Nouns and Verbs

Ray Jackendoff (I think) talks about the metaphorical ontology of nouns and verbs, indicating that they exist within our cognitive apparatus as entities which approach the condition of objects and actions respectively. So our understanding of entities which we refer to by using nouns is constituted as if these entities were physical objects, even when they are actually abstract concepts. Verbs, on the other hand, are understood as actions involving changes in state. Lakoff and others indicate that changes in state are, in turn, understood as changes in location (so we say, for example, that a change in temperatures is a case of GOING from cold TO hot). This suggests that all or most verbs are conceptualised as changes in location, as moving from one state/place to another. This must also apply to the verb/noun distinction between 'knowledge' and 'knowing'.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Ray
• Jackendoff
• verbs
• nouns
• linguistics
• language
• epistemology
• embodied
• cognition
• metaphor
• Lakoff