Synopsis
1. BACKGROUND This volume is one of three which emerged from the Conference on Knowledge and Language, held from May 21-May 25, 1989, at the occasion of the 37 5th anniversary of the University of Groningen. Studying the relation between knowledge and language, one may distinguish two different lines of inquiry, one focussing on language as a body of knowledge, the other on language as a vehicle of knowledge. Approaching language as a body of knowledge one faces questions concerning its structure, and the relation with other types of knowledge. One will ask, then, how language is acquired and to what extent the acquisition of language and the structure of the language faculty model relevant aspects of other cognitive capacities. If language is approached as a vehicle for knowledge, the question comes up what enables linguistic entities to represent facts about the world. To what extent does this reply on conventional aspects of mean ings? Is it possible for language, when used non-conventionally as in metaphors, to convey intersubjective knowledge? If so (and it does seem to be the case), one may wonder what makes this possible. The aim of this conference was to investigate the role of conceptual structure in cognitive processes, exploring it from the perspectives of philosophy of language, linguistics, political philosophy, psychology, liter ary theory, aesthetics, and philosophy of science. The themes of these three volumes reflect the themes of the conference.
Synopsis
"Lexical and Conceptual Structure" addresses the nature of the interface between conceptual and linguistic structure. It is a long-standing observation that there is a correspondence between formal linguistic and notional categories, which is incomplete, yet real. Presumably every language will contain a formal category which at least contains the expressions denoting prototypical objects, another containing the expressions which denote prototypical actions, and so on. If formal linguistic categories have images at some level of cognitive structure, the question arises what the nature of this level is: What are its elements and how do they combine? What is the relation between "cognitive structure" and the domain of interpretation? Finding the answer to questions of this type is of the utmost importance in order to understand how the language faculty relates to the other cognitive abilities. One of the important challenges facing us is to find a substantive theory of the relation between meanings as linguistic entities and real-world entities. This book attempts to provide such a theoretical framework.
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