delivers the meaning that the price was low, while
John sold the car for a good price
means the price was high. The meaning of 'good' depends on knowledge of the BUYER and SELLER roles in the COMMERCIAL EVENT frame.
Here is what Fillmore writes in the 1977 paper:
By the term 'frame' I have in mind any system of concepts related in such a way that to understand any one of them you have to understand the whole structure in which it fits.
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Similar to Fillmore's frames are Langacker's domains. He writes (1987 page 147):
All linguistic units are context-dependent to some degree. A context for the characterisation of a semantic unit is referred to as a domain. Domains are necessarily cognitive entities : mental experiences, representational spaces, concepts or conceptual complexes.
He gives as an example of a domain the concept KNUCKLE, and suggests it has at least 3 components in its domain matrix:
Figure 3.1 Concept domain
We therefore have a hierarchy of domains. Langacker argues that at the foundation of the hierarchy are basic domains, defined to be one which cannot be reduced to further components. He suggests that many of these are directly sensory, and suggests that [COLOUR] and [TEMPERATURE] are examples. Any domain which is not basic he calls an abstract domain. The basic domains are perhaps the foundational embodied concepts of Lakoff and Johnson.
Croft & Cruse (2004 page 15) describes domains as being identical with Fillmore's frames, although Evans & Green (2006 page 230) identifies 4 differences - which are largely matters of emphasis. Clearly frames and domains are very similar.
[KNUCKLE]
[PART/WHOLE] [BEND] [FINGER]
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3.5.1 The profile-base relation
Langacker (1987 page 183) also introduced the terms profile and base. He gives as an example the CIRCLE domain as a base, with ARC 'profiling' a component of it, namely a section of the perimeter. Similarly RADIUS profiles another aspect of CIRCLE, namely the distance from the centre to the perimeter. Another example is the KINSHIP domain as a base, with UNCLE profiling one aspect of that. Profile-base relations are discussed in relation to OOP in the next chapter.
3.6 Mental Spaces
In the preface to his work of that title, (1994) Fauconnier writes that:
..in order for thinking and communicating to take place, elaborate constructions must occur, that draw on conceptual capacities, highly structured background and contextual knowledge, schema-induction, and mapping capabilities. Expressions of language do not in themselves represent or code such constructions - the complexity of the constructions is such that the coding, even if it were at all possible, would take very large amounts of time and be extremely inefficient. Instead, languages are designed, very elegantly it would seem, to prompt us into making the constructions appropriate for a given context, with a minimum of grammatical structure.
and again:
This fundamental property of language is counterintuitive: in our folk theory, it is the words that carry the meaning - we 'say what we mean',..
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If this is true, this is of key significance for learning and teaching. The folk theory is that the words of the teacher carry the meaning 'at first hand', and that on that basis the student has to do no more than to hear in order to learn. But of course the folk theory is wrong. Fauconnier's idea of mental spaces arose as a consequence of dealing with problems of referential opacity. For example, suppose Jack is the son of Philip, and also, secretly, the leader of the Black Brigade. Then consider the two sentences
Philip believes his son is a genius, and
Philip believes the leader of the Black Brigade is a genius
These do not mean the same thing. In 'reality' the two terms in italics refer to the same person - but not in terms of Philip's beliefs, and so the meaning is different. This demonstrates the fact that words do not simply carry meaning, but only once refracted through the mental space elicited by the words.
In The Way We Think (Fauconnier and Turner 2002 page 102) they write that
..mental spaces are small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action.
However the key point is that what we think and talk about is not simply our physical environment, nor even our 'mental' environment which is in some sense objective, but rather that they are personal constructions which have varying degrees of 'fictive' nature, ranging from pure hypothesis, through possibilities, to counter-factuals, and to things such as paintings or novels, where the fact that they are 'not true' is not important. Fauconnier claims that frames structure mental spaces - in other words that some mental spaces are thought of as being instances of a frame, so that the elements and relationships in the space acquire roles according to the 'slots' in the frame.
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3.7 Conceptual Blending
Fauconnier and Turner (2002) use the term conceptual integration network (CIN) to describe related spaces, and describe several topologies of CINs. A common feature of CINs comprises of some 'input' spaces yielding an 'output' space which contains some selected elements of the inputs, and producing emergent structure in the output - in other words, something more than a simple summation of the projected elements. Their claim is that such blends enable individuals and communities to be creative and imaginative and to conceptualize beyond basic concrete ideas.
For example, consider