Introduction
Throughout this series, we have explored a radical idea: languages are not neutral tools, but ontologies of construal. Each language provides a lattice of distinctions—processes, participants, circumstances, relations, and modality—through which potential experience is actualised. This capstone post brings together the theoretical framework, comparative examples, and narrative implications, showing how linguistic ontology shapes cognition, culture, and storytelling.
1. Language and the Actualisation of Experience
From a relational-ontology perspective:
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Reality exists only as it is construed. Phenomena are actualised through semiotic systems.
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Languages structure potential experience, foregrounding some distinctions and backgrounding others.
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Variation across languages demonstrates the multiplicity of ways human experience can be patterned.
In short, meaning = reality, but reality is always semiotically mediated. Each language offers a distinct “lens” through which the world is actualised.
2. Lattices of Linguistic Ontology
The ideational metafunction provides five interrelated axes for understanding linguistic ontologies:
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Process Type – How events, actions, and states are categorised and foregrounded.
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Participant – How entities are individuated and related to processes.
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Circumstance – How time, place, manner, cause, and accompaniment are encoded.
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Relations – How entities and processes are connected (possession, part-whole, spatial, temporal, topological).
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Modality/Epistemic Status – How possibility, necessity, certainty, and evidentiality are expressed.
These axes form a semiotic lattice for each language, shaping the ways in which experience is actualised.
3. Comparative Ontology
A textual matrix illustrates how English, Japanese, Warlpiri, and Hopi construe experience differently:
This matrix shows that languages selectively actualise aspects of experience, shaping perception, cognition, and narrative.
4. Cognition and Culture
Language-specific ontologies shape how we think and interact:
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Cognition: Temporal, relational, and aspectual patterns orient perception and memory.
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Culture: Relational individuation, spatial encoding, and evidentiality influence social norms, rituals, and collective practices.
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Perspective: Languages that grammaticalise evidentiality or speaker stance cultivate sensitivity to knowledge source and certainty.
Thus, linguistic ontology is both cognitive and cultural, guiding how humans inhabit reality.
5. Narrative Construal
The lattice shapes storytelling:
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English: Agent-focused, linear narratives with clear event segmentation.
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Hopi/Warlpiri: Relational, cyclical narratives rooted in place and environmental context.
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Japanese: Topically structured, socially and contextually nuanced narratives, integrating perspective and evidentiality.
The semiotic lattice of a language determines how stories unfold, how events are related, and how readers/listeners interpret them.
6. Synthesis: Lattice, Life, and Meaning
Bringing it all together:
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Languages are semiotic lattices of potential.
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Each lattice structures experience along processes, participants, circumstances, relations, and modality.
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Cognition, culture, and storytelling are extensions of these lattices, showing how construal becomes lived reality.
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Meaning = Reality: The actualisation of experience through language is the enactment of reality itself, filtered through the semiotic possibilities of each language.
In essence, linguistic diversity is ontologically productive. It reveals the multiplicity of ways human experience can be structured and brought into being.
Conclusion
This series has traced the path from ideational theory to comparative ontology to narrative practice, demonstrating how languages actualise potential experience differently. By understanding languages as ontologies, we see that:
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Human experience is semiotically mediated.
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Linguistic lattices shape perception, sociality, and storytelling.
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The diversity of language is a manifestation of the multiplicity of reality itself, as construed through meaning.
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