南师大硕士课-5.ppt

Formalizing and Simulating Conceptual Representations Prof. Hui Zhang coglinger2011@126.com We look at some proposals about the types of cognitive operation that underlie semantic ability. We examine some attempts to formalize and model the conceptual representations involved in language. Jackendoff’s conceptual semantics: a theory about the cognitive structures behind language and the modes of their interaction. WordNet: the problems of word-sense disambiguation. Pustejovsky’s solution to word-sense disambiguation in his model of qualia structure. Conceptual semantics Ray Jackendoff Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always straddled the boundary between generative linguistics and cognitive linguistics, committed as he is both to the existence of an innate Universal Grammar (an important thesis of generative linguistics) and to giving an account of language that meshes well with the current understanding of the human mind and cognition (the main purpose of cognitive linguistics). Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics framework is an important approach to meaning ( Jackendoff 1983, 2002). Conceptual Semantics shares a key commitment with the cognitivist approaches: Jackendoff rejects any distinction between meaning and conceptualization, stating (2002: 282) that ‘we must consider the domain of linguistic semantics to be continuous with human conceptualization as a whole’. As a result, Jackendoff aims to situate semantics ‘in an overall psychological framework, integrating it not only with linguistic theory but also with theories of perception, cognition, and conscious experience’ (1990: 2). Conceptual Semantics differs from Cognitivist approaches, however, in two important ways. It is committed to a strict distinction between s