Lakoff, George;
Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories tell us about the nature of thought
University of Chicago Press, 1987, 632 pages
ISBN 0226468046
topics: | cognitive | psychology | language | category | prototype-theory
This is the book that defined cognitive linguistics, well before that term came to the fore. Much of it is refreshed in Philosophy in the Flesh but the examples are muted there, and this book remains the sharper read.
The title comes from the fact that in the dying aborigine language Dyirbal, Women, and fire, and dangerous things appear to constitute a linguistic class, one of four groupings of nouns where each class must be preceded by one of four particles. These particles are called classifiers, and are a bit similar to determiners - e.g. romance languages like French require that determiners (la, le) agree with grammatical "gender". Dyirbal has four such groupings, and the second one, which must be preceded by balan, includes women, bandicoots, dogs, platypus... scorpions, anything connected with water or fire, sun and stars, shields, some spears, some trees, etc.
the most widely accepted views of language within both linguistics and the philosophy of language assume that language is a separate "modular" system independent of the rest of cognition. The independence of grammar from the rest of cognition is perhaps the most fundamental assumption on which Noam Chomsky's theory of language rests. ... the very idea that language is a "formal system" (in the technical mathematical sense used by Chomsky and many other linguistic theorists) requires the assumption that language is independent of the rest of cognition. That formal-system view also embodies the implicit assumption that categories are classical (and hence can be characterized by distinctive features). Such views are also the norm in the philosophy of language, (e.g. Richard Montague, Donald Davidson, David Lewis, Saul Kripke, and many others).
Thus, the question of what linguistic categories are like is important in two ways. First, it affects our understanding of what language is. Does language make use of general cognitive mechanisms? Or is it something separate and independent, using only mechanisms of its own? How this question is answered will determine the course of the future study of language. Entirely different questions will be asked and theories proposed depending on the answer. Second, the answer will affect the study of cognition, since it will determine whether linguistic evidence is admissible in the study of the mind in general.
MARKEDNESS: some morphological categories have a "mark" and others are "unmarked." Take the category of number in English. Plural number has a "mark," the morpheme -s, as in boys, while singular number lacks any overt "mark," as in boy. The singular is thus the unmarked member of the morphological category number in English. The intuition that goes along with this is that singular is, somehow, cognitively simpler than plural and that its cognitive simplicity is reflected in its shorter form. The idea here is that simplicity in cognition is reflected in simplicity of form. Zero-marking for a morpheme is one kind of simplicity. In phonology, markedness is often understood in terms of some notion of relative ease of articulation. For example, the consonants p, t, and k are voiceless, that is, they do not involve the vibration of the vocal chords, while the minimally contrasting voiced consonants b, d, and g do involve vocal cord vibration. Thus, one can understand voicing as a "mark" added to voiceless consonants to yield voiced consonants, except between vowels where the vocal cords are vibrating to produce the vowels. [b,d,g are +voice, p,t,k are -voice] some lgs have only voiceless, not voiced. in English, after initial S-, there is no contrast between voiced and voiceless consonants. Only voiceless consonants may occur. English has words like spot, but no contrasting words like sbot. [in German at the end of words] only the voiceless consonants can occur. Thus, for example, /d/ is pronounced as [t]... 60 In general, where the contrast is neutralized (that is, only one member of the pair can occur), the one which occurs is "unmarked" in that environment. neutralization in semantics: tall-short, happy-sad. These contrastive pairs are not completely symmetric. For example, if one asks How tall is Harry? one is not suggesting that Harry is tall, but if one asks How short is Harry? one is suggesting that Harry is short. --> tall is unmarked in the tall-short contrast set.
--Phonology: phoneme vs phone: A phone is a unit of speech sound, while a phoneme is a cognitive element understood as occurring "at a higher level" and usually represented by a phone. For example, English has a phoneme /k/ (sometimes spelled with the letter c in English orthography) which occurs in the words cool, keel, key, school, and flak. If attention is payed to details of pronunciation, it turns out that /k/ is pronounced differently in these words: aspirated velar [kh] in cool, aspirated palatal [k'h] in keel, unaspirated velar [k] in school, and unaspirated palatal [k'] in ski. English speakers perceive these, despite their differences in pronunciation, as being instances of the same phoneme /k/. However, there are other languages in which [kh] and [k] are instances of different phonemes, and others still in which [k'] and [k] are instances of different phonemes. Jeri Jaeger (1980) has replicated Rosch's experiments in the domain of phonology. She suggests, on the basis of experimental evidence, that phonemes are prototype-based categories of phones. Thus, the phoneme [k] in English = category {[k), [kh], [k'), [k'h]}, with [k] as the prototypical member. Phonemic categories in general are understood in terms of their prototypical members. The nonprototypical phones are related to the prototype by phonological rules. Jaeger's results, if correct, indicate that phonological categorization, like other cognitive categorization, shows prototype effects. Her results contradict most contemporary phonological theories, which take the classical theory of categorization for granted. They point in the direction of a unification of phonology and other aspects of cognition.
Bybee and Moder (1983) have shown that English strong verbs like string/strung form a morphological category that displays prototype effects. They argue that verbs that form their past tense with Lambda (spelled u in English orthography) form a prototype-based category. The verbs include: spin, win, cling, fling, sling, sting, string, swing, wring, hang, stick, strike, slink, stick, sneak, dig + bring, shake (in certain dialects) On the basis of experimental results, they argue that the category has a prototype with the following properties: It begins with s followed by one or two consonants: sC(C)-. It ends with the velar nasal: /ij/. It has a lax high front vowel: I. Although the verbs in the category cannot be defined by common features, they all bear family resemblances to this prototype. String, sling, swing, and sting fit it exactly. * "one" difference from the prototype: cling, fling, and bring have two initial consonants, but no s; spin and stick have the right initial consonant cluster and vowel, but differ in the final consonant - spin has a dental instead of a velar nasal and stick has a velar stop instead of a velar nasal. * two minimal differences: Win has no initial s and a final dental nasal instead of a velar. Strike has a nonnasal final consonant and a different vowel. This category can be categorized by a central member plus something else. In this case the "something else" is a characterization of "minimal" phonological differences: the lack of an initial s, the lack of nasalization, a different vowel, the difference between a velar and a dental consonant, etc. [But no real] theory of what counts as a minimal difference for morphological categorization...
In a number of studies ranging widely over English syntax, John Robert Ross (1972, 1973a,b, 1974, 1981) has shown that just about every syntactic category in the language shows prototype effects. Ross's basic insight is that normal nouns undergo a large range of grammatical processes in English, while less nouny nouns do not undergo the full range of processes that apply to nouns in general. Consider the nouns toe, breath, way, and time, as they occur in the expressions: to stub one's toe to hold one's breath to lose one's way to take one's time Ross demonstrates that within these expressions toe is nounier than breath, which is nounier than way, which is nounier than time. Ross (1981) gives three syntactic environments that demonstrate the hierarchy. Starred sentences indicate ill-formedness. I. Modification by a passive participle A stubbed toe can be very painful. * Held breath is usually fetid when released. * A lost way has been the cause of many a missed appointment. * Taken time might tend to irritate your boss. II. Gapping 1 stubbed my toe, and she hers. 1 held my breath, and she hers. *1 lost my way, and she hers. *1 took my time, and she hers. III. Pluralization Betty and Sue stubbed their toes. *Betty and Sue stubbed their toe. Betty and Sue held their breaths. Betty and Sue held their breath. *Betty and Sue lost their ways. Betty and Sue lost their way. *Betty and Sue took their times. Betty and Sue took their time. IV. Pronominalization (Lakoff) I stubbed my toe, but didn't hurt IT. Sam held his breath for a few seconds and then released IT. Harry lost his way, but found IT again. *Harry took his time, but wasted IT. In each of these cases, the nounier nouns follow the general rule (that is, they behave the way one would expect nouns to behave), while the less nouny nouns do not follow the rule. As the sentences indicate, there is a hierarchy of nouniness among these examples... More recently, Hopper and Thompson (1984) have proposed that the prototypical members of the syntactic categories noun and verb can be defined in terms of semantic and discourse functions. They provide an account with examples from a wide range of languages that indicate that nouns and verbs have prototypical functions in discourses.
Bates and MacWhinney (1982) proposed on the basis of language acquisition data that prototype theory can be used to characterize the grammatical relation SUBJECT in the following way: - A prototypical SUBJECT is both AGENT and TOPIC. Van Oosten (1984) has found a wide range of evidence in English substantiating this hypothesis and expanding it to include the following: - AGENT and TOPIC are both natural categories centering around prototypes. - Membership in the category SUBJECT cannot be completely predicted from the properties of agents and topics. Perhaps the most striking confirmation of the Bates-MacWhinney hypothesis comes from Van Oosten's study of the uses of the passive in English. Van Oosten picked out passive sentences as they occurred in transcribed conversation and compiled a list of all the uses. The list seemed random. She then compared her list of uses of the passive with her list of the properties of prototypical agents and topics. What she noticed was a remarkable correlation - passive usage occurred whenever no single noun phrase had all the (prototypical) agent and topic properties.
"mother": as category, is structured radially, with a central subcategory defined by birth, nurture, etc, + non-central extensions (adoptive mother, birth mother, foster mother, surrogate mother, etc.) - which are extended from the central concept not by rules but by convention. But these extensions are not random - they are determined by the central model and the extensions; birth mother and foster mother are not understood purely on their own terms, but wrt the central model of _mother. 91 Borges' taxonomy: These ambiguities, redundances, and deficiences recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance. -- p.92 Borges of course, deals with the fantastic. These not only are not natural human cateogires -- they could not be natural human categories. But part of what makes this passage art, rather than mere fantasy, is that it comes close to the impression a Western reader gets when reading descriptions of nonwestern languages and cultures. The fact is that people around the world categorize things in ways that both boggle the Western mind and stump Western linguists and antropologists.
An excellent example is the classification of things in the world that occurs in traditional Dyirbal, an aboriginal language of Australia. every noun must be preceded by one of four classifiers: bayi, balan, balam, bala These words classify all objects in the Dyirbal universe, and to speak Dyirbal correctly one must use the right classifier before each noun. Here is a brief version of the Dyirbal classifcation of objects in the universe, as described by R.M.W. Dixon (1982): 1. Bayi: men, kangaroos, possums, bats, most snakes, most fishes, some birds, most insects, the moon, storms, rainbows, boomerangs, some spears, etc. 2. Balan: women, bandicoots, dogs, platypus, echidna, some snakes+fishes, most birds, fireflies, scorpions, crickets, the hairy mary grub, anything connected with water or fire, sun and stars, shields, some spears, some trees, etc. 3. Balam: all edible fruit and the plants that bear them, tubers, ferns, honey, cigarettes, wine, cake. 4. Bala: parts of the body, meat, bees, wind, yamsticks, some spears, most trees, grass, mud, stones, noises and language, etc. Dixon observed that speakers learn the categ's systematically. Proposes this anlaysis: 1. Bayi: (human) males, animals 2. Balan: (human) females, water, fire, fighting 3. Balam: nonflesh food 4. Bala: everything not in the other classes. [NOTE: See also baudhAyana, q. in AK Ramanujan Indian way of thought] : There is a difference between the [Brahmins of the] South and the North on five points. We shall describe the practices of the South: to eat with a person not having received Brahmanical initiation: to eat with one's wife; to eat food prepared the previous day; to marry the daughter of the maternal uncle or paternal aunt. And for the North: to sell wool; to drink spirits' to traffic in animals with two rows of teeth' to take up the profession of arms; to make sea voyages. - Collected essays, A. K. Ramanujan, p.427 ] [ALSO, this poem by dharmakIrti, in subhAshitaratnakoSha #478, in John Brough's translation: The grammar books all say that "mind" is neuter, And so I thought it safe to let my mind Salute her. But now it lingers in embraces tender: For Panini made a mistake, I find, In gender. (Poems from the Sanskrit, 44)]
Dixon further elaborates a "domain-of-experience" principle. If object A is associated w a domain or experience, then other entities in that domain are also in the same categ as A. 93 e.g. since fish are categ 1, fishing spears, fishing line, etc are in 1; similarly trees that bear edible fruit are also in 3, though when the same word is used to refer to the wood of such a tree, as in firewood etc, then it is class 4. Fighting implements are in the same class as fire and dangerous things in class 2. But "myth and belief" may override any rules. E.g. though birds are animate, they are believed to be the spirits of dead human females, so they are 2. Sometimes, some objects with an "important property" may be classified separately - most often this important property is "harmfulness". e.g. most fish are 1, but stone fish and gar fish are harmful, so 2. trees bushes grasses with no edible parts in 4, but stinging trees and stinging vine in 2. Other way also - hawks shd be with birds in 2, but since they are harmful, they are placed in 1. 94-5 Dixon's achievement is remarkable... has provided a superb example of how human cognition works. General principles: * Centrality: basic members of the category are central * Chaining: complex categs structured by chaining - central members to others etc. e.g. women linked to the sun, to sunburn, to hairy mary grub * Experiential domains: may be culture-specific * Idealized models: myths and beliefs * Specific knowledge overcomes general knowledge * The other: conceptual systems can have an "everything else" categ No common properties: categs on the whole not based on any common properties
Dixon's research was in 1963. By 1983, Dyirbal culture was dying under the onslaught of English (taught in schools etc). Study of changes based on several generations of speakers. [Annette Schmidt, 1985]: age 45+: speak traditional Dyirbal ~35: intermediate, w. some simplified forms --> categs are breaking down but mythic links are kept; sun, stars, bird are in 2 with women, as is fire. Fishing is lost as a domain relev to categorizn, fish are in 1, but fishing spears/lines etc have gone to 4. water is still with 2. but speakers show variations; one speaker has lost the danger link (stonefish/gar in 1, nettles in 4), one spkr still has it. two speakers lost the dog and bandicoot as exceptional animals in 2, they went to 1 with other animals. much younger: very simple - categ 3 lost completely. Now: 1. Bayi - human males, animates 2. Balan: human females 3. Bala: everything else on the death of Dyirbal Young people’s Dyirbal... as spoken by the "Rock’n-Rollers" Loss of prestige: "Talking Guwal [Dyirbal] to a waybala [white person], it’s like singing an’ you’re ashamed of your voice. " Correction of young semi-speakers by elders: "If I say `Oh, that's my gaya [mother's younger brother] there', she'll probably say `You can't say gaya to me... You gotta say mugu [mother's elder brother]’." Daughter: nganaji gotta cook-iman bala you know. we -TRANS it "We've got to cook that, you know" Mother: nyajun! cook "You mean `cook'!" Daughter: nyaju, cook-iman ... bala cook, TRANS it "Nyaju, cook it, whatever..." Mother: nginda mijiji-bin! you white-woman-INTRANS "You've become a white woman!" "That Phyllis, she don’t talk Guwal right. She mixes up the English... she got it wrong." "They won’t think [in Dyirbal]. They sorta can’t get round their own language." NOTE: These losses support the radial analysis - center is retained Evan Pritchard on Lakoff: How concepts are created: Lakoff In Dyirbal, an Australian aboriginal language, there are four categories: bayi, balan, balam, and bala. Everything that exists can be put into these four categories. As you might expect, if a people have only four categories for things, then some things could put together that we might not perceive to belong together. Specifically, women, fire, and dangerous things are all in the same category (balan). Lakoff explains how categorization in Dyirbal, or any other language, could have happened using three principles. * Domain of experience principle, so things that are experienced in the same way are categorized together. * Myth and belief principle, things that are linked by myth or belief are categorized together. * Important property principle, things that have an important property are categorized together. In Dyirbal, bayi and balan are categories for human male and human female, balam is for non-human living things, and bala is for everything else. Women are placed in the balan category (domain of experience principle), and women are believed to be related to the sun (myth and belief principle), which is related to fire, so fire is also placed in the balan category, but an important property of fire is that it's dangerous (important property principle), so dangerous things are also placed in the balan category.
The Japanese classifier hon is typically applied for long thin objects: sticks, canes, pencils, rope, etc. Radial category - the center of the category constitutes of long thin objects. Non-central extensions: • Trajectories: hits in baseball, serves in volleyball • Communications (because of long, thin media: wires, and, in early Japan, scrolls; also, communications are trajectories according to the CONDUIT metaphor): letters, telephone calls, radio & TV programs • Activities done with long, thin objects: martial arts contests (swords and staffs), medical injections (needles) • Activities like those done with long, thin objects: judo contests (no staffs or swords), Zen koan contests All these usages "radiate" from the central usage of "long thin objects"
BASIC REALISM: common to both objectivism and experientialism - real world exists, external to human beings, and includes the reality of human experience - links human concepts and other aspects of reality - truth - not based merely on internal coherence - stable knowledge exists in the world - rejects the view that diff conceptual systems are as good a the other two aspects: - METAPHYSICS: nature of world, indep of human understanding - EPISTEMOLOGY: nature of human cognition, language, knowledge OBJECTIVIST METAPHYSICS reality consists of: - entities, - properties of entities - relations that hold among these entities maps to set theoretical models, which consist of - entities - sets of entities (defined by the common properties of the members) - sets of n-tuples (corresponding to relations among entities) --> classical theory of categories --> set-theoretic implementn is possible objectivist metaphysics goes beyond the metaphysics of basic realism. Basic realism merely assumes that there is a reality of some sort. Objectivist metaphysics is much more specific. It additionally assumes that reality is correctly and completely structured in a way that can be modeled by set-theoretical models-that is, in terms of entities, properties, and relations. OBJECTIVE CATEGORIES: [since properties have an objective existence] entities in the world form objectively existing categories based on theis shared objective properties. 161 Essentialism: distinguishes shared "essential" properties, as opp to shared accidental properties": NATURAL KINDS: [characterized by] some 'essential nature' which the thing shares with other members of the natural kind. What the essential nature is is not a matter of language analysis but of scientific theory construction. [Putnam 75, p.104]
According to the objectivist paradigm, true knowledge of the external world can only be achieved if the system of symbols we use in thinking can accurately represent the external world. The objectivist conception of mind mu~t therefore rule out anything that can get in the way of that: perception, which can fool us; the body, which has its frailties; society, which has its pressures and special interests; memories, which can fade; mental images, which can differ from person to person; and imaginationespecially metaphor and metonymy-which cannot fit the objectively given external world. It is our objectivist legacy that we view rationality as being purely mental, unemotional, detached-independent of imagination, of social functioning, and of the limitations of our bodies and our memories. the development of computer science is bound up with the development of the foundations of mathematics. As a result, the most common kind of data base now in use happens to fit an objectivist metaphysics: It stores representations of entities, their properties, and the relations holding among them. In your bank's computer, you might be represented by your bank account number, together with your bank balance on various dates, your credit rating on various dates, etc. The data base of your bank's computer is an objectivist universe. In it you are your account number and your proper184 ties are your bank balance and your credit rating. People have been treated as numbers and collections of records for a long time, and they will be treated much more so in the future. Such treatment serves an important function in our society. There is a major folk theory in our society according to which being objective is being fair, and human judgment is subject to error or likely to be biased. Consequently decisions concerning people should be made on "objective" grounds as often as possible. It is the major way that people who make decisions avoid blame. If there are "cbjective" criteria on which to base a decision, then one cannot be blamed for being biased, and consequently one cannot be criticized, demoted, fired, or sued. [In this context, it is tempting to contrast some of the views from eastern mores - e.g. A.K. Ramanujan's Is there an Indian way of Thinking?: [The concept of universalization] - putting oneself in another's place - it is the golden rule for the new testament, Hobbes' "law of all men" - "do not do unto others what you do not want done unto you." The main tradition of Judeo-Christian ethics is based on such a premise of universalization - Manu would not understand such a premise. To be moral, for Manu, is to particularize - to ask who did what, to whom and when. - p.39 [LATER, quotes Blake] "one law for the lion and the ox is oppression." p.49 - AK Ramanujan, Is there an Indian way of thinking --Formalist Mathematics-- Formalism arose as an approach to the study of the foundations of mathematics. 219 The discovery of noneuclidean geometries showed that the axiomatic method, thought to be at the heart of mathematics, was itself not properly understood. Euclid's fifth postulate let's us conclude such "self-evident" truths such as: Through a point outside of a straight line, L, there can be drawn exactly one straight line parallel to L. But if we consider the geometry of the surface of a sphere, then a "straight line" may mean a great circle. Then, given a straight line, L, no straight lines parallel to L can be drawn through a point outside of L. And if we take the subject matter to be about a saddle-shaped surface and we take a "straight line" to be a geodesic on that surface, then there may be more than one line through P which are "parallel" to L (and never meet). Even if we try to generalize Euclid's postulates so that instead of planes we may call them two-dimensional surfaces, and instead of lines we could say geodesics, etc. But even with such more general concepts, there might be still other geometries with still different concepts than geodesics and surfaces. There was no guarantee that any fixed concepts would be general enoughto avoid such problems in the future. 221
David Hilbert (see Kleene, Stephen. 1967. Mathematical Logic; chap 4) came up with a solution that was completely general; his program of formalism. Hilbert viewed mathematical proofs as merely matters of form, with questions of meaning put aside to be discussed outside mathematics proper in "metamathematics." Mathematics, Hilbert suggested, is the study of meaningless symbols, and mathematical proofs are sequences of strings of uninterpreted symbols, with the lines of a proof related to one another by regular rules. In a formal axiomatic system, as Hilbert defined it, axioms are strings of uninterpreted symbols, and theorems are other strings of uninterpreted symbols derived from the axioms by rules. - 221 Similarly, mathematical logic is technically no more than the study of sequences of symbols strings (proof theory) and the way symbol strings can be paired with structures continaing entities and sets (model theory). What makes it the study of reason? The answer is: objectivist philosophy plus a way of understanding the models. It is only by assuming the correctness of objectivist philosophy and by imposing such an understanding that mathematical logic can be viewed as the study of reason in general. Such an understanding has been imposed by objectivist philosophers. There is nothing inherent to mathematical logic that makes it the study of reason. Hilbert was wrong about mathematics being nothing more than the study of meaningless symbols and their relationship to meaningless structures. Two things make formal mathematics mathematics: (a) the way those symbols and structures are understood as being about familiar mathematical domains and (b) the detailed justifications for adopting such an understanding. The assumptions of objectivist philosophy have been assumed to be sufficient justification. But that is no justification at all. What is needed is empirical justification. - 223/4
What we have referred to as objectivism is a special case of what Putnam calls metaphysical realism. ... Putnam has argued that metaphysical realism is internally incoherent. Its incoherence lies in its epistemology - its view of meaning, reference, knowledge, and understanding. The source of the incoherence is what Putnam calls its externalist perspective, that one can stand outside reality and find a unique correct way to understand reality. Such an understanding, on the view of metaphysical realism, would involve a symbol system standing external to the rest of reality and a reference relation pairing symbols and aspects of reality. The reference relation is assumed to "give meaning" to the symbols. First, Putnam shows that this is logically impossible, without violating what we mean by "meaning." Second, Putnam points out that in order for such an understanding to be unique and correct, the reference relation itself must be part of reality. He then observes that this too is logically impossible. Thus, Putnam concludes, there cannot be such a thing as "exactly one true and complete description of 'the way the world is'" -- that is, there can be no God's eye view of reality. The crucial words here are "description" and "view." They presuppose an external perspective: a symbol system external to reality, related to reality by a reference relation that gives meaning to the symbols. Putnam is not saying that there is no reality. And he is not saying that there is no "way the world is." He is not denying basic realism. He is only denying a certain epistomology. He is not saying that we cannot have correct knowledge. What ihe is saying is that we cannot have a priviledged correct description from an externalist perspective. - 260 (from http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Lakoff.html):
"Knowledge, like truth, is relative to understanding. Our folk view of knowledge as being absolute comes from the same source as our folk view that truth is absolute, which is the folk theory that there is only one way to understand a situation. When that folk theory fails, and we have multiple ways of understanding, or 'framing,' a situation, then knowledge, like truth, becomes relative to that understanding. Likewise, when our knowledge is stable and secure, knowledge based on that understanding is stable and secure. Is such knowledge 'real knowledge'? Well, it's as real as our knowledge ever gets--real enough for all but the most seasoned skeptics." (300)
Lakoff argues that experience is made possible and structured by preconceptual structures-- "directly meaningful concepts" roughly the same for all human beings that thus provide "certain fixed points in the objective evaluation of situations". He divides them into basic-level structures and image-schema structures, and acknowledges there may be other kinds. Basic-level structures arise "as a result of our capacities for gestalt perception, mental imagery, and motor movement" and manifest as basic-level categories such as hunger and pain, water, wood, and stone, people and cats, and (perhaps more surprisingly) tables and houses (302). Image schemas are spatial mappings such as source-path-goal, center-periphery, and container. It is out of these basic cognitive tools that more complex cognitive models of reality are constructed. --- blurb Focusing on studies of how humans categorize objects and ideas, this book examines the new understanding of human thought which proposes that human reason is imaginative, metaphorical, and intrinsically linked with the human body.