Marc Ettlinger Professor Sweetser Friday 16, 2003 Mind and Language, Spring 2003 Cognitive Science 201 Final Paper Interpreting Deixis in Mental Spaces An important area within the theory of mental spaces, ripe for further investigation, is that of deixis. The mechanisms have begun to be explored, but there are vast categories of examples to be examined that will add more factors to those currently established that contribute to the translation and understanding of deictic reference terms. For a successful consideration of these mental space deictic terms, it is necessary to have an understanding the fundamentals of what it means to refer, and to have a sound theory of semiotics that can integrate with the cognitive underpinnings of mental spaces; to that end, the semiotic notion of Peirce are first discussed. Afterwards, the basics of the translation of deictic terms in mental spaces as established by Fauconnier (1994, 1997), Rubba (1996) and Grundy et. al. (1998) are reiterated before moving on to an array of examples that reveal a number of new factors that need to be considered to interpret deictic terms. While all of Peirce’s ideas on representation and categorization do not integrate completely with an approach to linguistics rooted in cognitive science, there are many ideas that are prescient of the modern notion of embodied cognition and embodied language. Particularly in the realm of semiotics, Peirce’s ideas on categorization, thought, and symbolism have current practical applications in the areas of deixis and mental spaces. Cognitive Science 201 Final Paper Marc Ettlinger p 1 of 16