| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
YONEYAMA Mitsuaki Seikei Univ., Facculty of Letters Professor, 文学部, 教授 (60054392)
TOSU Norimitsu Keio Univ., Faculty of Letters Professor, 文学部, 教授 (50102017)
YAMANASHI Masaaki Univ. of Kyoto, Dept. of Human Sciences Associate Professor, 人間科学部, 助教授 (80107086)
YAMANAKA Keiichi Univ. of Tokyo, Col. of Arts and Sciences Professor, 教養学部, 教授 (20056055)
KAWAKAMI Seisaku Univ. of Osaka, Facculty of Letters Professor, 文学部, 教授 (20038467)
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| Research Abstract |
'Cognitive semantics' is an interdisciplinarily oriented latest development in linguistic semantics. In view of this fact, the present project is concerned with exploring both the theoretical viability and the empirical validity of this new approach. The central core of our research activity is represented by a series of meetings under the title of 'Seminar in Cognitive Linguistics', which are held once a month at the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo in the Metropolitan area and once in two months at the Faculty of Letters, University of Osaka in the Kansai area. In each meeting, one or two presentations are made on a specific topic or topics, followed by lively discussion. Side by side with these regular events, there were a lecture, a seminar, and a symposium with Prof. R. Langacker, a leading figure in cognitive linguistics, in Tokyo and Kobe in 1992. Members of the present research group also played the central role in organizing and conducting a symposium or a workshop on the occasion of the annual meeting of the English Language Society of Japan for three successive years since 1990. In the meanwhile, individual members of the group conducted their empirical investigation on their selected topics, interviewing the informants whenever desirable. Arguments against the traditional doctrine of the 'arbitrariness' of language and the transformational account of the 'autonomy' of grammar have been persuasively put forward, together with such interesting points as the prototypical structure of the notion of 'agentivity', the fuzziness of the boundary between 'metaphor' and 'metonymy', the 'bifocal' structure of the notion of 'causation', the role of 'verbs of sensation' as encoding schemas, to mention just a few of them.
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