Abstract: This paper proposes a new approach to style, arising from our work on computational media using structural blending, which enriches the conceptual blending of cognitive linguistics with structure building operations in order to encompass syntax and narrative as well as metaphor. We have implemented both conceptual and structural blending, and conducted initial experiments with poetry, including interactive multimedia poetry, although the approach generalizes to other media. The central idea is to analyze style in terms of blending principles, based on our finding that different principles from those of common sense blending are often needed for some contemporary poetic metaphors. 1

Abstract. This paper explores reasoning about space and time, e.g., in metaphors of time as space; an important method is to find minimal assumptions needed to reach the same conclusions that humans reach. Some mathematical language, including the notion of triad, is introduced for this purpose, formalizing and generalizing the cognitive semantics approaches to conceptual spaces (in the senses of both Fauconnier & Turner and of Gärdenfors), blending, and metaphor; in particular, continuous mathematics is used to model space and time. A new explanation of emergent structure in blend spaces is also discussed, and proposed as a source of creativity. Four main examples illustrate the approach, and an appendix encapsulates the most difficult mathematics. 1

Abstract not found

Our understanding of qualia is extremely weak when considerations of time are brought into play. Ignored has been the fact that the scale of time imposed by the brain on the events of the matter-field already defines quality, and that there is an essential “primary memory ” or continuity of time that underlies all qualitative events. This weakness is magnified when the concept of qualia is applied to form. The origin of the dilemma lies in the fact that the problem of qualia is posed in the context of an abstract space and time. When the time-evolution of the matter-field is taken as indivisible or non-differentiable, the problem can be reposed. It becomes a problem of the optimal specification of properties of an already qualitative matter-field at a particular scale of time.