An report on Prototype Category View

李成烨

The book, An Introduction to Pragmatics and cognition, written by Sun Ya, are altogether ten chapters, which are included in the field of cognitive linguistics and their brief introduction of each branch in cognition. The first chapter is about the brief introduction of cognitive linguistics, the definition, the historical backgrounds and the philosophical basis are introduced, which gives me a general impression on cognitive linguistics. The connection between pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, moreover, are also introduced, as well as their divergences and their characteristics.

Then, in the subsequent chapters, the prototype category view, the theory of image schema,the cognitive view of metaphor, the cognitive view of metonymy, mental space theory and conceptual blending theory, the generalization of politeness research, the research of demanding speech act, the misunderstanding research and the introduction of main masterpiece of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics overseas and so forth, these all have a generalized description. After an introduction for these conceptions, there will be some example in the last part of the chapter, which gives us a chance to understand those ideas better, and it explains to us that many phenomenon in English can be expounded through these theories. At the same time, it can also explain the social phenomenon, which is also a reflection of cognition in our life and society. Traditionally, we think that metaphor and metonymy are a way of figure speech, however, we now know that they are not only a figure speech method, but also a cognitive method. And cognition is not the thing we see or we feel in the world , which is not the real entity in the world, but is the experience and conception we feel about the world.

Among these theories, what I most impressed is the prototype category view. Before we continuing, let us talk categorization first. As far as I am concerned, it can considered as the class membership in a brief word. Whenever we see of feel things, we may have the habit of categorizing it into a class, such as , apple, belongs to the fruit; pepper, vegetable. And there always be a prototype, the reason why they belongs to a class is that they have similarities with the prototype, and those who are not prototypes are marginal members for their similarities with the typical member. Prototype is the stand for and the center of the category. In the traditional view, each member in the class is equal to on another, and they can be judged by the necessary and sufficient condition. However, in reality, it can not be achieved because there is no the same thing in the world, there is only similarities. Because of their differences, their status in the categorization is not equal, there are a prototype and marginal member, which makes up the radially structured. The prototype is in the middle of the circle, while the marginal is surrounded with the prototype. Sometimes, we meet that people cannot figure out that tomato is vegetable or fruit, for we can see it both in the field of vegetable and fruit, which means their boundaries is not clear. And we call it fuzziness.

When scanning from the prototype conception, the word hyponymy came to my mind. Hyponymy can also be seen as a matter of class membership. Let us give an example, flower, this word is the superordinate, and tulip, violet and jasmine are the lower terms of the flower, which is called the hyponymys. This kind of conception about hyponymy is similar to that of prototype category view. And the superordinate is just like the prototype, whereas the hyponymys is the marginal members of categorization. But this is the same with the traditional view of categorization. When talking about the hyponymy, we may come to the word polysemy, whose definition is that the same word has different meanings, which can be explained in accord with various situations, we call it context. The original meaning of the word is the prototype of the word, but when we put it in a different context, the word can have different meaning according to the context. And the process of meaning change can be called the prototype shift. During the process, the prototype , also called the original meaning of the word, is changed toward other meanings of the word, that is the marginal meaning .

All in all, the phenomenon of prototype category view can be found in our daily life. In some way, it is the extension of the prototype effect, just like the examples listed in the textbook about comparison of the prototype meaning between “eye” and “眼睛”. I also find that when you learn more, you will want to know more, and you will find many phenomenons in our daily life or in academic field can be interpreted clearly, which are all owed to our human civilization.

References:

[1]孫亚.语用和认知概论[M].北京:北京大学出版社,2007.

[2]王寅.认知语言学[M].上海:上海外语教育出版社,2006.