2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Studies on change predicates in the framework of the Mental Space Theory

Research Project

Project/Area Number	11610516
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	仏語・仏文学
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo
Principal Investigator	SAKAHARA Shigeru The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Professor, 大学院・総合文化研究科, 教授 (40153902)
Project Period (FY)	1999 – 2001
Keywords	change predicate / cognitive process / reading / fictive change / cognitive semantics / Mental space / prototype / natural language
Research Abstract	I have pointed out various readings of sentences containing a change predicate and have shown the factors that produce these readings. Change predicates bring up the following threefold interesting ambiguity of interpretation. (1) change on the subject : Jacques a vieilli. (2) cumulative interpretation via value-changing interpretation : Le president a beaucoup rajeuni. (3) change produced by a change in a certain evaluation criterion : Chaque annee, Celine devient plus facile. (1) expresses an ordinary change, which occurred in the subject Jacques. (2) has a reading such that the president has changed and the new president is younger than the former one. None of the successive presidents becomes younger. In the cumulative reading in question, the ages of the successive values of the role president are compared. (3) expresses a change which does not occur in the subject itself. The writer Celine died long time ago and his work does not become easier every year. Rather the reading skill of the speaker has improved (for example, his knowledge of French has gotten better, he has acquired now a rich experience of life, better knowledge about literature, and so on), and because of this, Celine's work seems to be less difficult. So the actual change happened in the speaker's ability and not in Celine's work, but this change is expressed as if it had occurred to Celine's work. In this research, I studied based how our cognitive process decide the cognition of the outside world and how it is reflected in language. This research is a part of the project to construct a semantic theory bosed on human cognitive processes.