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COPYRIGHT: John Barnden, 1997. This page of the databank may be freely copied for non-commercial research/instructional use provided this copyright notice is included.

DESCRIPTION OF METAPHOR:

Cognizing as Interacting with Non-Own-Mental Entities

Consider the sentence

             Take birthdays. One family may trot out party favors, ...

[= example from databank]. Here the agent is cast as interacting (physically) with entities, namely birthdays, that are not amongst his/her own mental entities. We therefore have a contrast with Ideas as External Entities, under which, for instance, the agent might ``grasp'' or otherwise interact with a mental entity.

(However, I am tentative about saying that ``take X'' sentences manifest Cognizing as Interacting with Non-Own-Mental Entities. It is possible that the X in ``take X'' should be analyzed as a metonymic reference to an idea of X, so that we would have a mixture of metonymy and Ideas as External Entities.)

Note that the entities interacted with may themselves be mental, if belonging to another person, as in ``drinking in her soul.''

For another type of sentence I tentatively suggest as manifesting the metaphor of Cognizing as Interacting with Non-Own-Mental Entities, consider

             To me, feminism has backfired against women.

[= example from databank]. I suggest that the backfire situation is cast as an entity which is physically ``directed towards'' the agent (``me''). For convenience, I include such directedness as a case of ``interaction'' very broadly construed.

Somewhat similarly, a ``for'' phrase can be used instead of a ``to'' phrase, as in

             For conservatives, today's military success compounds a paradox.

[= example from databank].

My comments about ``to X'' and ``for X'' sentences are in at least rough accord with the account of mental-state sentences in Langacker (1990: especially pp.222-226, 233-234), although he does not claim that such sentences are metaphorical.

OVERLAPS WITH:

Reference

Langacker, R.W. (1990).
   Settings, participants, and grammatical relations.
   In S.L. Tsohadzidis (Ed.), 
      Meanings and Prototypes: Studies in Linguistic Categorization,
            pp.213--238.
   London and New York: Routledge.