Lakoff's Cognitive Semantics And Edelman's Conceptual Systems Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 247):

With this background, Lakoff attempts to mount a structure for cognitive semantics. Notice first that meaning is already based in embodiment by means of image schemas, kinæsthetic schemas, metonyms, and the categorical relations that underlie metaphor. But this is not enough: Language is supposed to be characterised by symbolic models. These are models that pair linguistic information with the cognitive models that themselves make up a preexisting conceptual system. In as much as preexisting conceptual models are already embodied through their link to bodily and social experience, this link is not an arbitrary one. In contrast, the attribution of such a linkage to generative grammar in terms of mental representations is arbitrary; it is made from on high by the grammarian.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, Lakoff's cognitive models are meanings of language construed of experience of the non-semiotic domain by processes of consciousness.  Edelman's 'pre-existing conceptual system', on the other hand, is the organisation of perceptual meanings — construed of experience of the non-semiotic domain — into systems.  The relation between perceptual meanings and linguistic meanings is one of identity, whereby linguistic values are encoded by reference to perceptual tokens, and perceptual tokens are decoded by reference to linguistic values.

On the cognitive semantics model, human cognition ("intelligence") made human language possible, whereas on the SFL model, human language made human cognition ("intelligence") possible.