Chiastic Antisymmetry in Language Evolution

Pelkey, Jamin

doi:10.5840/ajs2013291-43

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…É sabido que vários linguistas tradicionais do passado e do presente não reconheciam a polissemia no nível da fala, ou seja, no processo de comunicação (PELKEY, 2016). Essa Existem alguns significados metafóricos baseados na comparação da aparência e função do capuz de uma jaqueta ou casaco: "uma cobertura para a cabeça de um cavalo / prisioneiro / falcão".…”

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“…Os significados lexicais, que se baseiam na experiência anterior de uso de um signo linguístico, são formados, por assim dizer, ad hoc. Ao mesmo tempo, também existem as chamadas variantes intermediárias de significados devido ao fato de o falante criar uma nova descrição difusa em um novo ambiente(PELKEY, 2016). Isso significa que, teoricamente, o número de significados reais de um lexema pode ser muito maior do que o apresentado nos dicionários.Conforme mencionado acima, o participante da comunicação destaca apenas as características mais significativas para a situação dada das entidades descritas e apenas como último recurso, se necessário, recorre a descrições mais detalhadas.…”

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A naive picture of the world and a biosemantic approach to describing the lexical structure of a word

Pesina

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Vinogradova

et al. 2023

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The problems of studying the lexical structure of a word have a way out into various areas of cognitive science, including biosemiotics. In the article, the biosemiotic approach is reframed into a biosemantic approach based on decoding specific lexical structures. The lexical invariants of polysemous words are shown to be meaningful cores of their figurative meanings. It is a set of dominant semantic components that are stably associated with each lexeme’s meaning. In the process of semiosis, the individual is guided by these invariant components. These components are formed over time in the individual's cognitive niche as a result of observations of the relationship between language signs. The practical part of the article includes an empirical invariant-component analysis of the English polysemous substantive “a hood” from the standpoint of invariant semantics. Given the results, biosemiotics has an advantage over traditional semantics in describing the semantics of lexical units.

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A naive picture of the world and a biosemantic approach to describing the lexical structure of a word

Pesina

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Vinogradova

et al. 2023

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“…Structural relations tend to be characterized as binary, arbitrary and pre-determined, whereas diagrammatic relations are identified as gradient (on a continuum), iconic (based on perceived resemblances) and open (to processes of change and growth). Diagrammatic relations rely on oppositional relations, plus the identification and reconfiguration of marked and unmarked members involved in these relations (see Nöth 1994, Pelkey 2013b; otherwise, such relations fossilize as mere systems of difference or idealized symmetries. The Tzeltal reanalysis presented above provides a good example of the important role played by marked and unmarked relations relative to the transverse plane in the diagrammatization (or diagrammatic grammaticalization) of productive geometric meronym mapping.…”

Section: Inverse Embodied Modeling As Grammatical-integrational Groundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upright posture and the meaning of meronymy: A synthesis of metaphoric and analytic accounts

Pelkey

2018

Cognitive Semiotics

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Cross-linguistic strategies for mapping lexical and spatial relations from body partonym systems to external object meronymies (as in English ‘table leg,’ ‘mountain face’) have attracted substantial research and debate over the past three decades. Due to the systematic mappings, lexical productivity, and geometric complexities of body-based meronymies found in many Mesoamerican languages, the region has become focal for these discussions, prominently including contrastive accounts of the phenomenon in Zapotec and Tzeltal, leading researchers to question whether such systems should be explained as global metaphorical mappings from bodily source to target holonym or as vector mappings of shape and axis generated “algorithmically.” I propose a synthesis of these accounts in this paper by drawing on the species-specific cognitive affordances of human upright posture grounded in the reorganization of the anatomical planes, with a special emphasis on antisymmetrical relations that emerge between arm-leg and face-groin antinomies cross-culturally. Whereas Levinson argues that the internal geometry of objects “stripped of their bodily associations” (1994: 821) is sufficient to account for Tzeltal meronymy, making metaphorical explanations entirely unnecessary, I propose a more powerful, elegant explanation of Tzeltal meronymic mapping that affirms both the geometric-analytic and the global-metaphorical nature of Tzeltal meaning construal. I do this by demonstrating that the “algorithm” in question arises from the phenomenology of movement and correlative body memories — an experiential ground that generates a culturally selected pair of inverse contrastive paradigm sets with marked and unmarked membership emerging antithetically relative to the transverse anatomical plane. These relations are then selected diagrammatically for the classification of object orientations according to systematic geometric iconicities. Results not only serve to clarify the case in question but also point to the relatively untapped potential that upright posture holds for theorizing the emergence of human cognition, highlighting in the process the nature, origins and theoretical validity of markedness and double scope conceptual integration.

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“…These chiastic reversals hold potentially rich (and relatively untapped) consequences for insight into sociocognitive processes (seePelkey 2013b and Corso 2014: 80-87 for intimations of things to come).…”

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Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square

Pelkey

2017

Semiotica

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According to Greimas, the semiotic square is far more than a heuristic for semantic and literary analysis. It represents the generative “deep structure” of human culture and cognition which “define the fundamental mode of existence of an individual or of a society, and subsequently the conditions of existence of semiotic objects”. The veracity of this bold hypothesis has received little attention in the literature. In response, this paper traces the history and development of the square of opposition from Aristotle to Greimas and beyond, to propose that the relations modeled in these diagrams are rooted in gestalt memories of kinesthesia and proprioception from which we derive basic structural awareness of opposition and contrast—including verticality, bilaterality, transversality, markedness and analogy. The paper draws on findings in the phenomenology of movement, recent developments in the analysis of logical opposition, recent scholarship in (post)Greimasian semiotics and prescient insights from Greimas himself. The argument is further tested via multimodal content analyses of a popular music video—highlighting relationships the semiotic square shares with mundane cultural ideologies and showing how these relationships might be traced to memory structures of bodily movement. The paper highlights the neglected relevance of embodied chiasmus and illustrates the enduring relevance of Greimasean thought.

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Chiastic Antisymmetry in Language Evolution

Cited by 11 publications

References 5 publications

A naive picture of the world and a biosemantic approach to describing the lexical structure of a word

A naive picture of the world and a biosemantic approach to describing the lexical structure of a word

Upright posture and the meaning of meronymy: A synthesis of metaphoric and analytic accounts

Greimas embodied: How kinesthetic opposition grounds the semiotic square

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