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Językoznawstwo baner

No. 1/16 (2022)

Articles

The problem of general abstract concepts in the context of cognitive linguistics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25312/2391-5137.16/2022_01mf  [Google Scholar]
Published: 2022-06-10

Abstract

It is now widely believed that the assumptions of the first cognitivist approach in linguistics should be completely replaced by the embodiment paradigm. While there is widespread agreement that the grounding problem is well understood in conceptual metaphor theory, a serious problem arises when trying to explain the mechanism of the emergence of abstract concepts (ungrounding problem, Dove 2016). In this article, I tried to show that the real problem facing embodiment theories is not how abstract thinking is embodied (Lakoff, Barsalou), but how embodied cognition can become abstract. This is the so-called "ungrounding problem" that breaks down into three minor issues: the generalization problem, the flexibility problem, and the dis-embodied problem. As I argue, only the adoption of an intermediate position between the theories of embodiment and distributive theories will allow us to formulate a satisfactory solution. The following article is an approximation of one such intermediate position as Guy Dove's theory of embodied and de-corporeal cognition.

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