Is There Such a Thing as Orthogonyms?

Abstract

The article explores the cognitive semantics thesis that lexical expressions function as points of access to vast repositories of schematic concepts arising from embodied experience. By comparing various forms of communication, I find that expressions in art, science, and technology display a pattern in which expressions prompting the sense of intensity, magnitude and force are often combined into products with expressions that prompt the sense of extent, multitude and displacement. This pattern seems to be largely absent from natural language. I argue that lexical items activate the same pattern, though in a less direct way.

Sensory Schema: From Sensory Contrasts to Antonyms

“…Both arrangements can convey spatial relations between contrasting elements, constituting their surfaces. The sense of space in such maps is derived from the fact that their elements occupy physical space (Raykowski, 2019). Cortical maps in the brain7 are large sensory neuron collections, the arrangement of which duplicates the distribution of their receptors in the body (Kaas, 1997) just as the arrangement of hexagons in Figure 1's map duplicates their distribution on the Earth's surface.…”

“…One reason why this might not always be the case is that human intuition of intensity and extent already exists at the level of sensations. I argue that, if considered in the context of sensory maps, many more notions, such as sense of space/time, addition/subtraction, differentiation/integration, sum/product, part/whole, opposite/inverse, idempotence, and other ideas (Raykowski, 2014(Raykowski, , 2015(Raykowski, , 2018(Raykowski, , 2019, known for their sophisticated nature, are already accessible as intuitions at the level of sensations that, when processed further, are transformed into image schemas and their expressions.…”

“…Sensations are private -they can be experienced only by their owner. To communicate them, sensations must be expressed publicly, and their expressions must include both the intensity and extent of sensations, the communication of which is not always consistent (Raykowski, 2019). For example, in the case of a painting, the paint's intensity always comes with its extent, whereas in natural language, one or both are frequently omitted, as demonstrated in the sentence "Those red apples are tasty".…”

“…The brackets demonstrate that sensations have quite sophisticated structure. Furthermore, the use of the notions of intensity and extent is widespread, as they can be found in areas of expression as different as engineering, sciences, arts and music and in practically all forms of expression, including natural language (Raykowski, 2018(Raykowski, , 2019.…”

“…These and other observations have led to the development of a sensory schema hypothesis presented in this article. The hypothesis interprets sensations as an intricately structured and meaningful phenomenon attributed to sensory organization, in which cortical maps in the brain play a key role.3 On this basis, I argue that sensations are not only inherently meaningful (Raykowski, 2019) but also give rise to a single sensory schema that precedes, as indicated below, the emergence of image schemas:4 sensory schema → Gestalts5 → … → image schemas → cognitive metaphors → expressions: analogies, linguistic metaphors, arguments or narratives, etc.…”