Semantic Extension, Subjectification, and Verbalization

Japanese cognitive linguistic scholar Shindo has focused her research on semantic extensions of perceptual and sensory expressions, and hypothesizes that the fields of perception and sensation should involve universal cognitive principles, because humans share almost identical bodily perceptions and functions. Here she offers evidence that the metaphorical extension of each word remains peculiarly restricted by its original characteristics, which demonstrates that the knowledge of language is firmly grounded in people's bodily experience. She offers four case studies of how adjectives originally describing a particular sense gradually took on abstract meaning. They are keen from the sense of touch, eager from taste, clear from sight, and plain from the sense of dimension. Other chapters set out the theory, methodology, implications for linguistics and other sciences. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mika Shindo holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Linguistics from Kyoto University. Her corpus research enables empirical diachronic analysis of semantic change. She has been a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Linguistics Department. She lectures on English at Kyoto University and other universities in the Kyoto area.