Cognitive semantics is part of the cognitive linguistics movement. Cogitive semantics is typically used as a tool for lexical studies such as those put forth by Leonard Talmy, George Lakoff, Dirk Geeraerts and Bruce Wayne Hawkins. Cognitive linguistics is a school of linguistics and cognitive science, which aims to provide accounts of language that mesh well with current understandings of the human mind, and is generally opposed to the more syntactocentric approaches to meaning in generative linguistics. ... Lexicology is a speciality in linguistics dealing with the study of the lexicon . ... Leonard Talmy is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Buffalo in New York. ... George P. Lakoff (born 1941 /ˈleɪˌkof/) is a professor of linguistics (in particular, cognitive linguistics) at the University of California, Berkeley where he has taught since 1972. ... Dirk Geeraerts (born 1955, PhD 1981) holds the chair of theoretical linguistics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. ... Bruce Wayne Hawkins graudated from the University of California in San Jose. ...

As part of the field of cognitive linguistics, the cognitive semantics approach rejects the formal traditions modularisation of linguistics into phonology, syntax, pragmatics, etc. Instead it divides semantics (meaning) into meaning-construction and knowledge representation. Therefore, cognitive semantics studies much of the area traditionally devoted to pragmatics as well as semantics. Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... The first meaning of the term syntax, originating from the Greek words συν (sun, meaning ‘together’) and ταξις (taxis, meaning sequence/order), can be described as the study of the rules, or patterned relations that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... Pragmatics is generally the study of natural language understanding, and specifically the study of how context influences the interpretation of meanings. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ...

Cognitive semantic theories are typically built on the argument that lexical meaning is conceptual. That is, the meaning of a lexeme is not reference to the entity or relation in the "real world" that the lexeme refers to, but to a concept in the mind based on experiences with that entity or relation. An implication of this is that semantics is not objective and also that semantic knowledge is not isolatable from encyclopaedic knowledge. Definition A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of words that are the same in basic meaning. ...

Moreover, cognitive semantic theories are also typically built upon the idea that semantics is amenable to he same mental processes as encyclopaedic knowledge. They thus involve many theories from cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropology such as prototypicality, which cognitive semanticists argue is the basic cause of polysemy. In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... Polysemy (from the Greek πολυσημεία = multiple meaning) is the state of being a polyseme; i. ...

Another trait of cognitive semantics is the recognition that lexical meaning is not fixed but a matter of construal and conventionalization. The processes of linguistic construal, it is argued, are the same psychological processes involved in the processing of encyclopaedic knowledge and in perception.

Many cognitive semantic frameworks, such as that developed by Leonard Talmy take into account syntactic structures as well, while others focus mainly on lexical entities. Leonard Talmy is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Buffalo in New York. ...

The four tenets of cognitive semantics are:

• Semantic structure is conceptual structure
• Conceptual structure is embodied
• Meaning representation is encyclopaedic
• Meaning-construction is conceptualisation

See also

• Force Dynamics