Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:57:39.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The paradoxical hybridity of words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2017

ABDOU ELIMAM  and
PAUL CHILTON
ABDOU ELIMAM*
Affiliation:
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Université de Rouen
PAUL CHILTON
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, and Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick
*
†Address for correspondence: Abdou Elimam, e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Words can be matched with the concept of sign (correspondence of a signifier to a signified) as long as they act as symbol-words endowed with some semantic self-sufficiency. But in discourse, they lose their wholeness as symbol-words and metamorphose into wording-symbols. They, suddenly, appear as mere signifier entities with a more or less loose allusion to their status as cultural symbols. In discourse, words are no longer signs but tools covering ephemeral collections of neurosemes: the link of the sign breaks as soon as discourse takes over. The referential potential is no longer the schematic meaning issued from culture, but the universe of discourse under construction. This is why any attempt to account for meaning in language must integrate the neural process of meaning creation. It is now established that meaning is not the result of language activity but the result of cognition. However, what language does, via discourse, is to make this meaning communicable. For all these reasons, the task of linguistics should be to investigate the relationship between cognition and linguistic output in order to shed light on all the cognitive traces left within the surface strings. The role of morphosyntax thus has to be re-evaluated in this light.

Keywords

culturediscourseneurosemesymboltransductionwordfaculty of language
Type
Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 208 - 233
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Abdou Elimam is a professor of linguistics, retired from French universities (Sorbonne Nouvelle, Rouen). Paul Chilton is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, and Visiting Professor, Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick.

References

references

Baars, B. (1988). A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barsalou, L. W. (2010). Grounded cognition: past, present, and future. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2, 716–724.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brandt, L. (2013). The communicative mind: a linguistic exploration of conceptual integration and meaning construction. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Changeux, P. (2004). L’homme de vérité. Paris: Odile Jacob.Google Scholar
Chilton, P. (2014). Language, space and mind: the conceptual geometry of linguistic meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culioli, A. (1986). Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, tome 1. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Ciaramelli, E., Rosenbaum, R. S., Solcz, S., Levine, B., & Moscovitch, M. (2010). Mental space travel: damage to posterior parietal cortex prevents egocentric navigation and re-experiencing of remote spatial memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 619–634.Google Scholar
Damasio, A. (1989). Time-locked multiregional retroactivation: a systems-level proposal for the neural substrates of recall and recognition. Cognition, 33, 25–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Damasio, A. (2010). Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Dehaene, S., Kersberg, M., & Changeux, J.-P. (1998). A neuronal model of a global workspace in effortful cognitive tasks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95, 14529–14534.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elimam, A. (2013). Hosting languages: an introduction to glottomotricity. Unpublished ms.Google Scholar
Elimam, A. (2014). Neurosciences et énonciation: nouveaux enjeux pour la linguistique. In Elimam, Abdou (Coord.), Énonciation et Neurosciences Cognitives. In Synergies Europe n° 9 (pp. 23–44).Google Scholar
Elimam, A. (2017, in press). Les soubassements énactifs et glottomoteurs de la sémiomorphose lexicale.Google Scholar
Evans, V. (2007). A glossary of cognitive linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fauconnier, G. (1985). Mental spaces. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. (1997). Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, C. J., & Baker, C. (2011). A frames approach to semantic analysis. Online: <http://lingo.stanford.edu/sag/papers/Fillmore-Baker-2011.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Gallese, V., & Lakoff, G. (2005). The brain’s concepts: the role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22(3/4), 455–479.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gauthier, B., & van Wassenhove, V. (2016). Cognitive mapping in mental time travel and mental space navigation. Cognition, 154, 55–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hagoort, P., & van Berkum, J. (2007). Beyond the sentence given. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362, 801–811.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jackendoff, R. (1978). An argument about the composition of conceptual structure. Online: <http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/T78-1022>..>Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (2007). Language, consciousness, culture: essays on mental structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lafont, R. (1979). Le travail et la langue. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1993). Convergence zones and conceptual structures. University of California, Berkeley, Miscellaneous Papers and Publications. Online: <http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6n13989z>.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 1. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
McClelland, J. L., & Rogers, T. T. (2003). The parallel distributed processing approach to semantic cognition. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 4(4), 310–322.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pulman, S. G. (2005). Lexical decomposition: for and against. In Tait, John I. (Ed.), Charting a new course: natural language processing and information retrieval: essays in honour of Karen Sparck Jones (pp. 155–174). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic / Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pulvermüller, F. (2013). How neurons make meaning: brain mechanisms for embodied and abstract-symbolic semantics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(9), 458–470.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pulvermüller, F., Garagnani, M, & Wennekers, T. (2014) Thinking in circuits: towards neurobiological explanation in cognitive neuroscience. Biological Cybernetics, 108, 573–593.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, T. T., & McClelland, J. L. (2004). Semantic cognition: a parallel distributed processing approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. Online: <http://commonweb.unifr.ch/artsdean/pub/gestens/f/as/files/4610/9778_083247.pdf>..>Google Scholar
Rubin, J. (1971). Evaluation and language planning. In Rubin, J. & Jernudd, B. H. (Eds.), Can language be planned? (pp. 217–252). Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675–735.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Visser, M, Jefferies, E., & Ralph, Lambon, , M. A. (2010). Semantic processing in the anterior temporal lobes: a meta-analysis of the functional neuroimaging literature. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 1083–1094.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed