Image schemas: From linguistic analysis to neural grounding

Abstract

Irnage Schemas: From linguistic analysis to neural grounding Ellen Dodge and George Lakofl Abstract What are image schemas? Why should the same primitive image—schemas occur in the world’s languages, even though spatial relations differ widely? What meth- odologies should we use to study them? How is linguistic theory affected by the answers to these questions? We argue that common primitive image-schemas arise from common brain structures, and that linguistic theory must be based on, and consistent with, what we know about the brain and experience. Focusing on motion-related experiences, we show how linguistics and neuroscience, when taken together, increase our understanding of image schemas. First, we look at how image schemas are expressed in language. Then, working from the assump~ tion that linguistic structure is an expression of neural structure, we shift our at- tention to the brain, showing how recent findings in neuroscience can support an analysis of image schemas that relates the structure of experience, thought, and language to neural structure. This analysis not only enhances our current under- standing of image schemas, but also suggests future avenues for image schema research. Key Words: primitive image schema, LOCOMOT ION schema, Cog theory, secondary sen sory—motor areas 1 . Introduction The idea of image schemas emerged from the empirical research on spatial- relations terms by Len Talmy (1972, 1975, 1978, 1983) and Ron Langacker (1976, 1987) in the mid—l970’s. They found, independently, that (1) even closely related languages vary widely in the meanings of their spatial-