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Vital relations

المؤلف:  Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green

المصدر:  Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction

الجزء والصفحة:  C12-P419

2026-01-25

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Vital relations

In the previous chapter, we saw that counterparts can be established between mental spaces, and that connectors are set up that link the counterparts. We described this process as a type of conceptual projection that involves mappings between spaces. In this chapter we have referred to the identification procedure as ‘matching’. In Blending Theory, Fauconnier and Turner refer to the various types of connector as vital relations. A vital relation is a link that matches two counterpart elements or properties. Fauconnier and Turner propose a small set of vital relations, which recur frequently in blending operations. From this perspective, what makes a connector a ‘vital’ relation is its ubiquity in conceptual blending.

Vital relations link counterparts in the input spaces and establish what Fauconnier and Turner call outer-space relations: relations in which two counterpart elements are in different input spaces. Vital relations can also give rise to compressions in the blend. In other words, the blend ‘compresses the distance’ or ‘tightens the connection’ that holds between the counterparts in the outer-space relation. This relation is compressed and represented as an inner-space relation in the blend: a counterpart relation inside a single mental space. As we saw earlier in relation to the example illustrating the blending of evolutionary time into the time-scale of a single day, the time-scale of evolution is compressed into the time-scale of a single day. This kind of com pression, resulting in a reduced scale, is called scaling. The process of com pression is illustrated in Figure 12.9. According to Fauconnier and Turner, it is by means of the mechanism of compression that blending achieves human scale, together with the various subgoals set out in Table 12.3. According to this perspective, conceptual blending represents an indispensable imaginative feat underlying human thought and reasoning.