Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.
The Metaphor Compass: Directions for Metaphor Research in Language, Cognition, Communication, and Creativity provides a roadmap to navigate the recent findings and cutting-edge research conducted around the world on metaphor, focusing on the following four themes: Metaphor and Linguistic Diversity, Metaphor and Cognition, Metaphor and Communication, and Metaphor and Creativity. The research presented in this book employs a variety of empirical methods, ranging from neuroimaging to corpus analyses and from behavioral experimentation to computational modeling. Divided into four parts, it offers an array of pedagogical material including activities at the ends of the chapters to help the reader to consolidate the notions discussed in the chapter. This is a useful resource for students, researchers, and scholars of linguistics, communication, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science looking to learn about figurative language and creativity.
By exploring the associations that people make between emotions and colours, looking at how they vary across languages, and exploring the explanations that people provide for the associations that they make, this Element provides insight into the ways in which humans express emotions through colour, and the reasons why they do so. Metaphoric (and metonymic) language and thought play a key role on several levels in the formation of emotion–colour associations, interacting with physical, environmental and social factors. A strong metaphorical connection between the valence of the emotion and the lightness of the colours with which it is associated, and between the intensity of an emotion and the saturation level of the colours with which it is associated is found. However, the strength of this association varies according to the linguistic background of the speaker, and the gender in which the emotion is presented.
By exploring the associations that people make between emotions and colours, looking at how they vary across languages, and exploring the explanations that people provide for the associations that they make, this Element provides insight into the ways in which humans express emotions through colour, and the reasons why they do so. Metaphoric (and metonymic) language and thought play a key role on several levels in the formation of emotion–colour associations, interacting with physical, environmental and social factors. A strong metaphorical connection between the valence of the emotion and the lightness of the colours with which it is associated, and between the intensity of an emotion and the saturation level of the colours with which it is associated is found. However, the strength of this association varies according to the linguistic background of the speaker, and the gender in which the emotion is presented.
The Metaphor Compass: Directions for Metaphor Research in Language, Cognition, Communication, and Creativity provides a roadmap to navigate the recent findings and cutting-edge research conducted around the world on metaphor, focusing on the following four themes: Metaphor and Linguistic Diversity, Metaphor and Cognition, Metaphor and Communication, and Metaphor and Creativity. The research presented in this book employs a variety of empirical methods, ranging from neuroimaging to corpus analyses and from behavioral experimentation to computational modeling. Divided into four parts, it offers an array of pedagogical material including activities at the ends of the chapters to help the reader to consolidate the notions discussed in the chapter. This is a useful resource for students, researchers, and scholars of linguistics, communication, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science looking to learn about figurative language and creativity.
Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.
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