Force dynamics

Force Dynamics gained a good deal of attention in cognitive linguistics due to its claims of psychological plausibility and the elegance with which it generalizes ideas not usually considered in the same context.

Introduced by cognitive linguist Leonard Talmy in 1981, force dynamics started out as a generalization of the traditional notion of the causative, dividing causation into finer primitives and considering the notions of letting, hindering, and helping.

In his view, a general idea underlying this discipline is the existence of a fundamental distinction in language between closed-class (grammatical) and open-class (lexical) categories.

Force dynamics plays an important role in several recent accounts of modal verbs in various languages (including Brandt 1992, Achard 1996, Boye 2001, and Vandenberghe 2002).

For the agonist, this tendency is marked with an arrowhead (action) or with a large dot (rest) (see b, figure 1).

This variable is exemplified by such expressions as A gust of wind made the pages of my book turn.

In force dynamic diagrams, this motion (‘change over time’) of the Antagonist is represented by an arrow.

The diagrams in Figure 2 to the right combine a shifting antagonist with agonists of varying force tendencies.

A case in point is reflexive force dynamic constructions of the type Chet was dragging himself instead of walking.

From the perspective of lexical semantics, some people have argued that force dynamics fails to be explanatory.

(…) From a semiotic point of view, a diagram never stands alone; it always depends on a system of verbal captions, whether these are explicit or implied."

Another objection regarding force dynamics is the question, raised by Goddard (1998:81), of how different representational devices are supposed to interact with one another.

As the field of cognitive linguistics is still in a state of theoretical flux, no systematic account addresses this issue yet.

Jackendoff (1990, 1996:120–3), in the process of incorporating aspects of force dynamics into his theory of conceptual semantics, has proposed a reconfiguration of some of its basic notions[vague].