Jordan Zlatev - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Jordan Zlatev

Biosemiotics, 2022

Following the levels of intentionality and semiosis distinguished by the Semiotic Hierarchy (a la... more Following the levels of intentionality and semiosis distinguished by the Semiotic Hierarchy (a layered model of semiosis/intentionality), and the distinction between original agency (without the use of artefacts) and enhanced agency (the prosthetic incorporation of artefacts), we propose a model of an agency hierarchy, consisting of six layers. Consistent with the phenomenological orientation of cognitive semiotics, a central claim is that agency and subjectivity are complementary aspects of intentionality. Hence, there is no agency without at least the minimal sense/feeling of agency. This perspective rules out all artefacts as genuine agents, as well as simple organisms, since it is highly unlikely that e.g. bacteria have any first-person perspective. Using this model, we review and assess recent proposals on the nature of agency from cognitive science, and neuroscience, and draw conclusions on how to incorporate aspects of them within a synthetic cognitive-semiotic framework.

Interdisciplinary Evolution Research

Studies in Language Companion Series

After decades dominated by a focus on the "individual speaker" and the "mind/ brain" in both gene... more After decades dominated by a focus on the "individual speaker" and the "mind/ brain" in both generative and cognitive linguistics, recent years have reinstated an older view on language as primarily social, i.e. as taking place between people more than within them. Within such a social conception of language, it is natural to reconsider the notion of language norm, but there have been few efforts in this direction. Two eminent exceptions are Eugenio Coseriu and Esa Itkonen, whose approaches to linguistic normativity we here focus on. Even given a combination of their insights, we find that some puzzles remain, especially concerning the question where language norms derive from. We pose this question in the spirit of (generative) phenomenology where the task is "precisely to inquire after how historical and intersubjective structures themselves become meaningful at all, how these structures are and can be generated" (Steinbock 2003: 300). Following earlier work where we have argued for the value of a phenomenological approach to language, we show how the philosophical tradition emanating from Edmund Husserl can both help resolve conceptual puzzles surrounding language norms and clear up the ground for further empirical studies.

Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage, 2021

Metaphor research has both increased and diversified during the latest decades, leading to many f... more Metaphor research has both increased and diversified during the latest decades, leading to many findings but also extensive disagreements. In this article we propose a set of desiderata that any contemporary theory of metaphor should be able to address. These are (a) to account for metaphor as a matter of both communication and cognition, (b) to explain both universal and culture-specific aspects, (c) to achieve a balance between more stable structures, and more contextual processes, (d) to be general enough to apply not only to language (and different languages), but to other semiotic systems such as gesture and depiction, and (e) to provide clear theoretical and operational definitions. Further, we argue that a recent cognitivesemiotic theory, the Motivation & Sedimentation Model, MSM (Devylder & Zlatev, in press; Stampoulidis, Bolognesi, & Zlatev, 2019) is capable of fulfilling these desiderata. To show this, we apply MSM to "motion-emotion metaphors" (Zlatev, Blomberg, & Magnusson, 2012), adding new data and a more systematic procedure to previous research. Thus, we compare metaphor(eme)s such as my heart jumped in six differentially related European languages-English, Swedish, Spanish, Bulgarian, Finnish and Estonian-and evaluate predictions from the theoretical model.

Stage models were prevalent in developmental psychology in the past, but have recently been subje... more Stage models were prevalent in developmental psychology in the past, but have recently been subjected to much criticism. We propose "rehabilitation", defining semiotic stage as a (not necessarily stable) period characterized by the clear establishment of a novel semiotic capacity, which may "dominate" the communication of the child at this stage, but does not replace capacities from previous stages. This is spelled out by adopting one particular model of semiotic development – the Mimesis Hierarchy (Zlatev 2008a, 2008b) – and presenting comparative and developmental data from 6 children in Sweden and Thailand, between 18 and 27 months of age, analyzing their acts of bodily communication (ABCs) in relation to their emerging linguistic capacities. The results show evidence for a transition around 20 months, when children display the use of (stable) signs, shared with their community, in both the linguistic and gestural modalities, but do not yet systematically comb...

Cognitive Semiotics, 2009

Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, 2014

The chapter reviews evidence for the bodily mimesis hypothesis, which states that the evolution o... more The chapter reviews evidence for the bodily mimesis hypothesis, which states that the evolution of language was preceded by an adaptation for improved volitional control of the body, giving our ancestors advantages in the domains of imitation, empathy and gestural communication. Much of this evidence is also shared by other gesture-first theories of language origins, but they face the problem of explaining the "switch" from a gestural (proto-) language to a spoken one. The bodily mimesis hypothesis fares better with this objection, since it (a) emphasizes the non-conventionality and non-systematicity of bodily mimetic signaling, (b) posits a long bio-cultural spiral of conventionalization and adaptation for speech and (c) insists that the transition to speech should be seen as only partial. Following Brown (2012), a cognitive semiotic explanation can further be given as to why speech has eventually taken on increasingly higher communicative load: vocalization is intrinsically less capable of iconic representation, and given a multimodal gestural-vocal communicative signal, the vocal element is bound to eventually take on the role of symbolic representation, involving higher levels of conventionality and systematicity.

Topoi

Every day we make choices, but our degree of investment in them differs, both in terms of pre-ver... more Every day we make choices, but our degree of investment in them differs, both in terms of pre-verbal experience and verbal justification. In an earlier experimental study, participants were asked to pick the more attractive one among two human faces, and among two abstract figures, and later to provide verbal motivations for these choices. They did not know that in some of the cases their choices were manipulated (i.e., they were asked to motivate the item they had not chosen). Against claims about our unreliability as conscious agents (Nisbett et al. in Psychol Rev 84:231–259, 2013; Johansson et al. in Science 310:116–119, 2005), the study found that in about half the cases the manipulations were detected. In the present study, we investigated whether varying degrees of choice investment could be an explanatory factor for such findings. We analysed the verbal justifications of the participants along a set of semantic categories, based on theoretical ideas from phenomenology and cog...

Sign Systems Studies, 2021

We present a cognitive semiotic case study of the narrative potential of the statue Den lille Hav... more We present a cognitive semiotic case study of the narrative potential of the statue Den lille Havfrue (‘the little mermaid’) by Edvard Eriksen in Copenhagen. On the basis of theoretical analysis and a survey in which 20 European and 19 Chinese participants replied to questions concerning this statue we argue that it, and similar statues, may be considered as products of intersemiotic translation, but only if we dispense with any requirements of “equivalence” between source and target, since statues are necessarily semiotically highly reduced. While the source narratives constitute cases of primary narrativity, with narrations providing the audiences with stories, statues may partake only of secondary narrativity, where a prior story is needed for the statue to be understood as narration. In our study, this was reflected by correlations between reported prior knowledge and narrative (and possibly even non-narrative) interpretations of Den lille Havfrue. Finally, we relate the discuss...

This book emerged as a happy coincidence. Or was it perhaps a matter of unplanned, but non-accide... more This book emerged as a happy coincidence. Or was it perhaps a matter of unplanned, but non-accidental "distributed cognition"? In retrospect it seems that it was something that was just waiting to happen. Based on our edited volume The Shared Mind (Zlatev et al. 2008), Tim Racine, Chris Sinha, Esa Itkonen and myself proposed a theme session with the title "Intersubjectivity and Language" to the 10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, held in Krakow, Poland, in July 2007. At the same time, Ad Foolen and Ulrike Lüdtke independently proposed a session on "Language and Emotion". Both proposals were accepted, but we were urged to combine them, and the outcome was the stimulating whole-day workshop "Intersubjectivity and Language: The Interplay of Cognition and Emotion". The first fruit of this, at first glance coerced, synthesis was the linking of the topics of intersubjectivity and emotion. While Zlatev et al. (2008: 1, 3) had defined the first of these notions as "the sharing of experiential content (e.g. feelings, perceptions, thoughts, linguistic meanings) among a plurality of subjects" and had stated that such "sharing of experiences is not only, and not primarily, on a cognitive level, but also (and more basically) on the level of affect, perceptual processes and conative (action-oriented) engagements"-emotion was not explicitly thematized in that predecessor to the present volume. This was clearly a blind spot in the programmatic attempt to frame the concept of intersubjectivity as an alternative to the cognitivist perspective of "theory of mind", which still dominates large parts of the field of social cognition. A second, and equally important, insight that emerged from the workshop was the close link between (inter) subjectivity and bodily motion, or movement. Again, it is not that Zlatev et al. (2008: 3) had neglected the essential role of the body and its various forms of "movements" for the understanding of self and others: "Such sharing and understanding are based on embodied interaction (e.g. empathic perception, imitation, gesture and practical collaboration)." Similarly, various traditions Note to the Author: We have set chapter title as in table of content. Please confirm.  Jordan Zlatev  Jordan Zlatev call it "e-motion. " This term connotes movement, its instigation by "impersonal affectivity", and the dynamic of "constant attraction and repulsion"

Journal of Language Evolution, 2020

We propose reframing one of the key questions in the field of language evolution as what was the ... more We propose reframing one of the key questions in the field of language evolution as what was the original human-specific communicative system? With the help of cognitive semiotics, first we clarify the difference between signals, which characterize animal communication, and signs, which do not replace but complement signals in human communication. We claim that the evolution of bodily mimesis allowed for the use of signs, and the social-cognitive skills needed to support them to emerge in hominin evolution. Neither signs nor signals operate single-handedly, but as part of semiotic systems. Communicative systems can be either monosemiotic or polysemiotic—the former consisting of a single semiotic system and the latter, of several. Our proposal is that pantomime, as the original human-specific communicative system, should be characterized as polysemiotic: dominated by gesture but also including vocalization, facial expression, and possibly the rudiments of depiction. Given that pantom...

Cognitive Linguistics, 2016

Cognitive Linguistics began as an apotheosis of lived experience, but has over the years diversif... more Cognitive Linguistics began as an apotheosis of lived experience, but has over the years diversified into many different stands, interpreting the notion of “experience” and along with it the notion of “cognition” in conflicting ways: individual or social, prelinguistic or linguistic, unconscious or conscious? These issues are not only philosophical as they hold crucial implications for methodology. Here, I propose that most of them can be resolved with the help of phenomenology, “the study of human experience and of the ways things present themselves to us in and through such experience” (Sokolowski 2000. Introduction to phenomenology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2). Cogent syntheses are proposed to the individual/social and prelinguistic/linguistic debates, showing that scholars like Langacker, Talmy and Itkonen have focused on complementary aspects of implicitly phenomenological investigations. Third-person, “objective” methods are necessary for extending the scope of su...

Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2013

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:More than two decades of intense research on moti... more In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:More than two decades of intense research on motion event typology, emanating from the influential proposal of Talmy (1991, 2000) of a universal binary classification of languages into verb-framed (VF), such as French, and satellite-framed (SF), such as English, still leaves many questions unresolved. One such question is whether serial-verb languages such as Thai should be considered a third type (Zlatev and David 2003; Zlatev and Yangklang 2004), generalized by Slobin (2004) as equipollently-framed (EF). A second question is whether these two or three types should be regarded as in some sense ‘distinct’ (even if they have minor expression patterns conflicting the dominant, type-characteristic ones), or rather as forming continua with respect to certain dimensions, such as the propensity to express MANNER (Slobin 2004) or PATH (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2009). A third and related question is whether the notion of language types (with respect...

Sign Systems Studies, 2010

It is being increasingly recognized that the Saussurean dictum of “the arbitrariness of the lingu... more It is being increasingly recognized that the Saussurean dictum of “the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign” is in conflict with the pervasiveness of the phenomenon commonly known as “sound symbolism”. After first presenting a historical overview of the debate, however, we conclude that both positions have been exaggerated, and that an adequate explanation of sound symbolism is still lacking. How can there, for example, be (perceived) similarity between expressions and contents across different sensory modalities? We offer an answer, based on the Peircian notion of iconic ground, and G. Sonesson’s distinction between primary and secondary iconicity. Furthermore, we describe an experimental study, in a paradigm first pioneered by W. Köhler, and recently popularized by V. Ramachandran, in which we varied vowels and consonants in fictive word-forms, and conclude that both types of sounds play a role in perceiving an iconic ground between the word-forms and visual figures. The combinati...

Moving Ourselves, Moving Others, 2012

The Shared Mind, 2008

, with its oft-criticised neglect of the role of the body, phenomenal experience, social interact... more , with its oft-criticised neglect of the role of the body, phenomenal experience, social interaction and culture. Animals also have an “embodied mind”, and there are no good reasons to deny that at least birds and mammals also have a “conscious mind”. However, although other species may have varying degrees of awareness, they do not seem be fully aware of the subjectivity of others. And whereas adult human beings go on to engage in discursive practices and rely on material and symbolic culture - and both of these central aspects of social life do indeed have formative effects on the human mind - there appears to be something more basic that grounds their

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2005

We find that the nature and origin of the proposed “dialogical cognitive representations” in the ... more We find that the nature and origin of the proposed “dialogical cognitive representations” in the target article is not sufficiently clear. Our proposal is that (triadic) bodily mimesis and in particular mimetic schemas – prelinguistic representational, intersubjective structures, emerging through imitation but subsequently interiorized – can provide the necessary link between private sensory-motor experience and public language. In particular, we argue that shared intentionality requires triadic mimesis.

Theoria et Historia Scientiarum

The way people order signs in non-verbal event representations of events has been a topic of exte... more The way people order signs in non-verbal event representations of events has been a topic of extensive research in recent decades, with conflicting findings. Based on a literature review, we distinguish the following factors that have been argued to influence sign order: (a) diagrammatic iconicity, (b) manipulation vs. construction events, (c) reversibility, (d) most common word order of L1, (e) the semiotic system (gesture, depiction) used, and (f) a putative “natural” Agent–Patient–Act order. To test the role of these factors, we conducted a study where Swedish participants observed events that varied with respect to reversibility and construction/manipulation status, and then had to communicate them to an addressee using gestures for half the stimuli. For the other half, they used sequences of simple drawings of the event participants and the action. The results showed the huge influence of the semiotic system (e) on sign order. There was a role of reversibility (c) only when ges...