Each theory, whether folk or expert, involves some idealized cognitive model, with a corresponding vocabulary.[...] It is commonplace for such idealized cognitive models to be inconsistent with one another.
- Lakoff (1987), Pag. 121

Each cognitive model (or ICM) is a structure consisting of symbols. There are two kinds of complex symbolic structures: building-block structures and gestalt structures. - A complex symbolic structure has a building block structure if its structural elements all exist independently, and if the meaning of the whole is a function of the meanings of the parts. - Otherwise, it has a gestalt structure, that is, a structure (a) whose elements do not all exist independent of the whole or (b) whose overall meaning is not predictable from the meanings of its parts and the way those parts are put together. [...] ICMs are typically quite complex structures, defined by image schemas of all sorts just discussed. Some symbols in an ICM may be directly meaningful: the basic-level and image-schematic concepts. Other symbols are understood indirectly via their relationship to directly understood concepts. Such relationships are defined by the image schemas that structure the ICMs.
- Lakoff (1987), Pag. 284