7 - Mapping conceptual representations into linguistic representations: the role of attention in grammar

Summary

Introduction

Two complementary sets of problems face researchers seeking to understand the interplay between conceptual and linguistic representations:

1. (1) How linguistic representations reveal or constrain conceptual representations, and

2. How conceptual representations are mapped into linguistic representations.

Most linguistic research aimed at cognitive or conceptual issues in language addresses the first set. Thus, work by Jackendoff (1983, 1987), Lakoff (1987), Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Langacker (1987,1991), Talmy (1988a, 1988b), and others typically begins with observations about language and uses these observations to make interesting and important inferences about what conceptual representations must or might look like given what we have observed about language, in effect reverse-engineering conceptual representations from linguistic representations.

But it is also important to investigate the second set of problems – how conceptual representations are mapped into linguistic representations. This problem is rather different from the first, because it does not make use of language to draw inferences about conceptualization – to use language precludes asking this second question in a non-circular fashion. Instead, the second set of problems requires that one develop a theory or model of conceptualization that is language-independent and then investigate how particular languages, as well as language in general, map those independently describable conceptual representations into linguistic representations.

This chapter presents a framework for investigating how conceptual representations of visual events are mapped into language.