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Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz high-altitude landscapes). Through completion and
elaboration, the blend may develop inferences and additional elements not
provided by the inputs, called emergent structure. Inferences, arguments
and ideas thus created in the blend can have an effect on cognition, leading
us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding
situations. In creative metaphors, completion might be part of the whole
process of understanding metaphors where the comprehension of literal
utterances differs from the comprehension of a metaphorical utterance.
Tendahl and Gibbs (2008) claim that blending theorists have not
commented on this possibility.
The third process is called elaboration and it refers to the mental
simulation of the situation depicted by the blend. In the example provided
above this might be enhanced by the photograph of the geographical
region the metaphor refers to. New features may be included in the blend
through simulating and running the blend. This creates the possibility of
constructing very creative blends, because ‘elaboration’ is no longer
governed by the linguistic form. In theory, blends can be elaborated ad
infinitum. In practice, however, the process of elaboration is certainly
subject to relevance considerations and therefore restricted by the goal of
minimizing the processing effort (Fauconnier and Turner 2002). In
addition, it needs to be mentioned that it is impossible to distinguish
clearly between pragmatic stylistics and cognitive stylistics because the
processes of completion and elaboration (Fauconnier and Turner 2002)
show that pragmatic inferences and cognitive processes are interrelated.
Fauconnier and Turner (2002) argue that a general cognitive mechanism
- that of conceptual blending – plays a central role in much (if not all)
cognitive activity. They call conceptual blending a great mental capacity
that gave human beings the ability to invent new concepts and,
subsequently, create art, science, religion, culture and language.
Nevertheless, it has to be mentioned that blending theory leaves several
issues unresolved. For instance, how are the input spaces determined? It
would of course not make sense to expect a predictive mechanism for the
content of mental spaces. According to Tendahl and Gibbs (2008), this is
not possible because mental spaces are constructed ad hoc and for local
purposes. However, blending theorists have not described in sufficient
detail which image-schemas, frames, conceptual metaphors and
metonymies are recruited in the formation of mental spaces and what the
selection mechanisms are for creating these spaces. What are the
constraints on composition, completion and elaboration? What factors
determine and constrain the determination of a particular integration
network? Fauconnier and Turner (1998) only provide a partial answer to