The Key Point’s of Neil Cohn’s “A Visual Lexicon” and “Visual Syntactic Structures”

Neil Cohn is a linguist who attempts to reveal the structure of the language of sequential art. He describes the visual arts as having a grammar of it’s own. He does this by breaking down transitions in sequential art as if to deconstruct sentences to further understand their rules and structure. This to investigate the visual lexicon and syntactic structures. The following are Neil Cohn’s key points from his articles.

"A Visual Lexicon"

Attention Units:

Frame characteristics:

• Positive - Figures or focal attention that are contained in frames.
• Negative - The background information in frames.

Lexical Representational Matrix:

• Polymorphic - These allow for grammatical structures and event representation to exist within the boundaries of a single frame.
• Macro - Containing more than one entity.
• Mono - Only a single entity.
• Micro - Less than one grammatical entity.

• These all don’t work as syntactic structures alone but are rather ‘Attention units’. They window attention and determine where the focus is desired.
• Unlike words, panels constantly change. Words are consistent in representation while frame are inconsistent with consistant context.
• Visual Morphemes cannot exist on their own, such as speed lines and speed bubbles.
• Yet narratives are free floating morphemes.

Lexical Items:

• Open class - Figures (augmentable)
• Closed class - Hearts, speed lines (fixed)

Constructions:

• These are form-meaning patterns in language that vary in size, and can include lengths longer than individual words.
• Though not much is known about similar patterns in the visual language that does not mean that they don’t exist.

Initial state – Causative [reading of paper section] – Resultant state

• Though strips include text it is still dominated by it’s visual syntax.
• Therefore constructions may be possible.
• Bimodal constructions might also be possible, yet requires further investigation.

Conclusion

• The visual language has a variety of sizes of ‘lexical items’ that combine on several levels to create units and constructions.
• A lexical Item is a meaningful unit or combination of units of form meaning pairing that can be either productive or non-productive. They can also be symbolic, indexical or iconic.

"Visual Syntactic Structures"

Transitional Syntax

• Visual language syntax is the study of the structural organization of a sequence of images.

Results and Revisions

1. Temporal transitions.
2. Spatial transitions
3. Spatio Temporal transitions

• Transitions are measured by the relation of one panel moving into another juxtaposed panel, while identifying individual panels themselves.

Types of transitions:

1.Temporally Progressive.

1.1Moment Transitions - Time dominant factor.

1.2Action Transitions - Action pushes time.

2.Temporally Ambiguous.

2.1 Environmentally Existential transitions –
Based on the relationship around the components of a single scene and environment.

2.1.1 Subject transitions –
Shifts into a panel containing a primary acting agent of the scene.

2.1.2 Aspect transitions –
Shift into a panel containing “non – acting” elements of the scene environment.

2.1.3 View transitions –
Change the perspective of which the elements of the scene are viewed, while not changing temporally.

2.2 Environmentally Co-dependent transitions –
Based on the relations of two environments and their enclosed actions.

2.3 Environmentally Ambiguous transitions –
Including a ‘Cognable Transition’, featuring a transition into a panel devoid of connection to an environment through retaining of semantic connecting.

2.4 McCloudian Non-Sequitur transitions–
Unrelated transitions.

Three previously unmentioned conditions that varied beyond outlined transitions:

1. Inclusionary transitions
Panels within panels or concepts within concepts

2. Embedded transitions:
Contained transitions within the framework of a single image, unbroken by panel borders.

3, Overlays:Where an element of the sequence intersects another in such a way that it affects multiple panels that it touches.

• Mcloud’s equation of the space equals time as a ‘temporal map’ is problematic to the ‘Temporally Ambiguous’ class.
• Mcloud also never elaborates on a methodology.
• Web diagrams – based on transitional taxonomy and can be used to draw transitions such as:
• Parrellel cutting – Two or more environments occurring simultaneously in a single linear stream.
• The mind splits these different environments into separate paths as retained knowledge.
• This dual mental track allows for an enclosed environment’s occurrences to be maintained and connected as a “concurrent streaming environment’.
• This does not fall under the Multi-Engaged transitions such as inclusionary, embedded and overlay transitions.
• Unifier - Method for divisional forms of Aspect transitions which deals with the issues of image consistency.
• The Problem with Web analysis - It does not account for the additive knowledge from frames between transitional frames.

An Alternative Perspective in a Traditional Field

Markov chain:

• This remedies the problems of the web diagram by linking words by their transition between word types. The same diagram may be apllied to the visual language.
• It is expressed through a ‘state diagram’ which contains expressed grammatical constructions up to a certain point.

Syntactic Structures:

• These remedy the problem of sentences of infinite length

Rules:

1. Sentence = Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase
2. NP = Determiner + Noun
3. VP = Verb + NP

• These are represented by a tree diagram and can work for the visual language as well.
• The task is to move from a state-to-state to a generative grammar for visual language syntax.