Conceptual Namespace

Core Definition

Conceptual frames are a layer of highly schematic frames that supply the conceptual foundation the lexical frames of FN-Br are interpreted against. They are grounded in Gärdenfors' theory of conceptual spaces and continue the image-schema tradition, but realize its recurrent structures — containment, sequence, part–whole, force — as frames, using the ordinary frame apparatus rather than a parallel formalism. A lexical frame Uses a conceptual frame, and the conceptual frame supplies the structure against which the lexical frame's meaning is read; lexical frames that share a structure Use the same conceptual frame, so the conceptual frame is the generalization over them.

The layer is topological and relational, not metric. Where Gärdenfors' conceptual spaces are metric — convex regions in a similarity space — the conceptual frames record only that regions are organized and how (ordered, grouped, composed), never how far apart they are. Genuine similarity metrics, where needed, belong to a separate conceptual-space representation the frames may point into, not to the frames themselves.

Two primitives underlie the whole layer:

• REGION — any concept, modelled as a region in a conceptual space; its location in that space is its meaning.
• FORCE — something acting on regions, undefined by essence and known only by its effect. FORCE is never used bare: it is always manifested as a relation between regions, named by a microframe. The single claim — every relation between regions is a force — is what unifies the layer.

Force has exactly two effects, and they organize the whole schema inventory:

What appears static is force in equilibrium (a DIMENSION); what happens is force out of equilibrium (an EVENT). This is why the namespace is structural rather than eventive: a conceptual frame profiles the schema itself — the space and its configuring forces — not a token occurrence read against it.

Formal template:

CONCEPTUAL(Region..., [Force]) — a schema Used by lexical frames

Key properties:

• Schematic / type-level: names a kind of conceptual structure, not a specific concept or occurrence
• Configurational: profiles how regions are organized (or transformed), not a token event or property
• Grounding: supplies the abstract structure that lexical (entity, relational, stative, eventive) frames Use
• Topological, not metric: records organization, not distance
• Non-token: no specific located object, no dated event, no result state of its own

Scope

Includes:

• The two primitives and the general form of a force: Region, Force, Link
• Configuring schemas — DIMENSION and its subtypes: Axis, Scale, Polarity, Deictic, Class (Set / Category), Part_whole
• The bearer / value schemas Entity, Value, and the attribution schema Attribution
• The transforming schema EVENT — the schematic event that the eventive namespaces are read against
• The inherited spatial image schemas: Bounded_region, Bounded_entity, Region_with_portal, Surrounding (containment); Source_path_goal (path); Contact_image_schema, Proximity_image_schema, Alignment_image_schema, Collocation_image_schema (configurational relations)

Excludes — see other namespaces:

• A token occurrence read against a schema (an event, a state, a relation holding of specific entities) → the eventive, Stative, or Relational namespaces
• A broad field of knowledge grouping frames thematically → the domain dimension
• A multi-event, role-and-phase scenario type → the Scenario frame type (orthogonal to namespace — see vs. Scenario below)
• A token occurrence of motion along a path → Change (motion subtype) (João foi para casa)

Critical boundary — Conceptual vs. Relational / Stative: A conceptual frame profiles the abstract region or configurational schema that grounds meaning across the lexicon; a Relational or Stative frame profiles the relation or condition holding of specific entities. Contact_image_schema (the contact configuration itself) is Conceptual; A xícara está sobre a mesa (a specific locative state) Uses that schema but is Stative.

Critical boundary — Conceptual vs. the eventive namespaces: The schematic EVENT — a region changing position in a conceptual space — is a conceptual frame; the token events that Use it (quebrar, derreter, assustar) belong to the eventive namespaces (@change, @agentive, @experiential, …). The schema is Conceptual; the occurrence read against it is eventive.

Subtypes

The conceptual frames fall into the two effect-families, plus the primitives they are built from:

Two structural relations connect the schemas. DIMENSION inherits from REGION (a dimension is a region that organizes others), and its ordinal and categorial subtypes inherit in turn; EVENT derives from DIMENSION (an event occurs in a dimension but is not one) — the single point in the inventory where a genuinely new kind of structure is built. Following these edges backward always terminates at a primitive, REGION or FORCE, which is the layer's well-formedness condition.

Comparison with Adjacent Namespaces

vs. the eventive namespaces: the schematic EVENT is a conceptual frame — the transforming structure itself; the eventive namespaces (@phenomenon, @change, @agentive, @undergoing, @experiential, @process) are token occurrences that Use it, each profiling a different subset of its elements.

vs. Stative / Attribute: these map to the ATTRIBUTION schema — a bearer holding a value on a dimension. The conceptual frame is the schema; the stative or attributive frame is a lexical frame that Uses it.

vs. Relational: some conceptual frames also involve two participants (Trajector and Ground, or the two relata of a LINK). The difference: Relational frames profile the relation holding between specific entities; conceptual frames profile the abstract region or configurational schema that grounds relational meaning across the lexicon.

vs. Scenario: a Scenario bundles the participants and phases of a social or physical situation type; a conceptual frame is the schematic structure — a dimension, a force, an image schema — that lexical frames, scenarios included, are read against. Note that the two are not alternatives on one axis: Scenario is a frame type (Frame Classification) and @conceptual a namespace, so they are orthogonal. In practice no frame is both, and that is a substantive fact rather than a stipulation — a scaffold for a scene with named participants is by nature token-oriented, which is precisely what this namespace excludes.