Gilles Fauconnier

Bio: Gilles Fauconnier is an academic researcher from University of California, San Diego. The author has contributed to research in topics: Conceptual blending & Metaphor. The author has an hindex of 27, co-authored 58 publications receiving 10098 citations. Previous affiliations of Gilles Fauconnier include Complutense University of Madrid & Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending And The Mind's Hidden Complexities

Abstract: A long-awaited synthesis that marks a major turning point in cognitive science. . Until recently, cognitive science focused on such mental functions as problem solving, grammar, and pattern-the functions in which the human mind most closely resembles a computer. But humans are more than computers: we invent new meanings, imagine wildly, and even have ideas that have never existed before. Today the cutting edge of cognitive science addresses precisely these mysterious, creative aspects of the mind. The Way We Think is a landmark analysis of the imaginative nature of the mind. Conceptual blending is already widely known in research laboratories throughout the world; this book, written to be accessible to both lay readers and interested scientists, is its definitive statement. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner show that conceptual blending is the root of the cognitively modern human mind, and that conceptual blends themselves are continually combined and reblended to create the rich mental fabric in which we live. The Way We Think shows how this blending operates; how it is affected by (and gives rise to) language, identity, culture, and invention; and how we imagine what could be and what might have been. The result is a bold and exciting new view of how the mind works.

Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language

Abstract: This book offers a highly original, integrated treatment of issues that play a central role in linguistic semantics, philosophy of language, and cognitive approaches to meaning.It is based on the idea that expressions of language are not interpreted directly via truth conditions; rather, at a certain cognitive level they help to build up mental spaces, internally structured and linked to one another. Because the construction of spaces is typically underdetermined by the expressions, simple principles yield multiple possibilities and apparently complex ambiguities.Focusing on the mental constructions that can be associated with expressions rather than merely on the expressions themselves, Fauconnier reveals a general, uniform, and elegant organization that is responsible for superficially diverse and complex phenomena. A finding that challenges several traditional and widespread views on meaning and natural language, with far-reaching implications: adequate theories of truth and reference cannot bypass the cognitive space-construction process, and standard linguistic arguments for hidden structural levels are invalidated.Gilles Fauconnier is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Paris VIII.A Bradford Book.

Conceptual Integration Networks

Abstract: This is an expanded version of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. 1998. "Conceptual Integration Networks." Cognitive Science 22:2 (April-June 1998), 133-187. Conceptual integration - "blending" - is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly.In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, blended mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations.Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles.

Mappings in thought and language

Abstract: Meaning in everyday thought and language is constructed at lightning speed. We are not conscious of the staggering complexity of the cognitive operations that drive our simplest behavior. This 1997 book examines a central component of meaning construction: the mappings that link mental spaces. A deep result of the research is that the same principles operate at the highest levels of scientific, artistic, and literary thought, and at the lower levels of elementary understanding and sentence meaning. Some key cognitive operations are analogical mappings, conceptual integration and blending, discourse management, induction and recursion. The analyses are based on a rich array of attested data in ordinary language, humor, action and design, science, and narratives. Phenomena that receive attention include counterfactuals; time, tense, and mood; opacity; metaphor; fictive motion; grammatical constructions; quantification over cognitive domains.

Perceptual symbol systems.

Abstract: Prior to the twentieth century, theories of knowledge were inherently perceptual. Since then, developments in logic, statis- tics, and programming languages have inspired amodal theories that rest on principles fundamentally different from those underlying perception. In addition, perceptual approaches have become widely viewed as untenable because they are assumed to implement record- ing systems, not conceptual systems. A perceptual theory of knowledge is developed here in the context of current cognitive science and neuroscience. During perceptual experience, association areas in the brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor areas to implement perceptual symbols. The stor- age and reactivation of perceptual symbols operates at the level of perceptual components - not at the level of holistic perceptual expe- riences. Through the use of selective attention, schematic representations of perceptual components are extracted from experience and stored in memory (e.g., individual memories of green, purr, hot). As memories of the same component become organized around a com- mon frame, they implement a simulator that produces limitless simulations of the component (e.g., simulations of purr). Not only do such simulators develop for aspects of sensory experience, they also develop for aspects of proprioception (e.g., lift, run) and introspec- tion (e.g., compare, memory, happy, hungry). Once established, these simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences. These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and ab- stract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system. Productivity results from integrating simulators combinato- rially and recursively to produce complex simulations. Propositions result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations. Abstract concepts are grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events. Thus, a per- ceptual theory of knowledge can implement a fully functional conceptual system while avoiding problems associated with amodal sym- bol systems. Implications for cognition, neuroscience, evolution, development, and artificial intelligence are explored.

The Act of Creation

Abstract: While the study of psychology has offered little in the way of explaining the creative process, Koestler examines the idea that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended--for example, in dreams and trancelike states. All who read The Act of Creation will find it a compelling and illuminating book.

Metaphor: A Practical Introduction

Abstract: 1. What Is Metaphor? 2. Common Source and Target Domains 3. Kinds of Metaphor 4. Metaphor in Literature 5. Nonlinguistic Realizations of Conceptual Metaphors 6. The Basis of Metaphor 7. The Partial Nature of Metaphorical Mappings 8. Cognitive Models, Metaphors, and Embodiment 9. Metaphorical Entailments 10. The Scope of Metaphor 11. Metaphor Systems 12. Another Figure: Metonymy 13. The Universality of Conceptual Metaphors 14. Cultural Variation in Metaphor and Metonymy 15. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Idioms 16. Metaphor and Metonymy in the Study of Language 17. Metaphors and Blends 18. Metaphor in Discourse 19. How Does All This 20. Hang Together? GLOSSARY SOLUTIONS TO EXERCISES REFERENCES GENERAL INDEX METAPHOR AND METONYMY INDEX

Situations and Attitudes.

Abstract: In this provocative book, Barwise and Perry tackle the slippery subject of \"meaning, \" a subject that has long vexed linguists, language philosophers, and logicians.

Annotating Expressions of Opinions and Emotions in Language

Abstract: This paper describes a corpus annotation project to study issues in the manual annotation of opinions, emotions, sentiments, speculations, evaluations and other private states in language. The resulting corpus annotation scheme is described, as well as examples of its use. In addition, the manual annotation process and the results of an inter-annotator agreement study on a 10,000-sentence corpus of articles drawn from the world press are presented.