Meaning on all language levels and their units. Basic assumptions of cognitive semantics. Meaning, reality and truth conditions in cognitive perspective.

In linguistics, meaning is what is expressed by the writer or speaker, and what is conveyed to the reader or listener, provided that they talk about the same thing (law of identity). Meaning – is relations of words to reality. Meaning – is relation of words to truth. Units of language are divided into segmental, suprasegmental. Segmental units consist of phonemes (syllables, morphemes, words etc). Suprasegmental units don`t exist by themselves but are realized together with segmental units. They are: intonation, accents, pauses. In the structure of language there are four main structural levels:

The phonological level is the lowest level. The ph.unit is phoneme. It is a distinctive unit (bag - back).

The morphological level has two level units: The morpheme – the lowest meaningful unit (teach - teacher); The words – the main naming (nominative) unit of language.

The syntactic level: The word-group – the dependant syntactic unit; The sentence – the main communicative unit.

The supersyntacical level has the text as its level unit. The level units are built up in the same way and that is why the units of a lower level serve the building material for the units of a higher level. The larger units we deal with, the closer we get to the actuality of people’s experience of language.

Basic assumptions of cognitive semantics

Cognitive semantics studies language as a container and an organizer of knowledge within the human mind. Thus it shares one basic property with pragmatics, namely, that language is not analyzed as an abstract structure but as a human quality. Semantics, as the theory of the relation between language and the world, is reformulated as a cognitive semantics referring to the theory of the relation between the language and the mind’s understanding of the world. It combines analysis of cognitive structure, conceptual structure, and semantic structure.

The following are some of the basic assumptions in cognitive semantics and grammar:

1.Meaning is conceptualization.

2.There is difference between real world and conceptualized world (no direct correspondence between them).

3.The cognitive theory of language describes only the organization of this conceptualized world (these theories are working only with epistemological categories and not with ontological categories.)

4.The cognitive operations used of humans to organize and structure linguistic information are the same as those used to structure non-linguistic information.

5.Human beings have an inborn capacity for such internal organization of information which is expressed by these operations.

Meaning, reality and truth conditions in cognitive perspective.

The cognitive perspective is concerned with understanding mental processes such as memory, perception, thinking, and problem solving, and how they may be related to human behavior.

Meaning and Truth. Truth cannot be described as an absolute measure but as a relative one, which is dependent on the users and the situation. If a proposition is false it does not mean that it has no meaning.

What is the meaning of “Supercolorfragilisticexpialadocious”

Nonse-words – neologisms – vocabulary.

Robot (invented by G. Wells) Laser – scientific or common vocabulary?

Boundaries of knowledge: The earth is round (true or false?)

Cognitive Personality Theory:A cognitive personality theory may explain individual differences in behavior with respect to differences in the way people think and process information.

Meaning in Cognitive Perspective:

1.Meaning reduces to conceptualization (mental experience) which subsumes both established concepts and novel conceptions.

2.A frequently-used item typically displays a network of interrelated senses.

3.Semantic structures are characterized relative to "cognitive domains".

4.A semantic structure (predication) derives its value through the imposition of a "profile" on a “base”.

Conceptualization includes sensory, emotive, and kinesthetic sensations and extends to our awareness of the physical, social, and linguistic context.

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