ABSTRACT
Conceptualization for language production can be briefly described as the cognitive process that builds up conceptual representations and produces preverbal messages from these representations, which can be encoded linguistically by the formula-tor. Conceptualization starts with the construction of conceptual representations. Conceptualization and perception interact in both directions; that is, there is information streaming not only from perception to conceptualization but also in the opposite direction. The temporal interleaving of the conceptualization tasks has important consequences for the way conceptualization proceeds. The data-driven approach to conceptualization requires a working differentiation between perception and conceptualization. Understanding conceptualization this way draws on a close interdependence of conceptual representations and the conceptual tasks that operate on these representations. Conceptualization starts with the construction of conceptual representations. For the task of online descriptions of events, this means that the conceptualizer reads in a stream of input increments and builds up a hierarchical representation of the external states of affairs from the input increments.
