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How does the conceptual system get started? Do early habits of concept formation influence thought and language throughout the life span? If cognition is significantly embodied, how does the human mind use those initial embodied structures to build ever more complex meanings?
Jean Mandler is a world leader in research on how preverbal infants build the first conceptual structure from perceptual gestalts, or image schemas, and how these schemas become enriched with non-spatial elements. Professor Mandler and I have explored the relations of this process with conceptual integration and with the notion of image schema in cognitive linguistics and other fields. We propose three different kinds of cognitive structure that have so far all come under the umbrella term of image schemas: spatial primitives, the first conceptual building blocks formed in infancy, image schemas, simple spatial stories built from the spatial primitives, and schematic integrations, which use the first two types to build concepts that include non spatial elements, such as force and emotion.
Mandler, J. & Pagán Cánovas, C. 2014. On defining image schemas. Language and Cognition 6:4. 510-532.
Pagán Cánovas, C. 2016. Rethinking image schemas: Containment and emotion in Greek poetry. Journal of Literary Semantics. 45(2): 117–139.
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