Exemplars and prototypes

[George Lakoff]

Re: David Konenfeld's and Brian MacWhinney's remarks on exemplars and
prototypes:

The place to find out about examplars versus prototypes is in my Women,
Fire and Dangerous Things, Chapters 2 through 7.

There are many different types of prototypes, each with different inference
patterns
(e.g., typical cases, ideal cases, social stereotypes, centers of radial
categories, etc.) and
various types of exemplars, again with different inference patterns (e.g.,
paragons, salient examplars, antiparagons, etc.).

Psychologists have been fairly sloppy in not distinguishing among the
different logical types -- largely,I think, because they tend not to study
inferences. I find this fairly bizarre, because inferences are what
reasoning is about.

George Lakoff