Deaca, Mircea Valeriu, Cognitive grammar applied to cinematic movement, In Crossing Boundaries in Culture and Communication. Topics in Cultural Studies. Approaches in Research and Teaching, 7 th edition of the International Conference, Department of Foreign Languages in partnership with the Department of Asian Studies of the Romanian-American University 10-12 May, 2018, Romanian – American University of Bucharest: Editura universitară, 2018 (in print). Cognitive grammar applied to cinematic movement Mircea Valeriu DEACA Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest deaca@dnt.ro Abstract The present paper argues for the application of a series of notions from the Cognitive Grammar advocated by Ronald W. Langacker to film analysis. Cinematic conceptualizations are constructed in a scaffolding manner. The constructions contain bindings between schematic subcomponents (elaboration site, i.e. e-site) and more fined grained elaborations (instantiations). The e-sites are ad-hoc goal derived categories or abstract summaries of conceptual content that is further elaborated in cinematic discourse unfolding. The schematic element and its instantiation have a conceptual commonality (one is schematic and the other an elaboration of an inherent conceptual content) and exhibit similar connections with external elements, i.e. play analogous roles in processual (head – complement) and non-processual (head – modifier) groupings. Specifically character movement and camera movement can be described with this conceptual apparatus. Keywords: Cognitive grammar, film analysis, camera movement, categorization, construal, cinematic conceptual construction, schematization, simulation. 1. The e-site as a goal-derived category Encountering a stimulus - for example an apple - triggers a mental process in which the brain combines “bits and pieces of knowledge of previous apples you’ve seen and tasted”, and “changes the firing of neurons in your sensory and motor regions to construct a mental instance of the concept ‘Apple’”. In short, “your brain uses your past experiences to construct a hypothesis - the simulation” (Barrett 2017: 27). Simulation is known by different labels, such as “perceptual inference” and “perceptual completion” (Pessoa et al. 1998), “embodied cognition,” and “grounded cognition” (Barsalou 1999; Barsalou 2008; Barsalou 2009 – “modal re- enactments”) (Barrett 2017: 370). 1 1 “[…] simulation is the re-enactment of perceptual, motor and introspective states acquired during experience with the world, body and mind” (Barsalou 2009: 1281); “Simulations represent a category’s instances in their absence during memory, language and thought. Simulations produce inferences and predictions about a category’s perceived instances using the pattern completion inference mechanism described later. Simulations combine productively to produce infinite conceptual combinations. Simulations represent the propositions that underlie type-token predication and complex propositional structures. Simulatons represent abstract concepts”. (1283).