The Conceptual Structure(s) of Modality

Download or read book The Conceptual Structure(s) of Modality written by Günther Lampert and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2000 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study takes George Lakoff's dictum seriously that arguments about conclusions will be pointless unless there is agreement on the premises. Subscribing to the view that linguistic categorization is necessarily theory-driven, it reconstructs and assesses, on the basis of domain-independent parameters derived from General Systems Theory and Leonard Talmy's Overlapping Systems Model of Cognitive Organization, hegemonic western conceptualizations of modality. Arguing against such propositional models of modality, the book outlines, modifies, and extends conceptualizations from a Cognitive Linguistics point of view, grounding «modality» especially on Talmy's Imaging System of Force Dynamics. The authors conceive of modality as an experientially and perceptually motivated radial category of Image Schemata, ultimately challenging the categorial status of modality as a cognitively motivated category.