Gilles Fauconnier

Conceptual Integration Networks

Conceptual integration—“blending”—is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly. In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, “blended” mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations. Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles.

Implication Reversal in a Natural Language

Much recent work about language has been representational: the solution of particular problems and the account of linguistic distributions is often perceived as being the choice (or the discovery) of abstract representations (e.g., semantic, syntactic, logical…) which reflect directly, largely by means of their configurations, properties and generalizations only dimly apparent at the ‘surface’. Of course, rules are necessary to relate these representations to the actually observed manifestations of language and the form of these rules, like that of the representations, is considered to be a question of crucial importance in linguistic theory.

The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought: Rethinking metaphor

The study of conceptual mappings, including metaphoric mappings, has produced great insights over the past several decades, not only for the study of language but also for the study of such subjects as scientific discovery, design, mathematical thinking, and computer interfaces. This tradition of inquiry is fulfilling its promises, with new findings and new applications all the time. Looking for conceptual mappings and their properties proves to be a rich method for discovery.1 To the initial studies that focused on cross-domain mappings and their most visible products have now been added many additional dimensions. Detailed studies have been carried out on topics such as compression, integration networks, and the principles and constraints that govern them.2 This blooming field of research has as one consequence the rethinking of metaphor. We have a richer and deeper understanding of the processes underlying metaphor than we did previously. In this article, we will illustrate the central areas of theoretical advance by looking in some detail at the often studied metaphor of TIME AS SPACE. The points we shall emphasize are the following:

Pragmatic Entailment and Questions

Sentential structures may contain positions that can be filled by other sentential structures: (1) Although —, we arrived late. (2) Galileo believes that —. (3) It is too early for —. (4) If —, then Monaco will attack. I will call such structures environments and symbolize their semantic content, with a corresponding empty slot, as U — V, U’ — V’ etc. If the sentential structure S that fills the empty slot has propositional content P, then the propositional content of the entire construction (environment filled in by S) will be UPV.

On Metaphor and Blending

Abstract There is a mistaken perception that ‘metaphor theory’ and ‘conceptual blending’ are competing views, and that there is some argument between us over this. The real situation is this: We have been good friends and colleagues for over forty years, and we remain so. We fully respect, and make use of, each other’s work. We are both scientists, who do both empirical research and theorizing. We see the research programs developed for metaphor and blending as mutually reinforcing and often deeply intertwined, rather than at odds with each other. So why do some see discord where we find remarkable convergence? The short answer is that over the years, we focused on what we were most interested in, with corresponding differences of emphasis and interpretation. To explain how all this unfolded, and dispel the view that pits metaphor against blending, we need to go over the basic developments over time in the study of conceptual metaphor and blends, and then do a comparison.

Creativity, simulation, and conceptualization

Understanding the role of simulation in conceptualization has become a priority for cognitive science. Barsalou makes a valuable contribution in that direction. The present commentary points to theoretical issues that need to be refined and elaborated in order to account for key aspects of meaning construction, such as negation, counterfactuals, quantification or analogy. Backstage cognition, with its elaborate bindings, blendings, and mappings, is more complex than Barsalous discussion might suggest. Language does not directly carry meaning, but rather serves, along with countless other situational elements, as a powerful instrument for prompting its construction

Roles and Values: The Case of French Copula Constructions

There are some interesting correlations between the semantic notions of “role,” “value,” “connector,” and the grammatical peculiarities of the so-called “copulative” sentences in French noted by Moreau (1970) and Ruwet(1972).

Fusión conceptual y analogía

Se enuncia la teoria de la fusion conceptual que avanza sobre la teoria bipolar de la proyeccion. En la teoria de la fusion existen cuatro dominios que son objeto de diversas operaciones, algunas proyectivas y otras de mezcla y union de dominios diversos, lo que crea diferentes campos de referencia sobre los que operar. La fusion conceptual es ejemplificada a traves de claros casos y se muestra su importancia en las distintas actividades comunicativas.

Pragmatic functions and mental spaces

A p~pub, although not always explicit, view of the relationship between psy choli a,uistics and hnguistics, as scientific fields, used to run something like this ,inguists, using the powers of pure reason, plus a good, but revisable, theoretical framework and a decent amount of data in the form of grammaticality judgments, set out to discover fhe structure of language (i.e., levels, rules, conditions on rules and levels...). Psychologists are provided with the linguists’ results and their task is to find out experimentally how such structures are processed and also, thereby, to give the postulated structures additional support. But the rediscovery of some epistemological truisms has perturbed this simple scheme. First, the structure attributed to the output of a system is not necessarily reflected within that system (the so-called E:st order isomorphism fallacy, cf., termites, planimeters...). Second, data is not theory-independent: a theoretical framework not only ‘explains’ data, but specifies what kind of data is actually relevant, legitimate..., and how it is to be gathered. Third, the concepts needed for classifying and theorizing do not arise magically out of combinatorial analysis: tT ,ey are either invented, which requires not only formal and empirical thoroughness but considerable imagination as well, and/or borrowed from other domains. My own work, during the last few years, has focussed on issues where such epistemological problems arise in relation to natural language logic, pragmatics, speech acts and syntax. These studies htive triggered extensions of the range of relevant data, sometimes within language (scalar phenomena, implication reversal, quantification across discourse), sometimes beyond (social rituals, anticipation, principles of intemuption), The corresponding shift in theoretical emphasis is, characteristically, away from the formal representation of ‘under’ linguistic structure to the explicit identification and explanation of the processes which mentally set up discourse on the basis of various factors. Discourse, under this view, is in no way a sequence of sentences or propositions, but rather a separate mental construction triggered by sentences, context, assumptions, et c,, and performed by a speaker, or by a listener. Communication, as opposed to disburse, involves partial matching and negotiation of these mental constructions.

Ten Lectures on Cognitive Construction of Meaning

A study of mental spaces and the connections between them. Conceptual integration of mental spaces leads to new meaning, global insight, and compressions useful for memory and creativity, with dynamic emergence of novel structure in all areas of human life (science, religion, art, ...).