MODELING MENTAL STRUCTURES IN COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

Abstract

Modeling mental structures in cognitive linguistics is the recognized tool to formalize ideas about mental categories. Most often researchers use such logical models as frames, gestalts and scripts. One of the ways in which a person structures and stores information about the environment is cognitive mapping, which is a simulation of mental process, consisting of series of psychological transformations of cognitive spheres. Mapping is a mental operation of conceptual blending. The process of blending is activated at the moment of comprehension of any utterance. When information enters the conceptual space, it is processed and selectively reflected in a new mental space. Mental spaces are models of discursive understanding that undergo constant changes in the communication process. Mental spaces allow to adequately model the process of linguistic perception. They are the realms in which concepts and other structures are formed. Representing an incomplete set of knowledge, mental space supplements the understanding in the process of communication. The main model of knowledge representation, which is often used by researchers, is frame. Frames are used to explain human ability to acquire new knowledge through existing in the memory structures of experience.

Frame is a model of cognitive phenomena and processes, including production of utterances. Words activate certain frames or associative schemas on the basis of which the texts are created. Frames are accompanied by sets of schemes. Researchers recognize the ambiguity of the term "frame", which is considered as a set of assumptions about the structure of linguistic forms that express knowledge; a set of entities that give an idea of mental structures; the organization of ideas stored in the memory. Still, the frame is considered the most productive way of designing knowledge. By now, cognitive linguistics has made considerable strides in modeling and describing the mental structures on linguistic data. However, advances in this field do not exclude the unresolved problems of modelling mental realms of people. Such is the problem of incorporating in models pragmatic information that influences the categorization of new knowledge.