A broad view of cognitive linguistics

Cognitive linguistics can offer an account not only of linguistic structure but also of a wide variety of social and cultural phenomena. The comprehensive account presented in this paper is crucially based and dependent on cognitive capacities that human understanders and producers of language possess quite independently of their ability to use language. By discussing the cognitive processes and the various linguistic, social and cultural issues they help us describe and explain, the author demonstrates that cognitive linguistics is far more than a theory of language; one can think of it as a theory of "meaning-making" in general in its innumerable linguistic, social and cultural facets

Contextual images as visual metaphors

In the standard version of conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors are stable connected structures in the conceptual system that emerge either because there is some similarity between two domains of experience (resemblance-based metaphors) or because the two domains are correlated in bodily experience (correlation-based metaphors). I propose that in addition to these two types of metaphor there is a third one, I call them ``context-induced´´ metaphors. These metaphors emerge from the (immediate and less immediate) context in which conceptualizers conceive of ideas in metaphorical ways. I suggest that the context can have a priming effect on (metaphorical) conceptualization. The effect of various kinds of context on metaphorical conceptualization can take a variety of forms, and several of them produce imagistic metaphors. The kinds of contexts that can produce context-induced metaphors include the following: (1) the immediate physical setting, (2) what we know about the major entities participating in the discourse, (3) the immediate cultural context, (4) the immediate social setting, and (5) the immediate linguistic context itself. Of these, the context that most clearly produces visual metaphors is the immediate physical setting. Various aspects of the physical setting can prompt conceptualizers to select various (visual, auditory, etc.) images from the context as source domains for their metaphorical targets. This process can be either conscious or unconscious. In the paper, I discuss several examples of imagistic metaphors of the visual kind

Internet - based Bilateral Teleoperation Using a Revised Time - Domain Passivity Controller

This study presents a teleoperation system for remote control of mobile manipulators over the Internet. A bilateral control algorithm is proposed that can assure both stability and proper force reflection in the presence of non-constant delay in the communication channels between the master and the slave. The control approach in this paper is based on the time domain passivity concept and proposes a modified passivity controller to assure enhanced transparency with bounded control actions in the presence of time-varying communication delay. Transatlantic and inter-European bilateral teleoperation experiments are also reported (Montreal, Canada - Tirgu Mures, Romania; Budapest, Hungary - Tirgu Mures, Romania). The experimental measurements show the applicability of the control approach and its benefits on the teleoperation performances

La création métaphorique dans le discours

Der Beitrag enthält das Abstract ausschließlich in englischer Sprache.On the “standard” view of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Kövecses, 2002), metaphorical creativity arises from the cognitive processes of extending, elaboration, questioning, and combining conceptual content in the source domain (Lakoff and Turner, 1989). I will propose that such cases constitute only a part of metaphorical creativity. An equally important and common set of cases is comprised by what I call “context-induced” metaphors. I will discuss five types of these: metaphors induced by 1) the immediate linguistic context itself, 2) what we know about the major entities participating in the discourse, 3) the physical setting, 4) the social setting, and 5) the immediate cultural context. Such metaphors have not been systematically investigated so far, though they seem to form a large part of our metaphorical creativity.L'article contient uniquement le résumé en anglais