Introduction:

- Semantics: is the study of meaning that is used for understanding

human expression through language.
- Natural language: it is a language that has developed naturally out of
the human facility for language.
- Minimal units of meaning: word, proposition, sentence they do not
require a context, are not concerned with the participants
- Proposition: basic unit that can be whether true or false. A declarative
sentence is linked to the proposition when talking in semantic terms
- Lexical meaning: the meaning of a word that is not a grammatical word
such as prepositions, modal verbs
- Utterance: they are real products of language produced in real situations
and their meaning depends on the context.
- Meaning in communication: is meaning beyond the minimal units of
meaning. Produced by real participants in real situations.
- Literal and non-literal meaning

Cognitive semantics:

- Conceptualization: cognitive process which is automatically performed

to make sense of the world, which is our utter reality.
- Categorization: cognitive operation we have unconsciously to organize
reality into sets of rules or elements which are similar / have things in
common.
- Traditional categorization: we categorize by shared features. We
identify that chair by image matching.
- Cognitive categorization: we see a chair, we check our prototypical
mental image and we identify it as a chair by matching the image with the
mental image.
- basic level concept: they are the basic level of significance. Theyre
frequently used in everyday language and are typically the earliest
learned. (ex: dog, cat, elephant)
- superordinate: very different from one another, but their members have
fewer shared
- properties (ex: animal, bird, fish, insect)
- subordinate: show a high degree of property sharing, but a lower
degree of distinctness. (spaniel, collie, Labrador)
- prototype: when you think of something, the image that comes to our
mind is the prototype. Its usually the most common one.
- mental image: a basic concept you have a mental image. Chair
- image schema: intermediate mental construct (is not a very complex
construct). It involves functions, action. It is the container image schema:
you have the container and the function. The path image schema is a
path your walk along.
- metaphorical conceptualization: cognitive operation which allows us to
think about and talk about complex realities or experiences in terms of
other more simple, usually physical, realities or experiences.
- Metaphor: it is a non-literal use of language. It has a relation of
resemblance between the figurative meaning and the literal meaning.
- mappings: projection between two cognitive domains usually associated
with metaphors. The properties of the source domain are
mapped/projects onto the target domain.
- Metonymy: A variety of figurative use of language. What distinguishes a
metonymic use of an expression is the relationship between its figurative
meaning and its literal meaning. Metonymy involves a relation of
association.
- Counterfactuals: hypothetical mental construct. It gives possibilities in a
certain situation if I were you, I will write this down = Im not you, I will
never be you. Somebody thinking for you, in your place. When I was a
child I didnt do that
- mental spaces: portions of conceptual space constructed as we think
and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action. They contain
pieces of information and structured by frames and cognitive models.
- Mental model: representation of complex information in your mind.
- blending: its a new reality which emerges from two previous realities.
This new reality inherits characteristics of the two pre-existing reality and
becomes a clearly distinguished new reality.
- conceptual integration: cognitive operations which involves complex
multiple interrelated conceptual projections.