Abstract
The objective in the present paper is to analyze the aspect of subjectivity having to do with construing motion and change where no motion and change exists outside the representation, that is, in cases where the conceptualizer does not intend to convey the idea that these properties exist in the state of affairs described. In the process of doing so, I will elaborate on a critique of the notion of fictivity as it is currently being used in cognitive linguistics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Note, by the way, that in adopting a philosophy according to which degrees, or modes, of reality/irreality is ascertained relative to an epistemically inpenetrable mind-independent reality, one easily runs into the paradox that the default state which is per definition unknowable yet serves to define realness/fictiveness; if all of human reality is a fiction, since the universe an sich is not cognizable to us, how is one able to make this assertion (that ‘human reality is a fiction’)? Supposedly one does not have access to the reality relative to which our fictive one is fictive.
The quote is a translation of the title of one of the chapters in E. Benveniste’s Problèmes de linguistique générale: “L’homme dans la langue” (Benveniste 1966).
Alerted to the phenomenal reality of speech acts and the very real effects these have in our lifeworld, Searle makes a case for an ontology informed by the conceptual, and indeed mind-dependent, realm of experience, arguing that the causal reality of these non-sensory phenomena, grounded in communicative interaction, supports a conception of reality as including the fundamentally “intentional” dimension of intersubjective meaning (Searle 1983).
From ‘Road to Hana: Maui’s Ultimate Road Trip’, http://www.maui.worldweb.com/Paia/FeaturesReviews/LocalAttractions//8–146594.html
A transcription of ten lectures on cognitive grammar delivered in Beijing in April 2006, published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, in the Eminent Linguists Lecture Series.
Talmy discusses “coextension paths” in his chapter on fictive motion (Talmy 2000). Fictive motion in language, he writes, encompasses these categories (incl. subcategories): emanation; pattern paths; frame-relative motion; advent paths; access paths; and coextension paths (with reference to work on virtual motion in Talmy 1983; extension, Jackendoff 1983; abstract motion, Langacker 1987; subjective motion, Matsumoto 1996a, b, c).
Notice, by the way, that the description of the hills as “an angry answer” to the water is a metaphor where the target domain is physical and the source domain is the ontological domain of communicative face-to-face interaction (aka the speech-act domain, cf. Sweetser 1990). This goes to illustrate that metaphoric meaning does not necessarily travel from physical experience to other more complex and abstract domains (as argued in much of the literature on the subject since Lakoff and Johnson 1980).
Other phenomena included in Talmy’s proposed categories illustrate the ubiquity of virtuality (a notion applied to things that are ‘sensed’ rather than directly perceived, e.g. the trajectory line extending from the index finger in demonstrative pointing) and subject-relational sensibility in experience (e.g. frame-relative path examples): emanation paths (incl. orientation paths), pattern paths, frame-relative motion, advent paths, access paths, and coextension paths. Aside from these, there are categories of what Talmy calls “fictive presence”, pertaining to “structurality”: the sensing of object structure, path structure, reference frames, structural history and future, projected paths, and force dynamics. (Talmy 2000)
Particular to Lakoff & Turner’s approach is their seeing this as-if meaning as the result of a conceptual metaphor (FORM IS ACTION). On this explanation, states have become the way they are because, metaphorically, someone made them that way. A variant account can be found in Michael Leyton’s Symmetry, Causality, Mind (1992) which unfolds an elaborate theory on this kind of resultative cognition. Instead of deriving meaning from metaphor, however, Leighton draws on the notion of narrative cognition. According to his “generative theory of space”, when non-symmetrical displays are perceived, we conceive of them in terms of causal narratives: The perceived shape of an object gives it its “history” (Leyton 1992).
Cp.: The sentence ‘The general’s limosine grows longer’ does not take the role interpretation.
For a quick overview of the main grammatical differences between the two types of construction, see Matsumoto 1996c, pp. 144–146.
“I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one could have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one which was not eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer—not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, ect.—is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.” (Borges 1998: 299)
Anything that exists “in general” is assigned to non-actuality. If there is something with particular reference, on the other hand, it is said to be part of actuality (Langacker 1999: 80).
The distinction between fiat and bona fide boundaries was introduced by Barry Smith in Smith 1995. Fiat boundaries are human-demarcation-induced boundaries; bona fide boundaries correspond to genuine physical discontinuities, which would exist even in the absence of the drawing of boundaries by cognitive agents.
Cf. Pascual 2006 (p. 247).
Most famously in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1758).
See also Talmy 2000, p.144, p. 154.
“Conceptual structure is dynamic: it emerges and develops through processing time, this temporal dimension being inherent and essential to its characterization.” (Langacker 2002 handout: “Dynamicity, Fictivity, and Scanning: The Imaginative Basis of Logic and Linguistic Meaning” (p. 1), cf. also Langacker 2005 and Langacker 2001 (p. 15).
References
Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 22, 577–660.
Barsalou, L. W. (2003). Situated simulation in the human conceptual system. Language & Cognitive Processes, 18, 513–562.
Benveniste, É. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard.
Borges, J. L. (1998). Collected fictions. New York: Penguin Books.
Boroditsky, L., & Ramscar, M. (2002). The roles of body and mind in abstract thought. Psychological Science, 13, 185–189.
Brandt, L. (2008). A semiotic approach to fictive interaction as a representational strategy in communicative meaning construction. In T. Oakley, & A. Hougaard (Eds.), Mental spaces approaches to discourse and interaction (pp. 109–148). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Chaon, D. (2001). Among the missing. New York: Ballantine Books.
Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 27–63). San Diego: Academic Press.
Croft, W. (2000). Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman.
Croft, W. (2005). Toward a social cognitive linguistics. Plenary lecture. First New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics in the UK Conference, Brighton.
Dorr, R. F. (2002). For space and security, a tighter focus. Aerospace America: Washington Watch http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/Article.cfm?issuetocid=213&ArchiveIssueID=27.
Fauconnier, G. (1994). Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think. New York: Basic Books.
Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gibbs, R. W. (2004). Embodiment and cognitive science. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Glenberg, A. M. (1999). Why mental models must be embodied. In G. Rickheit, & C. Habel (Eds.), Mental models in discourse processing and reasoning (pp. 77–90). New York: Elsevier.
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. Cambridge: MIT.
Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Lakoff, G., & Turner, M. (1989). More than cool reason: A field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, R. W. (1986). Abstract motion. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 12, 455–471.
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar (vol. 2). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, R. W. (1999). Virtual reality. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 29/2, 78–103.
Langacker, R. (2001). Dynamicity in grammar. Axiomathes, 12, 7–33.
Langacker, R. W. (2002). Handout: “Dynamicity, fictivity, and scanning: The imaginative basis of logic and linguistic meaning", course on Cognitive Grammar. San Diego: University of California.
Langacker, R. W. (2005). Dynamicity, fictivity, and scanning: The imaginative basis of logic and linguistic meaning. In D. Pecher, & R. A. Zwaan (Eds.), The grounding of cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Langacker, R. W. (2007). Lecture two: Dynamicity, fictivity and scanning. In Y. Gao, & T. Fuyin Li (Eds.), Ten lectures on cognitive grammar (pp. 47–90). Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press Eminent Linguistics Lecture Series.
Leyton, M. (1992). Symmetry, causality, mind. Cambridge: MIT.
Matlock, T. (2001). “Is anything real about fictive motion?”. Dissertation talk given Dec. 2001 in the Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California.
Matlock, T. (2002). “Fictive motion in language and thought”. Presentation given May 2002 (Colloquium), Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
Matlock, T. (2004a). The conceptual motivation of fictive motion. In G. Radden, & K. Panther (Eds.), Studies in linguistic motivation [Cognitive Linguistics Research]. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Matlock, T. (2004b). Fictive motion as cognitive simulation. Memory & Cognition, 32(8), 1389–1400.
Matlock, T. (2006). Depicting fictive motion in drawings. In J. Luchenbroers (Ed.), Cognitive Linguistics: Investigations across languages, fields, and philosophical boundaries. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Matlock, T., Ramscar, M., & Boroditsky, L. (2003). The experiential basis of meaning. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 792−797). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Matsumoto, Y. (1996a). How abstract is subjective motion? A comparison of coverage path expressions and access path expressions. In A. Goldberg (Ed.), Conceptual structure, discourse and language (pp. 359–373). Stanford: CSLI.
Matsumoto, Y. (1996b). Subjective motion and English and Japanese verbs. Cognitive Linguistics, 7, 183–226.
Matsumoto, Y. (1996c). Subjective-change expressions in Japanese and their cognitive and linguistic bases. In G. Fauconnier, & E. Sweetser (Eds.), Spaces, worlds, and grammar. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press.
Matsumoto, Y. (1997). Linguistic evidence for subjective (fictive) motion. In K. Yamanaka, & T. Ohori (Eds.), The locus of meaning: Papers in Honor of Yoshihiko Ikegami (pp. 209–220). Tokyo: Kuroshio.
Nicolle, S. (2007). Review of constructions of intersubjectivity: Discourse, syntax, and cognition by Arie Verhagen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. In SIL Electronic Book Reviews.
Oakley, T. & Hougaard, A. (Eds.) (2008). Mental spaces approaches to discourse and interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 170]. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Pascual, E. (2002). Imaginary trialogues: Conceptual blending and fictive interaction in criminal courts. Utrecht: LOT.
Pascual, E. (2006). Fictive interaction within the sentence: A communicative type of fictivity in grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 17–2(2006), 245–267.
Pascual, E., Królak, E. & Janssen, T. In prep. (2008). “Do-it-yourself compounds: Scenarios set up through fictive interaction”.
Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality: An essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sinha, C. (1999). Grounding, mapping, and acts of meaning. In T. Janssen, & G. Redeker (Eds.), Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope, and Methodology (pp. 223–255). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sinha, C. (2005). Mind, brain, society: Language as Vehicle and Language as Window. Handout, Plenary lecture. First New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics in the UK Conference, Brighton.
Smith, B. (1995). On drawing lines on a map. In A. U. Frank, & W. Kuhn (Eds.), COSIT’95, lecture notes in computer science 988 (pp. 475–484). Berlin: Springer.
Stanfield, R. A., & Zwaan, R. A. (2001). The effect of implied orientation derived from verbal context on picture recognition. Psychological Science, 121, 153–156.
Sweetser, E. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge studies in linguistics, Cambridge University Press.
Sweetser, E. (1996). Talk given on Mental Spaces and Role versus individual interpretations of change predicates, at the Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University (May 1996).
Sweetser, E. (1997). Role and individual interpretations of change predicates. In J. Nuyts, & E. Peterson (Eds.), Language and conceptualization (pp. 116–136). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Talmy, L. (1983). How language structures space. In H. Pick, & L. Acredolo (Eds.), Spatial orientation: Theory, research and application (pp. 225–282). New York: Plenum.
Talmy, L. (1996). Fictive motion in language and ‘ception’. In P. Bloom et al. (Eds.), Language and Space (pp. 211–276). MIT Press/Bradford.
Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics, Volume 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Talmy, L. (2003). Handout: “More on fictivity”. ICLC, Logroño 2003.
Tower, W. (2004). Everything ravaged, everything burned. In B. Marcus (Ed.), The anchor book of new American short stories. New Delhi: Anchor Books.
Verhagen, A. (2005). Constructions of intersubjectivity: Discourse, syntax, and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zlatev, J. (2005). What’s in a schema? Bodily mimesis and the grounding of language. In B. Hampe (Ed.),From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 313–343). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brandt, L. Subjectivity in the act of representing: The case for subjective motion and change. Phenom Cogn Sci 8, 573–601 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9123-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9123-9