1,721,003 research outputs found
«La semantica delle emozioni nella Cina Ming e Qing. Recensione al volume di P. Santangelo "Sentimental Education in Chinese History"»
No full textMetaphor from Buehler’s Sprachtheorie to conceptual integration
No full textDuring the last two decades of the 20th century, a kaleidoscope of ideas, theories
and philosophies has given birth to the Embodied Cognition program, along with
the rediscovery of the centrality of semantics over syntax. This cognitive semantic
turn insisted on the metaphorical nature of the conceptual activity to dismantle the
tenets of the so-called Standard Cognitive Science. Against Chomsky’s disembodied
cognitivism, the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor (Lakoff, Johnson 1980) was followed
by a great deal of research which confirmed the pervasiveness of this «fact of
thought». While conceptual metaphors consist in mappings across two conceptual
domains, whose essence is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of
another, more recently the Theory of Conceptual Integration has provided an indepth
investigation into the nature of those mappings, showing that metaphor is
only one of the outcomes of a more general process of blending mental spaces
(Fauconnier, Turner 1998). This paper aims to highlight some similarities between
the aforementioned approaches and the theory of language of the German psychologist
Karl Bühler, a critical exponent of the Gestalt psychology. The parallel is
justified by the fact that a hotly debated issue in the Gestalt schools was precisely
that of Übersummativität, which Bühler discussed according to the crucial role of
compounds in the structure of language. In metaphor, which for Bühler is indeed a
peculiar kind of compound, supersummativity occurs together with subsummativity.
The second plays, in fact, a complementary function in the process of mixing the
spheres of meaning, filtering out incompatible elements. Hence, Bühler’s sematological
perspective reveals surprising correspondences with the current approaches
since both highlight the structural character and the properties of conceptual integration.
Nevertheless, if, according to Bühler, the indeterminacy of the sign, which is
systemic before than pragmatic, relates to the creativity of language, in the cognitive
vein meanings are not given by language but merely «mirror» conceptual structuresconstrued independently of any semiotic activit
Premessa [a Il linguaggio: storia delle idee e questioni contemporanee. Per Stafano Gensini]
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Rethinking lexical semantic fields: relevance and local holism
Full text linkThis paper aims to single out some pathologies of current lexical semantics, which suffers from both the trauma of immanence and the opposite anxiety of rooting all knowledge in the pre-semiotic dimension, or entrusting sense-making entirely to context. To untangle these pitfalls, the dialogue with a phenomenological cognitive semiotics may prove fertile to focus on the lexicon as a type of storage and a type of memory; that is, a type of accumulated and sedimented knowledge based on the dynamical re-pertinentization of invariants. In particular, the perspective developed by Sonesson shows striking coincidences with De Mauro’s semiotic semantics, which already provides a solid foundation for rethinking the notion of lexical field drawing on an “authentic” Humboldtian and Saussurean heritage.
Therefore, I will briefly review some principles of lexical structural semantics, with the aim of showing how these notions, once emancipated from the Saussurean vulgata, can not only be compatible with a cognitive phenomenological approach, but also facilitate the rehabilitation of a theoretical apparatus still valuable for both (lexical) semantics and semiotics. Although focused on lexical fields, some of the issues addressed can be extended to language and languages, as well as to other types of semiotic systems, to shed light on controversial themes such as the embodiment of signs and the autonomy of linguistics and semantics
The Neo-Humboldtian lexical field theory. Origin, reception and perspectives
No full textLeo Weisgerber’s and Jost Trier’s Wortfeldtheorie is still considered the most consistent outcome of post-Saussurean structural semantics as well as the first step towards an “ontological structuralism”. One of their aims was to reconcile the impasse born out of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s distinction between Energeia and Ergon, which exploded in the 20th century dispute between structural semantics and cognitive and pragmatic approaches. If Neo-Humboldtians hastened the “structuralist turn”, Trier’s theory contains insights still relevant in the theories of language focusing on the interactions between language, thought, and reality
On influencing a titan. The Roman Jakobson - Eli Fischer-Jørgensen correspondence with particular reference to how it influenced Roman Jakobson's writings.
No full textIn 1952 Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) gave the first comprehensive exposition of his theory of “distinctive features”. The Danish phonetician and general linguist Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (1911-2010) was an important discussion partner of Jakobson’s for some thirty years. You may follow their exchange of ideas in a correspondence which ranges from 1949 until Jakobson’s death in 1982 (Bank Jensen & D’Ottavi, 2020). Fischer-Jørgensen always acknowledged her debt to Jakobson’s work; but was there also some influence the other way around? Based on Koerner’s (1989) guideline for defining the term “influence” in the history of linguistics, it is discussed which importance Fischer-Jørgensen had for Jakobson in the decade 1952-62, beyond what can be seen directly from his quotations of her. It is argued: that Fischer-Jørgensen’s critical input had an effect on some specific issues in the Jakobsonian expositions of the “distinctive feature” theory; that her suggestions had some influence on his use of theoretical concepts; and finally that she was an important figure when he took over as a chairman of the International Congresses of Phonetic Sciences
Chomsky and Lakoff: from cognition to language and politics, and back
Full text linkThe paper aims to compare two distant yet close conceptions of politics and political communication, that of Noam Chomsky, which matured since the second half of the last century, and that of George Lakoff, which came into vogue between the 1990s and 2000s. Chomsky and Lakoff are the heroes of the Linguistics Wars which redefined the physiognomy of US linguistics and cognitive science and also personify, each in his way, the figure of a public intellectual. Nevertheless, dealing with politics and communication, both fail to untangle the link between cognition, language, and propaganda: Chomsky moves, albeit contradictory, from heaven to earth, i.e., from the scientific investigation of language and mind to the non-scientific realm of historical events, whose analysis is entrusted to the citizen endowed with a Cartesian common-sense; Lakoff takes, instead, the reverse path, outlining a political mind that embrains the ideologies and consequently proposing cognitive activism which aims at reframing people’s brain. Both approaches flow into an outdated, reductionist communication model, entailed in both first and second-generation cognitive science, which does not ponder the complexity of political and communicative practices enacted by semiotic-political animals
La théorie des champs lexicaux: un essai de sémantique saussurienne?
No full textWeisgerber and Trier’s Wortfeldheorie has been considered the first consistent outcome of post-Saussurean semantics as well as the first step towards an “ontological structuralism” (Eco 1984). I will show that the Neo-Humboldtian approach could be seen, instead, as an attempt to read the Saussurean conception of language in the light of the Humboldtian notion of language as energeia. Thus, if from a methodological point of view the neo-Humboldtians surely hastens the “structuralist turn”, Trier’s theory in particular highlights the contradictions of the CGL’s dichotomies, avoiding to some extent the risks of the “Saussurean vulgata” attributed to the classical Structural Semantics paradig
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