Abstract
The paper develops a characterization of nominal compounds. The analysis is carried out on frame-schematic and construction-grammatical grounds. It rests on assumptions about cognitive processing long since known within cognitive linguistics, but it criticizes certain linguistic applications of Fauconnier and Turner's theory of conceptual integration, which historically is a reelaboration of Lakoff and Johnson's theory of metaphor.
The first section sums up two classical approaches in the analysis of nominal compounds; it comments on their inadequacies, and how these have been assessed by Fauconnier and Turner; next, it sketches out the way these two authors and other scholars in blending theory have traditionally analyzed nominal compounds in terms of conceptual integration, and finally one of the major drawbacks of this approach is identified: namely, its limited descriptive import.
In the following section, the authors unfold their own semantic analysis. A non-trivial and non-standard compositional theory is proposed, likely to capture the general way in which semantic parts of a compound configure into a semantic whole. Hereafter the authors proceed to a summary survey of how this scaffolding is actually instantiated or processed cognitively. A crucial difference between processing of literal and metaphorical compounds is established. Thus, the approach has a double scope: it aims at characterizing both the semantics of compounds and the way the semantics is cognitively accessed.
About the authors
Peer F. Bundgaard (b. 1967). His research interests include morphodynamic semiotics, cognitive linguistics and phenomenology of language, and aesthetic semiotics. His recent publications include ‘Presentation and representation in art — ontic and Gestaltic constraints on aesthetic experience’ (2002); Kunst — semiotiske beskrivelse af æstetisk betydning og oplevelse (2004); ‘The ideal scaolding of language — E. Husserl's fourth logical investigation in the light of cognitive linguistics’ (2004); and ‘Configuration sémantique et combinaison syntaxique dans la quatrieme recherche logique de Husserl’ (2004).
Svend Ostergaard (b. 1949). His research interests are cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. His publications include The Mathematics of Meaning (1997).
Frederik Stjernfelt (b. 1957). His research interests include semiotics of cognition, philosophy of science and learning, theory of literature, and political philosophy. His recent publications include ‘Diagrams as centerpiece in a Peircean epistemology’ (2000); Krigens scenografi (with Jens-Martin Eriksen, 2004); ‘The not immediately obvious. Literary interpretation as thought experiment — a Peircean approach’ (in press); and Diagrammatology. Investigations on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics (in press).
© Walter de Gruyter
