Събития

Корпус 1, Зала 20

Организатор:
Департамент "Когнитивна наука и психология"

Лектор:
Prof. Biljana Mišić Ilić (Department of English, Faculty of Philosophy and Centre for Cognitive Studies at the University of Niš, Serbia)

Модератор:
Проф. д-р Лилия Гурова

Участници:
Преподаватели, студенти и алумни на департамент „Когнитивна наука и психология“

In this talk, Prof. Biljana Mišić Ilić will address a possible connection between image schemas, lexical semantics and the significance of co-textual characteristics for concept construction. 

Image schemas are generally understood as dynamic mental patterns derived from our perceptual and bodily interactions that structure our understanding, forming the pre-conceptual building blocks for more complex ideas (Johnson, 1987). On the other hand, more complex events are to be interpreted by a group of interacting image schemas engaged in the conceptualization (Hedblom et al., 2015).

In particular, the focus here is on a specific cluster of image schemas related to the concept of motion, namely force and path, with a direction centre-periphery or periphery-centre. From the empirical analysis of a number of apparently very disparate examples from a newspaper corpus containing combinations of these three image schemas, it can be assumed that they motivate the semantics of expressions containing them. Namely, when put together, the three image schemas provide a basis for a more abstract, joint referential interpretation in which a force sets in motion a movement operating in two ways – either from the central point of a system, slowly dispersing in concentric circles of distance, or from the farthest of these circles, increasing and focusing as it moves toward the central point. A more concrete subspecification of image schemas (e.g. type of force, direction of movement, path covered, etc.), and possible optional schemas (e.g. link, containment) add to a finer semantic interpretation. Such a schematic framework is further filled with particular lexical units (mostly contextualized verbs) with their particular (semantic) senses.

Ultimately, on a more general level, different lexical manifestations related to the concept of motion can be shown to be conceptually based on a more abstract image schematic structure that sets the elementary cognitive basis for interpretation. The consequence is that image schemas may be viewed not only as higher-order categories, but potentially, also as generated by some higher-order underlying schematic principles, a tendency noted in theoretical semantics (Jackendoff, 1990) and experimental cognitive science alike (Antović et al., 2020).  

References:
- Antović M., Mitić, J., & Benecasa, N. 2020. ‘‘Conceptual rather than perceptual: Cross-modal binding of pitch sequencing is based on an underlying schematic structure’’. Psychology of Music, 48(1), 84-104.
- Hedblom, Maria, Oliver Kutz,  Fabian Neuhaus. 2015. Choosing the right path: Image schema theory as a foundation for concept invention. Journal of Artificial General Intelligence 6(1). 21–54. Jackendoff, Ray. 1990. Semantic Structures. MIT press.
- Johnson, Mark. 1987. The body in the mind. The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reasoning. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Biljana Mišić Ilić is a Full Professor at the Department of English, Faculty of Philosophy, and a member of Centre for Cognitive Studies at the University of Niš, Serbia. Her academic interests include pragmatics, discourse analysis, contact linguistics, cognitive linguistics and contrastive studies of English and Serbian. She has published 2 monographs, 4 university textbooks, more than 80 papers in scholarly journals and collections, co-edited three thematic volumes for Cambridge Scholars Publishing and more than 20 thematic volumes and conference proceedings for the University of Niš.
In the past several years her focused turned to more cognitive phenomena, due to the participation in the "SCHEMAS" project (2022-2025), funded through the prestigious "Ideas" programme of the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia. In particular, she participated in ample theoretical and empirical research on image schema complexes and their scalarity, and possible higher-order constraints relevant for meaning construction and interpretation in various types of discourses and cross-linguistically.
Her non-teaching academic activities include the participation in several Tempus/Erasmus+ projects and serving as the main coordinator of one, Fostering University Support Services and Procedures for Full Participation in the European Higher Education Area. She also serves as a reviewer for numerous national and international journals and academic publications. She was the President of the Serbian Association for the Study of English (SASE) and a member of the Board of European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) (2009-2019), and the Secretary of ESSE (2020-2025).