Semantics

220 BASIC SEMANTICS
Blending theory, was first formulated by Fauconnier and Turner (1994)
and it is a relatively recent development in Cognitive Linguistics. There are
two important concepts in this connection: mental space and blended space.
This theory provides a new explanation of metaphorical phenomena. Mental
spaces are small conceptual packets that we construct for the sake of
conversation. Input spaces (which include both source and target domains)
provide the basic material for metaphor interpretation. This information
merges in the blended space, where additional information is created. This
approach is also used to account for other cognitive linguistic phenomena
like metonymy, referential opacity, and presupposition.
Fauconnier’s main contribution explains how language users assign
and manipulate reference, including the use of names, articles and
pronouns. He focuses on the cognitive processes triggered during discourse
by these linguistic structures and on how speakers and hearers keep track
of the entities referred to in the language. His central idea is that when
we use language we are constantly constructing domains.
These domains in turn are like large areas of common reference. As
an example, we take Saeed’s reference to Julius Caesar. If we talk about
Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, we can handle several relevant domains,
or mental spaces. One domain is the world of the play, while another might
be the real world, where Julius Caesar is a historically documented figure.
We always make use of such division into domains and we use the same
name Julius Caesar for both the historical figure and the character in the
play. The process can be made more complex if we refer to the actor
playing this part and say that Julius Caesar was too young. And made even
more complicated if, seeing some children running off the foyer’s with a
life-size figure of the actor in costume, we say, following Saeed’s example:
Hey, they are stealing Julius Caesar. That is, we use the same name to refer
to the historical person, a role in a play written about him, an actor playing
that role and a figure of that actor playing the role. Fauconier’s mental
spaces try to explain this kind of mental flexibility.
Saeed compares this concept with the notion of possible worlds used
in formal semantics where it is assumed that the speaker can divide up
reality into separate domains of reference.
10.6. LANGACKER´S COGNITIVE GRAMMAR
Langacker´s cognitive grammar is possibly one of the most influential
contributions to the area of cognitive linguistics in the last twenty years.
One of his main tenets is the idea that there is no distinction between