Strategies for Translation

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3) Correlation between language science and cultural realies depicted in them. The central problem of the CL is categorization of human experience. Categorization is closely connected with all human cognitive abilities, and also with different components of cognitive activity such as memory, imagination, attention, concentration, etc.

Also, the task of CL is an attempt to understand the following issues:

a) What is the role of language in the process of cognition and understanding the world.

b)To find out the correlation between conceptual and lingual systems. (Concept of happiness – mental idea of happiness, but this idea is represented by language)

c)Establish how the language takes part in the process over reception, processing and passing information about world.

d)To understand the processes of conceptualization and categorization. Describe the means and ways of language categorization and conceptualization of culture.

e) How to describe system of universal concepts. Making up concept sphere and main rubrics of its division.

f)To solve the problem of “language picture of the world”. Correlation between scientific and “common place (everyday) pictures of the world” with “language picture of the world”.

The subject of study of CL:

1. Cognitive semantics (CL consists of 2 main parts – cog.semantics and cog.grammar), because the meaning of sign is closely connected with cognitive activity of a person. The most important place is given to language nomination / language motivation.

2. CL sets image schemes in the frames of which an individual cognizes the world.

3. Research from the cognitive discourse position.

4. Scientists try to investigate the other forms of knowledge presentation which play an important role in the language functioning. They are frames, scripts, scenarios, propositions, etc.

5. The subject of study of CL is also concepts, in particular the world modeling with the help of concepts.

Methods of CL are taken from other sciences. e.g., concept analysis, distribution, corpus

Only conceptual method belongs to CL, because other methods are taken from linguistics, psychology, and computational linguistics

Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Cognition

The main assumption of cognitive linguistics is that linguistic cognition is an inextricable phenomenon of overall human cognition and as such we expect patterns and structures of cognition observed by psychologists, neurobiologists and others are expected to be reflected in language. Conversely, linguistic structures, by virtue of the relative concreteness, provide generalizations that may reflect basic human cognitive abilities and processes which still remain unobservable directly. Linguistic structures are not only relatively concrete and directly observable. What is even more important is that there also examples of categorization that is abstract, automatic and entirely unconscious. Linguistic categories are among the kinds of abstract categories that are, perhaps, the most important ones for the study of the mind as their conceptual structure cannot be viewed as merely a mirror of nature. As Lakoff, one of the major influences in cl, points out human language is an important source of evidence for the nature of cognitive categories. Conversely, the views on cognitive categorization, such as Rosch’s prototype theory should affect the theories of categorization used in linguistics.

Ronald Langaker approach is this one: “Language is an integral part of human cognition. An accounts f linguistic structure should therefore articulate with what is known about the cognitive processing in general, regardless of whether one posits a special language “module”.

Two primary commitments of CL: cognitive linguistics and cognitive commitment

Five postulates of CL:

1. The thesis of embodied cognition. The thesis consists of two relative parts. The first part calls that the nature of reality is not objectively given, but is a function of our species-specific and individual embodiment - this is the sub-thesis of ‘embodied experience’. Second, our mental representation of reality is grounded in our embodied mental states: mental states captured from our embodied experience - this is the sub-thesis of ‘grounded cognition’.

2. The thesis of encyclopedic semantics is also made up of 2 parts. First, it holds that semantic representation in the linguistic system relate to representations in the conceptual world. The second part of thesis relates to the view that conceptual structure, to which semantic structure relates, constitutes a vast network of structured knowledge, a semantic potential which is encyclopedia-like in nature and in scope.

3. The symbolic thesis holds that the fundamental unit of grammar is a form-meaning pairing, or symbolic unit. The symbolic unit is variously termed “a symbolic assembly” in Langacker’s cognitive grammar. The symbolic thesis holds that the mental grammar consists of a form, a semantic unit, and symbolic correspondence that relates the two.

4. The thesis that meaning is conceptualization. Language understanding involves the interaction between semantic structure and conceptual structure, as mediated by various linguistic and conceptual mechanisms and processes. This thesis holds that the way in which symbolic units are combined during language understanding gives rise to a unit of meaning which is non-linguistic in nature, and relies, in part, on non-linguistic processes of integration.

5. Usage-based thesis holds that mental grammar of the language user is formed by the abstraction of symbolic units from situated instances of language use. Knowledge of language is knowledge of how language is used.

Six tenets of cognitive semantics

1. Meaning is conceptualization in a cognitive model. The prime slogan for cognitive semantics is: Meanings are in the head. More precisely, a semantics for a language is seen as a mapping from the expressions of the language to some mental entities. The truth of expressions is considered to be secondary, since truth concerns the relation between the mental structure and the world. Meaning

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