Metaphor, theories of concepts and biological reductionism
This thesis is an attempt to present a multidisciplinary approach to adjectival polysemy, particularly adjectival polysemy of a metaphorical type, and its underlying conceptual structure. The last ten years have clearly shown a tendency towards reducing the number of meanings and the idea of metaphor as a mechanism of concept formation has been gaining much force, influencing research in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. Despite that fact, the long-standing tradition of analytic philosophy did not succumb to the attack. However few contentions are shared in these different fields, one is held unquestioningly by almost everyone. It is the literal-metaphorical distinction which is at the heart of both traditional philosophy and the theory of embodied realism. Drawing extensively on evidence from research on cross-modal perception, synesthesia, double-function terms in cross-cultural studies, child development, psycholinguistic experiments and experiments with brain-damaged subjects, reinterpreting the available data and analyzing in detail theories of concepts contained in cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and informational semantics, the thesis casts doubt on the validity of the literal-metaphorical
Rakova, Marina
Metaphor, theories of concepts and biological reductionism. This thesis is an attempt to present a multidisciplinary approach to adjectival polysemy, particularly adjectival polysemy of a metaphorical type, and its underlying conceptual structure. The last ten years have clearly shown a tendency towards reducing the number of meanings and the idea of metaphor as a mechanism of concept formation has been gaining much force, influencing research in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. Despite that fact, the long-standing tradition of analytic philosophy did not succumb to the attack. However few contentions are shared in these different fields, one is held unquestioningly by almost everyone. It is the literal-metaphorical distinction which is at the heart of both traditional philosophy and the theory of embodied realism. Drawing extensively on evidence from research on cross-modal perception, synesthesia, double-function terms in cross-cultural studies, child development, psycholinguistic experiments and experiments with brain-damaged subjects, reinterpreting the available data and analyzing in detail theories of concepts contained in cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and informational semantics, the thesis casts doubt on the validity of the literal-metaphorical
metaphor theory concepts biological reductionism attempt present multidisciplinary adjectival polysemy particularly adjectival polysemy metaphorical type underlie conceptual_structure clearly_show tendency_towards reduce number meaning idea metaphor mechanism concept formation gain much force influence linguistics_psychology cognitive_science despite_fact long_standing tradition analytic_philosophy succumb attack however contention share different field held almost everyone literal_metaphorical distinction heart traditional philosophy theory embody realism drawing extensively evidence cross_modal perception double function term cross_cultural study child development psycholinguistic brain subject reinterpret available_data analyze_detail theory concept contain cognitive_linguistics lexical_semantics informational semantics cast_doubt validity literal_metaphorical