Introduction

We have now completed our general overview. It is time to get down to the nitty-gritty. We have spoken about cognitive models in very general terms. It is time to give some idea of what they look like in detail: to show what prepositional models, metaphoric models, image-schematic, and symbolic models look like up close. We have argued that an experiential-ist approach is needed so that phenomena involving metaphor, meton­ymy, image schemas, and radial categories can be adequately described. It is time to show what such an approach can do.

I will be presenting three case studies. Since I am a linguist, they will all involve language, but to show that the method of analysis is not limited to a single subject matter, these studies will cover three different do­mains—concepts, words, and grammatical constructions. Each of the case studies takes up a recalcitrant area of study, an area where classical techniques of analysis could not account adequately for the phenomena. The case studies are, therefore, intended not just as examples of how the cognitive models approach works. They are each of interest in their own right.

The first is the study of a concept—anger. It is taken from the domain of emotions for a number of reasons. Emotions are often viewed as feel­ings devoid of any conceptual content. But in addition to feeling what we feel, we also impose an understanding on what it is that we feel. When we act on our emotions, we act not only on the basis of feeling but also on the basis of that understanding. Emotional concepts are thus very clear ex­amples of concepts that are abstract and yet have an obvious basis in bod­ily experience. Anger, as we shall see, is a particularly rich example: it has a very elaborate conceptual structure. Anger also has a very rich category structure, in that there are many kinds of anger, from righteous indigna­tion, to wrath, to cold anger, and the like.

In the second study, we will consider a single word—over. Over is basi­cally a preposition, but it can also function as an adverb, a prefix, a parti-

378 Introduction

cle, and a predicate adjective. It has more than a hundred identifiable senses, which are linked to one another by family resemblances. Brugman (1981) has shown that the senses of over form a category with a radial structure, and we will be reviewing a portion of her analysis, as well as extending it to display the details of the relationships among the senses. Prepositions in English, as well as in other languages, have tradi­tionally been difficult to describe, largely because of their proliferation of senses. It has only been through the advent of prototype theory that we have begun to make sense of the semantics of prepositions. Of course, prepositions are not the only kinds of words that have a multitude of re­lated meanings. Most words are like that. Brugman's hypothesis ought to be extendable to cases of polysemy (multiple meaning) in general: poly­semy appears to be a special case of prototype-based categorization, where the senses of the word are the members of a category. The applica­tion of prototype theory to the study of word meaning brings order into an area where before there was only chaos.

The third, and longest, case study concerns grammatical constructions. It demonstrates that grammatical constructions form categories with ra­dial structures. Within contemporary linguistic theory, this is a very con­troversial claim. The case study will focus on an extremely complex and well-studied area of English syntax—(Acre-constructions. A great deal is known about these constructions. Yet they have previously resisted all at­tempts at an adequate analysis. We will try to show that they can be ana­lyzed adequately if we make three assumptions.

- Grammatical constructions are pairings of form and meaning.

- The structural aspect of meaning is describable using cognitive mod­els.

- Grammatical constructions form radially structured categories.

The third case study is much longer than the other two. It has to be that way because of the current state of the theory of grammar. There are a great many theories of grammar now available, and almost all of them are based on the classical theory of categorization. Most of these theories are complex and have many kinds of descriptive devices available. Because of this, there appears to be only one way to present a thorough case for the necessity of cognitive models and prototype theory in grammar: One must take a phenomenon with a very large amount of recalcitrant data, show how to make sense of that data, state all the relevant generaliza­tions, and show why those generalizations cannot be stated in other theo­ries. It is a long and difficult enterprise, but it is the only way I know of to make the case in a responsible manner.

Each of these case studies demonstrates the reality of radially struc-