Mental Representations of Linguistic Meaning: A Cognitive Approach to Meaning in Language

Abstract

Language is, above all, a natural phenomenon. Its study has undergone many developments across different eras. Due to huge advances in human knowledge and scientific and technological progress, the newer directions of linguistics — especially the cognitive approach — have tried to uncover one of the mysteries of this human phenomenon. 

However, this time the questions are not only about language itself, but also about the physiological, biological and psychological mechanisms that comprise it. Alongside recent developments in neurological, technical and computational research, cognitive linguistics has demonstrated the pivotal role of the human brain in generating the mental patterns that form the conceptual content of language meanings and discourse structures in external reality. 

Thus, it became possible to reveal the process through which mental mechanisms form meaning and how they connect to external reality — results that have become scientific facts.