Cognitive structures and semantic deep structures: the case of the instrumental

Abstract

Many linguists describe the underlying structure of sentences in terms of cases (e.g. Fillmore, 1968) or relations between the verb and nouns (Chafe, 1970), the, usually tacit, assumption being that this reflects the way we view the world. The underlying linguistic structure would accordingly be a formalization of cognitive structure. Elsewhere (Schlesinger, 1977: Ch. 5 ), I have argued that a distinction has to be made between cognitive structures and semantic deep structures. Cognitive structures correspond to the way we perceive the world.