vdoc.pub_an-introduction-to-cognitive-linguistics

PROTOTYPES AND CATEGORIES 39
last few years. 14 (The case of pictograms, as used in traffic signs, is more
complex because here the drawings are used as a vehicle for instructions
and will therefore be neglected.)
We would hold the position that the effectiveness of reduced drawings
is not a general phenomenon even with concrete objects and organisms,
but depends on the kind of lexical category to be illustrated. Just look at
the drawings of a bungalow and a cottage in Figure 1.12, which are both
taken from the same dictionary (LDOCE2, 1987). The bungalow is reduced
to the functional parts (one-storey building with walls, roof, windows, door),
and can still be readily identified. In contrast, the illustration of the cottage
contains a wealth of detail, and this seems to be necessary for easy
recognition, so it is in fact more easily categorized than some of the plainer
drawings of cottages in Figure 1.10.
From this it can be deduced that the prototype gestalt of a cottage comprises
more than the complete and well-proportioned parts of a house, important
as all this may be. The function of a cottage includes notions like creating
warmth and cosiness and being embedded in natural rural surroundings.
In other words, all sorts of emotional and attitudinal properties are involved.
Similarly it is difficult to imagine a line drawing of an English pub (and,
incidentally, none of the major dictionaries provides one); the wealth of
gestalt properties applying to a pub is simply too great.
Or take another simple case, the teddy bear. To approximate the prototype
gestalt of a teddy bear it is certainly not enough to give the outline
drawing of a teddy that coincides with its natural model, the brown bear.
What is also needed is an indication of its softness (something that takes
us beyond the visual to the tactile properties of the gestalt), and, perhaps
most important, the teddy should be hugged by a child to round off the
general impression of its function.
This shows that even in the domain of concrete objects we are not just
confronted with a single kind of gestalt prototype (the ‘reduced type’) but
bungalow
Figure 1.12
Bungalow and cottage: examples of reduced and ‘rich’ dictionary
illustrations (from LDOCE2, 1987)