CONSTRUCTING MEANING THROUGH CREATIVE CATEGORIAL EXTENSION IN POETIC DISCOURSE

[CODIS WORKING PAPERS] pp. 1-22 [Nº 1, MARCH 2012]

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CONSTRUCTING MEANING THROUGH CREATIVE CATEGORIAL EXTENSION

IN POETIC DISCOURSE1

PILAR ALONSO AND REBECA HERNÁNDEZ

Universidad de Salamanca

ABSTRACT: In an attempt to explore the potentialities of grammatical categories in the

creative construction of meaning, this paper examines three cases of non-standard uses of

grammatical words in artistic poetic discourse. The first part of the paper is a brief survey of

different theoretical views on whether grammatical categories are conceptualized around

prototypical instances or as discreet rule-bound sets of semantically related features

(Langacker 1987, Lakoff 1987, Aarts 2007). The discussion also considers the role played by

similarity in the process of categorial formation (Hampton 2002), the centrality of

prototypical effects in grammatical categories (Ross 2004), and the mechanisms of

grammatical categorial extension for creative linguistic purposes (Langacker 1987). In the

second part of the paper, these theoretical views are used as basis for the cognitive analysis of

poems by Cummings, Leminski and Salinas, which are presented as case studies (Fauconnier

and Turner 2002). The results of the analysis show that combinations in categorization help

with the disambiguation of peripheral uses of grammar in the three poems analyzed; the study

thus supports the view that grammatical categories are meaningful and capable of triggering

new direct and evocative meaning.

KEYWORDS: meaning construction, cognition, grammatical categorization, categorial

extension, poetic discourse

RESUMEN: En un intento de explorar el potencial de las categorías gramaticales en la

construcción creativa del significado, este trabajo analiza el uso no-estándar de términos

gramaticales en tres casos de discurso poético. En una primera parte se consideran diferentes

aproximaciones teóricas que ven las categorías gramaticales como conceptualizadas en torno

[CONSTRUCTING MEANING THROUGH CREATIVE CATEGORIAL EXTENSION IN POETIC DISCOURSE] [PILAR ALONSO AND REBECA HERNÁNDEZ]

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a ejemplos prototípicos. Del mismo modo, se contemplan aquellas teorías que las definen

como conjuntos de rasgos semánticamente relacionados (Langacker 1987, Lakoff 1987, Aarts

2007). Se trata también el concepto de similitud (Hampton 2002) y la centralidad de los

prototipos (Ross 2004) en la formación de las categorías gramaticales, así como los

mecanismos de extensión categorial que permiten usos lingüísticos creativos (Langacker

1987). En una segunda parte, estos puntos de vista teóricos se toman como base para el

análisis cognitivo, siguiendo a Fauconnier y Turner (2002), de poemas de Cummings,

Leminski y Salinas. Los resultados del análisis demuestran que las combinaciones que se

llevan a cabo en el proceso de categorización contribuyen a desambiguar los usos periféricos

gramaticales que se encuentran en los tres poemas analizados. Así, este artículo incide en la

consideración de las categorías gramaticales como portadoras y generadoras de significado

creativo.

PALABRAS CLAVE: construcción del significado, cognición, categorización gramatical,

extensión de categorías, discurso poético


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INTRODUCTION

It is the privilege of poets to work on the edges of language, and experimenting with

metalinguistic knowledge is not alien to it. A verse such as that which opens and gives title to

one of E.E. Cummings’ poetic compositions, Yes is a pleasant country, challenges the

foundations of the more formalistic approaches to grammar, for the semantic load acquired by

the adverbial particle “yes” is not only due to the poet’s mastery of symbolic image evocation

and aesthetic expression. Actually, and at a more matter-of-fact level, the meaning projected

onto the particle “yes” comes from the syntactic subject slot position the term occupies in the

line; this is what changes its conceptual configuration and allows the idea of “a pleasant

country” to be predicated of it. A different case which also involves grammar as a generator

of meaning is Brazilian poet Paulo Leminski’s poem The murderer was the scribe, which

reads in translation: “my teacher of syntactic analysis was the type of non-existing subject. /A

pleonasm, the main predicate of his life, / regular with a first class verbal paradigm”.2 In these

lines, it is knowledge of the grammatical system that works as a source and reference pattern

for the reader, when constructing the mental representation of a man who is the mirror image

of his job. Finally, there is a poem by Spanish poet Pedro Salinas which, translated, claims no

“higher joy” than “to live in pronouns”,3 thus building for the grammatical category of

pronouns an experiential non-formal mental space where life can be lived “conceptually” in

the mind. All three cases shatter many previous assumptions on the system of grammar and

bring, at least, two questions to the linguistic mind. The first concerns whether creativity

should be considered a potential constituent feature of grammatical conceptualization and

grammatical categorization, hand in hand, let’s say, with function, form, and instrumental

usage. And the second, a consequence of the first, tackles the question of whether it is feasible

to argue against grammar being a meaning-loaded system.

These are some of the challenges we wish to address in an attempt to shed some light

on how grammar categories are conceptualized and experienced in the language user’s mind.

We also intend to investigate whether the mental representation of grammatical categories by

language users is univocal, or if differences arise depending on factors such as individual

knowledge levels or expertise. The fact that the compositions studied here have been written

in three different languages may be taken as an indication that the phenomenon we are

describing is cognitive, that is, not exclusive to one single poetic mind or limited to one

specific language. What is of relevance for us in this paper is the cognitive status of grammar


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as a conceptual system, with special reference to the evocative or non-evocative nature of its

representation in the human mind. Accordingly, our interest first lies in exploring how

grammatical concepts can be used as a macro artistic resource to construct alternative ways of

expression, and second, in presenting this information as evidence for the meaning

potentialities of the grammatical system. Our aim is to advance a better understanding of

grammar as a meaningful and meaning-building instrument of creative cognition.

1. CONSTRUCTING MEANING THROUGH GRAMMAR

Outside cognitive models of language analysis, there has been a general tendency to

consider grammar as a self-contained formal system independent from meaning, with syntax

consisting of a set of uninterpreted rule-generated symbols, and semantics serving as its

interpretive source through the lexicon and its relations through reference to entities in the

world (Lakoff 1987: 226-229). Within cognitive models of linguistics, however, the

separation of form and meaning in grammatical categories and grammatical constructions is

considered incoherent. Langacker supports this view on the basis that “if the semantic pole [of

the phonology/syntax/semantics triangle] is suppressed, then symbolic relationships cease to

exist, and what remains is nothing but undifferentiated phonological structure” (1987: 85).

Along the same line, Lakoff contends that the formalization of natural languages by some

linguistic theories is metaphorical and not empirical as it involves the projection of methods

of description developed for formal languages (such as logic or mathematics) onto natural

language analysis. He views the separation of syntax and semantics as a consequence of this

metaphor and calls attention to the fact that, in natural language use, thought and language

processes are interrelated and function jointly for the purpose of communicating with the

world. This claim turns out to be crucial when the analysis of the grammatical structure of

language meets the frame of thought and complex ways of linguistic expression.

It is not our aim in this paper to enter into debates concerning cognition and the

semantic status of grammatical structures; extensive work has been done to determine the

relations that hold between both ends of the continuum (cf., for example, seminal works by

Langacker 1987, 1991 and Talmy 2000). Here we wish to focus on certain peripheral aspects

of the conceptualization of grammatical categories which may turn out to be of interest for the

ongoing discussion on grammar and meaning. Whether grammatical categories are

conceptualized around prototypical instances or as discreet rule-bound sets of semantically

related features is one of the most debated questions in the field. Another question that has


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been thoroughly studied is whether both procedures are compatible or not. Although there is

also vast literature for and against these issues (cf. Newmeyer 2000; Aarts et al. 2004), we

wish to approach the argument from a slightly different theoretical perspective. Following one

of Lakoff’s key observations (1987: 6), we will try to learn about conceptualization and

categorization in grammar and their role in the construction of meaning by addressing

problematic non-automatic processes which, in our case, fall within the framework of poetic

cognition (cf. Turner 1987; Lakoff and Turner 1989; Gibbs 1994; Stockwell 2002, to cite a

few). In order to pursue our aims, we have chosen to explore the language and cognitive

structure of three cases of artistic discourse by three major writers, who make creative use of

grammar by turning it into a conceptual device in their processes of meaning construction.

1.1 THE COGNITIVE APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL AND LINGUISTIC CATEGORIZATION

Langacker (1987, 2004) coincides with Lakoff (1987) in claiming that conceptual

and linguistic categorization by prototype offers a valid alternative to the classical view of

categorization by shared features, and that categorization by prototype functions in all areas of

experience and meaning construction, including grammatical meaning. In the prototype

model, categorization is a cognitive operation and not a decomposition of concepts into

features as more formal approaches to meaning argue.

Following experiments undertaken by psychologist Eleanor Rosch, the theory of

prototypes maintains that human beings do not have a category for every object, experience,

or action in the world; on the contrary, it contends that a large proportion of our mental

categories are categories of abstract entities represented in the human mind by a central or

nuclear instance of that category, i.e. a prototype. On general and basic grounds, prototype

theory has demonstrated that people identify members of a category through association with

a prototype or typical example of that category and not through segmentation into

components. A prototype may be described as the mental image that first comes to the mind

of the language user when a given category is mentioned. Accordingly, prototypes function as

basic cognitive models, in terms of objects, properties and shape, for subsequent

categorization processes. Prototypes are not universal; the mental image working as a

prototype usually coincides with that member of the category which is for some given reason

(experiential, socio-cultural, temporal and/or geographical) most familiar to the individual.

Prototypes are also responsible for the identification and categorization of other less familiar

or even unknown members of the same category. Thus, prototypical members occupy a


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central position in the identification of a category and other members are more or less

marginal depending on their proximity to the prototype. The distinction between central and

peripheral members is built on the principle of “goodness of example” which determines that

central members offer better examples of the category than peripheral ones.

One of the main tenets governing the formation of categories is cognitive economy.

People use categories to store and classify conceptual information in memory in a rather

effortless and economical way, and a sound advantage of categorization by prototypes is that

it solves problems which arise, for example, when deciding which features constitute essential

and sufficient criteria to define a category, or when certain class members do not meet central

defining criteria. But one issue at stake is whether prototypical categorization applies to all

areas of knowledge, no matter how abstract or complex. For example, a question central to

this paper is whether grammatical categories (such as nouns, or verbs, or adjectives, or

syntactic constructions such as the passive voice) are organized in the mind of the language

user around prototypical instances, or if they are instead built around the commonest, more

salient, necessary properties that distinguish the category. The following subsections will

briefly summarize approaches to these questions in an attempt to find out more about

grammatical categorization and its prototypical or discreet dimension.

1.2 SOME ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF (GRAMMATICAL) CATEGORIZATION BY PROTOTYPES

The theory (cf. Lakoff 1987, Langacker 1987) has demonstrated that basic level

concepts (e.g. those corresponding to objects, actions, properties, etc.) are the level from

which people start to operate in order to conceptualize and classify experience. It is at this

basic cognitive level where most human interaction with the environment takes place most

efficiently and where information is more easily communicated, stored, and processed. But

there are other cases which require more elaboration. For example, vague concepts (such as

qualities like tall or warm) are categorized around prototypes by graded membership within a

range of possibilities, which go from the best example of the category to the less

representative. There are also concepts whose qualities form a continuum (such as different

shades of a given colour) and are grouped into a category by arranging their properties around

continuous variables. Other concepts are identified as bounded portions of a whole even if

they are not physically separate (such as the terms phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase,

sentence, and paragraph, which may be seen as parts of a written discourse).


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This perception of language as a system whose internal relations rely more on

gradiance than discreetness makes Langacker question the standard criteria-attribute model of

linguistic categorization. He contends that class membership is a matter of degree and allows

for personal variations in the categorization process as long as these are sustained by some

type of operative rationale. Thus, he maintains that human categorization is better explained

through a flexible procedure, such as prototypical category formation where prototypes act as

“full, central members of the category” but “other instances form a gradation from central to

peripheral depending on how far and in what ways they deviate from the prototype” (1987:

16-22). With respect to grammar, Lakoff (1987: 64-65) bases his argument in favour of

grammatical categorization by prototypes on extensive work by leading researchers (Ross,

Bybee and Moder, Hopper and Thompson, among others) and focuses on the existence of

asymmetries within syntactic categories in the language (including, for example, nouns,

verbs, adjectives, clauses, prepositions, noun phrases or verb phrases) to claim that some

members perform more categorial functions, and therefore work as more basic and better

examples of that category; in that sense, they may be considered more central or prototypical

than others.

1.3 SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST (GRAMMATICAL) CATEGORIZATION BY PROTOTYPES

Contrary to the cognitive view, Aarts (2007: 87-90) argues against the prototypical

effects of grammatical categories. He says that linguistic categories are different from

conceptual categories in various ways. First, and drawing from Rosch’s experiments with

subjects’ perceptions of basic concepts categories (such as birds), he holds that conceptual

categories are categories of real-world objects and the mental image they project via a

prototype (such as the robin for the bird category) has criterial attributes easy to identify by

subjects (i.e. shape, size, feathers and wings, capacity to fly, etc.), something which cannot be

said of grammatical categories. Aarts’ point is that “the mental representations of grammatical

categories are not accessible in the same way as the representations of three dimensional

objects.” He contends that “it does not make sense to ask subjects in an experiment to judge

what the typical attributes of English adjectives are, or which of the items happy, ill, and

ultimate is the most typical adjective.” He bases this argumentation on the fact “that most

people do not know what an adjective is, let alone what a typical member of that class would

look like, or how it would behave.” (2007:88). Aarts is right when signalling the huge

cognitive distance there is between the mental images projected by physically or


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experientially based concepts and the mental construct projected by abstract concepts of a

certain complexity. It is a fact that knowledge is a cornerstone of all categorization processes,

for there are no prototypical instances of a class to take as models if the class as such is

unknown to the person doing the categorization. Langacker affirms that “established

categorization is part of a speaker’s knowledge of linguistic convention” (1987: 370);

therefore, lack of conscious knowledge of grammatical concepts, as Aarts contends is the case

for most language users, would automatically cancel the possibility of grammatical

categorization based on prototype-instance matching.

1.4 THE PRINCIPLE OF SIMILARITY AS A CORE FACTOR IN (GRAMMATICAL) CATEGORIZATION

One of the core factors underlying the discussion on the nature of categorization

processes seems to be the principle of similarity. It is in fact one of the most important

principles governing the classification of different entities or experiences under one cognitive

category. Similarity is mainly built on perceptual, visual, and/or semantic information and

serves as a measure to classify concepts which are close in meaning, appearance or function.

Most of the categories which are formed in the course of everyday cognition are based on

similarity. To endorse the utility of similarity as a fundamental factor in categorization,

Hampton (2001) proposes distinguishing between concepts as cultural constructions and

concepts as elements of mental representation. The former are culturally acquired by language

users and form a part of the socio-cultural heritage; they are received and accepted as such

following the principle of authority, and their internal features are neither questioned nor

consciously taken into account when they are classified into categories. The latter just

produce the prototypical mental image that comes to the language user’s mind when a word

or discourse is uttered. This distinction could be useful to clarify certain aspects of the case

Aarts raises against prototypical grammatical categorization. He argues that it is useless to ask

subjects what their better approximation of the prototype for adjectives is because most

subjects do not know what adjectives are. But following Hampton’s criteria, it is the principle

of authority that would make the non-specialist classify the most familiar adjective in a list as

the prototypical member of the “adjective” category, without previous thought about its

characteristic features or about its range of similarity with other grammatical categories. For

the same reason, grammatical rules or theoretical concepts are unquestionably accepted,

without requiring individual ad-hoc categorization.


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None of the positions discussed above imply, however, that certain members of a

grammatical category may show more prototypical features than other less central instances

of the same category, features which being the most distinctive of that category, may then be

cognitively projected onto other categories through extension. Nor do they imply that

knowledgeable members of the community of language users may not be able to develop

prototypical, even imagistic, representations of grammatical categories when encouraged to

do so by the linguistic, textual, and/or contextual situation. Both these claims are essential to

the argument of this paper.

1.5 GRAMMATICAL CREATIVITY BY EXTENSION FROM THE PROTOTYPE

As part of his work on prototypicality in grammar, Ross (2004) has investigated the

noun category and points at gradation in the identification of categorial characteristics,

claiming hierarchy over discreteness. In his research, Ross moves away from Aarts’

discussion about the adequacy or inadequacy of conducting an experiment among subjects to

investigate which is, for them, the most prototypical instance of a given grammatical

category, as is customary in Rosch’s psycholinguistic investigation on prototypes. So, instead

of asking subjects to rank items in a list of nouns and considering prototypical the noun more

widely selected as the most typical or best example of the category, Ross qualifies as the

“nouniest noun” that which shows more prototypical effects. Hence, from Ross’ perspective,

and within the grammatical category of nouns, the member that performs all syntactic,

semantic and discourse functions expected of it (e.g. pluralization, pronominalization or -let’s

say- pre-modification by a passive participle) is prototypically marked, while other “less-

nouny” members are defined with reference to it. Following this line of reasoning, we could

say that the adverbial yes of Cummings’ verse acquires its nouny quality from the subject

function it has in the poem. The subject function, which is a central syntactic property of the

noun category, converts the word yes into a member of the noun category, no matter how

peripheral, and automatically allows other categorial features of nouns to be transferred onto

it, thus increasing the particle’s potentiality for meaning. Despite his position on the

prototypical structure of grammatical categories, Ross does not rule out that they “can be

defined notionally [...] by necessary and sufficient conditions,” as he sees both approaches as

independent (2004: 489).

From a different perspective, Langacker associates linguistic creativity, such as that

found in Cummings’ poem, with the cognitive/linguistic operations of extension and


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elaboration; he understands both as based on “substantial conceptual flexibility”, a fact that

permits projecting and transforming meaning from the sanctioning structure to the target

structure. In relation to introducing innovations in standard categories, extension allows for a

wide range of linguistic and cognitive action between the more prototypical and the more

peripheral values, which may result in multiple (socially exploited or individually created,

conventional or non-conventional) instantiations. Elaboration, on the other hand, is capable of

constructing conceptual or functional, natural or acquired, features for a given entity. This is

achieved by framing the entity against a general schema formed by an abstraction of the

commonalities of all instances of the category to which this entity is being assimilated for

short or long-term purposes. Langacker considers that grammar is not alien to the constructive

process involved in both extension and elaboration. He asserts that “applying grammatical

rules to compute novel expressions is something that speakers (not grammars) do in response

to a coding problem” (1987: 71-72). The coding problem, of whichever kind -merely

communicative or highly artistic- may result in the need to create a lexical item or expression

for a given thought in a given situation for which conventional linguistic terms do not suffice

or are not available in the language user’s mind. Langacker gives as an example of personal

linguistic creativity the polymorphemic expression “apricoty” created ad-hoc by a child to

reject a pie by applying his/her knowledge of other prototypical grammatical realizations such

as “salty” or “spicy”.

The cognitive path of categorial domain projections described by Langacker allows

us to see grammar as a tool for creating new conceptual realities, while Ross’ prototypical

effects lead to flexibility in the conceptualization of grammatical prototypes. We will apply

both aspects of this theoretical reasoning to the cases we will study below; the other aspects

we wish to examine are the potential role of discreet categorization in this on-line meaning

construction process and the possible interaction between the prototypical and discreet

procedures.

2 CASE STUDIES

In the poetic compositions which we are studying here, the conceptual status of

grammatical words or structures is extended in various ways: first, through the reassignment

of membership to grammatical categories in Cummings’ poem (“yes is a pleasant country”);

second, through the metaphorical use of syntax as a behaviour paradigm in Leminski’s

composition (“my teacher of syntactic analysis was the type of non-existing subject. /A


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pleonasm, the main predicate of his life, / regular with a first class verbal paradigm”); and

third, through the use of pronouns as builders of a specific, locative, experiential, mental

space where one can find joy in Salinas’ desire “to live in pronouns” (our italics, in all three

cases). In all the quotes above, the creation of a mental image and/or a mental state is sought

by matching these (from-a-logical-standard-coherent-perspective) apparently incoherent

language uses with the prototypical mental image, action, property or sensation which comes

to the receiver’s mind (drawing from his/her previous knowledge of similar situations,

actions, images, visual or non-visual perceptions, or sensations). The resulting mental

construct is built by consciously reassigning prototypical categorial values to the innovative

poetic expression. This may be done automatically, no matter how high the processing effort,

for only lack of understanding (be it due to low level of knowledge or lack of reading

expertise) blocks interpretation. It is then when resorting to categorial discreetness as a

descriptive strategy may prove to be a helpful tool, but not necessarily the most efficient in

terms of processing time and/or degree of understanding.

Behind this approach are experimental cognitive studies on cognitive mappings as an

essential operational network of our mental system (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999;

Lakoff 1987, 1993, 1996; Lakoff and Turner 1989, Fauconnier and Turner 1996, 2000, 2002;

Fauconnier 1997; Fauconnier and Sweetser 1996; Coulson and Oakley 2000; Grady 2000,

Kövecses 2002; Barcelona 2003, among many others). Cognitive mappings (which are at the

basis of the categorial extensions and/or changes studied here) build paths across different

input domains and ad-hoc mental spaces and create models of conceptual integration

involving operations such as metaphorical relations, blendings, analogical mappings, cross-

space mappings of counterpart connections, fusion, etc. Thus, cognitive mappings connect

simple and complex, concrete and abstract areas of knowledge and affect the conceptual and

expression levels of linguistic communication. Within this theoretical framework the system

of grammar and grammatical categories (including not only grammatical constructions but

also overt-bound and overt-free grammatical forms such as inflections, derivations,

determiners, prepositions, adverbs, particles, etc.) function as one essential part of the process

of conceptualization in language (c.f. Langacker 1987 and Talmy 2000). Our point is that this

occurs both in an inner and outer sense, i.e. grammar not only supports the conceptual

structure of cognition (Talmy 2000: 22, 33), but also has the capacity to build conceptual

content for other areas of knowledge and experience.


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2.1 THE CASE OF E. E. CUMMINGS

A brief reading of E. E. Cummings’ poem “yes is a pleasant country” shows that

elements playing the role of subject in the sentences of the first two stanzas (italicized below),

are anything but prototypical; they are in fact very peripheral:

yes is a pleasant country:

if's wintry

(my lovely)

let's open the year

both is the very weather

(not either)

my treasure,

when violets appear

Conventionally, central members of the subject category are nouns, or noun substitutes such

as pronouns, and can therefore be considered prototypical instances of that category. Nominal

verbal phrases (infinitive and –ing), or other candidates for nominalization such as adjectives,

are respectively less and less central, but still fall within the expected nominal-subject

category. None of the elements functioning as subject in Cummings’ lines above comply with

this assumption: “yes” is an adverb, “if” is a conjunction, “both” is a determiner, and so is

“either”. All forms belong to the closed category of grammatical words; they are not fully

lexical elements, and although “both” and “either” may function as pronominal forms, it is not

the case here as verbal agreement indicates (“both is…”). And yet, in their acquired role as

subject and in typical nounlike behavior, they show one of the most basic “nouny” effects, to

use Ross’ terminology, for they carry essential meaning of which communicative and

aesthetic values are predicated. It is their non-prototypicality that works poetically and it is

because of our cognitive capacity to match their non-prototypicality against our functional

and semantic expectations of what prototypical subjects are that we are able to make sense of

their highly semantic function in the poem. It is in fact when the cognitive operation of

meaning transposition (from non-subject to subject) is not performed that the poem remains

difficult and obscure, the only cues for interpretation being the full lexical terms which belong

to the frames of “nature” (“country”, “wintry”, year”, “weather”, “violets”) and “love” (“my

lovely”, “my treasure”).


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The categorial extension of “yes”, “if”, “both” and “either” (from adverb /

conjunction / determiner to “nouny” subjects expressing consent, condition, togetherness and

separation respectively) takes place automatically through the creation of new ad-hoc mental

spaces which integrate semantic pre-existing information (love, nature, poetic symbolism)

into grammatical forms to produce blended concepts rich in content and originality

(Fauconnier and Turner 2002). This type of grammatical category extension is in no way a

phenomenon absent from everyday language. We have, for example, a parallel case to the

nouny use of “yes” in Cummings’ poem in the idiomatic sentence: “I will not take no for an

answer,” where “no” (here italicized) functions as a direct object and implicates a given

amount of contextual meaning which is not explicitly stated. It is the cognitive principle of

similarity (Hampton 2001) that allows category extension to work efficiently for the most

peripheral cases through analogy. That is to say, once “yes” has been re-categorized as noun

in subject position, all following operations to extend the categorial status of “if”, “both” and

“either” are performed automatically. A reasonable explanation for the instant extension of

non-subject (non-noun) category to subject (nouny) category seems to be the prototypicality

of central subjects, which allows us to subsume peripheral cases with minimum processing

effort. The recognition of Cummings as a major modernist poet (i.e. Hampton’s principle of

authority) also encourages readers to show their maximum level of readiness to cooperate

(Grice 1975).

2.2 THE CASE OF PAULO LEMINSKI

In his poem The murderer was the scribe (in the original O assassino era o escriba),

Leminski builds a conceptual pattern which invites us to think of categorization as a

discontinuous set of discreet components. This is the first stanza of the poem in English,

followed by the original in Portuguese:

My teacher of syntactic analysis was the type of non-existing subject.

A pleonasm, the main predicate of his life,

regular with a first class verbal paradigm

(Meu professor de análise sintáctica era o tipo de sujeito inexistente.

Um pleonasmo, o principal predicado da sua vida,

regular com um paradigma da 1ª conjugação. )


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In the poetic composition, there is a member of the category “man” (“My teacher of syntactic

analysis”) whose identity and character is metaphorically presented through analogy with his

profession. In general terms, establishing a similarity between a man, his profession, and his

temperament is not in itself that unconventional. It responds to a metonymic correspondence

which categorizes the person in terms of his/her job, considering the job as a continuous

integrating part of a person’s whole self, that which consists of his/her social roles in the

subject/self human compound (cf. Lakoff 1993, 1996). This metonymic relation may find its

foundation in the metaphorical mappings which conceptualize life in terms of business,

identifying somebody’s natural or social character with the qualities of their regular

occupation. Thus, it is not unusual to say of scientists, economists, mathematicians… that

“his/her mind is a computer” or “s/he’s got a square mind”. But the terms in which Leminski

constructs the equivalence man / syntactic analysis are undoubtedly more daring. In the

examples offered above, the inputs (computers, geometrical figures) involve physical concrete

properties whose functions and characteristics are precise and well-structured. In Leminski’s

case, however, the use of syntactic analysis as a source image of the man’s personality may

involve some of the difficulties which Aart (2007) foresees in his criticism of grammatical

categorization by prototypes. As was mentioned above, Aart contends that grammatical

categories are not representational in the same way as three- or two-dimensional objects are,

and therefore it is hard to decide on an instance of the category as the best example against

which to match less central members.

At first sight, what the reader of Leminski’s poem perceives, in categorial terms, is a

group of sufficient conditions (“the type of non-existing subject”, “a pleonasm”, “the main

predicate of his life”, “regular with a first class verbal paradigm”) which help to create a

mental representation of the man described. The grammatical features projected onto the

man’s personality are neither exhaustive nor comprehensive; they have been selected only in

so far as they satisfy the needs of the definition. In that sense, they are central to the target

entity and, therefore, we could say that their metaphorical projection works prototypically for

a type of man: systematic, subject to rules, predictable, the absolute absence of originality.

However, the mental representation that emerges from processing the information given by

the set of components is a cognitive construct which transcends the language of the

description, for the result of mapping certain qualities of syntax on the man’s personality does

not produce in the mind of the reader a semantic transposition of each of the characteristic

assigned, but a compact image or an impression. That image or impression is based on those

prototypical features of the superordinate “syntax” which are relevant to the object of


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attention, that is, the person under focus. In that sense, relevance theory’s axial principle,

which seeks to achieve the highest cognitive effects with the least minimum processing effort

(Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995), seems to play an important part in the conversion of

constitutive features into prototypical features. The issue here is that these features are not

prototypical because they are a priori recognized as the most central of the category by a large

number of language users, but because they surmount the limits of discreet notional

decomposition and prove sufficient to build a mental wholeness of the target entity. In this

sense, it could be said that the centrality of grammatical prototypes might not be built on

familiarity to the language user; neither should it be thought of as based on shared experience;

our evidence seems to suggest that it is their potential for representativity and/or recognition

that allows certain instances of grammar to function prototypically.

A no less important role, in the process of image construction put forth by Leminski

in his composition, is played by knowledge. We said above that a low level of knowledge

would be one of the reasons behind the preference for discreet description of concepts and

categories, while a high level of knowledge would favour ad-hoc prototypical mental

representation based on similarity and contrast. In the mind of a reader who is knowledgeable

in the structures and functions of syntax and grammar, the standard procedure for the

interpretation of Leminski’s poem seems to be the automatic representation of a mental image

free from, and not necessarily subject to, the constraints of the specific semantic content

activated by the lexical concepts. On the other hand, lack of knowledge would make the

individual meaning of the descriptive features essential for interpretation. Taking into account

this double perspective, it would be possible to consider categorization a flexible and variable

process, as well as directly related to the existence or non-existence of previous relevant

knowledge.

In the rest of the poem, Leminski further exploits the conceptual potential of syntax

by extending the categorization process with lines such as “He married a rule” (Casou com

uma regência), “He was possessive like a pronoun” (Era possessivo como um pronome) etc.

The analysis we have presented here will suffice, however, to illustrate the points we are

trying to make. First, that creative uses of grammar can form the basis of building a mental

image by different cognitive operations (such as metaphor, metonymy or analogy), which

result in categorial extension from the prototype. And second, that artistic grammatical

conceptualization helps to show the compatibility of prototypical, discreet and similarity

approaches to categorial construction and that the choice of one method over another is in

direct relation to levels of knowledge and expertise.


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2.3 THE CASE OF PEDRO SALINAS

The case on which we will focus next is a part of Salinas’ extensive poetic

composition My voice because of you (in the original in Spanish La voz a ti debida). In the

first stanza of the poem To live I don’t want (Para vivir no quiero), we find another case

involving grammatical categorial extension from the prototype to suit the poet’s creative use

of linguistic conceptualization. Here is the translation into English of the first stanza of the

poem, followed by Salinas’ words in Spanish:

To live I don’t want

islands, palaces, towers.

What higher joy:

to live in pronouns!

(Para vivir no quiero

islas, palacios, torres.

¡Qué alegría más alta:

vivir en los pronombres!)

The interest lies in the conceptual dimension that the grammatical category of pronouns

acquires in the last line of the stanza. Prototypically, the word “pronouns” stands for a closed

set of grammatical terms whose central function is referential and deictic; that is, they do not

carry a “nouny” semantic load, for their meaning is dependent on their immediate, real or

cotextual, background. But the fact that in the first two verses of the stanza the poetic voice

negates his wish to live in “islands, palaces, towers,” and in the last two verses he proclaims

as maximum joy the possibility of living in “pronouns”, situates the two options (i.e. locative

nouns and grammatical category) at equal level, both structurally and conceptually. This has

the immediate cognitive consequence of projecting the content properties of the lexical set

“islands, palaces, towers” onto the grammatical category “pronouns”. The operation, which

results in the categorization of “pronouns” as a peripheral instance of magnificent-places-to-

live involves the re-conceptualization of the grammatical word by analogy, and the creation of

a mental space for the term in a way similar to the spaces mentally assigned to the fully-

lexical, prototypical, magnificent-places-to-live concepts.

Simultaneously, the choice of “pronouns” as preferred alternative has a double effect

on the conceptual structure of the lexical cotext: First, the re-conceptualization of “pronouns”


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as a magnificent-place-to-live has the power to neutralize the potentially physical condition of

“islands, palaces, towers”; this ends up reducing the semantic status of the latter (that is, their

conceptual structure as locative lexical elements) to discourse entities with referential deictic

properties inherited from the input category of pronouns. Second, mapping the feature

“magnificent-place-to-live” onto the grammatical word “pronouns” extends the semantics of

the verb “live” and converts the physical action of “living” into a discourse state; thus, the

concrete well known reality of living in physical places and the abstract domain of grammar

are conceptually blended through compression (Fauconnier and Turner 2000, 2002). The

cognitive connection which is being exploited here is the historical controversial relation

between things and words and/or between words and their referents. The poet, whose job is

language and creation through language, chooses to compress this long-standing traditional

opposition and by suppressing the differences expands the possibilities. All these conceptual

transformations take place in the mental space which both producer and receivers create

especially for this purpose as they construct and interpret the poem respectively; the input

spaces of these projections are the well-established domains of life, reality, and words.

There is not one, single, organizing frame in this stanza; we can identify at least three

in interaction: life, language, and literature. These frames are actualized and made compatible

by the poetic condition of the author and the text. All of them in connection provide the

required topology to fill these lines with content. The more physical and concrete frame of life

activated by the terms “islands, palaces, towers” (islas, palacios, torres) supplies the

implicated and/or assumed positive qualities [exuberance, magnificence, luxury, beauty,

security] associated with these words, and later actualized in the phrase “higher joy” (alegría

más alta) attributed in contraposition to “live in pronouns” (vivir en los pronombres). The

conceptual transition from the frame of life to the frame of language, specifically represented

by the grammatical subset of pronouns with their own topology (referential, deictic, personal,

etc.) is made possible by the frame of literature which sets off a textual world where all

components are language. Given the literary quality of both text and speaker, the expert

reader may have no problem in accepting “pronouns” as poetic referential items, (i.e. poetic

“I” and poetic “you”) whose conceptual and categorial dimensions are mentally reorganized

within a textual world of words. This inferred reasoning, which is done effortlessly as a part

of the interpretation process, involves the re-conceptualization of the grammatical category

“pronouns” as prototypical happy locus, and the personal building of an abstract mental image

probably based on general knowledge, individual experience, or the imagination. The

readiness of the reader to walk this cognitive path will depend again on level of knowledge


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and expertise which allows for the word “pronouns” to activate an imaging capability from a

linguistic reality of reference and locative-deictic signaling.

3. CONCLUSION

In this paper we have attempted to explore issues related to the meaning potentialities

of grammatical categories in the conceptualization of complex communicative frames of

thought and linguistic expression. With that in mind, we have conducted a textual analysis of

sections of three poems by Cummings, Leminski and Salinas, which make a creative and

highly meaningful use of grammatical words. The common aim seems to be to endow matters

of ordinary life (in the cases studied here, mostly those of love and character) with new forms

of expression and new dimensions of meaning. The analysis has shown that the process of

meaning construction in all three poems involves cognitive strategies of re-conceptualization

of grammatical categories. At the basis of these operations we have identified categorial

extensions from prototypical instances based on cognitive mappings across input domains,

including analogical cross-cutting models or images, metaphorical projections, and blendings.

All of these operations bring about changes in the status of representative grammatical words,

affecting their conceptual structure and/or their grammatical function. We have investigated

in our description of these operations whether the non-standard uses of grammatical

categories found in the poems analyzed are conceptualized through image building around

prototypical instances of the category or as discreet rule-bound sets of semantically related

features. We have found that both procedures are not mutually exclusive, and that opting for

one or the other actually depends on the level of knowledge and expertise of the person

carrying on the process of understanding and meaning re-construction. We have also

discovered that identifying and assigning meaning to these artistic uses of grammatical

categories is worked out through analogical reasoning both at the macro level of poetry and at

the micro level of specific text content; this implies that the principles of authority and

similarity have proved to be central in the building and acceptance of new patterns of

expression based on ad-hoc models of conceptualization which, in the cases studied here,

evolve around different types of categorial modification.

In general we have found that the system of grammar and grammatical categories is

meaningful and capable of triggering new direct and evocative meaning. We have shown that

grammar does not only play a crucial role in the process of conceptualization in language, as

cognitive theoreticians claim, it also has the potential to build conceptual content for other


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areas of knowledge and experience. We have supported these issues on evidence from non-

standard uses of grammatical words in poetry. The analysis and understanding of the

elaborate examples found in the cases studied have led us to conclude that categorization by

prototype rules most conceptual and linguistic phenomena and helps with the disambiguation

of meaning transfers between (lexical and grammatical) categories through similarity-based

processes. We have proposed that these peripheral uses of language are received and accepted

as such due to the principle of authority, which frames their interpretation within the overall

field of creative and innovative aesthetics. We have also seen, however, that all on-line

procedures described above do not exclude categorization by shared features and functions,

especially, when levels of knowledge or expertise make the interpretation process difficult or

non-automatic. We have thus reached the double aim set forth in this article: that is,

investigating the meaning capacity of grammatical categories and shedding some light on the

creative uses of categorial extension in poetry.


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1 Research for this article has been financed by the Junta de Castilla y León Grant SA012A09.

2 The title of the original poem in Portuguese is “O assassino era o escriba,” and the lines

quoted run as follows: Meu professor de análise sintáctica era o tipo de sujeito inexistente./

Um pleonasmo, o principal predicado da sua vida, /regular com um paradigma da 1ª

conjugação.


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3 Here is the stanza in Spanish of Salinas’ poem Para vivir no quiero, followed by my

translation into English: Para vivir no quiero/islas, palacios, torres./¡Qué alegría más

alta:/vivir en los pronombres! [To live I don’t want/ islands, palaces, towers./ What higher

joy:/ to live in pronouns!]

RECIBIDO: 30.10.2011

ACEPTADO: 15.11.2011

CONSTRUCTING MEANING THROUGH CREATIVE CATEGORIAL EXTENSION IN POETIC DISCOURSE

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