E lise Stickles of the UBC English department will present a colloquium. The title and abstract are below.
Click to join Zoom meeting. The passcode is 635410. (The meeting ID is 647 6334 5823.)
< strong>Usage-based approaches to metaphor analysis and construction grammar : A case study of the English Event Structure Metaphor System
< p>Metaphor is pervasive in our everyday communication and intrinsic to our reasoning processes. Evidence from the investigation of metaphor in non-lin guistic modalities\, combined with recent advances in technology that enabl e the statistical analysis of metaphoric language\, demonstrates the need f or a more data-driven\, systematic treatment of metaphor as an integral par t of both semantics and syntax.In this talk\, I will be focusing on the Event Structure Metaphor System (ESM) in English. The ESM can be divide d into two subsystems\, as demonstrated in the following examples from COCA :
(1) If he can create jobs and help more Americans climb out of p overty\, count us in.
(2) ...as if great wealth and fortune were just within their grasp.
Both example (1) and (2) metap horically conceptualize economic status in terms of physical events. In (1) \, economic status is a location on vertically-oriented scale\, in w hich poverty is a lower location and financial security is a higher locatio n. This is an illustration of the Location Event Structure System (LESM)\, in which states of being are understood as locations\, and change of state is movement from one location to another. In contrast\, in (2) economic sta tus is an objectwhich can be grasped (or out of reach)\; this illust rates the Object Event Structure System\, in which states are understood as objects which can be possessed\, gained\, or lost. Together these t wo systems constitute a network of interrelated\, hierarchical metaphors wh ich are used in English (and many other languages) to describe and conceptu alize states of being and changes of state.
These examples also illus trate common constructional relationships between metaphor and syntax. When both the source domain (e.g.\, location) and target domain (e.g.\, economi c status) are lexically realised\, the source domain is indicated by the ve rb and the target domain by one of its arguments\, as in (1). When both sou rce and target are realised as nominals as in (2)\, the specific constructi on determines which nominal slots will contain the source or target domain language. (2) is an example of the NP1 PP NP2 construction\, in whic h NP1 takes the target domain and NP2 the source. It can be compared to the following:
(3) ...to get out of the pit of poverty…
Exa mple (3)\, which is another instance of the LESM\, also has both the source and target domain in NPs. However\, the NP1 of NP2 construction\, u nlike NP1 PP NP2\, has the source domain in NP1 and target in NP2.
I will make use of this metaphor system\, focusing on metaphors of mot ion within the LESM\, to illustrate two empirical approaches to metaphor an alysis. First\, I will provide a brief overview of the MetaNet metaphor ont ology and identification system and its use in the analysis of frequency an d variation of metaphoric language in large written corpora. Second\, I wil l discuss a novel experimental methodology for eliciting and collecting spo ntaneous spoken metaphoric language and co-speech gesture. The results of t hese studies both lead to a refined analysis of the Event Structure Metapho r System and pose challenges for current theories of metaphor and represent ation of linguistic structures. In answer to these challenges\, I propose a n implementation of Embodied Construction Grammar which incorporates the se mantics of metaphoric representations.
CATEGORIES:Featured Events LOCATION:Online GEO:49.260872;-123.113953 URL;VALUE=URI:https://linguistics.ubc.ca/events/event/elise-stickles-colloq uium/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20200308T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR