POV Shots in Light of Cognitive Grammar
POV Shots in Light of Cognitive Grammar

Summary/Abstract: The paper applies Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar notions to cinematic editing constructions. Notions like head, complement, autonomous and dependent structures and the concept of elaboration site (e-site) are applied to editing constructions. The e-site represents a schematic region in the situation evoked by a simulation, and plays the role of a simulator and a goal concept. Simulations can contain schematic components that only partially represent entities and event frames, not just detailed representations of them. Starting from grammatical constructions, we will detail the couplings between control models in sequences of POV shots. The visual expression is a composite structure that “inherits’ its profile from a component structure. Different construals and constructional schemas are instantiated by the juxtapositions of shots.The e-site plays the role a goal-concept. Goal-derived categories constitute the mappings between roles in event sequences, and instantiations in the environment. As structures of these mappings emerge, the conceptual system becomes organized around the action–environment interface (Barsalou 2003: 522). Since conceptual representations are dynamically contextualized to support diverse courses of goal pursuit, situated conceptualizations support conceptual inferences via pattern completion. When one part of a situated conceptualization is perceived, the remainder of the conceptualization becomes active, constituting inferences about the current situation. In short, the e-site can be defined as a summary conceptualization that inhabits a schematic region of a simulation, and prompts the film viewer to construct concepts that will categorize other components down the chain of a sequence of shots.In this paper, I describe different semantic construals evoked by a POV sequence of shots. The claim is that sequences of shots are conceptual systems bound by circular loops at several levels. Several configurations of the system coexist and the viewer has the executive control necessary for implementing alternative meaning construals.

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