The place of Cognitive Linguistics on the French linguistics scene

As previously described here, part of my project involves the investigation of the lemma pouvoir in a native French subdata set. Analyses of quantitative results of such investigation will be carried out according to the Cognitive Linguistics (CL) framework. Carrying out a literature review including the polysemy of pouvoir in relation to the CL framework has, so far, proved a little tricky. This post provides a little bit of background on the place of CL in France and in French linguistics generally. At the Congres Mondial de Linguistique Francaise in Paris in July 2008, Dirk Geeraerst discussed the situation of CL in the context of French linguistics in a very informative paper entitled La Reception de la Linguistique Cognitive dans la Linguistique du Francais. Bonne lecture!

Dylan Glynn on the theme of data-driven methodology in Cognitive Linguistics and its usefulness for the treatment of polysemy

In this post, I would like to bring attention to the work of Dylan Glynn whose on-going research is concerned with bridging the empirical and the cognitive. Here is how Glynn describes his own work:

The focus of my work is the development of methodology within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics. This school of thought imposes the minimal theoretical assumptions upon its model of language. It is for this reason that it is best placed to properly capture the complexity of language in a holistic manner. In methodological terms, I am most interested in finding ways to capture the multidimensional nature of language structure, from prosody and morphology through to semantics and culture. Specifically, I concentrate on the semantics of Grammatical Constructions, the polysemy and synonymy of lexis, iconicity in morphology, and the interaction of grammar, pragmatics, and metaphor-metonymy.(https://perswww.kuleuven.be/~u0049977/ling.html) [accessed 15/06/09]

As part of a talk given at the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference in July 2007 at the University of Cracow, entitled Usage-Based Cognitive Semantics: A Quantitative Approach, Glynn makes a case for the quantitative treatment of lexical and constructional semantics and claims that "[c]orpus data respects the complexity of language and, if treated in sufficiently large quantities, enables generalisations about language structure that other methods cannot" (abst.). Further, "usage-based quantitative methodology (...) facilitates attempts to reveal the interaction between the different parameters of language simultaneously" (abst.) [my emphasis]

During his opening talk of the theme session Empirical Evidence. Converging approaches to constructional meaning to the Third International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association on September 25th-27th 2008, Glynn points out the fast growing interest in empirical cognitive research, particularly in the field of Cognitive Semantics:

Cognitive Linguistics has recently witnessed a new and healthy concern for empirical methodology. Using such methods, important in-roads have been made in the study of near-synonymy, syntactic alternation, syntactic variation and lexical licensing.

Further,

Empirical methods, and methodology generally, are one of the most important concerns for any descriptive science and the recent blossoming of research in this respect in Cognitive Linguistics can be seen as a maturing of the field. A range of recent anthologies on the issue, including Gries & Stefanowitsch (2006), Stefanowitsch & Gries (2006), Gonzales-Marquez & al. (2007), Andor & Pelyvas (forth.), Newman & Rice (forth.), and Glynn & Fischer (in preparation), can be seen as testimony to the importance attached to this issue. Despite the advances in this regard, how the different methods and the results they produce inform each other remains largely ill-understood. Although this question of how elicited, experimental and found data relate has been addressed in the work of Schonefeld (1999,2001), Gries & al. (2005, in press), Goldberg (2006), Arppe & Jarvikivi (in press), Gilquin (in press), Divjak (forth.), and Wiechmann (subm.), it warrants further investigation.

The fast development of data-driven investigation methods within the field of Cognitive Linguistics is further pointed out by Glynn in his opening talk to the theme session Empirical Approaches to Polysemy and Synonymy, at the Cognitive and Functional Perspectives on Dynamic Tendencies in Languages event, on May 29th-June 1 2008. In that particular address, Glynn presents empirical cognitive approaches as a way to address existing issues in the cognitive treatment of polysemy:

Within the cognitive tradition, both the study of polysemy and synonymy have rich traditions. Brugman (1983) and Vandeloise (1984) began the study of sense variation in spatial prepositions that evolved into the radial network model applied to a wide range of linguistic forms, especially grammatical cases and spatial prepositions (Janda 1993, Cuyckens 1995). (...) Despite the success of this research, studies such as Sandra & Rice (1995) and Tyler and Evans (2001) identified serious shortcomings. In light of this, empirical cognitive approaches to semantic structure do not question the validity of the radial network model, but seek to develop methods for testing proposed semantic variation and relation. (abs.) [my emphasis]

In relation to my project (which includes a Cognitive Linguistics treatment of polysemous may,can and pouvoir via an investigation of corpus data), it is with much excitement that I begin to explore the work if Dylan Glynn.

Below is a selected bibliography of Glynn's work and that will be of interest for my research (unfortunately, several references are still in press or in preparation!):

• Glynn, D. In press (6pp). Multifactorial Polysemy. Form and meaning variation in the complex web of usage. R. Caballero (ed.). Lexicología y lexicografía. Proceedings of the XXVI AESLA Conference. Almería: University of Almería Press.

• Glynn, D. 2008. Polysemy, Syntax, and Variation. A usage-based method for Cognitive Semantics. V. Evans & S. Pourcel (eds). New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• Glynn, D. 2006. Conceptual Metonymy - A study in cognitive models, reference-points, and domain boundaries. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 42: 85-102.

• Glynn, D. 2006. Cognitive Semantics and Lexical Variation. Why we need a quantitative approach to conceptual structure. O. Prokhorova (ed.). Edinstvo sistemnogo i functionalnogo andliza yazykov (Systemic and Functional Analysis of Language). 53-60. Belgorod: Belgorod University Press.

In preparation:

• Glynn, D., Multidimensional Polysemy. A case study in usage-based cognitive semantics. Will be submitted to Cognitive Linguistics.

• Glynn, D., Geeraerts, D., & Speelman, D. Testing the hypothesis. Confirmatory statistical techniques for multifactorial data in Cognitive Semantics. D. Glynn & K. Fischer (ed.). Usage-Based Cognitive Semantics. Corpus-Driven methods for the study of meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Glynn, D. & Fischer, K. (eds). Usage-Based Cognitive Semantics. Corpus-Driven methods for the study of meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Glynn, D. Mapping Meaning. Toward a usage-based methodology in Cognitive Semantics. Will be submitted to Mouton de Gruyter.

Behavioral Profiling and polysemy

In their paper entitled In defense of corpus-based methods: A behavioral profile analysis of polysemous 'get' in English (presented at the 24th North West Linguistics Conference, 3-4th May 2008), Andrea L. Berez and Stefan Th. Gries make a general case for the use of corpus data. their paper serves as a response to Raukko's (1999,2003) proposal to disregard corpus data investigations in favour of experimentally motivated studies. Berez and Gries conclude that:

[A] rejection of corpus-based investigations of polysemy is premature: our BP approach to get not only avoids the pitfalls Raukko mistakenly claims to be inherent in corpus research, it also provides results that are surprisingly similar to his own questionnaire-based results, and Divjak and Gries (to appear) show how predictions following from a BP study are strongly supported in two different psycholinguistic experiments." (P.165)

Before conducting a case study of polysemous get -- the results of which are compared , in the second part of the paper, to those presented in Raukko's An "intersubjective" method for cognitive semantic research on polysemy: the case of 'get' (1999), the authors briefly state the advantages of corpus data:

- (...) the richness of and diversity of naturally-occurring data often forces the researcher to take a broader range of facts into consideration;
- the corpus output from a particular search expression together constitute an objective database of a kind that made-up sentences or judgements often do not. More pointedly, made-up sentences or introspective judgements involve potentially non-objective (1) data gathering, (ii) classification, (iii) interpretive process on the part of the researcher. Corpus data, on the other hand, at least allow for an objective and replicable data-gathering process; given replicable retrieval operations, the nature, scope and the ideas underlying the classification of examples can be made very explicit (...) (p.159)

Methodologically, Berez and Gries attempt to make their case by targeting 'polysemy' as their domain of investigation and by applying the Behavioral profiling method (described here):

Given the recency of this method, the number of studies that investigate highly polysemous items is still limited. We therefore apply this method to the verb to get to illustrate that not only does it not suffer from the problems of the intersubjective approach, but it also allows for a more bottom-up/data-driven analysis of the semantics of lexical elements to determine how many senses of a word to assume and what their similarities and differences are. (p.157)

Generally, the results encountered in both Berez and Gries' study and Raukko study are very similar. However, Berez and Gries' BP approach allows for a finer grained investigation:

we show that some of our results are incredibly close to Raukko's, but also provide an illustration of how the BPs can combine syntactic and semantic information in a multifactorial way that is hard to come by using the kinds of production experiments Raukko discusses. (p.159)

With regard to my project, broadly concerned with a corpus-driven investigation of polysemous lexical items , Berez and Gries' paper provides, methodologically, a useful illustration of how to exploit corpus data optimally for the retrieval of semantic information.

Behavioral Profiles, snake plots and cross-linguistic comparisons

This post complements this earlier post: The corpus-based Behavioral Profile approach to cognitive semantics as it revisits the Behavior Profile (BP) methodology and reports how, according to Divjak and Gries, snake plot representations can graphically reveal the relative significance of ID tags thus allowing for cross-linguistic ID tag-level comparisons. In this post I make reference to Divjak and Gries recent paper: Corpus-based cognitive semantics: a contrative study of phasal verbs in English and Russian (to appear).

Overall, Divjak and Gries demonstrate that the BP methodology not only allows to pick up dissimilarities between polysemous and near synonyms but it also allows to recognise and simultaneously process dissimilarities that are characteristically different:

"Because these dissimilarities are of an entirely different order, they can only be picked up if a methodology is used that adequately captures the multivariate nature of the phenomenon. The Behavioral Profiling approach we have developed and apply here does exactly that." (p.273, abst.).

For their investigation of polysemous and near synonymous lexical items the authors assume the existence of networks of words/senses. They also assume that the investigated lexical items in their study are included in such networks. Further, these networks demonstrate internal structure in the sense that "elements which are similar to each other are connected and the strength of the connection reflects the likelihood that the elements display similar syntactic and semantic behaviour" (p.281)

Divjak and Gries' paper achieves three goals:

1/ Presents the BP methodology as a means to provide a usage-based characterisation of the lemma under investigation by identifying individual syntactic and semantic characteristic features.

2/ Demonstrates that a snake plot graphic representation of those syntactic and semantic characteristic features allows to rank them in order of significance and therefore contributes to the identification of clusters of senses "on the basis of distributional characteristics collected in BPs" (p.292). Consequently, snake plots representations allow for the recognition of prototypical features of the investigated lexical items.
3/ Illustrates that semantically the BP approach allows for more rigorous investigation of translational cross-linguistic equivalents.

Overall, the authors are testing the BP approach for a simultaneous treatment of both language-specific data and cross-linguistic data.

"The (...) purpose is to show that this approach can also be applied to the notoriously difficult area of cross-linguistic comparisons. (...) [T]he approach will be put to the test by attempting a simultaneous within-language description and across-languages comparison of polysemous and near-synonymous items belonging to different subfamilies of Indo-European, i.e., English and Russian" (p.277)

Generally, Divjak and Gries' paper encourages to put the BP methodology further to the test by applying it to an interlanguage type of data where the investigated lexical items in language x and carving a specific conceptual space is used by a native speaker of language y whose conceptual space for the translational equivalent of the investigated item in language x is potentially different. In other words and with regard to the application of the BP methodology to my project, while the paper raises questions about the nature of conceptual spaces in interlanguage, it convincingly offers a methodology that would allow for the computation of my three-way data (including native English, native French and Fr-English interlanguage, details of the three sub-corpora can be found here). Simultaneous treatment of may, can and pouvoir can be carried out within language -- taking into account the native English data vs. the Fr-English interlanguage data, and across language -- taking ito account the native French vs. native English vs. Fr-English interlanguage data. Finally, the BP approach also provides the opportunity to investigate the possibilty of a correlation between the word class membership of may, can and pouvoir and their semantic BPs.

R training at the University of Uppsala

Finally ... back after too long! ...

In previous posts I tried to point out the advantages of using R as a methodological tool for my research project (here and here). Since the publication of Gries's Quantitative Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction at the end of March, I have started familiarising myself with the R language and working on possible scripts for the application of R to my data. The process has been taking longer than anticipated and is still at an initial stage -- hence the long absence from the blog!

On the 18-19 May 2009, the linguistics department at the University of Uppsala organised an R training workshop led by Stefan Gries (Statistics for linguistics with R: monofactorial tests and beyond), along with a research seminar on 20 May 2009, also given by Stefan Gries. I am extremely grateful to the Linguistics department at the University of Uppsala, and particulalry to Christer Geisler and Merja Kito for welcoming me so warmly during the occasion and letting me attend Stefan Gries' workshop and research seminar.

The experience was extremely enriching and motivating; I am now planning to put my new skills to the test within the next few days ...

Image-Schema transformations and cross-linguistic polysemy: a matter of terminology

In her 2004 paper (Transformation on image schemas and cross-linguistic polysemy), Lena Ekberg is generally concerned with diachronic semantic change across different languages and she argues that cross-linguistic semantic change is cognitively motivated. She recognises that "[m]odern research within the field of historical lexical semantics and grammaticalization in fact has provided arguments that meaning change is motivated by cognitive principles independent of specific languages" (p.42). Although Ekberg (2004) links with my project in the sense that it takes a cross-linguistic approach to investigate polysemous lexical items while trying to incorporate a Cognitive Semantics approach, it differs from my project in two major ways: i) it identifies specific semantic changes in specific languages and then compares those changes cross-linguistically; and ii) it considers semantic variance diachronically. My project, on the other hand, is concerned with cross-linguistic semantic change in terms of word senses in language x affecting the senses of corresponding words in language y. Further, my project is concerned with on-line cross-linguistic semantic interference and is not concerned with the development of word senses overtime. Despite these differences, Ekberg (2004) is of interest to me because it raises a number of terminology-, methodology- and theoretical framework-related issues.

Ekberg's overall stand on semantic change is stated in Construal operations in semantic change: the case of abstract nouns):

"The prerequisites of meaning variation of a lexeme are intrinsic in the underlying schematic structure as well as in the construal operations that may apply to that structure. Thus every instance of semantic change and variation - either resulting in polysemy or contextual meaning variation, is motivated by the possibilities of varying a given schematized structure by means of general and cognitively motivated construal operations" (p.63)

Further,

"[T]he processes generating semantic variation and change operate on the schematized structure underlying the lexical representation of a linguistic expression" (p. ).

Ekberg investigates cross-linguistic semantic change by considering and trying to bring together two theoretical approaches with different theoretical assumptions: the lexical semantics approach and the cognitive semantics approach. In her investigation of "the potential polysemy of lexemes based on a common schema" (p.25), Ekberg (2004) attempts to deal simultaneously with lexical patterns, conceptual processes and cognitive mechanisms. Overall, the paper highlights the limitations of such an inclusive methodology that ultimately relies on loose use of terminology.

Ekberg's (2004) working assumption is that:

• "semantic structures at a certain level of abstraction, as well as the principles of meaning change, are universal devices for generating new lexical meaning variants" (p.26)
  

Ekberg (2004) claims that:

• polysemy results from a process of image-schema transformation which itself results from a mental construal process
• polysemy refers to meaning variants of the same lexeme related by means of image-schema transformations and which are regarded as separate senses, i.e. instantiation of polysemy
  
• lexical meaning extensions reflecting transformations of image-schematic structure are cognitively motivated and thus arise cross-linguistically
• image-schema transformations are motivated by mental construal processes

Raising issues:

• Ekberg recognises the image schema transformation as a central process in the emergence of new senses. However, in the paper, the term image schema lacks a reliable working definition. The term is first defined on page 28, in the sense of Johnson (1987) as " a recurring dynamic pattern [...] that gives coherence and structure to our experience". The term is then later referred to on page 36 as being "the most abstract basis of lexical meaning", and on page 43 as an "underlying abstract semantic structure". In other words, throughout the paper, it is unclear whether the term refers to schematic representations of word senses or whether it refers to schematic representations of physical experiences. In the first case, the approach to cross-linguistic semantic change and polysemy is lexically based. In the second case, the approach is experientially based and therefore conceptual in nature (i.e. pre-linguistic). Distinguishing between the two cases is important because they both ultimately refer to different stages/levels in the construction of meaning. The author's attempt to bridge lexical matters (i.e. linguistic in nature) and conceptual matters (i.e. pre-linguistic in nature) creates a degree of confusion about the level of abstraction targeted in the discussion.
  
• Similarly, the term cognitively motivated ("lexical meaning extensions reflecting transformations of image-schematic structure are cognitively motivated and thus arise cross-linguistically") calls for clarification. Assuming that lexical meaning extensions do reflect transformations of image-schematic structure (as understood in the CL framework) then those meaning extensions are by definition cognitively motivated and the phrase quoted above is redundant and therefore not useful. Alternatively, the term (in the context of the example) could be referring to a speaker's specific cognitive ability which could be applied to the process of lexical meaning extensions.Under the term cognitive, it is unclear whether the author refers to a cognitive ability allowing speakers to extend lexical meanings in similar ways in different languages or whether the author refers to a conceptual process (i.e. image-schema, as understood in the CL framework). Without a solid working definition of the term image schema, it is difficult to recognise that polysemy results from a process of image schema transformation. It is also difficult to recognise what exactly is being transformed in the process of meaning extension: the schematic representation of lexical meanings or the image schema as an analog representation of a physical experience.
  

Ekberg (2004) raises questions about the possibility of/feasibility in bridging the lexical and the conceptual via the cognitive process of image schema. As far as my study is concerned, even though an overall CL approach to may/can in French-English IL will allow for an analysis of how the senses of may/can are represented in the French-English bilingual mind, the study may well be restricted to show just that! Talmy, Sweetser and Johnson have investigated the English modals in terms of linguitsic tools referring to the image schema of Force Dynamic. Although I cannot ignore such studies, the question is now how can they be exploited empirically?

From corpus to clusters: Gries and Divjak's suggested methodology

In Behavioral profiles: a corpus approach to cognitive semantic analysis (to appear), Gries and Divjak propose a methodology to approach polysemy both using an empirical approach and following the Cognitive Linguistics (CL) framework. The author's methodology is of interest for my project because of I adopt an empirical approach, I follow the CL framework and my investigated words (i.e. may, can and pouvoir) are all polysemous lexical items.

In their introduction, the authors review:

i) The treatment of polysemy in CL

ii) Present existing issues behind the identification of the prototypical sense(s) of a word

iii) Claim that a more sophisticated quantitative approach to corpus investigation would provide cognitive-linguistically relevant results.

Gries and Divjak’s methodology is based on the assumption that it “is radically corpus-based because it relies on the correlation between distributional patterns and functional characteristics to a much larger extent than most previous cognitive-linguistic work” (p.60). The authors claim that their methodology “aims at providing the best of both worlds, i.e. a precise, quantitative corpus-based approach that yields cognitive-linguistically relevant results” (p.60)

Method:

Four-step method based on the concepts of ID tags (cf. Atkins 1987) and the notion of Behavioral Profile (cf. Hanks’s 1996).

The method assumes that “the words or sense investigated are part of a network of words/senses”:

“In this network, elements which are similar to each other are connected in such a way that the strength of the connection reflects the likelihood that the elements display similar behavior with respect to phonological, syntactic, semantic or other type of linguistic behaviour” (p.61)

The four stages:

Stages 1-3 are concerned with data processing.

Stage 4 is concerned with meaningful data evaluation.

1. The retrieval of all instances of a word’s lemma from a corpus
2. A manual analysis of many properties of the word form (i.e. the annotation of the ID tags)
3. The generation of a co-occurrence table
4. The evaluation of the table by means of exploratory and other statistical techniques

Data processing:

Stage 1: use of a concordance program to retrieve all hits of a lemmata of a word

Stage 2: all hits are annotated for ID tags

Results from step 2 are displayed in a co-occurrence table where each row contains:

· one citation of the word in question

· each column contains an ID tag

· each cell contains the level of the ID tag for this citation

Stage 3: The co-occurrence table is turned into a frequency table (every row contains a level of an ID tag while every column contains a sense of the polysemous word. Each cell in the table provides the frequency of occurrence of the ID tags with the word sense(s)

[NB: to compare senses that occur at different frequencies, absolute frequencies need to be turned into relative frequencies (i.e. within ID tag percentages)]

Step 3 results in the Behavioral profile for a word sense: “each sense of a word (…) is characterized by one co-occurrence vector of within-ID tag relative frequencies” (p.63)

Stage 4 of Gries and Divjak’s methodology evaluates the vector-based behavioural profiles identifies in stage 3.

Data evaluation

The evaluation can be carried out using quantitative approaches (i.e. standardized statistical tests).

Gries and Divjak recognise two types of evaluations: monofactorial and multifactorial evaluations:

• Monfactorial evaluation: looks at token frequency and type frequency. “A useful strategy to start with is identifying in one’s corpus the most frequent senses of the word(s) one is investigating” (p.64)

• Multifactorial evaluation: The authors specifically focus on the exploratory technique of hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. The Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis (HAC) is a family of methods that aims at identifying and representing (dis)similarity relations between different items.
  

How to do a Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis:

i) Relative co-occurrence frequency table needs to be turned into a similarity/dissimilarity matrix (need to settle on a specific measure)

ii) Selection of an amalgamation strategy ( =algorithm that defines how the elements that need to be clustered will be joined together on the basis of the variables or the ID tags that they were inspected for (most widely used amalgamation strategy is Ward’s rule)

iii) Results appear in the form of a hierarchical tree diagram representing distinguishable clusters with high within-cluster similarity and low between-cluster similarity

Detailed analysis of the clustering solution

i) Assessment of the ‘cleanliness’ of the tree diagram

ii) Assessment of the clearest similarities emerging from the tree diagram

iii) Between-cluster differences can be assessed using t-values

NB: “the fact that a cluster analysis has grouped together particular sense/words does not necessarily imply that these senses or words are identical or even highly similar – it only shows that these sense/words are more similar to each other than they are to the rest of the senses/words investigated. By means of standardized z-scores, one can tease apart the difference between otherwise highly similar senses/words and shed light on what the internal structure of a cluster looks like” (p.67)

The author's methodology and my project:

• Can the authors' method lead to the identification of semantic clusters between the different senses of may, can and pouvoir?
  
• If so, what semantic features characterise each cluster? Can between-cluster differences be identified?
  
• How useful is the proposed methodology for the elaboration of a cross-linguistic semantic network of the senses of may, can and pouvoir?
  
• How useful is the proposed methodology for both the identification of cross-linguistic between cluster differences and the identification of within-cluster characterics?
  

Overall, the exploration of the authors' proposed methodology using my data should prove a useful exercise because it provides the opprotunity to investigate the mental semantic organisation of word senses at cross-linguistic level.