Publications

"A Proposed Formalism for ECG Schemas, Constructions, Mental Spaces, and Maps"

J. A. Feldman

ICSI Technical Report TR-02-010

September 2002

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Overview:

The traditional view has been that Cognitive Linguistics (CL) is incompatible with formalization. Cognitive linguistics is serious about embodiment and grounding, including imagery and image-schemas, force-dynamics, real-time processing, discourse considerations, mental spaces, context, and so on. It remains true that some properties of embodied language, such as context sensitivity, can not be fully captured in a static formalism, but a great deal of CL can be stated formally in a way that is compatible with a full treatment. It appears that we can specify rather complete embodied construction grammars (ECG) using only four types of formal structures: schemas, constructions, maps, and spaces. The purpose of this note is to specify these structures and present simple examples of their use.