Extracting the Meanings of Linguistic Expressions in the Kurdish Language

Abstract

Language is not only a means of transmitting information, but also a conscious process that shows how one understands and organizes one's experiences in the world around one. Thus, cognitive linguistics begins with the view that meaning is the result of the relationship between language, consciousness, and life experience, not just the product of grammatical rules. Therefore, most linguistic concepts are interpreted through conscious mechanisms and are related to actual human experience. This study investigates the concept of construal and its role in meaning construction in the Kurdish language from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. The study is based on the assumption that meaning is not merely the product of grammatical and lexical structures; rather, it is closely related to the speaker's construal and the cognitive mechanisms involved in human conceptualization.

The research examines the major dimensions of construal, including subjectivity and objectivity, specificity and schematicity, cognitive scanning, fictive motion, prominence, attentional framing, figure–ground organization, and profiling. These concepts are discussed both theoretically and analytically. To illustrate their functions, examples from the Kurdish language are analyzed within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, demonstrating how different linguistic expressions influence meaning construction and guide the listener's attention.

The findings indicate that many differences among linguistic expressions do not arise from differences in objective reality; rather, they result from differences in the speaker's construal, the prominence assigned to particular conceptual elements, the profiling of specific aspects of a conceptual structure, and the direction of attention. Furthermore, the study shows that language is not merely a means of transmitting information, but also a cognitive tool for organizing and conceptualizing human experience.