Mental Space Research Articles

Quasi-synonymy of Danish causal conjunctions from the speaker’s perspective

The article explores a fragment of the grammatical system of the Danish language, which represents a regular formal variation of auxiliary language markers — causal conjunctions fordi, for, eftersom, thi. The functional and pragmatic description of each of them is proposed based on the anthropocentric approach. This approach is aimed at studying the linguistic expression of the speaker’s orientation in denotative reality and communication. In terms of expressing causation, this presupposes differentiation of ways to substantiate the speaker’s assertion, depending on different sources of causation: the speaker’s own inference (for); appeal to knowledge, common to all participants in communication (thi); justifying one objective fact with another (fordi), justifying the speaker’s own inference with an objective fact (eftersom). The etymology of conjunctions, as well as the temporal correlation of the predicates in causal and main clauses, allows us to determine the reasons for the speaker to organize the mental space of causation in different ways. In addition, the use of the conceptual blending concept allows us to explain why one conjunction is replaced by another in oral speech.

The Mental Space of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in representations оf Dmytro Yavornytsky

The aim of the article is to study the mental space of the Zaporozhian Cossacks in representations of the prominent Ukrainian historian Dmytro Yavornytsky (1855–1940). Historiographic analysis and synthesis are research methods. Sources: works of Dmytro Yavornytsky, memoirs of contemporaries of the scientist-historian, modern historiography. The main results are that the author actualizes the historical and geographical aspect of the mental history of Ukraine; shows the importance of understanding spatial identification and differentiation for the realization of historical and national identity, mental understanding of the world on the examples of achievements of Ukrainian and foreign European scientists. Based on the analysis of Dmytro Yavornytsky’s creative work, it is proved that the scientist-historian came to the conclusion about the ancient, organic nature of the territory of the Steppe Ukraine to the Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Lowland Army; its external borders are established; the internal Ukrainian territorial demarcation between the lands of the Army of the Zaporozhian lower and Poltava regiments of the Hetmanate is marked. An expert on the history of the Zaporozhian Freedoms established that the space of the mental world of the Zaporozhian Cossacks covered a huge steppe expanse that ran along both banks of the Dnipro; widely used the data of hydrography, topography, climate, flora and fauna of the Zaporozhian region to understand the features of this area, which had a huge impact on the mentality of the Cossacks. The Dnipro River, which united the two banks of the Zaporozhian Freedoms, was of sacred significance for the mental world of the Cossacks. To understand the spatial component of the mental world of the Cossacks, it is important to divide the military and territorial division of the Zaporizhzhya, to show the history of the Cossacks in the context of contacts with neighbors. Noting the peculiarities of the history of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Dmytro Yavornytsky closely linked the struggle of the Zaporozhian Cossacks not only for the rights and freedoms of Zaporizhzhya, but also of other Ukrainian lands, which confirms the mental unity of the Cossacks with other parts of Ukraine. Brief conclusions. D. I. Yavornytsky revealed the spatial aspects of the diverse mental world of the Cossacks, which gave rise to a special historical energy, the basis of freedom-loving and the strength of spirit of the Zaporozhian society. The practical significance of the article is that its material will be of interest to students, graduate students, doctoral students and historians in the study of historiography and mental history of Ukraine. The originality of the article is in understanding of little- studied mental aspects of the heritage of the scientist-historian. Scientific novelty is in the development of insufficiently studied problem of the mental world of the Cossacks in the work of Dmitry Yavornytsky. Type of article: analytical.

The “Ethnic” Markets of Irkutsk: Production and Transformation of Urban Social Space

This article presents results of the study of the role of “ethnic” markets in the processes of urban transformations. The case of Irkutsk demonstrates the integration of the markets into everyday life of the city and their incorporation into the urban infrastructure. “Ethnic” markets are a special phenomenon of urban life and a complex of social, economic, and interethnic relations. The aim of this study is to analyze ethnically marked markets as specific localities and an important part of urban space. The analysis is based on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of construction of social space. This theory enables the study of “ethnic” markets as a complex of multidirectional processes that determine the forms and contents of social interactions. The social anthropological focus of the study allows us to consider “ethnic” markets as special localities included in various coordinate systems. The analysis includes not only the physical but also mental and social spaces and facilitates more in-depth and systematic conclusions. Moreover, the case is typical enough to allow for generalization of these conclusions. The results of field observations of Irkutsk “ethnic” markets suggest that markets are important for the city in terms of their impact on the organization of urban space. Most importantly, they function as the attraction of people, goods, and other elements involved in the implementation of the city’s everyday practices, as well as the intersection of social and infrastructure networks, which ensures a high density of the interactions. Article in Russian DOI: 10.25285/2078-1938-2020-12-3-70-99

Semantics and Cognition: an interview with Gilles Fauconnier

Gilles Fauconnier is a linguist and cognitive scientist internationally known for his work on the theory of Mental Spaces and on the theory of Conceptual Integration or “Blending”, in partnership with Mark Turner. His contribution to Cognitive Semantics in particular and Semantic Theory in general is invaluable. The theory of mental spaces allows refined treatment to a series of semantic phenomena that have always challenged semanticists such as referential opacity , conditionality , counterfactuality , presuppositional projection , among others. The theory of conceptual blending also enables the advanced treatment of the complex cognitive construction of the linguistic meaning underspecified in grammatical constructions, which offer clues or means of activating the cognitive process of blending, as the XYZ grammatical construction prototypically illustrates. Another central topic concerns the relationship between the semantic-cognitive processes of blending, metaphor and metonymy, their typological limits and their intersections. Consequently, the high explanatory power of blending invites us to reflect on its centrality in cognition and grammar for the construction of linguistic meaning, as well as on its economy, which includes its restrictions.

Causality, subjectivity and mental spaces: Insights from on-line discourse processing

Abstract Research has shown that it requires less time to process information that is part of an objective causal relation describing states of affairs in the world (She was out of breath because she was running), than information that is part of a subjective relation (She must have been in a hurry because she was running) expressing a claim or conclusion and a supporting argument. Representing subjectivity seems to require extra cognitive operations. In Mental Spaces Theory (MST; Fauconnier, Gilles. 1994. Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge: MIT Press) the difference between these two relation types can be described in terms of an extra mental space in the discourse representation of subjective relations: representing the Subject of Consciousness (SoC). In processing terms, this might imply that the processing difference is not present if this SoC has already been established in the discourse. We tested this prediction in two eye tracking experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that signaling the subjectivity of the relation by introducing a subject of consciousness beforehand did not diminish the processing asymmetry compared to a neutral context. However, the relative complexity of subjective relations was diminished in the context of Free Indirect Speech (No! He was absolutely sure. There was no doubt about it. She was running so she was in hurry; Experiment 2). In terms of MST and the representation of subjectivity in general, this implies that not only creating a representation of a thinking subject, but also assigning a claim to this thinking subject requires extra processing effort.

Functions of screen space in shots by Mieczysław Jahoda in the example of his first feature films: Zimowy zmierzch and Pętla

The text is devoted to discussing the formation methods and the functions of screen space in shots by Mieczysław Jahoda in the films Zimowy zmierzch (directed by S. Lenartowicz) and Pętla (directed by W.J. Has). Mieczysław Jahoda is presented as one of the main initiators of stylistic changes in the films of Polish School in the mid 1950s. The analysis concerns the camera means applied by Jahoda in order to obtain screen effects: light, frame composition, photographic optics and perspective transformation. The film shots by Mieczysław Jahoda are characterized by an exceptional ability to evoke mental space, emotions, memory and imagination via the shapes of screen space. Their feature is a special esthetization aimed at creating the atmosphere of films, as well as symbolic and cultural references.

On the thinking space

The article examines some aspects of the mental space, the psychic one, and the internal space of thinking. The psychic space is not considered a “psychic reflection of the sensory stimuli” insofar as the first psychic movements that presuppose psychic space are not related to the sensory (for example, the prenatal states). The psychic space arises at the same time as the very psychic phenomenon. Some forms of changes in the mental space, and in the internal space of thinking, as well as the emergence of self-intentional states are also considered

Spatial Attention in Serial Order Working Memory: An EEG Study.

Theoretical models explaining serial order processing link order information to specified position markers. However, the precise characteristics of position marking have remained largely elusive. Recent studies have shown that space is involved in marking serial position of items in verbal working memory (WM). Furthermore, it has been suggested, but not proven, that accessing these items involves horizontal shifts of spatial attention. We used continuous electroencephalography recordings to show that memory search in serial order verbal WM involves spatial attention processes that share the same electrophysiological signatures as those operating on the visuospatial WM and external space. Accessing an item from a sequence in verbal WM induced posterior "early directing attention negativity" and "anterior directing attention negativity" contralateral to the position of the item in mental space (i.e., begin items on the left; end items on the right). In the frequency domain, we observed posterior alpha suppression contralateral to the position of the item. Our results provide clear evidence for the involvement of spatial attention in retrieving serial information from verbal WM. Implications for WM models are discussed.

In times of illness: Covid-19 threat influences temporal focus and implicit space-time mappings

According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis, people's front-back mental space–time mappings are associated with their attention to the time frames of past and/or future. Based upon the findings that pathogen threats elicit preferences for social conservatism and traditions, we theorize that activating thinking about COVID-19, an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019, will promote people's past-oriented thinking and increase their responses of past-in-front mapping. By manipulating saliency of coronavirus threat, our results showed that exposure to information about coronavirus created changes in a stronger past focus and caused a significant increase in the rate of past-in-front responses, which provides supporting evidence for the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. These findings suggest that the unprecedented pandemic not only harms people's health, but also can influence the way they construe the world.

The Pandemic Lockdown Discourse Space: A Critical Cognitive-pragmatic Analysis

Recently, a new coronavirus disease COVID-19 has emerged as a respiratory infection with significant concern for global public health hazards. WHO was alarmed with the growing curve of confirmed cases and death tolls that have been globally reported. During this pandemic, ‘social distancing’ and lockdown were encouraged to flatten the curve which has had major social, political, and economic consequences. Drawing on data from PM Boris Johnson’s and President Donald Trump’s public speeches after WHO’s declaration of the pandemic state, the current study aimed to explore the conceptual and spatial representation of lockdown during the outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK and U.S. from a cognitive perspective. Based on a spatial-temporal and axiological model, this study examined the discursive strategies used by the UK and U.S. governments to legitimize the countries’ full or partial lockdown. Applying Cap’s Proximization Theory, a cognitive-pragmatic model of threat construction, this study investigated how these administrations constructed threat by deploying construal of relations between entities within the Discourse Space. The findings revealed how DS between the conceptualizers’ deictic centre and the threat was curtailed or broadened using conceptual, lexico-grammatical, and coercive strategies. The results showed that PM Johnson relied heavily on a dynamic discursive representation of threat; whereas, President Trump represented the Chinese threat statically. The former appealed to conceptualizers’ fear by broadening the distance between the threat and conceptualizers using promising proximization; whereas, the latter downplayed the virus’ risk blaming it on others, positioning adversary state(s) as source of threat in mental space.

Pristupi pojmovnoj metafori

This paper presents a set of possible contemporary approaches to the study of metaphor. Although undoubtedly most propulsive, Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual (or cognitive) metaphor theory is only one of several metaphor models. Conceptual metaphor theory postulates that metaphor is a phenomenon of thought which is manifest in language. According to this approach, metaphor is understanding abstract conceptual domains (where domain is any coherent organization of human experience) in terms of more concrete source domains. In Fauconnier and Turner’s blending theory meaning is constructed through building of a number of mental spaces and establishment of mappings between them. Contrary to these two approaches, in Glucksberg’s class-inclusion model of metaphor, properties of the source category are attributed to the target category not by means of mappings but through class inclusion. Bowdle and Gentner’s ‘career of metaphor’ theory highlights the importance of metaphor conventionality. In Cameron’s ‘discourse dynamics’ approach metaphor is explored through analysis of discourse. It is perceived and used as a tool which helps uncover attitudes and values. Relevance theorists, on the other end of the spectrum, see metaphor as ‘loose talk’ understood via pragmatic inferential processes. Critical metaphor analysis explores how metaphors shape not only human thought and language, but also our beliefs, values and actions. The range of available approaches to metaphor suggests that no single approach can exhaustively capture this multifaceted phenomenon.

Naive geography: geoconceptology and topology of geomental maps

The article presents the study of the geospace mental representations and their variability depending on the regional point of view. The research material comprises about 500 naive maps of Russia, created by informants of seven Russian regions: Moscow, St. Petersburg (capitals), Siberia (Barnaul, Biysk), Southern, Mid- and Northern Ural (Orenburg, Ufa, Perm) and Kaliningrad. A geoconcept, as a set of collective ideas about a geographic object, synthesizes images of a geographic location (topos), its name (toponym), ideas about it and its spatial parameters (length, coordinates, location relative to other geolocations). The paper raises the problem of the topology of the mental space, and describes the method and results of constructing computable metric models of geomental spaces. The use of modern means of processing and analyzing naive maps allowed to detect spatial dependencies between geoconcepts, their probable localization zones, and position relative to each other on the geomental map space. Modeling of geoconcepts was carried out on the example of the analysis of the collective regional representations associated with the capital (Moscow). Noticeable differences were found in the regional geoconcepts of Moscow, which makes it relevant to conduct research on the regional variability of the geoconcept systems of the country's common space.

Thinking abilities and cognitive-personality styles

The article presents the results of the empirical study devoted to the analysis of the relations between the variables of thinking abilities and personality-cognitive styles. The study involved 292 students of sociohumanitarian and economic faculties of the cities of Moscow and Kaluga aged 17 to 25 (19.44 ± 1.48), among which 62% were girls. Statistical data processing was carried out on the basis of the IBM SPSS software package. The obtained results indicate relationships among the ability to classify objects, categorical and generative abilities with variables of personality-cognitive styles. However, thinking abilities relate in different ways to personality-cognitive styles. The strongest conjugation of personality-cognitive styles is revealed with generative abilities. This fact manifests the organic involvement of personality-cognitive styles in the construction of a new reality – the creation of fundamentally new mental spaces and patterns of behaviour.

(Meta-)Ground Viewpoint Space and structurally-framed irony: A case study of the mobile game Liyla and the Shadows of War

Abstract Within the framework of Viewpoint Spaces (Dancygier, Barbara. 2012. The language of stories: A cognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), this paper investigates viewpoint interactions in a mobile game’s plot to show how the game’s structural framing leads to meaning construction, specifically the construal of irony. The notion of (meta-)Ground Viewpoint Space is proposed not only to provide a generalized account of a global mental space where local spaces and viewpoints relate to one another, but also to elucidate how the invoked genre-specific expectation makes a significant meaning contribution to the player’s overall construal of the game. This study presents a case study of the mobile game Liyla and the Shadows of War (Abueideh, Rasheed. 2016. Liyla and the Shadows of War) as a viewpoint phenomenon whose construal involves the interaction of multiple viewpoints. The game depicts the consequences of the 2014 Gaza conflict from the perspective of an unnamed Palestinian father struggling to escape the war zone with his daughter Liyla. It deviates from prototypical games in that it is impossible to complete the expected narrative, regardless of the player’s skill, although its ostensible goal is to let the protagonists survive and escape to a safer place. The mismatch between the player’s goal to clear all the stages, the character’s goal to survive, and the developer’s goal to convey a message is a source of ironic meaning, and this study focuses on how the network of multiple viewpoints – of the game developer, the character, and the player – constructs the intended meaning for players.

Mental Space Theory on Presupposition Projections in Advertisements

In this economic society in which information is prevailing, advertisements are found here and there, and play a very important role in our daily life. More and more importance is attached to the research of advertising language. This paper reveals presupposition projection problems in advertising, especially in English advertising. It aims to explore the explanation of mental space theory for cancellation or inheritability of presupposition in advertising, that is, the projection problem of presupposition. Different from how traditional presupposition theory is used in seeking for a reasonable explanation for projection problems, this paper will investigate in detail projection problems in advancing from the perspective of Fauconnier's mental space theory in combination with large quantities of advertisement examples.

Anger rumination in the context of high anger and forgiveness

Psychological problems involving anger detract from personal well-being, and one cognitive process bearing on anger dysregulation is rumination. Rumination can affect anger's time course and create a mental space in which retaliation can be imagined and scripted. How variable anger rumination is among people who are prone to anger has not been previously addressed. Psychological distress variables pertinent to anger rumination have often not been controlled, and thoughts of revenge should be separately partitioned. We examined the variability of anger rumination in conjunction with high anger disposition, defined by two separate instruments. In high anger subsamples, we tested dispositional forgiveness as a mitigator of anger rumination, controlling for anxiety, depression, impulsivity, and perseverative thinking. Anger rumination varied greatly among those high in anger. Forgiveness, particularly of others, was significantly associated with anger rumination, controlling for the covariates. That significance remained, after removing “thoughts of revenge” from the anger rumination measure. We discuss further research directions and therapeutic intervention targets for anger rumination among people having anger control problems.

Idiosyncratic spatial representations of the days of the week in individuals without synesthesia

People with spatial sequence synesthesia have clear and stable mental images of spatial arrays of numbers, days of the week, and months. The shapes of the arrays vary by individual. We conducted an experiment to estimate the shapes of spatial arrays in people without synesthesia. We presented a pair of Japanese characters that represent the days of the week on a display, and asked participants without synesthesia to state which day they thought came later by pressing a key that was congruent with the spatial position of the day shown. We then estimated the shape of the spatial array in the participants' mental space (mental weekday lines) from the distribution of the reaction times. We found that these ‘estimated mental weekday lines’ differed by individual, and that the shapes (straight or bent lines, U-shapes, zigzags, or triangles) were similar to the spatial arrays found in individuals with synesthesia. We then conducted simulations using a self-organizing map and found that differences in the shapes of the spatial arrays compared with those in individuals with synesthesia could be explained by the inputs to the network. These results support the hypothesis that interactions between spatial and ordinal/cardinal representations in both synesthetes and non-synesthetes develop under the influence of self-organizing learning.

Информационное пространство современности: реалии, проблемы и перспективы

В статье рассматриваются основные подходы к определению понятия информационное пространство. Показана его взаимосвязь с ментальным пространством. Проанализированы проблемы и перспективы их развития в контексте современности.

Telehealth Options for Treating Patients with SUD Expand

Telehealth Options for Treating Patients with SUD Expand

The tragic in Greek drama and conceptual blending

Abstract This paper examines the tragic sense permeating ancient Greek drama as a product of a special type of conceptual integration between two antithetic mental spaces, which prompts the simultaneous generation of two mutually exclusive emergent structures. The special tragic sense generated carries along the inferences of two equally impossible situations. The key-difference between this type of blend and other counterfactuals is argued to be found in the lack of reference scenario in the blend. In the context of theatrical enactment, the realisation of this special type of antithetic blend is based on the frame-clash between conceived and enacted space, matched by the emotions of pity and fear, respectively. The feeling of catharsis that follows the end of the play is analysed as a second level blend within the emergent structure that leads to the restoration of a single common space of cognitive compatibility between actors and audience.