Duality of patterning Containers

 There are 4 tangible categories in the world: space, objects, substances, and containers;  Cognitive science tells us that the human mind, in the face of a restricted set of semantically autonomous concepts, will make non-autonomous inanimate concepts animate (Lakoff and Turner, 1989: p. 113);  “States, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes, and means, are characterized cognitively via metaphor in terms of space, motion, and force” (Lakoff, 1993: p. 220).

 The condition of someone or something (COED);  We are IN the classroom vs.  We are IN a dilemma.  Lakoff (1993: p. 220) argues that “states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes, and means, are characterized cognitively via metaphor in terms of space, motion, and force.”  The experiential motivation for this event- structure system comes from our familiarity with motion in space, where these metaphors “emerge from everyday bodily experience” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: p. 171).

 States may include depression, danger, coma, love, poverty, peace, harmony, debt, etc.;  He is in a depression;  Depression is conceptualized as a location, i.e., a bounded region in space  the conceptual metaphor is: STATES ARE LOCATIONS.

 States show a duality of patterning;  Being IN a state, where a person is conceptualized in a bounded space: He is in a depression (STATES ARE LOCATIONS);  Having/possessing a state, where a person is conceptualized as possessing a state: He has a depression (STATES ARE POSSESSIONS).;  Not all states show this duality of patterning: He is in danger exists but *He has danger does not exist in English

ContainerPossessionBoth Container and Possession Danger Coma Love Peace Harmony Flu Disease Blood pressure Depression Poverty Debt Trouble

 The structure of a bounded region includes an interior, an exterior, and a boundary, which inferentially provides and, indeed, can predict possible linguistic metaphors like out of depression, in a deep depression, etc.;  It precludes the existence of certain expressions that do not conform to the structure of containment such as *to be on a depression or *to be under a depression.

STATES ARE LOCATIONSSTATES ARE POSSESSIONS أمن مشكلة غيبوبة فقر سعادة ورطة ديون مرض ضغط انهيار عصبي

ContainerPossessionBoth Container and Possession أمن غيبوبة فقر سعادة ورطة ديون مرض انهيار عصبي برد مشكلة ضغط

 States are abstract concepts for which we have no concrete words to talk about;  Space is universal; we live and move in space;  Objects that we can possess are also universal;  The universality of space and objects is what makes the two cultures similar in using the LOCATION-POSSESSION duality.

 Can we then talk about a one-to-one relationship between states in the two cultures? Yes and no.  Yes, because all humans share most states owing to their humanity. However, one state in one culture may not be a state in another (e.g. ضغط is a state in SA but pressure not in AE).  Another difference is that not all cultures have the two members of the duality (i.e. each culture may specifically focus on one rather than the other).

 When translators know that the mind functions by using SPACES and OBJECTS as two important categories in life, this knowledge may facilitate their job in translating states by giving them the power to predict that in many languages and cultures states are SPACES and OBJECTS.  However, they should also know that since different languages and cultures may focus either on SPACES or OBJECTS, they might have to translate a state-as-space in one culture into a state-as-possession in another.

ContainerPossessionBoth Container and Possession Danger Coma Love Peace Harmony Flu Disease Blood pressure Depression Poverty Debt Trouble أمن غيبوبة فقر سعادة ورطة ديون مرض انهيار عصبي برد مشكلة ضغط

 Changes are non-tangible categories that actually alter the states we are in or have;  Since states are either locations in space or possessions, changes combine location and possession to motion, which yields either leaving a state, or a state moving in space as illustrated below:  (a) I came out of my depression.  (b) My depression went away.

 In (a), the change is actually leaving the state as encoded by the preposition out;  This presupposes that the Experiencer was inside the state of depression, but left it;  The in/out image schema governing the change is responsible for motion from being in a depression to being out of it, which evokes the conceptual metaphor, CHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS.

 In (b), however, the depression is an object that can be possessed, as signaled by the possessive adjective “my,” that moves in space,  The conceptual metaphor governing (b) is CHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS OF POSSESSIONS.

STATES ARE CONTAINERSCHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS OF POSSESSIONS طحت في مشكلةطلعت من مشكلتي STATES ARE CONTAINERSCHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS أنا في ورطةأصحابي طلعوني من ورطتي STATES ARE POSSESSIONSCHANGES ARE MOVEMENTS OF POSSESSIONS عندي ظرف جاني الخوف ظرف وعدى راح مني الخوف

 The difference between states and changes is that states are static but changes are dynamic,  This explains the use of verbs such as “to be” with the prepositions IN, OUT, ON, etc., and “to have” with states, and the use of motion verbs such as راح, مشى, سقط, دخل, طلع etc., with changes.