Abstract Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends

Conceptual blending relies on three fundamental representational processes, selective mapping of structure from input spaces to a blended space, making inferences by completing projected structure in the blend, and manipulating structure in the blend. All of these processes require some degree of representational stability. There are two principal ways to achieve stability in conceptual models. First, the conceptual models that anthropologists call "cultural" models achieve representational stability via a combination of intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. Second, projecting material structure into a blended space can stabilize the conceptual blend. I call an input space from which material structure is projected into a blend a `material anchor' for the blend. The term material anchor is meant to emphasize the stabilizing role of the material structure. In this paper, I will present and discuss a number of examples of materially anchored blends, which depend to different degrees on material structure. Materially anchored blends vary on a number of complexly related dimensions. These dimensions include the extent to which the blend relies on the presence of material structure in the perceptual field, the complexity of the material structure, and whether the material structure was designed to support the blend or is used opportunistically. The problem of conceptual stability Conceptual integration processes sometimes involve complex manipulations of conceptual structure. Fauconnier (1997) describes the essence of the process as follows: A conceptual blend operates in two Input mental spaces to yield a third space, the blend. The blend inherits partial structure from the input spaces and has emergent structure of its own. The emergent structure arises in three inte..