Dear relevance list readers,
I would be interested in your reaction to the following statements:
1. All functional categories encode procedural information. In this way a
purely grammatical notion can in the end be traced back to a cognitive one.
2. Procedurally encoded information is not a monolythic block; rather,
different types of procedurally encoded information function differently,
e.g. while semantic constraints on implicatures ('after all, so') do not
surface in the langauge of thought representations, pronouns are replaced by
concepts of the referents they point to. Therefore it is doubtful that a
clear correspondence between functional categories and procedural encoding
could be established; and even it could, this wouldn't mean much.
3. Following Baker (2003: Lexical Categories. CUP), prepositions are
functional categories. Following statement 1, they encode procedural
information. ('Construct a relational concept with the properties X')
4. Prepositions are the paradigm case for polysemic expressions. Polysemy is a
lexical pragmatic phenomenon consisting of the inferential construction of
ad-hoc concepts on the basis of lexically encoded concepts or ad-hoc concept
formation templates. Prepositions are best analysed as encoding conceptual
information in the form of templates for ad-hoc concept formation.
With best wishes,
Christoph
-- Dr. Christoph Unger Alleestr. 7 67308 Albisheim Germany SIL International (www.sil.org)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 09 2006 - 12:13:00 GMT