A Cognitive Approach to Mental Spaces in English and Kurdish

Authors

  • Haybat Shaker Qadir Department of English, College of Basic Education, Salahaddin University-Erbil
  • Ali Mahmood Jukil Department of English, College of Basic Education, Salahaddin University-Erbil

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21271/zjhs.28.SpA.28

Keywords:

Mental Spaces, Space Builders, Counterfactual, Constructions, Conditionals

Abstract

In this article, mental spaces in English and Kurdish are analyzed. The study investigates the construction of mental space in English and Kurdish in order to identify differences and similarities between the two languages. Examples from both languages are used. The Kurdish examples are taken from rudaw.com and English examples are from every day uses and bbc.com. Mental space builders based on the Fauconnier approach are examined and shown to be effective, including modal verbs, prepositional phrases, negative constructions, and discourse markers. Although each of these components serves as a space builder, the structure of the sentences that contain them varies between the two languages. For instance, in Kurdish negative constructions, the negative element appears at the end of the sentence, delaying the listener's perception of the negativity until the speaker completes the sentence.

References

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- Dancygier, B. and Sweetser, E., 2005. Mental spaces in grammar: Conditional constructions (Vol. 108). Cambridge University Press.

- Evans, V., 2006. Cognitive linguistics. Edinburgh University Press.

- Evans, V., Bergen, B. and Zinken, J., 2007. The cognitive linguistics reader. Equinox Publishing Ltd.

- Fauconnier, Gilles. Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

- Fauconnier, Gilles. Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

- Littlemore, J. and Taylor, J.R. eds., 2014. The Bloomsbury companion to cognitive linguistics. Bloomsbury Publishing.

- Szerencsi, Katalin. "Grammatical Devices for Building Spaces in Cognitive Semantics." Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 4, no. 2 (2012): 261-274.

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Published

2024-04-15

How to Cite

Qadir, H. S. ., & Jukil , A. M. . (2024). A Cognitive Approach to Mental Spaces in English and Kurdish. Zanco Journal of Human Sciences, 28(SpA), 468–475. https://doi.org/10.21271/zjhs.28.SpA.28

Issue

Vol. 28 No. SpA (2024)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Haybat Shaker Qadir, Ali Mahmood Jukil

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