Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of English
Introduction to Linguistics
Fall 2004
Week 8: Questions for Singleton, Chapter 5
1. How are the meanings of words related to the real world?
In order to answer this question we need to think about the relation between language and the world in general. We need to ask what is the purpose of language and how was language set up to achieve this purpose? In the UG model (the main focus of this course) the part of language that is most closely tied to or derived form the world itself is word meaning. The grammatical module/component, what wee shall call UG, following Chomsky, is not tied to the world or to cognition (thought). Yet words must be. Concrete words/concepts (such as pencil or puppy)are thought to be tied to the world through a referential relationship. Thus, there is a direct link between a concrete word and the object it represents in the real world. The entity itself provides a referent upon which the word`s meaning is (at least partially) based. Abstract words/concepts (such as love and treachery) are more tricky. They need to be linked to cognition, but this is hard to check or verify because their only observable form is in language itself.
Moving back to the world in general, it is generally conceded that it is the world, either directly, as in the case of concrete words, or indirectly, as in the cases of abstract words, that the world itself is the supplier of words/concepts for language. The world consists of an infinite multitude of potential concepts. Languages, for reasons we will not go into here, but rest assured there are actual reasons, choose certain concepts from the world to encode and these form the basis of the language`s vocabulary.
2.How do structuralists approach word meaning?
Structuralists approach the issue of world meaning by positing a series of different kind of connections between words. These connections are what are commonly referred to as semantic and relate to what some researchers refer to as semantic memory. Generally they can be defined and exemplified through a semantic relationship called entailment. Some of the main relations generally posited are:
Synonymy
Synonyms are examples of two-way entailment.
(1) `The armadillo is stupid` entails `The armadillo is dumb`
and
(2) `The armadillo is dumb` entails `The armadillo is stupid`
Since these show a two-way entailment we might expect them to mean the same thing but obviously they don`t: well, at least they vary in some ways. Linguists, therefore, need to posit other ways for speakers to distinguish synonyms. They can different in collocational patters as Singleton discussed earlier in the chapter as well as in the previous chapter. In this view, from Lyons, part of a word`s meaning is going to based on the words that it can collocate with. Certainly speakers tend to use the word stupid with different partners than dumb, but here again they are going to be very similar. Synonyms can also vary in their degree of formality as well as their emotive effect, but these are not options generally discussed by structuralists.
Hyponymy
Hyponyms are examples of one-way entailment.
(3) `William is a crocodile` entails `William is an reptile`
but
(4) `William is an reptile` does not entail `William is a crocodile`
In hyponymy we have two types of terms the superordinate, which is the more general term, and the subordinate, which is the more specific term. The relationship can best be interpreted as a `kind of` relationship in which the subordinate term is a kind of superordinate term. In this view `saunter` is a kind of `walk` while `walk` is a kind of `movement` and `Chihuahua` is a kind of `dog` while `dog` is a kid of `canine` while `canine` is a kind of `animal` while `animal` is a kind of `creature`. As we can see from the previous example, these relations are often interpreted hierarchically. That is, we can arrange or visualize these hyponymic as arranged according to specificity and generality. The more general are located higher in the structure above their subordinate terms. These arrangements are called taxonomies.
Meronymy
Like hyponyms, meronyms are examples of a one-way entailment, but they describe a different kind of relation, namely one of a part-to-whole relation. As we can see from the example below the entailment relations move in the opposite direction as in hyponyms. For meronyms the superordinate entails the subordinate but not visa-versa.
(5) `The raging elephant destroyed the house` entails `The raging elephant destroyed the door`
but
(6) `The raging elephant destroyed the door` does not entail `The raging elephant destroyed the house`
Meronyms are things which are involved in a part whole relationship where the existence of one presupposes the existence of the other. Thus, if I have a fingernail, I must have, or have had, a finger. The same relation applies to all parts of the body as well as complex regularized structures like buildings or even, less typically, events like parties of races.
Incompatibility
Incompatibles have no entailment relations.
(7) `The porcupine ate a flower` does not entail `The porcupine ate dirt` Basically, these are words which are not at all related semantically. Thus, there are no connections in the mind to help us understand them. In effect, knowing what a fish is will not help us understand the concept represented by the word `keychain`. The two are unrelated ans shown in the utter lack of entailment relations.
Complementarity
Complementaries enjoy a two-way negative entailment.
(8) `the porcupine is alive` entails `the porcupine is not dead`
(9) `the porcupine is dead` entails `the porcupine is not alive`
also
(10) `the porcupine is not alive` entails `the porcupine is dead`
(11) `the porcupine is not dead` entails `the porcupine is alive`
Complementaries cannot occur in the same place. That is, one displaces or replaces the other. Yet, they involve different concepts. Thus, there is no superordinate for the two terms coded alive and dead in English. They are not co-hyponyms, but rather are concepts which exist separately and cancel each other out.
Converseness (Relational Opposites)
Conversives also are found to have a two-way negative entailment, but they do so as part of the same concept.
(12) `X is my husband` entails `X is not my wife`
(13) `X is my wife` entails `X is not my husband`
also
(14) `X is not my husband` entails `X is my wife`
(15) `X is not my husband` entails `X is my wife`
Conversives function like antonyms except they are co-hyponyms subordinated by one concept. Thus husband and wife and connected by being opposite parts of the same concept, spouse in English. To this we can add the examples of brother and sister from sibling and the problematic example of borrow and lend which are problematic simply because they seem to lack a clear superordinate and one or the other may function as the superordinate depending on the individual speaker.
Polar Antonymy (Gradable Antonyms)
Polar antonyms have a one-way negative entailment relation.
(16) `the water is hot` entails `the water is not cold`
(17) `the water is cold` entails `the water is not hot`
but
(18) `the water is not hot` does not entail `the water is cold`
(19) `the water is not cold` does not entail `the water is hot`
Polar antonyms are gradable. That means that they have no absolute value or meaning. There is no clear indication of how cold something has to be to be called cold. Often as well there are terms intervening between the poles. In such cases we can place such terms in what is called a continuum. At either end of the continuum (at the poles) are the polar terms and in the middle are some intervening terms like warm or tepid in the case of a continuum based on cold.
(20) cold............tepid.........warm...................hot
Following all this above discussion it should be clear that structuralists view words as deriving their meaning principally through their relations to other words. To this we can add the idea of collocational links and patterns as helping to define a word through its own usage, particularly for synonyms which cannot be differentiated by entailment relations alone. An important part of the structuralist view of language and word meaning is that world meanings are not directly linked to nor do they come from the world directly. Words are defined by their internal semantic relations to other words in huge networks or relations each with different types of meanings.
Recently linguists have also posited the existence of semantic primes or features as a means of providing more information on word meanings and for helping to organize the entire system. This is called componential analysis and basically posits that words are composed of smaller, more basic parts or primes. All words have values related to these different semantic primes and is the profile of th word according to the primes which aids people in understanding the concepts out of which the word is built. While this theory might seem intuitively intriguing it has run into several problems.
3. How do cognitivists approach word meaning?
Cognitive approaches to meaning revolve around people`s experience with both the world and with language. In this view word meanings come from our interaction with the world but they are not perfect or direct representations of the world. In fact, the meanings of words are the sum of all our experiences (both direct and indirect) in the world and as a result are in a constant state of flux as our experiences change. So, for cognitive linguists actual word meaning is both highly personal and constantly changing. Yet at the same time there must be a way of regularizing or generalizing word meaning otherwise speakers of the same language would not be able to understand each other and we might not be able to ever posit such things as languages, for if there is one thing that we can use to describe what a specific language is then it is both the words that the speakers of that language use and how they use them. There must be similarities.
There are two ways in which cognitive linguists see speakers being able to regularize their word meanings. These are through the theories of prototypes and schemas or frames. The first of these, prototype theory basically claims that each of us walk around with an idealized version in our heads for each concept the language we speak has decided to code into words and (maybe) even those concepts which our language does not code into words. This idealized view is based on experience with the world and the word in question`s role in it and to the speaker. Prototype theory is based on experimental evidence that people do indeed have idealized versions of things which are expressed as prototypes. A prototype is, for speaker, the best possible example of a specific concept or category and it is the first idea that will pop into a speaker`s head when confronted with a category. For example, if you are asked to think of the concept dog, what is the first idea that pops into your head. For me, before I came to Korea it was a German Shepard, for that is the type of dog that I was used to seeing. Now, like many Koreans, I am not so sure I have a clear prototype, but certainly it is a much smaller dog than a German Shepard. This brings us to the point that prototypes relate to all areas or component parts of a specific category like dog. All elements related to the concept dog, appearance, sound, behavior, etc. are prey to prototype effects. Thus, all concepts are arranged as highly complex categories composed of various and often not-directly related component parts. These are related to the idea of schemas or frames.
Schema theory is the basic idea that certain concepts are often involved in the same types of situations and these situations involve wide variety of different other objects. For example, for many people, dogs are involved in prototypical schemas, such as chasing cars, barking for no good reason, shedding hair all over the furniture, etc. These schemas provide very complex and detailed connections to other information related to the concept. The important thing to remember about all this is that they also are generated form experience in the real world.
4. What do these two viewpoints have in common and how do they affect models of the lexicon?
Both approaches, the structuralist and the cognitive, propose that he mental lexicon is arranged as a series of complex connections arranged in a series of interwoven and overlapping neural networks. In neither then is the lexicon simply an unordered list of words as was claimed by Chomsky (1965). The lexicon as an unordered list could never account for how meaning is generated through production in addition to how meaning is housed in the lexicon.
The two models differ considerably, however, in the types and the extent of those connections. For the structuralists, following the general tenets of the modularity hypothesis, word meaning, though based on a connectionist framework, is still language internal. Meaning is achieved only through other meanings and not through relations with experience and the world at large. For the congnitivists, it is precisely in our relations with the world that meaning is both achieved and coded.