On formal manifestation of spatial conceptualization in Japanese
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Manifestations of spatial cognition in languages of the world have been an object of various studies within the field of cognitive linguistics (e.g. Sinha & Jensen de López, 2000; Talmy, 2007). Most of them deal with conceptual schemas, such as those represented by prepositions (in, on, before, behind and others in English; v, za, před, do and others in Czech etc.). My goal in this talk is to give examples of spatial conceptualization of INSIDE and OUTSIDE, as represented by the concepts of UCHI and SOTO in the Japanese language. The categories of UCHI and SOTO are widely recognized as functioning in social structures or behavior of the Japanese. Naturally, expressions "uchi" and "soto" exist within the lexicon of the Japanese language. I will show, that the two concepts can be used as a valid tool for the description of several formal phenomena of the Japanese language, phenomena that include demonstratives, verbs (and auxiliaries) of movement, politeness or lexicon. Since my talk is intended to be within the realms of cognitive linguistics, I will provide not only the structural description, but also an attempt of providing an explanation – i.e. the motivation for the UCHI/SOTO structuration of the Japanese language. |