There are at least two kinds of structure in our preconceptual experiences:A.Basic-level structure: Basic-level categories are defined by the convergence of our gestalt perception, our capacity for bodily movement, and our ability to form rich mental images.B.Kinesthetic image-schematic structure: Image schemas are relatively simple structures that constantly recur in our everyday bodily experience: CONTAINERS, PATHS, LINKS, FORCES, BALANCE, and in various orientations and relations: UP-DOWN, FRONT-BACK, PART-WHOLE, CENTER-PERIPHERY, etc.These structures are directly meaningful, first, because they are directly and repeatedly experienced because of the nature of the body and its mode of functioning in our environment.[...]2. There are two ways in which abstract conceptual structure arises from basic-level and image-schematic structure:A. By metaphorical projection from the domain of the physical to abstract domains.B. By the projection from basic-level categories to superordinate and subordinate categories.Abstract conceptual structures are indirectly meaningful; they are understood because of their semantic relationship to directly meaningful structures.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.267

Image schemas characterize conceptual structure. They also characterize syntactic structure.-Hierarchical syntactic structure (i.e., constituent structure) is characterized by PART-WHOLE schemas: The mother node is the whole and the daughters are the parts.-Head–and-modifiers structures are characterized by CENTER-PERIPHERY schemas.- Grammatical relations and coreference relations are represented structurally by LINK schemas. - Syntactic “distance” is characterized by LINEAR SCALE schemas.- Syntactic categories, like other categories, are characterized structurally by CONTAINER schemas.[...] Given such a view of the nature of syntactic structure, we can represent grammatical constructions as ICMs. We can also characterize the meaning of grammatical construction by directly pairing the syntactic aspect of the construction with the ICM representing the meaning of the construction.
- Lakoff (1987), a pag.290