<p>This study describes the English verb ’consider’ and the characteristics of some of its senses. An investigation of this kind may be useful, since a machine translation program, SYSTRAN, has invariably translated ’consider’ with the Swedish verbs ’betrakta’ (Eng: ’view’, regard’) and ’anse’ (Eng: ’regard’). This handling of ’consider’ is not satisfactory in all contexts.</p><p>Since ’consider’ is a cogitative verb, it is fascinating to observe that both the theory of semantic primes and universals and conceptual semantics are concerned with cogitation in various ways. Anna Wierzbicka, who is one of the advocates of semantic primes and universals, argues that THINK should be considered as a semantic prime. Moreover, one of the prime issues of conceptual semantics is to describe how thoughts are constructed by virtue of e.g. linguistic components, perception and experience.</p><p>In order to define and clarify the distinctions between the different senses, we have taken advantage of the theory of mental spaces.</p><p>This thesis has been structured in accordance with the meanings that have been indicated in WordNet as to ’consider’. As a consequence, the senses that ’consider’ represents have been organized to form the subsequent groups: ’Observation’, ’Opinion’ together with its sub-group ’Likelihood’ and ’Cogitation’ followed by its sub-group ’Attention/Consideration’.</p><p>A concordance tool, http://www.nla.se/culler, provided us with 90 literary quotations that were collected in a corpus. Afterwards, these citations were distributed between the groups mentioned above and translated into Swedish by SYSTRAN.</p><p>Furthermore, the meanings as to ’consider’ have also been related to the senses, recorded by the FrameNet scholars. Here, ’consider’ is regarded as a verb of ’Cogitation’ and ’Categorization’.</p><p>When this study was accomplished, it could be inferred that certain senses are connected to specific syntactic constructions. In other cases, however, the distinctions between various meanings can only be explained by virtue of semantics.</p><p>To conclude, it appears to be likely that an implementation is facilitated if a specific syntactic construction can be tied to a particular sense. This may be the case concerning some meanings of ’consider’. Machine translation is presumably a much more laborious task, if one is solely governed by semantic conditions.</p>

This study describes the English verb ’consider’ and the characteristics of some of its senses. An investigation of this kind may be useful, since a machine translation program, SYSTRAN, has invariably translated ’consider’ with the Swedish verbs ’betrakta’ (Eng: ’view’, regard’) and ’anse’ (Eng: ’regard’). This handling of ’consider’ is not satisfactory in all contexts. Since ’consider’ is a cogitative verb, it is fascinating to observe that both the theory of semantic primes and universals and conceptual semantics are concerned with cogitation in various ways. Anna Wierzbicka, who is one of the advocates of semantic primes and universals, argues that THINK should be considered as a semantic prime. Moreover, one of the prime issues of conceptual semantics is to describe how thoughts are constructed by virtue of e.g. linguistic components, perception and experience. In order to define and clarify the distinctions between the different senses, we have taken advantage of the theory of mental spaces. This thesis has been structured in accordance with the meanings that have been indicated in WordNet as to ’consider’. As a consequence, the senses that ’consider’ represents have been organized to form the subsequent groups: ’Observation’, ’Opinion’ together with its sub-group ’Likelihood’ and ’Cogitation’ followed by its sub-group ’Attention/Consideration’. A concordance tool, http://www.nla.se/culler, provided us with 90 literary quotations that were collected in a corpus. Afterwards, these citations were distributed between the groups mentioned above and translated into Swedish by SYSTRAN. Furthermore, the meanings as to ’consider’ have also been related to the senses, recorded by the FrameNet scholars. Here, ’consider’ is regarded as a verb of ’Cogitation’ and ’Categorization’. When this study was accomplished, it could be inferred that certain senses are connected to specific syntactic constructions. In other cases, however, the distinctions between various meanings can only be explained by virtue of semantics. To conclude, it appears to be likely that an implementation is facilitated if a specific syntactic construction can be tied to a particular sense. This may be the case concerning some meanings of ’consider’. Machine translation is presumably a much more laborious task, if one is solely governed by semantic conditions.

Un débat perdure toujours entre les partisans du relativisme linguistique et ceux qui penchent plutôt pour l’universalisme. Depuis Whorf, plusieurs expériences ont été menées pour déterminer si la langue avait une influence sur l’esprit d’un individu, mais très peu ont porté sur la pragmatique. Je propose d’explorer le relativisme linguistique selon la perspective de la pragmatique du langage. Deux approches théoriques en pragmatique s’opposent sur la question du relativisme : l’ethnopragmatique et la théorie de la pertinence. En utilisant des modèles de l’interaction culturelle en anthropologie, en particulier les idées de Bourdieu et le concept d’assemblage, je démontre que la flexibilité de la théorie de la pertinence permettrait d’y intégrer une composante relativiste, et ce, sans avoir à la dénaturer. Pour illustrer cette possibilité, j’introduis l’Identité Cognitive qui agit comme composante relativiste tout en permettant une interaction avec la pertinence universaliste du modèle. / There is a strong division between those who believe in linguistic relativity and those who tend more towards universalism. Since Whorf, many experiments were conducted to determine how and if language could influence thoughts, but not often they were focussed on pragmatics. I revisit the debate on linguistic relativism by considering pragmatics only. There are two different theoretical models in pragmatics at the time, and they support opposing views on relativism: ethnopragmatics and relevance theory. Using models of cultural interaction from anthropology, in particular the ideas of Bourdieu and the concept of assemblage, I show that relevance theory is flexible enough to be able to incorporate a relativistic component, without having to modify its core principles. To illustrate this necessary transformation, I introduce the Cognitive Identity that could interact with the universalistic relevance of the model and still be relativistic itself.

Un débat perdure toujours entre les partisans du relativisme linguistique et ceux qui penchent plutôt pour l’universalisme. Depuis Whorf, plusieurs expériences ont été menées pour déterminer si la langue avait une influence sur l’esprit d’un individu, mais très peu ont porté sur la pragmatique. Je propose d’explorer le relativisme linguistique selon la perspective de la pragmatique du langage. Deux approches théoriques en pragmatique s’opposent sur la question du relativisme : l’ethnopragmatique et la théorie de la pertinence. En utilisant des modèles de l’interaction culturelle en anthropologie, en particulier les idées de Bourdieu et le concept d’assemblage, je démontre que la flexibilité de la théorie de la pertinence permettrait d’y intégrer une composante relativiste, et ce, sans avoir à la dénaturer. Pour illustrer cette possibilité, j’introduis l’Identité Cognitive qui agit comme composante relativiste tout en permettant une interaction avec la pertinence universaliste du modèle. / There is a strong division between those who believe in linguistic relativity and those who tend more towards universalism. Since Whorf, many experiments were conducted to determine how and if language could influence thoughts, but not often they were focussed on pragmatics. I revisit the debate on linguistic relativism by considering pragmatics only. There are two different theoretical models in pragmatics at the time, and they support opposing views on relativism: ethnopragmatics and relevance theory. Using models of cultural interaction from anthropology, in particular the ideas of Bourdieu and the concept of assemblage, I show that relevance theory is flexible enough to be able to incorporate a relativistic component, without having to modify its core principles. To illustrate this necessary transformation, I introduce the Cognitive Identity that could interact with the universalistic relevance of the model and still be relativistic itself.