Publisher Description

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending. Frame-shifting is semantic reanalysis in which existing elements in the contextual representation are reorganized into a new frame. Conceptual blending is a set of cognitive operations for combining partial cognitive models. By addressing linguistic phenomena often ignored in traditional meaning research, Coulson explains how processes of cross-domain mapping, frame-shifting and conceptual blending enhance the explanatory adequacy of traditional frame-based systems for natural language processing. The focus is on how the constructive processes speakers use to assemble, link and adapt simple cognitive models underlie a broad range of productive language behaviour.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; 1. Semantic leaps; Part I. Frame-Shifting: 2. Frame-shifting and models of language processing; 3. Models of sentential integration; 4. Frame-shifting and the brain; Part II. Conceptual Blending: 5. Conceptual blending in modified noun phrases; 6. Conceptual blending in metaphor and analogy; 7. Counterfactual conditionals; Part III. Applications: Blending, Framing, and Blaming: 8. Framing in moral discourse; 9. Frame-shifting and scalar implicature; 10. The space structuring model; Bibliography; Index.

Review

"Important...Makes the strong case that theories of language-use misrepresent what it is that readers must actually do. Coulson's book has much in common with other theorists' valiant efforts to get the field to change its ways." Contemporary Psychology "Most cognitive science work on thought and language focuses on relatively small sets of linguistic examples that only bear on restricted theoretical models. Seana Coulson's book Semantic Leaps is a wonderful exception to this trend. Her work addresses a wide range of diverse, complex linguistic phenomena, and she aims to capture how people construct meaning in terms of flexible theoretical framework of conceptual blending theory. Coulson's research and writing make use of principles and empirical methods from linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. The results of her studies push the boundaries of current cognitive science thinking about meaning construction. Semantic Leaps takes several small, but significant empirical steps, yet contains findings and ideas that represent a giant leap forward for the interdisciplinary study of mind and meaning." Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., Professor of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Promotional

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas.

Review Quote

"Important...Makes the strong case that theories of language-use misrepresent what it is that readers must actually do. Coulson's book has much in common with other theorists' valiant efforts to get the field to change its ways." Contemporary Psychology

Promotional "Headline"

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas.

Description for Bookstore

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending.

Description for Library

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending.

Details