The fact that major words classes such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives
can be identifi ed in almost all languages suggests that there
are universal patterns in human cognition that make the division into
these classes particularly useful for communication (Dixon 2004). The
structure of communication is subject to the same cognitive constraints
as thinking and problem solving in general. Therefore it is reasonable
that the structure of language, at least to some extent, is determined
by such general cognitive principles. In particular, I assume that the
structure of language is governed by the same principles of processing
effi ciency of representations as are other cognitive processes.
I do not claim that there is any simple mapping between word classes
and structures in conceptual spaces. As an illustration, Dixon (2004:
2) writes: “[A] lexical root cannot be assigned to a word class on the
basis of its meaning. If this were so, then ‘hunger/(be) hungry’, ‘(be)
mother (of)’, ‘(be) two’, and ‘beauty/(be) beautiful’ would relate to the
same class in every language, which they do not.” Dixon also points out
that the concept of ‘needing to eat’ is expressed as nouns, adjectives, or
verbs in different languages and that mother and father are verbs in
some American Indian languages. Nor do words (word roots) necessarily
belong to particular word classes. An example from English is round,
which can be used as adjective, noun, verb, adverb, and preposition.
In this paper the focus will be on showing how the meanings of different
word classes can be given a cognitive grounding. I will expand
on the analysis of nouns and adjectives that I outlined in Gärdenfors
(2000). Before embarking on that project, however, I will briefl y present
conceptual spaces.