Conceptual Spaces by Peter Gardenfors

Author:Peter Gardenfors [Gardenfors, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

V Semantics is primary to syntax and partly determines it (syntax cannot be described independently of semantics).

This thesis is anathema to the Chomskian tradition within linguistics. Within Chomsky’s school, grammar is a formal calculus, which can be described via a system of rules, where the rules are formulated independently of the meaning of the linguistic expressions· Semantics is something that is added, as a secondary independent feature, to the grammatical rule system. Similar claims are made for pragmatic aspects of language.

Within cognitive linguistics, semantics is the primary component (which, in the form of conceptual representations, exists before, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, syntax is fully developed). 168

The structure of the semantic schemas puts constraints on the possible grammars that can be used to represent those schemas. Petitot (1995, 232), who is building on a proposal from Thom, formulates the idea very clearly (see also Dixon 1982, 8):

One of our main theses is that syntactic structures linking participant roles in verbal actions are organized by universals and invariants of a topological, geometric, and morphological nature. This thesis is deeply akin to the work . . . concerning the central cognitive role of spatial and temporal Gestalten or image schemas. Actually, we will show how constituent structures can be retrieved from the morphologial analysis of perceptual scenes.

Later on, he puts the position in stark contrast to the Chomskian symbolic theory: The formal universals, which are not characterizable within the theory of formal grammars, need not necessarily be conceived of as innate. They can be explained by cognitive universal structures. . . . Insofar as these structures are not symbolic but of a topological and dynamical nature, there exists in syntax a deep iconicy. At this level, semantics and syntax are inseparable: syntax is no longer an independent and autonomous linguistic dimension·

(Petitot 1995, 256)

Since the cognitive analysis focuses more on speech acts rather than on free-floating sentences, the meaning of the modals is partly determined by a pragmatic analysis, and thus it does not provide just a semantics in the sense of philosophical logic. Traditionally, semantics concerns the meaning of expressions, while pragmatics concerns their use (but compare section 5.4.3 below). But if the meanings of certain expressions, like the modal verbs studied in Talmy (1988) and Winter and Gärdenfors (1995), cannot be determined without recourse to their

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