CHAPTER PREVIEW

This chapter considers meaning from the perspective of the cognitive operations which the mind can be hypothesized to perform in using language. We begin by introducing the idea that words in natural language can be seen as categories, and discuss two different models of the way categories work, the classical view of categorization and the prototype view (7.1), exploring the advantages and problems of each. We then discuss cognitive approaches to meaning, which developed out of the prototypical model of categorization. These approaches have introduced a rich model of the cognitive architecture underlying language (7.2).

The semantics of categorization

Categorization is an important topic in semantics because language can be seen as means of categorizing experience. A word like flower, for example, categorizes an indefinitely large number of different entities in the world as all examples of a single kind of thing, the category FLOWER. The actual types of flower vary widely – think of the difference between a tulip, a carnation and a sunflower – but these differences in no way affect the categorization of all types as flowers. The same is true of other lexical categories. The types of action I might describe by saying I am writing, for example, cover a wide range: filling in a form with a biro, typing on a keyboard, drawing letters in freshly poured concrete with a stick, and sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper with a pen, wondering how to begin a sentence. These outward differences are all glossed over by the verb write, which can be used for all of these activities indifferently.