Dear Everyone,

First and foremost, thank you so much for taking part in this new project!

It is my hope that we will be able to reach interesting and insightful conclusions each week. 7 weeks are too little for too much information there is in the Cognitive Linguistics field! Nonetheless, I will do my best to make the most out of this seminar.

Our first topic (this week) is “Conceptual Prototypes Theory.” I assume many of you already know quite a bit about this. What probably not many people know is that syntactic structures also center around one or more schematic prototypes and that just as dogs, birds, cups, mugs, and chairs are diverse, so are syntactic structures' internal semantic architecture (in spite of the seeming homogeneity). In other words, not all instantiations of “going to,” “over,” and so-called present perfect are the same; they display strong internal variation, which we need to be aware of.

1.

SO, the first thing I would like to ask you to do is to please answer the following survey:

https://forms.gle/XMz73Ey4cwtLepRi8

The point of this survey (apart from collecting some basic information) is to raise your awareness of the problem of conceptual categorization.

2.

The second assignment this week is to please read Chapter 1 (pages 7 to 58) of the PDF “An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics” that you will find further down below.

I know 51 pages sounds like a lot, but the letter case is very big; so, it actually takes you only about 1 or 2 hours to read everything (depending on how much you stop to analyze the little details).

I THANK YOU ALL, SO MUCH, FOR BEING PART OF THIS SEMINAR!!!

SERGIO

PDF “An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics”

Please click the image below to download the PDF

3.

The third assignment for this week is to please join the following roundtable and answer the task at hand that you will find there:

https://go.parlayideas.com?invite_code=SG-N!6nn8

If you are not sure how to create an account in Parlay (the above link), please let me know in our WhatsApp group so that I can help you out.

4.

We will discuss all these activities and, most importantly, the nature of conceptual prototypes next Thursday (February 25, 2021) in Zoom, from 18:40 to 20:20 hrs. Mexico City Time. Here is the link to join.

https://cuaed-unam.zoom.us/j/85907480672

Meeting ID: 859 0748 0672

5.

Additional Resources

If you are thirsty for even more information about conceptual prototypes theory, here are a) two other books that present the problem at an introductory level, b) some videos you might wish to watch, and c) an old presentation I used to give about the topic at hand.

6.

Random Examples

a)

Is this closer to a "CAT"? Or closer to a "PUMA"?

Is this just a "BIG CAT" or a somewhat small "MOUNTAIN LION"?

How would you categorize it in the absence of a precise technical term?