fledged bibliographical report of its own).

21

Chomsky’s review, published about two decades before Dennett (1978), could no doubt be dubbed the “Skinner Skinned” of linguistics.

22

The Cognitive Linguistics heading in Hudson’s bibliography contains items by Cognitive Linguists such as René Dirven, Dirk Geeraerts, Ron Langacker, Günter Radden, John Taylor and Marjolijn Verspoor. The innateness and modularity headings have entries by authors who are at best interested onlookers.

23

Produced for the BBC Horizon series by P. Millson and directed by D. Sington.

24

Does our training as linguists preclude us from understanding what is going on in the brain? Most of us have had no training whatsoever in the workings of the brain. Those who have developed an interest have typically done so independently of their study of linguistics. They have read up on the literature, in a slow but certain process of familiarisation with a hugely complex area which has traditionally been the hunting ground of neurologists, anatomists, brain surgeons and the like.

25

For an early introduction to Edelman, cf. Rosenfield (1988).

26

The assumption, here, is of course that Lamb did not misunderstand Edelman, and that his own hypothesis is correct. A reader of this paper suggested I attempt at least to summarise the basic idea. Suffice it to refer, once more, to the phrase neural Darwinism. Principles applied by Darwin to explain evolution at large apply within the brain as well: strengthening (of the more active neuronal groups), weakening/withering/disappearance (of the less active or inactive ones), in brief “survival of the fittest”.

27

I am grateful to David Tuggy for suggesting, at the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (Amsterdam, 1997), that for once the appropriate answer to a question which asks for information is affirmative.

28

A theory of language is operationally plausible if it provides a plausible basis for understanding the processes of speaking and comprehension. It is developmentally plausible if there is a plausible means whereby the proposed model or system could be acquired by children. It is neurologically plausible if it can offer a plausible account of how the system might be represented in neural structures. Theories which meet all three criteria qualify as forms of neurocognitive linguistics (in Lamb’s meaning of the term).

29

Fillmore was one of the first to analyse the commercial transaction scene at great length.

30

For an interesting attempt to link prototype semantics and neurocognitive linguistics, cf. Howard (this volume).

Classic lines of 007 movies ：Bond

10. Octopussy

Magda: “He suggests a trade. The egg for your life.”

Bond: “Well, I heard the price of eggs was up, but isn’t that a little high?”

9. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

(A villain chases Bond and skis into a snow-blower, which then sprays red snow.)

Bond: “He had a lot of guts!”

8. Thunderball

(Whilst placing Fiona Volpe’s body in a chair after she is shot on the dance floor.)

Bond: “Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She’s just dead.”

7. Tomorrow Never Dies

(Whilst Bond is in bed with his Scandinavian language tutor.)

Bond: “I always enjoyed learning a new tongue.”

6. Casino Royale

(As Le Chiffre tortures Bond by striking his testicles with a carpet beater.)

Bond: “Now the whole world will know that you died scratching my balls.”

5. Moonraker

Bond: “Miss Anders… I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

4. Goldfinger

(After dropping a lamp into a bathtub to electrocute a henchman.)

Bond: “Shocking! Positively shocking!”

3. Diamonds are Forever

Tiffany Case: “I’ll finish dressing.”

James Bond as Peter Franks: “Oh please don’t, not on my account.”

2. Goldfinger

Bond: “Who are you?”

Pussy: “My name is Pussy Galore.”

Bond: “I must be dreaming.”

1. You Only Live Twice

Tiger Tanaka: “Rule number two; in Japan, men come first, women come second.”

Bond: “I just might retire here.”

“直升机母亲”?单从字面理解，相信大多数人一定会理解为“直升机母亲/妈妈”，但依然会感到困惑，什么是“直升机母亲/妈妈”?到底要表达的是什么意思或其含义到底是什么意思?

我们来看看原文对helicopter mom/mother的解释

1，A hovering & controlling, but well-meaning, parent who gets way too involved in her child’s life to the point of doing things that are completely inappropriate, such as personally attending all of little Sweetiepie’s extracurricular activities, writing medium-sized Sweetiepie’s school application essays, and submitting full-grown Sweetiepie’s job applications.

2，The term helicopter mother comes from mothers of (usually) college students who ‘hover’ over their children at all times of the day. Here are some sign of you having a helicopter mother.

1. Your mother calls you once a day, or more than once a day.

2. Your mother calls you and reminds you about tests, homework, obligations, meetings, etc., because you cannot handle it yourself, you little child you.

3. Your mother registers your classes for you.

4. Your mother attempts to do your homework…and by doing your homework, I don’t mean revising a paper, but more like wrestling your chemistry homework from your willing hands and hiring somebody at home to do it for her then sending it back to you before it’s due…because she knows when it’s due.

5. Your mother sneaks into your school, does your laundry, then sneaks out.

6. You have a GPS chip somewhere underneith your skin, so she knows where you are at all times, and even if you don’t, she still knows where you are at all times because of all the phone calls.

7. You don’t know how to clean your room, because your mother does it for you.

7. You PROBABLY don’t have a (private) social life, although this one is optional.

“oh, mommy-wommy is calling again!”

“That’s the third time this hour”

“Well, my mommy loves me and yours doesn’t.”

“Because my mom doesn’t spoil me and do my laundry and call me twelve times a day? touche, touche…goddamn helicopter mother”

相信朋友们看了以上的解释，就不难弄懂helicopter mom/mother的意思了，但又苦于到底应该怎么翻译呢?其实，我们中文里好像没有直接对应的词汇来表示，因此似乎也只能意译为：“太溺爱自己孩子的妈妈”了。

当然，我孤陋寡闻，不知道各地对这样的妈妈是否有相应的说法，敬请提供。