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Concepts Are Described Through Motion Events: Review of the Role of Motion Concepts in Understanding Non-Motion Concepts. Khatin-Zadeh, Banaruee, Khoshsima, & Marmolejo-Ramos. Behavioral Sciences
Yousef Bakhshi Zadeh* and Afsane Askari
Language Department, Iran
Submission: October 29, 2018; Published: December 13, 2018
*Corresponding author: Yousef Bakhshi Zadeh, Language Department, Iran.
How to cite this article: Yousef B Z, Afsane A. Concepts Are Described Through Motion Events: Review of the Role of Motion Concepts in Understanding Non-Motion Concepts. Khatin-Zadeh, Banaruee, Khoshsima, & Marmolejo-Ramos. Behavioral Sciences. Theranostics Brain Spine Neuro Disord. 2018; 4(1): 555629. DOI: 10.19080/TBSND.2018.04.555629
Mini Review
Motion events and the ways that they are used to describe concepts have been the subject of a large number of works in the literature of cognitive linguistics. This has been particularly the case with the use of motion events to metaphorically describe abstract concepts. In their paper, Khatin-Zadeh, Banaruee, Khoshsima, and Marmolejo-Ramos [1]. Present three reasons for suitability of motion events to describe non-motion events: Firstly, motion events usually have high degrees of concreteness. Secondly, motion events are highly imageable. Thirdly, components of any motion event can be imagined almost simultaneously within a three-dimensional space. Khatin-Zadeh et al. mainly focus on metaphorical description of abstract concepts in terms of motion events. However, in the last part of the paper, they extend their discussion to the field of mathematics. They present several examples to show how motion events and three dimensional space can be used to acquire a clear understanding of highly complex and abstract mathematical problems. They argue that the process of representational transformation is very effective strategy for solving those abstract problems which are very difficult to solve. This idea seems to be novel. Among the three reasons that are suggested by Khatin-Zadeh et al., imageability of motion events is particularly interesting, as it can be offered as a main feature of many world’s phenomena. Transforming abstract concepts into imageable representations is one the most effective strategies for understanding highly abstract concepts such as time.
When the concept of time is metaphorically understood in terms of space, it is transformed into an imageable representation. This transformation makes it much easier for us to understand and to talk about a concept that is highly abstract. Khatin-Zadeh [1]. discuss several examples in which the concept of time is understood in terms of motion event. However, it would have been better if they had made a distinction between those metaphors in which time itself is seen as a moving object and those metaphors in which time is a non-moving object and it is the observer who is in movement. If they had made such a distinction between these two types of metaphor, the idea of the paper could have been presented in a clearer manner. Also, Khatin-Zadeh [1]. are not very clear in what they mean when they talk about the simultaneous imagination of components in the three-dimensional space and the relative positions of components of motion events. In fact, imageability and simultaneous imagination of components are two questions that need to distinguish in detail to make the main idea of the paper clearer. However, the paper presents some ideas that seem to be novel and interesting. These ideas could be investigated in future empirical studies. There is no doubt that presenting empirical evidence could support these ideas.
Acknowledgments
Authors thank their families for their constant support.
