Measures of prototypicality: convergence or divergence? The case of 'through'
(2008) Third International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association — Location: Leipzig (25.September.2008)
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- Abstract
- Several criteria have been proposed in the cognitive literature to identify the prototype of a category (see e.g. Rice 1996 or Tyler & Evans 2001). The aim of this paper is to test a number of these criteria and see whether they point in similar or different directions – and what this can tell us about the concept of prototypicality. The item that will serve as a basis for our study is through, a preposition which has received comparatively little attention among cognitive linguists. Lee (1998: 333), following King (1988: 579), claims that “[t]he preposition through prototypically involves a situation in which a physical object or substance enters a container, follows a path within the container, and then exits”, as illustrated by The train went through the tunnel. This purported prototype is in line with the cognitive view that “our thinking about abstract domains is grounded in our experience of physical space” (Lee 1998: 334), since more abstract senses of the preposition (as in They went through a terrible experience) are seen as deriving from this central, spatial sense. However, it is based on intuition and can therefore not claim to have any empirical validity. Starting from a corpus-based description of the different senses of the preposition, we will assess three measures of prototypicality, namely elicitation, diachrony and acquisition. Ease of elicitation is cited by Rice (1996) as one of the characteristics of prototypes. As Taylor (2003: 162) puts it, “[i]f a person is asked to come up with sentences exemplifying a target word, then, with remarkable consistency, certain uses will be cited earlier, and more frequently”. This aspect will be tested by means of a sentence production experiment, where the subjects are required to produce a sentence containing the word through. Diachronic research arguably gives access to prototypicality too. The prototype of a polysemous item is claimed to be the historically earliest sense (see Tyler & Evans 2001: 734 and Luraghi 2003: 12, among others), and it is also claimed to subsist through time, whereas more peripheral meanings do not survive for very long (Geeraerts 1992: 186-7). The diachronic analysis will be based on McMichael (2006). Finally, we will briefly consider the evidence provided by acquisition (see Rice 1996: 162), by looking at the earliest acquired sense of through among children and at “the ease or difficulty with which second language learners acquire prepositional usages” (ibid.). The acquisitional data will come from the CHILDES database and the International Corpus of Learner English. These measures of prototypicality will be compared with each other, and with the prototype of through as described by Lee (1998), and the differences and similarities will be highlighted. On this basis, conclusions will be drawn about the theoretical concept of prototypicality and about the place of empirical evidence in the identification of the prototype.
- Affiliations
Université Toulouse 2 CNRS
Citations
Gilquin, G., & McMichael, A. (2008). Measures of prototypicality: convergence or divergence? The case of ‘through’. Third International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, Leipzig. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/225737