by Mark Turner
They roam. One day, while the brothers re st under a tree, a black pillar rises from the surging sea until it reaches the sky. The terrified brothers climb the tree and watch as a giantjinnee carries a chest on his head. He places it on the shore below the tree, opens the chest to remove a box, and then opens that box to take out a “beautiful young girl, radiant as the sun.”
The jinnee falls asleep in the girl’s lap. She sees Shahriyar and Shahzaman and signals to them to come down and make love to her, on threat of her waking the jinnee to rip them apart should they decline. Afterward, she takes their seal rings, for a total of one hundred rings so acquired.
“This jinnee,” she added, “carried me away on my bridal night and imprisoned me in a box which he placed inside a chest. He fastened the chest with seven locks and deposited it at the bottom of the roaring sea. But he little knew how cunning we women are.”
MANY SPACES Q. 103
The two Kings marvelled at her story, and said to each other: “If such a thing could happen to a mighty jinnee, then our own misfortune is light indeed.” And they returned at once to the city.
As soon as they entered the palace, King Shahriyar put his wife to death.
Misery loves company. The two kings read this story emblematically: Women are always cunning and deceitful. From the specific story with a specific woman and a specific male who tries to keep her, they project an abstract generic story. The female dupes the male through her cunning. This generic storyis then available for projection to any other particular space, such as the specific stories of both Shahzaman and Shahriyar. The kings have a psychological interest in reading the story this way, as an emblem that provides a generic story of what women do to men.
There is of course a different projection available to us that it is psychologi- cally impossible just now for the kings. The jinnee, serving himself, exerts extra- ordinary control over the young woman, “taking” her physically from one loca- tion to another on her wedding night, limiting her freedoms in specifically spatial ways. His behavior causes her to hate him, which leads her to seek revenge: She sets out to do exactly what he has so single-mindedly tried to prevent her from doing. Given this causal sequence, we can regard the jinnee as the cause of his own predicament and blame him for it. This story can be projected metaphori- cally onto the story of marriage generally, or at least, certainly, of marriage to kings. “Stealing” the woman like an object on her wedding night, regardless of her desires, can be projected metaphorically onto what kings do with their brides. The jinnee’s locking her up and keeping her under the sea can be projected onto the kings’ placing limitations (spatial and nonspatial) on their wives—Shahriyar’s wife had to stay in the court while he went out to hunt. This projection is not available to Shahzaman and Shahriyar at this point: it would imply that they and not their wives are to blame for their being up a tree.
LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTIONS
Grammatical constructions often represent basic abstract stories. For example, consider the basic abstract story of result: An intentional agent performs an act on an object, with a particular result for the object. This basic abstract story is represented by the grammatical resultative construction, used in “Kathy pressed the wallpaper flat” and “Mike painted the kitchen yellow.” Consider also the “caused motion” construction studied by Goldberg. It has the syntax
NounPhrase—Verb—N ounPhrase—Preposition—NounPhrase ,
104 .6 THE LITERARY MIND
as in “He hit the ball into the bleachers” or “They shoved the poor guy out of the room.” The grammatical construction represents a basic abstract spatial action—story in which an agent performs a physical action that causes a physical object to move in a spatial direction. Fauconnier and I have analyzed the way in which this gram~ matical construction serves as a prompt to blend two things: the events referred to by the vocabulary filling the construction and the caused—motion storyrepresented by the construction itself. In the resulting blend, the unintegrated events to which the vocabulary refers acquire the integrated event structure of the caused—motion story. For example, if we say, “He floated the toy boat across the pond,” then even though floatencodes only the manner of the boat’ s motion, and notthe causal action or the causality between that action and the motion of the boat, we still know that we are being asked to conceive of a scene in which the floating of the boat is a story of caused motion. As Goldberg observes, “He sneezed the napkin off the table” has a verb that is a “parade example” of intransitivity, but its use in this construction prompts us to think of a scene in which sneezing physically causes the motion of an object in a direction. It does not mean, for example, that he sneezed and someone picked a napkin up off the table to hand him, because that is not a caused—motion story. We blend the physical caused—motion story with the story of sneezing.
We project from the basic abstract action story of caused physical motion an even more abstract generic story of causation that is not necessarily physical and that can be projected to target stories that may not be physical. For example, we can say, “They laughed the poor guy out of the room,” even though laughing is not a physical force. We can say, “She drove him out of his mind,” even if she exerted no physical force on him and even though the result is not physical motion in a spatial direction. The basic abstract story of physical caused motion involves physical spatiality; the generic story of caused motion does not, and can apply to targets that are not physical or spatial.
Grammar contains many devices for indicating what mental spaces are to be built and how they are to be connected. These devices include tenses, moods, some verbs, and conjunctions. Grammar is a set of instruments used to guide the building and blending of spaces and the projecting of generic spaces. In other words, grammar is the servant of parable. In the final chapter of this book, we will consider why it is such an apt servant.
As an example of how grammar gives us guidance in space building, space blending, and projection of generic space s, consider the xyz construction, whose syntax is deceptively simple:
NounPhrase(x) be NounPhrase(y) of NounPhrase(z)
as in Vanity is the quiekmnd of reason. This simple syntax has a complex semantic and pragmatic interpretation: Construct a set of spaces and projections with the
MANY SPACES Q. 105
result that x in a target is the counterpart of y in a source, and z in that target is the counterpart of an unmentioned fourth element win that source. In “Vanity is the quicksand of reason,” 10 is the traveler who travels toward a goal. As quick- sand stops the traveler, vanity stops reason. The grammatical information is minimal and highly abstract—f1nd a mapping and a missing element. The rest is left to the cognitive competence of the user, who must construct an implicit generic space and an implicit blend, in which a single element is simultaneously reason and a traveler.
An abbreviated form of the xyz construction can be seen in phrases like “Language is fossil poetry.” Emerson meant by this expression that language, which seems so literal, consists of historical traces of inventive and original “poetry.” Here, x is language, z is poetry, and y is given by the modifier fbssil. A missin w livin or anism must be found to com lete the corres ondences.We
8' g g P P construct a blended notion of something that is simultaneously language, poetry, and fossil: in the blended s ace, oet isa livin or nism that can leave a fossil P P W 3 ga trace (language).
Noun phrases of this yz form (“fossil poetry") arise often. We call a subur- ban teenager a “mall rat.” We refer to a “tax bite,” a “computer jock,” a “price war,” a “surfing safari,” or “channel surfing (or internet surfing).” The construc- tion can be used to signal new blends, as when the Clinton administration’s com- prehensive effort to make executive appointments along racial and gender guide- lines was called by a Republican congressional staffer a “diversityjihad.” A related construction uses the standard adjective-noun syntax to indicate counterparts: “In this way he acqui
red a vast hoard of all sorts of learning, and had it pigeon- holed in his head where he could ut his intellectual band on it whenever it was
P
wanted,” or, “In making these investments, you are digging your financial grave.” Someone who has left the Touraine and its cuisine to return to the American Midwest might be said to suffer upon reentry “the gastronomic bends.” A Pari- sian who dates one woman only on the Right Bank and another only on the Left refers to this as “French fidelity.” Universities that try to raise money for research by making arrangements for technology transfer are said to be holding “techno- logical bake sales.”
GRADIENTS
There is an aspect of parable that so far we have acknowledged only implicitly. It concerns gradients of spaces and projections. The basic metaphor DEATH IS DEPARTURE, for example, operates at one level of specificity, but above it lies EvENTs ARE ACTIONS, which projects information even more abstract, and above EvENTs ARE ACTIONS lies the most general level of projection, the general capa- bility of projecting one story parabolically onto another.
106 .9 THE LITERARY MIND
Below DEATH IS DEPARTURE on the gradient of specificity lies the projection of the story of an agent carrying somebody ofliforover onto the story of death. Below that lies the projection of the story of Thanatos intending to snatch the body at the grave and carry it ofl' to Hades, but being wrestled out of it by Heracles onto the story of the near death ofAltestis, and the projection of someone trying to pullfllcestis by the hand toward Charon theferryman who is waiting to carry heracross the river Styx onto the near death ofAltestis. A projection at any level in such a graded hierarchy can provide structure to any other projection in the same hierarchy.
THE CONCEPT OF A CONCEPT
Parable involves dynamic construction of input spaces, generic spaces, and blended spaces, multiply linked, with projections operating over them. Inferences: and meaning are not bounded in a single conceptual locus. Meaning is a complex operation of proj ecting, blending, and integrating over multiple spaces. Meaning never settles down into a single residence. Meaning is parabolic and literary.
This view of meaning may seem counterintuitive. If we think of concepts as little packets of meaning whose boundaries circumscribe our knowledge of them, then any sort of meaning we recognize as distributed over many spaces may seem secondary, marginal, special, or parasitic. On that view, a blended space will seem to be an exotic mental event, an exceptional quirk. But the variety of the examples we have seen shows that the dynamism, distribution, projection, and integra- tion we see in blending are actually central and pervasive elements of everyday thought.
Consider any basic everyday concept, like house. It seems static and perma- nent, stable and unitary, cohesive and self—contained. This is an illusion, derived from an influential but mistaken folk notion of concept. We have no concept house, but we do have a word “house,” and being able to use that word—like the words “fish,” “marriage,” “life”—requires us to construct, activate, link, and project the appropriate configurations of spaces, frames, and cognitive models. We may not perceive this multiple activation for a word like “house” because we activate again and again the same configurations of spaces and links for “house,” so that one of those configurations can come to seem to be our “basic concept house.” But in fact a great range of spaces is activated for “house”: shelter from the elements, bounded interiors, security from intruders, financial investment, artifacts, aes- thetic design, instrumentality for inhabitants, social residence, social place of meeting, partitioning of activities into different physical spaces, rental property, and on and on indefinitely. Any single use of the word “house” for any particular purpose will involve construction of meaning as an operation of selective inte- gration over these various distributed stories.
MANY SPACES Q. 107
Let us look at a case where it is clear that different spaces are activated for the same word in different local situations. Consider the simple xyz equation, “Ital- ian is the daughter of Latin.” The source input space contains overtly only a very little structure: It has a parent and a daughter. The target input space also con- tains overtly only a very little structure: It has Italian and Latin. Ultimately, par- ent in this source will correspond to Latin in this target, and daughter in this source will correspond to Italian in this target. The result is a double personification: In the blend, Latin and Italian are human beings. But this hardly accounts for the meaning we construct on hearing this phrase. One normal interpretation might be paraphrased: “Latin existed first, and Italian came into existence second by deriving causally from Latin.” It may seem as if the material needed for constructing this meaning is intrinsically in the source input space of parent—child and the tar- get input space of Latin-Italian. But it isn’t. It must be. recruited and brought into the source input and the target input. It can be recruited by activating other spaces and projecting them to the skeletal source and target inputs. Onto the skeletal target input, we project a space concerning languages. In it, some languages de- rive from others, and in particular, Italian derives diachronically from Latin. Onto the skeletal source input of parent and child, we project a particular story of progeneration. In it, a parent bears a causal and sequential relation to the child; the parent produces the child; the parent precedes the child.
If the source input and the target input are elaborated in these ways, by this recruited structure, they share a causal and sequential structure. This causal and sequential structure will then be available to constitute the generic space that underlies the interpretation “Latin precedes and results in Italian.”
But now suppose that we are talking about: the study of foreign languages in a particular high school, and we observe that nearly all the students of Latin come to the subject because they encountered it in courses in Italian. We might say, “Italian is the mother of Latin.” Does this assertion contradict the earlier asser- tion that “Italian is the daughter of Latin”? Clearly not. In the case of “Italian is the mother of Latin,” what has been additionally recruited to the target input is the sequential order in which languages are learned, not the order in which they historically derived. In the space of learning languages, the sequential order of Latin and Italian is the reverse of their sequential order in the space of the his- tory of languages. Recruiting structure from the space of learning languages to the space of Italian and Latin lets us say, “Italian is the mother of Latin,” while recruiting structure from the space of the history of languages to the space of Italian and Latin lets us say, “Italian is the daughter of Latin.” In general, there is no fixed structure of the target input space that the source input space must match, because the target input space has different structure under different re- cruitments to it.
108 .9 THE LITERARY MIND
Now let us consider the source input space. Suppose we are discussing the relative aesthetic qualities of Italian and Latin, and we comment upon the pre- cision of Latin in Vergil, Propertius, or Horace as compared to the florid and ostentatious qualities of Italian in Bocaccio or Tasso. We say, “Well, Italian is the daughter of Latin, and her ostentatious beauty is really a rebellion against her mother’s austerity.” Here, we recruit to the source input space of mother and daughter notjust progeneration but also social relations between mothers and daughters, and in particular adolescent rebellion over appearance and behavior. Under this recruitment of structure to the source input space, Italian is still the daughter of Latin, but in an entirely different additional sense.
In all these examples, the underlying conceptual domains—kinship and lan- guage s—are the same, but the spaces selected for recruiting additional structure to the source input space differ example to example, and the spaces selected for recruiting additional structure to the target input space differ example to example. The resulting conf1gurations—source input space, generic space, target input space, and blended space—are different in each case.
Som
e recruitments to source and to targetwill be more common than others and thus may come to mind more quickly and give rise to highly salient default interpretations. In isolation, “Italian is the mother of Latin” will raise eyebrows. Common or default recruitments are a phenomenon of thought in general: we are always ready to use default conceptual connections as we think. It is impor- tant to recognize, however, that common, default recruitments do not give us fixed basic concepts: we can always unplug the default connections; they are, in techni- cal jargon, “defeasible.” They look stable and fixed sometimes, but only because they are entrenched. Our most entrenched concepts and connections are formed by the same mechanisms of parable we have seen in the exotic and unusual cases.
INVARIANCE REVISITED
By now, we have detected many features of parable: input spaces (which some- times are related as source and target); abstract structure that is shared by inputs; generic spaces that contain that shared structure; counterpart connections that exist between inputs because of their shared structure; projection from inputs to a blend; development of emergent structure in the blend; projection of struc- ture, inferences, and affect back from the blend to inputs; and variable recruit- ment of structure from other spaces to the inputs themselves.
This many—space model of parable makes it possible to give a concise state- ment of the invariance principle: Conceptual projection, which has as one of its fundamental activities the projection of image—schematic structure from a source input to a target input, shall not result in an image-sche matic clash in the target.