Foundations
The DISCOWER project is built on the pillars of cognition and constructions supporting our cognitive–constructional (CC) framework, whose applicability is tested on the category of an abstract or, to be more precise, 2136 abstracts of research articles in three disciplines: law, linguistics, and literary studies, which were created by users of English as a lingua franca and gathered in the DISCOWER corpus. The framework and the corpus constitute a whole, unifying theoretical commitments and data analysis on the shared platform founded by:
A. cognition – a set of integrated mental systems arranged into higher (e.g. language and thought) and lower (e.g. action and perception) structures, with the latter embodying the former, through, for instance, Gestalt schematic concepts prone to experiential, e.g. physical and socio-cultural, pressures;
B. constructions – Gestalt– and experience–based symbolic units of varying degrees of (collective) entrenchment which combine linguistic and paralinguistic forms with their meanings rendered as frames of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes.
Generally, the two founding categories, i.e. cognition and constructions, are derived from theories of non-modular cognition and Gestalt perception, cognitive linguistics, social cognitive linguistics, multimodal cognitive linguistics, complex systems theory as well as cognitive and intercultural pragmatics and cognitive approaches to texts and genres. In particular, the CC framework integrates insights from theories of embodied and embedded cognition (Barsalou 1999, 2020; Gibbs 2017) and Prägnanz (Sadler 2020; van Geert and Wagemans 2024), cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987, 2008, 2014, 2017), cognitive semantics (Talmy 2000), frame theory (Barsalou 1992, 2016, 2017) and construction grammar (Ungerer and Hartmann 2023), multimodal construct(ion) grammar (Hoffmann 2021) and cognitive semiotics (Hoffmann and Bergs 2018; Hart and Queralto 2021).
Specifically, the CC approach recognizes the following commitments defining its theoretical scope and contents and culminating in the category of written abstracts of research articles.
A. The cognitive commitment
Cognition
1. Language should be described in accordance with what is known about human cognition (Lakoff 1990), i.e. a set of cognitive systems, such as action, attention, culture, memory, knowledge, thought, and language, which can be viewed in a modular or a non-modular way (Benson et. al 2025). ① ②
2. As a result, classic cognition, e.g. language and knowledge, can be seen as, among others, embodied, i.e. coupled with human physiological and sensorimotor capacities (Overmann and Malafouris 2018). ① ②
3. Embodied, classic, or higher, cognition shares fundamental structures with, among others, perception, e.g. vision, audition, haptics, gustation, olfaction, and proprioception (Barsalou 1999). ① ② ③
Gestalt and Prägnanz
4. Fundamental to perception is Gestalt organization (see Evans and Green 2006; Luccio 2011; Wagemans et al. 2012; Buffart and Jacobs 2021), which arranges unstructured sensory stimuli into unitary perceptual objects (Marini and Marzi 2016; Gärdenfors 2020), i.e. Gestalts. ①
5. Gestalt organization is guided by two sets of interrelated principles: grouping and figure–ground interaction, a.k.a. figure–ground segregation (Palmer 2003). ①
6. Gestalt principles specify perceptually salient factors or “conditions conducive to figure–ground articulation (Todorovich 2011: 3)”, such as proximity, closure, surroundedness, and solidity (Pinna et al. 2017), and “conditions conducive […] to grouping (Todorovich 2011: 3)”, such as proximity, closure, similarity, and continuity (Rock and Palmer 1990).
7. Grouping factors, or sub-principles, are subsumed under the meta-principle of Prägnanz (Ehrenstein et al. 2003), by which Gestalts tend to be (maximally) good, or ideal (Rausch 1966; Metzger 2006; Todorovich 2008). ① ②
8. Prägnanz is not only the principal tendency of perceptual organization but also “a property of the Gestalt” which emerges from this tendency (van Geert and Wagemans 2024: 552). ①
9. As a property, Prägnanz can be described on a gradual scale. Thus, a Gestalt can be a better or worse perceptual grouping by, for instance, being more or less closed, continuous, compact, or homogeneous. ① ② ③
Construal operations, schematic concepts and the conceptual system
10. Construal, or cognitive, operations, i.e. basic meaning-making mechanisms (Kövecses 2015: 16), encompass Gestalt principles, e.g. the Gestalt principle of grouping is referred to as the construal operation of grouping. ① ② ③
11. Gestalt construals can develop into foundational cognitive, or conceptual, structures (Mandler 1992; Lakoff 2012), i.e. basic, or schematic, concepts (Langacker 2008). ① ②
12. Universally available Gestalt schematic concepts enable the acquisition of a conceptual system, i.e. dynamically organized, categorized knowledge about the world (Kiefer and Barsalou 2013: 4), and constitute its relatively stable part (Kövecses 2015). ①
Concepts, frames, attributes and values
13. Gestalt schematic concepts are shaped by experience, i.e. embedded, to form more contentful concepts (David et al. 2016; Hart 2016). ① ②
14. Embeddedness provides intrinsic, e.g. physical, and extrinsic, e.g. cultural, content. ① ②
15. Conceptual content is stored as a two-level structure composed of “an underlying frame” and “the potentially infinite set of simulations [conceptualizations] that can be constructed from the frame” (Barsalou 1999: 586). ①
16. Frames, e.g. object frames, are assemblies of attributes, values, conceptual relations and recursion. ① ②
17. Attributes are concepts applied to particular categories. For instance, the Gestalt schematic concept of continuity becomes the attribute of continuity when “it describes an aspect of at least some category members” (Barsalou 1992: 30). ①
18. While attributes are concepts defining aspects of a larger whole, values are subordinate concepts of an attribute which can be either discrete, i.e. “digital (with a fixed number of clearly defined choices) or analogue (with a continuous range of choices)” (Szawerna 2012: 204). ① ②
19. Conceptual relations capture links between attributes and values while recursion arranges attributes and values into hierarchies. ① ②
20. Frames are associated with linguistic forms, giving rise to linguistic constructions. ① ②
B. The constructionist commitment
Linguistic constructions
21. A linguistic construction is a relatively stable form-frame association, i.e. a symbolic unit. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤
22. A linguistic construct, a.k.a. a usage event or an exemplar, is a context-dependent correspondence between a spoken or written utterance and a conceptualization (Langacker 2001; Evans and Green 2006; Neef 2021). ①
23. Linguistic constructions emerge in and from linguistic constructs, i.e. there is a construct-construction continuum. ① ②
24. The construct-construction continuum, or “the cline of constructionhood” (Ungerer 2023: 14), rests upon the notion of entrenchment. In other words, constructions “emerge via the progressive entrenchment of configurations that recur in a sufficient number of events to be established as cognitive routines” (Langacker 2008: 220). ① ②
25. Generally defined as an established pattern at the individual level, entrenchment can also be observed at the collective plane. ①
26. Collective entrenchment can be roughly equated with conventionality and measured through a corpus. ① ② ③ ④
27. While conventionality co-occurs with other dimensions, e.g. specificity and simplicity, it remains the most reliable determinant of constructionhood. ① ②
28. Although specificity and simplicity do not identify constructions, they can function as attributes describing constructional goodness. ① ② ③ ④
29. While commonly described with reference to specificity and simplicity, linguistic constructions can also be felicitously characterized with reference to other attributes referring to constructional goodness, e.g. closure and homogeneity. ① ②
30. This attribute-based characterization remains applicable also when the notion of constructionhood is expanded. ①
Non-linguistic and paralinguistic constructions
31. Expanding linguistic constructions means enriching them with non-linguistic and paralinguistic features. ①
32. While non-linguistic and paralinguistic features are typically acknowledged at the form pole of a linguistic construction, they can also be seen at its semantic plane. ① ② ③
33. In other words, non-linguistic, e.g. pictorial, and paralinguistic, e.g. graphemic, constructions can be recognized alongside linguistic constructions. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤
34. While paralinguistic constructions have been identified at the level of micropunctuation, they can be extended to the level of macropunctuation. ① ②
35. As a result, macropunctuation constructions can be defined as layout- and typography-based form-meaning pairings, such as white space and rules which can signal separation (or lack of compactness) and font size or colour variation which can indicate stylization (or lack of homogeneity) (Waller 1980: 248-249). ① ②
36. Based in layout and typography, macropunctuation constructions are readily identifiable at the textual level, i.e. in multi-mode text type constructions, such as written abstracts of research articles. ① ② ③
C. The cognitive-constructionist commitment
Applied to written abstracts of research articles
37. Written abstracts of research articles can be theorized in consonance with what is known about human cognition. This means that abstracts can be seen as embodied.
38. Embodied, abstracts are interpreted as per/conceptual groupings and apprehended through the principle of Prägnanz. This means that abstracts can be described as better or worse Gestalts, or wholes, through such properties as, e.g., distinctness, closure, synchrony and continuity.
39. Gestalt properties, also known as Gestalt schematic concepts, are embedded, i.e. modified by physical and sociocultural environments. This means that the initial pool of properties applicable to abstracts can be pruned and enriched.
40. Pruned, Gestalt schematic concepts become (at least partly) backgrounded. For instance, Western readers tend to prune closure to top-left and bottom-right areas. This means that upper-left / bottom-right corners are highly relevant for describing abstracts.
41. Enriched, Gestalt schematic concepts are adjusted to fit a particular category. For instance, though typically related to real motion, as an abstract’s attribute, synchrony reflects fictive motion (see Attributes for details).
42. Attributes can be intrinsic, i.e. pertaining to the abstract itself, and extrinsic, i.e. resulting from how the abstract is related to other objects (on the page).
43. Both intrinsic attributes, e.g., closure, synchrony and continuity, and extrinsic ones, e.g., distinctness, have discrete values. This means that abstracts can be described as, e.g., closed/non-closed, synchronous/non-synchronous, continuous/non-continuous, distinct/non-distinct.
44. In other words, a Gestalt schematic structure, when applied to the category of abstracts, becomes the category’s attribute. An attribute, in turn, when applied in a specific way, i.e. operationalized, becomes a measurable value.
45. Attributes and values are hierarchically arranged into abstract frames. This means that three levels of attributes can be exploited: attribute sets (e.g. contour), attributes (e.g. closure and continuity) and attribute values (e.g. closed/non-closed and continuous/non-continuous), and relations between them (e.g. between being closed and continuous) can be established.
46. Abstract frames are linked to linguistic forms to become linguistic constructions.
47. As constructions, abstracts display baseline/elaboration organization. This means that the abstract text construction can be augmented through a label into the basic abstract construction which can be augmented through, e.g. keywords, into the elaborated abstract construction.
48. Both basic and elaborated abstract constructions emerge from and in abstract constructs (exemplars). This means that abstract constructions are varyingly reflected in abstract constructs and that with repetition abstract constructs may reshape abstract constructions.
49. The reciprocal relationship between constructions and constructs means that there is no definite frequency threshold distinguishing between them. In other words, abstract constructions can be varyingly entrenched at individual and collective levels.
50. Collective entrenchment, or conventionality, can be measured through a corpus. This means that disciplinary preferences for basic and elaborated abstract constructions shown by members of, e.g., law, linguistics and literary studies communities, can be established.
51. In establishing preferences, or cognitive styles, of disciplinary communities, respective roles of top-down and bottom-up processes need to be specified. This distinction is reflected in the way (exemplars of) the two abstract constructions can be identified in the corpus.
52. To be more specific, the basic abstract construction can be recovered through its initial and final linguistic components, typically the abstract label and the abstract text, respectively, while the elaborated abstract construction can be discovered through its initial and final paralinguistic components, typically stretches of white space.
53. Linguistic and paralinguistic components are in fact linguistic and paralinguistic constructions. To illustrate, the abstract label is paired with the meaning “classifying the following content as the encapsulation of a research article”, the abstract text with the meaning “encapsulation of a research article”, while stretches of white space symbolize a grouping/a whole within. This means that basic and elaborated abstract constructions are (composed of) constructions in (at least) two semiotic modes, i.e. linguistic and paralinguistic.
54. As multi-mode constructions, basic and elaborated abstracts show varying degrees of symbolicity/iconicity. This means that in the case of linguistic constructions semantic and graphological poles resemble each other less than in the case of paralinguistic constructions.
55. Still, since the semantic poles of linguistic and paralinguistic constructions are based in Gestalt schematic concepts and can be described through a common set of attributes, various relations can be identified between and within these two types of constructions.
For more information on Foundations, contact A. Strugielska (see contact details in the footer).