Theoretical and empirical study of cognitive scales and their linguistic expression

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The main purpose of this project is to examine scalar properties in notions like time, space and degrees as represented in a natural language. For this purpose we have eyed linguistic expressions that involve scalarity as applied to time, space and degrees in Japanese and obtained results as follows:1.We have examined the interpretation of a deistic time noun 'imagoro' and have shown that it crucially, involves a periodic scalar structure imposed on time. We have also shown that the scalar structure thus imposed gives rise to a parallel temporal structure homomorphic to it and serves to express temporal parallelism between two sets of situations.2.We have examined a formal noun 'tokoro (place, location)' in detail and have shown that it represents a reference point in space, time and, possible worlds. By treating 'tokoro' as representing a reference point in different domains of interpretation, we have succeeded in explaining all the uses of 'tokoro' i.e. as a localizer, aspectual marker, and modal auxiliary in conditional consequents, as well as in giving a general account of the cognitive mapping involved that connects those domains.3.We have shown that the notion of reference point can be generalized to apply to scalar expressions for amount in natural language.The main results of our research have been presented at JK 13^<th> at Michigan State University, ELLIS at Vienna, The Second International Conference on Discourse and Cognitive Linguistics at Seoul.