The image-schematic basis of causation and concession in English and Spanish

Abstract

[eng] Cognitive linguistics holds that meaning in language is the mapping between linguistic expressions and cognitive structures that arise from our direct sensory experience and actions in the world. The present paper investigates that claim by exploring the perceptuomotor representational basis of causal and concessive discourse connectives. Taking as a starting point Lakoff and Johnson's theory of image schemas (1987) and Talmy's work on force dynamics (1988), in two experiments, we tested naïve subjects' intuitions about the image-schematic component of four causal and concessive discourse markers. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to select the sentences that best described a series of animations that depicted forceful relations between two entities. English and Spanish participants consistently preferred descriptions with the connectives because / porque when one of the entities involved in the interaction was overcome by the other; whereas they favoured sentences with the connectors although /aunque if one of the entities was able to impose itself in spite of the opposition from the other entity. Similar results were obtained in a second experiment where subjects' judgements were only guided by the presence of a causative or concessive marker in the animations' descriptions. In this case, any lexical reference to the notion of force that could have biased participants' responses in Experiment 1 was avoided by using nonce words instead. Altogether, these results support the hypothesis that force dynamics image schemas underlie the core meaning of causal and concessive connectives, which act as pointers to a concept of causation that seems to recruit our experiential knowledge with forces. Key words: conceptualization, connectives, causation, concession, force dynamics, image schemas.