Cognitive Science Colloquium (Counts as an Explore event for first year students, Explore students register here:) Title: From Topology to Cognitive Technology in the Language of the Blind

Speaker: Professor Renata Geld. Center for Cognitive Science, University of Zagreb.Title: "From Topology to Cognitive Technology in the Language of the Blind.” Abstract: Earlier cognitive-linguistic research on the language of the blind showed that meaning construal does not depend on visual imagery but on relational and topological organization (Geld 2014).
Blind speakers consistently adopt an in-the-scene perspective and produce highly granular descriptions grounded in local spatial relations rather than global visual layouts. This observation led to a focused investigation of where meaning is located in linguistic form. Studies on English particle-verb constructions demonstrated a clear topological bias: blind speakers rely more on particles (in, out, up, down) than on verbal roots when explaining meaning, foregrounding relations such as containment, path, boundary, and part–whole structure (Geld & Čutić 2014).
These findings support the cognitive-grammatical view that grammar provides schematic conceptual structure, a relational architecture for meaning  (Langacker 1987, 2008). Building on this insight, this talk presents preliminary findings of a recent case study that treats language as an extended cognitive technology (Clark 1997, 2006). Across a set of experiential and linguistically mediated concepts, a congenitally blind speaker constructed stable cognitive-grammatical structures (e.g. trajector–landmark relations, boundaries, processes, perspective) regardless of modality. However, for more abstract, linguistically mediated concepts, these structures emerged and stabilized only through dialogue. Interaction functioned as a cognitive scaffold, enabling the integration of embodied experience with grammatical structure and allowing meaning to emerge intersubjectively.
Together, these studies show that grammar is both the internal architecture of meaning and the external resource through which language extends cognition. Meaning is not stored in perception or words alone, but enacted through relational structure and dialogic interaction.
Website: https://cogsci.ffzg.unizg.hr/academics/faculty/Geld_Renata.html 
ReferencesLangacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Clark, A. (1997). Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Clark, A. (2006). Language, Embodiment, and the Cognitive Niche. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(8), 370–374.Geld, R. (2014) Investigating meaning construal in the language of the blind: a cognitive linguistic perspective. Suvremena lingvistika, 77, 27–59Geld, R. and A. Čutić (2014) Salience of topology in the strategic construal of English particle verbs in blind users of English. In: Peti–Stantić, A. and M.–M. Stanojević (eds.), Language as Information

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