3 - Concepts and Categorization

Summary

Chapter 3 introduces another cognitive mechanism called categorization. Categorization is an automatic and unconscious cognitive process that enables our limited cognitive capacities to understand and organize information, make predictions, and respond to new situations. Notable crosslinguistic variation can be found in conceptual categories. Such variation can be manifested in morphemes, words, grammar, phonology, and other levels of linguistic structure. The theory of linguistic relativism suggests that linguistic categories may implicitly affect how we categorize objects and events. Consequently, learning L2-specific categories generally entails a certain degree of conceptual recategorization.