The Language-Specificity of Conceptual Structure

Abstract

This chapter addresses the encoding of spatial semantics at Conceptual Structure (CS) in the framework proposed by Jackendoff. Jackendoff envisions CS as a language-independent faculty of cognition that generates noniconic conceptual representations of an algebraic internal structure (a recursive predicate-argument calculus that is syntactically different from both language and predicate logic). Reasoning and any transfer of information between different peripheral systems is divided between CS and another module of higher cognition, Spatial Structure (SpS). SpS encodes geometric properties in an “image-schematic” fashion. This chapter focuses on the representation of Motion events in language and cognition. Jackendoff advanced a number of arguments to the effect that CS encodes notions of Translational Motion (T-Motion) and Path, based on English data. It is argued, based on evidence from Yucatec Maya, that these arguments do not apply universally, and that Yucatec Motion event descriptions do not involve a semantics based on T-Motion and Path, but merely a State-Change semantics. In the account proposed here, cognitive representations of Motion are comparable between English and Yucatec at the level of SpS, but not at CS.

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