A Cognitive Theory of Language. Semantic Theory and Analysis‪.‬

”Classical” approaches to categorisation, as called by Taylor (1989, 21 ff.) and Lakoff (1987, 6 ff.), can be characterised by an understanding of linguistic categories as clearly bounded sets of members which have certain essential features in common. These categories are taken to reflect existing categories in the world which are defined by, as Aristotle called it, necessary and sufficient features. These features are binary, i.e. they determine or rule out membership and thereby establish clear boundaries. This understanding of categorisation is manifested in traditional philosophical and scientific thought as well as in ”common sense” theories about language and the world. Lakoff calls this approach ”objectivism” and identifies the following assumptions:

‘OBJECTIVIST METAPHYSICS: All of reality consists of entities, which have fixed properties and relations holding among them at any instant. [...]

OBJECTIVIST ESSENTIALISM: Among the properties that things have, some are essential; that is, they are those properties that make a thing what it is, and without which it would not be that kind of thing. Other properties are accidental – that is, they are properties that things happen to have, not properties that capture the essence of the thing. [...]

THE DOCTRINE OF OBJECTIVE CATEGORIES: The entities in the world form objectively existing categories based on their shared objective properties.’

(Lakoff 1987, 158-161; emphasis in the original)

Cognitive scientists have set out to prove these assumptions wrong. Categorisation, in their view, is an operation of human cognition which is determined by experiences of physiological and physical characteristics of the human body and bodily interactions with the environment. Categorisations and their realisations, however, can provide the basis for human experience once they are firmly established, so that conceptual categories can work back upon human perception. Language categories, they maintain, are reflections of conceptual categories. Thus, they disclaim the autonomy of language which is presupposed by most formalist and generative linguistic theories (cf. Lakoff 1987, ch. 9), as well as a metaphysical notion of reality which is reflected in human perception and categorisation. Rather, reality is made meaning of through these cognitive processes, which in turn are predominantly structured by bodily experiences and interactions. Therefore, cognitive semantics take empirical evidence about language as the basis for understanding human cognition. Prototype theory has developed from empirical studies of linguistic categorisation, and it is taken as evidence for processes of conceptual categorisation.