Category: cognitive linguistics
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Triangle of meaning
This year, at the urging of a friend, I presented at the APU Asia Pacific Conference. I was rather impressed with the panel organisation and level of research done there. While my paper did not fit perfectly into the type of research done there, it was enough to fit in with concepts and ideas presented…
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Is not good communication about saying the right things and asking the right questions?
In Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance (ISBN9780631198789) they quote the following in discussing the idea of mutual knowledge: On Wednesday morning Ann and Bob read the early edition of the newspaper, and they discuss the fact that its says that A Day at the Races is showing that night at the Roxy. When the late edition arrives,…
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Mandela’s Language
If peace needed a language to convey its meaning and intention far fewer people from around the world would have turned out for his state memorial service. Peace is beyond language and so language comes second to emotion and thought.
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How to listen without ears
Once in a while piece of new research will remind you that some things that seem a given are just not. Take for example this paper on a species of earless frogs listen with their mouths. As incredible as that may sound these frogs do indeed react to mating calls. In other words you don’t…
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Interaction of Color
We are the embodied. As humans we can nothing other. If we are then are deficient in some way. And as such we have the ability to see three colours. We have red, blue and green receptors in our eyes to interpret light which is abundant in the space around us (compare our eyes to…
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Bisociation and Conceptual Blending Theory
New Yorker magazine cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, talks about the anatomy of the New Yorker cartoon and what makes them funny. He cites Arthur Koestler’s idea of bisociation as explained in his Act of Creation as a major influence to his thinking in making choices for which cartoons get accepted into the magazine. Koestler’s book…
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Words and Experience
“We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.” — Vladimir Nabokov
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Neighbours, highlighting and hiding
Consider this conversation: Tom: This is my neighbour, David. David: Hi. I’m his neighbour. Call me Dave. Harry: Harry. Nice to meet you, Dave. David is Tom’s neighbour from Tom’s perspective. So the focus of the conversation is with Tom. But in reality we tend to forget (or in Lakoff and Johnson’s term hide) the…
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The importance of evolutionary embodiment – clues from the fingertips
Western philosophy has a tough time in dealing with the relationship between the body and the mind. In particular, identity has been all too often separated from the physical, all characteristic of ‘being’ invested in the soul. So it is no surprise that we have ignored the function of the fingerprint as part of our…
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Advances in neuroscience and imaging
Here is a great short video on how we have mapped the structure brain with the latest scanning technology. As part of the a project called the Human Connector Project 1,200 Americans have been scanned in order to analyse differences between behaviour and the brain’s structures. Highly interested to see how language and the mind…
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