This article serves as a primer for the theory of online meaning construction known alternately as conceptual blending, conceptual integration, the many space model, and the network theory. Our tutorial proceeds by analyzing novel and conventional examples of linguistic and nonlinguistic blends that pertain to topics of reference, partitioning, mapping, structure projection, and dynamic mental simulation. Principal concepts and processes of blending theory are described, including composition, completion, elaboration, emergent structure, and optimality constraints. We review recent work on blending theory from the perspective of linguistics, psychology, computer science, and neurobiology, and conclude with a discussion of potential weaknesses of the theory.

In his paper ‘Logic and conversation ’ Grice (1989: 37) introduced a distinction between generalized and particularized conversational implicatures. His notion of a generalized conversational implicature (GCI) has been developed in two competing directions, by neo-Griceans such as Horn (1989) and Levinson

Abstract. Here we present a model of a subtype of one-line jokes (not puns) that describes the relationship between the connector (part of the setup) and the disjunctor (often called the punchline). This relationship is at the heart of what makes this common type of joke humorous. We have implemented this model in a system, DisS (Disjunctor Selector), which, given a joke set-up, can select the best disjunctor from a list of alternatives. DisS agrees with human judges on the best disjunctor for one typical joke, and we are currently testing it on other jokes of the same sub-type. 1

A viable theory of work-related learning needs to be founded on an analysis of the historical development of work. A new landscape of learning emerges as work is transformed from mass production and mass customization toward co-configuration of customer-intelligent products and services with long life cycles. The purpose of this three-year project is threefold. First of all, the project aims at creating a conceptual and methodological framework for analyzing the learning demands and potentials of co-configuration work. Secondly, the project will produce a set of tools for the practical mastery and realization of these new learning demands and potentials in three different work settings. The theoretical foundation of the research is the theory of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987, in press). As the theory was created primarily to illuminate transformative learning in single activity systems, the inter-organizational and radically distributed nature of learning in coconfiguration work generates the third aim of the project: serious further development of the theory of expansive learning. CO-CONFIGURATION AS A NEW TYPE OF WORK AND PRODUCTION Steve Barley and Gideon Kunda (2001) argue that prevailing theories of organizing are based primarily on detailed observations of bureaucratic work, but that the nature of work today is

The expression "blends " is often used to refer to a type of data where, very visibly, two or more inputs are partially mapped onto each other and selectively projected to a new mental space in which novel structure can emerge (Fauconnier and Turner 1994, 1998, 2002). Famous examples of such blends are The Buddhist Monk, Regatta, Nixon in France, Complex Numbers, The Image Club. As it turns out, far from being exceptional, marginal, or genre-specific, such blends are all over the place, and especially visible in fields as different as scientific discovery, humor, advertising, or religious rituals. What warranted a new category for this kind of data when we first studied it was that it didn't fit into any of the known mapping schemes, in particular the source– target scheme of metaphor theory as understood at the time, or analogy, or metonymy, or simple framing. Methodologically, the abundance of previously unnoticed (and hence never analyzed) "blending " data suddenly offered a wealth of empirical resources to study with precision the cognitive operations 1 of mapping and integration that made such

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We propose an implementation of the eight Optimality Principles from the framework of Conceptual Blending, as presented by Fauconnier and Turner (1998). Conceptual Blending explains several cognitive phenomena in the light of the integration of knowledge from different mental spaces onto a single mental space: the Blend.

We can learn a great deal about consciousness and the place of mind in nature by attention to how things have meaning to us. What something means to us is the expectations that are triggered in us by its occurrence. As if to illustrate that point, this leads to many interesting conclusions. The result of the analysis presented here is that a mind is recursively defined as a system’s in-formed structure (of its subsystem processes) which constrains its process of pattern propagation. It is present in all embodied and ecologically embedded natural systems which all have the tendency to persist via pattern inertia. Though mind is accentuated in living, adaptive and self-reproducing systems, such processes occur throughout nature in simpler form. The process of pattern propagation viewed iteratively is always self referencing via recent state factored into the process update dynamical equations. Such internal feedback is a prototype of self knowledge. The more state history or memory a system can utilize in making state transitions, the more self or agency it has. When we look at such systems from the outside or 3 rd person view, we ascribe cognition in the adaptive, self-preserving behavior. When we reflect on our own personal 1 st person historical record using our advanced human declarative memory or when we imagine other viewpoints (“What is it like to be a ___”), we experience consciousness in ourselves or imagine something like it in others. The physical universe is orderly starting from the behavior of simple physical systems that internally synchronize their subsystems and start moving in one direction with a unified response. This scales up to complex systems that can orchestrate coordinated responses to serve anticipated goals. We tend to attribute awareness to those systems that have

We describe the space structuring model, a model of language comprehension inspired by ideas in cognitive linguistics, focusing on its capacity to explain the sorts of inferences needed to understand one-line jokes. One process posited in the model is frame-shifting, semantic and pragmatic reanalysis in which elements of the existing message-level representation are mapped into a new frame retrieved from long-term memory. To test this model, we recorded participants ’ eye movements with a headbandmounted eye-tracker while they read sentences that ended either as a jokes, or as nonfunny controls (“She read so much about the bad effects of smoking she decided to give up the reading./habit.”). Only jokes required frame-shifting; nonjoke endings were consistent with the contextually evoked frame. Though initial gaze durations were the same for jokes and nonjokes, total viewing duration was longer for the jokes and participants were more likely to make regressive (leftward) eye movements after reading the “punch word ” of a joke. Results are consistent with the psychological reality of some process like frame-shifting, suggesting readers literally revisit aspects of the prior context while apprehending one-line jokes.

In this article, we examine the relationship between literal and figurative meanings in view of mental spaces and conceptual blending theory as developed by Fauconnier & Turner (2002). Beginning with a brief introduction to the theory, we proceed by analyzing examples of metaphor, fictive motion, and virtual change to reveal various processes of meaning construction at work in a range of examples that vary in their figurativity. While a dichotomous distinction between literal and figurative language is difficult to maintain, we suggest that the notion of coded meaning is a useful one, and argue that coded meanings play an important role in the construction of conceptual integration networks for literal and figurative meanings alike. In addition, we explore various notions of context as it pertains to literal and figurative interpretation of language, focusing on Langacker's concept of ground. We suggest that there is much to be gained by explicating the mechanisms by which local context affects the process of meaning construction.