Cognitive linguists posit that language as a system of meaning is closely related to cognition and to the associated perceptual and physiological structures of the body. From the cognitive semantic viewpoint, cognitive processes underpin and motivate linguistic phenomena such as categorisation, polysemy, metaphor, metonymy and image schemas. The pedagogical implication of the cognitive semantic perspective is that understanding these cognitive motivations facilitates language learning. This dissertation uses an applied cognitive semantic approach to `make sense' of a traditional knowledge system, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM views human physiology as a holistic and dynamic system that exemplifies the same principles as the cosmos-environment. TCM models result in a categorisation of physiological phenomena based on a complex system of experiential and cosmological correspondences. I suggest that the holistic epistemology of cognitive linguistics is well suited to an understanding of these holistic models. From a pedagogical viewpoint, I argue that an analysis of the cognitive motivations which underpin TCM categorisations and the polysemy of some key TCM terms can help the student make sense of TCM as a meaningful system of thought and practice. Both the theoretical and applied approaches explored in this dissertation should have relevance to other traditional knowledge systems, particularly traditional medical systems. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

Cette thèse présente une analyse linguistique d’une sélection de poèmes de John Keats, et plus précisément celle de l’expression et de la verbalisation de l’émotion à travers le langage dans les vingt-six poèmes qui composent le corpus poétique et qui constituent le point de départ de cette recherche. L’approche linguistique privilégiée est une approche cognitive, basée sur les théories de la linguistique cognitive, de la grammaire cognitive, et de la poétique cognitive. La théorie de la métaphore et de la métonymie conceptuelles joue également un rôle important dans les analyses poétiques et grammaticales présentées dans cette thèse. L’émotion est conçue comme embodied (incarnée). Son étude s’appuie sur les travaux des cognitivistes, sur la philosophie et sur les recherches en neurobiologie. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’examiner les manières dont l’émotion s’exprime au sein de la poésie keatsienne par une interrogation approfondie de la langue elle-même, en partant donc du principe que les éléments lexicaux et grammaticaux – et leur signification – qui composent les poèmes s’avèrent essentiels pour bien rendre compte de la traduction poétique de l’expérience émotionnelle. / This thesis presents a linguistic analysis of a selection of poems by John Keats: specifically, the expression and verbalization of emotion by way of language the twenty-six poems that compose the poetic corpus upon which this research is founded. The linguistic approach taken is a cognitive approach, based on the theories of cognitive linguistics, cognitive grammar, and cognitive poetics. Conceptual Metaphor and Metonymy Theory also play an important role in the poetic and grammatical analyses. The approach concerning emotion is an embodied one, based in language, philosophy, and with support from neurobiological research. The goal of this thesis is to examine the ways in which emotion is expressed within Keatsian poetry by a close interrogation of the language itself, thus holding the view that the lexical and grammatical elements—and their semantics—that compose the verses and poems themselves are essential to the salience of the poetic rendering of emotional experience.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo realizar um estudo constrastivo das construções impessoais e passivas com o clítico SE/SE no espanhol e no português brasileiro. A hipótese central deste estudo é que as passivas com SE/SE passaram a ser interpretadas como impessoais nas duas línguas, porém com diferentes implicações: no espanhol, o clítico SE se mantém; no português brasileiro, esse clítico se apaga em alguns casos e, em outros, sinaliza um sujeito humano genérico na construção. A partir dessa hipótese e utilizando como referencial teórico a Gramática Cognitiva (LANGACKER, 1991; KEMMER, 1993, 1994; MALDONADO, 2006, 2012), são examinados os critérios sintáticos e semânticos que possibilitam reconhecer as passivas e impessoais, considerando sua coexistência com outras construções com clíticos, especialmente as reflexivas e as médias. Igualmente, são avaliados alguns fenômenos relacionados às passivas e impessoais nas duas línguas, tais como a perda da concordância verbal, a supressão do clítico em construções finitas e sua inserção em construções infinitivas. O trabalho se divide em três partes. O primeiro capítulo trata da fundamentação teórica e discute conceitos importantes na análise, tais como os modelos cognitivos de conceitualização, a transitividade e a elaboração de eventos. O segundo capítulo descreve as passivas e impessoais com SE/SE no espanhol e no português brasileiro, enfatizando as tendências comuns e as assimetrias dessas construções em ambas as línguas. O terceiro capítulo analisa o comportamento das passivas e impessoais com SE/SE em dois corpora de falantes nativos, um para o espanhol e outro para o português brasileiro. Os resultados obtidos na análise dos corpora confirmam a baixa produção dessas construções no português brasileiro e sugerem que tal fenômeno está relacionado com mudanças de conceitualização nessa língua. / The objective of this research is to conduct a contrastive study of impersonal SE/SE and passive SE/SE constructions in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The main hypothesis of this study is that the usage of passive SE/SE came to be interpreted as impersonal in both languages, although, with different implications: in Spanish, the clitic SE is maintained; in Brazilian Portuguese, it is suppressed in some cases and, in others, it signalizes a human generic subject in the construction. Having this hypothesis in mind and using Cognitive Grammar (LANGACKER, 1991; KEMMER, 1993, 1994; MALDONADO, 2006, 2012) as theoretical framework, it has been examined syntactic and semantic criteria which make it possible to recognize passives and impersonals, considering their coexistence with other clitic constructions such as reflexives and middles. Moreover, some phenomena related to passives and impersonals, in both languages, are also assessed: the loss of verb agreement, clitic suppression in finite constructions and its insertion in infinitive constructions. This study is divided into three parts. In the first chapter, it is discussed the theoretical basis and important concepts in the analysis, such as the cognitive models of conceptualization, transitivity and elaboration of events. In the second chapter, it is described passive SE/SE and impersonal SE/SE constructions in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and it is also highlighted common tendencies and asymmetries in both languages. In the third chapter, it is analysed the way SE/SE passive and impersonal constructions are produced in two native speakers\' corpora, one for Spanish and other for Brazilian Portuguese. As a result, after extensively corpora analysis, it is confirmed a low production of those constructions in Brazilian Portuguese and it may suggest that such phenomenon is related to conceptualization changes in this language.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird der für die allgemeine Wissenschaftssprache des Deutschen charakteristische Bereich der figurativen Verben im Rahmen eines gebrauchsbasierten Ansatzes unter Verwendung korpuslinguistischer Methoden empirisch erfasst und beschrieben. Auf der Grundlage dieser Untersuchung wird ein integrativer Ansatz zur Erfassung und Beschreibung zentraler Wortschatzbereiche der allgemeinen Wissenschaftssprache entwickelt. Das so gewonnene integrative Beschreibungsmodell verbindet die Perspektiven bisheriger quantitativ-bestandsbezogener und bedeutungsorientiert-einheitenbezogener Ansätze und bezieht darüber hinaus sowohl formale als auch inhaltlich-funktionale Aspekte als Gliederungsprinzipien für die zu beschreibenden Wortschatzbereiche mit ein. Methodisch zeichnet es sich durch das Ineinandergreifen von korpusgesteuertem und korpusbasiertem Vorgehen aus. Die Ausarbeitung der Komponenten des Beschreibungsmodells wird auf mehreren Ebenen vorgelegt: Diese werden im ersten Kapitel zunächst ausgehend von einer Bestandsaufnahme vorliegender Arbeiten zur Beschreibung allgemein-wissenschaftlichen Wortschatzes formuliert. Im zweiten Kapitel werden sie im Rahmen eines gebrauchsbasierten Modells der Sprachbeschreibung, der Kognitiven Grammatik Langackers, sprachtheoretisch fundiert. Methodisch eingelöst findet sich diese theoretische Fundierung in den korpuslinguistischen Untersuchungen zu figurativen Verben, die Gegenstand der Kapitel drei und vier sind. Im fünften Kapitel werden die dabei gewonnenen Ergebnisse zu einer formbasiert-funktionalen Typologie figurativer Verben zusammengeführt. Kapitel sechs zeigt die mit dem vorgeschlagenen Ansatz verbundenen Transfermöglichkeiten zur Erfassung und Beschreibung anderer Bereiche des allgemein-wissenschaftlichen Wortschatzes auf. Kapitel sieben ordnet den Untersuchungsgegenstand der figurativen Verben und das entwickelte Beschreibungsmodell aus fremdsprachendidaktischer Perspektive ein und skizziert einen Vorschlag zur Vermittlung allgemein-wissenschaftlichen Wortschatzes. / Verbs like ‘ausgehen von’, ‘beziehen auf’ or ‘darstellen’ that contain semantically concrete basic verbs (gehen, ziehen, stellen) form an essential part of German general academic vocabulary, i.e. vocabulary that is used across disciplines. Adopting a corpus linguistic approach, the study develops a comprehensive description of these ‚figurative verbs‘. Based on a data-driven methodology it investigates the properties of this lexis and shows that figurative verbs containing typical recurring forms like -stellen, -führen, -gehen and others are highly relevant from a quantitative point of view. On the basis of the most prominently recurring formal parts, a core inventory of verbs is collected and described with respect to the areas of meaning expressed as well as regarding aspects of polysemy. Based on the empirical study, a model for the identification and description of vocabulary is developed, that integrates the hitherto separated quantitative - inventory based and meaning oriented - unit based perspectives. Moreover, it brings together aspects regarding form and function as means of structuring the vocabulary under description. Methodically, the model builds on a combination of the corpus-driven and the corpus-based approach. The model is elaborated as follows: In Chapter 1, important aspects of description that the model should meet are identified based on a survey of existing work on general academic language. Chapter 2 provides a linguistic foundation within the framework of usage-based language description. In particular, it draws on Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, from which the concepts of linguistic unit and construal are adopted. Chapters 3 and 4 present the corpus linguistic investigations on figurative verbs. In Chapter 5, the empirical results are brought together in a form- as well as function-based typology of figurative verbs. Chapter 6 synthesizes the findings into a model and shows possibilities of application of the proposed approach to other areas of general academic vocabulary. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the results from the perspective of language pedagogy and outlines a proposal for the teaching of general academic vocabulary.

During an annotation project of 60 000 Afrikaans tokens by CTexT (North-West University), the developers had to answer difficult questions with regard to the annotation of the participle specifically. One of the main reasons for this difficulty is that the different sources that offer descriptions of the participle in Afrikaans are conflicting in such descriptions and, depending on which source is consulted, would provide different annotations. In order to clarify the uncertainty of how the participle in Afrikaans should be annotated, the available literature was surveyed to determine the exact nature of the participle in Afrikaans. The descriptions of the participle in Afrikaans were further situated in the context of how participles are described in English and Dutch. The conclusion that was reached is that the participle form of the verb in Afrikaans should be distinguished from the periphrastic construction form of the verb that appears in the past and the passive constructions. Furthermore, this study determined to what extent a cognitive usage-based descriptive framework could contribute towards a better understanding of the participle in Afrikaans. The first conclusion that was reached is that a characterisation of the participle within this framework enables one to make conceptual sense of the morphological structure of the participle. The study shows how the morphological structure of the participle is responsible for the fact that the verbal character of the participle stays intact while the participle functions as another word class. Another conclusion that was reached regarding the characterisation of the past and passive constructions from a cognitive usage-based descriptive framework is that the framework makes it possible to distinguish conceptually between the periphrastic form of the verb and the participle form of the verb. Lastly, the study determined to what extent new insights into the participle in Afrikaans could lead to alternative lemmatisation and part-of-speech-tagging of participles in the NCHLT-corpus. The conclusion that was reached is that participles are primarily lemmatised satisfactorily. Proposals that are made in order to improve the lemmatisation protocol, include: (i) distinguishing in the protocol between periphrastic forms of the verb and the participle form of the verb; (ii) repeating the guideline for the lemmatisation of compound verbs that was provided for verb lemmatisation under the lemmatisation guidelines for participles; (iii) adding more lexicalised adjectives to the existing list in the protocol; and (iv) suggesting a guideline that would allow one to consistently distinguish between participles that could function as adverbs as well as participles that could function as prepositions. The conclusion that was reached after the analysis of the part-of-speech protocol is that the part-of-speech tag set in Afrikaans does not allow for the specific attributes and values of participles to be taken into account. Participles in the Afrikaans tag set are tagged strictly according to the function of the word. Although such an approach is very practical, it results in a linguistically poorer part-of-speech tag that ignores the verbal character of the participle. An alternative strategy is therefore suggested for the part-of-speech tagging of participles in which the attributes and values of the verb tag are adapted. / MA (Linguistics and Literary Theory), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

During an annotation project of 60 000 Afrikaans tokens by CTexT (North-West University), the developers had to answer difficult questions with regard to the annotation of the participle specifically. One of the main reasons for this difficulty is that the different sources that offer descriptions of the participle in Afrikaans are conflicting in such descriptions and, depending on which source is consulted, would provide different annotations. In order to clarify the uncertainty of how the participle in Afrikaans should be annotated, the available literature was surveyed to determine the exact nature of the participle in Afrikaans. The descriptions of the participle in Afrikaans were further situated in the context of how participles are described in English and Dutch. The conclusion that was reached is that the participle form of the verb in Afrikaans should be distinguished from the periphrastic construction form of the verb that appears in the past and the passive constructions. Furthermore, this study determined to what extent a cognitive usage-based descriptive framework could contribute towards a better understanding of the participle in Afrikaans. The first conclusion that was reached is that a characterisation of the participle within this framework enables one to make conceptual sense of the morphological structure of the participle. The study shows how the morphological structure of the participle is responsible for the fact that the verbal character of the participle stays intact while the participle functions as another word class. Another conclusion that was reached regarding the characterisation of the past and passive constructions from a cognitive usage-based descriptive framework is that the framework makes it possible to distinguish conceptually between the periphrastic form of the verb and the participle form of the verb. Lastly, the study determined to what extent new insights into the participle in Afrikaans could lead to alternative lemmatisation and part-of-speech-tagging of participles in the NCHLT-corpus. The conclusion that was reached is that participles are primarily lemmatised satisfactorily. Proposals that are made in order to improve the lemmatisation protocol, include: (i) distinguishing in the protocol between periphrastic forms of the verb and the participle form of the verb; (ii) repeating the guideline for the lemmatisation of compound verbs that was provided for verb lemmatisation under the lemmatisation guidelines for participles; (iii) adding more lexicalised adjectives to the existing list in the protocol; and (iv) suggesting a guideline that would allow one to consistently distinguish between participles that could function as adverbs as well as participles that could function as prepositions. The conclusion that was reached after the analysis of the part-of-speech protocol is that the part-of-speech tag set in Afrikaans does not allow for the specific attributes and values of participles to be taken into account. Participles in the Afrikaans tag set are tagged strictly according to the function of the word. Although such an approach is very practical, it results in a linguistically poorer part-of-speech tag that ignores the verbal character of the participle. An alternative strategy is therefore suggested for the part-of-speech tagging of participles in which the attributes and values of the verb tag are adapted. / MA (Linguistics and Literary Theory), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The study is a comparative analysis of conceptual metaphors in English and Shona. The objectives of this study were: to compare the metaphorical expressions of English and Shona in the same or similar domains in order to establish on the one hand whether there are similarities and/or differences cross-linguistically and cross-culturally in the metaphorical construal of reality between these two languages and on the other hand, to establish what the underlying motivation is for the similarities and the differences between these two unrelated languages. The thesis also explores the reasons for the similarities in terms of particular assumptions underlying conceptual metaphors, that is, embodiment and ecological motivations. / Linguistics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

In this dissertation, I investigate the cognitive processes integral to intertextual readings by referring to the cognitive linguistics framework known as conceptual blending. I refer to different genres of intertextual texts and then explain these intertexts in terms of cognitive principles and processes, such as conceptual blending networks. By applying the framework of conceptual blending to intertexts within different genres, I suggest that the underlying cognitive processes are universal for the interpretation of any type of intertextual text. My findings indicate that conceptual blending underpins intertextuality which is cognitive, creative and dynamic in nature. This means that the meaning we construct from intertexts is dependent on the context in which they appear and cannot be studied in isolation. Investigating intertextual texts from a cognitive linguistics perspective reveals new inferences (such as the influence of implicit knowledge as a type of intertext) and the creativity involved in the meaning-making process. / Linguistics / M.A. (Linguistics)

In this dissertation, I investigate whether the conceptualisation of computerised technological phenomena is influenced by social variables, in particular exposure to the computer. The conceptualisation and behaviour of a group of students majoring in technology-related fields were studied. Through the application of Conceptual Blending Theory, the multi-modal desktop metaphorical blend (DMMB) (as an electronic representation of an actual office desktop) was focused on. The participants were provided with tasks with the aim of determining whether they conceptualise the electronic desktop as a literal ‘thing-in-itself’ or as an e-version of their actual desks. The intent was to examine to what extent social variables, especially exposure, motivate the nature of the conceptualisation. Therefore, it is hypothesised that exposure, regarded as the primary variable in this study, influences conceptualisation of the DMMB to the extent where the it either loses its metaphoric quality in participants, who maintain regular and prolonged exposure to the computer, or retains the metaphoric quality of the DMMB in participants, who are not exposed to the computer on a regular and prolonged basis. Two groups were distinguished based on the extent of the individual participants’ exposure to computer technology, namely a high-exposure group and a low-exposure group. A mixed method approach was used to test and analyse data collected from individual participants, as well as from the high- and low-exposure groups. Methods used to test these hypotheses included questionnaires, word association (a conceptual task), controlled observation (a behavioural task), and interviews. The resulting data were analysed by means of a thematic interview analysis and non-parametric statistical tests. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M.A. (Linguistics)

The study is a comparative analysis of conceptual metaphors in English and Shona. The objectives of this study were: to compare the metaphorical expressions of English and Shona in the same or similar domains in order to establish on the one hand whether there are similarities and/or differences cross-linguistically and cross-culturally in the metaphorical construal of reality between these two languages and on the other hand, to establish what the underlying motivation is for the similarities and the differences between these two unrelated languages. The thesis also explores the reasons for the similarities in terms of particular assumptions underlying conceptual metaphors, that is, embodiment and ecological motivations. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)