Matters

Some Tenets of Cognitive Semantics

"As an introduction, I want to contrast two approaches to formal semantics: one realistic and one cognitive. The fundamental difference concerns what kind of entities are the meanings of words. According to the realistic approach to semantics the meaning of an expression is something out there in the world. Cognitive semantics, on the other hand, identifies meanings of expressions with mental entities.
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The second paradigm of semantics is cognitivistic. The core idea of this approach is that meanings of expressions are mental. A semantics is seen as a mapping from the linguistic expressions to cognitive structures. Language itself is seen as part of the cognitive structure, and not an entity with independent standing. Within cognitive semantics the emphasis is on lexical meaning rather than on the meaning of sentences. This kind of semantics will be presented further in the following section."