rss_2.0Linguistic Frontiers FeedSciendo RSS Feed for Linguistic Frontiershttps://sciendo.com/journal/LFhttps://www.sciendo.comLinguistic Frontiers Feedhttps://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/64723962215d2f6c89dc0c75/cover-image.jpghttps://sciendo.com/journal/LF140216So, why Tartu?: Reflections on semiotics, praxis and international student (night)lifehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0019<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Tartu holds a special place in the history and education of semiotics and draws students from around the world. Semiotics is a learnt way of thinking and being, and so an induction into the field for international graduate students in Tartu is inseparable from its lived experience. This paper describes an account of living semiotics as a foreigner in Tartu, through its application to a personal field of interest, i.e. local underground nightlife and electronic dance music cultures. Besides offering strands of an analytical conception of nightlife and dance music cultures, this paper also reflects on students’ extracurricular commitments in this field to a cultural and artistic practice of applied semiotics.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00192025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00Exploring Life’s Boundaries: Biosemiotics and the Challenge of Defining Lifehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0024<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article addresses the challenges of defining life by combining insights from biological and semi-otic perspectives. It explores the lexicographic complexity of defining life, analysing how definitions vary across scientific and philosophical contexts and how these definitions are shaped by cultural and ideological influences. The study highlights the importance of semiosis as a fundamental characteristic of living organisms, positioning biosemiotics as a fundamental framework for understanding life beyond mechanistic models, but also semiotics as a tool for unravelling scientific narratives. Historical and contemporary intentions to define the minimum threshold of complexity for life, highlighting how these efforts have evolved over time and their implications for modern biology. By examining different perspectives on the phenomenon of life and its intermediate forms, the article offers a critical and interdisciplinary approach to understanding life as a semiotic and interpretive process.</p> <p>The fact that an everyday concept of life is richer than the biologic concept of life (in the sense of a greater semantic flexibility and its encompassing character of embracing normative, emotional, sacred, and other aspects of life) may lead us to pose a contra-factual question: Could other notions of life have become basic for biology had it not been developed in the shadow of a hegemony of a mechanicist ideal of science during the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20th centuries; i.e., could life have become conceived of as something different from merely complex organizations of material particles and their energetic relations? (Emmeche 1998: 4)</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00242025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00Visual Metaphor and Narrative: Ekphrasis in Fictional Narrative Prose of Late Antiquityhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0020<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article presents an interpretation of some functions performed by ekphrastic structures in the context of Ancient fictional narrative prose. Concrete examples are taken from two Ancient Greek novels: <italic>Daphnis and Chloe</italic> by Longus and <italic>Leucippe and Clitophon</italic> by Achilles Tatius. Using Olga Freidenberg’s conceptual and interpretative apparatus as a lens for reading the textual material, the central claim of the article is that within Ancient prose narrative, ekphrasis and metaphor are functionally interrelated, with ekphrasis serving to metaphorically embed narrative content within the mythological, affective, and genre-related fields of the textual production of meaning. At the same time, while adopting Freidenberg’s definition of metaphor as a primal state of cognitive indistinction between image and concept, the article attempts to go beyond her mythological interpretation of the Ancient novel and to provide a more socially and historically relevant understanding of the semantic features of this genre.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00202025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00The Image that Does Not Represent: Mythological Approachhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0025<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Can an image not signify? This paper explores two cases: self-referential images and mythological images. While Winfred Nöth defends the universality of semiotics against a potential paradox, this paper argues that subjection to semiotic logic can distort the understanding of domains such as myth. Mythological images do not adhere to formal logic and lack distinct signifiers and signified. By studying myth from within, without attempting to interpret it through external frameworks, the unique asemiotic nature of the identity between subject and object is revealed.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00252025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00(Im)material Language: Revealing the Body through Metaphorhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0023<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>When Roman Jakobson, based on his exploration of the problem of aphasia, distinguishes two aspects that characterize language – metaphoricity and metonymy – he touches on an important issue that will become a central theme for some of his followers. This question is the materiality of language. From the point of view of the aphatic himself, metaphoricity and metonymy express two extreme ways of relating to the material of language. A productive elaboration of this thesis in the history of semiotics has been provided by Julia Kristeva, who radicalizes Jakobson’s conclusions by working with the fundamental concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis. In the paper, I will compare Kristeva’s approach to that of Jacques Lacan and attempt to reconstruct the theoretical assumptions that allow Kristeva to ascribe to metaphor a privileged role that consists of the constant opening of the sphere of the sign towards the body of the subject. To illustrate some important aspects, I will turn to Vítězslav Nezval’s novella <italic>Sexual Nocturne</italic> (1931), where the connection between language and body plays a central role.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00232025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00New Frontiers in Metaphor Visualization: An Approach Through Generative Artificial Intelligencehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0022<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In the last two years, our culture and our everyday lives have literally been invaded by the use of new technological systems based on the operation of artificial intelligence. In a very short time, we have seen the development of new platforms capable of generating images or texts autonomously, following only instructions (input) of a few words. From this thought comes our question. What would happen if we asked such a system to produce something using a metaphor as input? The metaphor was chosen because, according to important semiotic and linguistic theories (Eco, Lakoff &amp; Johnson), it is one of the foundational elements of human thought. As we will see, generative artificial intelligence systems exhibit different behaviors when faced with metaphorical inputs. In this article, we will attempt to explore these behaviors and the variables that trigger them through various approaches.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00222025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00Metaphors Octopuses Live By? – A Cognitive Zoosemiotic Survey on Behavioral Mimicry as Evolutionary Contribution to Conceptual Metaphor Theoryhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0021<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>I adopt Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as a cognitive linguistic concept in a zoosemiotic framework to study behavioral polymorphic deception in Thaumoctopus Mimicus. This offers new analytical tools to zoosemiotics and may inform and underpin CMT from an evolutionary standpoint. The lack of studies on metaphorical thought in non-human animals, despite urgent calls for more diverse multimodal examples exbodying cross-domain mappings, reveals a strong anthropocentric bias in cognitive linguistics. A comprehensive theory of language, however, should be consistent from a diachronic and phylogenetic angle.</p> <p>The paper addresses how and for what metaphor, as an embodied cognitive phenomenon, may have emerged evolutionarily. It is posited that metaphor could have been present in animals before it became engrained in verbal language. This possibility is particularly relevant if we consider that lexical knowledge is not a prerequisite for metaphoric meaning-making, as the basic claim of CMT. I discuss that findings indicating embodied metaphoric processes in animals provide substantiation for cross-domain mappings as residing in cognitive systems.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00212025-01-02T00:00:00.000+00:00Construction and Reconstruction of the Language Systemhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0012<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This study loosely follows on the brilliant condensed interpretations of Jan Kořenský on the status of speech (in the sense of parole) and its assumptions (in the sense of langue) from the position of subject-object noetics. The author focuses on the question of what real language is. He is concerned with whether langue is only a social reality (exists only in social interactions) or also a cognitive reality (exists in some way in the cognition of the communicators). In his interpretation of langue, it appears as a rational language system, against which he sets a practical language system with the question of what reality these systems represent. He is reluctant to accept the view that langue is somehow present in a practical linguistic system. He takes the position that while a rational language system is only a reality constructed by the mind (a construct), a practical language system is a reality that arose from the gradual coordination of communicative activities of social subjects, which introduced flexible and stable practical rules without having to create a system in the sense of langue, functioning as a presuppositional basis of speech. He illuminates these systems from the point of view of the basic question of the theory of knowledge connected with the understanding of truth, and he points out their practical usefulness. He starts from the thesis that man is a construction-reconstruction being, and aims to support the rehabilitation of correspondence truth.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00122024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00Dynamical Systems in the Work of Jan Kořenský: Notes on the Solution of One of His Hypotheseshttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0017<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In the linguistic work of Jan Kořenský we find methodological inspiration from the theory of dynamical systems. The aim of this paper is to trace this inspiration in Kořenskýʼs key texts and to relate this conceptual borrowing to the time-specific (in the Czech environment, especially in the 1990s) interdisciplinary links between the humanities and the natural sciences. The text recalls Kořenskýʼs hypothesis about the relationship between order and chaos and the transformation of this central conceptual pair in the course of the development of the sciences at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. (přeloženo pomocí DeepL)</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00172024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00Foreword: The Legacy of Professor Jan Kořenský and Contemporary Horizons of Linguisticshttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0011ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00112024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00Scientific Metaphor and its Noetic Ambivalencehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0014<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In this paper we revisit the inspiration of J. Kořenský’s work on the problem of metaphor in scientific reflection on language. For us, the notion of <italic>noetic instrumentalisation of metaphor</italic> is the main concept by which the author captures that metaphor is an essential tool for interpreting, representing and modelling the processes of linguistic activity. We find Kořenský’s analysis of the noetic instrumentalisation of <italic>game</italic> inspiring, pointing out that the same metaphorical concept allows, on the one hand, for unifying interpretations of language, but also for interpretations that are in an ambivalent or even polemical relationship. In our study, we analyse the noetic ambivalence of the metaphor of fabric, which functions as a means of interpreting language/speech in two conflicting methodological lines: on the one hand, in a structural linguistic methodological framework, where it harmonises with the instrumentalist approach to language; on the other hand, in a social interactionist framework, where the conceptualisation of speech activity as fabric is used to explain the socially practical linguistic reality of language. The aim of the analysis is to answer the question of what lies behind the noetic ambivalence of this metaphor. To explain this, we draw on J. Dolník’s (2014) reflections on the role of autonomisation in interpreting, and distinguish between the resultative and emergent nature of the metaphorical base in scientific interpretation using metaphor.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00142024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00A Tribute to Jan Kořenskýhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0015<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The article „A Tribute to Jan Kořenský“ by Oldřich Uličný nostalgically reflects on the academic and personal life of Jan Kořenský, a significant Czech linguist, and their studies at the then Pedagogical University in Olomouc. The author recalls his first meeting with Kořenský in 1955, their studies, and cultural activities, as well as notable professors and the scientific growth at the Institute of the Czech Language in Prague. The article also documents their shared period during a turbulent time in Czech history, including normalization and political pressures that influenced their lives. Uličný highlights Kořenský‘s contributions to Czech linguistics, especially in semantics, pragmatics, and communication theory of language, concluding that his legacy and influence are evident in the work and enthusiasm of many generations of students. This remembrance draws from personal experiences and reveals the impact that their shared historical and academic journey may have had on the Czech linguistic community.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00152024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00Artificial Intelligence: Medium or Subject? On the 10th Anniversary of the Publication of the Article “Theory of New Media and the Transformation of a Medium into a Subject?”https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0013<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the publication of the article “Theory of new media and the transformation of a medium into a subject?” by Jan Kořenský, one of the most influential Czech linguists, it is important to evaluate his influence and visionary ideas that remain relevant even today. In his 2014 article, Kořenský predicted fundamental changes caused by technological progress, where new communication technologies change their role from mere means to acting entities with profound impacts on society. When he made these predictions, ocial networks such as Facebook and Instagram were examples of technologies affecting interpersonal relationships and the identity of users. Today, a decade later, the debate is shifting to artificial intelligence, raising questions about the future of work and the role of humanity. This article not only reflects Kořensky’s analysis of technological change, but also explores the current concerns and potential impacts of AI on society, science, and ethics. Kořenský’s theories remain an inspiration not only for linguists, but also for the general public dealing with the influence of technology on our reality.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00132024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00Jan Kořenský as a Proponent of Linguistic Pragmatics in Czechoslovak Linguisticshttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0016<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In the work of Jan Kořenský, pragmatic topics were mentioned as early as in 1970s, first without being termed explicitly. In the most extensive and elaborated version, Kořenský presented his concept of relations among semantics, grammar and pragmatics in the 1984 book Konstrukce gramatiky ze sémantické báze (Construing grammar on the basis of semantics). In the book, a pragmatic component (pragmatic dimension) is included in the model of grammar as a factor pertaining to the functional properties of lexical and grammatical variables. Also, Kořenský introduced an original approach towards pragmatic interpretation of utterances (semantics of “being said“) which can be considered an inspiration for the concept of logophoricity in discourse (a phenomenon broader than the traditional notion of “reported speech“).</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00162024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00The Library of Professor Kořenský as a Memorial and Source of Inspiration for Future Generations of Linguistshttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0018<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Professor Kořenský was a prominent personality of Czech linguistics, whose extensive research work covered many areas, including grammar, semantics, discourse analysis, communication process, morphology and others. His work significantly influenced the development of linguistics as a discipline in the Czech Republic. The Library of Professor Kořenský, dedicated to his legacy, is an expression of respect to his personality and scientific work, but it is also a source of inspiration and knowledge for future generations of linguists. It consists of two complementary parts: a physical library and an online library. The physical library is located at the Department of General Linguistics of Palacký University in Olomouc and is open to the public. It provides access to the collection of publications by Professor Kořenský and other related publications. The online library contains a catalogue of publications available in the physical library, contact information, a selection of Professor Kořenský‘s articles and other information and links to resources about his life and scientific contributions. The library was founded in 2023 through the collective efforts of students and academics, with the fundamental mission to preserve Professor Kořenský‘s work and make it accessible to current and future generations of linguists. It is a valuable resource for students, academics and anyone interested in linguistics. The library provides access to a comprehensive collection of materials documenting Professor Kořenský‘s scholarly work.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00182024-09-26T00:00:00.000+00:00Introduction to the Special Issue on Enlanguaged Practiceshttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0002ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00022024-07-05T00:00:00.000+00:00Bringing Things into Languaging or Not: The Role of Internal Dialoguehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0003<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This essay deals with how to “bring things into languaging” (`enlanguaging´). The theoretical background is a humanistic perspective, Merleau-Ponty´s phenomenology and extended dialogism. It will be argued that the phenomenon of `internal dialogue´, i.e., internal interaction within individual minds, are at play in such processes. This paper will consider different activities such as perception, thinking, speaking, planning for speaking, understanding, reading, interaction, and decision-making. It also pays attention to circumstances when public talk is evaded or inhibited.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00032024-07-05T00:00:00.000+00:00Linguistic Denotation as an Epistemological Issuehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0004<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Linguistic denotation is discussed as an epistemological issue that arises from the philosophy of external realism and the reification of language as a communication tool. Together, these serve as a foundation for viewing language as a sign system used for knowledge representation, when denotation is seen as the semantic property of linguistic signs – indication or reference to something, such as a thing (event, process, activity) or a concept. However, since neither the concept of sign in semiotics nor the concept of knowledge in philosophy (let alone the concept of concept itself) has a uniformly accepted informative definition, the concept of denotation, viewed by many as an implied semantic property of the linguistic sign, is highly controversial. It is argued that the reification of linguistic signs is a poor starting point in our attempts to understand language, not as a tool in the service of the mind, but as a mode of existence of humans in the world as an image of language.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00042024-07-05T00:00:00.000+00:00Doing Language(s) and Other Communicative Practiceshttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0005<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Enlanguaged practices bring together social semiosis working as an interfacial verge or axle for even greater domains of human existence. They have mental, bodily and communicative aspects, mingle with respective practices and thus bring them all together. 4E approaches to practices help to couple them. On the one hand embodying consolidates bodies and things while on the other enacting results in processes and practices. Linguistic bodies and things are shaped as nouns and nominal forms while processes and practices mold as verbs, predicatives and other rhematic formats.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00052024-07-05T00:00:00.000+00:00Normativity in Languaging and Practical Activityhttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-0006<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The paper explores some of the commonalities between language and practical activity. It focuses on the normativity involved and presents an account on two different kinds of normativity which constrain both languaging and practical doings in general. In this connection, the paper engages with the first-order—second-order distinction central to the Distributed Language Perspective and shows that there is a way for proponents of this perspective to come to terms with linguistic normativity without presupposing a dualism between, on the one hand, first-order articulations and, on the other, the second-order normative constrains that condition them.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/lf-2024-00062024-07-05T00:00:00.000+00:00en-us-1