How does language cut a big semantic cake?

• Main Author: Dilparić Branislava
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Philosophy, Kosovska Mitrovica 2007-01-01
• Series: Zbornik Radova Filozofskog Fakulteta u Prištini
• Subjects: reality; language; categorization; prototype theory; classical theory of categorization
• Online Access: http://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0354-3293/2007/0354-32930737109D.pdf

The act of categorization is undertaken every time we use a word to refer to two or more different entities. Although different, these entities are regarded as the same. Yet the seeing of sameness in differences raises deep philosophical problems and leads to different conclusions on the role of language in this cognitive process. The paper gives a short overview of these as well as of the fundamental principles of the prototype theory of categorization, which seriously challenged the foundations of the classical theory, dominant in linguistics for a long time, through extensive experimental research in the second part of the twentieth century and pointed to the need for a non-Aristotelian theory of categorization.