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wellesley.edu>Talmy, Leonard (2003) Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Volume 1: Concept Structuring Systems; Volume 2: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring, MIT Press, Language, Speech, and Communication series. Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-2236.html Laura Wagner, Wellesley College This two-volume set of Talmy's collected works is now out in paperback form. Volume 1 contains 8 papers which constitute the main pillars of Talmy's program: The Relation of Grammar to Cognition, Fictive Motion in Language and 'Ception', How Language Structures Space, The Windowing of Attention in Language, Figure and Ground in Language, Structures that Relate Events, Force Dynamics in Language, and Cognition and The Semantics of Causation. Volume 2 contains another 8 papers including Talmy's important typological work (Lexicalization Patterns, Surveying Lexicalization Patterns, A Typology of Event Integration, and Borrowing Semantic Space: Diachronic Hybridization) as well as some more speculative works (Semantic Conflict and Resolution, Communicative Goals and Means: Their Cognitive Interaction, The Cognitive Culture System, and A Cognitive Framework for Narrative Structure). In addition, both volumes begin with a brief introduction to Talmy's approach. All of the papers in these volumes have been published previously. However, Talmy has revised and expanded them, and has incorporated some previously unpublished data and arguments (including some from his dissertation). The intended audience for these volumes is professionals and advanced students. The writing is dense and technical. Talmy coins many of his own technical terms (e.g. agonist, satellite) and although these terms are periodically used throughout the volumes, they are only clearly defined in the original paper in which they were coined. As Talmy's general program is well-known and several of these papers are old favorites, I will provide only a brief review of Talmy's approach instead of summarizing each paper in turn. In a nutshell, Talmy's Cognitive Semantics ''seeks to ascertain the global integrated system of conceptual structuring in language'' (Vol. 1, p. 3). Talmy takes basic conceptual categories such as space, time, events, causation, perspective, agentivity, and intentions and delineates how these concepts are structured in the linguistic system. In each domain, language creates -- largely through the use of closed class elements -- a schematic organizational structure into which more particular knowledge -- largely in the form of open class elements -- is situated. The nature of the schematic organization is revealed through a close analysis of the grammatical means for expressing these basic concepts, the range of information within these concepts that can (and in some cases, cannot) be expressed grammatically, and how the pieces of information interact with each other in linguistic expression. At the heart of the program is the idea that there are intrinsic and inextricable links between the ways we conceptualize the world and the way language structures those conceptualizations. Evaluating these volumes is a little bit difficult because to a certain extent, these papers have already been evaluated by the field as a whole. Some of the ideas presented in these papers have become thoroughly entrenched in linguistic and psycholinguistic research. In particular, Talmy's typological analysis of motion events (with languages being either predominantly verb or satellite-framed), and the use of figure and ground as a way to understand argument relations are simply part of the common currency of our field. Although many of the ideas will be familiar to readers, there are still many delights worth (re-)visiting in these volumes: the arguments for maintaining the open/closed class distinction, the wealth of cross-linguistic examples (particularly in the papers originally written in the 1970's), the linguistic schematization of space. There are lots of examples that make you think, and enough data to mount a challenge to nearly anybody's semantic theory. Talmy envisions his program extremely broadly, and one can't help but have a certain affection for someone willing to put forward such a grand theory. There's an appealing willingness to take on any problem; the goodwill he generates with his successes is more than enough to carry one through the somewhat more indulgent applications of the program. With a collection this broad and this rich, it seems small- minded to identify the occasional argument that falls flat or example that isn't convincing. That said, there are a few elements that recur throughout the volumes that do bear criticizing. The first criticism has to do with the revised nature of the papers. Talmy could have opted to simply publish his collected papers in their original form but he chose instead to update and revise them. Given this choice, it is a little disappointing how little reference there is to more current work in this area. There are a few brief asides about the work of Goldberg and Fauconnier, for example, but virtually no attempt is made to connect to the wealth of work in Cognitive Linguistics and psycholinguistics that directly develops some of the ideas that Talmy discusses. The second criticism concerns the way Talmy undersells the cognitive dimension of his cognitive semantics. In several places in these volumes, Talmy makes explicit claims about how the mind itself works (e.g. Vol 2-ch.1's claim that backgrounded elements yield lower cognitive costs , and Vol 1-ch.2's discussion of apparent motion, the lasting effects of infant locomotion, and perhaps most astonishingly, identification of 13 parameters of cognitive functioning). In his introductory remarks, Talmy quite clearly articulates that his program begins with language but is aimed to extend towards (hence the ''towards'' in the title of these volumes) cognition more generally. However, the casual assumption that the linguistic analysis has already told us about cognition seems to be suggesting that the program has already hit its mark. This is simply not the case. Implicit in Talmy's program is a strong hypothesis, namely, that the linguistic structuring of concepts is deeply revealing about how those concepts are structured in the mind more generally. Testing this hypothesis requires two steps: first, we need to have a detailed idea about how language structures the concepts and second, we need to investigate the extent to which these structures actually correspond to our non- linguistic mental structures. Talmy's work is focused exclusively -- perhaps brilliantly, but exclusively nonetheless -- on the first step in this testing procedure. There are plenty of researchers out there who have taken up the second step seriously (I count myself among them) but Talmy isn't one of them -- certainly he isn't in these volumes. It is perhaps instructive to compare Talmy's treatment of Psychology to his treatment of Atsugewi. Talmy provides many linguistic examples from Atsugewi and these examples strengthen his arguments and his program in general because his knowledge is both specific and deep. His knowledge of Psychology - at least as illustrated in these volumes -- is neither. Talmy is certainly not obligated to discuss the cognition end of his program (he has certainly done his share of the work already), but he needn't undermine it by discussing it in such a careless fashion. My final criticism has to do with the sheer overwhelming force of the number of lists presented in the volumes. There are no fewer than 20 features identified as relevant for structuring spatial configurations using closed-class elements and another 20 elements define the force-dynamic system; there are also 6 sub-categories within the perspective system, 9 principles governing semantic borrowing, 8 associated characteristics of figures and grounds, 15 communicative goals, 7 sub-types of the degree- of-differentiation parameter within narrative structure, 35 semantic categories expressed (or not) by verb-complex elements, and so on and on. What's more, Talmy periodically notes that other elements besides those listed are relevant, leaving one with the depressing feeling that however overwhelming these lists are, they aren't even exhaustive. In some cases -- e.g. the typological analysis of motion verbs and possibly the analysis of force dynamics -- the lists are part of a systematic exploration of a few well articulated semantic parameters. But more often, the lists seem simply to be descriptions of a set of phenomena without necessarily stemming from or leading to any greater theoretical organization. This criticism may in fact be deeply unfair: nobody ever criticizes a chemist for identifying yet one more element to add to the long list of elements already discovered. Language is a complicated creature and it may simply be the case that it takes this many features to adequately describe it; it's not Talmy's fault that language is what it is. Nevertheless, one does start longing for some general principles which, while they might not be as descriptively accurate, would at least give the illusion of a coherent explanation. Criticisms notwithstanding, these volumes present an extremely important body of work that has had, and no doubt will continue to have, extensive influence in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science more generally. Bringing all of Talmy's papers together into one place is quite helpful and these volumes will doubtless grace the shelves of researchers for years to come. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Laura Wagner is currently at Wellesley College. Her research centers on the acquisition of tense and aspect and the non-linguistic representation of event concepts in development.Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue