On the sliding scale of time that gradiently builds and ebbs and recedes I am perpetually being re-context-ed and being iteratively re-inserted into particular frames of reference and spheres of existence. I am simultaneously (at… Read More
In a broad sense of the term, any particular ontology serves as a framework against which we interpret information; think of it like an organized perspective that we use as a lens to… Read More
If you say the admittedly odd sentence “The baby feeds on mother’s milk.” it accesses a parasitic construal for the act of eating. Pardon any offense this might cause you; I promise to… Read More
If we don’t pay that ticket, then I will have to go to court. [causal] It would be great if everyone just got along. [idealistic] I wonder if she knows she has jelly… Read More
Modals represent a perspective of force in relation to the participatory elements of a construction. In fact, they represent an encoding of force in the relation between subject, verb, and object. Children acquire… Read More
Reading Michael Israel’s The Way Constructions Grow taught me some things about how novel constructions actually emerge in a language. I encourage you to check out this classic article. The -Way construction in… Read More
In exemplar representation situation-specific tokens are decoded and classified as being instance-overlaps with existing exemplars and thereby reinforcing that exemplar instance, or else they are classified as having slight divergence from the existing… Read More
In my childhood I think it was the fable about Stone Soup that made me start to think about innovation. As I learned to cook and came further into the world of soup-lore… Read More
Part of my portfolio includes this project called Weaving Narratives: Possessions = Autobiographies, it is an exploration into how any ad hoc grouping of objects has some kind of inherent narrative, albeit a… Read More
Soulwax’s website extends an invitation for viewers to participate in DJing as they explore the website. From my first exposure this has been an amazing experience. The intuitive guided navigation doubles as a… Read More
Cut & Paste is not just a keyboard function. In fact, R.G. Collingwood coined the term in the mid 1940′s in his book The Idea of History, but being a more formal speaker… Read More
I recently created a short interview about my art project “Weaving Narratives” where I describe the process of reading objects that people own. I hope you check it out and let me know… Read More
Una dia el pollito va a la casa blanca y toca la puerta hay una persona abre la puerta y dice: “¿que queirres?” y el pollito respondon, “necesito hablar con el presidente por… Read More
I was recently sucked into playing OSMOS on my iPad. I never play video games (usually I am too busy: wife, art, school, work) but I did happen to spend four hours straight… Read More
I checked my email this morning and received a message telling me that my recently distributed paper “Figure-Ground Organization in Attention and Construal” made it on a top ten list for downloads yesterday… Read More
As I was riding the train home today I overheard a conversation that made me realize again how people view as odd the things which the linguist views as normal. The woman behind… Read More
Driving home tonight I heard a song on the radio, on the local hip-hop and R&B station, and while the song kind of annoys me, I kind of like it too. Anyway, this… Read More
A reasonable summary of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its tractable form is that different cultures interpret the same world differently and this has an impact on how they both think and construct meaning… Read More
Here is another network diagram…double click to enlarge…the diagram is an interpretation of the sense variation for the semantics of the modal auxiliary “Must”. [NB: I included a few obsolete usages that are… Read More
Take a look at this diagram of a possible interpretation for the polysemous network of HEAD: [Hint: double click the image to enlarge...] The senses for head have both physical and metaphorical interpretations. … Read More
ICMs structure mental spaces by providing asymmetrical matching or mismatching between concepts, center-periphery models to structure categories, and encapsulated categories to structure to the scope of predication. Below is an assortment of these… Read More
I have several friends who are strict Generativists/Formalists and I want to start a little series that summarizes information about topics that sometimes get muddled up in cross-theoretical discussions. This is the first… Read More
While I don’t necessarily agree with Jackendoff’s use of the semantic primitives, and while I recognize that this comes from a book that is from the early 80′s, I still want to present… Read More
Today on the train I overheard one man say to another man: “I got my Stevie Wonders on…I didn’t even see you.” Either he was trying to convey that his inability to see… Read More
Reading Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar has been a dense pleasure. I am currently reading part of it in a volume edited by Dirk Geeraerts called Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings (Mouton de Gruyter). Consider these… Read More
Tonight on the way to the ballet my wife and I were riding in the car with one of her friends. It came up that my sister-in-law’s roommate’s cat pissed in a cardboard… Read More
I was working through a homework assignment about developing a language that captures the conceptualization patterns that a spider would have (given the boundaries of its embodied experience), this was a fun experiment,… Read More
Ronald Langacker is considered one of the founding fathers of the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise, his seminal work in Cognitive Grammar has influenced pretty much everyone who does anything at all in Cognitive Linguistics.… Read More
This comes from the introduction to a book edited by Dirk Geeraerts: If conceptual perspectivization is the central function of a grammar, the typical formal categories of grammatical description (like word classes or… Read More
Language makes use of ecological elements (symbolic function, communicative function, et cetera) to provide an integrated “tool” with which meaning can be expressed and understood. Being a system implies the interrelationship of components… Read More
I just posted a free download of an excerpt of my semiotics project which will be available as a paperback in September. I encourage you to check it out and let me know… Read More
