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1、Lecture One Prototypes, Categories and Categorization1.1 Importance of categorization (Lakoff 1987:5-11):“There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action, and speech.” Every time we see something as a kind of thing, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kin
2、ds of things, we are employing categories. Any time we either produce or understand any utterance of any reasonable length, we are employing categories: categories of speech sounds, of words, of phrases and clauses, as well as conceptual categories. The above discussion involves two major types of c
3、ategorization, the categorization of natural things and that of language (Taylor 2001) - the latter can be referred to as metacategorization. “Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives. An understanding of ho
4、w we categorize is central to any understanding of how we think and how we function, and therefore central to an understanding of what make us human.”From the time of Aristotle to the later work of Wittengenstein, categories were assumed to be abstract containers, with things either inside or outsid
5、e the category. Things were assumed to be in the same category if and only if they had certain properties in common. And the properties they had in common were taken as defining the category. This classical theory became part of the background assumptions taken for granted in most scholarly discipli
6、nes over the centuries. Within cognitive psychology, categorization has become a major field of study, thanks to the pioneering work of the psychologist Eleanor Rosch, who made categorization an issue. Rosch observed that studies demonstrated that categories, in general, have best examples (called “
7、prototypes”) and that all of the specifically human capacities do play a role in categorization. Prototype theory is changing our idea of the most fundamental of human capacities - the capacity to categorize - and our idea of what the human mind and human reason are like. The approach to prototype t
8、heory suggests that human categorization is essentially a matter of both human experience and imagination - of perception, motor activity, and culture on the one hand, and of metaphor, metonymy, and mental imagery on the other.1.2 Theory of prototypeThe basic claim of cognitive linguistics on catego
9、ries is that cognitive categories, unlike classical categories, are prototype-based categories; or the formation of categories centres around prototypes.There are two ways in which to understand the term prototype. We can apply the term to the central member, or perhaps to the cluster of central mem
10、bers, of a category. The prototype can be understood as a semantic representation of the conceptual core of a category. On this approach, we could say, not that a particular entity is the prototype, but that it instantiates the prototype. (Taylor, 2001: 59)Below is the naissance and development of t
11、he theory of prototype-based categories.1.2.1 Berlin and Kays finding of focal coloursCategorization of colours is a result of arbitrariness or motivation?According to structuralist linguistics, it is a result of arbitrariness.Something about arbitrariness: Taylor 2001: 5-6.There are a number of imp
12、lications for the study of colour terms which follow from the structualist approach to word meaning. Among these are the following: a) All colour terms in a system have equal status.b) All referents of a colour term have equal status.c) The only legitimate object of linguistic study is the language
13、system, not individual terms in a system.Cognitive linguists put forward an alternative approach to categorization of colours, i.e., there are focal colours compared with nonfocal ones.According to the linguist-anthropologists Berlin and Kay in their work of Basic Colour Terms (1969), the characteri
14、stics of basic colour terms, derived from an investigation of the colour terms in 98 languages are as follows. Basic colour terms area) not subsumed under other terms.b) morphologically simple.c) not collocationally restricted.d) of frequent use. (Taylor 2001: 8)Berlin and Kay make two especially in
15、teresting claims (ibid.: 9). The first concerns so-called “focal” colours. Two colour samples might well be categorized as the same by speakers of one language, but as different by speakers of anther. If, on the other hand, people are asked to select good examples of the basic colour terms in their
16、language, cross-language (and within-language) variability largely disappears. Secondly, they noted that the 98 languages in their survey appeared to select their basic colour terms from an inventory of only 11 focal colours. Besides, the languages did not select randomly from this inventory, instead, they followed the following implicational hierarchy:black, whiteredyellow, blue, greenbrownpurple, pink, orange, grayGive
