Understanding the lexicon: meaning, sense and world knowledge in lexical semantics 3484302100, 9783484302105

Citation preview

Linguistische Arbeiten

210

Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Herbert E. Brekle, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Christian Rohrer, Heinz Vater und Otmar Werner

Understanding the Lexicon Meaning, Sense and World Knowledge in Lexical Semantics Edited by Werner Hüllen and Rainer Schulze

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1988

CIP-Titelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Understanding the lexicon : meaning, sense and world knowledge in lexical semantics / ed. by Werner Hüllen and Rainer Schulze. — Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1988. (Linguistische Arbeiten ; 210) NE: Hüllen, Werner [Hrsg.]; GT ISBN 3-484-30210-0

ISSN 0344-6727

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1988 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne Genehmigung des Verlages ist es nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus photomechanisch zu vervielfältigen. Printed in Germany. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt.

v

CONTENTS PREFACE

1-

2

4 -

10

11 -

22

23 -

35

36 -

47

5O -

61

62 -

72

73 -

84

85 -

96

Section 1 Ernst Burgschmidt SOME REMARKS ON THE TRADITION AND APPLICATION OF ANALYTICAL SEMANTICS

Horst Geckeier MAJOR ASPECTS OF THE LEXEMATICS OF THE TÜBINGEN SCHOOL OF SEMANTICS

Dirk Geeraerts KATZ REVISITED. ASPECTS OF THE HISTORY OF LEXICAL SEMANTICS MichaZ Post SCENES-AND-FRAMES SEMANTICS AS A NEO-LEXICAL FIELD THEORY

Section 2 Hans Ulrich Boas THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF LEXICAL ENTRIES: STRUCTURAL AND/OR 'DEFINITIONAL' SEMANTICS

Peter Bosch ON REPRESENTING LEXICAL MEANING

D. Alan Cruse WORD MEANING AND ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE

Richard A. Geiger THE PROBLEM OF REFERENCE AND THE INDETERMINACY OF REFER

Bart Geurts THE STRUCTURE OF NOMINAL CONCEPTS

97 - 1O9

VI

Ekkehard König, Elizabeth C. Traugott PRAGMATIC STRENGTHENING AND SEMANTIC CHANGE: CONVENTIONALIZING CF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATUKE

110 - 124

Bernd Kortmann COMPLEMENTATION AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO THE LEXICON

125 - 136

Barbara Lewandcwska-Tomaszczyk THE INCREMENT VALUE OF PREDICATES IN THE SEMANTIC LEXICON

137 - 147

Arthur Mettinger PAY CAESAR WHAT IS DUE TO CAESAR ...: SEMANTIC FEATURES VINDICATED

148 - 156

Edgar W. Schneider ON POLYSEMY IN ENGLISH, CONSIDERING CONSTDER

157 - 169

Pieter A. M. Seuren LEXICAL MEANING AND PRESUPPOSITION

17O - 187

Section 3 Dieter Kastovsky STRUCTURAL SEMANTICS OR PROTOTYPE SEMANTICS? THE EVIDENCE OF WORD-FORMATION

190 - 203

Günter Rohdenburg SEMANTIC FRINGE PHENOMENA INVOLVING NOMINAL COMPOUNDS IN ENGLISH

2O4 - 215

Bruno Staib EXTRA-LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE AND SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

216 - 227

Section 4 Martin Durrell SOME PROBLEMS OF CONTRASTIVE LEXICAL SEMANTICS

23O - 241

Wolfgang Kühlwein A SOCIO-SEMIOTIC WAY OF LOOKING AT CROSS-CULTURAL LEXICOLOGY

242 - 251

H. Joachim Neuhaus FALSE FRIENDS, FREGE'S SENSE, AND WORD-FOEMATION

252 - 262

VII

Section 5 Rosemarie Gläser THE GRADING OF IDIOMATIdTY AS A PRESUPPOSITION FOR A TAXONOMY OF IDIOMS

264 - 279

Karl Sornig IDIOMS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

28O - 29O

Section 6 George L. Dunbar, Terry F. Myers CONCEPT COMBINATION AND THE CHARACTERIZATION OF LEXICAL CONCEPTS

292 - 302

Johannes EngeUcaitip NOUNS AND VERBS IN THE MENTAL LEXICON

3O3 - 313

Section 7 Hubert Cuyckens SPATIAL PREPOSITIONS IN COGNITIVE SEMANTICS

316 - 328

Rene Dirven A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO CONVERSION

329 - 343

Use Karius ASPECTS OF LEXICAL CATEGORIZATION

344 - 354

Leonhard Lipka A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE: ON SIMPLE AND DUAL CATEGORIZATION IN NATURAL LANGUAGES

355 - 366

Peter Rolf Lutzeier A PROPOSAL FOR SPATIAL EVENT PATTERNS

367 - 379

Günter Radden THE CONCEPT OF MOTION

38O - 394

Rainer Schulze A SHORT STORY OF DOWN

395 - 414

Werner Wblski ZU PROBLEMEN UND PERSPEKTIVEN DES PROTOTYPEN- UND STEREOTYPENANSATZES IN DER LEXIKALISCHEN SEMANTIK

415 - 425

NAME INDEX

426 - 431

KEY WORD INDEX

432 - 443

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

444 - 445

PREFACE

This volume contains thirty-three papers read at a symposium on problems of lexical semantics at the University of Essen from November 19 to 21, 1987. The contributions mirror different trends in current linguistics, comprising research work done, for example, on word-field theory, structural semantics (with componential analysis in particular), reference semantics, and cognitive grammar. The editors believe that the collection provides readers with a representative sample of current investigations into the field. Apart from the renewed discussions on meaning and sense relations such as antonymy, hyponymy, taxonymy and others, and on the undetermined status of semantic (distinctive or criterial) features and selectional restrictions, many researchers have initiated and established a largely cognition-based approach. They predominantly focus on the investigation of conceptual and mental structures, question the traditional distinction between semantic and encyclopedic knowledge, and describe semantic structures as products of conventionalized conceptual configurations. The contributions not only show borderlines between semantics and lexicology or lexicography, but also those between semantics and psycholinguistics, pragmatics, artificial intelligence, and especially the newly developing area of cognitive linguistics. The editors hope that the papers collected in this volume will pave the way for further interesting research to be done in the near future. The editors would like to express their gratitude to the University of Essen which supported the symposium as well as this publication with generous funds. Moreover, they wish to thank Christa Bohrhardt, once more, for her untiring work in preparing the publication and producing the typescript. Thanks are also

due to Roland Aley, Michael Isermann, Richard Nate, Monika Sieburg and Gaby Sikora for their work in putting the two indices together. As in previous cases, DC Richard Brunt deserves our thanks for reading the manuscripts and occasionally giving them the final native-speaker touch. This volume is the product of the talents and efforts of a large number of people. All its contributors were speakers and discussants at the symposium. Vfe wish to thank everybody for this joint effort and, particularly, to include the chair-persons of the sessions.

Werner Hüllen, Rainer Schulze Essen, May 1988

SECTION 1

ERNST BURGSCHMIDT SOME REMARKS ON THE TRADITION AND APPLICATION OF ANALYTICAL SEMANTICS

1.

Preliminary remarks

The author had originally intended to contribute a lecture/paper on the relationship of word form (including word class, morphological structure, and syntagmatic behaviour) and word meaning in everyday language use contrasted to technical, philosophical, and artificial languages. After reading the abstracts of the lectures handed in for the conference the author decided to shift the emphasis of his own contribution. As a considerable number of participants of the conference had decided either to defend structural ' componential' semantics (mainly in the Coseriu tradition) or to attack traditional 'analytical1 or 'purely paradigmatic1 semantics (taking up and developing ideas used in frame theory, prototype and stereotype semantics, archetype semantics, etc.), a few thoughts on the development of traditional analytical and componential semantics in the context of the history of (English) semantics and lexicographic practice since the 17th century did not seem out of place in the scope of discussion of this conference. Although comparable tendencies can be observed in several European countries (especially France and Italy), England from the 17th century onwards is characterized by a marked combination of scientific progress (Royal Society, Oxford), categorial approaches towards language description, and lexicographic practice in unilingual dictionaries (from the first published by Cawdrey in 1604 to Dr Johnson's monumental dictionary of 1755). It will be claimed that this combination contributed to analytical tendencies of word definitions in the description of general vocabulary as well as scientific terms. Modern English lexicography (as, for example, the 'Advanced Learner's Dictionary', the 'Dictionary of Contemporary English1, 'Collins English Dictionary', even the 'Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary')

still relies en principles developed in the 17th and 18th centuries and refined by such influential lexicographers as Dr Johnson, Webster, or the compilers of the 'Oxford Qrglish Dictionary1. With Qiglish being the most frequently used defining language for users of Qiglish as a second language and for technical English, this tradition of presenting word meanings has to be seen in its historical context and cannot simply be disqualified as lacking any connection with modern lexical semantics and its progress. 2.

Analytical semantics and general lexicography

Modern semantic theory of the componential or feature type and lexicographic practice have more in common than is normally assumed. Traditional semanticists have usually tried to differentiate word meanings by comparing semantically related words, either near-synonyms or word groups in the paradigmatic context of 'word fields', thus arriving at essential distinctive semantic features by contrasting word meanings. Feature hierarchies (from the more general to the more specific components), semantic relations like hyponymy, entailment, etc. and syntagmatic features are used in order to avoid a mere addition of features in semantic descriptions. The analogy to feature analysis in phonological theory is obvious. Feature lists or feature configurations in componential semantics are usually presented a-syntactically. At first glance, unilingual dictionaries do not seem to conform to the principles of paradigmatic componential semantics. The semasiological alphabetic structure of such a dictionary obscures the user's view of the fact that most analytic sentences used to define words stem from similar attempts at comparison as in 'word field1 semantics. Most dictionaries, of course, lack consistency in the use of feature types, include circular definitions, and cannot devote the same amount of time and methodological consideration as can the author of a study on a particular word field. Moreover, many words (polysemes, word formations, phrases) are difficult to treat in a consistent manner. Dictionaries also often change their definition pattern even in the description of semantically related words, or combine different approaches meant to complement each other and with the intention of giving the user a somewhat redundant but more easily understandable bundle of synonyms and analytic sentences to grasp the exact word meaning. Ihus, synonyms, semantic relations such as hyponymy and hyperonymy, periphrases (especially for word formations), synthetic sentences, referential hints, even encyclopedic explanations, non-verbal means like drawings, diagrams, or pictures can be found together with analytic

sentences. These analytic sentences are in fact feature lists for segments of meaning in sentence or clause form. Often infinite clauses are used (verb infinitives) ; with nouns modifier structures (adjective/apposition plus noun) can be regularly found. Negative analytic sentences are used for words with a 'negative1 meaning but also for reasons of contrasting words. 3.

Attacks, on analytical semantics

In order to describe lexical meaning, traditional semantics usually provides feature configurations, whereas lexicography often uses analytic sentences. The similarity of these approaches has been described in 2. This cannon practice is followed in the description of general vocabulary and for technical word lists. This kind of analytical semantic procedure has recently been attacked by a number of psycholinguists and semanticists as being too narrow, as not covering the 'gestalt' and interdependence of phenomena, and as neglecting the varying importance of possible features of words in certain situations. Apart from the reproach that componential semantics imitates phonological theory, opponents of this approach have claimed that it wrongly employs ways of describing well-defined words of science or standardized technologies for less well-defined, perhaps opaque words of everyday communication (Wiegand 1985: 52, 56; Wildgen 1985: 4). These opponents of traditional semantics demand that atomistic attempts ought to be replaced by holistic descriptions. Frame theory (Fillmare), prototype semantics (Rösch et al.), stereotype semantics (Putnam), archetypal semantics (Wildgen), etc. could be mentioned among those opponents. Lexicographic practice has hardly been tackled in this way so far (but cf. Wierzbicka 1985). Other papers from this conference deal with these approaches extensively (Wegner 1985; Wildgen 1985: 9-58) without pointing out the necessity of differentiating between the scientific and general use of words and recognizing the fact that a large amount of the vocabulary of an individual language today has to be described in a scientific 'analytical1 way. 4.

The tradition of analytical description

In order to assess the importance of analytical semantics it is necessary to see its increased use for general vocabulary and its refinement from the 17th century onwards. Aristotelian principles of defining have always been used for scientific descriptions but from that time on these principles were also adopted for and adapted to the unilingual lexicography of individual languages and

especially to artificial, universal, and philosophical languages. Lexicographers, general linguists, orthoepists, and schoolitasters were encouraged in their analytical approach by the work of many empirical and rational philosophers in England, France, and Germany, such as Bacon, Leibniz, Descartes, Condillac, Kant, etc. (Aarsleff 1967; Land 1974). For English lexicography it took about 150 years (from Cawdrey 16O4 to Dr Johnson 1755) to establish an exemplary and consistent method of defining words in a mainly analytical way. Semanticists, lexicographers, and language planners in these centuries often aimed at an educated group of users and readers with philosophical interests, such as scientists, 'virtuosi1, poets, readers of journals and literature, etc. Clearly, all these attempts and projects also tried to facilitate international communication. Cue famous example may be mentioned. Bishop V&lkins1 attempt (1668) to establish a categorial system of semantic classification ('universal philosophy1) clearly shows the combination of linguistic aims with principles of scientific adequacy. He asked scientists (some of them founding members of the Royal Society 1662) to draw up some of his tables, and he used concepts from his categorial tables as a lexicographic metalanguage in the dictionary part of his monumental work (Funke 1929; Knowlson 1975; Dolezal 1985). Language standardization and the development of nomenclatures in the rising branches of science (especially botany, zoology, chemistry, medicine, etc.) from the 18th century onwards supported these tendencies towards the 'scientific1 description of words relying on categorial components used as features in more complex words and concentrating on the central features of a word thought to be prevalent in any occurrence of the word in any situation. Although many early nomenclatures were organized on a neo-Latin basis (Crosland 1962), the work of standardizing committees at the beginning of this century clearly illustrates the analytical approach to the description of word meaning in individual languages (cf. DIN 2330 1961; BS 3669 1963). 5.

Universal and artificial languages

Although artificial languages and universal language schemes never attracted a large group of users (with the exception of Esperanto), the principles employed in devising them (over 400 between the 17th and 19th century) clearly reflect categorial and analytical methods of description. Especially a-*priori languages tried to arrange their vocabulary on a planned categorial basis, to avoid ambiguous words, polysemes, and homonyms, and to use short analytical definitions (Couturat/Leau 1903; Knowlson 1975; Blanke 1985; large 1985). Such

8 a-pviori language schemes were mainly developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, whereas in the 19th century a-posteriori languages (usually en an Indo-European basis) were developed. Artificial languages are similar to most scientific nomenclatures and terminologies in dividing their vocabulary into a basic body of free or root morphemes with unambiguous meanings and a very subtly devised and highly productive derivational component used to enlarge the vocabulary almost at will. This combination enables these languages to avoid grammatical and derivational homonymy as well as syntagmatic and syntactic idiosyncrasies. They mainly rely on analogy, having as their basis a compact categorial feature inventory to define and delimit the range of their morphemes. 6.

Analytical description and science

In this paper only a rather simplistic picture of the influence of science on language description and analytical methods could be given. It had to exclude many complex problems of the relationship of language description and mathematics in the 18th and 19th centuries, of the long debate on the relationship of objects to ideas and word meanings (mainly in Prance), and of the influence of writing systems and sign languages on language description. On the other hand, linguistic description did not only borrow analytical methods from science and philosophy. Some scientists and philosophers (such as Leibniz, Condillac, etc.) hoped that universal language schemes and analytical methods in general could approximate a calculus-like precision. This precision would then clear scientific thought from ambiguous concepts and language use and would further progress on the whole. Despite all optimism many scientists, philosophers, and linguists realized that words in general use and even nomenclatures lacked the clarity they were aiming at, and that most categorial systems were still as inadequate as had been those of Aristotle two thousand years ago. Nevertheless, componential semantics of the 2Oth century should occasionally remember the background of its tools, especially when attacked by modem lexical semanticists. It has to be admitted that traditional semantics and lexicographic practice owe much to 'scientific1 approaches to word definition - but that does not mean that descriptions even of general vocabulary achieved in this way must necessarily be inadequate or wrong. The fact that many frames and prototypes resemble categorial elements of traditional semantics very closely is no surprise at all - and Bishop Wilkins and Dr Johnson are not as old-fashioned as seme linguists may believe.

REFERENCES

Aarsleff, Hans. 1967. The study of language in England 1780 - 186O. Princeton, Princeton University Press. Blanke, Detlev. 1985. Internationale Plansprachen. Eine Einführung. Berlin, Akademieverlag. BS 3669. 1963. Recommendations for the selection, formation and definition of technical terms. London, British Standards Institution. (1982). Crosland, Maurice P. 1962. Historical studies in the language of chemistry. London, Heinemann. Couturat, Louis, Leopold Lsau. 1903. Histoire de la langue universelle. Paris, repr. Hildesheim, Olms 1979. DIN 233O. 1961. Begriffe und Benennungen. Allgemeine Grundsätze. Ausschuß Normierungstechnik im Deutschen Normenausschuß. Berlin, Beuth-Verlag. Dolezal, Fredric. 1985. Forgotten but important lexicographers: John Wilkins and William Lloyd. A modern approach to lexicography before Johnson. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Funke, Otto. 1929. Zum Weltsprachenproblem in England im 17. Jahrhundert. Heidelberg, Winter. Hyldgaard-Jensen, Karl, Arne Zettersten (eds.). 1985. Symposium on lexicography II. Proceedings of the second international symposium on lexicography May 16-17, 1984, at the University of Copenhagen. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Khowlson, James. 1975. Universal language schemes in England and France 1600 - 18OO. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Land, Stephen K. 1974. From signs to propositions. The concept of form in eighteenth-century semantic theory. London, Longman. Large, Andrew. 1985. The artificial language movement. Oxford, Blackwell.

Salmon, Vivian. 1972. The works of Francis Lodwick. A study of his writings in the intellectual context of the seventeenth century. London, Longman. Salmon, Vivian. 1979. The study of language in 17th-century England. Amsterdam, John Benjamins B.V. Wegner, Ittmo. 1985. Frame-Theorie in der Lexikographie. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Wiegand, Herbert E. 1985. Eine neue Auffassung der sog. lexikographischen Definition. In: Karl Hyldgaard-Jensen, Arne Zettersten (eds.), 15-100. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1985. Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Ann Arbor, Karcma Publishers.

10

Wildgen, Hölfgang. 1985. Archetypensemantik. Grundlagen für eine dynamische Semantik auf der Basis der Katastrophentheorie. Tubingen, Narr. Wilkins, John.. 1668. An essay towards a real character, and a philosophical language. (English Linguistics 1500 - 1800. Vol. 199.) Menston, Scholar Press. (1968).

11

HORST rc MAJOR ASPECTS OF THE LEXEMATICS OF THE TÜBINGEN SCHOOL OF SEMANTICS

0.1 The colloquium on lexical semantics held at the University of Essen seems to us an excellent platform for presenting a particular approach to structural semantics, i.e. the lexematics of the Tübingen School of Semantics, to a considerable number of colleagues working in lexical semantics, but who, partly, are following orientations different from ours. Space restrictions impose a rather brief presentation of this particular type of structural semantics, which, by the way, is no longer a novelty of the year 1987 since it was outlined by Coseriu as early as the sixties and has been developed further by him and by several of his disciples - one of whan is the author of this contribution - in the following years up to the present. This type of structural semantics has actually met with a lively echo not only in Germany but also abroad, especially in Southern Romance countries and in Japan (Geckeler 1981b: 407). The aim of the present contribution is not to give an integral presentation of the theory of structural semantics of the Tubingen School - this would be a far too extensive task -, but to work out the advantages it has over other approaches, to call our colleagues1 attention to the various applications of this type of structural semantics and, finally, not to pass over in silence its limitations. 0.2 The title of our contribution contains two notions which call for an explanation. 0.2.1 'Lexematics1 is the term used by Coseriu to designate the type of structural (lexical) semantics developed and applied by the members of the Tübingen School of Semantics. In contrast to other usages, the epithet 'struc-

12

tural' in structural semantics is understood in this school as 'structural' in an analytical respect, as referred to the organization of the content-level of language by means of functional lexical oppositions. In this primarily paradigmatic type of lexical semantics, the analysis of lexical meaning is carried out by the decomposition of content into smaller elements (situated below the sign-threshold), i.e. into relevant meaning-differentiating features. Thus, the content of a lexeme results from the structure of its semantic features (archisememe, dimensions, semes, classemes). 0.2.2

The denomination "Tubingen School of Semantics' also needs a comment.

Japanese semanticists first used this name when referring to Goseriu and the circle of students interested in structural semantics whom he gathered around him after having moved from Montevideo to Tübingen in the early sixties. In fact, it was in the sixties that Goseriu developed, almost simultaneously with, but independently of, Pottier and Greimas, the outlines of modern descriptive semantics along European structuralistic lines (cf. especially Coseriu 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968 ). Also in later years he continued to work and to publish in the domain of semantics (cf. for example, Coseriu 1976a, 1976b, 1977, 1982a, 1983 ). The writer of these lines was the first at Tübingen to carry out a large-scale synchronic study of a lexical field according to Coseriu's lexematic theory (Geckeler 1971) and in his publications he elaborated certain concepts within the same theoretical framework (cf. also our joint publications Coseriu/ Geckeler 1974, 1981 ). It is not possible within the scope of this paper to mention all the linguists belonging more or less directly to the Tübingen School of Semantics; we will refer to most of them later on. Nowadays,the concept of 'Tübingen School of Semantics1 no longer denotes a geographical unity of place. Although the master's continuing to teach in Tübingen still ensures the correctness of the denomination, most of his disciples have left Tübingen for professional reasons and are now teaching at other universities in Germany or abroad. 1.0 Up to now Coseriu has elaborated and published the most comprehensive conception of a semantics of lexematic structures. His structural semantics has a twofold aim:

In spite of slightly different views on certain topics, Lipka (1980, 1981) and Kastovsky (198O, 1981, 1982: 66-15O) belong basically to this same orientation.

13

1) by precisely delimiting the object of his semantics, he intends to avoid the inadequacies of the approaches of other types of semantics (cf . infra his seven preliminary distinctions) ; 2) he wants to integrate all the questions of a structural semantics into a single and coherent system. This system comprises the paradigmatic structures of vocabulary as well as the syntagmatic structures ('syntagmatic1 understood as combinatorial on the seme-level). 1.1

ad 1 ) : By means of a succession of seven necessary preliminary distinc-

tions, Coseriu arrives at the desired homogeneous object of investigation, which can only then be subjected to a structural semantic analysis. As we cannot present and explain these distinctions within the framework of this paper, it may suffice to give a schematic representation of the hierarchy of the preliminary distinctions (for detailed information, cf. Coseriu (1966: 181-210)). objects metas language language ^^ diachrony \

primary repeated language / discourse historical *\ synchrony ^ language technique type Designation of d^scourse / ^^ ~~~^- functional-system language\ ~^*^ \^ signification 3 J \ norm norm discourse

Only the domain of (each) distinction whose designation is written in italics is retained because it is amenable to a structural treatment. The application of the seven distinctions, necessary from a theoretical point of view, leads at the same time to a considerable reduction in the enormous quantity of lexical material to be analysed. This reduction, although it is provisional, is a methodological one; in fact, it constitutes one of the limitations of this approach. Initially, the domains eliminated by the distinctions were sometimes considered as being of minor importance for semantic studies. Certain of our own formulations went in the same direction in the early years of the Tubingen School of Semantics. But it must be emphasized that the founder of this type

14

of semantics never considered the elimination of the domains in question as a definitive one; on the contrary, he regarded it as a temporary neglect due to the priority given to the structural study of language. In a lecture entitled 'Au-dela du struaturalisme1, delivered on numerous occasions, Coseriu (1982b) pleaded for the reintegration of the donains provisionally eliminated into the centre of linguistic interests. Several of the themes removed in favour of those amenable to structural analysis ware studied by Goseriu or by seme of his disciples; others have not yet been assigned their proper place in the realm of linguistics. At the very beginning of the elaboration of his semantic theory, Coseriu (1964) outlined the principles of a structural diachronic semantics - this is, from the point of view of the history of linguistics, a very interesting parallelism with Jakobson's reflections on diachronic phonology at the beginning of the development of phonological theory. Thun (1978) analysed the section of repeated discourse in his doctoral thesis on problems of phraseology. Staib (1980) applied the structural semantic analysis to diatopical varieties of a historical language. 1.2

ad 2): It is only after the careful application of the seven prelimi-

nary distinctions that we can start with the structural analysis of the lexernatic structures, which Coseriu conceives of in the following manner (1968: 7): Lexematic Structures Paradigmatic Structures (oppositional) Primary Structures - Lexical field - Lexical class

1.3

Syntagmatic Structures (combinatorial) (= Lexical Solidarities)

Secondary Structures - Modification - Development - Composition

- Affinity - Selection - Implication

Before passing on to comment on the lexematic structures, we would like

to emphasize that the Tübingen School of Semantics is firmly convinced that the first task of structural semantics is to establish a paradigmatic type of semantics, i.e. a word semantics, and that any attempt at working seriously on combinatorial semantics, i.e. sentence semantics or text semantics (although there is a substantial proposal for text semantics on the part of Coseriu (198O)), must turn out to be premature unless linguists have first worked out a solid basis for word semantics.

15 2.0 The limited space of this paper does not permit us to present in detail the different lexematic structures which Goseriu has established in the scheme presented above. In fact/ such a presentation is no longer necessary because the lexematic structures have been explained in numerous publications and are supposed to be known to the majority of the semanticists. What we intend to do is to insist upon the strong points and the special traits of this type of structural semantics. 2.1 The structural semantics of the Tübingen School possesses a fully elaborated method for the study of lexical fields. This method is a synthesis of the German tradition of lexical field research with the functional principles of European structuralism. Coseriu (1976b) even developed a typology of the lexical fields. The lexical field is defined by Coseriu (1967: 294) as follows (in our translation) : From a structural point of view a lexical field is a paradigm of the lexicon, which is constituted by the partition of a lexical contentcontinuum into different unities corresponding to words in a given language, these words standing in immediate opposition to each other by means of simple content-differentiating features.

The basic constitutive elements of the lexical field are these: lexemes, archilexemes, dimensions/ semes, classemes. - A lexeme is a lexical unit functioning within a lexical field. - An archilexeme is a lexeme whose content is identical with the content of the whole lexical field. The archilexeme may be realized as a lexical unit in a determinate language, but need not be. - A dimension - this is a concept that has been introduced into the discussion of structural semantics by ourselves following a suggestion of Ißunsbury is interpreted as a criterion of lexical 'articulation* ('Gliederung') which is operative in a lexical field and which - so to speak - furnished the scale for the oppositions functioning between determinate lexemes of the field (comparable to Greimas' 'axe semique'); within a dimension, the concept 'pole can be very usefully incorporated and applied. - A seme is a content-differentiating feature functioning in a lexeme. If we work with dimensions in lexical analysis, the semes are reduced to specific differences within a dimension. - A classeme is a content-feature by which a lexical class is determined. Classemes are general determinations in the lexicon, they are a specific kind of seme, also able to function outside lexical fields or throughout a series of lexical fields.

16

So the lexical content of a lexical item is composed of the archilexematic content (archisememe), of the dimension(s) and the semes and of the classeme(s). As to the applications of the lexical field theory of the Tübingen School: Up to now the most extensive study of a lexical field on the basis of the lexematics of the Tübingen School is our synchronic analysis of the lexical field of the adjectives structuring the semantic area 'age' in present-day French (Geckeler 1971). This study, based on a rich corpus of examples taken from contemporary French texts, was carried out (distributional) study of the collocations jeune, vieux,, 5.ge3 anoien, moderns} neuf, atic analysis of the lexical field; 2) the means of the ccmnutation test, reveals the

in two phases: 1) The syntagmatic of the respective adjectives (e.g. nouveau, etc.) leads to the classemparadigmatic analysis, realized by semic structure of the field. Sum-

maries of the results of the investigation of this particular lexical field can be found in various publications (Geckeler 1973: 52-70, 1976: 304-329, 1979a: 199-217). In her doctoral thesis, Krassin (1984), one of our students, studied the lexical field of the verbs designating locomotion in contemporary French. Another one, Azem (forthcoming), devoted her thesis to the investigation of the lexical field of the adjectives designating cleanness and dirtiness in present-day French. In both theses the structural semantic analyses were realized according to the principles of the Tübingen School of Semantics. 2.2.0 Another particularity of the structural semantics of the Tübingen School is the integration of word-formation into the domain of lexematics. In this approach, word-formation is treated from a strictly semantic point of view; the different types of word-formation are considered as secondary paradigmatic lexematic structures (cf. the schematic representation supra). This evaluation of word-formation is very different from current classification of this linguistic domain (Coseriu 1982a). According to the respective grammatical determination of the primary lexical unit involved, Coseriu distinguishes three types of 'secondary1 paradigmatic lexematic structures: 2.2.1 "Modification1 corresponds to an 'inactual1 grammatical determination, i.e. to a determination which does not imply any sentence-function of the modified primary lexical unit. The word-class (pars oration-is) does not change. In general, in modification we are dealing with a quantification of the primary lexical element; cf., for example, diminutive and collective formations, or

17 prefix formation in the case of verbs, e.g. Fr. mur ·+ muret; Span, oaballo -+ oaballito; Fr. tousser -> toussoter , noir ->- noiratre; It.

quereia -> queraeto;

Fr. wir -> revoir.

In the donain of modification, Ettinger (1974) thoroughly studied diminutive and augmentative word-formation with respect to Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Rumanian substantives. 2.2.2 'Development1 corresponds to a grammatical determination which comprises a sentence-function of the primary lexical unit; it is always accompanied by a change of the word-class of the primary term. Thus, for example, Fr. beau + predicative function ·* beaute ('le fait d'Stre beau1) . In the domain of development we must make mention of Ludtke's (1978) voluminous doctoral thesis on predicative nominalizations by means of suffixes in French, Catalan, and Spanish, cf . , e.g., Fr. etonner -*· etonnement, discret ->· discretion, and Stein's (1971) thesis, in which she deals with the derivational possibilities of adjectival word-formation in French and English, a subject which refers mainly to the 'development '-type. 2.2.3 'Composition1 always implies the presence of two basic lexical elements which stand in a grammatical relation to one another. Coseriu distinguishes two types of composition: 1) The 'specific1, or 'nominal1, or 'lexematic' composition, e.g. Fr. wagon-restaurant, station-service, where both combined elements represent really existing lexemes. This type of composition corresponds to traditional word-composition. Rohrer 's (1967) doctoral thesis, although not in total accordance with Coseriu1 s principles of word-formation, can be considered as a very valuable contribution to the study of the 'lexematic composition '-type. 2) The 'generic1, or 'pronominal', or 'prolexematic1 composition, e.g. Fr. poire ·+ pair - ier, calculer -+ oalculx - atvice , where one of the combined A A ~~"* B A A — B elements (B) is not identifiable with a lexeme existing in the language in question. The prolexematic composition-type of this new semantically defined classification of word-formation is traditionally referred to as 'derivation' . Recently, two extensive studies of prolexematic composition in Spanish and French have been realized by disciples of Coseriu (Laca 1 986 ; Staib forthcoming) .

18

The two types of composition may also appear contained, cf., for exampie, Germ. Kindergärtnerin (corresponds to a combination of lexematic composition (Kindergarten) and a prolexematic composition (K. - in)), Fr. ouvre-boftes interpretation of this type of compound, cf. Coseriu 1977 ). 2.2.4

(as to the

Eventually, we want to insist upon a special view that characterizes

this approach to word-formation: In Coseriu's conception, word-formation is a sort of granmaticalization of the lexicon and that is why word-formation constitutes a special domain within the lexicon: word-formation is regarded as a 'grammar of the lexicon1 (Coseriu 1982a: 12). 2.3 A further characteristic trait of the structural semantics of the Tübingen School is the integration of what Porzig called 'essential meaningrelations' ('wesenhafte Bedeutungsbeziehungen1) or 'elementary semantic fields' ('elementare Bedeutungsfelder1) into the domain of lexematics. Coseriu named them 'lexical solidarities' and classified them as 'syntagmatic lexematic structures', 'syntagmatic' being understood as combinatorial on the semic level. As examples may be quoted the implication of 'dent1 in Fr. mordre or of 'langue' in Fr. leaher (i.e. the lexemes dent and langue function as semes in the lexical content of mordre and leoher respectively). With regard to the status of the implied element, Coseriu distinguishes three types of lexical solidarities: 'affinity', 'selection', and 'implication1 (for further information, cf. Coseriu 1967 ) . 3.

There is quite a number of other phenomena within the domain of seman-

tics that have been studied by linguists of the Tübingen School, particularly by Coseriu himself. 3.1 The distinction between 'signification1, 'designation1, and 'sense1, elaborated by Coseriu (e.g. 198O), is fundamental for the theory of this type of structural semantics. 3.2 Coseriu (e.g. 1972, 1973) distinguishes five different types of linguistic content: 'lexical', 'categorial', 'instrumental·', "structural· (syntactic)1, and 'ontic' content (as regards the hierarchy of lexical· and grammatical· content, cf. Geckeler forthcoming b ). 3.3 A connection can also be found between our type of structural semantics and the one represented by Lyons (1968, 1977). Here we refer first of all· to the study of 'antonymy' (sensu lato) and, quite generaUy, to the increased

19

interest of semanticists in this meaning-relation, which is reflected in the numerous publications on this topic in recent years, cf., for example, our articles on antonymy (Geckeler 1979b, 198O) and the doctoral thesis by Nellessen (1982); for the relations between synonymy and antonymy, cf. our considerations on this subject (Geckeler forthcoming a). 3.4

Another question arising within the framework of structural semantics

is that of lexical gaps. This interesting domain has so far not been systematically investigated in linguistic research. In Geckeler (1974, 1985), we tried to establish a tentative classification of lexical gaps. We also published a rather sketchy study of the intralingual paradigmatic gap-type in the system of word-formation of modern French (Geckeler 1977). Finally, the question of the non-existence of antonymic structures in certain areas of the lexicon was dealt with (Geckeler 1983a, b). 4.

More than what can be said about the 'state of the art1 of our type of

structural semantics in this limited contribution is to be found elsewhere (Geckeler 1981a). Information on translations of the major publications of this orientation in structural semantics is available in Geckeler (1981b: 4O6-4O7) and in the two Festschriften in honour of Ooseriu. Further perspectives as well as other limitations of this semantic theory have been presented in Coseriu/Geckeler (1981: 66-69) and Geckeler (1981b: 4O8-4O9). A considerable amount of theoretical and practical work in the field of structural semantics has been done by the Tübingen School so far and this type of semantics has proved its practicability. But a lot of work remains to be done. We formulate our invitation to join this semantic theory by using the telling simile of St. Matthew 9, 37-38: "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; ..."

20 REFERENCES

Azem, Laure. forthcoming. Das Wartfeld der Sauberkeitsadjektive im heutigen Französisch. Diss. Minster. Brekle, Herbert Ernst, Dieter Kastovsky (eds.). 1977. Perspektiven der Wbrtbildungsforschung. Beiträge zum Wuppertaler Wörtbildungskolloquium von 9.-1O. Juli 1976. Anläßlich des 70. Geburtstags von Hans Marchand am 1. Oktober 1977. Bonn, Bouvier. Bülow, Edeltraud, Peter Schmitter (eds.). 1979. Integrale Linguistik. Festschrift für Helmut Gipper. Amsterdam, Benjamins. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1964. Pour une semantique diachronique structurale. Travaux de Linguistique et de Litterature 2;1,139-186. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1966. Structure lexicale et enseignement du vocabulaire. Actes du premier collogue international de linguistique appliquee. Nancy, 175-217. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1967. lexikalische Solidaritäten. Poetica 1, 293-303. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1968. Les structures lexematique. Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 1, 3-16. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1972. Semantik und Grammatik. Jahrbuch 1971 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache, 77-89. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1973. Die Lage in der Linguistik. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, Vorträge 9, 5-15. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1976a. Die funktioneile Betrachtung des Wortschatzes. Jahrbuch 1975 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache, 7-25. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1976b. Vers une typologie des chanps lexicaux. Cahiers de Lexicologie 27, 3O-51. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1977. Inhaltliche Wsrtbildungslehre (am Beispiel des Typs 'coupe-papier*). In: Herbert Ernst Brekle, Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), 48-61. Coseriu, Eugenio. 198O. Textlinguistik. Eine Einführung. Tübingen, Narr. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1982a. Lss precedes semantiques dans la formation des mots. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 35, 3-16. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1982b. Au-delä" du structuralisme. Linguistica e Letteratura 7, 9-16. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1983. Pour et centre l'analyse semique. In: Shirö Hattori, Kazuko Inoue (eds.), 137-148. Coseriu, Eugenio, Horst Geckeier. 1974. Linguistics and semantics - Linguistic, especially functional, semantics. In: Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), 103-171. Coseriu, Eugenio, Horst Geckeier. 1981. Trends in structural semantics. Tübingen, Narr.

21

Eikmeyer, Hans-Jürgen, Hannes Rieser (eds.). 1981. Words, worlds, and contexts. New approaches in word semantics. Berlin, New York, de Gruyter. Ettinger, Stefan. 1974. Diminutiv- und Augmentativbildung: Regeln und Restriktionen. Tübingen, Narr. Geckeier, Horst. 1971. Zur Wartfelddiskussion. Untersuchungen zur Gliederung des Wortfeldes 'alt-jung-neu' im heutigen Französisch, München, Fink. Geckeier, Horst. 1973. Strukturelle Semantik des Französischen. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Geckeier, Horst. 1974. Le problems des lacunes linguistiques. Cahiers de Lexicologie 25, 31-45. Geckeier, Horst. 1976. Semantica estructural y teoria del campo lexico. Madrid, Credos. 1984. Geckeier, Horst. 1977. Zur Frage der Lücken im System der Wortbildung. In: Herbert Ernst Barekle, Dieter Kastovsky (eds.), 7O-82. Geckeier, Horst. 1979a. La semantics strutturale. Torino, Boringhieri. Geckeier, Horst. 1979b. Antonymie und Wortart. In: Edeltraud Bülow, Peter Schmitter (eds.), 455-482. Geckeier, Horst. 198O. Die Antonymie im Lexikon. In: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 42-69. Geckeier, Horst. 1981a. Progrös et stagnation en semantique structurale. In: Horst Geckeier et al. (eds.), 53-69. Geckeier, Horst. 1981b. Structural semantics. In: Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer, Hannes Rieser (eds.), 381-413. Geckeler, Horst. 1983a. Lexeme ohne Antonyme. In: Helmut Stürm, Wolfgang Raible (eds.), 71-79. Geckeler, Horst. 1983b. Observations sur l'absence de l'antonymie dans certaines sections du lexique. Quaderni di Semantica 4, 98-1O6. Geckeler, Horst. 1985. Nouveaux regards sur les lacunes lexicales. Actös· du Xle collogue international de linguistique fonctionelle. Padova, CLESP, 248-252. Geckeler, Horst, forthcoming a. Considerations sur les relations entre la synonymie et l'antonymie. Geckeler, Horst, forthcoming b. Considerations sur la hierarchie des faits semantiques dans la graimaire et dans le lexique. Geckeler, Horst et al. (eds.). 1981. Logos Semantikos. Studia linguistica in honorem Eugenio Coseriu 1921-1981. Vol. III. Berlin, New York, Madrid, de Gruyter, Gredos. Hattori, Shirö, Kazuko Inoue (eds.). 1983. Proceedings of the Xlllth international congress of linguists, August 29 - September 4, 1982, Tokyo, The Committee.

22

Kastovsky, Dieter (ed.). 1980. Perspektiven der lexikalischen Semantik. Beiträge zum Wuppertaler Semantikkolloquium von 2.-3. Dezember 1977. Bonn, Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Kastovsky/ Dieter. 198O. Selectional restrictions and lexical solidarities, in: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 70-92. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1981. Lexical fields and word-formation. In: Horst Geckeier et al. (eds.), 429-445. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1982. Wortbildung und Semantik. Düsseldorf, Bern, München, Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann, Bagel, Francke. Krassin, Gudrun. 1984. Das Wortfeld der Fortbewegungsverben im modernen Französisch. Frankfurt/taain, Bern, New York. Lang. Laca, Brenda. 1986. Die Wortbildung als Granmatik des Wortschatzes. Tübingen, Narr. Lipka, Leonhard. 198O. Mathcdology and representation in the study of lexical fields. In: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 93-114. Lipka, Leonhard. 1981. On the interrelation of syntagmatic modification and paradigmatic lexical structuring in English. In: Horst Geckeier et al. (eds.), 373-383. LUdtke, Jens. 1978. Prädikative Nominalisierungen mit Suffixen im Französischen, Katalanischen und Spanischen. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Lyons, John. 1968. Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge, etc., Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. 1 and 2. Cambridge, etc., Cambridge University Press. Nellessen, Horst. 1982. Die Antonymie im Bereich des neufranzösischen Verbs. Tübingen, Narr. Rohrer, Christian. 1967. Die Wortzusammensetzung im modernen Französisch. Tübingen, Narr. 1977. Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.). 1974. Current trends in linguistics. Vol. XII. The Hague, Paris, Itouton. Staib, Bruno. 1980. Semantik und Sprachgeographie. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Staib, Bruno, forthcoming. Generische Komposita. Funktionelle Untersuchungen zum Französischen und Spanischen. Tübingen, Niemeyer. Stein, Gabriele.1971. Primäre und sekundäre Adjektive im Französischen und Englischen. Tübingen, Narr. Stürm, Helmut, Wolf gang Raible (eds.). 1983. Zur Semantik des Französischen. Wiesbaden, Steiner. Thun, Harald. 1978. Probleme der Phraseologie. Tübingen, Niemeyer.

23

DIRK GEERAERTS

KATZ REVISITED. ASPECTS OF ΊΗΕ HISTORY OF LEXICAL SEMANTICS

All through the seventies, Katz/Fodor's "The structure of a semantic theory1 (1963) formed a reference point for studies in lexical semantics, together with the subsequent elaborations and revisions of the model in the work of Katz (1972). Taking a stand in lexical semantics meant taking a stand with regard to ccnponential analysis of the Katzian brand, and more often than not the stand was negative: a rejection of one aspect or another of the Katzian approach often seemed to be the preliminary ritual parricide of lexical-semantic studies. What I propose to do here is to address precisely the question of why Katz/ Fodor were so tremendously successful and why they were so tremendously unsuccessful. The wording of this question is deliberately paradoxical: I will try to show that the reasons for their success are intimately connected - if not partly identical - with the reasons for their failure. Dealing with this problem is not just an end in itself; I will try to make it clear that it is a way of uncovering seme major lines in the history of lexical semantics, and that it provides a framework for a new appreciation of the present-day situation of the discipline.

The view of the history of lexical semantics that lies at the basis of this paper is the same as the one presented in Geeraerts (forthcoming) (cf. figure 1). In the latter article, most of the attention goes towards the relationship between post-structuralist cognitive semantics and pre-transformationalist diachronic semantics. Here, the attention goes towards the middle period of the development, and more particularly towards the transitional role of Katzian semantics. The history of lexical semantics can only be treated briefly in the context of this paper. For a more extensive treatment, see Geeraerts (1986).

24

So why did Katzian semantics draw the attention of so many linguists? One reason is clearly extrinsic - extrinsic, that is, to the kind of lexical-semantic theory put forward by Katz. By incorporating semantics into generative grammar, Katz was able to ride along the waves of transformationalist enthusiasm. But we should give Katz the credit he deserves: he not only profited from the appeal of generative grammar, he also contributed to it. For Katz/Fodor's incorporation of a semantic component into the Chomskyan model clearly filled an unappealing and counter-intuitive gap that characterized the earlier, Syntactic Structures-type of grammatical model. The attractiveness of Chomskyanism was based to a large extent on the elegance of the Aspects-model, and we should not forget that Katz/ Fodor took a decisive step towards the formulation of that model. Incidentally, the importance of this extrinsic reason for Katz's success may be brought out clearly by comparing his fate to that of Pettier, whose 1963 and 1964 articles present a type of semantic theory that is intrinsically in many ways similar to Katz's, but who was bound to remain relatively isolated, mainly because he did not link up with the mainstream of linguistic discussions, con2 centrated round generative grammar. But the appeal of Katzian semantics did not rest on extrinsic factors alone: the intrinsic characteristics of the model are equally important. There are three of them to be mentioned: its basically structuralist methodology, its attempt at formal representation, and its mentalist conception of language. There is, of course, a connection between these intrinsic characteristics and the extrinsic link with Chomskyanism, because the mentalist and the formalist stance of Katzian semantics derive from the Chomskyan emphasis on precisely these aspects of doing linguistics. On the other hand, Katz's methodological position links up with the pre-transformationalist structural tradition of lexical semantics. Granting for a moment that Katz's methodology indeed brings together the main strands of structural semantics (but I will presently have to come back to this), it is easy to see that the singular combination of the three characteristics itself was appealing: a major tradition of lexical semantics (indeed, the major one in the period innediately preceding the generative era) was linked to the vanguard of linguistics. But each of the three characteristics itself was also attractive.

A fortiori, this applies to European structuralist semantics of the Coseriu-brand (cf. Geckeler, this volume).

25

First of all, Katz took over the Chomskyan requirement that linguistic analyses be rigidly fomalized. Oomponential analysis was at the same time a method of descriptive analysis, and a formal descriptive apparatus, a formal apparatus that seemed indispensable to comply with the requirements of conceptual rigidity and falsifiability that, according to the model furnished by the mathematical sciences, any respectable scientific endeavour had to live up to. Formalisation signified, in other words, a guarantee of scientific seriousness. Second, Katzian semantics inherited the mentalistic self-conception of Chomskyanism. By defining the subject matter of semantics as the competential 'ability to interpret sentences' of the language user, semantics came to share the promises of explanatory adequacy that constituted so much of the appeal of generative grammar. The third aspect of Katz's approach needs some elaboration. Why can we say that Katz's method is a cabnination of structural semantics? To appreciate that this is indeed the case, we should go back to the origins of structuralist semantics. These are customarily attributed to Trier (1931), but while Trier's monograph may indeed be the first major descriptive work in structuralist semantics, the first theoretical and methodological expose of the new approach is to be found in Weisgerber's Die Bedeutungelehre - ein Irrweg der Spracfojissensehaft? (1927). Weisgerber criticizes pre-structuralist historical semantics on three points. First, the study of meaning should not be atomistic but should be concerned with semantic structures. Second, it should be synchronic instead of diachronic. And third, the study of linguistic meaning should proceed in an autonomously linguistic way. Because the meaning of a linguistic sign is determined by its position in the linguistic structures in which it takes part, linguistic meanings should not be studied from a psychological perspective (as was usual in pre-structuralist historical semantics). Rather, because the subject matter of semantics consists of autonomous linguistic phenomena, the methodology of linguistic semantics will be autonomous, too. For obvious reasons, the practical realization of this attempt to develop a synchronic, non-psychological, structural theory of semantics will depend on the way in which the notion of semantic structure is conceived. In practice, there are mainly three distinct definitions of semantic structure that have been employed by structuralist semanticians. More particularly, three distinct kinds of structural relations among lexical items have been singled out as the proper methodological basis of lexical semantics. Primo, there is the relationship of semantic similarity that lies at the basis of semantic field analysis,

26

inaugurated by Trier and ultimately leading to oomponential analysis in the work of anthropological linguists such as Goodenough (1956) and Lounsbury (1956). Secunck), there are unanalyzed lexical relations such as synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy; these were for the first time systematically selected as the methodological basis of structural semantics by Lyons (1963). Tevtio, syntagmatic lexical relations were identified by Borzig (1934) under the name of 'wesenhafte Bedeutungsbeziehungen'. In actual practice, only the first of these three kinds of semantic relationships received considerable attention in pre-transformationalist semantics. Now, what makes Katzian semantics so interesting from a structuralist point of view is the fact that it brings together the three types of semantic relations that may lie at the basis of structuralist semantic theories. In the first place, paradigmatic similarity relations show up in Katz/Fodor's adoption of componential analysis. In the second place, syntagmatic relationships are the subject of selectional restrictions and projection rules. In fact, as a result of its syntactic, transformational background, the 1963 article is mainly concerned with these syntagmatic phenomena; the paradigmatic elaboration of the model is to a large extent the result of later additions. This becomes obvious when we consider, in the third place, the paradigmatic lexical relations highlighted by Lyons. They are not discussed in 1963, but in 1972 (apparently as a result of the publication of Lyons's book), Katz points out explicitly that semantic theory should describe lexical relations such as synonymy, antonymy, and hyponomy. There are two remarks to be made with regard to the observation that the Katzian approach to semantics brings together the three structural types of semantic relations. To begin with, it will be clear from what was said above that Katzian semantics is not a straightforward chronological development out of the structuralist tradition. While his incorporation of lexical relations such as hyponymy and antonymy most certainly derives from Lyons, and while componential analysis is probably taken over from anthropological linguistics, the notion of selectional restrictions, at least, seems to be an independent innovation. Further, it should be noted that Katz draws together the three types of structural relations in two distinct ways. On the one hand, they are brought together

As far as I know, Katz has never explicitly and unambiguously acknowledged such an indebtedness.

27

into the observational basis of lexical semantics. What lexical semantics should try to describe, Katz says, is precisely the total sum of those different kinds of structural relationships. On the other hand, his generalization of componential analysis suggests a unified method for describing those distinct relational types. While componential analysis had previously been restricted to the analysis of field relations, Katz uses it to describe the other relations as well. Thus, for instance, selectional restrictions are couched in componential terms. In this sense, he adds to the structuralist appeal of his unified observational basis for semantics by suggesting a uniform method of description. Sumtiarizing, then, Katzian semantics appears to be a singular combination, within the framework of generative grammar, of a basic structuralist methodology, a mentalist philosophy of language and a formalized descriptive apparatus. This combination explains the attractiveness of the model: the structuralist basis seemed to ensure its descriptive adequacy and a large empirical scope; the mentalist point of view contained an exciting promise of explanatory adequacy; and the formalization seemed to establish the model's scientific respectability. However, this combination of distinct elements is at the same time the very cause of its gradual decline. I think it can be shown that the Katzian amalgam contained the germ of a number of internal tensions that finally made the model fall apart. There are two major tendencies to be cited; in each case, semantics moves away from the structuralist pole of the Katzian conjunction towards one of the other two poles. Thus, the demands of formalization diminished the structuralist influence in semantics in favour of logical approaches to meaning analysis. Next to this, attempts to take the mentalist position of Katzian semantics seriously led to a straightforward psychological, cognitive orientation in semantic studies. Let us now have a closer (though inevitably brief) look at these two lines of development. 1. The evolution towards logical semantics took place in two steps. After a primary transition from Katzian formalizations towards a notational system couched in the tradition of predicate logic, the set-theoretical elaborations and refinements of classical logic were introduced into linguistic semantics, mainly in the framework of Montague grammar. The important thing is to see that this evolution was a 'logical' step, deriving as it did from certain inadequacies in Katz's formalizations. Thus, Weinreich (1966) among others pointed out that Katz's sentential readings did not have internal structure. Katz (1966) tried to remedy this by introducing complex markers, but Bierwisch (1969) and others then made clear that this was only a halfhearted and still insufficient

28

move towards the formalism of predicate logic. This full step towards predicate logic was then taken precipitately by Generative Semantics, also because quantifiers played an important role in the discussion with Interpretative Semantics. The next stage in the development was reached when logicians remarked that symbolic representations of meaning had to be formally interpreted if semantics was to became truly formal. This is, of course, the gist of Lewis's wellknown critique with regard to Katzian 'markerese' (1972). The subsequent introduction into linguistics of the model - theoretical apparatus needed to ensure a formal interpretation of the representational language completed the evolution towards logical semantics. In the context of a methodological history of lexical semantics, the evolution towards logical semantics means two things. First, the observational basis of semantics is changed. Instead of structural relations, truth conditions became the primary empirical point of interest of semantics. Second, the emphasis moves away from lexical semantics towards sentential semantics. Truth conditions are properties of sentences, not of lexical items. Thus, Thcmason's statement (1974) that a semantic theory need not specify the way in which items such as walk and fun differ in meaning is typical for the shift in interest from 4 lexical relational structures to sentential truth conditions. 2. The development towards psychologically rather than logically orientated forms of semantics can best be traced in the discussion between the componential method advocated by Katz, and the axiomatic method for semantic representation. As the use of semantic postulates originated in logical grammar, the initial phase of the discussion (Bar-Hillel 1967) appeared to be just another aspect of the tension between Katz's linguistic approach and existing logical forms of analysis. It gradually became clear, however, that a decompositional approach would need semantic axioms in any case, e.g. in order to represent redundancy rules. As such, a fusion of both approaches became possible. In 1977, Katz tacitly introduced postulates into his componential approach, while in the same period Dowty (1979) showed that it was possible to incorporate decompositional definitions of lexical items into a ttontagovian semantic theory.

The whole shift is awkwardly reflected by the fact that the terra 'structural semantics' may now be used to denote semantic analyses dealing with the logical structure of sentences rather than the relational structure of the lexicon (cf. e.g. Garnham 1985:99).

29

But when the fornal compatibility of the decompositional and the axiomatic approaches is established, the question becomes what degree of deconposition is necessary. This is no longer a formal question, but a substantive one, and it can be solved by using experimental evidence for the psychological reality of decotpositional representations. Such results were, for instance, provided by Fodor/Fodor/Garrett (1975), who recorded the reaction times needed to verify sentences containing either overtly marked or implicit lexical negations. However, these experiments clearly involved performative processes, whereas Katz's deconpositional approach explicitly wanted to be a competential theory of semantics (Katz 1981). At this point, a particular tension within the Katzian approach became apparent. On the one hand, using psycholinguistic data about performative processes is the ultirtate consequence of the mentalist position of Katzian semantics. If semantic descriptions do indeed have psychological reality, it is methodologically acceptable to use all kinds of psychological evidence, including data with regard to the way in which sentences are processed. On the other hand, an attitude that opposes this methodological extrapolation of the mentalist self-conception of Katzian semantics is supported by two other aspects of Katz's position. Both the generative notion of competence and the structuralist attempt to define an autonomous method for linguistic semantics preclude using psychological data pertaining to the actual performative processes involved in interpreting sentences. If one remembers Weisgerber's charges against psychological approaches in linguistic semantics, it should be clear that Katz's mentalism was not a methodological position. It characterized the object of the investigation as something that is psychologically real, but it did not influence the method used to determine the nature of that object. That method is structural in the sense that it is based on the static relations among linguistic elements, rather than on actual on-line processes of interpretation. In actual practice, Katz's present-day (highly isolated) Platonistic position (1981) clearly continues his earlier competential autonomous point of view. On the other hand, the 'performative', psychological, non-autoncmous option that gradually appeared was able to link up with existing work on comprehension processes and meaning representation. This work can be found in two overlapping areas: psycholinguistics and artificial intelligence.

In this kind of research,

The closest point of contact between both approaches is when psycholinguists try to devise formal models for semantic memory, as in the work of Smith/Shoben/Rips ( 1 9 7 4 ) , Collins/Loftus(1975), and Glass/ Holyoak (1976).

3O

the original question with regard to the alternative between componential and axiomatic approaches is transcended into the more general question 'What does an adequate model of man's use and knowledge of language look like?". Researchers in psycholinguistics and artificial intelligence generally do not estimate that the linguistic capacities of man can be studied in isolation from his other cognitive capacities. A satisfactory model of semantic knowledge may e.g. require a representation that has access to perceptual information; one kind of lexical item may require a traditional conceptual representation, but the meaning of another set of items may have to be represented in close connection with, say, the visual mode of human memory. In short, the autonomistic methodological ideal of structuralism is abandoned, not just by using 'performative1 psychological data, but also more generally by incorporating the study of linguistic semantics into the broader field of cognitive science. Linguistic knowledge is no longer considered to be an autonomous form of knowledge that can be studied in isolation, but an adequate picture of language comprehension and production is expected to involve the cooperation of distinct forms of knowledge. In linguistic lexical semantics, this psychological reorientation has led to the school of Cognitive Semantics of which Langacker (1987) and Lakoff (1987) are currently the leading figures, in close connection with the prototypical theory of categorial structure developed in psycholinguistics by Rosen (1978), the distinction between semantic and encyclopaedic knowledge is discarded: there is no longer believed to be an autonomous level of semantic organization, separated from the general conceptual capacities of the human being. Summarizing, then, I have tried to make it clear that the two innovations added by Katz to a more traditional structuralist methodology eventually led to forms of semantics that went far beyond the initial structuralist position. Just as taking the formalization of semantic analysis seriously entailed the adoption of a full-fledged logical semantics, taking the nentalist claims seriously entailed a shift towards a psychologically orientated cognitive type of semantics. Both the logical and the cognitive approach may take many forms, but they

6

Smith/Medin(1981).

7

Basic references are Rosch (.1978), Lakoff

(1987), Langacker (1987).

31

do constitute the major paradigms of contemporary semantic research. In this sense, then, Katz represents the grandeur et d&cadznee of structural semantics. He resumes the whole endeavour, but the nuances he adds to it eventually incite semantics to move away from the structuralist framework. One might say that the very diversity that lay at the basis of the appeal of Katzian semantics, led to the subsequent adoption of different approaches, approaches that were intrinsically more coherent than Katz's eclectic approach. The latter gave way to other approaches mainly as a result of the dynamism inherent in its own constitution. But there is an additional step that has to be taken if the historical position of Katz is to be fully appreciated. As we saw earlier, Katz links pre-transformationalist structuralism to contemporary linguistics. But we also saw that structural semantics is related in a particular fashion to the pre-structuralist, historical-philological approach to lexical semantics. If we bring together these historical lines of development, figure 1 appears; let us briefly review ο the stages of the development. First, historical semantics starts off with a thoroughly psychological, non-autonomous method. Second, pre-transformationalist structuralism reacts by imposing an autonomous relational method. Third, Katz takes up the method, adding to it the mentalist and formalist emphasis of transformational grammar. And fourth, the Katzian amalgam dissolves.

Some additional remarks with regard to the figure are necessary. First, the progression represented by the figure does not imply that the older traditions are extinct, but merely that they are no longer the main centre of attention and the main locus of progress in the field. Second, following Seuren (1986), the cognitive tradition might also be called 'ecological semantics 1 . Third, this cognitive/ecological approach most certainly does not oppose formalization (e.g. in the form of AI models of natural language comprehension). The point made in figure 1 is merely that the development towards logical semantics resulted from a requirement of formal rigidity with regard to Katzian formalization s, whereas the development towards cognitive semantics was not triggered by such formal considerations of logical adequacy, but rather by substantive considerations of psychological adequacy. The distinction between both approaches as they exist now is not, however, one of formalization versus the absence of formalization, but has something to do with the kind of facts (roughly, competential versus performative) that have to be formalized.

32

But new, what is truly important is to see how present-day cognitive semantics links up with pre-structuralist historical-philological semantics. I do not 9 have the opportunity here to make the comparison in great detail, but there is one point that can easily be appreciated. The cognitive approach again takes up the psychological approach that characterized historical semantics. Semantic phenomena are no longer studied as self-sufficient, structural, purely linguistic data, but they are seen as non-autonomous phenomena that can only be understood against their contextual background. This context is twofold: it is psychological on the one hand, socio-cultural on the other. Both aspects were conspicuously present in historical-philological semantics. The psychological approach has already been touched upon in connection with Weisgerber's denunciation of it, while the attention devoted to socio-cultural phenomena followed straightforwardly from the historical outlook: a lot of diachronic semantic changes can hardly be understood if changes in the social, cultural, historical context are not taken into account. Furthermore, the earlier interest in semantic change is reflected by the attention given by cognitive semanticists to the dynamic flexibility of human categorization. This is, of course, particularly true of prototype theory. If this is correct, i.e. if post-structuralist cognitive semantics, to a large extent,takes up again the interests and methods of pre-structuralist historical semantics, the major dividing line in the history of lexical semantics appears to be between non-autonomous approaches such as historical and cognitive semantics, and autonomous approaches such as logical and structural semantics. In this respect, there are two major questions about doing lexical semantics that arise from our historical sketch. The first question is relevant only if an autonomous approach is adopted; proponents of such an approach should try to determine whether the structural or the logical point of view best suits their purposes, or alternatively, whether more of structural semantics should be incorporated into logical semantics than is usually the case. The other question is, of course, whether the autonomous approach should be adopted at all. Specifically with regard to the present-day situation, can and should cognitive semantics be combined? I have my own answers to these problems, but dealing with them would go well beyond the scope of this article. The present paper will have served its purpose if it has become clear how the questions just mentioned arise from a historical overview of lexical semantics.

9

Cf. the references mentioned in footnote 1.

10

In particular, cf. Geeraerts (.1985).

33 REFERENCES

Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1967. Dictionaries and meaning rules. Foundations of language 3, 409-414. Bierwisch, Manfred. 1969. On certain problems of semantic representations. Foundations of language 5, 53-184. Collins, Allan M., Elizabeth F. Loftus. 1975. A spreading activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Seview 6, 407-428. Davidson, Donald D., Richard Barman (eds.). 1972. Semantics of natural language Dordrecht, Reidel. Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht, Reidel. Fodor, Janet, Jerry Fodor, Merrill Garrett. 1975. The psychological unreality of semantic representations. Linguistic Inquiry 6, 515-531. Garnham, Alan. 1985. Psycholinguistics. Central topics. London, Methuen. Geeraerts, Dirk. 1985. Paradigm and paradox. Explorations into a paradigmatic theory of meaning and its epistemological background. Leuven, university Press. Geeraerts, Dirk. 1986. Wbordbetekenis. Een overzicht van de lexicale semantiek. Leuven, Acco. Geeraerts, Dirk, forthcoming. Cognitive graintar and the history of lexical semantics. In: Brygida Rudzka (ed.), 643-673. Glass, Arnold, Keith Holyoak. 1976. Alternative conceptions of semantic theory. Cognition 3, 313-339. Goodenough, Ward H. 1956. Componential analysis and the study of meaning. Language 32, 195-216. Katz, Jerrold J. 1966. Ihe philosophy of language. New York, Harper & Row. Katz, Jerrold J. 1972. Semantic theory. New York, Harper & Row. Katz, Jerrold J. 1977. The advantage of semantic theory over predicate calculus in the representation of logical form in natural language. The Monist 6O, 380-405. Katz, Jerrold J. 1981. Language and other abstract objects. Oxford, Blackwell. Katz, Jerrold J., Jerry A. Fodor. 1963. The structure of a semantic theory. Language 39, 17O-210. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things. What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago, London, Chicago university Press. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Volume 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford, Cal., Stanford University Press.

34

Lewis, David. 1972. General semantics. In: Donald D. Davidson, Richard Barman (eds.), 169-218. lounsbury, Floyd. 1956. A semantic analysis of Pawnee kinship usage. Language 32, 158-194. Lyons, John. 1963. Structural semantics. Oxford, Blackwell. Porzig, Walter. 1934. Wesenhafte Bedeutungsbeziehungen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache und Literatur 58, 7O-97. Pottier, Bernard. 1963. Recherches sur l'analyse semantique en linguistique et en traduction mecanique. Nancy, Faculte de Lettres et Sciences Humaines. Pottier, Bernard. 1964. Vers une semantique moderne. Travaux de Linguistique et de Utterature 2, 107-137. Rösch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of categorization. In: Eleanor Rosch, Barbara B. Lloyd (eds.), 27-48. Rosch, Eleanor, Barbara B. Lloyd (eds.). 1978. Cognition and categorization. New York, etc., Lawrence Erlbaum. Rudzka, Brygida (ed.). forthcoming. Topics in cognitive grammar. Amsterdam, Benjamins. Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.). 1966. Current trends in linguistics. Volume 3. The Hague, Mouton. Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1986. Formal theory and the ecology of language. Theoretical Linguistics 13, 1-18. Smith, Edward, Douglas Medin. 1981. Categories and concepts. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Smith, Edward, Edward Shoben, Lance Rips. 1974. Structure and process in semantic memory: A featural model for semantic decisions. Psychological Review 81, 214-241. Thomason, Richmond (ed.). 1974. Formal philosophy. Selected papers of Richard Montague. New Haven, Yale University Press. Trier, Jost. 1931. Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes. Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes. Heidelberg, Winter. Weinreich, Uriel. 1966. Explorations in semantic theory. In: Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), 395-477. Weisgerber, Leo. 1927. Die Bedeutungslehre - ein Irrweg der Sprachwissenschaft? Germanisch-Rcmanische Monatsschrift 15, 161-183.

35

Figure 1: HISTORICALPHnJODOGICAL SEMANTICS

meaning should be studied from a synchronic, nonpsychological , autonomous point of view

STRUCTURAL SEMANTICS

paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations reveal the autonomous semantic structure of language

TRANSFORMATIONAL SEMANTICS mentalism

a psychologically adequate study of meaning requires a non-autonomistic approach

COGNITIVE SEMANTICS

formalization

a formally adequate representation of meaning requires a model-theoretic interpretation

LOGICAL SEMANTICS

36

POST SCENES-AND-FRAMES SEMANTICS AS A NED-LEXICAL FIELD THEORY

0.

Introduction

The Polish philosopher Adam Schaff in his book Jezyk a poznanie (1964: 11) ('language and cognition1) observes that One of the more interesting methodological problems is the analysis of the reception of earlier research ideas under new historical circumstances. The idea born in a particular period and milieu, in response to specific conditions and requirements of the development of science, reappears in a new period and in a new milieu, again responding to the changed conditions and needs. In a way, this new idea is a continuation of the old one which had earlier disclosed a research problem, thus giving a beginning to what L. Krzywicki labelled some time ago as "the wandering of ideas in time and space 1 . Simultaneously, this idea is novel owing to its new contents, and the entire new intellectual and social context. (M.P.)

In what follows I will argue that Fillmore's scenes-and-frames

semantics (hence-

forth SAF) can be regarded as such a new idea which is a continuation, in new circumstances and intellectual context, of an old idea. This old idea to which 2 SAF relates is lexical field theory (henceforth LFT). The passage quoted suggests three questions. Firstly, what is it that makes SAF a continuation of LFT? Secondly, what is SAP's contribution to field theory? Thirdly, why should the idea of lexical fields appear again? As regards the first two questions, I prefer to concentrate on indicating the essential features shared by the two theories, the discussion of new elements being subjected to the former aspects. Such an arrangement is in agreement with the general purpose of showing that SAF is indeed a continuation of LFT. As regards the third question, the closing remarks to the present paper will offer a tentative answer to it.

Krzywicki, Ludwik J. F. (1859-1941), an outstanding Polish sociologist, social activist and journalist. I have in mind here the version of lexical field theory developed by such linguists as Jost Trier and Leo Weisgerber.

37

My implicit assumption is that LET and SAF are comparable. That they are somehow parallel has been hinted at by Fillmore in some of his papers. Fillmore (1975: 124) also admits that he can "... also see it (the scene-and-frame idea, M.P.) in the work of the European semantic field theorists", and he adds: The concept of semantic field can be captured by appealing to the notion of schema, and the allied concept of vocabulary field can be identified with the notion of frame and with various linkages among frames. The human colour schema identifies the semantic field of colour terms; the commercial event schema underlies the vocabulary field of buying and selling. And so on. The schema and the associated linguistic frames for the human body provide for the field of body part names and the vocabulary of body positions and body movements. (1977: 13O-1)

Fillmore is clearly aware of the affinity of the twa theories, as is evidenced by the above quotation. In his 1975 paper he even suggests that SAF can be an alternative to LET: "Other areas in which scene-and-frame approaches could give sensible alternatives to traditional accounts are: ... selection restrictions, synonymy, the recognition of polysemy versus the formulation of core meanings, metaphor, the nature of semantic fields" (1975: 129). As is usually the case one encounters contrary views which regard the juxtaposition of LET and SAF as ill-conceived. For instance, Verschueren (1981: 339) says that One might be tempted to identify lexical frames with what the structuralists called semantic or lexical fields. Such an identification would be wrong.

In my opinion, these opposing views on the relationship between LET and SAF indicate that their juxtaposition is a non-trivial matter. And that before one of the opposing views is finally accepted, a comparison of these two theories should be carried out. It is the aim of the present paper to offer such a tentative comparison. I will now indicate those aspects of the two theories in question that motivate the treatment of SAF as a continuation of LET. Both theories make the strikingly similar claim that groups of thematically related words in the lexicon are mapped on conceptual structures. In what follows I will concentrate on the following issues relating to this claim: (i) the nature of conceptual fields in LET and SAF; (ii) the characterization of lexical meaning in LET and SAF; (iii) the organization of the lexicon in LET and SAF.

38

1.

Conceptual fields in IfT and SAF

As will be indicated below, conceptual fields of LET and scenes of SAF have a number of essential attributes in cannon, due to which they seem to be objects of the same kind. IfT and SAF are based on the assumption that words are mapped on the continuum of thought, i.e. conceptual structures rather than directly on the external world or on external reality. This assumption places IfT and SAF in the line of the continuators of Humboldt and de Saussure, and sets them in opposition to Matore (1953), who would rather assume that sets of words are mapped directly on external reality. Trier's and Weisgerber's fields are reflections of external reality both in their totality and their parts (fields and subfields). An example of such a reflection of a part of external reality is constituted by Trier's description of German intellectual terms (1931). At one period wtsheit, kunst and list embodied two fundamental principles of medieval civilization, i.e. feudalism and universality. A hundred years later, due to social changes and a breakdown in the medieval system, science, philosophy and theology came to be distinguished. As a result, the structure of the entire conceptual field of knowledge altered, too, and it came to be exhaustively and differently articulated by kunst, wizzen and wtsheit. In the relevant literature there are also other examples illustrating the role of conceptual fields in the organization of one's experience. They are colour terms, kinship terminology, army ranks, etc. What is important in the context of my discussion is the fact that the conceptual structures of LET, or rather their structuring, is determined environmentally, i.e. they reflect the experiences of language users. Fillmorean scenes are chunks of knowledge of varying size, stereotypical, simplified, representing a common sense understanding of real world situations. Scenes are intended to be mental representations of the language user's real world experiences, i.e. scenes are also experientially-based. Trier's discussion of intellectual terms shows that changes occurred in the representation of a fragment of the reality of the entire population. This is naturally reminiscent of Humboldt's view that in languages the spirit of the nation (Volksgeist) is reflected; that for each nation there exists a permanent, canton conceptual structure (Brown 1967). Fillmore's SAF is concerned with the individual's view of the world rather than that of the nation. However, there

39

are reasons to believe that SAF is capable of incorporating the conceptual structures characterizing the warId-views of large populations. One should remember that SAF is a forerunner of Cognitive Linguistics in which something akin to a Volksgeist can also be detected. I can see it in Lakoff's (1987) discussion of categorization in Dyirbal, which holds for the entire Australian population, and his analysis of anger, in American Qiglish, which holds for American speakers. It seems that SAP's theoretical assumptions do permit conceptual structures to be shared by larger populations or even by whole nations. Another support for the plausibility of this suggestion comes from the evolution of LFT itself. Trier's field theory is the 'strongest1 version of LFT, and his predecessors, contemporaries and followers attempted to weaken some of its claims in various ways. For example, Oksaar (1958) suggested that each speaker has his own individual vocabulary, signalling thus the shift from the uniformity of conceptual structures to their variability. In Cognitive Linguistics, the variability in question is also reflected by a frequently made observation that speakers need to negotiate meanings. In short, both theories are in principle capable of accamodating the nation's and the individual's world-views. As a corollary, the difference between them with respect to the scope of conceptual structure is quantitative rather than qualitative. In LFT, the conceptual structure, covering the entire world, is an organic whole expressing the peculiar way in which a nation attempts to reflect reality It is argued that conceptual structures of higher rank consist of conceptual structures of lower rank, their contours fitting one another like pieces of different shapes in a mosaic. Wie mosaic metaphor, deriving from Ipsen (1924), holds for the entire lexicon and the entire conceptual structure. Due to this mosaic organization and the strict delimitation of individual conceptual structures, the words covering them are organized into closely-knit sectors. Like LFT's conceptual fields, Fillmorean scenes are organic wholes, cognitively linked with other scenes and other frames in such a way that in their totality they characterize perceived reality and the entire stock of lexical resources for talking about it (Fillmore 1977b: 72). Furthermore, frames are associated in memory with other frames by virtue of their shared linguistic material, and scenes are associated with other scenes by virtue of the sameness or similarity of the entities, or relations or substances in them, or their context of occurrence (Fillmore 1975: 124).

40

The above indicates that despite the different principles by which the entire conceptual structure is arranged in ΙίΊ and SAF, they are organic wholes, which is again reminiscent of Humboldt's and de Saussure's systemic nature of language. The systenaticity of mental structures in both theories imposes systematicity on the words napped on them, making a system of them. In this way, the conceptual structure becomes one of the principal devices of organization in the lexicon. The details of organization will be discussed in section 3 below. Another aspect of IfT, stemming fron Humboldt's work, is that conceptual structures, with a particular world-view encoded in them, determine the perception of reality by the users of a particular language. In other words, LET provides an approach to the influence of language on thinking. Conceptual structures do not only reflect the ideas, values and outlook of a society but also hand them down to the later generations as a ready-made analysis of reality through which the world will be viewed (Ullmam1957). In this respect ΙίΤ links up with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on the influence of language upon thought. The above is a belief that IFT theoreticians adhered to. In actual practice, however, they were interested in how a priori given conceptual areas become fields; how they are articulated by the lexical resources of a given language. The confirmation of the hypothesis, or rather attempts to substantiate it, were undertaken by Sapir and Whorf in their empirical studies. SAF also follows the view that conceptual structures play a role in dealing with reality. But Fillmore is concerned neither with philosophical implications of the problem nor with the empirical confirmation of it. He focuses solely on the psychological mechanism of perception and comprehension. According to the view adopted by Fillmore from Artificial Intelligence (Minsky 1975), understanding a real world situation involves the evoking of a scene that best fits this situation. There is a flexibility here, as the situation is allowed to fit the scene 'to a degree1. If it does fit, then it may be verbalized with the lexical resources from the evoked scene. On the one hand, scenes are conceptual representations of real world experiences; on the other, they impose their structure on new world experiences, which is in keeping with the views of Humboldt, Sapir, Whorf and field theoreticians.

41

2.

The characterization of lexical meaning in LIT and SAF

LET and SAP operate with apparently different conceptions of meaning. In the former theory there are two complementary views of what constitutes the meaning of the word. The meaning of a word is a relatively small conceptual area within a wider conceptual field, and any conceptual area that is associated with a word as its meaning is a concept. This view was held by Trier and Weisgerber, and was a corollary of an absolute parallelism between conceptual structures and word fields (isomorphism). According to the other view, attributed by Lehrer (1974) to Lyons (1977), the meaning of a word is a function of its relationships to the other terms in the lexical field. LFT's view of word meaning is determined by an explicit adherence to the structuralist assumption that each separate element of the language derives its essence (value) fron its relation with other elements. With respect to the lexicon of a language this means that the meaning of each word depends on the existence of other words in the same field. The meanings of the words in a field fill up all the space in that field like the tiles of a mosaic. This approach recognizes sharply marked boundaries among the conceptual areas representing the meanings of individual words in a given field. Due to the rigidity of boundaries, lexical meaning in LET is a checklist in Fillmorean sense, i.e. a list of necessary and sufficient conditions that an entity must satisfy to be named by a given word. SAF assumes that the meaning of the word is a prototype (Coleman/Kay 1981) which for an adequate description of the meaning of a word requires the giving of only the typical conditions under which the word can be used appropriately. According to the prototype approach, the non-existence of sharp boundaries between the conceptual areas covered by words in a particular field causes no problem - the theory concentrates on the focal parts of conceptual areas, disregarding their boundaries. Despite these different approaches to what constitutes the meaning of a word, LIT and SAF are surprisingly similar as to the way they define the meaning of a word. Let us consider LFT. Trier completely rejected the meaning of a word as an independent unit, saying that in the system, all parts receive their meaning only from the whole. That means that a word in any language is not an isolated carrier of meaning, on the contrary, each has a meaning only because there are others adjacent to it (Trier 1931: 43O). In other words, the meaning of words is determined by the entire field, or more precisely by the structure of the field. Trier's discussion of intellectual terms is an illustration of this.

42

Trier's remark that all the parts receive their meaning only from the whole echoes in FiHraore's slogan that "meanings are relativized to scenes" (Fillmare 1977b: 84). Fillmore says that someone who understands a word can be thought of as activating a scene and pointing to a certain part of that scene: If we know in one way or another what the commercial event is, then, given that knowledge, we can know exactly what the vocabulary pertaining to that semantic domain means. In short, I can believe of myself that I know exactly what is meant by such words as buy, sell, pay or cost, without requiring of myself that I have a complete and correct checklist description of the commercial event itself. (1977b: 60)

Recapitulating the present section, I will argue that, despite the different conceptions of meaning, the two theories involved require that the meaning of individual words be defined within experientially-based mental structures. 3.

Ihe organization of the lexicon in LFT and SAP

From the above outline of the nature of conceptual fields and scenes certain common properties of LFT and SAP seem to follow. Firstly, LFT and SÄF are mentalistic frameworks. Both assume the existence of an intermediate mental structure between words and the real world, whose structure in its totality constitutes a mental representation of reality. Secondly, the mental structures in both theories, i.e. conceptual fields and scenes, are experientially-based, i.e. they reflect the worlds as experienced by the users of languages. Thirdly, conceptual fields constitute a system, which in its entirety represents the reality of a given speech community (nation) or of an individual. The systematicity of mental structures in both theories imposes systematicity in the words mapped on them, making a system of them, too. Thus conceptual structure becomes one of the principles of organization in the lexicon. From the discussion in the relevant literature (Trier 1931; Öhman 1953; Weisgerber 1954; Lehrer 1974; Vassilyev 1974; Lyons 1977; Lutzeier 1982; Gordon 1982) the following views of the lexicon in LET emerge. Trier adopted de Saussure's structuralist principle that language is an organized whole whose elements delimit one another and derive their significance (value) from the general framework in which they are placed. He adhered to the idea of a totally and precisely delimited lexicon. According to this view, the whole lexicon consists of fields. Each field is a discrete entity within a totally structured lexicon. The whole vocabulary is a single, integrated and fully articulated system. It is hierarchically segmented into two types of fields which are parallel to each other: (i) conceptual fields (Begriffsfelder,

43

Sinribezirke), and (ii) word fields (Wortfelder). Each of these fields, in turn, is subdivided into elementary units, i.e. concepts and words, where the components of the word field cover completely the corresponding conceptual one. Fields occupy an intermediate position between the totality of the vocabulary and its minimal dependent units - words. The part-whole relationship which holds between individual lexemes and the lexical field within which they are interpreted is identical or at least similar to the part-whole relationship which holds between the lexical fields and the totality of the vocabulary. As suggested above, Trier's UT is a 'strong1 version of this approach, according to which every field is a discrete entity within a totally structured lexicon. This idea of the total delimitation of the lexicon is absent from the work of Ipsen and Porzig. Porzig (1934) indicated that it is not only paradigmatic relations that are the organizing principle in the lexicon but also syntagmatic relations as illustrated by his theory of syntagmatic fields. From the time perspective it can be seen that the evolution of IFT proceeded from Trier's 'stronger1 version to a 'weaker1 variety, the essence of which is that (i) words in the lexicon are related in a variety of ways, and as a corollary, (ii) there is no single semantic description of lexical meaning. Fillmore 's views on the structure of the lexicon can be placed within the 'weaker1 variety of IFT. Fillmore's most explicit statement on the issue in question can be found in another article (1978). In it he claims that there is no such thing as a uniform semantics for ordinary language, explicitly thus manifesting his adherence to the 'weaker' version of IFT. Furthermore, he maintains that there are various kinds of structures that characterize different semantic domains: contrast set, taxonomy, partonymy, paradigm, cycle, chain, network, etc. Among the different semantic domain types there is a frame, most central and powerful of all the domains, defined as a lexical set whose members index portions or aspects of some conceptual or actional whole. (1978: 165)

In a frame, there can be found sets of words that form paradigms, contrast sets, taxonomies and other kinds of structures. Ipsen's and Porzig's criticism was evidently motivated by the inadequacy of Trier's homogeneous lexicon. Fillmore arrived at his heterogeneous lexicon not through the criticism of classical IFT but rather on the basis of his own work

44

on lexical semantics and the work of others. This has led people to give up the view of the lexicon as an unordered list of words and to recognize a rich forml and semantic structuring within it. In his papers, Fillmore occasionally indicates what he means by indexing a portion or aspect of some conceptual whole. In his work (1977a) he discusses the noun alimony which activates a sequence of scenes associated with legal acts and with the marriage relationship (1977a: 114-5). In these scenes, the word alimony is linked to an entity, a fixed sum of money, given by a husband to his former wife. The word divorce, to take another example, would be linked to a portion of the sane large scene, i.e. that marriage ends and at the same time a legal agreement is made between the two participants to the effect that one would pay money to the other. Cne of the ways in which words may be linked in a frame is via perspectivization, i.e. the different viewpoints that they offer on the same scene. For example, in the commercial event scene buyer and seller, money and goods can be taken into perspective. If the perspective of the buyer and the money is taken, the verb to spend is selected. If one wishes to take the perspective of goods and money, the verb to cost will be preferred. Perspectivezation is thus an important relationship holding among the words in a frame. Still another way of grouping words in the lexicon is via natural categorization, i.e. in terms of deviation from the prototype and the relationship of family resemblance holding among the words from the set. In his book (1977a) Fillmore presents the description of a writing scene, associated with the English verb to write, which comprises the individual who does the writing, the implement with which the individual writes, the surface on which the writing is done, and the product of a writing act, that is a linguistic conflgurätiDn of marks on the surface. Then, a discussion of about twenty English verbs follows, clearly implying that what might relate them is the relation of family resemblance. For example, he says that to sketch adds the information that the product is something representational and the implement is of a particular kind - a brush; to draw is more or less like to sketch, but both are different from to paint, since to paint is to produce an artistic object, not necessarily representational, and so on. The other verbs discussed in a similar manner are to print, to autographf to scribble, to scrawl, to pen, to jot down, to pencil, to type, to transcribe, to copy, to address. An account similar to the Fillmorean one can be found in Kalisz's article (1981), where the lexical field of obscenities and terms pertaining to sexual intercourse are discussed explicitly in terms of deviation from the prototype scene of sexual intercourse.

45

In a nutshell, Fillmore's view on the organization of the lexicon, as compared with liT's related view, can be characterized as follows: his heterogeneous lexicon can easily accommodate the proposals of Trier and other field theoreticians . 4.

Conclusion

There remains to be answered the third question asked at the very outset of the present paper, namely why the ideas of LET should emerge again in the form of SAF. To answer this question is not an easy matter; I would, however, suggest that an explanation should consider the interaction of subjective and objective factors such as Fillmore's own work on the lexicon, results of research in other relevant disciplines, and the encouraging intellectual atmosphere. Fillmore's preoccupation with lexical semantics and the lexicon ever since his Case Grammar has evidently enabled him to undertake the idea of LET in a natural way. In the grammar mentioned, for example, Fillmore introduced the concept of case frame, understood as associated with a predicating word, either imposing structure on an event or on the conceptualization of an event in a fixed way and with a given perspective. We find this concept incorporated and elaborated in SAF, as demonstrated above. Research in several fields has made it possible to undertake and interpret the essential problems of LFT in a new light. I have in mind here in particular Artificial Intelligence with its proposal of knowledge representation systems, and Cognitive Psychology with its natural categorization and prototypes. The discovery of the complexity of the lexicon in the last fifteen years has also played an important role. Finally, the encouraging intellectual atmosphere has made it possible to articulate SAF publicly. One should recall that SAF falls within the province of Cognitive linguistics, a continuator of the anthropological linguistics of Boas, Sapir and Whorf, who were either directly or indirectly influenced by the ideas of Herder and Humboldt (Brown 1967). It is not surprising, then, that the proposals of Weisgerber, Trier and other field theoreticians should fall within the scope of SAF.

46

REFERENCES

Brown, Roger. 1967. Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of linguistic relativity. The Hague, Mouton. Cole, Boger W. (ed.). 1977. Current issues in linguistic theory. Bloomington, London, Indiana University Press. Coleman, Linda, Paul Kay. 1981. Prototype semantics: The English verb lie. Language 57, 26-44. Farkas, Donka, Wesley M. Jacobsen, Karol Todrys (eds.). 1978. Papers from the parasession on the lexicon. Chicago, 111., Chicago Linguistic Society. Fillmore, Charles P. 1975. An alternative to checklist theories of meaning. Proceedings of the first annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 123-131. Fillmore, Charles F. 1977a. Topics in lexical semantics. In: Roger W. Cole (ed.), 76-138. Fillmore, Charles F. 1977b. Scenes-and-frames semantics. In: Adrian Zampolli (ed.), 55-81. Fillmore, Charles F. 1978. On the organization of semantic information in the lexicon. In: Donka Farkas, Wesley M. Jacobsen, Karol Ibdrys (eds.), 148-176. Friedrich, Johannes et al. 1924. Stand und Aufgaben der Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift für Wilhelm Streitberg. Heidelberg, Winter. Gordon, W. Terence. 1982. A history of semantics. Amsterdam, Benjamins. Ipsen, Günther. 1924. Der Alte Orient und die Indogermanen. In: Johannes Friedrich et al., 200-237. Kälisz, Roman. 1981. Frame semantics and its validity for linguistic description. Linguistica et Anglica Gedaniensia 2, 83-95. Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous things. What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago, London, University of Chicago Press. Lehrer, Adrienne. 1974. Semantic fields and lexical structure. Amsterdam, North Holland. Lutzeier, Peter R. 1982. The notion of lexical field and its application to English nouns of financial income. Lingua 56, 1-42. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics 1. Cambridge, Cambridge university Press. Matore, George. 1953. La methode en lexicologie. Paris, Didier. Metzing, Dieter (ed.). 1974. Frame conceptions and text understanding. Berlin, New York, de Gruyter. Minsky, Marvin. 1974. A framswork for representing knowledge. In: Dieter Metzing (ed.), 1-25. tartan, Suzanne. 1953. Theories of the linguistic field. Word 9, 123-34. Oksaar, Els. 1958. Semantische Studien im Sinnbereich der Schnelligkeit. Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell.

47

Borzig, Walter. 1934. Wesenhafte Bedeutungsbeziehungen. Beiträge zur Deutschen Sprache und Literatur 58, 70-97. Schaff, Mam. 1964. Jezyk a poznanie. Warszawa, EWN. 1967. Trier, Jost. 1931. Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes. Heidelberg, Winter. Ullmam, Stephen. 1957. Ihe principles of semantics. Glasgow, Jackson. Vassilyev, Leon. 1974. The theory of semantic fields. Linguistics 137, 79-93. Verschueren, Jef. 1981. Problems of lexical semantics. Lingua 53, 317-351. Weisgerber, Leo. 1954. Die Sprachfelder in der geistigen Erschließung der Welt. Meisenheim, Hain. Zampolli, Adrian (ed.). 1977. Linguistic structures processing. Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, North Holland.

49

SECTION 2

50

HANS ULRICH BOAS

THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF LEXICAL ENTRIES: STRUCTURAL AND/OR 'DEFINITIONAL·' SEMANTICS

This paper will be concerned with a critical evaluation of Coseriu's proposal to transfer the structural method developed in phonolgy as a model to the analysis of lexical meaning, a proposal on which his theory of structural semantics seems to be mainly based. I will try to show that the structural semanticists' analytical procedure of setting up minimal lexical oppositions in order to arrive at meaning-differentiating semantic features is inadequate to describe complex semantic information inherent in lexical items. Such descriptions require approaches which in modelling the semantic competence of native speakers give priority to the psychological reality or, at least, plausibility of their theoretical constructs. One of Coseriu's early treatments of the parallelism between phonology and lexical semantics can be found in his article of 1964/1978. Having emphasized at the outset that structural methods of investigation can only be applied to the individual 'functional language1 in the sense of more or less uniform linguistic systems within a historical language, but not to a historical language as a whole (1978: 91), Coseriu mentions an empirical difficulty that arises if one considers the vocabulary of such a functional language to constitute a single system or, at any rate, a 'system of systems' (1978: 1O5). Due to the very large number of units it seems impossible to deal with the whole vocabulary of a language from the beginning. Coseriu, therefore, suggests starting out by setting up relatively simple partial systems that may be integrated later into

For a summary of Coseriu's version of structural semantics, cf. Geckeler (1981), the references given there and his paper in this volume.

51

more oonplex ones (1978: 1O6). Being aware that whole vocabularies cannot be claimed to be organized like systems of phonemes, he puts forth the weaker claim that the vocabulary of a language contains structures that are similar to phonological ones and can thus be dealt with in an analogous fashion. He then tries to substantiate this claim: Wenn man unter "Struktur" die Abgrenzung und Organisation einer Substanz mittels funktioneller Einheiten, die in verschiedenen Sprachen verschieden sind, versteht, ist man zweifellos berechtigt, von einer "lexikalischen Struktur" zu sprechen, denn in diesem Sinne sind die Organisation der Erfahrung der Wirklichkeit durch lexikalische Einheiten und die Organisation der phonischen Substanz durch Phoneme vollkommen vergleichbar. (1978: 107/8)

Notice already at this point that it seems objectionable to speak of 'perfect comparability1 of the phonic substance and substance as the experience of reality. The phonemes of a language can, in principle, be arrived at without having access to its semantics, i.e. by applying the well-known types of discovery procedures of segmentation and classification to the speech flow of an 2 unknown language. The elements of the metalanguage in which phonological descriptions are couched such as distinctive features have pretty clear extralinguistic, i.e. articulatory and/or acoustic, correlates in terms of which all phonemes of all languages are supposed to be exhaustively characterizable. In all these respects the primary units of the vocabulary, i.e. the monomorphemic words of a language, are different. Lexical structures, i.e. immediate paradigmatic oppositions between lexical items, can only be determined if the language under consideration and the meanings of its lexical items are known by the analyst such that minimal meaning differences can be named and identified. There is, moreover, no way of defining semantic features as elements of the metalanguage by means of extralinguistic correlates, i.e. independently of, or without recourse to, the object language. The use of capitals in writing down semantic features may signal their intended metalinguistic status, but does not really solve the problem of defining them independently of the object language. In addition, there is no finite list of minimal meaning-differentiating features in terms of which all lexical items of a language

2

Cf. Newmeyer's (1981: 6) remarks on structuralist methodology.

3

Cf. Sprengel (198O) and Kastovsky (1982: 1O6).

52

could be described exhaustively.

4

But even if unanalysed residual meanings are

admitted in principle, it retrains totally obscure how such analyses could be carried out given that it is impossible for native speakers to have intuitions about that part of the meaning of a lexical item that is left after the extraction of one or more semantic features. It appears that the same types of problems persist even if the analytical and descriptive machinery of structural phonology is modified and applied only to small partial systems of the vocabulary.

Take, for example, Kastovsky's (1982a)

attempt to justify the use of 'privative oppositions' as developed by Praguian phonologists for the analysis of lexical meaning. He claims that "any semantic analysis of lexical items must ultimately be based on a notion of opposition in the Saussurean sense" (1982a: 31) and adopts as a starting point a slightly modified version of Coseriu's theory of lexical fields. In surmarizing this theory he discusses lexical oppositions: Man:woman3 boy:girl represent minimal oppositions and involve only one semantic axis or dimension, viz. SEX. They result in the semantic features MALE and FEMALE specifying this dimension. The residual meanings which remain after the extraction of these features are equivalent to the meanings of the lexical items adult and child, which again form a minimal opposition constituting the dimension MATURITY specified by the features ADULT and YOUNG.(Kastovsky 1982a: 32)

Neither the semantic features MALE and FEMALE, nor the residual meanings that allegedly remain after the extraction of these features are independently motivated. They are based solely on the semantic intuitions of linguists qua linguists.

4

Coseriu's views on this point seem to be somehow inconclusive: "Daher kann man auch nicht wie in der Phonologie ein Inventar kleinster distinktiver Einheiten aufstellen und behaupten, der Wortschatz bestünde aus einer feststellbaren beschränkten Anzahl dieser kleinsten Elemente. Die Methoden und Ergebnisse der Phonologie sind also nicht ohne Modifizierung auf die Semantik übertragbar." (1973: 15). This is obviously incompatible with: "Wenn man unter "Struktur 1 die Tatsache versteht, daß die funktionellen Einheiten restlos in differentielle Elemente ('unterscheidende Züge 1 ) zerlegt werden können, kann man ebenfalls von 1 lexikalischen Strukturen" sprechen, denn die Analogie, die man zwischen phonologischen Einheiten und Lexemen feststellt, ist in dieser Hinsicht nicht weniger evident." (1978: 111-112).

5

This is suggested in Coseriu (1973: 15).

6

Cf. also Sprengel (198O: 158/9).

53 There are also no established discovery procedures or transfer rules to find out whether the residual meanings are equivalent to the meanings of any lexical items and, if so, to which. Why is it,

for example, that such lexical

items as person or baby are not included in this analysis, items which might prove the notion of minimal opposition to be too simplistic? In a footnote, Kastovsky discusses at least one problematic aspect of this type of analysis: Obviously, one has to assume a difference between the lexical item adult (as a noun) and the semantic feature ADULT. Adult involves, besides the feature ADULT, also the feature HUMAN. The metalinguistic use of lexical items as designations of semantic features must therefore not be confused with the object-linguistic meaning of these designations, although there is, without any doubt, an inherent relationship between these two levels, the nature of which is, however, far from clear. (1982a: 32)

It is not only the relationship between the meta- and object-linguistic level that is far from clear; it is also the criteria for distinguishing these levels in the first place (Kastovsky 1982: 1O9) and for applying other principles of structural semantics that remain mysterious. Thus, the semantic feature ADULT which, according to Kastovsky, must be assumed to be different from the lexical item adult (as a noun) seems to be identical with the object linguistic adjective adult except for being capitalized (but cf. Kastovsky 1982: 1O8). But if it is true that the noun adult also involves, besides the feature ADULT, the feature HUMAN, then this noun is obviously derived from the underlying adjective adult, and should therefore be excluded from the primary paradigmatic structures of lexical fields. This follows from a well-established principle of structural semantics, namely the distinction between primary and secondary vocabulary which, in turn, is among the seven preliminary distinctions drawn by Coseriu in the attempt to delimit the object of his semantics, to reduce the great number of lexical items and to arrive at a homogeneous object of investigation (Coseriu 1973: 16ff.; Geckeler 1981: 382-383, 391). The method of setting up immediate oppositions can be recursively applied to the residual meanings, just in case there exist primary lexical items in the language whose meanings are judged to be equivalent to the respective residues (Kastovsky 1982a: 33). In this way it yields, apart fron semantic features such as MALE and FEMALE or ADULT and YOUNG, such semantic dimensions as SEX, MATURITY, etc. which are said to be specified by the relevant semantic features.

For the status of semantic features, cf. Lipka (1972: 42 f f . ) .

54

In Kastovsky's approach, semantic features are thus taken to characterize the internal semantic structure of individual lexical items and, at the sane tine, to indicate meaning relations between lexical items such as hyponymy, antonymy, converseness, which play a decisive role in the overall structuring of the vocabulary in terms of lexical fields or word fields (Kastovsky 1982a: 33-34). Notice, however, that nest of the work done within Coseriu's brand of structural semantics is concerned with the internal structure of lexical fields and word-fields, i.e. delimiting 'lexemes', 'archilexemes', 'semes', 'sememes' and 'archisememss'. The internal structure of individual items themselves has not received much attention. A reason for this could be that Coseriu seems to analyse the meanings of primary lexical items as simple heaps or clusters of semantic features (Ooseriu 1973: 54). 8 Biis view is at variance with the results of Weinreich's (1966) investigation into the semantic representations of lexical items within the framework of a standard-theoretical model of generative transformational grammar. Weinreich's chief result was the finding that "complex semantic information is stored in the dictionary of a language in forms of the same type as it assumes in sentences" (1966: 471). He showed that there are numerous Simplexes "which are not definable without a configuration of features" (446), i.e. that a syntactic form must be imposed on the semantic features contained in the dictionary. Weinreich's concept of the internal structure of morphemes is thus incompatible q with the one advocated by structural semanticists. The 'sentencehood1 of dictionary definitions demonstrates that he is not conmitted to the structuralist discovery procedure of setting up minimal oppositions between morphemes. Weinipeichis interested in reconstructing and explicating the ability of the ordinary native speaker to recognize, for example, sentences as analytic, or even as definitions of morphemes. Since the definitional status of a sentence, or even its analyticity, is not self-evident from its structure, the isolation of definitional sentences cajinot be reduced to a procedure, but must take place by trial and error. (Weinreich 1966: 447)

C f . , however, Coseriu (1976: 19): "Dieses Korollar [i.e. the analysability of functional units into differentiating features] bedeutet allerdings nicht, daß Einheiten aus Merkmalen bestehen, oder daß sie durch Zusammensetzung von schon gegebenen Merkmalen entstehen.". Cf. "The awkwardness of representing some meanings (e.g. that of oat) by means of any feature mechanism is also a good reason to search for alternatives." (Weinreich 1966: 473).

55

As problems of his theory, Weinreich mentions "a proof that every morpheme in a language has at least one definition, a proof that every morpheme has a unique optimal definition; and an investigation of reducible circularities and irreducible, mutually interdependent sets of semantic primitives in the network of definitions." (1966: 447). It should be obvious that this program of research is different in principle from the structural semanticists' one. While the latter believe in the applicability of the sane discovery procedures of permutation and Genmutation to different idealized substances, i.e. to the "Substanz der Ausdrucksebene" as well as to the "Substanz der Inhaltsebene" (Geckeier 1971: 195), Weinreich admits that "there is no known discovery procedure for correct semantic descriptions" (1962: 26) and suggests "Ideally a description is adequate if it supplies us with overt means for approximating the intuitions of native speakers about the semantic relationships of words in their language" (1962: 26). I would like to propose that the differences between the kinds of approaches to linguistic semantics advocated by Ooseriu as against Weinreich are ultimately due to distinct sets of primary generalizations in the sense of basic assumptions of the general linguistic theory they subscribe to (Boas 1984: 7O). To express it in more fashionable terms, the theories in question fix certain parameters differently. Ihe two most basic parameters have to do with the choice of the subject matter or domain of theories and with the types of idealizations that are adopted. Thus, despite Coseriu's modifications of the Saussurean dichotomy 'langue' - 'parole' - Coseriu distinguishes four levels of structuring: "type1, "system1, 'norm1, and 'discourse1 where 'norm' is the level of what is traditionally (or socially) fixed and not necessarily functional (Geckeler 1981: 388-389) - he still subscribes basically to de Saussure's view that "dans la langue il n'y a que des differences sans termes positifs" (1916: 166) and to his conception of 'langue' which emphasizes the social aspect of language, i.e. 'langue' as a ccrtmunity possession (de Saussure 1916; 3Off.). Ihis conception of 'langue' as a social phenomenon is logically linked to other cornerstones of Saussurean structuralism such as Ί 'arbitraire du signs' and 'la valeuv Itnguistique': ... le fait social peut seul creer un Systeme linguistique. La collect!vite est necessaire pour etablir des valeurs dont 1'unique raison d'etre est dans I 1 usage et le consentement general; ... c'est une grande illusion de

ΙΟ

Cf. also Coseriu

(1973: 58, 65) and Kastovsky (1982: 2 3 ) .

56 considerer un terme simplement comme 1"union d'un certain son avec un certain concept. Le definir ainsi, ce serait l1isoler du syst me dont il fait partie; ce serait croire qu'on peut commencer par les termes et construire le Systeme en faisant la somme, alors qu'au contraire c'est du tout solidaire qu'il faut partir pour obtenir par analyse les elements qu'il renferme. (de Saussure 1916: 157)

The linguistic system 'la langue', in turn, can be viewed as a series of contiguous subdivisions marked off on both, the indeterminate level of thoughts - "notre pensee n'est qu'une masse amorphe et indistincte" (1916: 155) - and the equally vague level of sounds. Fran such assumptions the analytical procedure of setting up minimal pairs follows naturally. Ίΐιβ subject matter of Weinreich1 s approach, on the other hand, is the individual aspect of language, i.e. the linguistic ooqpetence of the more or less idealized native speaker. It is part of this ability to use his language as a metalanguage (1966: 447) as, for example, when he zeros in on the correct definition of a lexical item (1966: 447). In contrast to Saussure, who idealized 'langue' as a social institution by abstracting away from individual instances of 'parole' (Boas 1984a), the linguistic theory underlying Weinreich1s approach idealizes the native speaker as an individual. In such theories analytical procedures like the minimal pair principle cannot be derived. It also appears that the psychological premises of Saussure's conception of 'langue' mentioned above (cf. 1916: 155) as well as the concept of 'Substanz der Inhaltsebene' are untenable by today's standards in view of the results of psychological research in the last seventy or eighty years. Differences in idealization are also evident fron the distinct assumptions concerning homogeneity. While Coseriu constructs his homogeneous object of investigation 'functional language1 by excluding such phenomena as terminologies, metalinguistic usage of the primary language and the linguistic norm (Geckeler 1981: 382, 385, 389) - morphologically conditioned allomorphs of historical languages, for example, would not belong to the functional system - the linguistic competence of the idealized native speaker who is supposed to live in a homogeneous speech-comnunity (Boas 1984: 14-15) nevertheless encompasses all these phenomena including elements traditionally fixed

11

Cf. also "La langue elabore ses unites en se constituant entre deux masses amorphes" (de Saussure 1916: 156).

12

C f . , for example, Rosch (1977), Jackendoff 'prototypes' in this volume.

(1983) and the papers on

57

in this speech-community such as irregular plural and past tense forms of this historical language. Cf., for example, the morphophonemic subcomponent of Chomsky's early generative models or the treatment in Chomsky/Halle (1968). Speaker-hearer-oriented theories give, in addition, priority to the psychological reality, or at least plausibility, of their theoretical constructs, i.e. they subscribe to some version of mentalism as against the alleged objectivity of discovery procedures applied to homogeneous objects of inquiry. Ihis is particularly evident in a recent 'definitional1 approach to lexical semantics, namely Wierzbicka's (1985). In following Weinreich's program of research her definitions, which state the semantic competence of native speakers, are expressed in a metalanguage " which is derived exclusively from natural language and which is, therefore, intuitively understandable and verifiable. Hie lexicon of this metalanguage consists of a small set of indefinable 14 expressions" (1985: 9), i.e. semantic primitives. Wierzbicka considers meaning to be a conceptual structure and not a sum of shared properties of denotata (1985: 260). It is therefore a structuralist fallacy to conclude, for example, that the meaning of 'parent1 must be included in the meaning of 'mother' because the set of denotata for 'mother' is included in the set of denotata for 'parent1 (1985 : 26O). Since her investigations demonstrate that the meaning of concrete concepts such as human artefacts must be described primarily in terms of their function and not of their outward appearance (1985: 335) she criticizes feature analysts like Pottier (1965) for using simplistic questionnaires of binary features which are assumed to be relevant to all the words in a given domain. But such an assumption is totally unfounded. "Ihe presence or absence of a back support as in ahair vs. stool can be observed, but the intended function can't: it has to be discovered by assiduous mental experimentation." (1985: 335).

13

A case in point is, for example, Stampe's (1979) theory of natural phonology. He rejects de Saussure1s and the Prague School's view that "phonemes are functional entities characterized solely by those properties which distinguish them from other phonemes in a language, their 'distinctive' features." (1979: 16). In his mentalistic theory, underlying segments are considered to be ontologically of the same status as any segment in surface representation. Cf. also Sapir (1933).

14

For a survey of arguments about 'semantic primitives', cf. Wilks (1977).

58

Coseriu's postulation of archilexemes parallel to archiphonemes in phonology has also been called into question. Thus, the results of Snell-Hornby's (1983) extensive study of descriptive verbs in English and German neither confirm that the basic unit of a field is necessarily an archilexeme corresponding to the entire semantic content of the field nor that all lexemes must be accommodated within a field. Moreover, the overlappings between lexemes are so complicated "and the fields merge so frequently into each other that any criterion of sharp delimitations would seem to run contrary to the linguistic picture presented by the verbs." (1983: 69; cf. also Wierzbicka 1985: 74). In concluding these arguments against using structuralist methods in lexical semantics it should be pointed out that the same kinds of phenomena which could not be analysed satisfactorily by structural phonologists, namely stress, pitch and juncture, have prompted generative phonologists in recent years to modify and extend the standard view of phonological representations (Chansky/Halle 1968). In autosegmental phonology segments are no longer conceived as unordered sets of specified features, but as having internal, i.e. subsegmental, structure. To deal with tonal phenomena which can spread over several segments, 'higher levels', i.e. suprasegmental structure is postulated. Metrical phonology, on the other hand, explores the hierarchical organization of segments into larger units, i.e. syllables, 'feet1 and phonological words and their relation to stress (van der Hülst/Smith 1982). Thus, even the 'phonic substance1 appears to be 'structured' in ways not accessible to simplistic discovery procedures. The results of this paper can be summarized in the following way: There are systematic discrepancies between phonological and semantic structure concerning the feasibility of the main discovery procedure of setting up minimal oppositions, and concerning the nature and number of units of the respective metalanguages as well as their modes of application. Capturing complex semantic information inherent in lexical items requires more than heaps or collections of semantically distinctive features that have been extracted fron the elements of an over-idealized object language by means of discovery procedures taken over from phonology. It requires definitional, i.e. analytic, sentences that are part of the native speaker's ability to use his language, which is open to empirical investigation.

15

A similar conclusion is arrived at by Gauger (1972).

59 Structural semanticists obviously still subscribe to a notion of 'Substanz der Inhaltsebene' or 'Inhaltskontinuum' which is logically related to Saussure's concept of 'tongue' as a social phenomenon and to the correlative concepts of 'substance1 and 'form 1 , whose psychological premises are no longer tenable. Mentalistic approaches like Weinreich's and Wierzbicka's, on the other hand, try to capture and describe the individual aspect of language, i.e. the linguistic competence of speakers including their metalinguistic ability to define the lexical items of their language. They may thus stand a better chance of being incorporated into models of artificial intelligence.

60

REFERENCES

Aarsleff, Hans, louis G. Kelly, Hans-Josef Niederehe (eds.). 1987. Papers in the history of linguistics. Proceedings of the third international conference on the history of the language sciences (ICHoLS III), Princeton, 19-23 August 1984. Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Benjamins. Boas, Hans Ulrich. 1984. Formal versus explanatory generalizations in generative transformational grammar. (Linguistische Arbeiten 150.) Tübingen, Niemeyer. Boas, Hans Ulrich. 1984a. (R)REST - Chomskys Annäherung an Saussures 'langue1Konzeption?. In: Hans Aarsleff, Louis G. Kelly, Hans-Josef Niederehe (eds.), 665-676. Chomsky, rfoam. 1975. Reflections on language. New York, Fontana. Chomsky, Noam, Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York, Harper & Row. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1973. Probleme der Strukturellen Semantik. (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 40.) ed. by Dieter Kastovsky. Tübingen, Narr. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1976. Die funktionelle Betrachtung des Wortschatzes. Jahrbuch 1975 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache, 7-25. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1978. Für eine strukturelle diachrone Semantik. In: Horst Geckeier (ed.), 9O-163. Eikmeyer, Hans-Jürgen, Hannes Rieser (eds.). 1981. Words, worlds, and contexts. (Research in text theory 6.) Berlin, New York, de Gruyter. Gauger, Hans-Martin. 1972. Bedeutung als Semstruktur? Vox Romanica 31, 24-39. Geckeier, Horst. 1971. Strukturelle Semantik und Wbrtfeldtheorie. München, Fink. Geckeier, Horst (ed.). 1978. Strukturelle Bedeutungslehre. (Wege der Forschung 426.) Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Geckeier, Horst. 1981. Structural semantics. In: Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer, Hannes Rieser (eds.), 381-413. Householder, Fred W., Sol Saporta (eds.). 1962. Problems in lexicography. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Linguistics Club. van der Hülst, Harry, Norval Smith (eds.). 1982. The structure of phonological representations (part I). Dordrecht, Foris. Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, Mass., London, MIT Press. Kastovsky, Dieter (ed.). 198O. Perspektiven der lexikalischen Semantik. Beiträge zum Wuppertaler Semantikkolloquium vom 2.-3.Dezember 1977. (Gesamthochschule Wuppertal. Schriftenreihe Linguistik. Band 2.) Bonn, Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

61

Kastovsky, Dieter. 1982. Wortbildung und Semantik. Düsseldorf, Bern, München, Pädagogischer Verlag Schwärm, Bagel, Francke. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1982a. 'Privative opposition1 and lexical semantics. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 14, 29-45. Lipka, Leonhard. 1972. Semantic structure and word-formation. Verb-particle constructions in contemporary English. München, Fink. Nevireyer, Frederick. 198O. Linguistic theory in America. New York, etc., Academic Press. Pottier, Bernard. 1965. la definition semantique dans les dictionnaires. Travaux de Linguistique et de Litterature 3, 22-39. Rasch, Eleanor. 1977. Human categorization. In: Neil Warren (ed.), 1-49. Sapir, Edward. 1933. La realite psychologique des phooänes. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique 30, 247-265. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Oours de linguistique generale. Publie par Charles Bally et Albert Sechehaye avec la collaboration de Albert Riedlinger. Paris, Payot. 1971. Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.). 1966. Current trends in linguistics. Volume 3. The Hague, Mouton. Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1983. Verb-descriptivity in German and English. (Anglistische Forschungen 158.) Heidelberg, Winter. Sprengel, Konrad. 198O. Über semantische Merkmale. In: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 145-177. Stampe, David. 1979. A dissertation on natural phonology. Bloomington, Ind., Indiana University Linguistics Club. Warren, Neil (ed.). 1977. Studies in cross-cultural psychology. Volume 1. London, etc., Academic Press. Weinreich, Uriel. 1962. Lexicographic definition in descriptive semantics. In: Fred W. Householder, Sol Saporta (eds.), 25-44. Weinreich, Uriel. 1966. Explorations in semantic theory. In: Thomas S. Sebeok (ed.), 395-477. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1985. Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Ann Arbor, Karoma. Wilks, Yorick. 1977. Good and bad arguments about semantic primitives. Communication & Cognition 10, 181-221.

62

PETER BOSCH

ON REPRESENTING LEXICAL MEANING

1.

Introduction

The general notion of the meaning of a word is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to make explicit. A reasonably practical stipulation for what the meaning of a word could be in a particular context of use, however, is this: The meaning of a word is the contribution the word makes toward the inferences that can be drawn from the sentence in which the word occurs in a particular context of use. This is, if you like, the result of, first, turning the truth conditions of a sentence into the more operational notion of the set of inferences that can be drawn from the sentence, and, second, letting not only the sentence contribute to this set of inferences, but also the context. A problem with this proposal for the notion of word meaning is that a word can take in principle an arbitrarily large number of such contextual meanings, depending on the sentences and contexts in which it occurs. This does not mean that a word can mean just anything, it only means that a word can mean very many things, and indeed many more things than a speaker could possibly ever have experienced. Still, this multiplicity of word senses does not form an obstacle for ordinary cotrprehension. Hence 'knowing a word' or 'knowing what a word means' must be much more, or so it seems, than just 'having a representation of the sense(s) of the word that have already been experienced1. For how, otherwise, should comprehension of new senses be possible? Conversely, one might want to argue that if indeed the representation of word meaning is rich enough to already 'contain', as it were, any new senses a speaker may encounter, then the problem of arriving at these rich representations on the basis of a limited input - in the extreme case just one case of successful

63

usage - is aggravated. In other words: we may choose where we want to locate the problem, in the creativity of re-application or in learning, and correspondingly we may choose between poor and rich lexical representations. This problem,however, is not a problem for all approaches to lexical meaning. For most structuralist approaches and for many formal accounts of lexical semantics, the problem does not arise. Either because language use is never even considered anyway, or because it is not considered as something of a dynamic nature that links past linguistic experience with current and future use. More specifically, the very fact from which our problem arises, i.e. the multiplicity of interpretations a word receives in actual use, is a plain absurdity for the structuralist. The meaning of a word, for the structuralist, is constituted by the relations of similarity and contrast between the meaning of one word and others. Relations of reference would have no direct influence on any kind of word meaning. But it is precisely relations of reference that account for the potential infinity of the set of interpretations that can be given to a word in actual language use. Mainstream structuralist! thus escapes the problem by not considering reference. It can do so, however, only at the price of ignoring language use. Similarly, the problem is not a problem for current varieties of formal semantics and, perhaps surprisingly, for a very similar reason. Although formal semantics is professedly reference semantics, it considers reference only in a formal, not in an empirical sense. The reference is not to anything in the intersubjective world, but to a formal model that figures as a substitute for reality. To the extent that the formal model must be finitely specifiable in terms of one or the other formal language, we are, strictly speaking, not concerned with reference semantics at all but with translation semantics: expressions from a natural language are given a semantic interpretation by being translated into another language, the formal language that specifies the relevant model. The problem becomes real though for a cognitive science approach to natural language. And since this is the perspective from which I want to consider the problem, I had better first say what exactly I mean. The cognitive science approach to natural language a. concentrates on language use rather than on the language system. b. It considers language use

64

(i) as representational, in the sense that language/ at least in its primary uses, functions in cxranunication about the world; (ii) as computational, in the sense that all processes that form part of language use must be effectively realizable within finite time and with finite memory resources. c. It requires besides linguistic also psychological plausibility of its hypotheses. Reasons for choosing this rather than any other perspective may be found in the fact that, apart fron concentrating on language use or linguistic behaviour, and thus allowing for an empirical theory in linguistics, it makes an attempt to account for the, to my mind, fundamental intuition that linguistic utterances are, first and foremost, about the intersubjectively shared - and in this sense 'real1 - world. Furthermore, it makes a serious attempt to set up functioning models of natural language use that could be models of psychological mechanisms. An absolutely minimal requirement for this is the ccnputability assumption (cf. b ii). The ancestors of the cognitive science view are found in American Pragmatism and in varieties of Philosophical Behaviourism, as far as the kind of outlook is concerned. And, despite grave differences in outlook, no cognitive science approach to linguists would even be thinkable without the work of European as well as American Structuralism, and of course logical and philosophical semantics. 2.

The problem

The problem that I am addressing becomes manifest in the contextual variation of word meaning. To give some body to this notion and thereby to the problem that understanding a word in one context by no means implies understanding the same word in another context, let us consider an example. Take the interpretation of the adjective white in a number of different contexts. I shall avoid the hassle of explicitly specifying contexts by simply placing the adjective together with different nouns which, as it were, hint at particular types of contextual!zation. What is it then that a white wall, white paint, white wine, white coffee, white chocolate, white fish, white hair, and the white race have in common? - Whatever it is, it is certainly not the case that all these things somehow are of (different shades of) the same colour. If white wine has the same colour as white

65

coffee, then a dirty glass is about the only conceivable explanation. And as for white fish, there is nothing white about it until it has been cooked and the skin has been taken off - the white wall, white chocolate, and the white man, on the other hand, won't become any whiter than they already are, even when cooked and skinned. Note, first of all, that the problem here is not one of vagueness: we are not just concerned with different shades of white, but with the attribution of quite different properties that are, as it happens, all referred to, in suitable contexts, by the same English adjective, i.e. white. Note further that we are not just concerned with a limited number of fixed expressions, of the form white x, that could be learnt one by one. The list can be extended ad nauseam (Bosch 1985a, b). The point is not so much the objects having a particular property, or combination of properties, but the relevance of these properties for distinguishing the intended object from other objects in the same situation (Bosch 1985b). And here, of course, we are back with structuralist principles - but new on a referential territory, traditionally out of bounds for the structuralist. The point is nicely illustrated, and the notion of an indefinite number of interpretations is supported, by an experiment reported in Olson (1970). Table 1: goal

contrast set

Z7 Δ Δ Δ ^ Δ Δ A^ £i D^

description

the triangle the equilateral one

the big one

the small one

66

Subjects ware presented with oras particular object (the one in the first column of Table 1) in combination with a differing set of contrasting objects, ana were asked to name that object. Not surprisingly the descriptions chosen for the goal object would differ, depending on what other objects it had to be distinguished from. looking at the properties of the object that were referred to in the descriptions, a first impression may be that they would eventually add up to something like a full description of the object. But this impression is wrong. The influence of the contrasting objects, i.e. the context, goes much further: it also influences the way the object is conceptualized, the way it is mentally represented, and hence influences our judgment as to whether or not the object has a particular property and not just whether or not that property is currently useful for purposes of the individuation of the referent. This is illustrated, first of all, by the descriptions the big one vs. the small one. Nothing can be both big and small at the same time. But then one may argue that big and small, being relative adjectives, don't straightforwardly refer to object properties anyway, but hinge upon a standard of comparison, here given by the objects in the contrast set. Let me try and make my point then with the help of the adjectives white and black, which do not have the same status of notorious exceptions. Suppose we extend Table 1, by way of a Gedankenexperiment, as in Table 2. Table 2:

goal

contrast set

Δ Δ Δ Δ ^fk

JXUA

description

the white one the black one

[dotted and double lines are to be visualized as solid single lines of red and green colour respectively]

Even though one should concede that an object may at the same time be a triangle and big and equilateral, and even though one may concede that also a description by the adjectives big and small need not be contradictory, because we are deal-

67

ing with relative adjectives, one would be less inclined to admit that a triangle may be white and black at the same time. Still, Table 2 shows that both descriptions of the same triangle are not only possible but would indeed be the most natural ones in the contexts given. The point brought home by these considerations is that the very notion of a particular object possessing a particular property makes no sense without reference to a particular context (Winograd/Flores 1986). 3.

Making meaning more precise

In order to be able to discuss the above observations in a somewhat more precise framework, let me draw a distinction between what one may want to regard as the dictionary meaning of a word and the meaning the word receives in a particular context of use. This is roughly the distinction Hermann Paul was drawing between the 'usual meaning1 (usuelle Bedeutung) and the 'occasion meaning1 (oocasionelle Bedeutung) of a word. Intuitively speaking, the former should be seen as the meaning a conpetent speaker knows when he knows the word. The latter is what he makes of it in a particular instance of use, which thus is already the result of an interaction between the dictionary meaning of the word, the dictionary meaning of words with which it combines in the sentence, knowledge of the situation, knowledge conferred by the preceding text, and more general world knowledge. This latter form of 'meaning' I refer to as a 'contextual notion', for short: a CM. A CN, associated with a particular linguistic form in a particular context of use, then is the contribution that this linguistic form makes towards the inferences that may legitimately be drawn from the sentence in which it occurs in that particular context of use. - This set of inferences is here being used to make the notion of understanding an utterance operational. Although the term 'contextual notion1 is new, the notion of meaning that it refers to is not. Not only is it more than just foreshadowed in Paul's notion of occasion meaning, but it has also played a manifest and operational role in more recent grammatical theory. Linguists studying English verb-phrase anaphora and the form so do, do so, etc. have insisted that, while for pronominal anaphora referential identity of pronoun and antecedent +«=>τνΐ