2007, Schalley, Andrea, Zaefferer, D

Current progress in linguistic theorizing is more and more informed by cross-linguistic investigation. Comparison of languages relies crucially on those concepts which are essentially the same across human minds, cultures, and languages, and which therefore can be activated through the use of any human language. These instances of mental universals join other less common concepts to constitute a complex structure in our minds, a network of cross-connected conceptualizations of the phenomena that make up our world. Following more and more widespread usage we call such a system of conceptualizations an 'ontology', and we submit that the most reliable basis for any cross-linguistic research lies in the common core of the different individual human ontologies. This is the basic tenet of all approaches that can properly be called ontology-based linguistics or 'ontolinguistics' for short.

2004, Schalley, A

To date, rigorous approaches to the representation of verbal semantics, and lexical semantics in general, have not put much effort into achieving cognitive adequacy for their frameworks. This book sets out to take a major step in this direction. It develops a representational framework for verbal semantics that is formal and intuitive at the same time. This means in effect proposing a framework that is in principle computer processable on the one hand, and yet on the other hand whose representations reflect the wealth and flexibility of natural language in an intuitively plausible way and in accordance with our current knowledge about natural language. A new decompositional framework for the modeling and description of verbal semantics is proposed, the Unified Eventity Representation (UER). The development of the framework is based on results from linguistics, psychology, and computer science. In particular, the UER framework adopts and adapts the current lingua franca for the design of object-orientated systems in computer science, the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In contrast to other formal approaches to lexical semantics, it is neither logical nor functional in nature, but uses a third paradigm found in programming languages: object-orientation is introduced as a new paradigm to linguistic semantics. Thereby, a new route to the formal treatment of verbal semantics is opened up.

2003, Schalley, A

From a typological point of view it is challenging to ask which factors account for the differences in the encoding of complex event concepts. Strategies of lexicalizing complex event concepts will be investigated in this paper, leading us to two competing principles which turn out to be variational dimensions in the lexicon.Let me briefly outline the plan of this paper: We will look at codingalternatives of complex event concepts that can be found in thelexicons of languages, thereby opening up a discussion about differentstrategies of lexicalization and lexical organization. A comparisonof these strategies will reveal – as mentioned above – two competingprinciples in the lexicon which will be discussed more thoroughly.Moreover, the question arises why such principles exist,leading us to the search for an explanation of the principles themselves.I hope to be able to show that a functionalistic approach suppliesadequate reasons, where terms like user optimality andefficiency play important roles. Due to the complexity of the factorsinteracting to achieve efficiency in communication, we will restrainourselves to the more "static" or "offline" part of language productionand understanding. That is to say we will concentrate on aspectsof learning, remembering and accessing lexical items and not considerthe "online" aspect of producing and processing utterances.

2004, Schalley, Andrea

We view the cognitive system as a system that aims at interpreting the world. This interpretation involves the categorisation and structuring of information. Particularly important for a successful categorisation and information structuring is the disregard of irrelevant data. Underspecification, understood as 'purposeful' neglect of such information in conceptualisation, provides a mechanism for this, a mechanism that is a vital part of our cognitive system. It allows us to disregard dispensable information, whereby the cognitive effort is kept low.

2007, Nickles, Matthias, Pease, Adam, Schalley, Andrea, Zaefferer, Dietmar

The English word 'ontology', together with its counterparts in many languages, has made a breathtaking career during the last decades especially in information science, but also in other disciplines. Since its definition s vary considerably within and especially across disciplines, and since this volume, although clearly focused on linguistic matters, is conceived as tying together several disciplines, it seems appropriate to provide a short survey of these uses in order to make the different contributions and their interconnections more accessible for those readers who are not familiar with all the fields that arc represented between the covers of this book (presumably the majority).

2003, Schalley, A

This paper presents the possible coding alternatives and the factual realizations of a complex event concept. We assume that any concept is built on a perceptional and functional basis and ask in what ways different languages encode such a concept, i.e., how the surface realizations of such a concept differ from one another. The concept under consideration in this paper, henceforth termed 'FETCH', is the concept realized in British English 'fetch' and Croatian 'dohvatiti'. After characterizing the event structure of 'FETCH' at the beginning, a discussion of potential coding alternatives in terms ofconceptual vs. lexical chunking follows. We then compare the cross-linguistic encoding of 'FETCH' in a sample of 29 languages and show how the different surface realizations demonstrate differentinstantiations of potential conceptual and lexical chunking. Moreover, we discuss whether the event concept 'FETCH' itself is universal. Finally, we test current theories on event structures, with a focus on the often assumed binary construction scheme.

2007, Schalley, Andrea, Kuhn, S

In this paper, we discuss the lexical semantics of the German memory verb '(sich) erinnern', which can be roughly translated into English as "remember, remind, recall, recollect". On the basis of qualitative data from the German COSMAS II corpora, readings of '(sich) erinnern' are carved out and discussed. They are represented using the Unified Eventity Representation (UER), which is a decompositional modelling framework for lexical meaning, and which allows the explicit depiction of relationships that are vital components of the verb's lexical semantics. We demonstrate that '(sich) erinnern' is not highly polysemous as its English counterparts might suggest. The results are also a case in point that the question what constitutes and delineates a reading should be investigated more generally.

2004, Schalley, A

The paper presents a new way of accounting for a diagrammatic notation based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We will introduce the new framework by outlining some modeling elements and indicating major differences to the UML. An extended example will be discussed in more detail. We will then focus on the cognitive background of the framework, and in particular address the question why the usage of graphical elements within a linguistic modeling language proves to be very fruitful. Finally, we will briefly indicate the potential of the newframework and its applicability.

2007, Schalley, Andrea

This paper addresses the role ontological knowledge plays in the conceptualization of 'eventities' (events and similar entities, cf. Zaefferer 2002), of entities that are typically encoded by verbs in natural languages. We will approach this issue by asking which meaning components are needed for detailed decompositional representations of verbal semantics and how these components can be combined with one another. Decompositional representations of verbal semantics (and hence of eventities) depict, besides specific content information, the internal structure of eventity concepts. Accordingly, representations comprise components that convey underlying structural information - in addition to expressing content information. Such structural information includes, for instance, components that represent statal structure and those that represent activity structure.

2007, Schalley, Andrea, Zaefferer, D

Current progress in linguistic theorizing is more and more informed by cross-linguistic investigation. Comparison of languages relies crucially on those concepts which are essentially the same across human minds, cultures, and languages, and which therefore can be activated through the use of any human language. These instances of mental universals join other less common concepts to constitute a complex structure in our minds, a network of cross-connected conceptualizations of the phenomena that make up our world. Following more and more widespread usage we call such a system of conceptualizations an 'ontology', and we submit that the most reliable basis for any cross-linguistic research lies in the common core of the different individual human ontologies. This is the basic tenet of all approaches that can properly be called ontology-based linguistics or 'ontolinguistics' for short. While concept activations depend on episodic linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli and therefore are subject to permanent change, recorded in short-term memory, the conceptual system itself, after its development, differentiation, and stabilization in the ontogeny of each agent, l is assumed to be relatively stable and stored in long-term memory. Therefore, the emphasis of ontolinguistic research is less on processing than on structure. The initial idea behind the present volume is to further instigate progress in linguistics by asking a rather underexplored question: What is the relation between the ontologies in our minds and the languages we participate in?