How image schemas underpin the conceptual and linguistic structure

How image schemas underpin the conceptual and linguistic structure

Introduction

An image schema can be defined as a recurring, dynamic pattern of people’s perceptual interactions and motor programs that provides coherence and structure to people’s experience.  According to Oakley (2010), image schema is the condensed re-description of the perceptual experience of spatial mapping structure onto the conceptual structure. Despite the researchers in cognitive linguistics having several interpretations of what it means to possess linguistic primitives, the research on the formal domain of image schema takes a straightforward view.

Image schema is the highly schematic gestalts that consume the structural continuity of sensorimotor experience through integrating information from numerous modalities. According to gestalts work, image schemas exist as internal structures. It implies that image schema is composed of highly flexible few parts.  The degree of their flexibility is manifested in the various transformations they pass through in their different experiential contexts. In addition to the ability of the cognitive metaphor, which supports human beings to map experiential structures from imagistic domains to abstracts domains, image schema has been hypothesized to give one of the embodied anchors of the entire conceptualization system.

The first analysis of the image schema in the linguistic structures and the conceptual perceptions was attained by the use of cross-linguistic examination of the ideas of movements and spatial reactions. Image schema plays a core role in the standard inventory. This article, in conjunction with several other types of research, supports the growing consensus in the cognitive metaphors about the embodied roots of conception in people’s thinking and ideas. Many researchers in their quest to analyze how image schema underpins conceptual and linguistic structures have based their work on the assumptions that both languages and imaginations depend in no small degree on the mental stimulation of the sensorimotor experience. This sensorimotor experience is the outline of which is captured by image schema.

The search for structure

The most significant part of the analogy is the process of searching for a standard structure in the two domains. The alignment is always done automatically by human beings in parallel, where the underlying structure is less obvious. For instance, when aligning the Rutherford atom model, the first process is based on SCALE. Since the sun is larger than the planets, the nucleus is also more substantial than the electrons. Furthermore, movement transferred from how the worlds REVOLVE_AROUND the sun to how atoms are perceived to REVOLVE_AROUND around the core.

Conceptual Metaphor

Also known as cognitive metaphors, are specialized forms of analogies where theoretical domains are used to outline the concepts of another realm.  Being an essential aspect of human beings thinking, making it a critical part of natural language processing, machine translation, and opinion.  Conceptual metaphors generate out of the association of two unrelated and distinct concepts.  A cognitive metaphor ARGUMENT IS a WAR is a linguistic structure emanating from expression such as ‘she shut down all my opinions,’ and the ‘the correction was right on the spot.’  In this cognitive metaphor example, the source domain WAR permits for the analogical diffusion of the war-related words such as shooting and target into an expression of the target domain known as ARGUMENT. In this expression, the word shooting represents the moving targets shoot inanimate objects. According to Hampe (2005), cognitive metaphor enables human beings to map experienced, stable structures from the sensorimotor realm to the mental field, which creates a binding connection between conceptual metaphors with embodied cognition. It is important to note that the cognitive metaphor relates both the source domain and target domain structures.

Conceptual Blending

Fauconnier and Turner (1998), in their research theories for concept invention based on the idea that creativity is the act of combining the existing knowledge into a new domain. The idea was first introduced as conceptual integration but later become famous as conceptual blending. The theory has attracted many studies and researches over the past years. Fuaconnier and Turner (1998) build their approach to the principle of analogical reasoning, where one domain transfers the information to another area. However, the data is mapped between two merged novel spaces referred to as blend. The blend is the process of merging into new spaces the conceptual spaces. Despite possessing the emergent properties, blends also inherit attributes associated with input spaces. Conceptual blending is the process of combining the smoothness of the metaphor with the structural complexity and organization power of analogy. The primary aspect of blending is the manner in which the common structures between the inputs concepts accelerates the development of the new concepts.  The development of the base ontology moderates the typical structure represented as the generic space.

Cognitive support for image schemas originates from how they provide babies conceptual grounds to predict their surroundings. Several pieces of research in linguistics and psychology reveal image schematic inclusion in infants’ reasoning and language development. In psychological development, image schematic outlines how significant concepts are transferred through analogical reasoning and conceptual metaphors. For example, learning image schemas CONTAINMENT through exposure to daily activity events such as entering/exiting classroom and eating, then understanding that objects can exist within other purposes is transferable to different situations. Suppose the child has enough knowledge about the domain elements, it can use CONTAINMENT to predict that people can be outside the house therein, that tea will remain in a cup when it is poured. Likewise, if the baby been exposed to play football, it may be understood that the assistant referees SUPPORT center referee. Combining such knowledge with experience such as climbing trees and sitting on a swing, the child develops generalization under the image schema SUPPORT. Generalization is consequentially passed to other situations in which object tends similar to the already observed and categorized. Hence, it will be possible for the infant to use its analogical reasoning to infer that tables will SUPPORT plates. This passing of knowledge becomes a significant part of cognition. As the cognitive development attains conceptual understanding in the early teenage stage, it can provide ground for abstract thinking as well.

Lakoff and Nunez (2000), made an essential distinction between the expected movement and the actual movement. They argue that when a baby has learned and conceptualized the image schema of SUPPORT, it may fail to comprehend that water flows are operating under different principles and physical laws than the wooden surface of the table.  Through this, the foundation of how image schematic differentiations and structures are acquired. The development of these unfulfilled expectations allows the child to restructure its expectations for future occurrences.

The process of analogical transfer of information continues throughout the language development period in an infant, particularly when the abstract concept is involved. Conceptual metaphors often are based on underlying conceptual structures; for example, UP is GOOD/DOWN is BAD. Critical analysis of these structures always presents a skeleton of image schemas.  Pouwels (1995) demonstrates how image schemas underpin the transferred information into conceptual metaphors. For example, both offering SUPPORT to a friend and putting in the right words for someone’s expressions offer some shreds of evidence. In this case, the use of the word ‘put’ requires people to understand CONTAINMENT.

The study further illustrates possible levels of skeletal information abstracting using image schema. According to education, the image schema can be used as a direct building block for conceptualizations of the concepts. It is entirely impossible to describe very word and thoughts using image schema. However, other ideas can be described, and for example, a bottle can be classified as a container (CONTAINMENT), a bed as a SUPPORTING object, capitalizing on the idea of affordances. Also, abstract concepts such as transportation can be broken down into image schemas.

Originally, image schemas were introduced as a means to elaborate linguistic phenomena from the perspective of embodied thinking. This study illustrates many relevant works performed in the cognitive linguistics on image-schematic structures. Many kinds of research have outlined their work image schemas by comparing the manifestations in different languages.   This type of combination is reported to be parallel in its castellation. However, there exists a combination of image schema, which can be used to alter the image of the schema. For example, a conceptualization concept such as transportation can also be conceptualized into image schema. Shipping is abroad representation, which can be broken down into PATH and CONTAINMENT.  A LINKED_PATH represents a shared conceptualization of the concept of marriage. In this example, the components of the image schemas are combined instead of adding sequentially.

Image Schema Profiles

When discussing how image schemas and its combination are used in conceptualization, it can be related to how early during cognitive establishments, infants can critically think and conceptualize simple occurrence.  Oakley (2010), in his study, explains how image schema profiles relate to a collection of image schemas, which, in combination, outlines the conceptualization of a given occurrence and concepts. For example, using a series of the image of schema, it is possible to describe a scenario when analyzing complex conceptualizations involving several aspects such as going to the library, in a particular case: SOURCE_PATH_GOAL, CONTAINMENT, COLLECTION, PART_WHOLE, ITERATION, and TRANSFER.

Image schema in language and Conceptualizations

During the conceptualization of events period, image schemas always undergo image schema transformation. They are referred to as the dynamic notions of specific sensorimotor experiences that transform into the complex representations of schema’s layers. When a baby realizes that objects SCALE from small/large, and vice versa as the body moves from closer/further. It, therefore, means that from the respective of the image schematic transformation, the NEAR_FAR image schema develops a conceptual overlap to the SCALE image schema. Image schema profiles can be defined as the events parallel to how image schemas are viewed as building block concepts.

One of the primary methods researches uses in the study of image schemas is through comparison of their manifestation in different languages. As the image schemas roots from sensorimotor body experiences, it should be noted that they are language independent. Delicate turnings always exist since the language expression is a social-cultural occurrence. This report is supported by scholarly researches, which outlines the conceptual system which underlies how images schema may change in individual languages. Also, these fundamental theoretical ideas differ marginally cross-linguistically. One example to help describe how to express different degrees of the specificity of the CONTAINMENT may be expressed in different languages. For instance, Korean differentiate between tight and loose CONTAINMENT, which is not available in the English version. Similarly, Papafragou et al. (2006), when analyzing with regards to SOURCE_PATH_GOAL and the linguistic identification of motion information, states that unlike Greeks, English speakers can easily linguistically encode the manner of motion information. This was proved to be true to cross-linguistic asymmetries and the authors who could differentiate between the manner languages from PATH languages.

Consequentially, SOURCE_PATH-GOAL image schema is not only a spatial but also temporal; the time has always been considered as a significant aspect when conceptualizing it. In regards to image schematic conceptualization of time, the classic view of western has always been that of PATH. In contrast, Fuhrman et al. (2011) in their studies found out that Chinese speakers prefer vertical representation of time. Finally, the studies show that spatial construal of time concept varies depending on whether the future is forecast as in a front or behind the speaker.

In an experiment to identify the linguistic encoding of different specificities of PATHS in English speakers (both children and adults), the interviewees were questioned to verbalize visualizations. The results revealed an asymmetrically more significant frequency of PATH_GOALS compared to the asymmetric frequency value of SOURCE_PATH. This implies that the SOURCE_PATH_GOAL image schema contains multiple members of different levels of the information.

According to the investigation by Kellman and Spelke (1983), on if infants understood objects via a series of object occlusion experiments, infants always understand the relationship between behind and front during their early months. In relation to image schema, they outline that children at early stages develop a conceptualization of LINK since they are able to register the two concepts moving together behind an occlusion are of the same object.  Vinner (1983), in his survey with pupils, attempted to outline the primary difference between the concept definitions and the conceptualizations. The research on the pupils’ conceptualization of the mathematical functions, Vinner (1983) found out that conceptualizations vary more than concept definition. This experiment outlined the real difference between the internal conceptualization and the linguistic expression used to describe it.

Similarly, an experiment was conducted on music conceptualization in reference to the cognitive metaphor existing theory. Using different settings, Vinner (1983) found out that theoretical musical concept is always conceptualized using visuospatial conceptual metaphors. In his finding, Vinner (1983) present academic support for the expression that image schemas provide the conceptual ground for mathematical concepts. The accurate conceptualizations imply that addition and subtractions are performed in accordance with the author’s perception of the movement along a path, which is a weaker form of SOURCE_PATH_GOAL. Similarly, Venn diagrams describe set theory and discrete mathematics as a visual representation of the CONTAINMENT image schema. They can make their way up through their work to an increasingly abstract concept. This includes nailing down the conceptualization of infinity and zero into embodied experiences and image schematic experiences. It is worth noting that the cognitive machinery behind conceptualization blending takes two or more input spaces with analogical relations to one another.  The different elements in each of the areas are connected through a cross space mapping between two input spaces. The blending space is a result of a combination of the given two inputs.

Conclusion

This study introduces the foundation of current research. The symbol grounding issues are presented together with the cognitive and computational problems of conceptualization understandings and grounding. Also, the study outlines the role of sensorimotor processes in conceptual development, along with the theories of embodied cognition. Additionally, conceptual blending, which is built on the idea of analogical thinking, is analyses as a piece of theoretical machinery for concept generation by combining conceptual spaces. He conceptual theories discussed in this article originates from cognitive linguistics, which explains the extent of the spatial language which exists in the cognitive metaphors. The report further discusses image schema as the conceptual building blocks which originate from a sensorimotor as experienced by babies. It, therefore, means that image schema provides a theoretical stepping stone between embodied experiences and people’s mental representations. In such cases, image schema would provide useful information in structuring conceptual information. Which are helpful in transferring data in the analogical reasoning and conceptual blending.

The articles also critically analyze issues of how image schemas can be united together to create an image schema profiles. The underlying conceptualization concepts and events have also been outlined.  This research presents the intersection of human and computational concept inventions, which depend on the challenges of the symbol grounding. The article helps the reader to understand image schema in the conceptual and in the linguistic structure by discussing how cognitive-linguistic assumes that linguistic expressions profile something.

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