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Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp32206

How do Language and Thought Influence Each Other?. A Reconsideration of Their Relationship with Parallel References to the History of Philosophy and Cognitive Linguistics

Ljudevit Fran Ježić orcid id orcid.org/0000-0003-2431-8366 ; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ivana Lučića 3, HR–10000 Zagreb


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Abstract

The paper explores the relationship of language and thought with respect to their mutual determination or influence. Two questions are considered crucial: how do we learn the meanings of conventional linguistic signs, including those for abstract concepts, and how do we express our original insights, thoughts and feelings through not-yet conventional linguistic means. These are followed by succinct answers and extensive elaborations referring to opposite views and linguistic examples from the history of philosophy and cognitive linguistics. It is argued that linguistic expressions, including metaphors, mostly incorporate how people represent (or once represented) the world to themselves through imagination and present (or once presented) the world to others through language. Hence language neither directly shows how we conceive and understand the world nor how we construct it in our thoughts. On the other hand, symbolization through metaphor and metonymy, as well as innovative verbalization, enable our cognition to communicate novel as well as abstract and philosophically demanding meanings.

Keywords

language; thought; cognition; conceptual metaphor; verbalization; symbolic cognition; Aristotle; Immanuel Kant; philosophy of cognitive linguistics; George Lakoff; Marc Johnson

Hrčak ID:

200281

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/200281

Publication date:

30.4.2018.

Article data in other languages: croatian french german

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