The Attentional System
As we have seen, the ‘Configurational Structure System’ structures matter and action in SPACE and TIME. The ‘Attentional System’ governs the distribution of attention over matter and action (scenes and their participants) and is governed by three main factors. The first factor is strength, which relates to the relative prominence of referents: whether they are either backgrounded or fore grounded. The second factor is pattern, which concerns how patterns of attention are organised. For example, a focus of attention pattern gives rise to figure-ground organisation. Other patterns are window of attention and level of attention. The third factor is mapping, which governs the way in which parts of an attention pattern are mapped onto parts of the scene described. Table 15.6 summarises the three factors that govern the ‘Attentional System’.
As we saw in Chapter 3, the figure-ground asymmetry, an attentional phenomenon, is fundamental to the nature of human perception. According to the cognitive model, attention is also fundamental to grammatical organisation. It is important to emphasise that the factors strength, pattern and mapping of attention should not be viewed as distinct types of attention. Instead, these are factors that interact to focus attention: prominence gives rise to patterns of attention which are then mapped onto scenes. We illustrate the interaction of these parameters here with examples of the three types of attention pattern: focus, window and level of attention.
Focus of attention pattern
Example (16) involves a COMMERCIAL EVENT frame (this was discussed in Chapter 7). In (16a) the shop assistant, corresponding to the SELLER role, is fore grounded. In other words, it is the figure. The BUYER and GOODS roles are backgrounded and together make up the ground. In (16b), George, which corresponds to the BUYER role, is the figure, and the SELLER and GOODS roles make up the ground.
This example illustrates a focus of attention pattern. In terms of strength of attention, the foregrounding results from the mapping of attention onto a particular entity in the scene. The grammatical system encodes this in two ways: firstly, by the selection of one of several verbs relating to the event frame (buy versus sell, for example); and secondly by the associated word order. The prominence of the clause-initial position illustrates the phenomenon called grammatical iconicity, where some aspect of conceptual representation is ‘mirrored’ by grammatical structure. In this case, conceptual prominence is mirrored by grammatical prominence. The choice over which participant in the event is placed in this position is linked in part to the choice of verb and in part to the type of grammatical construction selected (e.g. active versus passive, or cleft versus unmarked declarative).
Windowing pattern
The windowing pattern involves the explicit mention of some part or parts of a scene (windowing), while other parts may be omitted (gapping). The windowing pattern differs from the figure-ground pattern because the figure ground pattern concerns the organisation of aspects of the conceptual representation that are present in the linguistic representation. Like the figure-ground pattern, however, the windowing pattern represents a strategy for foregrounding (strength) and involves mapping. As we saw in Chapter 6, for example, a path of motion consists of a beginning, a middle and an end. In example (17), the whole path of motion is windowed whereas in the examples in (18) only the initial, medial or final portion of the path is windowed, respectively:
According to Talmy, the windowing pattern also accounts for grammatical behaviour, such as the division of the complement category into obligatory and optional complements. For example, one of the verbs relating to the COMMERCIAL EVENT frame, spend, only requires the MONEY role as an obligatory complement (together with BUYER). This is illustrated in (19a). The GOODS role can be realised as an optional complement (19b). However, the SELLER role is ‘blocked’ as a complement if this verb is selected (19c), because each choice of verb windows certain participants in the event frame.
Level of attention pattern
The examples in (20) illustrate two different level of attention patterns. As these examples show, this idea relates to whether the focus of attention is upon the group of friends as a whole, also known as a Gestalt representation (20a), or upon the internal structure or componentiality of the group (20b). This difference is encoded by grammatical construction.
