Brian Dillon, Andrew Nevins, Alison C. Austin, and Colin Phillips Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA Department of Linguistics, University College London, London, UK Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA Department of Linguistics, Program...

The first part of the article offers an historical overview of metaphors, starting from Aristotle and the classical definition of metaphor. Chomsky's contribution to cognitive psychology is also mentioned together with Rosch’s and Kay and McDaniel’s research concerning categorization. The end of the first part contains new theories of metaphor, thus establishing the link to the second part, whi...

The relation of linguistics to psychology is [...] implied in the basic position of the latter among the mental sciences. [...] As language is in its forms the least deliberate of human activities, the one in which rationalizing explanations are most grossly out of place, linguistics is, of all the mental sciences, most in need of guidance at every step by the best psychologic insight available...

1 The talk will describe an ongoing project (modestly named the Neural Theory of Language) that is attempting to model language behavior in a way that is both neurally plausible and computationally practical. The cornerstone of the effort is a formalism called Embodied Construction Grammar (ECG). I will describe the formalism, a robust semantic parser based on it, and a variety of applications ...