Talmy: Force Dynamics (original) (raw)

Force Dynamics

The faculty of construing the world in terms of entities interacting through force

(Last updated December 7, 1996)

The main paper on this faculty from a linguistic approach is Leonard Talmy's ["Force Dynamics in Language and Cognition"](../Bibliography.html#Talmy %281988%29) (1988). Talmy is working in the Cognitive Linguistics tradition of Wittgenstein, Rosch, and Lakoff; like Jackendoff, he uses semantic fields to infer central conceptual structure. At the time of this article, Talmy was at the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Berkeley; this intellectual environment appears to have been relatively insulated from the work of experimental psychologists interested in domain specificity, although the two communities were in fact developing similar and convergent models of cognition. Talmy and Jackendoff's more recent work (cf. [Talmy 1995](../Bibliography.html#Talmy %281995%29)) reflects a growing familiarity with the psychological approaches to domain-specificity

The following presentation bases itself on Talmy's article. I do not attempt to introduce his iconic notational system; for the purposes of an orientation, a matrix seemed more accessible. I have also added a number of examples. The presentation is schematic, reflecting the fact it was designed as a series of overheads. For a summary of the significance of the article for Cognitive Cultural Theory, see the conclusion.

Talmy's starting point is Cognitive Linguistics, and the observation that certain notional categories are expressed by grammatical form, while others are not. Number, gender, and time, for instance, are categories frequently encountered in the syntactical structures of languages, while color and temperature are not so utilized. Talmy argues that force dynamics--a mode of construing the world in terms of entities interacting with respect to force (49)--is a neglected semantic category, spanning across more semantic fields than the more traditional "causative". His "systematic application of force concepts to the organization of meaning in language" (50) aims to demonstrate the pervasiveness of force-dynamics thinking.

Overview

Cross-field generalizations

Force dynamics conceptual primitives

• two entities
• each exerts a force on the other
• one is foregrounded or singled out for focal attention (the "agonist")
• the other is considered for the effect it has on the agonist (the "antagonist")
• "an entity is taken to exert a force by virtue of an intrinsic tendency towards manifesting it" (54)
  • towards motion (action)
  • towards rest (inaction)
• opposed forces have different relative strength
  • "the entity that is able to manifest its tendency at the expense of its opponent is the stronger" (54)
• "according to their relative strengths, the opposing forces yield a resultant" (54)
  • assessed only for the agonist
  • action or inaction

Force dynamics categories

Basic steady-state force-dynamic patterns

Force	Greater	The shed kept standing despite the wind	The ball kept rolling despite the grass
Lesser	The ball kept rolling because of the wind	The log kept lying because of the ridge
[](#Change of state)	Rest	Motion
Tendency

Change-of-state force-dynamic patterns

Force	Greater	The ball's hitting it made the lamp fall	The water's dripping on it made the fire die down
Lesser	The stirring-rod's breaking let the particles settle	The plug's coming loose let the water flow out
	Rest	Motion
Tendency

Physical / psychological dynamics (agent dynamics)

Force	Greater	They kept the rocks from falling	He struggled against the wind
Lesser	They couldn't keep the boat from sinking	She got stuck in the mud
	Rest	Motion
Tendency

The Divided Self: Internal Psychodynamics

Force	Greater	She refrained from responding	I forced myself to keep working
Lesser	I couldn't keep myself from falling asleep	He was so ashamed he couldn't open his mouth
	Rest	Motion
Tendency

• The natural state of the mind can be both activity and inactivity.
• Freud's model of the id, the ego, and the superego uses the preconceptual structures of force dynamics

Extension of force dynamics to social interactions

Force	Greater	He stayed even though they asked him to leave	He ordered me to polish his boots
Lesser	He couldn't convince her to come to the meeting	I couldn't stop him from telling her
[](#Cognitive domains)	Rest	Motion
Tendency

The force-dynamics semantic field and cognitive domains

• "the conceptual models within linguistic organization have a striking similarity to those evident in our naïve world conceptions" (91)
• the proper cognitive domain of force mechanics is objects; this has been metaphorically extended to the actual domains of intentions and mental states

Intuitive force dynamics versus scientific notions of force

• construing force dynamics from the perspective of an agonist has no counterpart in physics; equivalent objects have the same properties
• objects do not have an intrinsic force tendency towards action or rest, but continue at their current velocity unless externally affected
• although differing amounts of force, measured as mass times velocity, are in fact associated with objects, two interacting objects must nevertheless--and counterintuitively--always be exerting an equal amount of force against each other
• the semantic patterns "comprise a severely limited selection from the causal actualities", omitting "particularities of rate, scope of involvement, manner of spread, and the like" (92)
• "some of the most basic force--dynamic concepts-blocking and letting, resistance and overcoming--have no principled counterpart in physics" (93)
• in the psychological domain, the metaphor of force dynamics "physicalizes" the psychological and social realms

Conclusion

The main significance of Talmy's work in terms of cognitive cultural theory is twofold. First of all, he is beginning to make the link between the conceptual structures that emerge out of a study of cross-field generalizations in language and cognitive domains. In the present case, he relates the semantic category "force dynamics" to the cognitive domain "naive physics", provides a great list of conceptual primitives, and points out that our intuitive notions of mechanics is erroneous on almost all points with respect to scientifically formulated notions. Secondly, he implies that while the basic notions of force dynamics are expressed in a range of semantic fields, they originate in object mechanics. The application of conceptual primitives, image schemas, and inference patterns from a source domain onto a novel target domain is treated extensively in [Lakoff (1987)](../Bibliography.html#Lakoff %281987%29) as the action of metaphor. [Sperber's (1994)](../Bibliography.html#Sperber %281994%29) treatment amounts to an extention of this scenario in two directions, both of which appear compatible with Talmy's work. On the one hand, the source domain is traced back to the environment in which humans evolved, where we can look for a relevant proper domain for the development of the faculty in question through a process of natural selection. On the other hand, the target domain is seen to constitute a part of the current actual domain, of which the cultural forms a special case. Talmy's most recent work is in fact in this field; cf. [Talmy (1995)](../Bibliography.html#Talmy %281995%29).

	Jackendoff on conceptual structure
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© 1996 Francis F. Steen, Communication Studies, University of California, Los Angeles