become similar to attributive clauses and reduced predications which are similar to stative attributive phrases. There is a general principle at work in Burmese—tighter constructions
mirror tighter conceptual blends.
In Burmese, basic-level conceptual units are realized as a simple binary opposition between Thing and Relation. In this study, the nature of a Thing is often grammaticalized as a
nominal and the nature of a Relation is often grammaticalized as a verb action, event, state, or process or a particle textual action, event, state, or process.
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Thing and Relation are manifested in the prototypical ontological categories of Noun N and Verb V. These two
basic grammatical classes when combined as blended constructional units N + V also result in ontological nominals—that is, linguistic, textual Things N. Such complex, whole
constructions are a result of the process of sentence meaning creation—predication. Sentences in Burmese are ontologically nominals that result from underlying cognitive
processes by innovatively creating emergent meaning. The nominalization process is an iteratively applied part of the hardwiring of conceptualization and perception.
1.3.2.1 The Role of Framing in Creating Units
Framing is one way in which an interpretation of an utterance can be shifted depending on the context or the mental scene constructed which conceptually bounds the utterance. The role of
the frame is to recruit background, world knowledge as a specifier or delimiter of the particular linguistic representation. The expectational aspects of recognition and
comprehension have been attributed to the role of the frame, which selects, organizes relevant knowledge, fills in details, makes conjectures and inferences, tests and revises assumptions
Minsky 1980. A text frame in this sense performs a role similar in part to that of Generic Space in the conceptual integration model. Minsky’s notion of frame refers to more than a
static, immediate context. Rather it is a mental model that evokes an active, cognitive construct that functions as a heuristic device to dynamically construct and to shift meaning.
Assuming that a similar operation takes place in textual understanding, then this process would have to be both rapid and natural, and would very likely be outside awareness, though
not subconscious.
The ability to conceptually bound or frame is an aspect of perception and is not part of objective reality. That is why we cannot account for meaning objectively but must study the
processes that structure conceptualization. The bounding structures of concern here are those a person imposes and employs during his mental experience of linguistic construal of a
conceptual scenario.
1.3.2.2 The Role of Bounding in Creating Units
Langacker’s basic definition of a nominal is “a bounded region in some domain” 1987a; 1991b. The beauty of this definition is that it encompasses an almost infinite scope of
internal structures, arrangements, activities, and states in various profiles—’plane’, ‘cup’, ‘sphere’, ‘area’, ‘ a run’, ‘abstraction’, ‘destruction’. Thus, what is bounded may be a simple
verb, ‘run’ or a verb and nominalizer ‘runner’. Alternately, what is bounded may be a whole scenario with actants nouns as well as relations verbs, as in ‘a run’, or it could profile a
process of successive temporal “scans,” scripts, where the verb is characterized as a sequence
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Particles relate textual units whereas verbs relate participants or props, agents, or adjuncts. See section 1.5.
of temporal states, ‘a race’, or as a progressive aspect ‘racing’. The bounding nature of nominalization is essentially a function of profiling information. The content of a
nominalization, e.g., ‘complaint’ versus ‘complainer’, is not necessarily altered by construal as a bounded set, only how it is viewed.
The definition of a noun as a bounded region refers to the prototypical noun—the count noun. The ability to pluralize in and of itself designates an abstract boundary by the fact
that it can be enumerated; that, as a group, it can be composed of distinctly bounded units. Mass nouns, on the other hand, are characterized as not so bounded. Rather they simply
“name the substance without imposing any inherent limitation on its spatial extension” Langacker 1987a:203—’water’, ‘gravel’, ‘beer’, ‘snow’. Count nouns profile a region that
is bounded, where there is some kind of limit of extension on the set of entities in that region. Mass nouns are characterized by “indefinite expansibility and contractibility” Langacker
1987a:204. For instance, ‘water’ will be so designated no matter how much the volume is increased. As a named substance, ‘water’ has an inferred boundary or limit, but it is less
fixed.
Abstract nouns are characterized in Langacker’s model as replicating the bound and unbound distinction of concrete nouns. He categorizes the deverbal noun as the count type of
the abstract noun—’jump’, ‘walk’, ‘dance’, ‘argument’, ‘complaint’. The count abstract noun form designates only one instance of the process indicated by the verb stem. The more typical
abstract noun or the gerund is categorized as the mass type of the abstract noun — ’destruction’, ‘love’, ‘hope’, ‘procrastination’, ‘abstraction’, and also ‘jumping’. The mass
abstract noun form designates a much less distinct boundary.
Langacker’s important insight is that nominal forms are bounded in some sense in relation to another figure he identifies as a “region.” Regions can be understood as matrices
of relevant dimensions, such as of hue or brightness in color domains or as types of surfaces or curves in two or three dimensional spatial domains.
Nominal boundaries can be of varying types. The discussion of the difference between count and mass nouns as to boundaries could as well be a discussion of types of centers and
boundaries. The notion of concreteness versus abstractness of a noun refers to both center and boundary type, but the center of ‘jumping’ classified as an abstract mass noun profiling an
action is quite different from the verbal center of ‘love’. Leaving the discussion of centers aside, boundaries will be sufficient here to distinguish different types of nominals. Three
types will be assumed rather than just two. These are analogous to the types of cognitive experiences in viewing the forms in figure 5. The ability to perceive a circle in each of these
forms, moving in the direction from a to c, is a process of greater abstraction since there is less information and greater mental attribution of shape in c, in this case that of a boundary.
Reversing the process by moving from c to a, from the more abstract towards a form with greater definition or concreteness is a process of reification, the inverse of abstraction Lehar
2003. Reification or substantivization, are other names for the process of nominalization—to attribute a sense of substance or a quality of being a Thing.
Figure 5. Abstractness of boundary types
The types of boundaries schematized in figure 5 represent three types of nominal boundaries: a count, b mass, and c abstract. See section 4.2.2 for further discussion of
nominalization from a cognitive viewpoint. One of the crucial aspects of understanding the approach in this study is to recognize
the role of conceiving of diverse parts as a whole unit—that is, framing, bounding, unitizing, reifying, substantivizing a series of elements in a linguistically that is, grammatically
realized or finalized sense. This process is here called
NOMINALIZATION
.
1.3.2.3 Ontological Nominals
