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Abstract:
The study of conceptual mappings, including metaphoric mappings, has produced great insights over the last several decades, not only for the study of language, but also for the study of such subjects as scientific discovery, design, mathematical thinking, and computer interfaces. This tradition of inquiry is fulfilling its promises, with new findings and new applications all the time. Looking for conceptual mappings and their properties proves to be a rich method for discovery. To the initial studies that focused on cross-domain mappings and their most visible products have now been added many additional dimensions. Detailed studies have been carried out on topics such as compression, integration networks, and the principles and constraints that govern them. This blooming field of research has as one consequence the rethinking of metaphor. We have a richer and deeper understanding of the processes underlying metaphor than we did previously. In this article, we will illustrate the central areas of theoretical advance by looking in some detail at the metaphor of TIME AS SPACE.

conceptual integration, cognitive science, metaphor, compression, time, space

Abstract:
Conceptual integration, or "blending," is a basic mental operation with constitutive and governing principles. It underlies human mental singularities and is at the heart of human invention and creativity. "Double-scope" blending is the highest form of conceptual integration and the hallmark of human higher-order cognition. A double-scope conceptual integration network has inputs with different (and often clashing) organizing frames and an organizing frame for the blend that includes parts of each of those organizing frames and has emergent structure of its own. In such networks, both organizing frames make central contributions to the blend, and their sharp differences offer the possibility of rich clashes. Far from blocking the construction of the network, such clashes offer challenges to the imagination and the resulting blended frames can turn out to be highly creative. This paper illustrates the mechanisms of frame blending with central examples from linguistics, economics, and philosophy.

Conceptual Integration, Blending, Frames, Linguistics, Economics, Philosophy

Abstract:
In this article, we look at some aspects of polysemy which derive from the power of meaning potential. More specifically, we focus on aspects linked to the operation of conceptual blending, a major cognitive resource for creativity in many of its manifestations.

conceptual blending, conceptual integration, polysemy, linguistics

Abstract:
This is an expanded version of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. 1998. "Conceptual Integration Networks." Cognitive Science 22:2 (April-June 1998), 133-187. Conceptual integration - "blending" - is a general cognitive operation on a par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing. It serves a variety of cognitive purposes. It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Blending is easy to detect in spectacular cases but it is for the most part a routine, workaday process that escapes detection except on technical analysis. It is not reserved for special purposes, and is not costly.

In blending, structure from input mental spaces is projected to a separate, blended mental space. The projection is selective. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations.

Blending operates according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. It additionally observes a set of optimality principles.

Conceptual Integration, Blending, Mental Space, Metaphor, Counterfactual, Analogy, Vital Relations, Compression

Abstract:
An investigation of the way in which the basic mental operation of conceptual integration ("blending") is central to grammar.

This is an expanded web version of Fauconnier and Turner, 1996 ("Blending as a Central Process of Grammar." in Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language. Edited by Adele Goldberg. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information [CSLI] [distributed by Cambridge University Press]. Pages 113-129.) This expanded version consists of the original article, additional diagrams for the caused motion construction that were edited from the original article to save space, and an additional section on the ditransitive construction, which is excerpted from Turner and Fauconnier, 1999, "A Mechanism of Creativity," Poetics Today.

grammar, cognitive linguistics, conceptual integration, blending, constructions

Abstract:
The invention of each new communications technology has brought new opportunities for understanding the self by blending our vague, diffuse notions of self over time with our notion of self as a user of the technology. These technologies include semaphore signaling systems, signed language, telegraphy, personal letter writing, telephony, radio, television, e-mail, and chat rooms. We know our technologies better than we know ourselves. Our communications technologies are designed to operate at human scale and are therefore at the center of what we know best. Accordingly, we think of ourselves in terms of them, by blending our general concept of ourselves with our understanding of how the communications technology works.

conceptual integration, blending, technology, identity, cognitive science

Abstract:
Blending is indispensable for advanced narrative cognition. In The Literary Mind (1996), I argued that the modern mind derives from our remarkable capacity to deploy a cohort of basic mental operations-story, projection, blending, and parable. These operations are a pack, a troupe, a self-feeding cyclone, an autocatalytic vortex, a breeder reactor, a dynamic heterarchy-choose your metaphor: they labor together. Some of the evidence I presented in The Literary Mind can be misinterpreted, it seems, as suggesting that advanced narrative cognition comes first in the sequence, and that upon this rock the other operations build their conceptual church. My purpose here is to correct that misinterpretation. Mature narrative cognition does not exist without blending. Blending is not a second step.

conceptual integration, blending, narrative, theory of mind, personal identity, perspective, other minds, future self, past self, discounting the future, mental time travel, projection of intentionality, compression, mental space

Abstract:
Conceptual projection from one mental space to another always involves projection to "middle" spaces-abstract "generic" middle spaces or richer "blended" middle spaces. Projection to a middle space is a general cognitive process, operating uniformly at different levels of abstraction and under superficially divergent contextual circumstances. Middle spaces are indispensable sites for central mental and linguistic work. The process of blending is in particular a fundamental and general cognitive process, running over many (conceivably all) cognitive phenomena, including categorization, the making of hypotheses, inference, the origin and combining of grammatical constructions, analogy, metaphor, and narrative. Blending is not secondary to these phenomena but prerequisite, and its operation is not restricted to any one of these phenomena. We give evidence for blending from a wide range of data that includes everyday language, idioms, literary metaphor, non-verbal conceptualization of action, creative thought in mathematics, evolution of socio-cultural models, jokes, and advertising. Blending is in general invisible to consciousness and detectable only on analysis. Blended spaces are routinely necessary for constructing central meanings, inferences, and structures, and for motivating emotions. We show that the blending of highly schematic spaces yields the fusion of grammatical constructions and functional assemblies studied in Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar. Finally, recognizing the cognitive import of middle spaces allows us to propose a generalized four-space model of conceptual projection that subsumes a variety of previous models. We explore the consequences of this model for the theory of concept formation.

Introduction 3 I. The four space model 4 II. The phenomenon of blended spaces 5 1. Dante's Inferno 5 2. Regatta 7 3. The riddle of the Buddhist monk 8 4. Getting ahead of oneself 9 5. Tuning in, and other actions 11 6. Complex numbers 12 III. Prototypes of blending and mistaken reductions 14 IV. Further evidence for conceptual projection into a blended space 17 1. President Bush on third base 18 2. President Nixon in France 19 3. Personification 21 V. Category extension 22 VI. Generic spaces 24 VII. Parameters and subschemes 25 VIII. Blending and grammar 30 IX. The concept of a concept 33 Notes 35 References 38

blending, conceptual integration, metaphor, mental spaces, analogy, counterfactuals, inference, grammar

Abstract:
The first of four lectures at the Coll¿ge de France in 2000 on the subject of conceptual mappings and conceptual structure.

Creativity, Imagination, Brain, Conceptual Integration, Blending, Mapping, Creativity

Abstract:
A review of Terrence Deacon, 1997, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W. W. Norton.

Deacon, evolution, language, brain

Abstract:
A reconsideration of the standard questions concerning literal and nonliteral language and thought, from the point of view of conceptual integration theory.

The study of figure has been sidetracked from basic conceptual issues since the Greeks, with the surprising and humbling result that the study of figure, one of the oldest bodies of knowledge in the human sciences, remains in our age still in its infancy.

literal, figurative, figure, conceptual integration, conceptual blending, metaphor, metonymy

Abstract:
This article analyzes the complexities of the basic mental operation of conceptual integration, especially double-scope conceptual integration, as revealed in texts by Shakespeare, especially Hamlet and King Henry the Sixth, part one, most notably the speech by Lord Talbot addressed to "Thou Antic Death."

conceptual integration, metaphor, metonymy, blending, compression

Abstract:
The second of four lectures at the Collège de France in 2000 on the subject of conceptual mappings and conceptual structure.

Blending, Conceptual Integration, Conceptual Mapping, Meaning, Creativity, Emergence

Abstract:
How do we make sense of a bare equation like language is a virus? Frequently, a bare equation can be understood as expressing a conventional basic metaphor which we already know as part of our everyday linguistic competence. For example, this job is a detour can be understood as expressing the basic metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY. In such a case, the basic metaphor provides most of the interpretation. But when a bare equation is not recognized as an instance of a conventional basic metaphor, then it must be understood through different conceptual instruments. This article discusses some of those conceptual instruments, especially the Invariance Principle and the commonplace notion of The Nature of Things.

metaphor, blending

Abstract:
Reason and choice depend upon backstage cognition - mental operations that typically operate below the horizon of observation, too intricately for consciousness to monitor or manage, interactively with each other, in the moment, very quickly, and with powers of access and recognition not otherwise available. Such mental operations include focal point reasoning, categorization, framing, grammar, prototyping, memory, mental space assembly and connection, narrative, and conceptual integration. This paper focuses on the role of conceptual integration - also known as "blending" - in counterfactual reasoning, choice, decision, and judgment.

cognitive science, reason, choice, conceptual integration, blending, focal point reasoning, categorization, framing, grammar, prototype, memory, mental space, narrative, conceptual integration, rational choice, counterfactual reasoning, decision, judgment

Abstract:
The fourth of four lectures at the Collège de France in 2000 on the subject of conceptual mappings and conceptual structure.

Blending, Conceptual Integration, Imagination, Creativity

Abstract:
The third of four lectures at the Collège de France in 2000 on the subject of conceptual mappings and conceptual structure.

Blending, Conceptual Integration, Imagination, Creativity, Memory

Abstract:
An analysis of the way in which conceptual integration, "blending," underlies human creativity, with examples from mathematics, language, literature, science, journalism, etc.

conceptual integration, blending, construction grammar, creativity

Abstract:
Review of Leonard Talmy, Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Two volumes. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Language: The Journal of the Linguistic Society of America 78:3 (2002), 576-578.

cognitive linguistics, semantics

Abstract:
Narrative and blending are two of the most central higher order operations of the cognitively modern human mind. This article explores how they work together.

narrative, blending, conceptual integration, story, language, cognitive linguistics

Abstract:
Biologically, we resemble other animals, but mentally, we leave them in the dust. The scope of human thought is vast. Why are we so different? This think-piece explores the scope of human thought, its possible origins, and the mental operations that make it possible.

Conceptual integration, blending, primate, mental time-travel, Tulving, Damasio, Neisser, explanation, prediction, brain imaging, brain mapping, neurophysiology, image schemas, art, norms, niches, culture

Abstract:
Compression is a phenomenon in conceptual integration that allows human beings simultaneously to control long diffuse chains of logical reasoning and to grasp the global meanings of such chains. Compression operates on a small set (under twenty) of relations rooted in fundamental human neurobiology as it applies to shared physical and socio-cultural human experience. So-called Vital Relations, including Cause-Effect, Change, Time, Identity, Intentionality, Representation, and Part-Whole, can apply across mental spaces, and also de®ne essential topology within mental spaces. In blending networks, a vital relation across inputs (outer-space vital relation) can be compressed into a vital relation within the blended space (inner-space vital relation). We show how one of the overarching goals of compression through blending is to achieve `human scale' in the blended space, where a great many of our conscious manipulations take place.

mental space, compression, conceptual integration, vital relation, blending

Abstract:
Conceptual integration is a basic mental operation that underlies higher human mental capacities. This article analyzes the role of conceptual integration in the conception of other minds, including minds of imaginary beings.

theory of mind, imaginary beings, fiction, autism, asperger's condition, intentionality, blending, conceptual integration

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the way in which the classical study of figure anticipated the development of modern construction grammars, and the ways in which construction grammar could be extended and improved by integrating some of the research initiatives of the classical study of figure. The article provides as an example an analysis of what the author has previously called the XYZ construction.

construction grammar, cognitive linguistics, conceptual blending, iconicity, figure, Milton, literature

Abstract:
Review of Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding, Cambridge: University Press, 1994. ix 527 pages

Abstract:
Conceptual connections that look inevitable in retrospect often come from industrious and dynamic creative work below the horizon of observation. I introduce the theory of conceptual integration and discuss constraints that shape and guide the construction of meaningful connections.

analogy, conceptual integration, blending