MENTAL SPACES.

SUMMARY

In this text, what is represented has to do with meanings, that is to say, with semantics.

Mental spaces, as I have understood it, are our mental constructions of the information we
receive. They contain elements (simple pieces of information, like names or places for
example) that are structured by frames and cognitive models. They set up different mental
spaces depending on the connections and implications between the elements (mappings).
There are common relations between elements in a mental space, which are called frames
(what is wider and implies more than a domain because of culture and context, for example
presuppositions or prejudices).

Now here it comes the Access Principle, which is the process in which elements are connected
to create mental spaces (however, the definition that comes in the text is tricky and kind of
technical for me). Space builders set the mental space (for example, maybe sets up the space
of possibility). We have also the Base Space, which contains (or so I think) the elements with
the basic information we have about them.

There are some “exceptions” to this Access Principle, which have to do mainly with the
difference in perspective and in how information is true or not depending on context. This
means that information can be referentially transparent (or more or less true, as I see it) or
referentially opaque (or more or less false, as I see it). This goes against the logic of the Access
Principle, but mainly because logic does not take into account the speaker’s intentions, which
is something quite abstract. Verbs like think, hope, want, belief, make allusion to the
opaqueness of a statement.

Some terms like counterpart or counterfactual seem difficult to explain for me, but I think that
they have to do with the subtle information that a statement is giving, that is to say, with the
indirect implications that the sentence is referencing to.

At the end of the article, the author explains that this process is also possible for people who
use Sign Language to communicate themselves, setting as an example the ASL (American Sign
Language). This idea is interesting for me because I have studied Spanish Sign Language and
this idea connects two languages that seem to be far different one from the other but, in the
end, they can represent similar ideas.

As well as with other texts, this one has been easy to decipher (once I read it three times
indeed) but because the terminology that some linguists use is easy to understand when you
know the etymology of the words they use (that is why, for example, I can assume that the
morpheme count- in counterpart has to do with an adverse effect). I do not like very much the
Logic part that shows this process in a visual way, but it is just because I hated logic at
Philosophy class. However, it does not mean that I do not understand it, but it is just that I find
it kind of intricate, and difficult to understand at first sight.