Language and The Lexicon An Introduction
Uploaded by
personalhhyLanguage and The Lexicon An Introduction
Uploaded by
personalhhyLanguage and the Lexicon
LANGUAGE AND THE LEXICON
An Introduction
DAVID SINGLETON
Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics Trinity College Dublin
First published 2000 by Hodder Education
Co-published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY10016
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2000 David Singleton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, meanical, or other means, now known or hereaer invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
e advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of going to
press, but neither the authors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any
errors or omissions.
Every effort has been made to trace and anowledge the owners of copyright. e publishers will be
glad to make suitable arrangements with any copyright holders whom it has not been possible to
contact.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-340-73174-1 (pbk)
Cover Design: Terry Griffiths
Typeset in 10/12 Sabon by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
In memoriam
is book is dedicated to the memory of my mu-missed friend Andrew
Corrigan, unvanquished jazzman, wordsmith extraordinaire and
irreplaceable companion.
Too irreverent for the clergy,
Too irrelevant for the sages,
I tinker on,
Lost in a maze of words
That hide their meanings
In a jovial host
Of irreverence
And irrelevance.
Andrew Corrigan, ‘Disbelief Between’, October 1973
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction: the lexicon – words and more
1.1 Some preliminary definitions
1.2 Words and language
1.3 What’s in a word?
1.4 e domain of the lexicon
1.5 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
2 Lexis and syntax
2.1 Colligation
2.2 e computational perspective
2.3 e ‘London Sool’ perspective
2.4 e Valency Grammar perspective
2.5 e Lexical-Functional perspective
2.6 e Chomskyan perspective
2.7 Summary
Sources and suggestion for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
3 Lexis and morphology
3.1 e inner life of words
3.2 Morphemes and allomorphs
3.3 ‘Lexical’ morphology and inflectional morphology
3.4 Inflectional morphemes and the lexicon
3.5 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
4 Lexical partnerships
4.1 Collocation: the togetherness factor
4.2 Collocational range
4.3 Fixed expressions and compounds
4.4 Collocations and the dictionary
4.5 Corpora and collocations
4.6 Creativity and prefabrication in language use
4.7 Collocations, the lexicon and lexical units
4.8 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
5 Lexis and meaning
5.1 Words making the difference
5.2 Meaning seen as reference or denotation
5.3 Structuralist perspectives on meaning
5.4 Componential analysis
5.5 Cognitive approaes to meaning
5.6 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
6 Lexis, phonology and orthography
6.1 Lexis and ‘levels of articulation’
6.2 Phonemes, stresses and tones
6.3 Lexical phonology as a reflection of lexical grammar and lexical
meaning
6.4 Association between particular sounds and particular (categories of)
lexical items
6.5 Lexis and orthography
6.6 Orthography as a reflection of lexical grammar and lexical meaning
6.7 Association between particular wrien signs and particular
(categories of) lexical items
6.8 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
7 Lexis and language variation
7.1 Variety is the spice of language
7.2 Language variation: sociolinguistic perspectives
7.3 Lexical aspects of geographical variation
7.4 Lexical aspects of social variation
7.5 Lexical aspects of ethnic variation
7.6 Lexical aspects of gender-related variation
7.7 Lexical aspects of context-related variation
7.8 Lexical variation, culture and thought
7.9 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
8 Lexical ange
8.1 Language in motion
8.2 e comparative method and internal reconstruction
8.3 Changes in lexical form
8.4 Changes in lexical meaning
8.5 Changes in lexical distribution
8.6 Lexical anges associated with language contact
8.7 e case of proper names
8.8 Lexical engineering
8.9 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
9 Acquiring and processing lexis
9.1 e ‘mental lexicon’
9.2 Meeting the lexical allenge
9.3 Before the first words
9.4 First words and beyond
9.5 Models of lexical processing
9.6 L2 dimensions
9.7 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
10 Charting and imparting the lexicon
10.1 Dictionaries and didactics
10.2 Lexicography: a poed history
10.3 e lexicon - lexicographer’s bane!
10.4 Approaes to lexis in the language classroom
10.5 Lexical learning and other aspects of language learning
10.6 Summary
Sources and suggestions for further reading
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
Conclusion
Index
Preface
A number of people have made valuable contributions to the process of
whi this book is the product. I especially need to anowledge the
absolutely indispensable assistance I received in the initial stages of planning
and writing the volume from Lisa Ryan, now Resear Fellow in Linguistics
at University College, Dublin. Without Lisa’s input, some of the early
apters might never have reaed any kind of conclusion, never mind a
happy one. I am also indebted to Jennifer Pariseau for using some of the
time she spent teaing in ailand in 1998-99 to collect examples in ai,
whi she was then good enough to pass on to me for recycling in the pages
that follow.
Various other colleagues have shown their usual generosity in agreeing to
cast a critical eye over parts of the book relating to areas where their
expertise easily outstrips mine. In this connection I should like to thank
Nicola McLelland of the Department of Germanic Studies, Trinity College
Dublin, Breffni O’Rourke of the Centre for Language and Communication
Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Vera Regan of the Department of Fren,
University College Dublin, and Carl Vogel of the Department of Computer
Science, Trinity College, Dublin. A further very helpful sounding board was
provided by the editorial team at Edward Arnold, and in particular by
Christina Wipf Perry, to whom I am most grateful indeed not only for the
unflagging encouragement she offered but also for her great sensitivity and
aplomb in guiding me away from all manner of blind alleys.
At an institutional level my thanks are due to the Trinity College Dublin
Arts/ESS Benefactions Fund for financial support of my resear in the
lexical area and to the Board of Trinity College Dublin for granting me a six-
month leave of absence while I was preparing this book.
Finally, I should like most warmly to thank my wife, Emer, and my sons,
Christopher and Daniel, for various kinds of help they have given me over
the past two years and perhaps above all for their forbearance!
I am all too aware that, despite all the advice and assistance I have
received from the above, the volume is very far from perfect and contains
many faults and failings, for whi I am entirely unabashed to recognize my
sole responsibility. Aer all, in the words of the Chevalier de Boufflers,
perfectibility is to perfection what time is to eternity.
Greystones, County Wilow
February 2000
1
Introduction: e lexicon – words and
more
1.1 Some preliminary definitions
is book is about the lexicon. Lexicon is the Anglicized version of a Greek
word (λεξικóν), whi basically means ‘dictionary’, and it is the term used by
linguists to refer to those aspects of a language whi relate to words,
otherwise known as its lexical aspects. Lexicon is based on the term lexis
(λέξις), whose Greek meaning is ‘word’, but whi is used as a collective
expression in linguistic terminology in the sense of ‘vocabulary’. e study of
lexis and the lexicon is called lexicology.
In fact, as we shall see in the course of the next 200 pages or so, almost
everything in language is related in some way or other to words. We shall also
see that, conversely, the lexical dimension of language needs to be conceived
of as rather more than just a list of lexical items.
1.2 Words and language
‘In the beginning was the Word …’
is opening pronouncement of the Gospel of John in the New Testament
may or may not be a true claim about the origins of the cosmos. However, if
taken as a statement about where our thinking about language started from
(and continues to start from) it is hard to fault.
e original version of John’s Gospel was wrien in Greek, and in this
version the term used for ‘word’ is lógos (λόγος), whi, significantly enough,
meant (and in Modern Greek still means) ‘spee’ as well as ‘word’. is kind
of association between the concept of word and a more general concept of
spee or language is by no means confined to Greek culture. For example, to
stay with the Gospel of John for just a lile longer, the Latin translation of the
above quotation is : ‘In principio erat Verbum …’, where λόγος is replaced by
verbum, an expression whi, like the Greek term, was applicable to spee as
well as to individual words. us, for example, one way of saying ‘to speak in
public’ in Latin was verbum in publico facere (literally, ‘word in public to
make’).
A similar association between ‘word’ and ‘spee’ is to be found in many
other languages. For example, this dual meaning aaes to Fren parole,
Italian parola and Spanish palabra. Similarly, in Japanese the term kotoba
(‘word’, ‘phrase’, ‘expression’) is oen abbreviated to koto or goto and is used
as a suffix in expressions referring to spee su as hitorigoto o iu (literally,
‘by-oneself-word say’ = ‘talk to oneself’) and negoto o iu (literally, ‘sleep-
word say’ = ‘talk in one’s sleep’); in Swedish the expression en ordets man
(literally, ‘an of-the-word man’) is used to refer to a skilled speaker; and in
German one way of saying ‘to refuse someone permission to speak’ translates
literally as ‘from someone the word to remove’ – einem das Wort entziehen.
In English, too, the association between the word and language in use is very
mu a feature of the way in whi linguistic events are talked about in
ordinary parlance, as the following examples illustrate:
That traffic warden wants a word with you.
A word in the right ear works wonders.
When you are free for lunch just say the word.
The Prime Minister’s words have been misinterpreted by the media.
The wording needs to be revised.
Nor is it particularly surprising that words should loom so large in people’s
understanding of what language is. Aer all, words are vital to linguistic
communication, and without them not mu can be conveyed. For instance, a
visitor to a Spanish-speaking country anxious to discover where the toilets are
in some location or other may have a perfect command of Spanish
pronunciation and sentence-structure, but will make lile progress without the
word servicios (in Spain) or sanitarios (in Latin America).
It needs perhaps to be added that awareness of words is not limited to
literate societies. e American linguist Edward Sapir, for example, conducted
a great deal of fieldwork among Native Americans in the early part of the
twentieth century. His goal was the transcription and analysis of Native
American languages whi had not previously been described. He found that
although the Native Americans he was working with were illiterate and thus
unaccustomed to the concept of the wrien word, they nevertheless had no
serious difficulty in dictating a text to him word by word, and that they were
also quite capable of isolating individual words and repeating them as units.
Interestingly, a ild acquiring language appears to develop an awareness of
words earlier than an awareness of how sentences are formed. For example,
resear has shown that ildren in the age group 2–3½ correct themselves
when they make errors with words before they start self-correcting in the
area of sentence construction. us, examples like the first one given below
will begin to appear earlier than examples like the second one cited.
you pick up … you take her (substitution of take for initial word-oice
pick up)
The kitty cat is … the … the spider is kissing the kitty cat’s back
(reordering of elements in order to avoid the passive construction The
kitty-cat’s back is being kissed by the spider)
With regard to the specialist study of language, this too has been highly word-
centred. For instance, in phonology, under whi heading fall both the sound-
structure of languages and the study of su sound-structure, a major focus of
aention is the identification of sound distinctions whi are significant in a
particular language. Anyone with any knowledge of English, for example, is
aware that in that language the broad distinction between the ‘t-sound’ and
the ‘p-sound’ is important, whereas no su importance aaes to the
distinction between an aspirated t (i.e. a t-sound pronounced with a fair
amount of air being expelled) and an unaspirated t sound (i.e. a t-sound
pronounced without su a voluminous expulsion of air). is last distinction
is, in English, determined simply by the particular environment in whi the t-
sound occurs; thus, aspirated t occurs at the beginnings of words like ten, tight
and toe,whereas unaspirated t occurs aer the s-sound in words like steer,
sting and stool. Phonologists talk about environmentally conditioned varieties
of the t-sound in a given language as belonging to or being realizations of the
/t/ phoneme, and label them as allophones of the phoneme in question. (Notice
that the convention in linguistics is for phonemes to be placed between slashes
– /t/–, whereas allophones are placed between square braets – the
transcription of the aspirated allophone of /t/, for example, being [th]).
To return to the role of words in all this, one of the crucial tests for
phonemic distinctions is that of lexical differentiation – that is, the test of
whether a particular sound distinction differentiates between words. is can
be tested by use of minimal pairs – pairs of words whi differ in respect of
just one sound (pin/tin, top/tot, gape/gate etc.). Distinctions between sound
segments whi serve to differentiate between words in this way – su as the
difference between the English p-sound and the English t-sound – are called
phonemic distinctions, whereas distinctions between sound segments whi do
not differentiate between words – su as degrees of aspiration of English
consonants are described as non-phonemic. It should be noted, incidentally,
that in other languages (su as Sanskrit and its modern descendants) the
distinction between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, whi in English is
merely allophonic, is as important in differentiating between words as the
distinction between /p/ and /t/ in English.
ere are other ways of studying the sounds used in human languages –
ways whi do not need to refer to phonemes and hence have no particular
connection with lexical issues. For example, it is perfectly possible, without
geing involved in questions of word differentiation and without any regard
to the semantic implications of using one sound rather than another in a
particular language, to study the acoustic properties of human spee (in
terms of the physics of sound) or the physiological aspects of spee
production (the interplay of the lips, the tongue, the vocal cords etc.). ese
kinds of phenomena and their investigation go under the heading of phonetics.
e Greek root phoné (ϕονή – ‘sound’, ‘voice’), is shared by both phonetics
and phonology, but whereas phonology deals with the sound systems of
individual languages (and any universal organizational principles whi may
emerge from su investigations) – and in doing so uses lexical differentiation
as an important reference point – phonetics is concerned with spee sounds
without reference to linguistic system and meaning. us it can be said that
what differentiates phonology from phonetics is an interest in lexical
differentiation in the above sense.
At the grammatical level too, the distinction between two major areas of
interest essentially revolves around words – although in a somewhat different
manner. Grammar has traditionally been seen as having two branes –
syntax and morphology – and in both cases the very definition of terms is
lexically based. us, the term syntax, a derivative of the Greek word
sýntaxis (ούνταξις – ‘puing together in order’), denotes the whole range of
regularities whi can be observed in the combination of sentence
components (and the study of su regularities), and it turns out that these
components are largely identifiable as words and groups of words. For
example, the distinction between the syntax of statements in English (e.g.
John can swim.) and the syntax of questions (e.g. Can John swim?) is, at least
from one perspective, a distinction between different ways of ordering words.
e term morphology, for its part, owes its origins to the Greek root morphé
(μορϕή – ‘form’, ‘shape’) and denotes the internal structure of words (and the
study thereof) – that is, how words are built up out of basic units (known as
morphemes) whi may or may not be capable of standing alone as words in
their own right (e.g. un-just-ly, de-nation-al-ize, re-en-act-ment etc.).
A third area right at the heart of linguists’ interests, namely semantics –
that is, the domain of meaning (and its investigation) – is also very mu
bound up with words. Although the coverage of the term semantics (from the
Greek s ma ( ) – ‘sign’, ‘signal’) extends well beyond the limits of the
lexicon, and semanticists certainly do not confine their aention to the
meanings of individual words, the lexical level of meaning has always been
the starting point for semantic study and theorizing, and remains a focus for
debate. us, for instance, there is continuing discussion over whether the
meaning of a word like man should be seen as an aggregate of the relations
between man and words su as animal, woman, child etc., whether it should
be treated as decomposable into smaller atoms of meaning (human, male,
adult etc.), whether it should be envisaged as some kind of idealized or
stereotypical mental image against whi actual instances of men are
compared, or whether all three approaes should be integrated in some way.
1.3 What’s in a word?
Although, as is clear from the above, the word is central to the way in whi
non-specialists and specialists alike think about language, defining what a
word is poses a problem or two. To begin with, what we mean by word will
depend very mu on whether we are talking about actual occurrences of any
items that might qualify or whether we are intent on grouping or classifying
items in some way or other.
To illustrate this, let us begin by looking at the orus from the Beatles’
song She Loves You:
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah;
She loves you, yeah, yeah yeah;
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
How many words are there in these three lines? If we take actual occurrences
of any items – word tokens – as the basis of our count, we shall come up with
6 words in the first line, six in the second, and seven in the third. at is 19
overall. On the other hand, if we base our count on word types – items with
different identities – the overall figure for the entire extract will be just four
(she, loves, you and yeah). Similarly, the phrase going, going, gone will be
considered a three-word expression on a count of tokens but will be
considered to contain only two words (going and gone) on a count of types.
In another sense of word, the sequence going, going, gone may be thought
of as containing just one word – the verb go, represented by two of its forms
(going and gone). is approa to the notion of the word – seeing it as a
‘family’ of related forms or as an abstract unit whi is realized by one or
other of these forms as the linguistic environment demands – calls to mind the
concept of the phoneme and its allophones (see above). is linkage with the
phoneme idea is expressed terminologically: the notion of the word as a
family of forms or as an abstract unit is captured in the term lexeme, while a
lexeme’s concrete representatives or realizations are referred to as word-
forms. When we want to refer to a given lexeme in, for instance, a dictionary-
entry, we typically do so using just one of its various forms, and the oice of
this form, known as the citation form, is determined by convention, whi
varies from culture to culture and language to language. For example, the
citation form of a Fren verb lexeme is its infinitive form (donner, sortir,
prendre etc.), whereas the citation form of a Modern Greek verb is the first-
person singular form of the present indicative (káno/κάνω, thélo/θέλω, akúo/
ακóυω etc.).
We can also see words in different perspectives according to the particular
level of linguistic classification we are applying. For example, if we look at the
English word thinks from the point of view of the English orthographic
(spelling) system we shall see it as a series of leers – t + h + i + n + k + s; if
we consider it as a phonological entity we shall perceive it as a sequence of
phonemes – /υ/ + /ɪ/ + /n/ + /k/ + /s/ – one of whi, /υ/, corresponds to the
leers th in the English writing system; if we view thinks in grammatical
terms, we shall focus on the fact that we have before us the third-person
singular present form of a verb; and if we approa it as a carrier of meaning,
we shall be led to relate it to (among other things) the synonyms whi can
replace it in different contexts, for example:
I think/believe I can do it.
The philosopher’s task is to think/cogitate.
I’ll think about/consider your suggestion .
Mention of meaning brings us to the distinction whi has been drawn
between what are termed content words (also called full words or lexical
words) and form words (otherwise known as grammatical words, empty words
or function words). Words described as content words are those whi are
considered to have substantial meaning even out of context, whereas words
described as form words are those considered to have lile or no independent
meaning and to have a largely grammatical role. Some examples of content
words are: bucket, cheese, president; some examples of form words are: a, it,
of. is distinction is not unproblematic, since many so-called form words –
su as prepositions like around and towards and conjunctions like although
and whereas – are clearly far from empty of semantic content. In any case, we
need to be careful with the idea of ‘semantic content’. We have to keep in
mind that it is a metaphor, and that people not words are the sources of
meanings, even if words are used as instruments to signal su meanings.
Actually, a more satisfactory way of distinguishing between content words
and form words is in terms of set membership: grammatical words belong to
classes with more or less fixed membership (at least during any individual
speaker’s lifetime), while content words belong to open classes whose
membership is subject to quite rapid ange, as new terms come into being
and others fall into disuse.
In the light of all that has been said so far in this section, it is hardly
surprising that linguists’ aempts to provide a general aracterization of the
word have made reference to quite a wide variety of possible defining
properties. e main lines of these different approaes are set out below.
The orthographic approach
In the orthographic approa the word is defined as a sequence of leers
bounded on either side by a blank space. is definition works up to a point
for languages using writing systems su as the Roman or Cyrillic alphabet,
but is not at all useful in relation to languages (like Chinese and Japanese)
whose writing-systems do not consistently mark word-boundaries or in
relation to language varieties whi do not usually appear in wrien form
(e.g. local varieties of Colloquial Arabic) or whi have never been wrien
down (e.g. many of the indigenous languages of the Americas). Also, there
seems to be something rather odd about defining words in terms of the
wrien medium given that, as we have seen, the word is in no sense a product
of literacy, and given that, both in the history of human language and in the
development of the individual, wrien language arrives on the scene well
aer spoken language. We can note further that defining words in terms of
leer-sequences and spaces is very mu a form-oriented, token-oriented
exercise whi takes absolutely no account of more abstract conceptions of
the word.
The phonetic approach
Another possible way of trying to define the word is to look for some way in
whi words might be identifiable in terms of the way they sound –
irrespective of the particular sound-systems of specific languages. It might
perhaps be imagined, for example, that words are separated from ea other
in spee by pauses. Alas, life is not that simple! In fact, individual words can
rarely be pinpointed in physical terms in the ordinary flow of spee, whi is
in the main a continuous burst of noise. (Anyone who needs to be convinced
of this should tune to a radio station broadcasting in a totally unfamiliar
language.) Indeed, the la of phonetic independence of individual words is
precisely what explains linguistic anges su as the loss from some words in
English of an initial /n/ (because this was felt to belong to the preceding
indefinite article, e.g. auger from Old English nafu-gar; apron from Old
Fren naperon) and the addition of a ‘stolen’ /n/ in some other cases (e.g. a
newt from an ewt; a nickname from an eke-name). It is, of course, true that
pausing is possible between words, and that linguists in the field working on
hitherto undescribed languages may sometimes be able to make use of the
‘potential pause’ criterion when gathering data from native speakers – as
Sapir did (see above) – but, since speakers do not normally pause between
words this criterion has rather limited value.
The phonological approach
At first glance a more promising approa to defining words on the basis of
sound is to think in terms of the aracteristics of words in particular sound-
systems. For example, in some languages – English being a case in point –
words tend to have only one stressed syllable, whi may occur in various
positions (e.g. renew, renewable, renewability etc.). Another instance of a
word-related phonological feature is that of vowel-harmony in languages su
as Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish. In this case the nature of the
vowel in the first part of a word determines the oice of vowels in what
follows. is is illustrated by the following two Hungarian words : kegyetlen-
ség-ük-ben (literally, ‘pity-less-ness-their-in’ = ‘in their cruelty’) versus gond-
atlan-ság-uk-ban (literally, ‘care-less-ness-their-in’ = ‘in their carelessness’).
Also to be considered in this context is the fact that in a given language a
particular phoneme or combination of phonemes may be found only rarely or
not at all in a specific position in the word; for instance, in English /z/ is
seldom to be found at the beginning of words and the ‘ng sound’ (/ŋ/) never
occurs at all in this position. One problem with phonological aracterizations
of words is that, of their very nature, they relate to specific languages or, at
best, to specific language-types. Also, su aracterizations oen have to be
seen as descriptions of broad tendencies rather than as absolutely reliable;
thus, with regard to stress in English, many units that are recognized as words
in that language typically do not actually take stress in ordinary spee, e.g.
and, but, by, if, the – and, on the other hand, in some groups of words whi
constitute fixed expressions (see below, Chapter 4) only one main stress is
applied in the entire group, e.g. building worker, dancing lesson, lifeboat crew.
The semantic approach
If definitions in terms of sound have their limitations, what about definitions
in terms of meaning? Might it not be possible, for example, to define words as
the basic units of meaning in language? e answer to this question is
unfortunately ‘No’. ere are admiedly individual units of meaning whi
are expressed in single, simple words. For example, the English words ant,
bottle and shoe are individual and indivisible forms whi convey specific
individual meanings. However, the relationship between single words and
particular meanings is not always quite so straightforward.
Let us consider, for instance the English word teapot. is is wrien as a
single item and can be thought of as denoting a single entity, but, on the other
hand, it does actually contain two elements whi are words in their own
right – tea and pot. Similarly, there are combinations whi are not necessarily
wrien as one word, su as: public house, cricket pavilion, icecream kiosk etc.
Actually, if we think more carefully about the meanings of su combinations
we can recognize the semantic contributions of ea individual word, but the
image whi ea combination of words first brings to mind is unquestionably
that of a single building or type of building. A further obvious point to be
made about the idea of words being minimum units of meaning is that there
are actually units below the level of the word whi function as semantic units.
Reference has already been made to the fact that words may contain units that
cannot stand alone as words in their own right. For example, the word un-
just-ly has the word just as its core but also contains two elements (un - and -
ly ) whi are vital to its meaning – un meaning roughly ‘not’ and -ly meaning
something like in a … manner’.
The grammatical approach
e aracterization of the word that seems to be least problematic is that
whi defines words in grammatical terms. e grammatical approa uses
the criteria of ‘positional mobility’ and ‘internal stability’. Words are said to be
‘positionally mobile’ in the sense that they are not fixed to specific places in a
sentence. For example, in a sentence like The cat drowsily stretched her
elegant forelegs we can re-order the words in various ways without removing
or disrupting anything essential.
The cat stretched her elegant forelegs drowsily .
Drowsily the cat stretched her elegant forelegs.
Her elegant forelegs the cat drowsily stretched.
‘Internal stability’ refers to the fact that within words the order of morphemes
remains consistent. us the morphemic constituents of, for example, forelegs
(fore + leg + s) cannot be altered – so that *sforeleg, *slegfore, *legfores,
foresleg and legsfore are not possible versions of the word in question.
Definition of the word as units whi are positionally mobile but internally
stable works well across languages. However, even this on the whole
successful definition needs some qualification. For example, the English
definite article the would normally be considered a word, but its positional
mobility is distinctly limited. at is to say, except when it is being talked
about as an object of study (as it is now), it has to be part of a noun phrase,
occurring before the noun and any other elements that are included to qualify
the noun; thus, the wolf, the large wolf, the extremely large wolf etc.
Interestingly, the words that have su tight restrictions imposed on their
possible positions in sentences are typically grammatical words, notably,
definite articles (the), indefinite articles (a, an), prepositions (in, on, to, from
etc.), whi, as we have seen, have traditionally been regarded as lesser
species of words, not ‘full words’.
Defining the word: a summary
Having looked at a number of possibilities for defining the word, then, what
can we say about this problem? Well, one thing is clear: there is not just one
way of looking at words. We can see them as types or tokens; we can see
them as lexemes or word-forms; we can see them as orthographic units,
phonological units, grammatical units or semantic units. We can also make a
distinction between content words and form words.
Regarding the various approaes to providing a general aracterization of
the word, it is clear that the grammatical approa in this connection is not
only the least problematic but also the one that works best across languages.
Phonetic and semantic perspectives offer lile in the way of definitional
criteria, but they do suggest some procedures whi may be of use to the field
linguist working with informants. As far as orthographic and phonological
approaes are concerned, the criteria whi emerge from these approaes
apply in different ways and degrees to different languages.
One result of particular sets of criteria operating differently from language
to language is that words in one language may have some aracteristics
whi have lile or nothing in common with the aracteristics of words in
another language. For example, a word in Finnish – with word-stress and
vowel-harmony – is rather different from a word in Fren, a language in
whi neither word-stress nor vowel-harmony operates. is does not mean,
though, that it is inappropriate to use the term word in a cross-linguistic
context. Finnish words and Fren words are recognizable on the basis of
other criteria – grammatical criteria, the ‘potential pause’ criterion etc. –
whi are not tied to any particular language or language-group.
1.4 e domain of the lexicon
We have seen how the word is not perhaps as easy to aracterize as one
might have imagined before starting to reflect on this problem. Alas, even
when we have arrived at some reasonably satisfying conclusions about how to
define words, we are still rather a long way from defining what the lexicon is.
As we noted earlier, lexicon is the Anglicized version of a Greek word
meaning ‘dictionary’. It may be instructive, then, in the context of a discussion
of the domain of the lexicon, briefly to consider what kind of information is
typically to be found in a dictionary. e following example is drawn – more
or less at random – from the pages of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
kin /kɪn/ n. & adj. One’s relatives or family. – predic. adj. (of a person)
related (we are kin; he is kin to me) (see also AKIN) □kith and kin see
KITH. near of kin closely related by blood, or in aracter. next of
kin see NEXT. □□kinless adj. [OE cynn f. Gmc]
What is interesting about su an entry is that, although the focus of the
dictionary-maker is obviously on the individual word – in this specific
instance on the word kin – a broader range of information seems inevitably to
find its way into the picture. us, as well as information about the spelling
(kin), sound-shape (/kɪn/) and meaning (‘one’s relatives or family’) of the
particular item in question, we are provided with information about its
various grammatical roles – n. [= noun] & adj. [=adjective], some examples of
how it is used as a predic. adj. [= predicative adjective] (we are kin; he is kin
to me), some examples of expressions in whi it occurs (kith and kin, near of
kin, next of kin ), an example of a word formed by adding a suffix to kin
(kinless), and a poed history of kin – OE cynn f. Gmc [ = Old English cynn
from Germanic].
And so it is generally when one begins to look closely at any given
individual word. Other issues simply cannot be kept at bay – especially issues
having to do with how the word in question interacts with other elements.
Take the very simple and unremarkable word dog, for instance. As soon as we
home in on this word we have to recognize that part of its essential profile is
that it is both a noun and a verb. Its grammatical categorization in these terms
implies that it can appear in sentences like We all pat the dog as well as in
sentences like The President was dogged by misfortune. We also have to
recognize that dog is a participant in a wide range of frequently occurring
combinations, or collocations, with other words, not all of whi have
meanings whi are easily relatable to canineness – dog in the manger (= ‘a
person who refuses to let others have something for whi he/she has no use’),
dog’s dinner (= ‘a mess’), raining cats and dogs (= ‘raining hard’) etc.
One especially interesting aspect of su interaction between a word and its
linguistic environment is the way in whi the oice of one word may have
one set of repercussions in this environment, while the oice of another word
– even a word with a fairly similar meaning – may have quite a different set
of repercussions. e examples below – from English, Fren and German
respectively – illustrate this point.
We are forbidden to leave the building after midnight.
We are prohibited from leaving the building after midnight.
[oice of forbid entails oice of to + VERB; oice of prohibit entails
oice of from + VERBing]
Nous espérons qu’elle chantera.
(literally, ‘We hope that she will sing.’ = ‘We hope she will sing.’)
Nous voulons qu’elle chante
(literally, ‘We want that she sing.’ = ‘We want her to sing.’)
[oice of verb espérer entails oice of future indicative form of verb –
chantera – in following clause; oice of verb vouloir entails oice of
present subjunctive form of verb – chante – in following clause]
Sie hat mir geholfen .
(literally, ‘She has me helped.’ = ‘She (has) helped me.’)
Sie hat mich getröstet.
(literally, ‘She has me comforted.’ = ‘She (has) comforted me.’
[oice of verb helfen – past participle geholfen – entails oice of dative
form of object pronoun – mir; oice of verb trösten – past participle
getröstet – entails oice of accusative form of object pronoun – mich]
is discussion of the interplay between lexis and other aspects of language
continues in the apters that follow. However, even from the foregoing brief
excursion into this topic we can draw the conclusions that, on the one hand,
any plausible conception of the lexicon has to be broad enough in scope to
include elements other than just individual words, and that, on the other,
aspects of language not customarily thought of as lexical – notably
grammatical phenomena – have to be recognized as at least having a lexical
dimension.
1.5 Summary
is apter has noted the extent to whi language is popularly conceived of
in terms of words – even in the absence of literacy – and of the extent to
whi awareness of language as words features in ild language
development. It has also pointed to evidence of ‘lexico-centricity’ in the way
in whi linguists have traditionally approaed language as an object of
study. It has shown that, despite all of this, it is no easy maer to define what
a word actually is, illustrating this point by reference to possible phonological,
orthographic, semantic and grammatical perspectives on the problem. It has
then offered some first thoughts on the proposition that words cannot be seen
in isolation from other aspects of language.
With regard to the content of the remaining apters:
• Chapter 2 continues the discussion begun in the present apter on the
relationship between lexis and syntax.
• Chapter 3 looks at the ways in whi words are structured.
• Chapter 4 focuses on habitual lexical combinations – collocations.
• Chapter 5 explores various approaes to lexical semantics.
• Chapter 6 examines the relationship between the lexicon and the phonology
and orthography of particular languages.
• Chapter 7 scrutinizes the ways in whi the lexicon relates to social,
regional and situational variation in language.
• Chapter 8 describes and exemplifies different types of lexical ange in the
historical development of languages.
• Chapter 9 addresses the question of what is involved in the construction of a
‘internal’ or ‘mental’ lexicon in the context of the acquisition of a language
and also discusses ways in whi the mental lexicon might be organized and
accessed.
• Chapter 10 surveys the evolution of dictionary-making – lexicography –
from its origins down to its very recent, tenologically based
manifestations and offers an account of how lexis has been treated in the
context of language teaing.
Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads of the various parts of the
discussion in some final comments on the expanding perception of the extent
and the role of the lexicon.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 1.2 .
Edward Sapir’s comments on his work with Native Americans can be
found on pp. 33–4 of his book Language: an introduction to the study of
speech (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1921).
e source of the examples of ildren’s self-corrections is a paper by E. V.
Clark and E. Andersen entitled ‘Spontaneous repairs: awareness in the process
of acquiring language’, whi was presented at the Biennial Meeting of the
Society for Resear in Child Development, San Francisco, 1979. e paper is
summarized and discussed in S. Brédart and J-A. Rondal, L’analyse du langage
chez l’enfant: les activités métalinguistiques (Brussels: Pierre Mardaga, 1982).
See 1.3.e discussion of different approaes to defining the word draws
heavily on the relevant sections in: R. Carter, Vocabulary: applied linguistic
perspectives (second edition, London: Routledge, 1998); D. Cruse, Lexical
semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); J. Lyons,
Introduction to theoretical linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1968) and S. Ullmann, Semantics: an introduction to the science of
meaning (Oxford: Blawell, 1962).
e examples of lexical ange in the section dealing with the phonetic
approa to defining the word and the Hungarian examples in the section on
the phonological approa are borrowed from Ullmann.
See 1.4.e kin entry in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (eighth edition, edited
by R. E. Allen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) is to be found on p. 650.
Readers in sear of further reading maer on some of the issues raised in this
apter may like to consult some or all of the following:
R. Carter, Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives (second edition,
London: Routledge, 1998);
G. Fin, Linguistic terms and concepts (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000);
H. Jason, Words and their meaning (London: Longman, 1988), especially
Chapter 1;
M. Lewis, The lexical approach (Hove: Language Teaing Publications,
1993), especially Chapter 5;
J. Lyons, Linguistic semantics: an introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), especially Chapter 2;
F. Palmer, Grammar (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), especially Chapter 2;
S. Pinker, The language instinct (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1994),
especially Chapter 5;
H. G. Widdowson, Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
especially apters 3, 4 and 5.
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. In this apter a number of expressions were cited – expressions like I
want a word with you – whi show that our everyday conception of
language is very mu bound up with words. ink of some further
examples of su expressions – in English or any other languages you
know.
2. It was mentioned in the apter in connection with phonology that lexical
differentiation was one of the tests for phonemic distinctions. For example,
in the ‘minimal pair’ tie/dye, the two words are differentiated by the
distinction /t/ and /d/ and by that distinction alone. Whi of the following
pairs of words are ‘minimal pairs’ in whi lexical differentiation similarly
depends on a single phonemic distinction?
heat – peat role – bowl
breath – breathe scope – rope
deep – sleep wreath – wreathe
dot – doll witch – filch
phoney – pony wreck – neck
3. We saw in the apter that the smallest units of meaning are not words but
morphemes. For example, in the word unwise there are two morphemes,
un and wise, the second of whi is a word but the first of whi is not. Try
to analyse the following expressions into their constituent morphemes:
antidepressant misfire
bowler poetically
disembarked resting
encage unlawful
hateful wedding-bells
4. ‘Positional mobility’ was presented in the apter as one of the
grammatical criteria for defining words. Put together a list of English words
including both ‘content words’ and ‘form words’ – and then examine these
words in the light of the ‘positional mobility’ criterion. Are some of the
words more ‘positionally mobile’ than others? Are the equivalents of these
words in other languages you know more or less ‘positionally mobile’ than
the English words, or about the same?
5. It was noted in the apter that oosing one lexical item may have one set
of repercussions on other oices in the sentence in question, while
oosing a different item (with a similar meaning) may have a different set
of repercussions. us, for example: The residents protested against the
development plan vs. The residents objected to the development plan . Try to
think of some further instances – in English and in any other languages you
know – of different lexical oices having different implications for the
form of the sentence in whi the relevant words are situated.
2
Lexis and syntax
2.1 Colligation
We saw in the previous apter that particular syntactic paerns are
associated with particular lexical items. is kind of association has sometimes
been labelled colligation – from the Latin cum (‘with’) and ligare (‘to tie’), the
image underlying this term being that of elements being ‘tied together’ by, as
it were, syntactic necessity.
In the past the notion of colligation has tended to be applied to a fairly
restricted range of rather ‘local’ syntactic relationships – su as the
relationship between a verb and the form of the verb that follows it (its verbal
complement), for example:
She will eat chocolate tonight. [will + VERB]
She wishes to eat chocolate tonight. [wish + to + VERB]
She intends to eat/intends eating chocolate tonight. [intend + to +
VERB/intend + VERBing]
She regrets eating chocolate tonight. [regret + VERBing]
She is indulging in eating chocolate tonight. [indulge + in + VERBing]
She is refraining from eating chocolate tonight. [refrain + from +
VERBing]
However, the recent trend in linguistics has been towards a mu wider
conception of the interaction between lexicon and syntax – to the point,
indeed, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to pronounce with any
confidence on the question of where lexicon ends and syntax begins.
In this apter we shall look briefly at the way in whi the relationship
between syntax and the lexicon has been approaed in a number of different
varieties of linguistics, notably computational linguistics, the ‘London Sool’,
the Valency Grammar tradition, Lexical-Functional Grammar and Chomskyan
linguistics.
2.2 e computational perspective
Computational linguistics refers to more or less everything that goes on at the
intersection between computer science and the study of language. One
dimension of computational linguistics is its interest in the relationship
between what computers can do and what we humans do when we acquire
and use language. us, some computational linguists spend their time trying
to model aspects of language acquisition and processing on computers, oen
with very practical objectives in mind – automatic translation, spee
synthesis etc. Another aspect of computational linguistics is the use of
computers as an aid in the analysis of language. For example, computers are
now widely used in the analysis of very large collections (corpora – singular
corpus) of naturally occurring language in order to provide information about
the frequency of particular items or the frequency with whi certain items
co-occur with certain other items. From both kinds of computational
linguistics there emerges a strong sense of the difficulty of neatly separating
the lexicon from syntax.
With regard to the language-modelling aspect of computational linguistics,
an interesting instance of su resear is the work that is being undertaken at
the Laboratoire d’Automatiquc Documentaire et Linguistique (LADL) in Paris,
where the object is to design systems whi will enable computers to perform
operations (su as maine translation) on texts. e systems that the LADL
researers are endeavouring to put in place have to be capable of
recognizing, decoding, selecting and combining words without the online
assistance of human speakers. It transpires that the principal problems whi
emerge from the construction of su electronic lexicons have to do with the
difficulty of separating lexis and grammar.
us, very annoyingly, from the LADL researers’ point of view, sentences
whi are identical in structure and perhaps quite close in meaning do not
necessarily behave identically when it comes to adjusting them in various
ways, su behaviour seeming to be entirely dependent on the particular
words used, for example:
Cette question concerne (Works also in the passive – in both Fren
Pierre.
(‘is question and English: Pierre est concerné par cette
concerns Pierre.’) question . ‘Pierre is concerned by this
question.’)
Cette question regarde Pierre. (Does not work in the passive – in either
(‘is question regards Pierre.’) Fren or English: *Pierre est regardé par cett
question . Pierre is regarded by this question.’)
With regard to the light shed on the lexis–syntax interface by the use of
computer tenology as a tool of linguistic analysis, an obvious example to
cite here is the resear carried out under the auspices of the Collins
Birmingham University International Language Database (COBUILD), whi
will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 4. e relevant point to emerge
from su resear with reference to the present context is that there is a
strong tendency for particular words or particular senses of words to be
associated with particular syntactic structures. For example, the word yield has
two main senses – ‘give way/ submit/surrender’ and ‘produce’. It turns out
that the first sense is almost always associated with uses of the word as an
intransitive verb (verb without a direct object), for example:
But we did not yield then and we shall not yield now .
Love yields to business …
In Sweden the authorities yielded at once to the threats …
e second sense, on the other hand, is mostly associated with uses of the
word as a noun, for example:
… a nuclear shell with a 15 kiloton yield…
… more fertilizer than Europe to achieve similar yields …
… Bangladesh’s low annual yields…
A particular approa to syntax whi is very widely used in computational
linguistics is Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). HPSG is very
widely used in maine translation, especially in Europe. Its particular
usefulness to computational linguists derives from the fact that it aempts to
provide a totally explicit specification of how syntax operates. With regard to
the lexicon, HPSG, in common with Valency Grammar and Lexical-Functional
Grammar, sees words as extremely ri in grammatical information and as
playing a key role in determining the syntactic shape of the sentences in whi
they occur. is is the sense of head-driven in the expression Head-driven
Phrase Structure Grammar. e concept of the structure of the phrase in HPSG
is that the head of a given phrase, su as a noun phrase or a verb phrase (i.e.
the single word – the noun, the verb etc. – around whi it is built), has
aributes out of whi crucial properties of the surrounding syntax are
derived. For example, the lexical entry for the verb bakes would have to
specify that it takes a subject noun, that it may also take a direct object noun
and that where both a subject and a direct object are involved the relation
between them is that of agent (doer of an action) and patient (undergoer of an
action). Accordingly, the head of the verb phrase components of the following
sentences determines the legitimacy of the nouns present in the sentence, and
also determines their grammatical functions and the relations between them.
VERB PHRASE
Joanna [bakes].
HEAD
(VERB)
VERB PHRASE
Joanna [bakes bread].
HEAD
(VERB)
2.3 e ‘London Sool’ perspective
e COBUILD project took its inspiration from the work of a mid-twentieth-
century British linguist, J.R. Firth, founder of the so-called ‘London Sool’ of
linguistics, who took the view that the meaning of a word could be equated
with the sum of its linguistic environments, and that, therefore, linguists could
essentially find out what they needed to know about a word’s meaning by
exhaustively analysing its collocations. Firth’s general approa to the study of
language continues to have eoes in modern linguistics through the work of
eminent heirs to the ‘London Sool’ tradition su as John Sinclair, the
leading light in the COBUILD project, and Miael Halliday.
We have already begun to look at Sinclair’s work and shall return to it in
Chapter 4. With regard to Halliday and his followers, they see lexis and syntax
not as separate entities but rather as merely different ends of the same
continuum, whi they label the lexicogrammar. In the Hallidayan
perspective, a lexical distinction su as that between man and woman is seen
in terms of the different environments in whi they are likely to occur, just as
the distinction between, for instance, a count or countable noun (e.g. dog) and
a mass noun (e.g. mud) is seen in terms of the different syntactic frames in
whi these categories can occur. us, a count noun can occur aer numerals
(She has two dogs. He drank three litres of water.) and aer quantifiers like
several and many (The child had to have several stitches. We’ve visited Ireland
on many occasions.), whereas a mass noun cannot occur aer numerals nor
aer several/many, but can occur aer a quantifier su as much (There was
too much mud and not enough grass for a decent game. We didn’t get much
enjoyment out of it.). Similarly, man but not woman can occur in the close
company of a word like prostate (in a sentence su as The poor man had
prostate problems.), while woman but not man can occur in the close company
of a word like pregnant (in a sentence su as That woman is pregnant.).
One argument that has been put against Halliday’s contention that syntactic
distinctions are not qualitatively different from lexical distinctions is that,
whereas syntax is a ‘purely’ linguistic phenomenon, lexical distinctions are
based on the nature of the real world. For example, one can argue that the fact
that we do not juxtapose man and pregnant has simply to do with the
limitations of male physiology. However, it also possible to argue that
syntactic categories and processes are the way they are at least in part because
of how things are in the world. To return to the case of the distinction
between count nouns and mass nouns, for instance, it would be perfectly
plausible to say that the reason why we do not normally put numerals in front
of words like mud, air, enjoyment, darkness etc. is that the very nature of the
substances or experiences to whi they refer encourages a perception of
them as continuous wholes rather than individual entities, a notion whi
receives support from the fact that across languages where the count/mass
distinction exists, while there are certainly many differences in the detail of
classification, the same kinds of substances and experiences tend to be referred
to with mass nouns. For example, the translation-equivalents of mud and air
in Fren (boue, air), German (Schlamm, Luft), Spanish (barro, aire) and
Modern Greek (λασπη, αέρας) all (in those senses) normally function as mass
nouns. e most sensible position would seem to be that the nature of both
the lexicon and the syntax of any given language are determined by an
interaction between extra-linguistic reality (the way things are ‘outside
language’) and intra-linguistic reality (the way things are ‘inside language’).
2.4 e Valency Grammar perspective
Valency Grammar is particularly associated, historically, with German
linguistics, but it has a wide influence on thinking about grammar generally.
e term valency in this context derives from its application in emistry,
where a given element’s valency is defined in terms of its capacity to combine
with other elements. In linguistics valency refers to the number and types of
bonds syntactic elements form with ea other. Valency Grammar
traditionally presents the verb as the fundamental or central element of the
sentence and focuses on the relationship between the verb and the elements
whi depend on it (whi are known as its arguments, expressions,
complements or valents). e relevance of Valency Grammar in the present
discussion is that it recognizes the shape of sentence structure as a
consequence of lexical oice, that is, the oice of a particular verb with a
particular valency. Some examples of verb valencies follow.
Exist, snore, vanish
Verbs like these require only a subject.
Poverty exists.
He was snoring .
The problem vanished.
In traditional terms they are labelled intransitive. In valency terminology they
are said to be monovalent, having a valency of 1.
Annoy, damage, scrutinize
Verbs like these require both a subject and a direct object.
You annoy me.
The storm damaged the sea-wall.
We have scrutinized the documents.
In traditional terms they are labelled transitive. In valency terminology they
are said to be bivalent, having a valency of 2.
Bestow, give, inform
Verbs like these require a subject, a direct object and one further valent.
The king bestowed a knighthood on him.
Jeremy gave the parcel to his aunt.
The police informed Jack of Jill’s safe return .
In traditional terms they are labelled ditransitive. In valency terminology they
are said to be trivalent, having a valency of 3.
As has been mentioned, traditionally the notion of valency has been applied
to verbs. However, a number of recent approaes to grammar, whi take
mu of their inspiration from Valency Grammar and whi are grouped
together under the general heading of Dependency Grammar, extend the
basic valency idea to other lexical categories su as adjectives and nouns. It is
clear, for example, that the valency of the adjective tall (whi can ‘stand
alone’ in qualifying a noun) differs from that of the adjective susceptible
(whi requires something further):
The professor is tall.
The professor is susceptible to pressure.
Similarly with the nouns problem and propensity.
He has a problem.
He has a propensity to violence.
2.5 e Lexical–Functional perspective
Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) developed in the 1980s as a kind of
offshoot of the Chomskyan approa to syntax – one whi aempted to
bring the theoretical and descriptive treatment of syntax closer to what was
known about the psyological processes involved in producing and
understanding uerances. As its name suggests, Lexical–Functional Grammar
places the lexicon right at the heart of its account of syntax.
In LFG every item in the lexicon is seen as coming equipped not only with
indicators of how it sounds, how it is wrien and what it means but also with
indicators of the roles of the elements to whi it relates in a given sentence
(its argument structure) and of the grammatical functions assigned to these
roles. For example, the verbs walk and stroke can be portrayed within this
framework as follows:
(subject) (assignment of grammatical function)
walk (agent) (argument structure)
(subject) (object) (assignment of grammatical function)
stroke (agent, theme) (argument structure)
In walk the argument structure consists merely of an agent argument (the role
of doer of an action) whi is associated with the subject of the verb, as in:
(subject of the verb walk)
Eric was walking .
(agent – doer of the walking)
In stroke the argument structure consists of an agent argument (the role of
doer of an action) whi is associated with the subject of the verb and a
patient or theme argument (the role of undergoer of the action) associated
with the object of the verb, as in:
(subject of the verb stroke) (object of the verb stroke)
Jill stroked the cat.
(agent – doer of the stroking) (theme – undergoer of the
stroking)
us, like HPSG, Valency Grammar and the various forms of Dependency
Grammar, LFG presents lexical oice as the shaper of the syntax of any given
sentence. A sentence is seen as involving lexical structure, constituent
structure (or c-structure) and functional structure (or f-structure). Because ea
lexical element of a sentence is held to specify an argument structure, the
lexical structure of the sentence is seen as determining its constituent structure
(the component parts whi make up the sentence and how these component
parts relate to ea other); and, because the various roles (agent, theme etc.)
aaed to particular lexical items are viewed as associated with grammatical
functions (subject, object etc.), functional structure too is seen as dependent on
lexical structure.
2.6 e Chomskyan perspective
We come finally to what would until fairly recently have been considered the
most syntactic of syntactic models, namely that whi is associated with the
name of Noam Chomsky. In the very earliest version of the Chomskyan
model the lexicon was not recognized as an autonomous component at all;
words were considered to be merely the observable elements through whi
syntax manifested itself – the outward signs of inward syntax – to borrow a
theological expression.
However, the evolution of Chomskyan linguistics since its beginnings in the
1950s has consistently been in the direction of ascribing more and more
importance to the lexicon. Phenomena whi had previously been represented
as purely syntactic processes were by this time being treated with reference to
the lexicon. A good example of this is the case of passivization. In Chomsky’s
first book, Syntactic Structures (published 1957), syntax was represented as
generated in the first place by phrase structure rules of the type:
S → NP + VP
[A SENTENCE CONSISTS OF A NOUN PHRASE AND A VERB
PHRASE]
NP → (DET) + N
[A NOUN PHRASE MAY OR MAY NOT INCLUDE A DETERMINER
(SUCH AS AN ARTICLE a, the. etc.), BUT ALWAYS CONTAINS A
NOUN]
e basic or kernel structures whi were specified by the phrase structure
rules were then subject to various kinds of transformation, including passive
transformation. e passive transformation rule looked roughly like this:
is can be exemplified as follows:
It later came to be recognized by Chomskyans, however, that passivization
was not something that could be dealt with simply in terms of a syntactic
generalization. Su a generalization might run something like the following:
NP2 in the active sentence moves to NP1 position in the passivized sentence
and vice versa. is would explain how we get:
A picture was taken of Brett by the official photographer
from:
The official photographer (NP1) took a picture (NP2) of Brett (NP3).
It also accounts for the questionable status of ?Brett was taken a picture of by
the official photographer, where the noun phrase whi is ‘moved’ to subject
position is NP3 in the corresponding active sentence (i.e. not the direct object).
However, in some cases non-direct objects can be ‘moved’ to subject position
in passive sentences. For example, all three of the following sentences are
perfectly acceptable, even though in the third sentence John is NP3, and does
not represent the direct object of the active version of the sentence but rather
the object of a preposition.
They (NP1) took advantage (NP2) of John (NP3).
Advantage was taken of John .
John was taken advantage of.
e only way to explain this seemed to be in terms of a lexical restructuring
rule whi would allow certain whole expressions like take advantage of
optionally to be restructured as a sort of complex transitive verb. Optional
restructuring of this kind turns out to be highly idiosyncratic; thus, it works
perfectly with take care of (e.g. The job was taken care of) but not so well with
?
take offence at ( The chairman’s remarks were taken offence at). Accordingly,
specific lexical oice can be seen to determine the possibility or otherwise of
lexical restructuring, whi in turn determines the permissibility of certain
kinds of passivization.
By the early 1980s the lexicon was being seen as having a crucial influence
on syntactic structure. e so-called ‘Projection Principle’ of the ‘Government
and Binding’ (GB) version of Chomskyan syntax current in the 1980s states
that the properties of lexical entries ‘project onto’ the syntax of the sentence –
whi essentially coincides with the perspective of HPSG, Valency Grammar
and LFG in the maer of the lexis-syntax interface.
e Projection Principle can be illustrated as follows. As we have seen, in
early versions of Chomsky’s model, the phrase structure component of the
syntax fully specified the basic constituents of the sentence. us, for example:
S → NP + VP
[A SENTENCE CONSISTS OF A NOUN PHRASE AND A VERB
PHRASE]
NP → (DET) + N
[A NOUN PHRASE MAY OR MAY NOT INCLUDE A DETERMINER
(SUCH AS AN ARTICLE a, the. etc.), BUT ALWAYS CONTAINS A
NOUN]
In this version of things the expansion of the VP element was:
VP → V(+ NP)
[A VERB PHRASE ALWAYS CONTAINS A VERB AND MAY OR MAY
NOT INCLUDE A NOUN PHRASE]
On the other hand, the lexical entries for verbs specified whether or not they
could be followed by a noun phrase. For example, the entry for a transitive
verb su as hit would have contained the information:
[__NP]
[OCCURS IN THE ENVIRONMENT OF A FOLLOWING NOUN
PHRASE]
e entry for an intransitive verb like snooze, on the other hand, would not
have contained the specification of this particular environment. Accordingly,
there is duplication between the information provided by the phrase structure
rules and that provided by the lexicon. If we take it that, as the Projection
Principle states, lexical properties intervene in the shaping of syntax, then the
notion of having a general statement at the syntactic level about the
optionality of occurrence of a noun phrase in the verb phrase no longer makes
sense, since the lexicon supplies the information for ea particular verb as to
whether or not it may be followed by a noun phrase.
Subsequent developments in Chomskyan linguistics went even further in a
lexicalist direction. One of the major distinctive features of Chomsky’s view of
language is that every human being is born with a language faculty, and that it
is this language faculty whi enables the ild to acquire language. A
fundamental corollary of this view is that human languages are essentially
structured along the same lines, lines whi reflect the structure of the
language faculty. If this were not the case, clearly, the notion of a language
faculty would be unable to explain the fact that a human ildren will acquire
any human language to whi they are given adequate exposure. Chomsky
labels the structural common core of languages whi he posits Universal
Grammar. According to the Chomskyan model of the 1980s, Universal
Grammar consists of, on the one hand, a set of principles, applicable to all
languages, and, on the other, a set of parameters, that vary from language to
language within very specific limits. An example of a principle has already
been given, namely the Projection Principle (see previous two paragraphs). An
example of a parameter is the Head Parameter, whi states, basically, that
within a particular phrase (prepositional phrase, verb phrase etc.) the head of
the phrase (preposition, verb etc.) occurs consistently either to the le or to
the right of the other elements (the complement). us, English is said to be a
‘head-first’ language on the basis of data su as:
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[in Japan] (Preposition head to the le of its complement in a
HEAD prepositional phrase)
(PREPOSITION)
VERB PHRASE
[am japanese] (Verb to the le of its complement in a verb phrase)
HEAD
(VERB)
Japanese, on the other hand, is said to be a ‘head-last’ language on the basis of
data su as:
PREPOSITIONAL
PHRASE
[Nihon ni] (Preposition head to the right of its complement in a
HEAD prepositional phrase)
(PREPOSITION)
[literally, ‘Japan in’]
VERB PHRASE
[nihonjin desu] (Verb head to the right of its complement in a verb
HEAD phrase)
(VERB)
[literally, ‘Japanese am’]
However, towards the end of the 1980s it began to be suggested that
parameters were not properties of principles, but rather properties of
individual lexical items, a view known as the lexical parameterization
hypothesis.
Let us look briefly at some evidence bearing on the lexical parameterization
hypothesis from English and German prepositional phrases. Both English and
German would be considered ‘head-first’ languages on the basis of the
positioning of heads in prepositional (and other) phrases. For example:
ENGLISH
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[in Germany] (Preposition head – in – to the le of its complement)
HEAD
(PREPOSITION)
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[with me] (Preposition head – with – to the le of its complement)
HEAD
(PREPOSITION)
GERMAN
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[in Deutschland] (Preposition head – in – to the le of its complement)
HEAD
(PREPOSITION)
[‘in Germany’]
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[mit mir] (Preposition head – mit – to the le of its complement)
HEAD
(PREPOSITION)
[‘with me’]
However, in both languages there are, in fact, prepositions whi may occur to
the right of their complements:
ENGLISH
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[your objection (Preposition head – notwithstanding – to
notwithstanding ] the right of its complement)
HEAD
(PREPOSITION)
GERMAN
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
[der Schule gegenüber] (Preposition head – gegenüber – to the right
HEAD of its complement)
(PREPOSITION)
[‘opposite the sool’ –
literally, ‘the sool opposite’]
Examples su as these last two seem to indicate that the positioning of heads
of prepositional phrases is not something whi is set globally for all cases
within a given language, but rather, as the lexical parameterization hypothesis
suggests, that su positioning is determined by the lexical properties of ea
particular preposition.
e lexicalizing tendency in Chomskyan linguistics reaes its logical
conclusion in Chomsky’s latest version of his model, the ‘Minimalist
Programme’. In this model the whole process of deriving a syntactic structure
is represented as beginning in the lexicon, since Chomsky and his followers
now accept, alongside many other sools of linguists (see earlier sections),
that the particular lexical elements whi are selected in any given sentence
will be the principal determinants of both the content and the form of the
sentence. e minimalism of the Minimalist Programme refers precisely to the
fact that syntactic levels and operations are in this model reduced to an
absolute minimum, with many of the most familiar features of earlier models
being discarded, while the lexicon is viewed as driving the entire structure-
building system. us, for example, instead of the syntactic rules beginning
with sentence-level and then filling in what the sentence consists of, as, for
example, in S → NP + VP, the minimalist model begins by building individual
structures around individual lexical items and then merges these individual,
lexically based structures into larger structures.
2.7 Summary
is apter has shown that syntacticians from a very wide range of
theoretical traditions view the lexicon as having a vital, determining role in
the structuring of sentences. In some instances, for example ‘London Sool’
linguistics and Valency Grammar, the interpenetration of lexis and syntax was
recognized from the outset; in others, for example in computational linguistics,
the anowledgment of su interpenetration was an inevitable inference
arising from working with the ‘niy-griy’ of data; and in still others, for
example the later Chomskyan models, increasing importance was aributed
to the lexicon in respect of syntactic structure as the models in question
developed in response to their perceived inadequacies. e consensus across
all of the above sools (and many others) is that the syntactic shape of any
sentence is very largely a function of the properties of the lexical elements out
of whi it is composed.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 2.2 .e LADL examples were taken from B. Lamiroy, ‘Oú en sont les
rapports entre les études de lexique et la syntaxe?’ (Travaux de Linguistique
23, 1991, 133–9). e account of the lexico-syntactic findings of the COBUILD
project was based on Chapter 4 of J. Sinclair, Corpus, concordance, collocation
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Sources for the discussion of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar were: R.
D. Borsley, Modern phrase structure grammar (Oxford: Blawell, 1996); C.
Pollard and I. A. Sag, Head-driven phrase structure (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press and Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1994); I. A. Sag and T. Wasow,
Syntactic theory: a formal introduction (Stanford: CSLI Publications, in press).
Also consulted in this connection was the website
hp://hpsg.stanford.edu/hpsg/hpsg.html.
e bakes example was loosely derived from R.L. Humphreys, ‘Lexicon in
formal grammar’ (in K. Brown and J. Miller (eds), Syntactic theory, Oxford:
Elsevier Science, 1996).
See 2.3.Discussion of M. Halliday’s approa to the lexicogrammar was based
on statements and arguments to be found in his very early work, su as
‘Categories of the theory of grammar’ (Word 1961, 17, 241–92), but also in his
recent work – for example, Functional grammar (second edition, London:
Edward Arnold, 1994).
e counter-argument to the Hallidayan position came from G. Sampson, in
Schools of linguistics: competition and evolution (London: Hutinson, 1980, p.
233).
See 2.4.e principal sources for the discussion of Valency Grammar were D. J.
Allerton’s book Valency and the English verb (London: Academic Press, 1982),
and his article ‘Valency grammar’, in E.F. K. Koerner and R. E. Asher (eds),
Concise history of the language sciences (Oxford: Kidlington, 1995). Material
on a broad range of Dependency Grammar approaes was also consulted at
the website hp://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/dg/dgmain.html
See 2.5.Sources for the section on Lexical–Functional Grammar included: J.
Bresnan and R. Kaplan, ‘Introduction: grammars as mental representations of
language’, in J. Bresnan (ed.), The mental representation of grammatical
relations, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982); S.C. Dik, Functional Grammar
(Dordret: Foris, 1981); C. Neidle, ‘Lexical-Functional Grammar’, in K. Brown
and J. Miller (eds), Syntactic theory, Oxford: Elsevier Science, 1996). e
websites hp://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LFG/ and hp://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/
were also consulted.
See 2.6. e discussion of Chomskyan models drew on both editions of
Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: an introduction (first edition – authored by V.
J. Cook – Oxford: Blawell, 1988; second edition – co-authored by V. J. Cook
and M. Newson – Oxford: Blawell, 1996) and on A. Radford’s books,
Transformational syntax (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
Syntax: a Minimalist introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), Syntactic theory and the structure of English: a minimalist approach
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). e relevant original N.
Chomsky sources were: Syntactic structures (e Hague: Mouton, 1957),
Lectures on Government and Binding (Dordret: Foris, 1981) and The
Minimalist Program (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). e lexical
parameterization hypothesis was the brainild of P. Wexler and R. Manzini
(‘Parameters and learnability in Binding eory’, in T. Roeper and E. Williams
(eds), Parameter setting, Dordret: Foris, 1987).
Readers who wish to explore syntax further might profitably begin with one
or other of the following:
L. omas, Beginning syntax (Oxford: Blawell, 1994);
C.L. Baker, English syntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
Good introductions to specifically Chomskyan syntax are provided by:
V. J. Cook and M. Newson, Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: an introduction
(Oxford: Blawell, 1996);
A. Radford, Syntax: a minimalist introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997);
L. P. Shapiro, ‘Tutorial: an introduction to syntax’ (Journal of Speech,
Language and Hearing Research, 40, 1997, 254–72).
Further discussion of the interface between the lexicon and syntax can be
found in:
R. L. Humphreys, ‘Lexicon in formal grammar’, in K. Brown and J. Miller
(eds), Syntactic theory, Oxford: Elsevier Science, 1996);
T. Stowell, ‘e role of the lexicon in syntactic theory’, in T. Stowell and E.
Wehrli (eds), Syntax and semantics. Volume 26. Syntax and the lexicon,
San Diego: Academic Press, 1992);
T. Stowell and E. Wehrli, ‘Introduction’, in T. Stowell and E. Wehrli (eds),
Syntax and semantics. Volume 26. Syntax and the lexicon , San Diego:
Academic Press, 1992).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. At the beginning of the apter the following examples were given of
different paerns of verbal complementation:
will eat [will + VERB];
wish to eat [wish + to + VERB];
intend to eat/intend eating [intend + to + VERB/intend + VERBing];
regret eating [regret + VERBing];
indulge in eating [indulge + in + VERBing];
refrain from eating [refrain + from + VERBing].
For ea of the above cases try to find two verbs whose verbal
complementation paern parallels that of the example given (e.g. must
follows the same paern as will).
2. We saw in section 2.3 that lexical distinctions, like certain grammatical
distinctions, can be seen in terms of elements with whi lexical items may
and may not co-occur. It is also true that co-occurrence possibilities are
affected by context and by the meaning intended. us, with regard to the
words man and woman, both of the following sentences would be
unremarkable in Anglican contexts (where female as well as male priests
are oen encountered), but the second would be impossible in Roman
Catholic or Greek Orthodox contexts (where female priests are never
encountered).
The priest was a fine man .
The priest was a fine woman .
Similarly, in relation to countable and mass nouns, whereas not many
waters would be perfectly possible in the context of a supermarket with
only a limited range of brands of mineral water, not much water would
have to be the expression used in the context of a reservoir whose water
level had been affected by drought. Try to think of some other instances of
contextual influence on co-occurrence possibilities.
3. In 2.4 we saw that Valency Grammar ascribes valencies to verbs according
to the number of arguments they take. us intransitive verbs like exist,
sleep, vanish are labelled monovalent, having a valency of 1, transitive
verbs like annoy, damage, scrutinize are labelled bivalent, having a
valency of 2, and ditransitive verbs like give, inform, characterize are
labelled trivalent, having a valency of 3. Try to find five further verbs
belonging to ea of the above three valency categories. In performing this
exercise, note the way in whi some verbs have different valencies in
different contexts. For instance, a normally monovalent verb like dream
may in some contexts be bivalent (e.g. He dreamt a strange dream).
4. On the basis of the discussion of HPSG in 2.1 and of LFG in 2.5, identify the
agent and, where applicable, the patient in ea of the following sentences,
and use the information so obtained to specify the argument structure of
the verb in ea case.
The folk-dancers slapped their thighs.
John was working .
Every February we ski in the French Alps.
Mr McVeigh sliced the tomatoes very fine.
Christopher was tuning his guitar.
5. In the account of the development of the Chomskyan model in 2.6 we
encountered the notion of parameter, whi was illustrated by means of the
Head Parameter. Another parameter discussed by Chomskyans is the Pro-
Drop Parameter, whi relates to whether or not subject pronouns may be
‘dropped’ before verbs. us Spanish is said to be a pro-drop language, on
the basis that, for example, yo [‘I’] in an expression like yo entiendo [‘I
understand’] may be, and usually is, ‘dropped’ – so that the usual way of
saying ‘I understand’ in Spanish is simply entiendo. In Fren, on the other
hand, the je [‘I’] of je comprends [‘I understand’] cannot be dropped, and on
the basis of this and myriad similar examples, Fren is said to be a non-
pro-drop language. Where, then, would English stand in relation to the Pro-
Drop Parameter? Is there any variation in the ‘droppability’ of the subject
pronoun depending on context and/or on the particular verb selected?
3
Lexis and morphology
3.1 e inner life of words
We saw in Chapter 1 that morphology is derived from a Greek word meaning
‘form’ or ‘shape’ and that it denotes the internal structure of words (and the
study thereof), A given word is not necessarily just a sequence of sounds or
leers with an overall, indivisible meaning and or grammatical function; a
word may be made up of a whole collection of meaningful components, of
whi some may in other contexts stand alone as words in their own right,
and others may be used only as parts of words.
Consider, for instance the words underlined in the following sentences:
The enormous fish looked rather fearsome.
If you are going to dance the cancan you will need some fishnet
stockings.
This is a story about three little fishes.
There’s a fishy smell in here.
Fish is obviously a word whi can stand alone in its own right. However, it
can also be conjoined with other elements whi can function as independent
words – su as net. Furthermore, it can also be combined with elements
whi have no independent existence as words, but whi clearly have
meaning and function. us the -es ending in fishes signals that more than one
fish is involved and the -y ending in fishy turns the noun fish into an adjective.
Similarly in other languages: for example, the German translations of fish,
fishnet and fishes are respectively Fisch, Fischnetz (Fisch + Netz – both words
in their own right) and Fische (Fisch + the non-word plural ending -e).
e basic building blos of meaning and grammar are not, therefore,
words but rather the irreducible components out of whi words are
composed – that is to say, elements whi cannot be further decomposed into
anything relevant to their meaning or grammatical function. ese irreducible
entities are known as morphemes. In this apter we shall examine how
morphemes function, how they are customarily classified and how they relate
to the lexicon.
3.2 Morphemes and allomorphs
Morphemes can be defined as the smallest elements of any language whi
have semantic and/or grammatical significance. As we have seen, some
morphemes are also whole words – fish, for example, whereas others are
units below the level of the word whi nevertheless have their own meaning
and/or grammatical function in the context of the words in whi they occur,
for example -es in fishes, -y in fishy.
Morphemes whi can stand alone as words are known as free morphemes
while morphemes whi can only be meaningful or functional as parts of
words are known as bound morphemes. Bound morphemes very oen
manifest themselves as prefixes – elements aaed at the beginnings of
words (e.g. dis- as in disobey) – or as suffixes – elements aaed at the ends
of words (e.g. -ize as in idolize). Prefixes and suffixes are known collectively
as affixes. Other kinds of affixes to be found in the world’s languages include
infixes and circumfixes. Infixes are elements aaed within the free
morpheme bases of words; for example in Bontoc, a language of the
Philippines, the infix -um- makes a verb out of an adjective or noun (thus,
fikas – ‘strong’, fumikas ‘to be strong’). Circumfixes are elements whi
‘surround’ the relevant base; for instance, in Chiasaw, a Native American
language, the negative is formed by the alteration of the base both fore and
a (thus, lakna – ‘it is hot’, iklakno – ‘it is not hot’). As we shall see later,
bound morphemes may also sometimes be represented by nothing at all in the
outer forms of words, and they may also be expressed as processes rather than
or as well as additions.
Some further examples of free and bound morphemes from English and
Fren follow.
FREE MORPHEMES BOUND MORPHEMES
ENGLISH
fire pre- (as in predispose)
red -ize (as in idolize)
fast -ing (as in sailing)
in -s (as in considers)
FRENCH
pomme (‘apple’) ré- (as in réinuenter – ‘to reinvent’)
jaune (‘yellow’) -ment (as in politment – ‘politely’)
là (‘there’) -ions (as in parlions – ‘(we) talked’)
sur (‘on’) -s (as in vins – ‘wines’)
A morpheme may be realized by different forms – its morphemic alternants
or allomorphs – according to the particular environment in whi it occurs.
For instance, the English past tense morpheme may be realized as /Id/ (as in
wanted), as /d/ (as in stayed), as /t/ (as in jumped), and in other ways besides.
An example of morphemic alternation from Italian is the case of the free
morpheme a, whi means ‘to’, ‘at’ or ‘in’ (depending on context). A is the
form used before words beginning with consonants, but where the following
word begins with a vowel the form ad is used – as is illustrated by the
sentences below.
Andiamo a Milano. (‘We are going to Milan’)
Andiamo ad Athène. (‘We are going to Athens’)
A not dissimilar example from Fren – in this case involving a ‘zero
allomorph’ is the way in whi the bound plural morpheme aaed to nouns
behaves: when followed by a word beginning with a consonant it is not
pronounced, whereas when followed by a vowel sound it may or may not be
realized as /z/ – depending on spee style and tempo. For instance the s in
the wrien form of the Fren word for ‘cars’ – voitures – is silent in the first
of the sentences below but may be pronounced as /z/ in the second if the
spee is fluent rather than halting and if the spee style is relatively formal.
Les voitures ralentissaient. (e cars were slowing down.’)
Les voitures allaient très vite. (‘e cars were going very fast.’)
3.3 ‘Lexical’ morphology and inflectional morphology
Since, as we have seen, morphology in general relates to the structure of
words, it would be not unreasonable to conclude that all morphology is
lexical. However, many morphologists are inclined to make a distinction
between morphological phenomena that have to do with word formation – to
whi specifically they aa the term lexical morphology – and aspects of
morphology whi have rather to do with the grammatical modification of
words – whi they label inflectional morphology. An example of lexical
morphology on this definition would be the addition of the bound morpheme
-ness to the adjective kind to form the abstract noun kindness; and an
example of inflectional morphology would be the addition of the bound
morpheme -s to the verb run when that verb is preceded by he, she or it in its
present tense.
‘Lexical’ morphology, as defined above, can itself be seen as divisible into
two further subcategories: composition or compounding on the one hand and
derivation on the other. Composition/compounding is customarily applied to
instances of word formation where the formation process involves free
morphemes. For example, the free morpheme light and the free morpheme
house combine to form the compound word lighthouse, whi draws on the
meanings of its component morphemes but whi has a specific meaning all
of its own. Derivation, for its part, is applied to instances of word formation in
whi bound morphemes play a role. For example, the word unwise is a
different word with a different meaning from the word wise, and it is formed
simply by the prefixing of the bound morpheme un- to the free morpheme
wise. Some further examples (from English and Dut) of words formed by
composition/compounding and words formed by derivation are given below.
COMPOSITION/COMPOUNDING DERIVATION
ENGLISH
teapot payment (bound derivational
morpheme: -ment)
override enrage (bound derivational morpheme:
en -)
bittersweet smallish (bound derivational
morpheme: -ish)
anyone swiftly (bound derivational morpheme:
-ly)
DUTCH
zeeman (‘seaman’) grootheid (‘greatness’; bound
derivational morpheme: -heid)
lichtbruin (‘light brown’) verhuizen (‘to move house’; bound
derivational morphemes: ver-, -en)
eenmaal (‘one time’) katje (‘lile cat’, ‘kien’; bound
derivational morpheme: -je)
welkom (‘welcome’) onwel (‘unwell’; bound derivational
morpheme: on-)
As can be seen from these examples, bound morphemes involved in
derivation may or may not ange the grammatical class of the free
morphemes to whi they are aaed. us, the addition of the bound
derivational morpheme -ment to the verb pay yields the noun payment (cf.
arrange/arrangement, excite/excitement, resent/resentment), whereas, on the
other hand, the addition of the bound derivational morpheme -ish to the
adjective small yields another, different, adjective smallish (cf. grey/greyish,
slowlslowish, warm/warmish).
With regard to inflectional morphology, this can be further exemplified –
again from English and Dut – as follows.
INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY
ENGLISH
trees (as in The trees are lovely; bound inflectional morpheme: -s)
recognizes (as in She recognizes me; bound inflectional morpheme: -s)
lifted (as in Jill lifted her head; bound inflectional morpheme: -ed)
vaccinating (as in The doctor was vaccinating the ten-year-olds; bound
inflectional morpheme: -ing)
DUTCH
boeken (‘books’, as in De boeken zijn thuis – ‘e books are at home’;
bound inflectional morpheme: -en)
koopt (‘buys’, as in Hij koopt sijn krant in de winkel – ‘He buys his
newspaper in the shop’; bound inflectional morpheme -t)
kookte (‘boiled’, as in Het water kookte – ‘e water boiled’; bound
inflectional morpheme -te)
goede (‘good’, as in Mijn vader was een goede man – ‘My father was
a good man’; bound inflectional morpheme -e; compare Mijn
vader was goed – ‘My father was good’)
As the above examples illustrate, inflectional morphemes are not involved in
word formation, and they never ange the actual grammatical category of
the free morphemes to whi they are aaed. Rather, they make small
adjustments to words whi have important grammatical consequences –
signalling, for instance, tense, person and number in verbs, and number and
grammatical case in nouns. e following examples, from various languages,
provide further illustration of these various roles.
Present-past distinction in German:
er lebt (‘he lives’) vs. er lebte (‘he lived’)
First person-second person distinction in Spanish:
regreso(‘I return’) vs. regresas (‘you (sing.) return’)
regresamos (‘we return’) vs. regresais (‘you (plur.) return’)
Singular plural distinction in Fren:
elle chantera (‘she will sing’) vs. elles chanteront (‘they (fem.) will sing’)
Singular-plural distinction in Swedish:
apelsin (‘orange’) vs. apelsiner (‘oranges’)
Nominative (subject case) vs. genitive (possessive case) in Modern Greek:
to neró (τo νερó – ‘the water’) vs. tu nerú (του νερóυ – ‘of the water’, ‘the
water’s’)
Because of the grammatical nature of their contribution to word-structure,
and because, at first sight at least, they seem to be assignable by rule rather
than dependent on the particularities of lexical items, inflectional morphemes
have been considered by some linguists to lie outside the domain of the
lexicon and to belong rather with the grammatical rules of a language. We
have seen already, with regard to syntax, that making a hard and fast
distinction between lexicon and grammar is no easy task. In the case of
morphology, as will become clear in the next section, su a distinction makes
no sense whatsoever.
3.4 Inflectional morphemes and the lexicon
A first very basic problem about a claim that derivational morphemes are
lexicon-based while inflectional morphemes are not is that it is not at all clear
in some instances whether a particular morpheme is derivational or
inflectional. A commonly cited illustration of this problem is the case of the
positive, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives in English,
exemplified below:
POSITIVE COMPARATIVE SUPERLATIVE
bright brighter brightest
dear dearer dearest
quick quicker quickest
On the one hand, this seems like a highly rule-governed paern, and most
native English speakers would probably think of, e.g. quicker and quickest as
forms of quick rather than as different words – whi seems to argue for the
morphemes involved (-er and -est) being inflectional. On the other hand, the
anges involved do not seem to involve fiing the adjectives to their
grammatical environment in the same way that, for example, adding a plural
ending to a noun does – whi seems to argue for regarding the morphemes
in question as derivational and as having the same kind of status as a
morpheme like -ish (in, e.g., quickish).
Another problem in relation to making a hard and fast distinction between
morphemes that are in the lexicon and morphemes that are supposedly
excluded from it is that a particular morpheme may, in some contexts, have an
inflectional role while having a derivational role in others. For example, the
bound morpheme -ing is the marker of progressive aspect in English verbs.
at is to say it marks a verb as referring to ongoing process or activity rather
than a stable state or completed process or action, for example:
She is being awkward.
(as opposed to: She is awkward.)
I was working .
(as opposed to: I worked.)
In this kind of instance -ing has certainly to be seen as having an inflectional
role. However, -ing can also be used in the formation of verbal nouns – just
like derivational morphemes su as -ion and -ment, for example:
Two judges were responsible for the administering of the oath. (compare:
Two judges were responsible for the administration of the oath.)
The deferring of the meeting had some unfortunate consequences.
(compare: The deferment of the meeting had some unfortunate
consequences.)
In this case -ing is clearly involved in word formation and has to be
considered derivational. Are we going to say that -ing is sometimes supplied
by the lexicon and sometimes not?
A third problem in this connection is that inflectional morphology does not
conform to rules to anything like the extent that it is believed to. For example,
the morphology of the pluralization of English nouns has some highly
idiosyncratic features, as the examples listed below show. Indeed, there do not
seem to be noticeably fewer divergences from the regular plural paern in
nouns than from the normal (derivational) paern of adverb formation in
English (ADJECTIVE + bound derivational morpheme -ly, for example:
dark/darkly, delicate/delicately, spiteful/spitefully etc., but fast/fast). One
would have thought that in both cases the lexicon would have to contain at
least information as to whether a given word was subject to the normal
paern or not, and, if not, what the relevant particularities of its morphology
were.
SINGULAR PLURAL
sheep sheep
wife wives
man men
woman women
mouse mice
die dice
child children
ox oxen
phenomenon phenomena
basis bases
formula formulae (or formulas)
stimulus stimuli
datum data
corpus corpora
graffito graffiti
plateau plateaux(or plateaus)
cherub cherubim (or cherubs)
Finally, on the question of whether or not inflectional morphemes are lexicon-
based, let us consider the ways in whi the addition of inflectional
morphemes affects the free morphemes to whi they are aaed. In very
many instances there is no perceptible effect at all, in spoken or wrien form.
us, the addition of -ed to the base forms fill, jump, stay or want anges
nothing in these base forms. On the other hand, as can be seen from the
collection of English noun plurals above, there are plenty of other cases where
noticeable alterations to the form of the free morpheme do occur. Sometimes
there is just a slight ange ‘at the join’, as it were. e plural of wife is a case
in point; here the /f/ of the singular form is replaced by a /v/ in the plural form
– wife (/waɪf/) wives (/waɪvz/). Sometimes – especially in plurals borrowed
from Greek and Latin – the last syllable of the singular form is replaced by
one or more different syllables in the plural, as in: stimulus (/ˡstɪmjʊlǝs/) →
stimuli (/ˡstɪmjʊlaɪ/). And sometimes pluralization occasions anges in the
very core of the pluralized word. is is the case for children, where the plural
is signalled not only by the aament of the anomalous morpheme -ren but
also by a ange in the quality of the vowel sound (wrien i) in child from /aɪ/
in child to /ɪ/ in children. In man – men (/mæn/→/mεn/) the ange in the
vowel sound in the core of the word from /æ/ to /ε/ is the only way in whi
pluralization is signalled.
All of the plurals referred to in the preceding paragraph represent a
allenge for linguists. As long as the morphemes they are dealing with are
neatly sequential (jump + ed, cat + s, sing + ing etc.), and as long as the
allomorphs of su morphemes resemble ea other and are predictable from
the phonological environment, morphologists can provide analyses whi are
relatively straightforward and concrete. In the cases of wives, children, men,
stimuli and the like, however, the morpheme takes on a more abstract quality,
and its allomorphs have to be treated partly or wholly in terms of processes
rather than simply in terms of an added element whose variant forms are
determined by phonological environment. us, the allomorph of the English
noun plural morpheme represented in wives involves not only the addition of
-s but also a process whereby the last consonant of the word anges from /f/
to /v/, whi in turn means that the -s ending is pronounced as /z/. Similarly,
in children, the allomorph involved is the anomalous ending -ren (/rǝn/) plus
the process whi anges /aɪ/ to /ɪ/ in child. In man — men and stimulus –
stimuli only a process allomorph is involved, the anges from /æ/ to /ε/ and
from /ǝs/ to /aɪ/ respectively.
It is clear, then, that inflectional morphemes are not necessarily just
elements that are taed on to free morphemes without affecting the forms of
those free morphemes. Let us compare the case of inflectional morphology
with that of derivational morphology in this connection. Some derivational
morphemes are said to be ‘neutral’ in their phonological effects, that is they do
not ange anything in the word to whi they are aaed. For example, the
above-mentioned adverbializing morpheme -ly has no impact on the forms to
whi it is aaed; thus, the warm element of warmly is constant in both
words. Similarly, ‘neutral’ derivational morphemes include: -ment (as in pave
– pavement), -ness (as in white – whiteness) and en- (as in cage – encage).
Other derivational morphemes, on the other hand, are recognized as ‘non-
neutral’ in their impact on the free morpheme base, and are accordingly
thought of as at a different level of relationship with that base and as more
deeply ‘lexical’. For instance, the addition of -ic to meteor anges the stress
paern of this laer; thus: meteor, but meteoric As for the derivational
morpheme -ion, it causes all manner of anges in the base form – sometimes
occasioning a shi in stress, sometimes bringing about anges in or additions
to the sound segments making up the word to whi -ion is aaed,
sometimes causing both, for example:
admire admiration
admit admission
assume assumption
divide division
revolve revolution
To return to the case of inflectional morphemes, these can be every bit as
‘non-neutral’ in the above sense in relation to the words to whi they are
affixed as can derivational morphemes. We have seen how the English noun
plural morpheme may be expressed via significant alterations in the forms of
the nouns pluralized. e morpheme whi marks the simple past tense (what
is sometimes known as the preterite) in English is associated with anges in
the base forms of verbs whi are no less far-reaing. us, alongside play –
played, hope – hoped, want – wanted etc. we have present-preterite
oppositions, su as:
bear bore
come came
drive drove
go went
sing sang
In sum, then, although in principle one can see the point of distinguishing
between morphology whi is involved in word formation and morphology
whi is not, it has always to be borne in mind that this distinction is by no
means clear-cut. It also needs to be recognized that inflectional morphology is
quirky and lexically determined in the same way that ‘lexical’ morphology is.
Finally, it cannot be ignored that inflectional morphemes may have just as
large an impact on the forms of words to whi they are aaed as ‘lexical’
morphemes. All in all, there seem to be absolutely no good grounds for
suggesting that inflectional morphemes lie outside the domain of the lexicon;
and to the extent that the term lexical morphology can be interpreted as
implying that there is a morphology whi is non-lexical, it needs to be
treated with caution.
3.5 Summary
is apter has explored the internal structure of words. It began by noting
that the morphemes of whi words are made up may be either free, that is
units that may stand alone as words in their own right, or bound, that is units
that can occur only as parts of words. e phenomenon of morphemic
alternation – the way in whi morphemes may be realized in varying ways –
was also dealt with. e apter then moved on to discuss the distinction
between ‘lexical’ morphology – morphology involved in word formation –
and inflectional morphology – morphology involved in fiing words to their
grammatical environment. It was shown that the distinction between these
two categories of morphology is not entirely clear-cut, that some morphemes
sit astride the two categories, and that inflectional morphemes may have just
as great an impact as ‘lexical’ morphemes on the base forms of words to
whi they are aaed. In the light of these facts it was argued that there are
no good grounds for considering one particular category of morphemes, i.e.
inflectional morphemes, to lie outside the domain of the lexicon.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
e account of morphemes and allomorphs presented here draws on the
broad tradition of received wisdom in morphological studies as represented in
works su as: F. Katamba, Morphology (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993); J.
Lyons, Introduction to theoretical linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968, Chapter 5); P. H. Mahews, Morphology; an
introduction to the theory of word-structure (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1974).
See 3.2 .
e Bontoc and Chiasaw examples in 3.1 are taken from V. Fromkin
and R. Rodman, An introduction to language (Sixth edition, New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1998, Chapter 3). e distinction between ‘lexical’
morphology and inflectional morphology sketed follows that to be found in
P. H. Mahews, Morphology: an introduction to the theory of word-structure
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Other works adopting a
similar approa include F. Katamba, Morphology (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1993 ). e notion that inflectional morphology is grammatical rather than
lexical has a long history – dating ba to Bloomfield (see L. Bloomfield,
Language, New York: Holt, 1933, 274) and beyond.
See 3.4. e ambivalence of the -ing morpheme is referred to by A. Akmajian,
R. A. Demers, A. K. Farmer and R. M. Harnish in their book Linguistics: an
introduction to language and communication (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1990). e general difficulty of distinguishing between derivational and
inflectional morphology is very widely anowledged by linguists – even if at
times a lile grudgingly see, for example, A. Spencer, Morphological theory:
an introduction to word structure in generative grammar (Oxford: Blawell,
1991). e concept of ‘neutrality/non-neutrality’ in the context of morphology
is discussed by F. Katamba (Morphology, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993 ) and
by J. Harris (English sound structure, Oxford: Blawell, 1994); see also P.
Kiparsky ‘Word formation and the lexicon’, in F. Ingemann (ed.), Proceedings
of the 1982 Mid-America Linguistics Conference, Kansas: University of Kansas
Press, 1983). e case in favour of the idea that all morphology is essentially
lexically based is put by, among others, J. T. Jensen and M. Strong-Jensen
(1984) ‘Morphology is in the lexicon’ (Linguistic Inquiry 15, 74–98).
Arguments tending broadly in the same direction are also to be found in M.
Aronoff and F. Ashen, ‘Morphology and the lexicon: lexicalization and
productivity’, in A. Spencer and A. M. Zwiy (eds), The handbook of
morphology (Oxford: Blawell, 1998).
Accessible presentations of basic morphological concepts are to be found in a
number of introductions to linguistics. Particularly recommended in this
connection are:
V. Fromkin and R. Rodman, An introduction to language (sixth edition,
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998);
R. H. Robins, General linguistics: an introductory survey (London:
Longman, 1989).
Among works treating morphology in greater depth and whi would be
suitable for more advanced reading the following is recommended (in
addition to the Mahews and Katamba volumes mentioned above):
A. Carstairs-McCarthy, Current morphology (London: Routledge, 1991).
For those looking for particular perspectives on morphology the following
titles may be of interest:
On the recent history of morphology: P. H. Mahews, Grammatical theory
in the United States from Bloomfield to Chomsky (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
On cognitive dimensions of morphology: C. J. Hall, Morphology and the
mind: a unified approach to explanation in linguistics (London:
Routledge, 1992).
On the role of morphology in the Chomskyan framework: A. Spencer,
Morphological theory: an introduction to word structure in generative
grammar (Oxford: Blawell, 1991).
Also to be noted is the very comprehensive work edited by A. Spencer and
A. M. Zwiy, The handbook of morphology (Oxford: Blawell, 1998).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. In the following passage try to find five examples of free morphemes and
five examples of bound morphemes.
I wanted to go to Philip’s party, but Robert, my boyfriend, hates spending
time around that particular crowd, so we decided instead to sample one of
the latest delights on offer down at the local multiplex cinema. As it turned
out, we both enjoyed the film in question, but we definitely did not
appreciate the two guys siing in front of us, who were very tall and very
noisy.
2. Consider the following words. Try to identify whi of them respectively
exemplify compounding, derivation and inflection.
grapes proven bookshelf sisters’
seaside frighten tightrope adores
brightly oldish sweaty media
lice Tim’s oxen instep
lousy doorbell tended unfit
3. In 3.3 we saw some examples of English noun plural forms whi departed
from the normal (+ -(e)s) paern. Try to think of five further examples of
su irregular noun plurals in English and try also to think of five examples
of English past tense forms whi do not conform to the normal (+ -ed)
paern. Also, reflect on the inflectional morphology of any language you
know other than English and try to identify some examples of inflectional
irregularity in this other language too.
4. Group the following words into those whi show a ‘neutral’ impact on the
base form on the part of the relevant bound morpheme and those whi
show a ‘non-neutral’ impact.
active houses motion bulbous
action poetic movement harshly
had normal hooves Chomskyan
has swollen roofs Hallidayan
proceeded paying gracious titular
5. e following words are oen thought of as posing problems for
morphologists. Can you say why this might be? Can you think of some
further words that might pose similar kinds of problems?
bilberry contain fission equine
cranberry maintain fissile equestrian
unkempt retain locate invade
dishevelled select locomotion evade
disparage elect frantic pensive
4
Lexical partnerships
4.1 Collocation: the togetherness factor
We saw in Chapter 1 and again in Chapter 2 that a great deal of what was
traditionally seen as coming under the heading of grammar is now considered
to be essentially lexical in nature. e basic point we noted was that once a
particular lexical oice has been made in a given sentence, this oice has a
major impact on the determination of what else may or may not occur in the
sentence in question. In addition to this strongly determinant aspect of lexical
oice there is also an effect in respect of word selection whi is rather more
probabilistic in nature. is laer effect has to do with the fact that – for a
variety of reasons – particular words are frequently to be found in the
company of certain other words. In su cases the selection of one or more of
the words concerned in a given context is quite likely – or even very likely –
to be accompanied by the selection of another word or other words from its
habitual entourage. For instance, if a radio or television presenter uses the
word breaking, we are anything but surprised if the word news follows.
Similarly with:
at this moment in time
law and order
the Middle East peace process
As has already been indicated in earlier apters, this phenomenon of words
‘keeping company’ together is referred to as collocation. Collocation comes
from two Latin words, the word cum (‘with’) and the word locus (‘place’).
Words whi form collocations are repeatedly ‘placed with’ ea other; that is
to say, they oen co-occur within a short distance of ea other in spee and
in wrien texts. In this apter we shall briefly explore the notion of
collocational range, look at fixed expressions and compounds, examine the
role of collocational information in traditional dictionaries, review some of the
recent corpus-based resear into collocations, consider the question of the
extent to whi language use is based on prefabricated multi-word unks,
and discuss some of the implications of the collocation phenomenon for our
understanding of the notion of lexical unit.
4.2 Collocational range
Even the most casual reflection on the way in whi we put words together in
the languages we know will lead us to an awareness of the fact that some
words enter into a great number and variety of lexical partnerships, whereas
other words are, as it were, a great deal more ‘oosy’ about the combinations
they become involved with. At the many-partnered end of the scale is, for
example, the English word nice. e list of items with whi this word
frequently co-occurs seems to be almost endless; the following is a tiny sample
of the vast array of nice collocations: nice body, nice day, nice food, nice
house, nice idea, nice job, nice manners, nice move, nice neighbourhood, nice
person, nice time, nice weather. At the other end of the scale is the word
addled, whi in its literal sense of ‘roen’ collocates only with egg (s), and
whi in its metaphorical sense of ‘muddled’ collocates only with words su
as brain(s) and mind. e term used to refer to these different paerns of
combinability is collocational range; thus, nice would be said to have a very
wide collocational range, whereas addled would be said to have a very
restricted collocational range.
One obvious issue that arises in the context of looking at collocational range
– indeed in the context of collocational resear generally – is how far away
from ea other two words can be in a piece of spee or writing and still be
regarded as ‘keeping company’. For example, taking the word garden as our
starting point or node, whi other words in the following sentences are to be
considered as occurring close enough to garden to qualify as candidates for
having a collocational relationship with that word.
They invited me to a garden party .
County Wicklow is sometimes called the Garden of Ireland.
The children were playing in the garden .
None of these houses has a decent garden .
The garden was totally devoid of flowers.
These gardens are famous for their exotic trees.
I planted those tulip bulbs I bought in Amsterdam in the garden this
year.
Party in the first sentence obviously counts, since there are no intervening
words between it and garden, but just how many intervening words between
the node and a potential lexical partner are we prepared to accept? If one is
the answer, then Ireland in the second sentence comes into the frame, if up to
five, then so do playing (sentence 3), houses (sentence 4), flowers (sentence 5)
and trees (sentence 6). What about tulip and bulbs in the final sentence? Can
we accept six or seven intervening words and still talk about ‘keeping
company’ ? Different researers will set the limits differently in this
connection, but it is clear that there is no straightforward solution to this
problem, and that whatever decision is taken will be open to debate.
4.3 Fixed expressions and compounds
A particular grouping of words may recur so frequently in a language that it
comes to be seen as a fixed expression. Some examples of fixed expressions in
English are:
once in a blue moon
seeing is believing
the more the merrier
the other side of the coin
to throw in the towel
Obviously, some fixed expressions are more fixed than others. In some of the
above instances, for example, almost no ange to either the order of the
words or the actual words used is possible without the general meaning or the
acceptability of the expression being affected. us, in seeing is believing, it
might just be possible to insert an adverb before is (e.g. seeing really is
believing ), but otherwise the expression has to be used as it is. Similarly with
the more the merrier; here the only admissible ange is the placing of an
intensifying word (usually a taboo word or a euphemism for a taboo word)
before merrier (e.g. the more the bleedin’ merrier). In other cases anges in
the syntax and in the actual components of the expression can be made
without the force of expression being undermined. us, the other side of the
coin can be manipulated in various ways while still maintaining its essential
identity:
Moving on to the cost of the project, here we see the negative side of the
coin .
Of the French economy it has been remarked that this is a coin that has
two very different sides.
As for the present political situation, well, which side of the coin shall I
begin with?
Fixed expressions vary also in relation to the extent to whi their overall
meanings can be arrived at by simply adding together the meanings of the
words out of whi they are composed. For example, seeing is believing is
interpretable simply on the basis of a knowledge of the normal meanings of
the individual words involved in this expression. However, in the case of to
throw in the towel, it would not be possible to interpret this as ‘to give up’, ‘to
surrender’ unless one actually knew that this meaning aaed to the whole
expression – or unless one knew enough about boxing (where a towel thrown
into the ring has traditionally been a way of conceding defeat) to be able to
decode the metaphor. Expressions su as these whi are ‘semantically
opaque’ in this kind of way are generally referred to as idioms.
Lexical items whi very frequently co-occur with ea other oen fuse
together into compound words (see above, Chapter 3). Examples of this are
blackboard (black + board), keyhole (key + hole) and paintbrush (paint +
brush). In su instances the relationship between the meaning of the
compound word and the meanings of its individual constituent words is not
always a simple one. us, for example, blackboard does not denote any old
board whi is bla, but a very specific kind of bla board, usually found in
classrooms, on whi it is possible to write (and make excruciating noises!)
with alk.
e rule of thumb commonly appealed to for distinguishing between
compound words and fixed expressions is based on an orthographic criterion.
If two words are joined together in wrien form we tend to label them as a
compound word; if not, we tend to treat them as participating in a fixed
expression. However, this is a highly arbitrary distinction. Within a particular
language a given expression may be transcribed in various ways. For example:
air bag air-bag airbag
coffee shop coffee-shop coffeeshop
gold mine gold-mine goldmine
It is also worth saying that, as we saw in Chapter 1, some languages are
wrien down using systems whi do not mark word boundaries, and some
languages are not wrien down at all; clearly, in these cases the orthographic
approa to distinguishing between fixed expressions and compounds would
be totally irrelevant.
A phonological approa to this conundrum does not get us very far either.
As, again, we saw in Chapter 1, whereas, for example, in most English words
we can identify one syllable carrying the main stress, in many multi-word
expressions that on the orthographic criterion, and according to native
speakers’ own intuitions, would not be classed as compound words, only one
main stress occurs over the whole group. us:
barber shop group
feel good factor
skin care ointment
We might also note that phonological usage in this regard varies within
language communities. e expression New Year (as in Happy New Year!), for
instance, is given just one main stress by some speakers of English (New Year),
while other speakers of English place a stress on both words (New Year).
Nor does there seem to be a simple way of distinguishing between
compound words and fixed expressions in semantic terms. We have seen some
examples of compounds whose meanings are not straightforwardly
computable from the meanings of the words whi compose them. However,
as we have also noted, it is equally easy to find examples of collocations with
similarly peculiar semantics: heavy smoker is not typically understood as
‘overweight nicotine-user’; criminal lawyer is in most contexts taken to mean
something other than ‘law-breaking aorney’; and artificial florist will not
usually be interpreted as ‘flower-seller of unnatural origin’! On the other hand,
fixed expressions as well as compounds oen mean exactly what they look as
if they might mean. us, heavy vehicle uncomplicatedly denotes a vehicle
whi is heavy; criminal behaviour denotes behaviour whi is criminal; and
artificial additive denotes an additive beyond Mother Nature’s range.
Similarly, coalminer denotes someone who mines coal, sunlight denotes the
sun’s light, and workplace denotes the place where one works.
4.4 Collocations and the dictionary
Whether it is possible to differentiate rigorously between compound words
and collocations, and whether the meaning generated by the co-occurrence of
two or more particular lexical items is a straightforward sum of the individual
meanings of the items concerned, it is clear that the combinations into whi a
given word may enter and the meanings that aa to the various
combinations in question are important elements in that word’s profile. is is
recognized at a practical level by dictionary-makers, as is demonstrated by the
fact that (leaving aside the very tiniest poet dictionaries) dictionary entries
have traditionally not only treated the individual words concerned but have
also referred to items with whi they frequently co-occur. e following
entry from the 1940 edition of the Harrap’s Shorter French and English
Dictionary is fairly representative.
fatigue [fatig], s.f. 1. (a) Fatigue, tiredness, weariness. Tomber de
fatigue, to be dropping with weariness. Brisé de fatigue, dog-tired;
dead-beat. (b) Souliers de fatigue, strong walking shoes. Habits de
fatigue, working clothes. Cheval de fatigue, cart-horse. Mec. E:
Pièces de fatigue, parts subject to strains. 2. Wear and tear (of
maines, clothes etc.).
As was mentioned in Chapter 2, the suggestion was made many years ago by
the British linguist J. R. Firth that investigating the lexicon was essentially a
maer of exhaustively investigating collocations, and, in fact, he specifically
referred to lexicography (i.e. dictionary-making) in this context. e idea that
dictionary-making needs to be founded on collocational resear is a point of
view whi continues to have its ampions today. Indeed, it is an idea whi
has been gaining ground over the last 10–15 years. Moreover, since Firth’s
time information tenology has developed to the point where it is now
possible – through the use of computerized corpora (see above, 2.2) – to
undertake the kind of exhaustive investigation of collocations that Firth called
for, and su corpora are indeed drawn on in the preparation of dietionaries,
as well as being exploited in many other ways.
4.5 Corpora and collocations
e present view of many linguists is that the investigation of collocations is
inextricably bound up with the exploitation of computerized corpora, for the
simple reason that only through the use of su corpora – with their vast
amounts of authentic data and their concordancing soware – is it possible to
come to any reliable conclusions about whi words ‘keep company’ with
whi. Collocations were certainly studied before the advent of electronic
corpora; the work of J.R. Firth in the 1950s has already been mentioned in this
connection, and before him, in the 1930s, another British linguist, H.E. Palmer,
was already deep into collocational resear; however, there is no doubt that
the creation of su corpora has enabled this area of resear really to come
into its own.
e potentialities of electronic corpora in this regard have been
dramatically demonstrated by the COBUILD project. COBUILD (Collins
Birmingham University International Language Database) involves a
partnership between the Collins (now HarperCollins) publishing house and the
Sool of English of the University of Birmingham. It has assembled a vast
and still growing corpus of naturally occurring English data, now known as
the Bank of English. Recent reports indicate that the corpus currently runs to
more than 320 million words of spoken and wrien English text. ere were,
admiedly, corpora in existence before COBUILD, and other corpora were
developed alongside and aer COBUILD; however, the COBUILD project went
further than its predecessors in showing how useful a corpus could be not only
to researers focused on language description but also in very practical
domains su as the production of dictionaries and language-teaing
materials, and, in so doing, it blazed a trail for the many corpusbased projects
that followed and imitated it. It should perhaps also be noted in the present
context that the director and leading light of the COBUILD project, John
Sinclair, was deeply involved in collocational resear long before the project
was ever thought of, and that he always saw one of the principal aractions of
the project as being its capacity to shed light on collocational issues.
Materials and language descriptions arising out of the COBUILD project
base their definitions and illustrations on the combinatorial paerns
discernible in the corpus. e following is a typical COBUILD dictionary entry.
e meaning it assigns reflects an exhaustive analysis of the environments in
whi the word in question has been found to occur in the corpus — some of
whi are cited in the entry.
veritable/vεritǝbǝl/ is used to emphasize a description of something and
used to suggest that, although the description might seem exaggerated, it
is really accurate. EG The water descended like a veritable Niagara … I’m
sure the audience has a veritable host of questions … … a veritable
passion for the cinema.
We can see the same kind of approa in the Collins COBUILD English
Grammar, as the following excerpt demonstrates.
Many nouns can be used aer ‘make’.
… ere is usually a related verb whi can be used followed by a
reported clause.
She made a remark about the weather.
Allen remarked that at times he thought he was in America.
Now and then she makes a comment on something .
Henry Cecil commented that the ground was too firm.
Here is a list of nouns whi are used aer ‘make’ and have a related
reporting verb:
arrangement confession protest suggestion
claim decision remark
comment promise signal
Other nouns used with ‘make’ express spee actions other than reports
or describe ange, results, effort, and so on.
I’ll make some enquiries for you.
They agreed to make a few minor changes.
McEnroe was desperate to make one last big effort to win Wimbledon
again .
Here is a list of other nouns whi are used aer ‘make’:
appeal contribution noise sound
aempt effort point spee
ange enquiry progress start
arge impression recovery success
eoretical/descriptive linguists drawing on the COBUILD Bank of English use
it as a basis for making statements about how words are combined that go
beyond syntactic generalizations. For example, faced with a sentence su as
The bushes and trees were blowing in the wind, but the rain had stopped, a
syntactician would wish to analyse it in terms of finite clauses, noun phrases
and verb phrases; the collocationally oriented corpus linguist, on the other
hand, would be inclined to look at the whole range of instances in the
databank in whi combinations like blow-wind, rain-stop occurred in order
to be able to comment on the lexical frame ‘SOMETHING blowing in the
wind’ (whi, as it turns out, is a great deal more likely to occur than the
lexical frame ‘the wind blowing SOMETHING’) or to be able to note that rain
followed by stop is mu more typical that rain followed by end.
Some further electronic English-language corpora whi are frequently
referred to in the lexicological literature, and whi to a greater or lesser
extent have been used in collocational resear, are mentioned below. We
shall be revisiting some of them, as well as the COBUILD corpus, in Chapter
10 when we return to the topic of dictionary-making.
• the Brown Corpus (Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day
American English), started in 1961, comprising one million words of wrien
American English;
• the LOB Corpus (London, Oslo, Bergen Corpus), compiled between 1970 and
1978, involving the collaboration of the University of Lancaster, the
University of Oslo and the Norwegian Computing Centre for the
Humanities at Bergen, comprising one million words of wrien British
English;
• the London-Lund Corpus, available since 1987, based mostly on the
University of Lund’s Survey of Spoken English (1975), whi in turn was
mostly based on the (non-computerized) Survey of English Usage compiled
at University College London (1959), comprising approximately half a
million words of spoken English;
• the Longman-Lancaster Corpus, dating from 1996, comprising 30 million
words of spoken and wrien English from British and American sources;
• the BNC (British National Corpus), compiled between 1991 and 1995,
involving collaboration between Oxford University Press, Longman
Chambers Harrap, the University of Lancaster, the British Library and
Oxford University Computing Service, comprising 90 million words of
wrien British English and 10 million words of spoken British English;
• the CIC (Cambridge International Corpus – formerly known as the
Cambridge Language Survey ), available since 1996, an initiative of
Cambridge University Press, comprising 95 million words of wrien English
(the spoken language annexe of CIC, compiled in collaboration with the
University of Noingham and comprising five million words, is known as
the CANCODE – Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in
English).
4.6 Creativity and prefabrication in language use
Linguists have put a good deal of emphasis in the last three or four decades on
what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘creative’ dimension of language use – on the
fact that knowledge of a language enables one to ‘understand an indefinite
number of expressions that are new to one’s experience … and … to produce
su expressions’. While it is undoubtedly true that we can and do use
language innovatively and open-endedly in precisely the way Chomsky
suggests, it certainly is not the case that our use of language is exclusively
‘creative’ in this sense. Large numbers of the sequences of words that we
deploy and encounter in everyday spee and writing are clearly
combinations that we have available to us as more or less prefabricated
unks – su combinations ranging from fixed idiomatic expressions like cats
and dogs (= ‘hard’ as in It’s raining cats and dogs) to ‘semi-fixed’
combinations su as to know one’s onions/stuff and to know/be up to all the
tricks. An analysis of authentic data in preparation for the Oxford Dictionary
of current idiomatic English, for example, yielded literally thousands of su
stable multi-word units. Similarly, it has been estimated that the Oxford
Dictionary of phrasal verbs and the Oxford Dictionary of English idioms
between them contain some 15,000 multi-word expressions. ere is also
psyolinguistic evidence to suggest that fixed expressions and formulas have
an important economizing role in spee production; that is to say that they
enable us to produce spee whi is very mu more fluent than it would be
if we had to start from scrat and build up piece by piece every expression
and every structure we use.
is notion has been taken a stage further by Sinclair, on the basis of his
experience with the COBUILD data, and developed into the so-called ‘idiom
principle’. (e term idiom is used here with a mu broader application than
in 4.3, where mention was made of its more usual usage as a label for fixed
expressions with meanings that cannot be deduced from the meanings of their
component parts). e idiom principle states that, when we are puing
together phrases in a language we know, although it may look as if we
operating on the basis of open oices at every stage (the only constraints
being that what we produce has to be broadly grammatical and make sense),
what we are doing most of the time is drawing on our knowledge of pre-
constructed or semi-preconstructed phrases that constitute single oices,
varying lexical content within the osen paerns to a fairly limited extent.
Why we do this, rather than going through the process of constructing new
phrases out of individual words every time, may, says Sinclair, have to do with
our capitalization on the fact that similar situations recur in life and tend to be
referred to in similar ways; it may have to do with the fact that we in any case
prefer to economize on effort whenever possible; and/or it may have to do
with the fact that the demands made on us by the extreme rapidity of spee
production are su that we have to exploit every opportunity to make
savings on processing time.
Some examples of the kind of thing Sinclair has in mind are:
• the phrase set eyes on, whi usually has a pronoun subject and whi is
usually associated with either never or an expression su as the moment,
the first time – as in I’ve never set eyes on him; The first time he set eyes on
her he knew he would always love her etc.;
• the phrasal verb set about, whi (in the sense of ‘begin’) tends to be
associated with a following (usually transitive) verb in the -ing form – as in
We set about packing our bags; Bill finally set about earning some real
money etc.;
• the verb happen, whi tends to occur in a particular kind of semantic
environment – one where unpleasant occurrences, su as accidents, are
being referred to – as in No one knew how the catastrophe has happened;
Such appalling events can never be allowed to happen again etc.
4.7 Collocations, the lexicon and lexical units
What are the implications of collocational paerning for our conception of the
lexicon and in particular for our understanding of what constitutes a lexical
unit? If the lexicon represents that part of our knowledge of language that
revolves around words, then, clearly, collocations have to be seen as included
in the lexicon. It is obvious from all that has been said that we need to know
about collocational paerns in order to function smoothly in lexical terms in
either our mother tongue or any other language we may know. Anyone
listening to news reports in English about recent military conflicts, for
example, who did not know the terrible meanings that emerge when ethnic
‘keeps company’ with cleansing, collateral with damage or friendly with fire
would be deeply mystified by what they heard. Similarly, and on a lighter
note, anyone trying to express great excitement and pleasure in English who
used a combination su as I’m on top of the moon (rather than I’m on top of
the world or I’m over the moon ) would certainly run the risk of
incomprehension.
With regard to defining the lexical unit, one approa is to take the word as
the typical lexical unit and to say that a group of words can be considered as a
lexical unit only if its meaning is associated with the group as a whole rather
than a sum of the individual meanings of the constituent words. According to
this view black is a lexical unit; so is blackbird (as opposed to black bird),
since blackbird denotes a particular species of bird (turdus merula) rather than
just a bird of a particular colour; and so is in black and white (as in He wants
it in black and white), since the meaning of this whole expression (‘wrien’,
‘in writing’) cannot be arrived at simply by combining the normal meanings
of the individual items out of whi it is formed.
ere are at least two possible objections to this approa. On the one hand,
the issue of semantic transparency or opacity in relation to multi-word
expressions (i.e. whether or not the meaning of a expression can or cannot be
seen as a straightforward composite of its component words) is somewhat
problematic. It is not the case that multi-word expressions are either self-
evidently transparent or self-evidently opaque. ere are degrees of opacity.
us, blackbird is less opaque than ladybird (whi in many varieties of
English is the word used for the insect that in American English is called
ladybug ); and ladybird (given that ladybirds do at least fly like birds!) is less
opaque than strictly for the birds (= ‘trivial’, ‘uninteresting’). Even many
apparently transparent examples like fish and chips turn out on closer
inspection to have opaque aspects; thus, in order to qualify to be described as
fish and chips a culinary product has to involve one of a particular range of
types of fish (sardine, trout or tuna will not do) and has to have been cooked
and presented in a particular way.
Another problem is that using a purely semantic criterion is a rather narrow
way of looking at the maer. It leaves out of account the question of whether
in the use of a particular expression – whatever its degree of semantic opacity
– the individual words are selected and are perceived to function singly or
together. For example, the following expressions are all relatively transparent,
but there is lile doubt that they are selected and understood as wholes rather
than being processed in a word by word manner.
midnight
good-natured
diesel engine
bread and butter
say it with flowers
As we have seen, it has been suggested that most of our use of language relies
on the exploitation of collections of words that to a greater or lesser extent
function together as entire paages. Whether or not this is true, it does seem
clear that groups of words whi are transparent in their meaning may
nevertheless operate as units.
To sum up, even a conservative approa to the question of what counts as
a lexical unit based on a criterion of semantic unitariness has to concede that
there are lexical units whi consist of more than one word. An approa
whi makes reference to the broader issue of the selection and perception of
multi-word expressions as wholes (whatever their degree of semantic
transparency/opacity) yields the conclusion that many multi-word expressions
whi are semantically transparent are none the less to be seen as lexical units.
4.8 Summary
is apter looked at the commonly observed fact that certain words
habitually ‘keep company’ with certain other words. It showed that a
particular word may have a wider or more restricted collocational range, that
is, enter into frequent partnership with a greater or lesser quantity and variety
of other words; it explored the relationship between compound words and
fixed expressions, concluding that there was no hard and fast way of
distinguishing between these two categories of collocation; it toued on
collocational description in traditional lexicography; it discussed the way in
whi collocational resear has been enhanced by the advent of electronic
corpora; it reported on evidence from corpus-based resear that language
users incorporate very large numbers of pre-constructed and semi-
preconstructed multi-word expressions into their spee, and noted a
suggestion that most language use relies on sequences of words that are to a
greater or lesser extent prefabricated; and, finally, it examined the implications
of the results of collocational resear for our understanding of the nature of
lexical units.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 4.2 .
e treatment of the notion of collocational range, whi originates in
A. McIntosh, ‘Paerns and ranges’ in A. McIntosh and M. A. K. Halliday,
Patterns of language: papers in general, descriptive and applied linguistics
(London: Longman, 1966), owes mu to Chapter 3 of R. Carter’s book
Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives (second edition, London:
Routledge, 1998). Carter’s apter was in fact also a valuable source for mu
of the rest of the discussion of collocations.
See 4.3.
e heavy smoker, criminal lawyer and artificial florist examples are
borrowed from F. Palmer’s Grammar (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, 45, 54).
See 4.4. e illustrative dictionary entry in 4.4 are taken from the 1965 reprint
of J. E. Mansion (ed.), Harrap’s Shorter French and English Dictionary
(London: George G. Harrap & Company, 1940, 259). A concise account of
Firth’s collocational approa to lexicographical issues – in his own words – is
to be found on pages 26–7 of his article ‘A synopsis of linguistic theory’ in
Studies in linguistic analysis (Special Volume of the Philological Society,
Oxford: Blawell, 1957).
See 4.5. On the question of the connection between electronic corpus-based
studies and collocation resear, a typical pronouncement is that of Moon:
‘collocation studies are now inevitably associated with corpus studies, since it
is difficult and arguably pointless to study su things except through using
large amounts of real data’ (R. Moon, ‘Vocabulary connections: multi-word
items in English’, in N. Smi and M. McCarthy (eds), Vocabulary:
description, acquisition and pedagogy , Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997, 41). H. E. Palmer’s work, and in particular his Second interim
report on English collocations (Tokyo: Institute for Resear in English
Teaing, 1933) is cited by G. Kennedy in his Introduction to corpus linguistics
(London: Longman, 1998, 108).
See 4.5. e two main sources for the description of the COBUILD project in
4.5 are: J. Sinclair (ed.), Looking up: an account of the COBUILD project in
lexical computing and the development of the Collins COBUILD English
Language Dictionary (London: Collins, 1987) and J. Sinclair, Corpus,
concordance, collocation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). e figure of
320 million words is quoted by R. Carter (Vocabulary, London: Routledge,
1998, 167). e COBUILD dictionary entry is cited and discussed by R.
Krishnamurthy in his article ‘e process of compilation’ (in J. Sinclair (ed.),
Looking up, London: Collins, 1987). e extract from the Collins COBUILD
English grammar (London: Collins, 1990, 150–1) is taken from the section
entitled ‘Verbs with lile meaning: delexical verbs’. e brief discussion of the
sentence The bushes and trees were blowing in the wind, but the rain had
stopped is based on R. Moon’s comments on p. 41 of her article ‘Vocabulary
connections: multi-word items in English’ (in N. Smi and M. McCarthy
(eds), Vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
See 4.6.e Chomsky quote is to be found on p. 100 of N. Chomsky, Language
and mind (enlarged edition, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovi, 1972). e
report on the resear leading to the Oxford Dictionary of current idiomatic
English (eds A. Cowie, R. Main and I. A. McCaig, two volumes, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1975/1983) is that of A. Cowie in his article ‘Stable
and creative aspects of vocabulary use’ (in R. Carter and M. McCarthy (eds),
Vocabulary and language teaching , London: Longman, 1988). e Oxford
Dictionary of phrasal verbs and the Oxford Dictionary of English idioms are
both published in Oxford by Oxford University Press (1993); the quantitative
figure put on their content (15,000 multi-word expressions) is cited by R.
Moon (‘Vocabulary connections: multiword items in English’, in N. Smi
and M. McCarthy (eds), Vocabulary: description, acquisition and pedagogy,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 48). Psyolinguistic evidence
regarding the facilitating role of prefabricated paerns in spee production is
referred to by, among others, A. Peters in The units of language acquisition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). e discussion of John
Sinclair’s idiom principle is based on the section entitled e idiom principle’
in his book Corpus, concordance collocation (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991, 110–15); the examples used in this context are taken from pp. 111–12 of
this book.
See 4.7. e importance of the contribution of collocational knowledge to
linguistic competence, referred to in 4.7, is discussed by, among others, M.
Benson (‘Collocations and idioms’, in R. Ilson (ed.), Dictionaries, lexicography
and language learning , Oxford: Pergamon/e British Council), G. Kjellmer
(‘A mint of phrases’, in K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds), English corpus
linguistics: studies in honour of Jan Svartvik, London: Longman, 1991), and T.
Van Der Wouden (Negative contexts: collocation, polarity and multiple
negation , London: Routledge, 1997). e semantically based approa to the
definition of lexical units summarized in this section is essentially that
proposed by D. A. Cruse in his book Lexical semantics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986, Chapter 2). e blackbird, ladybird and fish
and chips examples are all borrowed from Cruse, this source.
Good introductions to the collocational aspect of the lexicon are to be found in
Chapter 3 of R. Carter’s Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives (second
edition, London: Routledge, 1998), in Chapter 9 of E. Hat and C. Brown’s
Vocabulary, semantics and language education (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), in R. Moon’s above-mentioned article in N. Smi
and M. McCarthy’s edited volume Vocabulary: description, acquisition and
pedagogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and in the first
section of T. Van Der Wouden’s Negative contexts: collocation, polarity and
multiple negation (Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1997).
Numerous books on the use of corpora in collocational resear (and linguistic
resear generally) are now available. Some of the relevant titles are:
K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds), English corpus linguistics: studies in
honour of Jan Svartvik (London: Longman, 1991);
G. Kennedy, Introduction to corpus linguistics (London: Longman, 1998);
T. McEnery and A. Wilson, Corpus linguistics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1996);
J. Sinclair (ed.), Looking up: an account of the COBUILD project in lexical
computing and the development of the Collins COBUILD English
Language Dictionary (London: Collins, 1987); J. Sinclair, Corpus,
concordance, collocation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991);
J. omas and M. Short (eds), Using corpora for language research: studies
in the honour of Geoffrey Leech (London: Longman, 1996).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. At the beginning of the apter some cliés commonly used in journalism
were mentioned (breaking news, law and order etc.). Try to think of five more
su cliés in English and also try to think of one or two in any other
language you know.
2. In 4.2 we looked at the notion of collocational range, comparing the very
wide collocational ranges of nice with the very restricted collocational range
of addled. Consider the following words and try to categorize them likewise
according to their collocational range – that is to say, into items with very
wide collocational ranges and items with mu more restricted ranges. In ea
case give examples of collocations in whi they occur.
big bright centrifugal improper
loud premeditated rancid right
sad short trenchant unwarranted
3. In our discussion of fixed expressions and compound words in 4.3 we noted
that some compounds and fixed expressions are semantically transparent
(i.e. have meanings whi are essentially combinations of the meanings of
their component parts) and that others are semantically opaque (i.e. have
meanings whi are not simply sums of the meanings of their component
parts). Consider the following compounds and fixed expressions and try to
decide whi are semantically transparent and whi are semantically
opaque. In the case of those whi are semantically opaque demonstrate
their opacity by providing definitions of their meanings.
air circulation system eye strain to pop off
airhead to see eye to eye to pop the question
blue skies foxglove to look on the sunny side
blue language to go fox-hunting sun-dried
a weekend in the good grief! to sing out of tune
country
country music grievous bodily he who pays the piper calls the
harm tune
4. In 4.4 we saw some examples of the way in whi information about
collocational paerns have been incorporated into traditional dictionary
entries. Imagine you are writing dictionary entries for the following words
and decide what kind of collocational information and examples you would
include in these cases.
day all fire high middle rat spirit tell twist way
5. It seems that some kinds of writing are full of well-worn expressions and
phrases, while others are aracterized by a relative absence of frequent
collocations. Horoscopes tend to fall into the former category and poetry
into the laer. Have a look at some horoscopes and some poems and try to
decide why the writers of these texts took the approa they did in relation
to the use of collocations.
5
Lexis and meaning
5.1 Words making the difference
It is quite obvious to any user of any language that there is an intimate
connection between the lexicon and meaning. A brief glance at the following
two brief passages – whi are identical but for one word – will persuade
anyone who needs convincing just how mu difference to the meaning of an
entire stret of language a single word can make.
The interrogating officer moved closer to the prisoner.
‘Let’s see how you like this’, he said.
He then hit the prisoner with a truly vicious question .
The interrogating officer moved closer to the prisoner.
‘Let’s see how you like this’, he said.
He then hit the prisoner with a truly vicious truncheon .
Of course, the use of different sequences of words does not always yield vastly
different overall meanings. Indeed, the English expression in other words
normally introduces a phrase or a sentence whi is differently formulated
from but similar in meaning to what went before it, for example:
I worship the ground you stand on, dearest Patricia. I bless the day that
you were born, and I rejoice in every breath you take. In other words,
sweet Patty, I love you.
Usually, in su cases, as in the above example, some kind of summary of the
preceding material is involved.
ere is also the fact that individual words may resemble ea other
semantically to the point where they are synonymous, i.e. can replace ea
other in some contexts without any noticeable ange in meaning being
involved, for example:
They stumbled into the sitting room and collapsed on to the couch.
They stumbled into the sitting room and collapsed on to the sofa.
The questions on this paper were too hard for us to answer.
The questions on this paper were too difficult for us to answer.
Josie and I are the best of pals now .
Josie and I are the best of friends now .
However, it is generally true to say that the meaning of what we say or write
is carried to a very large extent by the words that we oose, and that
anging words more oen than not anges meanings, for example:
Sue lives up North, well in the Midlands really, not too far from Leicester.
It says here in the paper that he lived off ‘immortal earnings’. I suppose
they mean ‘immoral’.
I used to jog around the park, but now I just walk!
In what follows we shall explore some of the ways in whi linguists have
tried to come to grips with the relationship between words and meaning. We
shall start by looking at the notion that lexical meaning is essentially about
expressions being applied to objects, places, people, aributes, states, actions,
processes etc. in the ‘real world’. We shall then consider that dimension of
meaning whi has to do with relations between words. Our next port of call
will be the suggestion that the meaning of any given word can be analysed
into a set of sense components. Finally, we shall examine some ‘cognitive’
approaes to word meaning – that is, approaes whi are based on the
idea that the ways in whi linguistic meanings are constructed and organized
come out of our experience of the world and our perception and processing of
that experience.
5.2 Meaning seen as reference or denotation
It is self-evident that language conveys meaning partly by as it were pointing
to various kinds of phenomena in the ‘real world’. In fact, physically pointing
to something can oen perform the same function as naming it. For example,
if I am in the queue for lun in the university canteen, and, on reaing the
servery, I am asked for my order, I may say ‘e egg curry please’, or I may
point to the steaming concoction in question, or I may do both. When a
linguistic expression ‘points’ in this way in a particular context to a specific
entity, aribute, state, process etc., linguists talk about an act of reference, the
phenomenon thus identified being labelled as the referent.
ere is another way in whi linguistic expressions can be applied to ‘real
world’ phenomena. Instead of piing out a specific phenomenon in a
particular context, an expression may identify a whole class of phenomena.
For instance, in the following sentence the expression the wolf does not refer
to one particular wolf but to an entire category of mammals.
The wolf is a much misunderstood animal.
Similarly with baked beans and Sunday night in the sentences below.
Even though they taste nice, baked beans are actually quite good for you.
Sunday night is as quiet as the grave around these parts.
Many linguists call this kind of meaning denotation, labelling the class of
entities to whi an expression is applied as its denotatum (plural: denotata).
(However, it should be noted that the terms refer, reference and referent are
oen used in a broad sense to cover both reference as defined earlier and
denotation.)
Traditionally, language has been seen as communicating meanings via
concepts constructed out of our experience of the relevant denotata. On this
view, ea linguistic form is associated with a concept, and ea concept is the
mental representation of a phenomenon in the ‘real world’. is notion is
sometimes represented diagrammatically as shown in Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.1 Linguistic forms associated with ‘real world’ phenomena.
One difficulty with this kind of representation is that, in implying that ea
particular form is uniquely associated with a single particular concept, it fails
to provide any account of cases where more than one expression is associated
with a single meaning or of cases where a single expression is associated with
a more than one meaning (see below) and there is also the problem that this
whole approa leads to an ‘atomistic’ view of semantics whi treats ea
form and its meaning as isolated and self-contained.
ere are other reasons too for taking a wary approa to the notion that
meaning is only about expressions being applied to ‘real world’ phenomena,
whether referentially or denotationally. For one thing, there are words whose
meaning simply cannot be accounted for in this way – words like if, and,
should, nevertheless. All of these items have meaning, but certainly not by
virtue of identifying observable phenomena or classes of phenomena in the
‘real world’. ere are also expressions that relate to phenomena whi do not
exist – mermaid, tooth-fairy, unicorn etc. Can we say that su expressions
have no meaning just because they have no corresponding denotata in the
‘real world’? Certainly not.
Also worth noting is that two (or more) expressions may be applied to
exactly the same phenomenon and yet have different meanings. e classic
example of this is the designation of the planet Venus as both the Morning
Star and the Evening Star (because – owing to its brightness – Venus is still
visible at dawn and already visible at dusk). e expressions Morning Star and
Evening Star clearly have different meanings, and yet they are applied to
precisely the same object. Some further illustrations of expressions with
different meanings being applied to the same phenomenon follow.
the Lionheart half-empty to tell lies
King Richard I of England half-full to be economical with the
truth
5.3 Structuralist perspectives on meaning
Mu of the discussion in previous apters has been concerned with structure
of various kinds – sentence-structure, the internal structure of words, sound-
structure etc. is is very mu the hallmark of the whole approa to
language taken by modern linguistics, whi is usually taken to date from the
work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the generally recognized
‘founding father’ of what became known as structuralism. According to the
structuralist conception, in the words of the British linguist John Lyons, ‘every
language is cut to a unique paern’, and the units of a given language ‘can be
identified only in terms of their relationships with other units in the same
language’. What this view implies in respect of lexical meaning is that it has to
be seen in the light of relations between expressions in the same language
system.
is is not to say that structuralism denies the relationship between
linguistic forms and phenomena in the ‘real world’. It does, however, insist
that this relationship is only part of the story. Saussure draws an analogy in
this connection with monetary systems. Just as the value of a given coin (e.g.
five francs) is based, he says, both on the kinds of goods it will buy and on its
relationship with other coins in the same system (e.g. one franc), so, says
Saussure, the ‘value’ of a linguistic unit derives both from the concepts for
whi it may be ‘exanged’ and from its set of relationships with other
words in the language.
e first manifestation of structuralist semantics was lexical field theory.
is is an approa based on the idea that it is possible to identify within the
vocabulary of a language particular sets of expressions (lexical fields) covering
particular areas of meaning (semantic fields) where the lexical organization is
su that the relevant lexical units precisely mark out ea other’s territory, so
to speak. One of the early exponents of lexical field theory, Jost Trier, wrote in
terms of ‘a net of words’ cast over meaning ‘in order to capture and organize
it and have it in demarcated concepts’. A mu-cited example of a semantic
field is that of colour. Colour is an undifferentiated continuum in nature; it is
organized into red, orange, yellow, green etc. by the words whi are used to
identify particular areas of the spectrum. Moreover, different languages divide
up colour differently. For example, Russian recognizes two colours in the blue
range where English recognizes only one; the words Russian goluboj and sinij
– whi are customarily translated as ‘light blue’ and ‘dark blue’ respectively
– are in fact understood as identifying quite distinct colours, not different
varieties of the same colour.
e fact that lexical field theory talked so mu about concepts was,
however, off-puing for some structuralist linguists, especially North
American structuralists who took their inspiration from the work of the
American linguist Leonard Bloomfield. Bloomfield was determined to see
linguistics recognized as a fully-fledged science and so he and his followers
were interested only in those areas of language whi were amenable to
rigorous objective analysis. Meaning, defined in terms of unobservable
concepts, did not come into that category as far as the Bloomfieldians were
concerned, and they saw the scientifically accurate definition of meaning in
terms of the ‘real world’ phenomena to whi words were applied as being
possible for only a minority of expressions. Bloomfield claimed, for example,
that defining the names of minerals was relatively straightforward thanks to
the resources made available by emistry and mineralogy; the problems
arose in the cases of words like love or hate, ‘whi concern situations that
have not been accurately classified’, these laer being ‘in the great majority’.
is is a very limited and naïve view of meaning. On the other hand, the
dependence of lexical field theory on the notion of conceptually defined
semantic fields is undoubtedly a weakness. ere are certainly some areas of
meaning – like colour, the human body etc. – whi have a clearly identifiable
objective reality whi can be detaed from other areas of meaning, but
what about a semantic field su as the ‘intellectual domain of meaning’, on
whi Jost Trier did his pioneering work? For Trier the ‘intellectual domain’
covers a whole range of types of knowledge – solarly, social, mystical,
tenical, aesthetic – but his definition of the domain is essentially arbitrary;
for some researers the ‘intellectual domain of meaning’ might be mu
more narrowly defined, and for others it might be more broadly defined.
It was the above-mentioned British linguist, John Lyons, who found a
widely acceptable way forward for a structuralist approa to lexical meaning.
He anowledges that aspect of meaning whi derives from some
expressions’ relationship with the world beyond language – their application
in terms of reference and denotation as defined earlier. However, in common
with Saussure and the lexical field theorists, Lyons also recognizes that the
meaning of an individual expression crucially depends on the network of
relations with other expressions into whi it enters. is laer aspect of
meaning Lyons labels sense, and his approa to the analysis of sense is su
that it does not require the prior identification of a conceptual area or
semantic field; the lexical field or subsystem in this perspective is defined in
terms of the observable relations between lexical expressions within particular
contexts.
is last point about context needs emphasizing because of the fact that a
given expression may have more than one meaning. For example, the word
mouth may refer to a facial feature in some contexts (e.g. He has rather a
small mouth) and to a geographical feature in other (e.g. The mouth of this
river is difficult to navigate). Where the meanings aaed to a given form
are clearly connected in this kind of way, linguists are happy to regard them as
meanings of the same word and to talk about multiple meaning or polysemy.
ere are, however, other cases where a particular form is associated with
more than one meaning and the meanings in question are totally unrelated
(e.g. bank denoting a financial institution and bank denoting the edge of a
river, canal etc.). In this sort of instance, linguists consider that two distinct
words are involved whi simply happen to coincide formally, the term used
to signify this situation being homonymy. Homonyms may be completely
identical – as in bank-bank; they may be identical only at the phonological
level – as in meet-meat (in whi case they are called homophones); or they
may be identical only at the orthographic level – as in row /rau/ = ‘propel a
boat using oars’ and row /raʊ/ = ‘quarrel’ – (in whi case they are called
homographs). Unfortunately, it is not necessarily always crystal-clear in
specific instances whether polysemy or homonymy is involved.
With regard to the kinds of relations Lyons has in mind, he distinguishes
between those whi are paradigmatic (or substitutional) in nature and those
whi are syntagmatic (or combinatorial). Paradigmatic relations are defined
as those whi hold ‘between intersubstitutable members of the same
grammatical category’, and syntagmatic relations are defined as those whi
hold ‘typically, though not necessarily, between expressions of different
grammatical categories (e.g. between nouns and adjectives, between verbs
and adverbs etc.), whi can be put together in grammatically well-formed
combinations (or constructions)’. Syntagmatic sense-relations are clearly one
aspect of the colligational and collocational dimensions of the lexicon, whi
have already been discussed (in apters 2 and 3, respectively). For example,
the fact that the adjective rancid combines with only a limited range of nouns
(butter, lard, oil etc.) can be seen as a set of semantic relationships, since the
meanings of the nouns in question are clearly the determining factor. As far as
paradigmatic relations are concerned, Lyons focuses on synonymy, hyponymy
and incompatibility, whi he defines and demonstrates in terms of logical
relations between sentences, or meaning postulates. e two important logical
notions that Lyons uses in his approa are those of entailment and negation.
One sentence entails another sentence in a given context if the one necessarily
implies the other (e.g. I am a man entails I am a human being where the two
Is refer to the same individual. One sentence negates another in a given
context if the one necessarily denies the truth of the other (e.g. I am a man
negates I am a centipede where the two Is refer to the same individual).
Synonymy
e relation of synonymy has already been briefly mentioned in 5.1. It is
defined by Lyons in terms of minimally different sentences entailing ea
other. Where two or more sentences entail ea other and differ by only one
expression, the distinguishing expressions are taken to be synonymous. For
example, the following sentences all entail ea other.
Ethelred the Unready died in 1016.
Ethelred the Unready expired in 1016.
Ethelred the Unready passed away in 1016.
Ethelred the Unready popped off in 1016.
Ethelred the Unready kicked the bucket in 1016.
Ethelred the Unready snuffed it in 1016.
ey differ by only the expressions underlined, and so, according to the terms
of the above definition, all of these expressions are synonymous. e above
examples illustrate two further points whi are relevant to the rest of the
discussion of lexical relations. e first is that su relations can hold between
individual words (e.g. die, expire), between individual words and multi-word
expressions (e.g. die, snuff it) and between multi-word expressions (pass
away, kick the bucket). e second point is that it is not a condition for the
establishment of a particular semantic relation that it should hold in all
contexts. For example, there are instances where the expression kick the
bucket is interpreted literally, as in: The window-cleaner tripped and kicked
the bucket which was standing at the bottom of his ladder, spilling water all
over the pavement. Obviously, this last sentence does not entail The window-
cleaner tripped and expired which was standing at the bottom of his ladder,
spilling water all over the pavement; accordingly, in this context kick the
bucket is not synonymous with expire, die, pass away etc. Issues of contextual
appropriacy also arise: the contexts in whi we might use snuff it in the
above sense would tend not to be the same as those in whi we would use
expire. For these reasons, statements about semantic relations between lexical
expressions always have to take context into consideration.
Two further examples of sets of synonyms are set out and illustrated below.
Aid, assistance, help
The crisis cannot be solved without the aid of the international
community .
The crisis cannot be solved without the assistance of the international
community .
The crisis cannot be solved without the help of the international
community .
Fast, quily, speedily, swily
He was travelling so fast that everything around him became a blur.
He was travelling so quickly that everything around him became a blur.
He was travelling so speedily that everything around him became a blur.
He was travelling so swiftly that everything around him became a blur.
Hyponymy
Hyponymy, the relation between more specific (hyponymous) terms (e.g.
spaniel) and less specific (superordinate) terms (e.g. dog ) is defined in terms of
one-way rather than two-way entailment. us I own a spaniel entails I own
a dog , but I own a dog does not entail I own a spaniel. Hyponymous relations
can be represented as inverted tree diagrams in whi the lower intersections
or nodes represent terms whi are hyponymous to the ones above them, and
these laer in turn are hyponymous to the ones above them. us in the
(incomplete) Figure 5.2 below cocker spaniel is hyponymous to spaniel, whi
is in turn hyponymous to dog, whi is in turn hyponymous to mammal,
whi is in turn hyponymous to animal.
Another aracteristic of hyponymy is that it is what semanticists call
transitive, in the sense that the relation can be seen as ‘in transit’ all the way
along the line, so that if X is hyponymous to Y and Y is hyponymous to Z then
X is hyponymous to Z . us, cocker spaniel is hyponymous not only to spaniel
but also to dog, mammal and animal.
Further examples of expressions in hyponymous-superordinate
relationships are given below.
Figure 5.2 Hyponymous relations.
Claret, wine, drink
You’ll find some claret on the table.
You’ll find some wine on the table.
You’ll find some drink on the table.
Claret is hyponymous to wine; wine is hyponymous to drink; and claret is
also hyponymous to drink.
Hatba, car, vehicle
The firm bought him a new hatchback.
The firm bought him a new car.
The firm bought him a new vehicle.
Hatchback is hyponymous to car; car is hyponymous to vehicle; and
hatchback is also hyponymous to vehicle.
Incompatibility
With regard to incompatibility, this can be defined in general terms, and also
more specifically for particular types of incompatibility, namely,
complementarity, polar antonymy and converseness. Incompatibility in
general is simply defined in terms of negative entailment: Johnny’s shirt is
pink entails Johnny’s shirt is not green; Johnny’s shirt is green entails
Johnny’s shirt is not pink; and so pink and green can be taken to be
incompatible. Similarly with:
Metal, wood
The chair is entirely made of metal.
The chair is entirely made of wood.
Plain, striped
The tie I was wearing was plain .
The tie I was wearing was striped.
Complementarity
Turning now to particular subcategories of incompatibility, let us begin with
the relation of complementarity (also known as simple antonymy or binary
antonymy ), whi is a sort of ‘one or the other’ relation. In the case of
complementarity not only does the assertion of one lexical item in a
complementary pair (su as alive and dead) imply the denial of the other but
the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other. us Nessie is alive
entails Nessie is not dead, and Nessie is not dead entails Nessie is alive. Some
further examples follow.
Pass, fail
Janet passed the exam. Janet failed the exam.
Janet did not pass the exam. Janet did not fail the exam.
Janet passed the exam entails Janet did not fail the exam; Janet failed the
exam entails Janet did not pass the exam; Janet did not pass the exam entails
Janet failed the exam; Janet did not fail the exam entails Janet passed the
exam.
True, false
What he says is true. What he says is false.
What he says is not true. What he says is not false.
What he says is true entails What he says is not false;
What he says is false
entails What he says is not true; What he says is not true entails What he say
is false; What he says is not false entails What he says is true.
Polar antonymy
Polar antonymy (also known as gradable antonymy) differs from
complementarity by virtue of the fact that the items in question are not in a
‘one or the other’ relationship but imply the possibility of gradations between
them. e assertion of one of a pair of polar antonyms (e.g. rich and poor)
implies the denial of the other, but the denial of the one does not necessarily
imply the assertion of the other. Liz is rich entails Liz is not poor, and Liz is
poor entails Liz is not rich. However, Liz is not poor does not entail Liz is rich,
and Liz is not rich does not entail Liz is poor, since it is fairly easy to think of
expressions identifying states somewhere between being ri and being poor
(e.g. comfortably off); rich and poor are therefore said to be polar antonyms
with respect to ea other. Where polar antonyms are used there is always
some kind of implicit or explicit standard or norm involved against whi
judgments are made and in the light of whi qualities are aributed. For
instance, the same person, let us say a teaer by the name of Rothsild, may
be described as ri when compared with other members of his/her profession
but poor when compared with other members of the Rothsild family.
Whenever we use the terms rich, poor, comfortably off etc. we always have
some kind of yardsti in mind on the basis of whi we make the evaluations
signalled by the words used. Similarly with the following examples.
Big, small
Tom’s house is big . Tom’s house is small.
Tom’s house is not big . Tom’s house is not small
Tom’s house is big entails Tom’s house is not small, but Tom’s house is no
small does not entail Tom’s house is big. Tom’s house is small entails Tom
house is not big , but Tom’s house is not big does not entail Tom’s house i
small. Intermediate terms between big and small exist, e.g. middle-sized.
Hot, cold
The water is hot. The water is cold.
The water is not hot. The water is not cold.
The water is hot entails The water is not cold. but The water is not cold does
not entail The water is hot. The water is cold entails The water is not hot. bu
The water is not hot does not entail The water is cold. Intermediate terms
between hot and cold exist, e.g. tepid.
Converseness
Finally under the heading of incompatibility, we come to converseness
(otherwise known as relational oppositeness). is is the relation that holds
between expressions in sentences (differing only in respect of the converse
expressions in question) whi imply the denial of ea other but whi, aer
particular kinds of syntactic permutation have been effected, actually entail
ea other: Fred lent the flat to Michael entails the denial of Fred borrowed the
flat from Michael (and vice versa), but Fred lent the flat to Michael entails and
is entailed by Michael borrowed the flat from Fred, and so lend and borrow are
taken to be converses of ea other. Converseness is further exemplified
below.
Buy, sell
Rick bought the car from Sarah. Rick sold the car to Sarah.
Sarah bought the car from Rick. Sarah sold the car to Rick.
Rick bought the car from Sarah entails the denial of Rick sold the car to Sarah
(and vice versa). Sarah bought the car from Rick entails the denial of Sarah
sold the car to Rick (and vice versa). Rick bought the car from Sarah entails
Sarah sold the car to Rick (and vice versa). Rick sold the car to Sarah entails
Sarah bought the car from Rick (and vice versa).
Husband, wife
Hilary is Vivian’s husband. Hilary is Vivian’s wife.
Vivian is Hilary’s husband. Vivian is Hilary’s wife.
Hilary is Vivian’s husband entails the denial of Hilary is Vivian’s wife (and
vice versa). Vivian is Hilary’s husband entails the denial of Vivian is Hilary’
wife (and vice versa). Hilary is Vivian’s husband entails Vivian is Hilary’
wife (and vice versa). Hilary is Vivian’s wife entails Vivian is Hilary’
husband (and vice versa).
Meronymy
A lexical relation not focused on particularly by Lyons but discussed at length
by other lexical semanticists is that of meronymy. is relation covers part-
whole connections. X is a meronym of Y if it can form the subject of the
sentence An X is a part of a Y. Y in su a case is labelled a holonym of X. For
example, finger is a meronym of hand, and hand is a holonym of finger on
the basis of the way in whi the two words feature in the sentence: A finger
is a part of a hand.
As in the case of hyponymy, it is possible to represent meronym–holonym
relations in inverted tree diagrams, where meronymy is represented as the
relationship between a lower node and a higher node. us, in the diagram on
page 75 (Figure 5.3), finger is a meronym of hand, whi in turn is a meronym
of arm, whi in turn is a meronym of body.
However, meronymy is not consistently transitive in the way that
hyponymy is. For example, despite the fact that finger is a meronym of hand
and hand is a meronym of arm, we might have some hesitation about the
sentence A finger is a part of an arm.
Figure 5.3 Meronymy.
Two further examples of meronym–holonym pairs follow.
Petal, flower
A petal is a part of a flower.
Petal is a meronym of flower. Flower is a holonym of petal.
Roof, house
A roof is a part of a house.
Roof is a meronym of house. House is a holonym of roof.
5.4 Componential analysis
Some linguists have tried to take structuralist semantics a stage further by
trying to analyse lexical meaning into components, otherwise labelled
semantic markers or semantic features, whi might underlie sense-relations.
For example, in a componential analysis the relations between human being,
man, woman, boy, girl and lad might be accounted for in terms of plus or
minus values aaing to the components HUMAN, MALE and ADULT. us:
In this perspective the synonymy between boy and lad would, for example, be
seen as explicable in terms of the fact that their features and their feature-
values totally mat (+ HUMAN, + MALE, – ADULT); the hyponymy
between man and human being would be seen as explicable in terms of the
fact that man shares a feature and feature value (+ HUMAN) with human
being and, despite being endowed with other features besides, exhibits no
feature-values whi are at odds with the componential profile of human
being; and the incompatibility between man and woman would be seen as
explicable in terms of the fact that the two words differ in terms of the
respective values aaed to the feature MALE.
is approa to lexical meaning obviously has strong similarities to the
traditional dictionary definition. For example, a typical dictionary definition of
girl would be ‘female ild’ (i.e. – MALE, – ADULT, in the above terms).
Componential analysis has long been used in anthropological linguistics – in,
for example, studies of kinship terms, and it has also been associated with
broadly Chomskyan perspectives, but it has also been favoured by
semanticists without any specific resear task preoccupations or theoretical
predispositions.
Despite its apparently wide appeal, componential analysis has been subject
to a fair amount of criticism. Perhaps most controversial has been the claim
made by some linguists that the semantic components on whi componential
analysis is based are universal – in other words that they underlie the
expression of meaning in all languages and cultures. is claim is undermined
by the fact that even concepts whi in common sense terms look as if they
might be independent of particular cultures turn out on closer inspection not
to be. For example, the feature MALE, whi, in view of its association with a
clear biological category, looks as if it might well be a candidate for
universality, appears distinctly less universal when one considers the fact that
– at least as far as human maleness is concerned – the concept of maleness is
also a product of socio-cultural traditions and perceptions whi diverge
widely from society to society. For example, males are involved to vastly
differing degrees in nurturing and rearing ildren from culture to culture; the
extent to whi and manner in whi they ‘beautify’ themselves is also highly
culture-dependent, as is their role in courtship and in the sexual arena
generally.
Componential analysts insist that the labels are language-neutral and
indeed that they could be replaced by arbitrary symbols ( etc.).
However, in practice, real words from natural languages are used (human,
male, adult etc.) whi inevitably carry the particular cultural baggage of the
language communities with whi they are associated. Moreover, because in
the binary system of values (+ or -) oen adopted by componentialists just one
term is osen to carry either value, componential analysis constantly runs the
risk of seeming to be sexist, ageist and indeed many other ‘ists’. How many
women, for instance, are content to see the meaning of the word woman
being aracterized as including the feature – MALE?
A further frequent arge levelled at componential analysis is that it treats
meaning in too ‘cut and dried’ a manner, and that it cannot therefore deal with
contextual and metaphorical effects. For example, we know that there are
circumstances where the words boy and lad are frequently used for adult
males, in other words as synonyms of man. us, in the context of social
interaction in the dressing-room in the aermath of a rugby mat between
two teams of males of mature years the following sentences are entirely
equivalent:
Are we going for a pint, men?
Are we going for a pint, boys?
Are we going for a pint, lads?
How does an analysis of boy and lad as [+ HUMAN, + MALE, – ADULT] sit
with this? Similarly, the word girlfriend is applied by males and females alike
to female companions of any age from nine to ninety, whi casts more than a
modicum of doubt on the analysis of girl as simply [+ HUMAN, – MALE, -
ADULT].
ese and other points have not gone without response from those who
advocate a componentialist approa, although at least some componentialists
are prepared to admit that componential analysis is not the whole story. On
the other hand, non-componentialists like Lyons are perfectly happy to
recognize that, because it is based on structural notions of sense, componential
analysis is, ‘at least in principle, fully compatible with [other approaes to
structural semantics]’.
5.5 Cognitive approaes to meaning
One version of the componential approa whi appears to meet some of the
above criticisms is that whi starts from the notion of prototypical sense
(otherwise labelled stereotypical, focal or nuclear). e notion of prototype
arises from the work of psyolinguists and cognitive linguists – in other
words from resear whi is interested in how language relates to the mind.
According to advocates of prototype theory, on the basis of our experience of
the world we construct in our minds ‘ideal exemplars’ of particular categories
of ‘real world’ phenomena with ideal sets of aracteristics. ese ‘ideal
exemplars’ are the prototypes postulated by prototype theorists, who suggest
that when we come across further candidates for inclusion in the same
category, we judge them against the prototypes we have established.
However, the mating process is envisaged as flexible. ere does not have
to be a complete mat. us, for example, our prototype of a bird would
undoubtedly include features su as ‘HAS WINGS’, ‘FLIES’, but this would
not prevent us from recognizing a penguin as a bird, even though penguins
have flippers rather than wings and swim rather than fly.
Similarly, our prototype of chair would probably include the feature ‘HAS
FOUR LEGS’, but that would not lead us to reject as airs the kinds of seats
that have appeared in offices and around tables in modern times – items with
single tubular steel stems aaed to wide, heavy bases. On the other hand, in
some instances it is unclear where a particular item fits in terms of
prototypical categories. For example, there are drinking vessels on the market
these days whi are large and have no saucers – and to that extent resemble
the mug prototype, but whi on the other hand have an elegantly curved
cup-like shape – and to that extent resemble the cup prototype. In other
words, prototypes have ‘fuzzy’ boundaries.
e prototypical view of lexical meaning obviously takes us away from
what Lyons calls a ‘elist theory of definition’ whi allows for absolutely
no indeterminacy of meaning. Clearly, prototype theory can cope far beer
than classic ‘elist’ componential analysis with the fact that – in particular
contexts – terms like boy and girl may be applied to adults and that terms like
beast, rat, shark, snake may be applied to human beings. On the other hand,
prototype theory is not without its drawbas either. It appears to relate more
to a traditional denotational view of meaning than to recent structuralist
perspectives. In consequence, the prototypical approa may be not be able to
cope equally well with all types of words; words whi do not identify
concrete ‘real world’ phenomena with observable aracteristics – alas, albeit,
become etc. – would seem to pose some problems in this connection. In any
case, prototype theory has very lile to say about sense, that important
dimension of meaning – explored in 5.3 and also (in its collocational aspects)
in Chapter 4 – whi derives from relations holding between lexical
expressions.
Another approa to meaning whi can be aracterized as cognitive in
nature is that proposed by linguists working within the ‘conceptual semantics’
framework. Conceptual semantics, whose best-known proponent is Ray
Jaendoff, essentially says that semantic structure exactly coincides with
conceptual structure and that, therefore, any semantic analysis is also an
analysis of mental representations. Jaendoff claims that we human beings
come into the world equipped with (a) some very basic concepts (‘primitives’
– su as spatial concepts, concepts of time, even some social concepts like
possession and dominance) whi are applicable to the interpretation and
categorization of a whole variety of experiences, and (b) some principles of
concept-combination. Lexical meanings, on this view, are constructed on the
basis of interaction among: our inborn conceptual primitives, our inborn
concept-combining principles, our experience of the world and our experience
of language.
ere are, therefore, according to conceptual semantics, limits on the kinds
of lexical meanings that we can generate – limits having to do with
‘conceptual well-formedness’ in terms of what kinds of combinations of
concepts our innate primitives and principles will permit. A further aspect of
the conceptual semantics perspective is that, because the process of meaning
formation is combinatorial, lexical meanings so formed can necessarily be
analysed into the concepts out of whi they were composed. However, the
kind of conceptual structure envisaged by Jaendoff goes far beyond the
listing of features with plus or minus signs aaed; for example, he suggests
that lexical entries for physical object words include three-dimensional model
representations – basically the prototypical images posited by prototype
theorists but with more structure.
Conceptual semantics has been criticized on the ground that there is not
sufficient hard evidence to support the view that linguistic meaning exactly
parallels conceptual structure. It is also claimed that linguistic meanings do not
actually reflect the fuzziness of concept structure. For instance, the above-
discussed semantic relation of complementarity (as in true:false) operates as if
truth and falsehood ruled ea other out (as we saw in 5.3, X is true entails
and is entailed by X is not false; and X is false entails and is entailed by X is
not true. e fact is, though, that ‘in real life’, as it were, we can quite easily
conceive of Xs that partake of both truth and falsehood. Jaendoff’s remark
that ‘People have things to talk about only by virtue of having represented
them’ is difficult to argue with, but it is as yet unclear precisely how close the
relationship is between mental representation and linguistic meaning.
Finally in the context of cognitive approaes to lexical meaning, it is worth
noting that a further development in the prototype concept in semantics is the
idea that not only individual entities but also entire events may have
prototypical features. is is a notion born of script theory, according to whi
we interpret experience via scripts – general prototypes of or templates for
particular types of activity. For example, the prototypical scenario for going
on a train journey will include going to the railway station, buying a tiet,
standing on the station platform, boarding the train, finding a seat and
presenting one’s tiet to the tiet inspector when he passes through the
train. According to script theory, event templates su as this allow us to fill in
any information gaps from what we know about the typical way in whi
things happen. Related to and overlapping with the notion of script is the
notion of frame; frames are conceived of as mental frameworks or plans
relating to specific domains of knowledge whi assist us in dealing with
relevant situations. A railway station frame, for instance, would include a
tiet office, a waiting room, a cafeteria, an arrivals and departures
information board, a station master etc. Also connected with script theory and
the frame concept are schema-theoretic models of comprehension whi are
based on the idea that comprehension always taps into one’s knowledge of the
world as well as one’s linguistic knowledge.
e relevance of scripts, frames and semata for lexical semantics has at
least two aspects. On the one hand, scripts and frames provide a plausible
underpinning for at least some aspects of syntagmatic lexical relations. at is
to say, the fact that the same lexical expressions repeatedly recur in ea
other’s company is partly explicable in terms of the fact that the same kinds of
scenarios involving the same kinds of entities recur in the life of a particular
culture and in the lives (including the mental lives) of those who participate in
that culture. On the other hand, scripts, frames and semata also relate to
paradigmatic aspects of meaning, and, in particular to the contextual
dimension of su relations. For example, the noun stump in some contexts
denotes the remnant of a cut or fallen tree and in other contexts denotes one
of the three uprights of the wiet defended by the batsman in the game of
criet. Now, it so happens that in the contexts where stump has the first of
the above meanings the relevant prototypical frame (‘in the forest’) centrally
involves trees and does not involve at all the accoutrements of criet, while
in contexts where stump has its ‘wiet’ sense the relevant prototypical frame
(‘a game of criet’) involves a large open pit where trees have no place
(except perhaps as peripheral baground).
5.6 Summary
is apter has been devoted to exploring some of the different ways in
whi lexical meaning has been approaed by linguists. e exploration in
question has covered the traditional, referential/denotational account of word-
meaning, has talked about Saussure’s perspective and the lexical field theory
to whi it gave rise, has defined and exemplified lexico-semantic relations as
they have been understood in recent decades by Lyons and others, and has
sketed out the componential analysis approa to explicating su relations.
Mention has also been made of a number of ‘cognitive’ perspectives on lexical
meaning. It is clear from discussion in the apter that lexical meaning is no
different from other aspects of language in being in part a function of the
network of interrelations between linguistic units. It is also clear that su
relations hold not only between words, but also between words and multi-
word lexical expressions and within pairs and groups of multi-word
expressions. is underlines the fact – already clear from the discussion in
earlier apters – that the lexicon is not just an inventory of individual words
but also covers a large variety of combinations of words. Finally, it is
noteworthy that a consideration of context is necessary to the very definition
of lexical sense-relations and that contextual influence on meaning is a major
issue in lexical semantics – whi leads to the conclusion that orientation to
context is fundamental to the way in whi the lexicon operates.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 5.2. e diagram in 5.2 is based on the model proposed by C. Ogden and I.
Riards in their book The meaning of meaning (fourth edition, London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1936, 11). e objection that the Ogden and
Riards model is ‘atomistic’ is voiced by, among others, S. Ullmann in his
Semantics: an introduction to the science of meaning (Oxford: Blawell, 1962,
63). e problems surrounding a view of meaning whi is purely based on
reference or denotation have been discussed by philosophers for more than a
century. e name usually mentioned in this connection is that of Golob
Frege, and in particular his article ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ (Zeitschift für
Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100, 1892, 25–50). Frege’s work is
available in English translation in P. Gea and M. Bla’s Translations from
the philosophical writings of Gottlob Frege (Oxford: Blawell, 1952). e
Morning Star/Evening Star example is Frege’s. e discussion of
referential/denotational meaning in 4.2 was informed mostly by the work of J.
Lyons – especially his Structural semantics (Oxford: Blawell, 1963, Chapter
4) and his Introduction to theoretical linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968, Chapter 9). Other sources drawn on were R. Carter,
Vocabulary (second edition, London: Routledge, 1998, Chapter 1) and Stephen
Ullmann, Semantics (Oxford: Blawell, 1962, Chapter 3).
See 5.3.e Lyons quotations at the beginning of 5.3 are taken from his article
‘Structuralism and linguistics’ (in D. Robey (ed.), Structuralism: an
introduction , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, 6). Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours
de linguistique générale (first published 1916) is available in a modern critical
edition prepared by Tullio de Mauro (Paris: Payot, 1973). It is also available in
English translation: Course in general linguistics, translated by W. Baskin with
an introduction by J. Culler (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1974). e monetary
analogy is to be found in Chapter IV of the Second Part of the Cours. e
words cited (and translated) from J. Trier are from his book Der deutsche
Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1931, 2).
e colour example is borrowed from J. Lyons’s Introduction to theoretical
linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, 56–7). Leonard
Bloomfield’s comments on meaning are taken from his book Language (New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1933, 139). e discussion of synonymy,
hyponymy and the various types of incompatibility is based very largely on
the ideas of Lyons as set out in his books: Structural semantics: an analysis of
part of the vocabulary of Plato (Oxford: Blawell, 1963), Introduction to
theoretical linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968),
Semantics (two volumes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977),
Language, meaning and context (London: Fontana, 1981), Linguistic
semantics: an introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
e principal source for the treatment of meronymy is Chapter 7 of Cruse’s
Lexical semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
See 5.4.An example of componential analysis being put at the service of
anthropological linguistics is F. Wallace and J. Atkins’s (1960) article ‘e
meaning of kinship terms’ (American Anthropologist 62, 58–80). Examples of
componential analysis partaking of a Chomskyan perspective are J. Katz and J.
Fodor’s (1963) mu cited article ‘e structure of a semantic theory’
(Language 39, 170–210) and R. Jaendoff’s Semantic structures (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1990). An example of a componentialist without a particular
methodological or theoretical axe to grind is G. Lee (see, for example his
book Semantics: the study of meaning, second edition, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1981). e critique of componential analysis in 5.4 draws on
comments by D. Bolinger (1965) (‘e atomization of meaning’, Language 41,
555–73); J. Lyons (Introduction to theoretical linguistics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968, 470 ff.; Linguistic semantics: an
introduction , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 114 ff.) and J.
Saeed (Semantics, Oxford: Blawell, 1997, 259 ff.). e Lyons quote whi
ends 5.4 is taken from p. 117 of his Linguistic semantics: an introduction
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
See 5.5.
e sources for the discussion of prototype theory in 5.5 include: L.
Coleman and P. Kay (1981), ‘Prototype semantics: the English word “lie”’
(Language 57, 26–44); W. Labov, ‘e boundaries of words and their
meanings’ (in J. Fishman (ed.), New ways of analyzing variation in English,
Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1973). G. Lakoff, Women, fire
and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987); S. Pulman, Word, meaning and belief
(London: Croom Helm, 1983); E. Ros, ‘Principles of categorization’ (in E.
Ros and B. Lloyd (eds), Cognition and categorization, Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978). e definition of prototype as ‘ideal exemplar’ is
borrowed from J. Aitison’s book Words in the mind: an introduction to the
mental lexicon (second edition, Oxford: Blawell, 1994, 55). Lyons’s
description of componential analysis as a ‘elist theory of definition’ is to
be found on p. 99 of his book Linguistic semantics: an introduction
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). e criticisms of prototype
theory sketed here draw on the discussion by A. Lehrer in his article
‘Prototype theory and its implications for lexical analysis’ (in S. L.Tsohatzidis
(ed.), Meanings and prototypes: studies in linguistics categorization, London:
Routledge, 1990). e account of conceptual semantics is largely based on the
first four apters of R. Jaendoff’s book Languages of the mind (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1992) and on W. Fawley’s discussion of the topic in his
Linguistic semantics (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992, Chapter 2). e
discussion of scripts, frames and semas draws on: R. Anderson, R. Reynolds,
D. Sallert and E. Goetz (1977), ‘Frameworks for comprehending discourse’
(American Educational Research Journal 14, 367–81); M. Minsky, ‘A
framework for representing knowledge’ (in P. Winston (ed.), The psychology
of computer vision , New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975); R. Sank and R. Abelson,
Scripts, plans, goals and understanding (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum,
1977); R. Sank and A. Kass, ‘Knowledge representation in people and
maines’ (in U. Eco, M. Santambrogio and P. Violi (eds), Meaning and mental
representations, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988).
Accessible introductions to lexical semantics are provided by: Chapter 1 of R.
Carter’s Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives (second edition, London:
Routledge, 1998), apters 1–4 of J. Lyons’s Language, meaning and context
(London: Fontana, 1981) and apters 2–4 of the same author’s Linguistic
semantics: an introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
apters 1–7 of G. Lee’s Semantics: the study of meaning (second edition,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), and apters 1–7 of E. Hat and C. Brown’s
Vocabulary, semantics and language education (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995). With regard specifically to ‘cognitive’ approaes to
lexical semantics the interested reader may also care to consult J. Aitison,
Words in the mind: an introduction to the mental lexicon (second edition,
Oxford: Blawell, 1994, especially apters 4–8), and F. Ungerer and H. J.
Smid, An introduction to cognitive linguistics (London: Longman, 1996).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. In the introductory section of the apter it was claimed that anging even
a single word can make a radical difference to the meaning of a sentence or
indeed a longer stret of spee or writing. Try to think of five pairs of
sentences differing by a single word where the effect of the word-anges
in question is to transform the meanings of the sentences in a fundamental
way.
2. We noted in 5.2 that two or more expressions with different senses can
identify the same object, person, place, aribute, action etc. in the real
world, one example being the way in whi the expressions Morning Star
and Evening Star both refer to the planet Venus. Try to think of five further
examples of words or phrases with different senses being applied to the
same ‘real world’ phenomenon.
3. Section 5.3 defined and illustrated a number of sense-relations. Re-read this
section and then – avoiding the examples already given in the section – try
to supply the following: two pairs of synonyms, two pairs of expressions
linked to ea other by the relation of hyponymy–superordinateness, two
pairs of complementaries, two pairs of polar antonyms, two pairs of
converses, and two pairs of expressions linked to ea other by the relation
of meronymy–holonymy. In ea case illustrate the relations in question,
taking the illustrative sentences in the section as your model.
4. In 4.4 we saw some examples of the way in whi componential analysts
treat lexical meaning. Using these examples as your guide, suggest a
possible componential analysis of the meanings of the following sets of
words:
bitch: dog: puppy
duck: drake: duckling
ewe: ram: lamb
goose: gander: gosling
mare: stallion: foal
Indicate any problems you perceive in relation to the analysis you arrive at.
5. In 5.5 we saw some examples of items whi were less close to the ‘ideal
exemplar’ of their category than certain other items (e.g. penguin in
relation to bird). For ea of the following categories specify one member
of the category in question whi is close to the ‘ideal exemplar’ and one
member whi is less close. Give reasons for your proposals.
country (France, Germany, Spain etc.
fruit (apple, pear, orange etc.)
garment (blouse, jacket, sweater etc.)
mammal (bear, cow, panda etc.)
tree (ash, elm, oak etc.)
6
Lexis, phonology and orthography
6.1 Lexis and ‘levels of articulation’
In our discussion so far we have been concentrating mostly on what the
Fren linguist Martinet calls the primary level of articulation, the level of
language at whi meaningful units (morphemes, words etc.) combine into
larger meaningful units (phrases, sentences etc.). It is clear that what happens
at this level is very largely determined by lexical oice. It would be fairly
natural to speculate that things might be rather different at the secondary level
of articulation – the level at whi meaning less units (in spee, minimal
phonemes; in alphabetic writing, individual leers) combine to form
meaningful units (inflections, affixes, words etc.).
However, as we shall see, there is enough evidence of interaction between
lexis and phonology on the one hand and lexis and orthography on the other
to rule out any idea that sound-systems and writing systems are partitioned
off from the lexical domain. One self-evident sense in whi lexis and the
secondary level of articulation interact relates to the fact that the oice of any
given lexical unit determines the particular combination of phonological or
orthographical units that is deployed. A less obvious – and for that reason
more interesting – dimension to the issue is the question of whether the
phonological or orthographic realization of specific words draws on semantic
and grammatical information about the word concerned whi the lexicon has
to supply and whether individual lexical items or categories of items have
specific sounds or symbols associated with them.
6.2 Phonemes, stresses and tones
Let us begin with that aspect of the interaction between the lexicon and
phonology whi is labelled above as ‘self-evident’. Given that knowledge of
a lexical expression typically includes knowledge of how that expression is
pronounced, we have to assume that an entry in the lexicon contains
information about the sounds out of whi the item in question is composed –
just as entries in dictionaries may contain ‘phonetic’ transcriptions. e sound
components of a lexical unit include: (i) the relevant sequence of individual
sound segments, (ii) (in languages su as English) the paern of stress-
distribution in the unit in question, and (iii) (in languages su as Chinese and
ai) the specific pit or tone aracteristic of the expression concerned when
used in a particular sense.
With regard to individual sound segments, we saw in Chapter 1 that some
differences between sounds were critical in differentiating between words and
that some were not. We noted that distinctions that are critical in this way are
labelled phonemic, and that the sound units whi are, as it were, kept apart
by su distinctions are called phonemes. Phonemes can thus be looked upon
as collections of distinctive features. Examples of su features are:
• plosiveness: whether or not air is completely bloed before being released
in the production of a sound – as in /p/ – or not – as in /f/;
• labiality whether the lips are involved in the production of a sound – as in
/p/ – or not – as in /k/;
• nasality : whether air passes through the nose in the production of a sound –
as in /n/ – or not – as in /d/;
• voice: whether the vocal cords are in vibration in the production of a sound
– as in /z/ – or not – as in /s/;
• froutness/backness/centrality: whether the tongue is positioned towards the
front of the mouth in the production of a vowel – as in /ɪ/ (the vowel sound
in lid), towards the ba – as in /u:/ (the vowel sound in boot), or centrally –
as in /ʌ/ (the vowel sound in but);
• highnessllowness/midness (whether the tongue is high in the mouth in the
production of a vowel – as in /ɪ/, low in the mouth – as in /a:/ (the vowel
sound in the standard British English pronunciation of bath), or in a mid
position – as in /ε/ (the vowel sound in bet).
Correspondingly, the phonological dimension of ea lexical entry can be
conceived of as an array or matrix of distinctive features as well as a sequence
of phonemes. us, a simplified version of the matrix for pin might be
represented as follows:
/p/ /ɪ/ /n/
Plosive + –
Labial + –
Nasal – +
Voiced – +
Front/ba/central Front
High/low/mid High
Turning now to the question of stress paerns, in many languages, including
English, the ways in whi stresses are distributed are important in
differentiating between words. For example there are a number of pairs of
nouns and verbs in English where grammatical category is signalled partly by
stress distribution. us:
Student numbers are continuing to decrease [VERB].
There has been a continuing decrease [NOUN] in student numbers.
He’s going to record [VERB] a new single.
He’s going to make a new record [NOUN].
In Europe we no longer implant [VERB] growth-promoting substances in
cattle.
The growth-promoting implant [NOUN] is no longer used in Europe.
In some instances, stress distribution is a factor in distinguishing between
distinct meanings of similar sequences of sounds. For example, the word
process, when used as a verb, means something like ‘to treat’, ‘to work on’ –
as in:
The new information had to be processed very rapidly by the research
team.
When the stress in process is shied to the second syllable, however, the verb
means ‘to walk in procession’ as in:
The bishop, the priests, the acolytes and the choir processed solemnly up
the aisle.
Not dissimilar is the case of the adjective contrary. When stressed on its first
syllable, this form means ‘opposed’, ‘opposite’ – as in:
This idea is contrary to good sense.
When stressed on its second syllable, on the other hand, it means ‘self-willed’,
‘perverse’, ‘cantankerous’ – as in the nursery rhyme:
Mary, Mary, quite contrary ,
How does your garden grow ?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row .
With regard to tone, in a number of languages of Asia – su as Chinese,
ai and Burmese, as well as in many African and Native American
languages, the pit at whi a particular sequence of sounds is uered and/or
the direction of the pit (rising or falling) will determine what is understood
by the sound-sequence in question. For instance in ai, the sequence /kao/
means ‘he’ or ‘she’ if spoken with a high or rising tone, ‘rice’ if spoken with a
falling tone, ‘white’ if spoken with a low tone, and ‘news’ if spoken with a
mid-tone. Similarly with the sequence /naa/, whi means ‘young maternal
uncle or aunt’ if spoken with a high tone, ‘thi’ if spoken with a rising tone,
‘face’ if spoken with a falling tone, ‘niname’ if spoken with a low tone, and
‘rice paddy’ if spoken with a mid-tone.
6.3 Lexical phonology as a reflection of lexical grammar and
lexical meaning
We have already seen that there is a connection between the way in whi a
particular form is pronounced and its grammatical category. In other words,
there is in some cases a relationship between the grammatical category
assigned to a given entry in the lexicon and the manner in whi it is stressed.
On the other hand, this kind of variation in stress placement, according to
whether a noun or a verb is involved, is not systematic. In other cases the
main stress remains in the same place irrespective of grammatical category,
for example: delay [VERB]; delay [NOUN]; offer [VERB]; offer [NOUN];
repeat [VERB]; repeat [NOUN]. What this means is that the lexicon has to
specify whi nouns and verbs follow the record: record paern and whi do
not, and that the pronunciation of a particular word will need to be based on
this information as well as information about grammatical category.
As for the question of the relationship between lexical phonology and
meaning, one obvious set of circumstances in whi this relationship can be
seen to exist is any situation where onomatopoeia is involved. In su
instances part of the meaning conveyed by the word is the sound made by the
entity or activity to whi the word is applied – buzz, crackle, cuckoo, plop,
tinkle etc. In other words, in cases su as these the particular phonological
shapes involved are determined in large measure by the meanings they are
intended to convey. It is worth emphasizing, perhaps, that the phrase ‘in large
measure’ is very deliberately osen here. ere is no question of the forms of
onomatopoeic words being completely determined by the sounds they imitate;
the conventions of the particular language in whi an onomatopoeic form
occurs also play a role. is is even true of words that are used to represent
animal noises. For instance, in English, the sound made by a crowing co is
represented as cock-a-doodle-doo. Not so in other languages, as the following
examples indicate.
German kikeriki
Japanese kokekokou
Persian gogoligogo
Spanish quíquíriqúi
ai ek-i-ek-ek
Nevertheless, the relationship between the phonological forms of
onomatopoeic words and their meanings is clear and indisputable.
Somewhat more subtle demonstrations of a relationship between meaning
and specific sounds are instances where particular combinations of sounds are
avoided because they are associated with taboo words. For example, in
Luganda, the /nj/ combination (whi corresponds roughly to the combination
of sounds in the middle of the English word onion – /ɪʌnjǝn/) occurs in taboo
items like /kunja/ ‘defecate’ and /kinjo/ ‘anus’. Because of its association with
su words, it tends to be replaced in other items by /ŋ/ (whi corresponds to
the ng sound in English sing). us /kanja:la/ (‘immature banana’) and
/munjo:ngo/ (‘miserable’) tend to be pronounced as /kaŋa:la/ and /muŋo:ngo/
respectively.
To return briefly to the question of interaction among grammar, the lexicon
and phonology, it is interesting to note that there is a whole theoretical
approa to phonology – known as Lexical Phonology – whi is based on a
recognition of this interaction. In this conception of phonology, phonological
processes are seen as operating together with word-formation rules in a cyclic
fashion in su a way as to specify the lexical items in a language. Affixes are
seen as being divided into different subsets (called levels or strata), to whi
different word-formation rules apply, these word-formation rules correlating
with different phonological rules.
6.4 Association between particular sounds and particular
(categories of) lexical items
Let us now consider the notion that particular sounds in a language may be
closely, even exclusively, associated with particular words or categories of
words. A revealing case to examine in this connection is that of the /ŋ/ sound
in Modern Standard Fren (the sound corresponding to ng in English sing).
is sound, whi features in the pronunciation of words like vin and pain in
many non-standard varieties of Fren spoken in Southern France, is an
innovation in the more prestigious varieties of the language – the Fren of
educated speakers in Paris, Brussels, Geneva etc. It was brought into these
laer varieties via loanwords from English – especially words ending in the
morpheme -ing. When su words first came into Standard Fren their -ing
ending was pronounced by most people using phonemes from the Standard
Fren repertoire. us -ing was pronounced as the nasal vowel /ẽ/ (whi
normally corresponds to the spelling in in Standard Fren), as /in/ (whi
normally corresponds to the spelling ine in Standard Fren) or as /iɲ/ (whi
normally corresponds to the spelling igne in Standard Fren). In more recent
times, however, -ing words like parking, casting, lifting etc. have increasingly
been pronounced using an /ŋ/ sound.
e interesting point about /ŋ/ in the present context is that, although the
distinction between this sound and other sounds is phonemic (differentiating,
for example, shopping (‘shopping’) from chopine (‘bole [of wine]’), it occurs
in a very limited set of words. Moreover, the words in question are rather
difficult to place under a common heading. It certainly is not the case that /ŋ/
is systematically associated with the spelling ing. In many words ing simply
indicates the presence of a nasal vowel (coing = /kwẽ/ – ‘quince’; poing =
/pwẽ/ – ‘fist’ etc.). Nor can one even say that the /ŋ)/ phoneme is
systematically associated with English loanwords ending in -ing; for instance,
the -ing in the loan-word shampooing is pronounced not as /ŋ/ but rather as
the same nasal vowel as in coing, i.e. /ẽ/ In any case, many of the -ing words
in Fren pronounced with final /ŋ/ are not so mu loans as new coinages,
for example footing meaning ‘jogging’, lifting in the sense of ‘face li’. To sum
up, there is a phoneme in Modern Standard Fren whi is exclusively
associated with a small and rather ill-defined assortment of lexical items and
whose occurrence is, therefore, entirely dependent on the selection of one of
these words.
In the above case the particular sound discussed can be seen as the result of
language contact. However, lexically determined aspects of phonology are not
necessarily connected to the borrowing of sounds. e process known as
lexical diffusion may or may not involve cross-linguistic influence, but what it
always does involve is an association between specific sets of lexical items and
the sounds that are likely to occur. Lexical diffusion is a phenomenon that has
been observed by linguists traing phonological anges over time in
particular languages and dialects. It refers to the fact that su anges
develop gradually – affecting different portions of the vocabulary as they
progress.
It used to be thought that anges in sound-systems operated
simultaneously across the board according to laws that admied no
exceptions, the same sound in the same environment always developing in
precisely the same way. It now appears that this view of sound ange was
fundamentally mistaken. e current indications are that when a sound
ange gets under way it spreads on a word-by-word basis through the
lexicon, so that whether or not the new sound is likely to occur is dependent
not on the general phonetic/phonological environment but on specific lexical
selection. A good illustration of su lexical diffusion comes from data on
Belfast English collected in the 1970s. From these data it emerges that there is
a sound shi in process in Belfast English from [ ] (whi is fairly close to the
Fren u sound or the German ü sound) to [ʌ] (whi is the u sound in
Standard British English pronunciations of words like but and cut). However,
the [ʌ] innovation is affecting different lexical items to varying degrees. us,
the word pull, for instance, was pronounced [pʌl] in the data in question in
about three-quarters of its occurrences, whereas the word look aracted the
pronunciation [lʌk] in only about a quarter of its occurrences. In other words,
whether or not [ʌ] occurs is closely related to the selection and deployment of
specific lexical items.
6.5 Lexis and orthography
Mu the same kind of situation applies in relation to the lexis/orthography
interface as has been described in respect of lexis and phonology. at is to
say, it is obvious that lexical selection determines the particular sequence of
leers (in an alphabetic system), the aracter (in a logographic system) etc.,
that is deployed; it is also true to say that orthographic representations draw
on lexicosemantic and lexicogrammatical information; and it is in addition the
case that certain aspects of a writing system may be particularly, or even
exclusively, associated with a specific set of lexical items.
Writing systems vary enormously around the world, and have varied
enormously through history. is book is wrien using an alphabetic system,
where there is a clear relationship between wrien signs and the sounds of the
words represented by those signs. For example, in the following wrien
versions of English words, ea leer represents a different phoneme
occurring in the words in question:
den /dεn/
men /mεn/
ten /tεn/
English, in common with all western European (and numerous other)
languages, uses Roman script, whi, as its name implies, was developed by
the Romans, and was the form in whi Latin was wrien. e Roman
alphabet was based on the Greek alphabet, whi exhibits the same basic
principle of clear correspondence between wrien signs and individual sounds
– as the following examples from Modern Greek demonstrate:
vα /na/ ‘that’, ‘in order to’
σα /sa/ ‘when’, ‘as soon as’ (= σαν)
τα /ta/ definite article (neuter nominative/accusative plural)
Also based on the Greek alphabet, and on the same principle of
correspondence between leers and phonemes, is the Cyrillic alphabet, in
whi many Slavic languages, su as Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian, are
wrien.
As is well-known, there is a fair amount of variation in alphabetic systems
in relation to the precise degree of consistency of correspondence between
leers and sounds. In a language like Spanish or Finnish, the level of
consistency is very high indeed. at is to say, in these systems it is more oen
than not the case that for any given sequence of phonemes there is only one
possible spelling and that for any given sequence of leers there is only one
possible pronunciation. Compare this with the situation in English, Modern
Greek or Fren, where the relationship between sounds and leers is a good
deal more fluid. In English, for example, the vowel sound /i:/ can be wrien as
e (as in be), ee (as in bee), ea (as in bean ), ie (as in brief), ei (as in receive), ey
(as in key), i (as in ravine), even ae (as in encyclopaedia).
An earlier version of the alphabetic approa was the system used to
transcribe Semitic languages, starting with Phoenician. Semitic languages,
represented in the modern world by Arabic and Modern Hebrew, have the
aracteristic of showing morphological contrasts (for verb tense etc.) through
the alternation of vowels within the word rather than by the addition of
endings. We have this to some extent in English too, for example run–ran,
sing–sang, write–wrote; however, in the Semitic languages this type of
grammatical paerning operates throughout. What this means is that the basic
form of any given word is its ‘consonantal shell’ – the counterpart of English
s-ng in the sing–sang case – and that the vowels are, as it were, supplied by
the grammatical context. Probably for this reason, the Phoenician alphabet
represented consonants only, the vowel sounds being le for readers to work
out for themselves. Hebrew and Arabic were also originally wrien in the
same way, with only consonants being represented, and, indeed, writing
Hebrew and Arabic in this way remains an option even today. However, in
the case of both languages, the writing systems have with the passage of time
developed ways of indicating vowel sounds.
e original Phoenician alphabet was the source of the Greek alphabet;
what the Greeks did was to ‘re-cycle’ consonantal signs that they did not
require as vowel signs. us, for example, the Phoenician sign for a gloal
stop (whi involves holding air by totally closing the vocal cords and then
releasing it) was . Since this particular consonant was not a phoneme of
Ancient Greek, it could be borrowed to represent the vowel /a/, and so it was
that, with some minor adjustments, it became the Greek leer alpha – A α –
and subsequently found its way – in mu the same form and with mu the
same value – into both the Roman alphabet and the Cyrillic alphabet.
An alternative to the alphabetic approa to representing the sounds of
words in wrien form is to take the syllable rather than the individual
phoneme as the basis of the system. Systems whi take this approa –
known as syllabaries – include the Japanese kana script, the script used by the
Cherokees, and the script invented by the Minoan Greeks – called Linear B by
araeologists – long before the development of the Greek alphabet. As far as
Japanese is concerned, the kana script is used in two forms, hiragana and
katakana, to represent, respectively, on the one hand, particles, verb-
inflections etc. and, on the other, words borrowed from Western languages
su as English. However, this is only part of the story; non-Western content
words (nouns, verbs etc.) are represented in Japanese using a totally different
system – a system based on Chinese aracters (kanji), whi takes meanings
rather than sounds as its starting point.
e most extreme version of this last-mentioned kind of system is that in
whi the objects, animals etc. referred to in writing are represented
pictorially. is takes us right ba to the origins of writing in human history.
us, the earliest-known form of writing was associated with the Sumerian
culture of Mesopotamia, the area between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates
streting from the Persian Gulf towards modern-day Baghdad. e
Sumerians wrote on clay tablets, and the first wrien signs they used were in
effect simplified drawings. For example, the sign for ‘cow’ was a simplified
representation of a bovine head, the sign for ‘bird’ was a simplified
representation of the ne and body of a bird, and the sign for ‘woman’ was a
simplified representation of a vulva (Figure 6.1):
Figure 6.1 e earliest-known form of writing associated with the Sumerian
culture of Mesopotamia.
As Sumerian writing developed, su pictorial representations, or pictograms,
became progressively stylized – literally, because the anges can largely be
ascribed to the particularities of the stylus used to make them. e scribes of
the time wrote on wet clay using a reed whi had had one of its ends cut into
a triangular shape. Accordingly, the impressions made in the so clay tended
to be wedge-shaped or cuneiform (< Latin cuneus = ‘wedge’), and these
triangular shapes were increasingly used to form the signs based on the earlier
drawings. So it was that the sign for ‘cow’ was first turned on its side and
eventually took on a form whi was very far indeed from the original
representational pictogram (Figure 6.2):
Figure 6.2 Stylization of pictograms.
rough the combination of pictograms it became possible to express concepts
other than those covered by the original basic repertoire of simplified
drawings. us by combining the pictogram for ‘woman’ with that
representing ‘mountains’ it became possible to express in writing the notion of
“woman from beyond the mountains’ = ‘foreign woman’ = ‘female slave’
(Figure 6.3):
Figure 6.3 Expression of concepts through combination of pictograms.
Since in su cases the signs no longer simply or directly reflect the visual
appearance of the entity represented, but can be thought of rather as
representing ideas, they are oen referred to as ideograms. To the extent that
this kind of sign represents an idea encapsulated in a single word, it can also
be seen as a logogram (< Greek λόγος – lógos – ‘word’).
Other pictographic systems underwent similar evolutions. For instance, in
the Chinese writing system the notion of ‘sheep’ was initially represented in
writing by a simplified drawing of ram’s horns. Later developments of this
aracter rendered it increasingly less representational (Figure 6.4):
Figure 6.4 Evolution of the Chinese aracter for ‘sheep’.
On the other hand, some Chinese aracters retain some of the
representational nature of their original forms, as the historical development
of the aracter for ‘tree’ illustrates (Figure 6.5):
Figure 6.5 Retention of the representational nature of the original form:
Chinese aracter for ‘tree’.
As well as undergoing anges in form, some pictographic systems also
underwent developments in terms of what the signs stood for. us, the
Sumerian cuneiform system sometimes used signs for a particular meaning to
represent the syllable corresponding to the word in question, and indeed
sometimes used the sign for a particular meaning to represent a word
sounding the same as the word associated with the original meaning. For
example, the pictogram for ‘arrow’ – for whi the Sumerian word was ti –
was also used to represent ‘life’ – for whi the word was also ti.
To return to the case of Sumerian, it is clear from the above that the way in
whi the Sumerian writing system came to be used contained the seeds of a
sound-based system. ese seeds germinated when the Sumerian system was
used to transcribe other languages in the region. For instance, the Akkadians
(ancestors of the Arabs and Hebrews) used Sumerian signs to represent both
the syllables for whi they stood in Sumerian and the meanings associated
with the original Sumerian words. us, in the Akkadian system the Sumerian
sign for ‘sky’/’heaven’ – in Sumerian an – was used both to represent the
syllable /an/ and the Akkadian word for ‘sky’/’heaven’ – shamu. (e use of
pictures or symbols representing words with particular sound shapes to stand
for words with similar sound shapes – sometimes labelled the rebus principle
– is familiar to us in the modern world from wordgames, riddles, jokes and
advertising.) In further developments, the Sumerian writing system actually
became the basis for an alphabet. us, cuneiform script was used to
transcribe a Semitic language spoken in ancient Syria – almost certainly
proto-Phoenician – and in this case signs whi in Akkadian had represented
syllables were used to represent single consonants. For example, the sign
whi in Akkadian had stood for the syllable /pa/ was used to represent /p/.
e Egyptian writing system underwent a similar kind of development. In
this case the hieroglyphs (< Greek ‘ιερóς – hierós – ‘holy’, γλὐϕειν – glúphein
– ‘to engrave’) familiar to us from pictures of Egyptian tombs were originally
pictograms. In hieroglyphic writing – and in the simpler writing systems
based on it whi were used for writing on papyrus – a sign representing an
entity associated with a particular word oen also came to be used to
represent a word with a similar sound-shape – as in the Sumerian system. For
example the sign for ‘scarab’, for whi the Ancient Egyptian word was
khéper (the initial kh being pronounced as /x/ – the ch sound in the Scoish-
English word loch, German Dach etc), was in addition used to represent
‘become’, the word for whi was also khéper. Moreover, particular signs
were also deployed to represent the sounds of the ‘consonantal shell’ of the
words with the meanings of whi they were originally associated. us the
hieroglyph for ‘scarab’ also more generally represented the ‘consonantal shell’
/xpr/. Where only one consonant was involved in a word for whi the
corresponding sign was used in this way, the signs in question effectively
functioned in this particular role as ‘leers’ standing for individual consonants.
For example, the hieroglyph for ‘seat’ – □ – was also used to represent the
sound /p/.
Whether a writing system is sound-based or meaning-based – or indeed a
mixture of the two – the wrien signs whi constitute the system obviously
need to be distinct from ea other. us in the Roman alphabet, for instance,
the leer t is distinguished from the leer l by the horizontal stroke through
its upper part, and d is distinguished from l by the c shape aaed to its
boom-le side. Similarly, the Egyptian hieroglyph □ (‘seat’, /p/) is
distinguished from (‘mouth’, /r/) by shape, and from ● (‘grill’, /x/) by
shape and by the absence/presence of shading. Because wrien signs are
contrastive units in wrien language in mu the same way as phonemes are
in spee, they are sometimes referred to as graphemes (< Greek γραϕή –
graphē – ‘writing’). Moreover, just as phonemes have allophones, so
graphemes can be thought of as having allographs; that is to say, ea wrien
sign may be realized in a variety of ways. us, for example, A, a and a are all
variant forms of the same leer.
We have seen that in alphabetic systems the correspondences between
graphemes and phonemes can sometimes be quite variable, even within the
same language. Examples have already been given from English, Modern
Greek and Fren. A further – indeed the classic example – from English of
variation in grapheme-phoneme correspondence is the case of the
combination of the leers o, u, g and h. is may correspond to /ʌf/ (as in
rough), /ɒf/ (as in cough), /ǝʊ/ (as in though), /ɔ:/ (as in thought) or /ɒx/ (as in
Irish-English lough). Likewise, grapheme-meaning correspondences can vary.
For example the Sumerian sign corresponds not only to ‘sky’/’heaven’
(an), but also to ‘god’ (dingir). We have also seen that signs may stand both
for sounds and for meanings. With regard to alphabetic systems, it has
sometimes been claimed that variation in grapheme-phoneme
correspondences can be of assistance in distinguishing between homophones.
It is noted that, thanks to a certain looseness of fit between graphemes and
phonemes in Fren, for example, it is possible to distinguish orthographically
between identically pronounced pairs su as the adjectives sûr (‘sure’) and sur
(‘sour’), the plural nouns maux (‘evils’) and mots (‘words’) and the verbs
pécher (‘to sin’) and pêcher (‘to fish’). Unfortunately for this particular line of
argument, Fren, in common with English, goes only a rather limited
distance along this road. For instance, it does not distinguish between the
identically pronounced pairs sur (‘sour’) and sur (‘on’) or pêcher (‘to fish’) and
pêcher (‘pea-tree’). Moreover, there are cases in Fren of homographs, i.e.
identically spelt items – whi are in fact differently pronounced. us fils
meaning ‘threads’ is pronounced /fil/, while fils meaning ‘son’ or ‘sons’ is
pronounced /fis/.
As well as signs standing for phonemes and syllables and signs standing for
meanings, writing systems may also contain signs indicating how words are
stressed. For example, in Modern Greek, every word containing more than
one syllable has a diacritic symbol (/) over the syllable bearing the main word
stress. us:
ϕορ á
/foɪra/ ‘time’
σπ íτι ‘house’
/ɪspiti/
τράπεζα ‘bank’
/ɪtrapeza/
It is, then, perfectly possible for wrien forms of languages to incorporate
information about word stress in what appears on the page. As it happens, the
wrien conventions of different languages vary in the extent to whi they
make use of this possibility. e wrien form of English, for instance, provides
absolutely no information about stress distribution. Similarly with the
transcription of tone. e writing systems of some tone languages – su as
the ai system – indicate the tone associated with a particular lexical item,
whereas others do not.
6.6 Orthography as a reflection of lexical grammar and lexical
meaning
Just as the pronunciation of particular words may draw on information about
their grammatical aracteristics and about their meaning, so too may the
way in whi they are wrien. With regard to grammar, one very clear
demonstration of the influence of a word’s grammatical profile on its spelling
is the way in whi all nouns are wrien with initial capital leers in German.
us, in the following sentence, apart from the first word (wir = ‘we’) –
capitalized simply because it begins the sentence – all capitalized items are
nouns:
Wir finden das Essen und das Bier besonders gut in dieser Kneipe.
(‘We find the food and the beer especially good in this pub.’)
It is worth noting that capitalization is not triggered simply by the form of the
word. us, for example, the form e–s–s–e–n, whi here means ‘food’, can
also be used as a verb, meaning ‘to eat’ (as in Sollen wir essen? – ‘Shall we
eat?’). In the laer circumstances, the word is not capitalized.
In English (and in many other languages) capitalization in the spelling of
nouns is restricted to the subcategory of proper nouns, that is to nouns whi
identify very specific persons, places, ideas etc. in any particular context. For
example, Beethoven, Paris and Islam are all proper nouns. However, once
again, capitalization is not triggered simply by the form of the word. For
instance, the word Ulster may be used as a proper noun to refer to the nine
northernmost counties of Ireland or, more loosely, to refer to Northern
Ireland, whi extends over six of the counties in question. However ulster
may also be used as a common noun to refer to an entire class of entities, i.e.
long loose overcoats of coarse cloth. us:
The ancient province of Ulster is the setting for many of Ireland’s best-
known legends.
The stranger was wearing a dark ulster, which flapped in the wind as he
walked.
As far as the relationship between the lexicon and meaning is concerned,
this has already been dealt with in the discussion of different types of writing
system in the last section. We saw there that some writing systems (for
example the Sumerian and the Ancient Egyptian systems) actually began as
aempts to represent the entities referred to in pictorial form. However, from
the way in whi these systems subsequently developed – with, for example,
particular signs sometimes being used to represent words with sound-shapes
similar to those of the words associated with the original meanings
represented – it is clear that the meanings on whi su pictographic systems
were based were essentially word-meanings. It is for this reason that su
systems are oen described as logographic.
An example of a modern logographic system is that used in association
with Chinese. As we saw earlier, the Chinese system also began life as a
straightforwardly pictographic system, but the aracters gradually lost
contact with their original pictorial role. It should be noted that the situation in
Chinese is actually a lile more complicated than one in whi an individual
word is always represented by an individual aracter. For instance, the
aracter used alone stands for mu (‘tree’); doubled it stands for lin
(‘wood’, ‘small forest’); and tripled for sen (‘large forest’, ‘numerous’,
‘dark’). Also, as in Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian, certain aracters may be
combined with others in order to indicate phonetic aracteristics of the word
represented. ese and other considerations have led some linguists to
question whether the Chinese system is truly logographic – some solars
continuing to assert that it is essentially pictographic, others that it is a system
whi primarily represents syllables or morphemes rather than word-
meanings. However, whiever line one wants to take on the terminology
whi most succinctly captures the most salient aracteristics of the Chinese
system, it is clear that at least part of what determines the forms of the
aracters deployed is the word-meanings to whi they relate. us, for
example, the sequence /nan/ can mean ‘difficult’, ‘south’ or ‘male’, and ea of
these meanings is differently represented in the shape of the aracter used for
/nan/.
In alphabetic writing systems, too, there is oen a relationship between
what a word means and how it is spelt. In the previous section we looked at
some examples of Fren homophones whose spelling varied in accordance
with their meaning. Some further examples – from English – of identically
pronounced items with different spellings depending on their different
meanings are:
beat: beet
grate:great
sole:soul
As we also saw, this kind of differentiation of homophones by spelling is not
universal. For instance, the following pairs of English words are identical in
both pronunciation and spelling, even though their meanings are completely
unrelated:
cope (applied to priest’s vestment): cope (= manage)
pen (applied to enclosure for, e.g. pen (applied to writing
sheep): implement)
However, there are enough orthographically differentiated homophones
around in languages su as English and Fren to demonstrate that in at least
some alphabetic systems word meaning can play an important role in the
determination of orthographic form.
6.7 Association between particular written signs and particular
(categories of) lexical items
As is the case of the relationship between sounds and lexis, one can oen
point to particular wrien signs whi are linked with particular lexical items
or categories of lexical items. An obvious demonstration of this phenomenon
is provided by logographic systems, su as those discussed earlier, where
specific wrien aracters are associated with specific words – or sets of
words. However, there are also instances of particular signs being associated
with particular words or types of words in syllabaries and alphabetic systems.
With regard to syllabaries, a rather dramatic example of specific signs being
associated with specific sets or types of words comes from Japanese. It was
mentioned earlier – in 6.5 – that the Japanese kana syllabary script, has two
forms. On the one hand, there is the ‘normal’ form – hiragana – used for
Japanese particles, verb-inflections etc., but, on the other hand, there is a
version of kana – katakana – whi is specifically and exclusively used to
represent words borrowed from Western languages su as English. at is to
say, in the Japanese system a particular category of words – loanwords from
Western languages – has an entire script all of its own dedicated to it.
As far as alphabetic systems are concerned, a case of a particular leer
being associated with a particular type of word is that of the leer c in
German when it is used outside the clusters ck and ch and outside proper
names su as Celle and Claus. When it is used alone in common nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs, c is exclusively associated with foreign borrowings.
Some examples of borrowed expressions in whi c is used are: Comeback,
Comics, Cornflakes. As foreign words become increasingly integrated into
German, both their wrien form and their pronunciation are Germanized, c
being wrien as k or z depending on whether it is to be pronounced as /k/ or
as /ts/. us what was originally wrien as Copie is now wrien as Kopie, and
what was originally wrien as Penicillin is now wrien as Penizillin. Other
examples are: Spectrum → Spektrum, Centrum → Zentrum, Accusativ →
Akkusativ. Where c is retained or reverted to in the spelling of su words,
this is oen a deliberate act on the part of advertisers who thus seek to give a
product or an event foreign ic or exotic connotations. One notes, for
example, that cigaree advertisements sometimes contain the spelling
Cigaretten rather than Zigaretten , and circus posters frequently prefer Circus
to Zirkus. Clearly, su an advertising ploy would not be possible were it not
the case that c is associated with a particular type of lexical item – namely
foreign words.
A further point worth noting is the way in whi grapheme-phoneme
correspondences are, at least in some languages, highly dependent on the
particular lexical item in whi particular leer-combinations occur. For
example, mention was made earlier of the combination ough in English. Now,
it so happens that there is just one word in English in whi this sequence of
leers is pronounced as /ɒx/, namely lough. Lough is a word used for ‘lake’,
with particular reference to lakes in Ireland. (It is derived from the Gaelic
word loch, whi exists in both Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic.)
6.8 Summary
is apter has concerned itself with evidence of interaction between the
lexicon and phonological and orthographic systems. With regard to
phonology, it pointed to the rather obvious fact that the oice of a lexical
item determines the particular sound-shape, the particular combination of
phonological units – phonemes, allophone, stressed and unstressed syllables,
and (in languages like ai) tones – that is deployed. It also looked at evidence
in favour of the notions that phonological realizations of lexical items are
informed by grammatical and semantic considerations and that individual
lexical items or groups of items may have particular sounds associated with
them. In relation to orthography, the apter noted that lexical oice
determines orthographic shape no less than it determines phonological shape.
e apter also set out evidence showing that, again as in the case of
phonology, on the one hand, orthographic realizations draw on grammatical
and semantic information, and, on the other, certain features of a writing
system, and/or particular grapheme-phoneme correspondences, are oen
associated with a specific set or category of lexical items.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 6.1. e notion of double articulation referred to is discussed in A.
Martinet’s articles ‘La double articulation linguistique’ (Travaux du Cercle
Linguistique de Copenhague 5, 1949, 30–7) and ‘Arbitraire linguistique et
double articulation’ (Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 15, 1957, 105–16).
See 6.2 .
e discussion in 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 owes some of its inspiration to F.
Katamba’s treatment of the topics in question in his book An introduction to
phonology (London: Longman, 1989). e first of the ai examples in 6.2 was
provided by Jennifer Pariseau; the second was taken from V. Fromkin and
R.Rodman, An introduction to language (sixth edition, New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1998, 241).
See 6.3.e examples in 6.3 of the different ways in whi the cocrow is
designated in different languages are borrowed from V. Cook’s Inside
language (London: Arnold, 1997, 53). e examples from Luganda are to be
found on p. 256 of F. Katamba’s An introduction to phonology. Lexical
Phonology is the brainild of P. Kiparsky – see, e.g. his articles ‘Lexical
phonology and morphology’ (in I. S. Yang (ed.), Linguistics in the morning
calm, Seoul: Hanshin, 1982) and ‘Some consequences of lexical phonology’
(Phonology Yearbook 2, 83–138). Other treatments of the topic include K. P.
Monahan’s book The theory of lexical phonology (Dordret: D. Reidel
Publishing, 1986) and M. Kenstowicz’s apter ‘Lexical Phonology’ in his
volume Phonology in generative grammar (Oxford: Blawell).
See 6.4.e discussion of the /ŋ/ phoneme in Fren broadly follows what I
had to say on the maer in my lile volume French: some historical
background (Dublin: Authentik, 1992, 49f.). e notion of lexical diffusion
derives from the work of W. Wang – e.g. W. Wang, ‘Competing anges as a
cause of residue’ (Language 45, 1969, 9–25); M. Chen and W. Wang, ‘Sound
ange: actuation and implementation’ (Language 51, 1975, 255–81); it is
discussed by, among others, J. Aitison, in her book Language change:
progress or decay? (London: Fontana, 1981, 95), R. Hudson, in his book
Sociolinguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, 168ff.) and S.
Romaine, in her book Socio-historical linguistics: its status and methodology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, 254ff.). e Belfast data are
discussed in articles by R. Maclaran (‘e variable (ʌ): a relic form with social
correlates, Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 1, 1976, 45–
68) and J. Milroy (‘Lexical alternation and diffusion in vernacular spee’,
Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 3, 1978, 101–14).
See 6.5.Section 6.5 draws liberally on the following three sources: apters 2–6
of L-J. Calvet’s Histoire de l’écriture (Paris: Plon, 1996); Chapter 6 of V. Cook’s
Inside language (London: Arnold, 1997); and apters 1–3 of Georges Jean’s
Writing: the story of alphabets and scripts (London: ames & Hudson, 1992).
e Sumerian, Chinese and Ancient Egyptian examples cited in the section are
all borrowed from these authors. e English, Fren, Modern Greek and
Spanish examples are my own.
See 6.6. e brief mention of the controversy about the nature of the Chinese
writing system was inspired by articles contributed by W. C. Brice, M. A.
Fren and E. Pulgram to the collection of papers edited by W. Haas under the
title Writing without letters (Manester: Manester University Press, 1976)
and by J. DeFrancis’s article ‘How efficient is the Chinese writing system?’
(Visible Language 30, 1996, 6–44).
See 6.7.e examples of German words spelt with c are taken from D. Berger,
G. Drosdowski and O. Käge’s Richtiges und gutes Deutsch (Mannheim:
Dudenverlag, 1985, 160). e examples of words exanging their c for a k or
a z are taken from G. Drosdowski, W. Müller, W. Solze-Stubenret and M.
Wermke’s Rechtschreibung der deutschen Sprache (Mannheim: Dudenverlag,
1991, 29).
Good introductions to phonology – all of whi refer in varying degrees to
lexical maers – are:
V. Cook, Inside language (London: Arnold, 1997, Chapter 4);
H. Giegeri, English phonology: an introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992);
F. Katamba, An introduction to phonology (London: Longman, 1989).
More theoretical treatments of phonology are to be found in:
P. Carr, Phonology (London: Macmillan, 1993);
J. Goldsmith, The handbook of phonological theory (Oxford: Blawell,
1995);
M. Kenstowicz, Phonology in generative grammar (Oxford: Blawell,
1994);
A. Spencer, Phonology: theory and description (Oxford: Blawell, 1996).
Accessible introductory publications on writing systems and orthography
include:
L.-J. Calvet, Histoire de l’écriture (Paris: Plon, 1996);
V. Cook, Inside language (London: Arnold, 1997, Chapter 6);
F. Coulmas, The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems (Oxford:
Blawell, 1996);
Georges Jean, Writing: the story of alphabets and scripts (London:
ames & Hudson, 1992);
J. L. Swerdlow, ‘e power of writing’ (National Geographic 1962, 1999,
110–32).
e reader looking for more in-depth discussion of orthographic and related
issues may wish to consult one or more of the following:
E. Carney, A survey of English spelling (London: Routledge, 1994);
P. T. Daniels and W. Bright (eds), The world’s writing systems (Oxford:
Blawell, 1996);
G. Sampson, Writing systems: a linguistic introduction (London:
Hutinson, 1985);
M. Stubbs, Language and literacy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1980).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. In 6.2 and 6.3 we saw some examples of different stress distributions in
relation to similar sound-sequences being associated with different
grammatical categories – e.g. reject [VERB] vs. reject [NOUN]. Try to find
further pairs of English words whi are differentiated in this way.
2. In 6.4 we looked at the association between particular sounds and particular
(categories of) lexical items. Consider the nasalized vowel sound /ã/ as it
occurs, for example, in the final syllable of many English-speakers’
pronunciation of the word restaurant. In what other English words does
this sound occur? What kinds of words are these?
3. In 6.5 the notion of allograph was briefly discussed. It was noted that a
particular grapheme – the first leer of the Roman alphabet – has the
allographs A, a and a. Taking any writing system(s) with whi you are
familiar, try to find some further examples of ‘families’ of allographs.
4. In 6.5 and 6.6 it was shown that orthography is sometimes used to
differentiate between homophones (e.g. meat:meet). Illustrate this
phenomenon further from any language(s) you know.
5. In 6.7 we observed that some wrien signs are associated with particular
words or categories of words. Try to think of some further instances of this
in any language(s) with whi you are familiar. Note that sometimes the
specific association has to do with where the particular sign occurs as well
as with the nature of the sign itself. For example, the leer x rarely occurs
at the beginning of words in English, and almost all the words whi
feature x in this position are of Greek origin.
7
Lexis and language variation
7.1 Variety is the spice of language
So far we have been looking at the lexical aspects of language largely as if the
same range of forms and functions of any given language were deployed in all
circumstances of language use. A moment’s reflection, however, will bring us to
the conclusion that this is a simplification and that, in fact, languages are
aracterized by high degrees of variation. Regional accents immediately spring
to mind in this connection, as do the different words that people from different
regions use for the same object.
Similar kinds of variation occur across the social and ethnic spectrum, as well as
between the genders. With regard to gender, for instance, there are languages in
whi males and females pronounce the same words differently; thus, in Gros
Ventre, a Native American language of the north-eastern United States, words
whi male speakers pronounce with a /dj/ sound (the sound in the middle of
Indian ) are pronounced by women with a /kj/ sound (the sound in the middle of
Slovakian ) – so that the word for ‘bread’ in this language is either djatsa or
kjatsa, depending on whether the speaker is male or female. In other languages
certain pronouns and particles are gender-specific; thus, in Japanese, female
speakers indicate their gender by using the particles ne or wa at the end of
sentences they produce.
Also, it is clear that we vary our use of language from situation to situation – so
that, for example, the way we talk or write to a prospective employer is likely to
differ significantly from the way in whi we talk or write to close personal
friends. For example, over a cup of coffee with a friend we might explain that we
are too busy to go somewhere or do something using a form of words su as:
Can’t. I’m up to my eyes. In a formal interaction with an employer or a
prospective employer we might be more likely to express the same thought
rather differently: I am unfortunately unable to make myself available at that
particular time because of pressure of work.
e study of language variation falls within the ambit of that bran of
linguistics known as sociolinguistics. In this apter we shall begin with some
discussion around a few of the basic concepts and terms developed by
sociolinguists in connection with their study of language variation. We shall then
home in on the extremely important lexical dimension of language variation in its
different manifestations. Finally, we shall take a brief look at the question of the
relationship between lexical variation and cultural variation and the impact, if any,
of lexical variation on perceptions and thought paerns.
7.2 Language variation: sociolinguistic perspectives
With all this variation in evidence, a legitimate question to ask is: when are the
differences so great as to indicate that we are dealing with distinct languages
rather than two or more versions of the same language? Compare, for example,
the expressions in the first two columns below:
auf dem Fahrrad op de Fiets ‘on the bicycle’
es zieht et drekkt ‘there’s a draught’
wir trinken Schnaps we drenken Söpis ‘we’re drinking snaps’
Can these two sets of expressions possibly be from the same language? In fact the
expressions from the first column are from Standard High German (Hochdeutsch),
whereas the expressions in the second column are from what is generally
regarded as a ‘dialect’ of German spoken in a part of Germany whi lies very
close to the Dut border. e ‘dialect’ in question is in fact a variety of
Plattdeutsch or Low German.
Now consider three more sets of expressions:
et bord til to et bord til to ett bord för två ‘a table for two’
hva koster det hvad koster det? vad kostar det? ‘what does it cost?’
jeg er tørst jeg er tørstig jag är törstig ‘I’m thirsty’
Are these perhaps also from different dialects of the same language? In fact, the
first column contains expressions from Norwegian, the second column contains
expressions from Danish, and the third column contains expressions from
Swedish. In other words, in this case we are talking about sets of expressions from
what are regarded as three separate languages.
What is interesting is that, whereas a Norwegian, Dane and a Swede, can, ea
using his/her own language, to a very large extent converse with ea other
intelligibly, a speaker of Standard German with no knowledge of Plattdeutsch
would have great difficulty understanding the German ‘dialect’ from whi the
earlier examples are taken, including the examples themselves. Actually, a
speaker of Dut would fare beer in this regard. is demonstrates clearly that
whether we call something a dialect or a language is really more a maer of
politics than of linguistics. If the part of Germany where the above-exemplified
type of Plattdeutsch is spoken had happened to be situated in the Netherlands, the
linguistic variety in question would have been designated as a ‘dialect’ of Dut.
As it turns out, mu the same variety is spoken on the Dut side of the border,
where it is indeed regarded as a ‘dialect’ of Dut.
e way in whi sociolinguists deal with this problem terminologically is to
apply the neutral term variety to any set of linguistic items and paerns whi
coheres into a means for communication – not only in the context of geographic
variation but also in the context of social, ethnic, gender-related or context-related
variation. For example, one ethnic variety whi has been mu studied by
sociolinguists is Black English, otherwise known as Black Vernacular English or
Afro-American Vernacular English. is variety – used, as its various labels
indicate, by many Bla people in the United States – diverges very noticeably
from varieties used by Whites. It has a fairly well-defined set of aracteristics,
one of whi is a tendency for word-final plosive consonants to be voiceless; thus,
the Bla English consonants corresponding to Standard English /g/ in big, /b/ in
cub and /d/ in kid may occur as /k/, /p/ and /t/.
A feature su as a word-final plosive whose differing realization can, as in the
case of Bla English, contribute towards the identification of a particular variety
is labelled a variable in sociolinguistics. Another example of a variable is that of
/h/ in British English. Most British English-speakers would consider the dropping
of h’s at the beginnings of words to be a ‘working-class’ phenomenon. As it turns
out, h-dropping is not the exclusive preserve of any particular social stratum in
Great Britain, although the degree to whi it occurs is correlated with class, as is
evident from the following figures from a study conducted in the 1970s showing
the percentages of word-initial /h/s dropped by samples from different social
groupings in Bradford and Norwi:
BRADFORD NORWICH
Middle middle-class 12% 6%
Lower middle-class 28 % 14 %
Upper working-class 67% 40%
Middle working-class 89% 60%
Lower working-class 93% 60%
What this set of figures illustrates is that linguistic varieties are not necessarily
aracterized by the absolute presence or the absolute absence of a specific
realization of a variable – in this case the suppliance or the dropping of the word-
initial h sound. us, while it seems to be the case that, in both Bradford and
Norwi, middle-class speakers pronounce word-initial h more oen than they
fail to pronounce it, there are nevertheless occasions when they drop it. Varieties,
in other words, are oen aracterized by tendencies or probabilities in terms of
the presence or absence of particular variants of variables rather than by
categorical aributes. Another dimension of the way in whi variables relate to
varieties whi is illustrated by the above figures is the fact that different varieties
are not necessarily discrete, self-contained systems neatly divided off from ea
other, but may form a continuum and blur into ea other.
A continuum of variation is precisely what one usually finds in social context-
related variation, whi is sometimes referred to as style-shifting. In all languages
people adjust their language style according to the situation in whi
communication is taking place and according to the relationship that exists
between the participants in the interaction. For example, consider the expression
going to in English, as in: I’m going to leave tomorrow . is expression can
undergo a range of reductions – indicated below – and its most reduced forms are
more frequently used in informal styles of spee and less frequently used in
formal styles:
/gǝʊiŋ tu: / (‘going to’)
/gǝʊiŋ tǝ/ (‘going tub’)
/gǝʊin tǝ (‘goin’ tuh’)
/gǝn tǝ/ (‘guhn tuh’)
/gǝnǝ/ (‘guhnuh’ – the form usually wrien as ‘gonna’)
at is not to say that ‘one or the other’ situations are unknown in language
variation. Where two or more varieties have aained the status of standard
regional, national or international languages and their paerns have been fixed
and prescribed for by grammar books, dictionaries, and language academies, the
differences between them are more categorical. For example, in Standard Swedish
the form två will always be used for ‘two’, whereas in Standard Danish the form
used will be to. Similarly with the pairs of forms below representing Castilian
(Standard Spanish) and Catalan respectively:
CASTILIAN CATALAN
ciudad ciutat ‘city’
descuento descompte ‘discount’
dirección direcció ‘direction’
mas més ‘more’
podemos podem ‘we can’
tambien també ‘also’
tiempo temps ‘time’
Two important points remain to be made before we move on to examine the
lexical dimension of language variation in more detail. e first is that the various
factors in language variation do not operate in isolation from ea other but on
the contrary constantly interact. For example, there is an interplay between
geographical variation and social variation, with non-standard regional accents
and expressions being more frequently found in working-class language use than
in the language use of the middle classes. ere is also interaction, to take another
example, between geographical variation and social context-related variation;
thus, an individual with a knowledge of both a national standard variety (su as
Standard German) and a non-standard regional variety (su as a variety of
Plattdeutsch) will tend to use the non-standard variety in situations of intimacy
and informality – in the home and with friends and acquaintances from his/her
locality and will use the standard variety in more formal circumstances – with
strangers and in the world of officialdom.
e second point is that the particular variety or varieties that we use are not
deterministically imposed on us but rather reflect the models we ourselves adopt
and the aaments and affiliations we enter into; I was born and raised in a
working-class home in Dorset, but – because at some stage in my ildhood I
began to identify with the norms, including the linguistic norms, of my Standard
English-speaking educators – I no longer (alas!) speak with a Dorset accent.
Sometimes a particular affiliation can take speakers in a less rather than a more
standard direction. For instance, a mu-cited study conducted in Martha’s
Vineyard (an island off the coast of Massauses) some years ago revealed that
the use of a particular nonstandard vowel sound was increasing among the
islanders – apparently reflecting a heightened sense of local solidarity and a
negative reaction to the values and behaviour of the large numbers of
mainlanders who holidayed on the island in the summer.
7.3 Lexical aspects of geographical variation
A very frequently cited illustration of lexical variation related to geography is the
case of lexical divergence between American and British English, for example:
AMERICAN ENGLISH BRITISH ENGLISH
apartment flat
billfold wallet
diaper nappy
gas(oline) petrol
trunk (of a car) boot
Also well-known are pronunciation and spelling differences between British
English and American English su as:
AMERICAN ENGLISH BRITISH ENGLISH
PRONUNCIATION DIFFERENCES
harass /haˡras/ harass /ˡhærss/
laboratory/ˡlabrǝtori/ laboratory /lǝˡbnrǝtrı/
leisure/ˡli:ᴣǝr/ leisure
magazine magazine
missile missile
center centre
defense defence
favorite favourite
plow plough
traveler traveller
In a number of cases where British and American English have what look like
identical words, there are differences in morphological behaviour. For example,
the verb to dive, whi in British English has dived as its preterite (simple past)
form, in at least some varieties of American English has dove as its preterite.
Other cases where – at least to judge by the usage of many current American
popular writers – British and American preterites diverge include: to fit – British
fitted, American fit; to sneak – British sneaked, American snuk; to strive – British
strove, American strived. ere is also the case of the past participle of the verb to
get, whi in British English is got and in American English gotten .
Probably more problematic in communicative terms are instances of ‘false
friends’ – words whi seem to be identical but whi have different meanings.
e case of bum is probably too well known to cause misunderstandings; in
American English it means ‘tramp’, whereas in colloquial British English it
denotes ‘buos’ (= colloquial American English buns). e metaphorical use of
the expression pissed, on the other hand, might just be a source of difficulty. In
colloquial British English I’m really pissed means ‘I’m really drunk’; in American
English, however, it means ‘I’m really annoyed’, whi British English speakers
express by adding off: I’m really pissed off. A British English speaker buying a
small item – su as a book or a card – in downtown Indianapolis may also be
taken aba (as I was!) to be asked ‘Do you want a sa for that?’; the word sack,
whi in American English can be applied to bags of any description, is in British
English applied only to very large bags – su as those used for coal or fertilizer.
Mu the same kind of situation as one finds in relation to lexical differences
between the English of Great Britain and the English of North America applies to
the Castilian Spanish of Spain and the Spanish of Latin America. us, for
example, in America the Spanish for ‘bean’ is frijol, whereas the Castilian word is
alubia or judia; in America the Spanish for ‘bus’ is bus, whereas the Castilian
version is autobus; in America the words used when answering the telephone are
aló, bola or bueno, whereas in Castilian the expressions used are digame or diga.
ere are a number of ‘false friends’ in this connection too. For instance, the word
carro, whi in Castilian means ‘cart’ or ‘wagon’, also means ‘car’ in America (=
Castilian coche); the word estampilla, whi in Castilian means ‘rubber stamp’, is
also used in Latin America for ‘postage stamp’ (= Castilian sello); and the word
coger, whi in Castilian has the innocent enough meaning ‘to take hold of’, in
Latin America is a slang word for ‘to have sex with’ (= Castilian joder).
Not that the interposition of a large ocean is a necessary prerequisite for lexical
divergences. Su divergences are also found from country to country within
Europe. For example, the number system in Fren operates differently in
Francophone parts of Belgium and Switzerland from the way it operates in
France. In France the words used for ‘seventy’, ‘eighty’ and ‘ninety’ are,
respectively, soixante-dix (literally ‘sixty-ten’), quatre-vingts (literally ‘four-
twenties’) and quatre-vingt-dix (literally ‘four-twenty-ten’). In Belgium and
Switzerland, on the other hand, the words used for ‘seventy’ and ‘ninety’ are,
respectively, septante and nonante; also, in Switzerland the word huitante is
frequently used for ‘eighty’. ere are also differences between the English of
Ireland (sometimes called Hiberno-English) and British English. For instance, most
British English speakers would have difficulties with the Irish English expressions:
boreen (‘narrow tra’), garsoon (‘boy’), gurrier (‘ruffian’), locked (in the sense of
‘drunk’), and yoke (in the sense of ‘thing’).
Even national frontiers are of only limited value as guides to lexical divergence.
at is to say, particular lexical forms or usages do not necessarily stop at frontiers
– as we saw in the earlier discussion of the Plattdeutsch examples – and lexical
differences are to be observed within as well as between varieties spoken in any
given country. us, for example, although the statement in the last paragraph
about the use of soixante-dix for ‘seventy’ in France – as opposed to septante in
Belgium and Switzerland – is generally true, in fact, septante is also used by some
speakers in eastern France. A further case of lexical variation within a country is
that of the German words for ‘Saturday’; in northern Germany the word used is
typically Sonnabend, whereas in southern Germany the word Samstag tends to be
used.
7.4 Lexical aspects of social variation
Whereas relating the way in whi people speak and write to the country or
region they come from is relatively uncontroversial, making the same kinds of
connections between language varieties and social baground is a somewhat
more sensitive maer, since the description of particular variants of linguistic
variables as being associated with a particular social class is liable to be
interpreted as feeding into snobbery, élitism and/or anti-democratic political
philosophies. Indeed, one early aempt to analyse lexical usage in social terms
was immediately put at the service of elitist aitudes. is was the work of the
English linguist, A.S.C. Ross, whi set out – in a rather impressionistic manner –
to isolate markers of upper-class (‘U’) and non-upper-class (‘non-U’) language use
in respect of pronunciation, grammar and most especially vocabulary. Ross’s
dictates were seized upon and added to by linguistic snobs all over the English-
speaking world and led to the establishment of a veritable glossary of ‘U’ and
‘non-U’ terms. For example, in the U/non-U seme of things, the words on the
le below are supposedly ‘U’, and the words on the right their ‘non-U’
equivalents:
‘U’ ‘NON-U’
bicycle/bike cycle
looking glass mirror
lavatory toilet
lunch (eon ) dinner
(table-)napkin serviette
scent perfume
pudding sweet
wireless radio
One rather amusing point in this connection is that the so-called ‘upper-class’
variants in many cases precisely coincide with the variants used in working-class
circles. For example, in my own working-class home in the 1950s we listened to
the wireless rather than the radio, looked forward to pudding not sweet, rode
bikes not cycles, and occasionally presented my mother with boles of scent not
perfume. Ogden Nash’s suitably sceptical comment on the whole U/non-U
discussion was that the Wied een in the Snow-White story, by uering the
words ‘Mirror mirror on the wall’, ‘exposed herself as not only wied but
definitely non-U’.
Other early aempts to examine the relationship between language – including
lexis – and social class were rather more scientific. As far ba as the late 1930s
the American linguist Charles Fries compared a number of aspects of the
language used in leers on similar topics sent to the same destination (an
administrative department of the armed forces) by lower working-class and
professional correspondents. Among the lexical differences that emerged from
Fries’s work were the following:
the professional subjects in the study tended to intensify the force of
adjectives using forms ending in -ly (as in awfully difficult), whereas the
more common intensifiers used by the working-class subjects were items like
awful, mighty, pretty, real, right.
the professional subjects used a single form you, whether the reference was
singular or plural, whereas the working-class subjects oen used forms su
as youse, you all, you people to indicate plurality;
the working-class subjects oen used double prepositions su as off from,
whereas the professional subjects tended not to use su forms.
Another early study, this time dating from the 1950s, found that, on being
interviewed about a tornado in Arkansas, working-class speakers, unlike middle-
class speakers, used we, they and persons’ names without further explanation for
the benefit of the interviewer, and that they used expressions like and stuff like
that instead of going into detail.
A more recent account of language and class is that of the British sociologist
Basil Bernstein. Bernstein talks about two ‘codes’ to whi, he claims, lower
working-class and middle-class speakers have differential access. e two ‘codes’
in question are, on the one hand, restricted code (originally labelled public
language) and, on the other, elaborated code (originally labelled formal language).
Restricted code, according to Bernstein, is the code of intimacy, the code we all
use when with people and in circumstances where we can communicate a great
deal without saying very mu because there is so mu shared information and
there are so many shared expectations in the situations in question. Elaborated
code, for its part, says Bernstein, is the code we use when we need to be explicit in
our spee and writing because the person(s) to whom we are addressing
ourselves is/are not familiar with the people, places, ideas etc. we are referring to,
whi means that we need to contextualize everything we are producing in order
to be understood. Bernstein contends that, whereas all users of a language have
access to restricted code, lower working class speakers have lile experience of
elaborated code and so are likely to be disadvantaged in situations, su as sool,
where the use of elaborated code is required.
e linguistic aracteristics of restricted and elaborated code, as described by
Bernstein, include the following:
RESTRICTED ELABORATED
short, oen unfinished or fragmentary well-ordered complete sentences with
sentences syntactic norms observed
simple and repetitive use of use of a wide range of conjunctions
conjunctions (e.g. because, so) and very and subordinate clauses
limited use of use of a wide range of
subordinate clauses
rigid and limited use of adjectives and appropriate use of a wide range of
adverbs adjectives and adverbs
With regard to the lexicon, what all of the above amounts to is a claim that lower
working-class language users produce fewer conjunctions, adjectives and adverbs
than middle-class language users, and in fact, a number of studies appear to show
that this is indeed the case. On the other hand, Bernstein’s claims and his
interpretation of the relevant evidence have been called into question by some
linguists on the basis that the quantitative findings he cites do not necessarily
indicate two qualitatively different orientations, and that, in any case, a narrower
vocabulary in some grammatical categories may perhaps be compensated for by a
wider vocabulary in other categories hitherto uninvestigated.
A final point on the question of lexis and social class concerns ‘bad’ language or
‘vulgar’ language. It seems to be quite widely assumed that su language is
mostly to be found on the lips of people at the lower end of the social scale.
Indeed, the very word vulgar comes from a Latin word, vulgus, whi means ‘the
common people’, and there has been a longstanding tendency to associate the use
of oice language with stigmatized social categories. However, oaths, curses
profanities and obscenities have also been a royal and an aristocratic prerogative.
een Elizabeth I, for instance, was famous for her foul mouth, and the
traditionally oice language of the nobility is reflected in the expression to swear
like a lord.
In the modern age, at least in the West, there seems to have been an increase in
the use and acceptability of words whi would once have been regarded as
offensive (see Chapter 8) and this phenomenon has apparently affected the entire
social range. Serious resear into the social distribution of ‘swear-words’ remains
to be done, but it is likely that the extent of the use of su items will depend on
factors rather more complex than simply adherence to a particular social class. For
example, among the working-class population of Great Britain there are sizeable
numbers of practising Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs for whom the use of
explicitly sexual words or irreverent references to sacred maers would be
unthinkable.
7.5 Lexical aspects of ethnic variation
We turn now to the issue of the relationship between language variation and
ethnicity. Ethnicity is that aspect of culture whi signifies ‘belongingness’ to a
community in terms other than socio-economic terms; it is been recently defined
as ‘the identificational dimension of culture’. Racial factors may or may not be
present among the criteria by whi an ethnic group defines itself and/or is
defined by other groups. For example, the small Vietnamese community in Dublin
has aracteristics of both a cultural and a racial kind whi distinguish it from the
majority of the population, whereas most Scots residing in the same city would
not be identifiable in racial terms but would nevertheless see themselves as
culturally distinct from the Irish people among whom they live.
Obviously, one component of a culture whi very oen plays an important
role in identifying an ethnic group is language. For many members of particular
communities there is an absolutely vital connection between their language and
their ethnicity; thus, for instance, one of the slogans frequently heard in the
context of the revival of the Irish language is ‘Gan teanga, gan tir ‘ – ‘Without a
language, without a country’ – and among Jews it has been claimed that Hebrew
‘emerges from the same fiery furnace from whi the soul of the people emerges’.
In some countries and regions there is a high degree of separation of ethnic
groupings defined largely in linguistic terms. For example, in Belgium the
longstanding linguistico-cultural conflict between the Dut-speaking Flemings
and the Fren-speaking Walloons has resolved itself into a division of the country
– with the exception of the bilingual territory of Brussels – into two large
unilingual regions, Dut-speaking Flanders to the north, and Fren-speaking
Wallonia to the south. ere is in addition an officially recognized small German-
speaking area in eastern Belgium (Eupen, St Vith). In other situations, members of
different ethnic groupings are living and working side by side, communicating
with ea other via the standard language of the country and largely reserving
their use of ethnic varieties distinct from that standard language for use with
family and friends of the same ethnic baground. is would be true, for
example, of the community of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. In still
other situations the varieties spoken by particular ethnic groups may have strong
resemblances to and connections with the varieties of other ethnic groups,
including the standard variety of the country or region in question. Examples of
this kind of scenario would include the cases of speakers of American English,
Australian English, Hiberno-English, West Indian English etc. living in Great
Britain.
Further to this last point, a particularly interesting study of paerns of language
use among West Indians in Great Britain was conducted in the 1980s by the British
linguist Viv Edwards. According to her account, the variety – or patois – used
(especially in informal and intimate contexts) by the Jamaican community is very
closely related to Standard English but has a large number of specific features,
including lexical features, whi set it apart from the laer. Some of the lexical
differences between Jamaican Patois and Standard English reported by Edwards
are detailed below.
JAMAICAN PATOIS STANDARD ENGLISH
PLURAL MARKING OF NOUNS
mostly zero marking, e.g. mostly -s
He give me two book. He gave me two books.
-dem, where the context does not suffice to
indicate plurality, e.g.
Clovis gone up a Elaine fi you record-dem. Clovis went up Elaine’s for
your records.
JAMAICAN PATOIS STANDARD ENGLISH
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
me I, me, my
yu you, your
im he, him, his, she, her
i it, its
we we, us, our
unu you, your
dem they, them, their
INFINITIVES OF VERBS
fi + base form of verb, e.g. to + base form of verb
Dem want me fi go up dere go tell dem. They want me to go up there and tell
them
EXPRESSION OF LOCATION
deh + expression of place, e.g. to be + expression of place
When me deh at school, di whole a dem When I was at school, they all hated
hate me me.
Finally in this connection, it may be worth mentioning that some ethnic groups
mark their identity by conversational code-switching – switing to and fro –
apparently quite arbitrarily – between the languages at their disposal. For
example, some groups within the Hispanic (or Latino) communities in the United
States – whether from parts of the country whi once belonged to Mexico or
immigrants from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico or Puerto Rico – signal
their ethnicity in all its biculturality by inserting English expressions into their
discourse when speaking Spanish and insert Spanish expressions into their
discourse when speaking English. In some instances there actually seems to be a
convention to the effect that roughly equal amounts of both languages should be
used in any given conversation. One o-cited study of code-switing among
Puerto Ricans in New York demonstrates this kind of balanced approa in its
very title – quoted from one of the members of the community in question:
‘Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English y termino en español’ (Sometimes I’ll
start a sentence in English and finish it in Spanish.’).
7.6 Lexical aspects of gender-related variation
Gender-related variation, as we saw from the Gros Ventre and Japanese examples
mentioned at the beginning of the apter, may in some cases be very clear and
noticeable by all. In other cases the differences between male and female spee
are more subtle and users of a given language may or may not be conscious of
them. With regard to English and many other European languages, for instance,
the differences are oen said to reside in the tendency of female language use to
be closer to the ‘prestige variety’ than male language use. us, for example, as
far as accent is concerned, it has been observed that female British English
speakers are more likely than their male counterparts to produce pronunciations
whi resemble those of radio and television announcers. An explanation
commonly offered for this kind of difference is that women have traditionally
been expected to be more ‘correct’ and conforming in their behaviour than men
and that this expectation and its consequences carry over into the linguistic
sphere.
With regard to lexis, a test case for ‘good behaviour’ among women as far as
language is concerned is that of ‘swear-words’. It is certainly true to say that there
is – or at least until recently was – a certain reluctance on the part of many men
to uer su words in the presence of women. e expression not in mixed
company , whi really means ‘not in front of the women’, was frequently used as
an interdiction in respect of jokes and anecdotes whi contained sexually explicit
references and/or ‘four-leer words’. One presumes from this kind of approa on
the part of some men that women have traditionally heard less ‘bad language’
than men, but what about their production of su language?
een Elizabeth I was mentioned in the last section as a user of oice
language. One interesting comment about her in the present context depicts her as
having ‘sworn like a man’. is implies that in Renaissance England – at least in
well-to-do circles – swearing was associated more with men than with women,
but it also implies, of course, that individual women (including the Supreme
Governor of the Chur of England) refused to be bound by this particular
convention. In seventeenth century England the association between maleness and
swearing was still, apparently, very mu in place if the following quotation is
anything to go by.
e Grace of Swearing has not obtain’d to be a Mode yet among the
Women; God damn ye, does not sit well upon a Female Tongue; it seems to
be a Masculine Vice, whi the Women are not arrived to yet …
Defoe, An essay on projects, 1697
To bring the discussion a lile closer to our own times, in an influential study
published in 1975 under the title of Language and women’s place, the American
linguist, Robin Lakoff claims that ‘If a lile girl “talks rough” like a boy, she will
be ostracized, scolded or made fun of’ (p. 5). Lakoff provides the following
example (p. 10):
(a) Oh dear, you’ve put the peanut buer in the refrigerator again.
(b) Shit, you’ve put the peanut buer in the refrigerator again.
It is safe to predict that people would classify the first sentence as ‘women’s
language’ the second as ‘men’s language’.
Actually, 25 years on, the above prediction would not be at all safe. In Great
Britain and Ireland at any rate many women now say shit no less readily than
they drink pints. Whether this means that women have entirely caught up with
men in the ‘four-leer word’ stakes is not clear, but there is lile doubt that – to
say the very least of the maer – the gap is closing.
Lakoff also claims that some other words are more frequently used by women
than by men. us, for example, she maintains that certain colour words su as
aquamarine, chartreuse, lavender and magenta are more likely to be produced by
women than by men, and that mu the same applies to adjectives su as
adorable, divine and precious. Among the many aspects of British upper middle-
class behaviour parodied in the television series Absolutely Fabulous! is the
vocabulary used by women of that baground – darling, gorgeous, sweetie etc.
Vivian Cook found in an informal survey conducted in association with his book
Inside language that 90% of his 48 respondents identified Absolutely gorgeous and
It’s nice, isn’t it? as coming from female speakers.
Just how far lexical divergences genuinely differentiate between speakers of
different genders in a language like English is, as can be seen from the above
discussion, a maer of some debate – whatever may be the situation in languages
like Gros Ventre and Japanese. It is worth saying, however, that in the major
European languages, including English, and presumably in all languages there are
certain words whi, when used literally and self-referentially, will very clearly
designate the speaker or writer as male or female. e particular items will vary
from language to language but their denotation will typically have to do with
biological aributes and/or with roles or positions assigned to one gender or the
other in a given society. Here are some examples from English:
MALE-IDENTIFYING FEMALE-IDENTIFYING
I’m extremely virile. I’m extremely pregnant.
I’m a monk. I’m a nun .
I’m a widower. I’m a widow .
Moreover, in languages with grammatical gender the particular morphological
shape of certain words will have mu the same effect, as the following examples
from Fren demonstrate:
MALE-IDENTIFYING FEMALE-IDENTIFYING
Je suis étudiant. Je suis étudiante.
‘I’m a student’ ‘I’m a student’
Je suis heureux . Je suis heureuse.
‘I’m happy’ ‘I’m happy’
Cela m’a surpris. Cela m’a surprise.
‘at surprised me’ ‘at surprised me’
7.7 Lexical aspects of context-related variation
As has already been indicated, and as a moment’s reflection on our own use of
language will confirm, language varies not only in accordance with
speakers’/writers’ geographical, social, ethnic and gender profiles but also in
accordance with the context in whi the speaking or writing takes place. e
examples given earlier were of people using a very different spee style with
their friends from that used with employers or prospective employers, and of
people who speak Plattdeutsch at home and with friends switing to Standard
German when in the presence of strangers or bureaucrats.
is second example illustrates a phenomenon whi the American linguist
Charles Ferguson called diglossia – in an article bearing that name published in
1959. In the cases described by Ferguson diglossia refers to situations where two
related but very different varieties are in use within a given community, one of
whi – labelled High (H) – is used for formal, high-status functions, and the
other – labelled Low (L) – is used in more intimate, informal circumstances. e
cases in question are Classical Arabic and Egyptian Arabic in Egypt, Standard
German and Swiss German in Switzerland, Fren and Haitian Creole in Haiti,
and Katharevousa and Demotic Greek in Greece. A word or two of explanation
about ea of these cases follows.
• Classical Arabic is the language of the Koran; in its modern form it is nowadays
more usually called Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA is used as a means of
communication throughout the Arab world, but ea Arabic-speaking country
and region has its own local variety of Demotic Arabic, these different varieties
being unintelligible to speakers of other local varieties.
• e case of Standard German (Hochdeutsch) and Swiss German
(Schweizerdeutsch, Schwyzertüüsch) in Switzerland is comparable to the case of
Hochdeutsch and Plattdeutsch in northern Germany. at is to say, Swiss
German is very different from Standard German – to the point of being largely
unintelligible to Standard German speakers who have not learnt Swiss German.
• e official language of Haiti is Fren, the language of the colonists who
populated it with African slaves and ruled it until 1804. However, the native
variety of most of its population is Haitian Creole. A creole develops when a
simplified system of communication between two groups speaking mutually
unintelligible languages (pidgin), is adopted as a mother tongue (by, for
example, ildren born of sexual relationships between members of the two
groups). Haitian Creole, like most creoles, took most of its vocabulary from the
language of the economically dominant group, i.e. Fren in this instance, but
has some grammatical elements derived from the languages – in this case
African languages – of the economically subordinate group.
• Katharevousa is a supposedly ‘pure’ (= Greek καθ αρóς – katharós) form of
Modern Greek whi is mu closer to Ancient Greek than is Demotic Greek (=
δηµτική – dhimotikí). Katharevousa was invented in the nineteenth century by
certain solars concerned to re-connect Greeks with their ancient culture and
to rid Modern Greek of elements borrowed from Turkish. It was for a
considerable period aer Greek independence from Turkey the official language
of the country and the language of education. Modern Demotic Greek, on the
other hand, is the vernacular language whi naturally evolved from Ancient
Greek, borrowing fairly extensively from Turkish and other languages. It was
adopted as the language of administration and education in Greece in 1976 (so
that the linguistic situation in Greece is now very different from that described
by Ferguson in the 1950s).
Ferguson’s representation of the functional distribution of H and L varieties in
these instances is given below.
H L
Sermon in ur or mosque x
Instructions to servants, waiters, workmen, clerks x
Personal leer x
Spee in parliament, political spee x
University lecture x
Conversation with family, friends, colleagues x
News broadcast x
Radio ‘soap opera’ x
Newspaper editorial, news story, caption on picture x
Caption on political cartoon x
Poetry x
Folk literature x
With regard to the lexical differences between the H and L varieties he discusses,
Ferguson gives the following examples (among others) of lexical doublets.
H L
Arabic in Egypt
‘al’āna dilwa’ti ‘now’
’anfun manaxīr ‘nose’
mā ēh ‘what’
German in Switzerland
jemand öpper ‘someone’
klein chly ‘small’
nachdem no ‘aer’
Fren and Creole in Haiti
âne bourik ‘donkey’
beaucoup âpil ‘mu’, ‘a lot’
donner bay ‘give’
Greek
étehe eyénise ‘gave birth’
idhor neró ‘water’
ikos spiti ‘house’
What Ferguson describes under the heading of diglossia can be seen as a special
case of code-switching. We have already (at the end of 7.5) looked at
conversational code-switching , where the practice of alternating between two
distinct varieties seems to be just an unspoken convention of a particular group.
However, there is another type of code-switing – situational code-switching –
where the swit between varieties is triggered by the situation in whi
communication is proceeding. e swit from Swiss German to Standard
German as a speaker moves from a conversation with family to giving a lecture
or filling in a form in a tax office is precisely su a case. In classic diglossic cases,
as we have seen, the two varieties are widely perceived as High and Low versions
of the ‘same language’. In other instances of situational code-switing this need
not apply. To take a very obvious example, if I take a train from London to Paris, I
shall begin my journey (buy my tiet etc.) in one language – English – and end it
(ask directions to my hotel etc.) in another – Fren.
A third type of code-switing whi needs to mentioned – for the sake of
completeness – is that known as metaphorical code-switching. is term is
applied where the swit between varieties is triggered by a ange of topic.
When the topic anges the effect on language use is as if the situation were
anged; hence ‘metaphorical’. A mu-quoted example of metaphorical code-
switing refers to the linguistic goings on in a community administration office in
Norway, where the clerks used standard or local dialect phrases with ea other
according to whether or not they were talking about official maers, and where
members of the public interacted with the clerks in the standard variety or local
dialect depending on whether they were transacting business or engaging in small
talk at the beginning or end of the transaction.
Most of us who have acquired and made use of more than one language during
the course of our lives will have been involved in code-switing of some kind or
other at some point. All of us will have been involved in what is usually called
style-shifting – that is to say, in making relatively subtle anges in the language
we use in response to differences in context – adjusting what we say or write to
make it appropriate to more formal or less formal situations, for instance. With
regard to the lexical aspects of style-shiing, some expressions are relatively
neutral in respect of the kinds of contexts in whi they are likely to occur, some
are identifiable as unlikely to be used in formal circumstances, whilst others are
unlikely to be associated with informal communication. e following examples
illustrate this for British English.
FORMAL NEUTRAL INFORMAL
diminutive small teeny-weeny
garments clothes threads
offspring child sprog
voluminous large whopping
weep cry blub
e association of given words with particular kinds of contexts has a major
influence on what impact they will have in other contexts. us, for example,
between close friends or colleagues at the end of a hard day an expression like I’m
shagged (in the sense of ‘I’m really tired’) will cause not a ripple. Offered as a
contribution to polite small talk with a visiting dignitary at a gliering civic
reception, on the other hand, its effect will be somewhat different. ere is
another sense too in whi context determines how words are received. One of
the most interesting books on language of the twentieth century was a small
volume called How to do things with words published by a philosopher by the
name of John Langshaw Austin. Austin was particularly interested in what he
called performative uerances, the saying of whi both perform specific acts and
explicitly refer to the acts in question, for example:
ENTERING INTO MARRIAGE
With this ring I thee wed …
PUTTING ONESELF UNDER OATH
I swear by Almighty God that the evidence which I shall give will be the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
NAMING A SHIP
I name this ship Titanic II …
Austin also noted that in order for acts su as those referred to above to take
effect, certain felicity conditions had to be fulfilled. In order for With this ring I
thee wed to ‘work’, for instance, the marriage has to have been consented to by
both the parties to it and by the religious and/or civic authorities validating it,
vows have to have been taken, a ring has to be put on the finger of the addressee,
and the entire ceremony has to take place in front of witnesses, including at least
one witness (priest, mayor, registrar, captain of ship etc.) empowered by Chur
and/or State to be the official overseer of proceedings. e same words uered by
a deeply smien ten-year-old romeo to his giggling girlfriend behind the sool
bicycle-sheds (even if accompanied by the offering of a ring) will simply not do
the job – at least not the job of admiing the happy couple to the holy estate of
matrimony!
Actually, as Austin himself noted, and as other writers on the topic have since
emphasized, we perform an act of some kind not only when we make a highly
conventionalized uerance in a formal public ceremony su as a wedding, but
every single time we use language. ere may be some kind of ritual involved –
as in the above cases; we may explicitly name the act we are performing – as in
the above cases and also in cases like I hereby approve this claim (APPROVAL), I
congratulate you on your success (CONGRATULATION), I promise I’ll be there
(PROMISE); or the act may be signalled by an interaction between the words we
use and the context in whi we use them; for example, Could you please pass the
salt? and Is there any salt? will both be interpreted as requests (for the salt cellar
to be passed) if uered at table by a diner too far from the salt to rea it
him/herself. e acts in question usually go under the label of speech acts in the
relevant literature, but they would more appropriately be called language acts,
since they are the substance and the results of any kind of linguistic
communication – whether in spee, writing or sign.
To return to the question of the role of context, the act performed by any set of
words will vary according to the situation in whi they are produced. For
example, Is there any salt? uered by an irritated teenager to his/her poor
harassed parents in the presence of an open cupboard from whi salt is very
obviously missing performs the act of complaining rather than (or as well as)
requesting; in other contexts, su as the collective inspection of the partially
stoed kiten of a flat being borrowed for the weekend by a group of friends,
the same uerance will constitute a simple enquiry. Similarly, the word cheers
uered to the accompaniment of the raising of a glass constitutes a toast; uered
in the context of the departure of the uerer it constitutes a leave-taking; uered
in response to a kindness it constitutes an act of thanking.
7.8 Lexical variation, culture and thought
Finally in this apter we shall very briefly explore lexical variation in a
somewhat different sense. If we look at the language varieties used in different
countries and communities around the world we shall quily come recognize
that, while in many instances they have different words for the same concepts, for
example American English gasoline, British English petrol, Fren essence,
German Benzin etc., there are many other instances in whi they lexicalize
reality differently. at is to say, the range of concepts covered by vocabulary and
the ways in whi the concepts in question are bundled together in words will
tend to diverge from variety to variety. We saw this in our discussion of
structuralist perspectives on meaning in Chapter 5, when we noted that different
languages deal differently with the colour spectrum. Similarly, different languages
deal differently with how they paage concepts of kinship. Even two languages
as relatively close as English and Swedish differ in this regard; thus, whereas
English has just one word, grandmother, to signify female grandparents on both
the mother’s and the father’s side, and one word, grandfather, to signify male
grandparents on both the mother’s and the father’s side, Swedish has separate
words for ‘mother’s mother’ (mormor) and ‘father’s mother’ (farmor), and,
similarly, separate words for ‘mother’s father’ (morfar) and ‘father’s father’
(farfar). Another example – this time from two varieties of English – concerns the
dividing up of the day. In British English ea day has a morning period, an
afternoon period, an evening period and a night period; in some varieties of
Hiberno-English, on the other hand, afternoon is missing, and evening covers the
entire period from noon until the onset of the night period. Two questions arise
from su divergences: (i) do they reflect meaningful cultural distinctions relative
to the groups using the varieties in question (culture and cultural in this context
being applied to whole paern of life in a society rather than just to its ‘high
cultural’ activities su as poetry and music), and (ii) do they result in differences
in the ways in whi different groups perceive the world.
With regard to the first of the above questions, it is widely assumed that the
greater the lexical differentiation in a linguistic variety in respect of any given
semantic field, the greater the cultural significance of that field for the community
using the variety in question. e old clié in this connection about Eskimos
having dozens of words for ‘snow’ turns out to be something of an exaggeration.
However, the general notion whi it is meant to illustrate is not seriously
disputed, and it is quite easily demonstrable without resorting to examples from
the frozen north. An example that occurs to me every time I read a nineteenth-
century novel relates to horse-drawn vehicles. In the nineteenth century the
horse-drawn carriage was highly important both as a means of transport and as a
marker of social status; correspondingly there were large numbers of words in use
whi denoted various aspects of horse-drawn transport – including words
denoting different types of vehicle: barouche, brougham, chaise, landau, phaeton
etc. How many English-speakers at the beginning of the twenty-first century
would have even the vaguest idea what a baroue or a brougham might be? To
take an instance even closer to home, in this case referring to vocabulary
associated with a particular academic subculture, the present book contains dozens
of terms – from allophone to syllabary – whi refer to absolutely basic
distinctions within linguistics, but whi simply do not figure (because they do not
need to figure) in the lexical equipment available to most non-linguists. Su
anecdotal observations have been verified more scientifically; for example, an
intercultural study conducted in the 1970s revealed that languages do not have
vocabulary for cooking practices that are not used in the cultures with whi the
languages are associated.
It is, let it be said, always possible to talk about the entities that words denote
even if the particular lexical labels do not exist. If we did not have the word
landau, we could always say something like ‘four-wheeled enclosed carriage with
a removable front cover and a ba cover that can be raised and lowered’ (the
Concise Oxford Dictionary definition), and if we did not have the word syllabary
we could always evoke the relevant concept with an expression su as ‘writing-
system whose aracters represent syllables’. However, obviously, having the
applicable words at our disposal makes life mu easier, especially if we are in a
society or a profession where landaus or syllabaries have some importance and
where we need to speak or write about them relatively frequently. Indeed, if a
concept aains significance in the life of a particular group and a term does not
exist for the concept in question, then it is very likely that a word will be created
to cover the case.
Some illing illustrations of su lexical innovation are provided by the British
linguist Miael Stubbs, who currently works in Germany. Stubbs summarizes an
article from a German student newspaper whi critically examines the racist
lexicon of the political right – items su as: Fremdenbass (‘hatred of foreigners’),
Scheinasylanten (‘apparent/sham political asylum seekers’) and Überfremdung
(‘infiltration by foreigners’); Stubbs cites with approval the article’s argument that
‘su lexical creations crystallize thoughts, make them easy to refer to, presuppose
the existence of su things’. In the realm of love rather than hate, some decidedly
more pleasing examples are to be found in the lexical coinages of certain
American groups experimenting with new approaes to relationships and who
have invented terms su as polyamory (to refer to the notion of having
responsible, loving, sexual relationships with more than one partner at a time) and
polyfidelity (to refer to the idea of being sexually faithful to a group of people
rather than to just one partner).
Moving on to the question of lexis and thought, whereas, as we have seen, it is
possible to represent new thinking by coining new expressions, we do not start
from square one in the maer of linguistic representation. When we acquire our
first language, that language provides us with one particular set of possibilities of
expressing experience and fails to make available other possibilities. For example,
English makes available a multitude of words for different colours and thus
facilitates the expression of quite subtle distinctions in relation to visual
experience; on the other hand, English is mu less well-endowed than some
other languages with ways of signifying finely graded degrees of distance and
intimacy between individuals.
According to some linguists su differences between languages and language
varieties determine the way in whi we perceive the world and think about it –
our Weltbild or ‘picture of the world’. is idea goes ba to ancient times: the
early Latin poet intus Ennius apparently used to say that because he had three
languages, he had ‘tria cordia’ (‘three hearts’); it also surfaced in the work of the
nineteenth-century German linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, who believed that
the Sprachform (‘language shape’) and thought of a people were inseparable. In its
more modern manifestation, however, this view is commonly referred to as the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – aer two American linguists, Edward Sapir and
Benjamin Lee Whorf, who devoted a great deal of aention to it in the first half of
the twentieth century. A quotation from ea of these two solars in turn,
starting with Sapir, will give an immediate idea of their standpoint:
Human beings … are at the mercy of the particular language whi has
become the medium of expression for their society … No two languages are
ever sufficiently alike to be considered as representing the same social reality.
e worlds in whi different societies live are distinct worlds, not the same
world with different labels aaed.
e linguistic system of ea language is not merely a reproducing system
for voicing ideas, but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and
guide for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for
his synthesis of his mental sto-in-trade … We dissect nature along lines laid
down by our native languages.
e kinds of arguments that have been put against a strongly deterministic
interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – the notion that we absolutely
cannot escape from the categories imposed by our native language – include the
fact that:
• we can learn languages other than our first language and can thus enter into
other representations of reality;
• we can talk about and understand categorizations of reality other than those
made available by our native language (as Sapir and Whorf both demonstrate!);
• in broad terms at least, the same needs (e.g. for food and drink), problems (e.g.
siness) and existential boundaries (i.e. birth and death) are present in all
human societies, so that, again in broad terms at least, we all have common
points of reference.
ese arguments are persuasive and are supported by the findings of
experimental studies whi fail to support the notion that language determines
perception.
However, it is possible to conceive of a more moderate reading of the
hypothesis – the idea that the categories of our native language have a pre-
disposing influence on the way in whi we deal with the world even if they do
not rule out other options. is weaker version of the hypothesis has some
evidence on its side. For example, some years ago a study was carried out whi
investigated whether Navajo-speaking ildren and English-speaking ildren
differed in the way in whi they sorted objects of various shapes and colours. In
the Navajo language, unlike in English, the shape of an object involved in the
action referred to by a verb has important effects on the form of the verb, and so
the hypothesis was that the Navajo-speakers would be more inclined than the
English-speakers to sort by shape rather than colour – whi indeed proved to be
the case. e message of this and other studies with similar results seems to be
that, although Sapir and Whorf may have somewhat overplayed their hand, their
contention that specific features of languages we know can have an effect on
aspects of how we process experience appears to hold water.
7.9 Summary
Chapter 7 began with a brief introduction to the notion of language variation
followed by the definition and exemplification of some basic sociolinguistic
concepts relative to this phenomenon – notably those of variety and variable. e
apter then proceeded to consider language variation in relation to geography,
social class, ethnicity, gender and context, showing that in ea case there was a
clear lexical dimension to the variation in question. Finally, reference was made to
the possible implications of lexical variation from group to group and community
to community – in terms of types and degrees of lexical differentiation in different
conceptual spheres – in respect of intercultural distinctions and differences in the
perception of reality; the conclusions from this part of the discussion were that
differences in vocabulary structure reflect cultural differences, and that, while the
specific features of particular languages (including lexical features) do not
determine perception, they do seem to have some influence on the processing of
experience.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 7.1.
e examples of gender-based variation are taken from Chapter 13 of R.
Wardhaugh’s book An introduction to sociolinguistics (third edition, Oxford:
Blawell, 1998).
See 7.2 .e case of the varieties spoken along the Dut-German border is
something of a clié in sociolinguistics. However, I was fortunate enough to
experience it as a fascinating daily reality when, during my undergraduate years, I
spent time in the Vorrink household in the German village of Neuenhaus (near
Nordhorn). e Norwegian, Danish and Swedish examples in 7.2 were gleaned
from the Collins Scandinavian phrase book edited by L. Myking (London: Collins,
1959). e reference to Bla English is based on p. 333 of R. Wardhaugh’s An
introduction to sociolinguistics (third edition, Oxford: Blawell, 1998). e
figures on h-dropping in British English are taken from J. Milroy and L. Milroy’s
article ‘Varieties and variation’ in F. Coulmas (ed.), The handbook of
sociolinguistics (Oxford: Blawell, 49); the Milroys cite these figures from J. K.
Chambers and P. Trudgill’s book Dialectology (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980, 69). e Martha’s Vineyard study referred to is W. Labov’s ‘e social
motivation of a sound ange’ (Word 19, 1963, 273–309).
See 7.4.A. S. C. Ross’s article on ‘U’ and ‘non-U’ lexis is: ‘Linguistic class-indicators
in present-day English’ (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 55, 1954, 20–56; reprinted
in revised form under the title ‘U and Non-U: an essay in sociological linguistics’
in N. Mitford (ed.), Noblesse oblige, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1956). F. Ogden
Nash’s comment on the Wied een’s non-U status is to be found in You can’t
get there from here (1957). e Fries study of working-class and professional
correspondents’ use of English is referred to in C. C. Fries, American English
grammar (New York: Appleton-Century-Cros, 1940). e study of the language
used in interviews is reported in L. Satzman and A. Strauss’s article ‘Social class
and modes of communication’ (American Journal of Sociology 60, 1955, 329–38).
e account of this study and the Fries study given here is based on the second
section of Chapter 8 in W. P. Robinson’s book Language and social behaviour
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). e aracteristics of restricted and elaborated
codes presented here are derived from B. Bernstein’s account in his article ‘Social
structure, language and learning’ (Educational Research 3, 1961, 163–76). Studies
whi appear to validate Bernstein’s lexical claims include those reported in: B.
Bernstein, ‘Social class, linguistic codes and grammatical elements’ (Language and
Speech 5, 1962, 221–40); D. Lawton, Social class, language and education (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968); W. P. Robinson, ‘e elaborated code in working
class’ (Language and Speech 8, 243–52). Critical reactions to Bernstein’s work are
to be found in: M. C. Coulthard, ‘A discussion of restricted and elaborated codes’
(Educational Review 22, 1969, 38–51); W. Labov, Sociolinguistic patterns,
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972); H. Rosen, Language and
class: a critical look at the theories of Basil Bernstein (Bristol: Falling Wall Press,
1972).
See 7.5.e definition of ethnicity in the first paragraph of 7.5 is that offered by J.
A. Fishman on p. 329 of his article ‘Language and ethnicity: the view from within’
(in F. Coulmas (ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics, Oxford: Blawell, 1997).
e quotation about Hebrew in the next paragraph is cited by Fishman in the
same article (p. 331) from an essay published in 1908 by Yaakov Nakht. e
account of the Belgian situation is based on pp. 295–6 of P. H. Nelde’s article
‘Language conflict’ (in F. Coulmas (ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics, Oxford:
Blawell, 1997). e reference to the Turkish community in the Netherlands is
informed by A. Baus’s book Two in one: bilingual speech of Turkish
immigrants in the Netherlands (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press). Viv Edwards’s
study of Jamaican Patois is reported in her book Language in a black community
(Clevedon: Multilingual Maers Ltd, 1986). e article on Puerto-Rican code-
switing referred to is S. Popla’s ‘Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in English y
termino en español: toward a typology of code-switing’, (Linguistics 18, 1980,
581–616)’.
See 7.6.e reference to een Elizabeth I at the beginning of 7.6 is cited from F.
A. Shirley, Swearing and perjury in Shakespeare’s plays (London: Allen & Unwin,
1979, 10) by G. Hughes in Swearing: a social history of foul language, oaths and
profanity in English (second edition, London: Penguin, 1998, 103). e Defoe
quotations is also borrowed from Hughes’s book (p. 209), and the quotation from
Lakoff’s study (Language and woman’s place, New York: Harper & Row, 1975) is
borrowed from p. 211 of the same source. V. Cook, from whom I have borrowed
the reference to Absolutely Fabulous! reports the gender-related findings of his
informal survey on p. 160 of Inside language (London: Arnold, 1997).
See 7.7. C. Ferguson’s article ‘Diglossia’ – referred to at length in 7.7 first appeared
in Word 15, 1959 (325–40); it is reprinted as Chapter 11 of P. P. Giglioli (ed.),
Language and social context (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). e example of
metaphorical code-switing is taken from p. 425 of J-P. Blom and J. J. Gumperz’s
article ‘Social meaning in linguistic structure: code-switing in Norway’ (in J. J.
Gumperz and D. H. Hymes (eds), Directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography
of communication , New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972). J. L. Austin’s book
How to do things with words was first published in 1962 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press).
See 7.8. e German examples of lexical innovation cited in 7.8 and M. Stubbs’s
discussion of these examples are to be found on p. 366 of Stubbs’s article
‘Language and the mediation of experience: linguistic representation and
cognitive orientation’ (in F. Coulmas (ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics,
Oxford: Blawell, 1997). e American lexical coinages regarding multiple
relationships feature in the publications of, among many others, D. Anapol (see,
e.g. her book Polyamory: the new love without limits, Initinet Resources Center,
1997). e quotation from E. Sapir is from p. 209 of his article ‘e status of
linguistics as a science’ (Language 5, 1929, 207–14), and the quotation from B. L.
Whorf is from pp. 212–13 of Language, thought and reality: selected writings of
Benjamin Lee Whorf (edited by J. B. Carroll, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1956).
References to the experimental evidence regarding the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
are informed by pp. 81–125 of R. E. Cromer’s book Language and thought in
normal and handicapped children (Oxford: Blawell, 1991); the experiment
involving Navajo-speakers, summarized on pp. 97–8 of Cromer’s book, is
reported in J. B. Carroll and J. B. Casagrande, ‘e function of language
classifications in behaviour’ (in E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb and E. L. Hartley
(eds), Readings in social psychology, third edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1958).
e area of sociolinguistics – more than any other area of linguistics in my view –
is extremely well served as far as the range of well-wrien accessible
introductions is concerned. e following four titles all fall into this category, and
all deal, to a greater or lesser extent, with lexical dimensions of language
variation:
J. Holmes, Sociolinguistics: an introduction to language and society (Harlow:
Longman, 1992);
R.A. Hudson, Sociolinguistics (second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996);
P. Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: an introduction (second edition, London:
Penguin, 1995);
R. Wardhaugh, An introduction to sociolinguistics (third edition, Oxford:
Blawell, 1997).
Very readable but rather shorter introductions to this topic are to be found in
Chapter 8 of V. Cook’s Inside language (London: Arnold, 1997) and Chapter 10 of
V. Fromkin and R. Rodman’s An introduction to language (sixth edition, New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1996).
Readers looking wishing to explore further may wish to consult:
F. Coulmas (ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics (Oxford: Blawell, 1997);
N. Coupland and A. Jaworski (eds), Sociolinguistics: a reader and coursebook
(London: Macmillan, 1997);
R. W. Fasold, Sociolinguistics of society (Oxford: Blawell, 1984);
R. W. Fasold, Sociolinguistics of language (Oxford: Blawell, 1990).
With regard to particular aspects of language variation, the following titles are
recommended.
Geographical variation:
J. Cheshire (ed.), English around the world (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991);
P. Trudgill, Dialects (London: Routledge, 1994).
Social variation:
L. Milroy, Language and social networks (second edition, Oxford: Blawell,
1987);
P. Trudgill, The social differentiation of English in Norwich (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1974).
Ethnic variation:
V. Edwards, Language in a black community (Clevedon: Multilingual
Maers, 1986);
W. Labov, Language in the inner city: studies in the Black English
vernacular (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
Gender-related variation:
J. Coates, Men, women and language: a sociolinguistic account of gender
differences in language (London: Longman, 1993);
S. Mills, Language and gender: interdisciplinary perspectives (London:
Longman, 1995).
Context-related variation:
B. Myers-Scoon, Social motivation for code-switching (Oxford: Clarendon,
1993).
Lexis, culture and thought:
J. A. Lucy, Language diversity and thought: a reformulation of the linguistic
relativity hypothesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
A.Wierzbia, Understanding cultures through their key words (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. In 7.3 we looked at some differences between American English words and
their British English equivalents. Try to find some more examples of lexical
differences between American English and British English and/or between any
other two subvarieties of a language with whi you are familiar.
2. We saw in 7.4 that a number of aempts have been made to identify words or
types of words whi are particularly associated with particular social classes.
Try to come up with some suggestions of your own in this connection – with
reference either to English or to any other language you know.
3. In 7.5 Belgium was mentioned as an example of a country where different
ethnic groups – defined partly by language – live relatively separate from ea
other. Can you think of other countries where similar kinds of situations
obtain?
4. In 7.6 we noted – with respect to English and Fren – some words and word-
forms whi identify the speaker/writer as male or female (e.g. I’m a monk
(MALE), Je suis étudiante (FEMALE)). Try to add further items to the list for
either or both of the languages mentioned, or begin a new list of su items for
any other language you know.
5. As we saw in 7.7, one of the dimensions of context-related variation is the
association of particular words with formal, informal or neutral styles of spee
and writing. How would you classify ea of the following words in terms of
formality, informality or neutrality?
alacrity greedy mind snot
buy hyped naughty trouble
chuck inexplicable opulent undergarments
daft jumbo pee vamp
enervating kinky quick watch
fart limpid remuneration yuppy
6. In 7.8 we considered the different degrees and kinds of lexical differentiation
that exist from language variety to language variety. What groups or
communities – professional, political, national or international – would you
expect to be using linguistic varieties with a high level of lexical differentiation
in ea of the following spheres (and why)?
beer fire
calligraphy horses
cheese pollution
clouds sausages
cricket (the game) tea
8
Lexical ange
8.1 Language in motion
Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (1385) contains five lines that oen find their way
into books about language as well as into general dictionaries of quotations. In
these lines Chaucer notes that over the centuries the forms of language are
marked by ange, to the extent that words of long ago seem strange to us, but
that life – in particular, love – goes on whatever the shape of the words in whi
it is conducted:
Ye knowe ek that in forme of spee is aunge
Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
at hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.
Chaucer’s philosophical, accepting aitude to language ange is mirrored in the
comments of Ferdinand de Saussure in his Cours de linguistique générale (Course
in general linguistics, first published in 1916) from whi, as was mentioned in an
earlier apter, modern linguistics takes mu of its inspiration:
Time anges all things; there is no reason why language should escape this
universal law.
Every part of language is subjected to ange … e stream of language
flows without interruption; whether its course is calm or torrential is of
secondary importance.
In fact, linguistics had been looking at language ange long before Saussure
arrived on the scene. Indeed, for the hundred years or so before the publication of
Saussure’s major work, linguistics was almost totally preoccupied with comparing
different languages and examining particular languages at different historical
stages in order to trace the evolution of languages and language families.
Saussure’s contribution to linguistics, actually, was to broaden its horizons by
demonstrating that the synchronic study of languages (the study of languages at
any given point in their development) was every bit as fascinating as the
diachronic study of languages (the study of languages in their development
through time). is is not to say that diaronic or historical linguistics is a thing
of the past. On the contrary, at the present time it is aracting some extremely
dynamic researers, who in their exploration of historical issues are drawing on
insights from across the entire spectrum of contemporary linguistics. However, the
core methodologies of historical linguistics – the comparative method and internal
reconstruction – have remained substantially unanged since the nineteenth
century. We shall take a brief general look at these methodologies before homing
in on language ange in the specifically lexical domain.
8.2 e comparative method and internal reconstruction
e comparative method has its origins in the event whi launed historical
linguistics, namely the beginning of the serious study of ancient Indian language
of Sanskrit by Western solars at the end of the eighteenth century – in the wake
of Fren and British colonization of India. A number of European visitors to India
had in earlier times noticed similarities between Sanskrit words and words in
European languages, but in 1786 Sir William Jones of the East India Company
read a paper to the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcua in whi he provided
persuasive evidence and arguments in favour of the notion that Sanskrit was
related to Latin and Greek and also suggested that it might be linked to the
Germanic languages and the Celtic languages.
Essentially, what Jones did intuitively – noticing resemblances between
languages and positing a common source on the basis of su resemblances – the
comparative method does systematically. e method can be illustrated by
reference to some data from three Romance languages, Spanish, Italian and
Fren:
SPANISH ITALIAN FRENCH
cuerpo (/¹kuerpo/) corpo /¹kɔrpo/) corps(/kɔR/) ‘body’
color (/kɔ¹lɔr/) colore (/kɔ¹ɔre/) couleur (/kulœR/) ‘colour’
caro (/¹karo/) caro (/¹karo/) cher (/∫εR/) ‘dear’
Even the casual observer will notice that these are similar forms with similar
meanings and will be led by these similarities to speculate that the words in
question may be cognates, that is, derived from shared origins e historical
linguist will go on to look at hundreds of words in ea language; will
hypothesize, on the basis of finding a constant recurrence of su resemblances,
that Spanish, Italian and Fren are descendants of the same parent language; and
will seek to establish what the forms of the parent language might be by
examining the correspondences between the forms of the three languages. For
example, from the fact that two of the three languages have a p-sound in the
word for ‘body’, the inference will be drawn that this p-sound probably existed in
the original form; and the fact that two of the three languages begin the words for
‘dear’ with /ka/ rather than /∫ε/ will be seen as suggesting that /ka/ rather than /∫ε/
was original.
In the above cases it is possible to e the results of this approa, because we
know that the Romance languages are all descended from Latin (daughter
languages of Latin, as the terminology goes), and we know that the Latin words
for ‘body’, ‘colour’ and ‘dear’ were, respectively, corpus, color and carus. However,
where we have samples of historically related languages but no traces of the
parent language, the comparative method is our ‘best bet’, as far as trying to
discover the original forms is concerned. For instance, let us compare the relevant
forms of the word for ‘father’ in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic and Old Irish:
Sanskrit: pitā
Greek: patēr
Latin: pater
Gothic: fadar
Old Irish: athir
On the basis of these data, and using the same approa as with Spanish, Italian
and Fren, we can say that in all likelihood the original form from whi the
above forms are descended had /p/ as its initial consonant (shied to /f/ in Gothic,
lost in Old Irish), that its middle consonant was /t/ (shied to /d/ in Gothic and to
a th sound – /θ/ – in Old Irish), and that its final consonant was /r/ (lost in
Sanskrit). In fact, historical linguists, having looked at the above examples – and
having taken account of data from many other sources – have come to the
conclusion that the word from whi all of them descended was something like
*pǝter (where ǝ stands for a neutral vowel like the e sound in as in mower – and *
signifies that the form is ‘reconstructed’ rather than aested).
Using the comparative method, historical linguists came to the conclusion that
not only the languages mentioned by Jones but also a number of other languages
across Europe and Asia belonged to the same family – usually referred to as Indo-
European – all being descendants of a language to whi the label Proto-Indo-
European was aaed. Proto-comes from a Greek word prótos (πρώτος), whi
simply means ‘first’. It is also applied to the ancestor languages of groups of
languages within the Indo-European family; thus, the term Proto-Germanic is
applied to the (unaested) ancestor of Dut, German, Swedish etc. e sema
below presents a (highly simplified) historical overview of the Indo-European
‘family’:
rough the application of the comparative method on a wider scale, similar kinds
of ‘family-trees’ have been arrived at for many other language families.
In the case of language families, su as the Indo-European family, with large
numbers of modern representatives and with wrien records going ba
thousands of years, the comparative method works well. e more languages that
are available, the rier the data to whi the method can be applied; and the
longer the wrien record, the easier it is to trace su languages – via their earlier
forms – ba to a common origin. For example, if the Indo-European family were
represented by just two modern languages, Fren and Modern Irish, linking
Modern Irish athair to Fren père would be a good deal less obvious than is in
fact the case thanks to the availability of other modern forms like Spanish padre
and English father, and thanks also to the availability of older forms su as Latin
pater. ere are, however, cases where the ideal conditions for the comparative
method are not in place – cases, for example, where only a few representatives
(sometimes just one) of a language family have been discovered and/or a
language family is represented by data from just one historical period. In cases
like this historical linguists resort to internal reconstruction – that is, they try to
infer conclusions about the historical development of the language from internal
evidence.
For purposes of illustration, let us consider how internal reconstruction might
operate with regard to an aspect of German (about whose history, in fact, we
know a great deal). In German, word-final plosive consonants are always
voiceless. us, the consonant wrien b in lieb (‘dear’) is pronounced /p/ (just like
the consonant wrien p in Typ – ‘type’); the consonant wrien d in Bund (‘bond’,
‘federation’) is pronounced /t/ (just like the consonant wrien t in bunt –
‘colourful’); and the consonant wrien g in Tag (‘day’) is pronounced /k/ (just like
the consonant wrien ck in Sack – ‘sa’). When, however, words ending in b, d
and g are involved in morphological processes whi add vowels to the
consonants in question, their final consonants are then voiced. us, for instance,
1
lieber in mein lieber Freund (‘my dear friend’) is pronounced / li:bǝr/ (compare
Typen – ‘types’ – pronounced /¹typǝn/); similarly, Bundes in the expression die
Bundesrepublik (‘the Federal Republic’) is pronounced /bundǝs/ (compare bunte in
bunte Blumen – ‘colourful flowers’ – , pronounced /buntǝ/); and Tage in früh am
Tage (‘early in the day) is pronounced /ta:gǝ/ (compare Sackes in des Sackes – ‘of
the sa’ –, pronounced /zakǝs/). is alternation between voiced and voiceless
realizations of consonants in certain words is likely to suggest to the historical
linguist that at an earlier stage there may have been a single form and that the
divergent pronunciations depending on the presence or absence of an additional
vowel may have been a later development. In other words, the historical linguist
reconstructing the history of the language from whi modern German developed
on the basis of internal evidence may posit that at an earlier point in the evolution
of that language the lexical ancestor of lieb would always have been pronounced
with a final /b/, the lexical ancestor of Bund would always have been pronounced
with a final /d/ and the lexical ancestor of Tag would always have been
pronounced with a final /g/.
In this particular instance supplementary evidence for the proposal in question
is present in the spellings of the words concerned, whi point to an earlier single
form in ea case. anks to the existence of wrien forms of Germanic
languages over hundreds of years we can also e the plausibility of the
internally constructed solution arrived at by looking ba to earlier versions of
words like lieb, Bund and Tag; with regard to the final consonant of Tag, for
example, we can note that in Old English the word for ‘day’ was dæg. Given that
we know of numerous other modern languages whi are closely related to
German, we can also e the internally reconstructed solution by examining
cognate forms in these languages; for instance we can note that the word for ‘day’
in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish is dag. Su confirmation of the
internally arrived at solution by other means in this kind of case encourages
historical linguists to have some confidence in internal reconstruction in instances
where longstanding orthographic evidence and/or comparative evidence is not
available.
As a final comment on the above, it may be worth underscoring the fact that
the entire comparative-historical enterprise starts from and is carried forward by a
focus on lexis. Linguists hypothesize historical links between languages on the
basis of noting large numbers of lexical resemblances; they come to conclusions
about the developments within language families and individual languages by
comparing, where possible, the details of similar lexical forms across languages
thought to be related at different stages of the evolution of those languages; and,
where there are limitations on the possibility of cross-language and/or cross-
period comparison, they aempt to reconstruct the earlier shape of a language by
examining the alternating forms of words whi exist in the particular state of the
language to whi they have access. Whatever a historical linguist’s osen
destination – in terms of phonology, syntax, semantics etc. – his/her point of
departure and means of transport will inevitably be lexical.
8.3 Changes in lexical form
As we saw in Chapter 6, the view of historical linguists used to be that a given
phonological ange affected the entire language system at more or less the same
time, the same sound in the same environment always shiing in precisely the
same way. We also saw that this notion is mistaken. What actually happens is that
when a sound ange gets under way it spreads on a word by word basis through
the lexicon in a process known as lexical diffusion. A further example of lexical
diffusion comes from Modern Welsh, where words beginning with chw- in their
wrien form are increasingly pronounced as if the ch (pronounced as in Scots
Gaelic – and English – loch) were not there. at is, these words, whi used to be
pronounced with an initial /xw/ sound are now oen pronounced with a simple
/w/. Interestingly, this shi affected some words before others; thus the word
chwarae (‘to play’) was observed to be likely to be pronounced without initial /x/
at an earlier stage than the word chwannen (‘flea’), and this laer word was
observed to be likely to be pronounced without initial /x/ at an earlier stage than
the word chwaer (‘sister’).
Another traditional assumption of historical linguistics is that sound anges are
regular. If this assumption were not made then the use of correspondences
between words in different languages to establish historical relationships would
la any kind of foundation. How, for example, could we be justified in aributing
any significance to the correspondences Latin pater:Gothic fadar (‘father’), Latin
pes:Gothic fotu (‘foot’), Latin pellis: Gothic fill (‘skin’) etc., if we were to assume
that a sound like initial /p/ in a given language – Proto-Indo-European, for
example – might sometimes ange to /f/ in a given daughter language, and
sometimes, quite randomly, to entirely different sounds – /g/, /n/, /r/ etc. Clearly,
unlike the claim that sound anges affect all relevant contexts in a language
simultaneously, the idea that sound anges are regular has to be accepted as a
general principle. On the other hand, individual words do sometimes go their own
way in phonological terms.
A good example of su individual development is provided by the word esprit
(‘spirit’) in Fren. Esprit derives from Latin spiritus, a word whi, in the days
when Latin was the language of the Roman Catholic Chur, would have been
very widely used and heard in religious contexts – for example, in the invocation
of the Trinity (‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti’ – ‘In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’) whi begins all Catholic services
and formal prayers, and in the greeting and response ‘Dominus vobiscum – Et
cum spiritu tuo’ (‘e Lord be with you – And with thy spirit’) whi figure
repeatedly in the mass and other Catholic ceremonies. is – and the fact that in
those days people tended to do a great deal of ur-aending and praying –
probably explains why esprit has retained the s sound of its Latin forebear in its
modern pronunciation (/εspri/) instead of losing it in the thirteenth century, as in
the case of other Fren words deriving from Latin words beginning with sp:
Latin sparsus (‘scaered’) > Fren épars (‘sparse’); Latin spina (‘thorn’). Fren
épine (‘thorn’); Latin sponsus (‘bridegroom’) > Fren époux (‘husband’) etc.
Oen, the individualized direction of sound anges in particular lexical items
seems to be prompted by the need to avoid what is known as homonymic or
homophonic clash – that is a situation where two or more words with totally
different meanings end up sounding identical. For example, there is a regular
sound ange whereby Old English /i/ and /y/ normally converged in Middle
English /ɪ/ whi in turn developed into Modern English /ɪ/: thus, Old English
brycg > Modern English bridge; Old English scip > Modern English ship.
However, in some cases Old English /y/ developed via Middle English /u/ into
Modern English /ʌ/. One su case is that of Old English scyttan, from whi
Modern English shut derives. Had scyttan undergone the regular sound ange it
would have resulted in a form identical to Modern English shit, whi for its part
is descended from Old English *scitan (aested in besciten). It has been argued
that the way in whi scyttan evolved represents an instance of development
away from unwanted homophony, although not all linguists are convinced by this
argument.
e argument is probably strengthened in the particular instance of scyttan by
the fact that the posited avoidance relates to a word connected with defecation.
ere seems to be good evidence of phonological (and other) adjustments being
triggered by uncomfortable associations with particular body-parts, intimate
physical functions, sacred maers, death etc. We saw an example of this in
Chapter 6 drawn from Luganda. In English, taboo-induced anges have tended
to focus on expletive uses of the taboo words themselves and have tended to lead
to the creation of what are widely thought of as different words, whi then co-
exist with the original expletives rather than replacing them, as the following
doublets illustrate:
hell! heck!
God! gosh!
Jesus! gee(z)!
As for the more generalized, regular sound anges, these have been explained
in a variety of ways. Some linguists have seen them as originating in people
‘missing the bull’s-eye’ when aempting to articulate particular sounds, the idea
being that, when a critical mass of mis-hits have been heard, the position of the
‘bull’s-eye’, as it were, shis. is kind of explanation does not, however, take
account of the fact that sound anges tend to be similar in kind in quite
unconnected languages and that they do not result in systemic confusion and
aos, both of whi facts seem to be at odds with the notion that sound ange is
entirely random. Also somewhat dubious is the claim that regular sound anges
arise from the imperfect acquisition of sound systems by young ildren, the idea
being that ildren’s ‘imperfections’ survive into adulthood and are then adopted
as norms; unfortunately for this position, there is lile evidence that phonological
‘imperfections’ of young ildren’s spee survive into adulthood and exercise this
kind of influence.
Another view is that sound ange results from the influence of other
languages or language varieties. is certainly does explain some anges. For
example, in India languages of Indo-European origin (including Indian English)
and historically unrelated languages from the Dravidian family share a
retroflexion feature in certain consonants. at is to say, for instance, in the Indian
pronunciation of a word like day, the d sound is pronounced with the tip of the
tongue pointing bawards as it makes contact with the dental ridge. is feature
is unusual, and is unlikely to have arisen spontaneously and separately in ea of
the languages concerned. Mu more plausible is the notion that the feature in
question spread through contact between the different language communities. A
very common phenomenon in this connection is phonological ange in the
direction of a variety with high status in a particular community. e recent and
ongoing shi away from the pronunciation of post-vocalic r in words like car in
the West Country of England towards a London-like, r-less pronunciation of su
words exemplifies this phenomenon. On the other hand, there are also cases of
shis towards a more local, homely variety, as we saw in the example of Martha’s
Vineyard – also referred to in the last apter.
A further claim whi appears to ring true is that sound anges oen come to
pass because of inherent features of the environments in whi they occur. For
example, when voiceless plosive consonants su as [p], [t] and [k] are inter-
vocalic – situated between two vowels – the quality of the vowels (voiced, not
involving the obstruction of air flow) will tend to influence the consonants, whi
may become voiced, may cease to involve a complete blo of air flow, and in the
end may disappear altogether. Let us take, for instance, the case of inter-vocalic
Latin /t/ and its development in Spanish and Fren. In Spanish it first developed
into /d/ and then into /ð/ (the voiced th sound in English then), and so what
started out, for example, as Latin vita (‘life’) ended up as Modern Spanish vida –
pronounced /’ßiða/. As far as Fren is concerned, Latin inter-vocalic /t/ travelled
the same route in this case, but went further; thus, the word vita has an eleventh
century Fren descendant wrien vithe, and its Modern Fren descendant is vie,
devoid of all traces of the original /t/, Interestingly, English inter-vocalic /t/ has
begun to develop in a similar direction in American English, in many varieties of
whi the medial consonant sounds of matter and madder are identical.
With regard to anges in spelling, in sound-based writing systems these oen
reflect anges in pronunciation. For example, it was mentioned earlier that in
Fren /s/ before /p/ disappeared in the thirteenth century from the spoken form
of most words. In fact this was a more general trend than was indicated earlier; /s/
disappeared at this time from all pre-consonantal positions in the pronunciation of
most Fren words. Nevertheless, until the mid-eighteenth century the s
continued to be wrien. However, the third edition of the Dictionary of the
Fren Academy finally removed it from words where it was no longer
pronounced, replacing it with a circumflex or acute accent; thus beste (‘beast’)
began to be wrien as bête, chasteau (‘castle’) as château, escole (‘sool’) as école
etc.
On the other hand, there have sometimes been movements in a contrary
direction in spelling – that is to say, aempts to make words look more like the
forms from whi they were assumed to derive – irrespective of the way in whi
they were pronounced. For example, Fren scribes of the fourteenth and
fieenth centuries were very concerned to make Fren look as mu as possible
like Latin, and so they began spelling dette (‘debt’) as debte (cf. Latin debitum),
doute (‘doubt’) as doubte (cf. Latin dubitum), e (‘and’) as et (cf. Latin et), fevre
(‘smith’) as febvre (cf. Latin faber), and set (‘seven’) as sept (cf. Latin septem).
Occasionally their etymology was faulty. For instance, thinking that savoir (‘to
know’) was descended from Latin scire (‘to know’), they introduced a silent c and
wrote it as scauoir; in fact, savoir comes from the verb sapere, whi in formal
wrien Latin meant ‘to discern’, ‘to be wise’, ‘to think’, but whi was used
colloquially to mean ‘to know’ (cf. colloquial Modern English ‘to be wise to’).
Large numbers of these etymological spellings have since been re-simplified:
Modern Fren writes dette, doute and savoir. However, some have ‘taken’: et and
sept are still in place and, although the word febvre has fallen out of use, the
surname corresponding roughly to the English surname Smith is still oen wrien
Lefebvre. Interestingly, where etymological spellings have disappeared from
Fren they have sometimes been retained in English – as the above cases of debt
and doubt demonstrate. For English had its own Latinizers, and Anglo-Saxonizers
too. Middle English iland (‘island’), for example, had an s inserted into it because
it was wrongly associated with its Romance synonym isle, from Latin insula; and
the word delit, whi came from Old Fren delitier, delit – deriving from Latin
delectare (‘to delight’) had gh ‘restored’ to it by analogy with the genuinely
Germanic light (Old English liht), night (Old English niht), right (Old English riht)
etc.
Another dimension of orthographic ange is the development of different
spellings for different meanings. For instance, many speakers of British English
have adopted the American spellings program and disk for use in the context of
computer programs and disks while retaining the British spellings programme and
disc in all other contexts. To take another example, most present-day speakers of
English would probably regard the words flour and flower as totally different
words – homophones with entirely unrelated meanings. As a maer of fact they
both derive from Old Fren flour (‘flower’), flour being seen as the flower – or
finest part – of the ground corn and, interestingly, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary of the
English Language (1755) does not distinguish between them in spelling, giving
‘the finest part of meal’ as one of the meanings of flower. However, both before
and since Dr Johnson, other writers in English have felt the need to signal the
distinction between these meanings orthographically, and so the spellings
diverged. It is worth noting also that a concern to differentiate between words
with different meanings may sometimes have militated against spelling ange.
us, for instance, the words meet and meat used to be pronounced differently,
meat rhyming with great. In most varieties of Modern English the phonological
distinction between them no longer exists. However, there has been no
adjustment in the spelling of meat, a non-development whi possibly has to do
with the avoidance of homographic clash in the same way that the phonological
development of scyttan (see above) may have had to do with the avoidance of
homophonic clash.
Turning, finally in this section, to anges in the wrien forms of words in non-
sound-based writing systems, these have typically been related to developments
in the materials and implements used, the circumstances under whi writing
proceeded and considerations of learnability. As we saw, for example, in Chapter
6, Sumerian pictograms gave way to stylized cuneiform symbols under the
influence of the way in whi the writing act came to be performed – involving
so clay and reeds with wedge-shaped ‘nibs’. In modern times the Chinese
writing system has been simplified: in 1955 the government of the People’s
Republic of China sanctioned the simplification of 515 aracters and 54 particles.
e effect of this reform was to reduce the average number of strokes per
aracter from 16 to eight. Its motivation was a concern to give the Chinese
population at large easier access to literacy skills, although some of the reductions
actually decreased the representational transparency of the aracters.
8.4 Changes in lexical meaning
Whereas it is possible – with qualifications (see above) – to talk about general,
regular anges in the sounds of a language, notions of generality and regularity
have lile or no application to anges in meaning. ere is absolutely no ance,
for instance, that the tenological meaning recently acquired by the word mouse
– ‘hand-operated device whi controls the cursor on a computer screen’ – will be
extended to all or most other words referring to rodents – porcupine, rat, squirrel
etc. On the other hand, the word-specific nature of semantic ange does not
mean that shis in meaning are totally arbitrary; there are particular sets of
circumstances whi are known to favour semantic ange, and there are
particular processes whi are known to recur in semantic development.
One set of conditions for semantic ange is the case where knowledge of the
world moves on from one point in time to another. Let us take for example the
word world itself. English-speakers’ perception of what the Old English ancestor
of world (worold) signified would have been markedly different from what world
signifies for present-day English-speakers; in the Old English period worold
referred to an entity perceived as flat and immobile, whereas (in its literal sense)
world for us today refers to a spherical object rotating on its axis and travelling at
great speed through space. Su anges in conceptualization may, of course, take
place within the experience of an individual; thus, when I was a ild, the word
whale denoted for me something like ‘huge fish’, whereas now I understand it as
denoting ‘large sea-dwelling mammal’. Linguists and philosophers debate about
whether the above kinds of ange are really anges in meaning, whi some
wish to define as both socially determined and determined by the actual nature of
things rather than simply a maer of the concepts in the individual’s head’.
However, su anges certainly do have consequences in terms of the lexical
semantic relations exhibited in an individual’s or a group’s use of a language. For
example, if I think of the whale as a fish, then, clearly, the word whale will have a
hyponymous relationship with the word fish whi it will not have if I see the
whale as a mammal.
Another situation in whi word meanings ange is where the realities to
whi the words are applied ange. For instance in any large American city at
the end of the nineteenth century it was possible to take a cab from, say, the train
station to one’s hotel; at the beginning of the twenty-first century that is still true,
but the nature of the cab has anged, and so, accordingly, has the meaning of the
word cab. In the nineteenth century cab was applied to a two-wheeled horse-
drawn vehicle whereas today it is applied to a four-wheeled motor vehicle. is
kind of semantic ange can be occasioned by social and political restructuring as
well as by tenological developments. For example, throughout the Western
Roman Empire in the fourth century AD the Latin expressions princeps (‘foremost
(person)’) and dominus noster (‘our master’) were applied in legal and
administrative texts to the emperor (imperator), who also took the title Augustus,
and to his adjutant and successor designate (the person referred to in the Late
Empire as Caesar). Despite the kingly trappings of the emperor, the Latin
expression for ‘king’ – rex – was never used of the emperor. is laer term had
remained something of a ‘dirty word’ for Roman citizens ever since the
proclamation of the Roman Republic in 509 BC and the overthrow of Tarquinius
Superbus, the last of the Etruscan (Tarquin) kings of Rome. In the Late Empire rex
was applied only to these Tarquin kings and to kings of territories outside the
Empire. Two hundred years later, the Western Roman Empire having collapsed
and Germanic peoples having taken control of erst-while Western Roman
provinces, most of the above words were still in use in legal and administrative
texts, but in ways whi reflect a totally different social and political reality. us
in the legal Latin of Merovingian France the expressions dominus noster and
princeps were used synonymously with rex (Francorum) (‘king (of the Franks)’);
the terms imperator and Augustus, on the other hand, were incompatible with
dominus noster and princeps, and were applied (as courtesy titles) exclusively to
the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, whi was
still alive and well but whi no longer had any power in the West.
In all of the above cases there is a clear functional continuity between the
earlier and the later applications of the terms. Whether horse-drawn or motor-
powered, a cab still gets us from the station to our hotel. Whether a Roman
emperor or a Frankish ieain, the man in arge is still our master (dominus
noster). What happens, then, when a totally new kind of object, animal, social
phenomenon etc. appears on the scene of a particular community? One possibility
in su a case is to create a descriptive combination of already existing words – as
in traffic-warden (‘a person who takes care of traffic’ – cf. churchwarden, game-
warden etc.) or group-marriage (‘a longterm commied relationship involving a
group of people rather than just a couple’). A variation of this approa is to give
the descriptive expression a Greek or Latin form; thus the Fren word
télégraphe, from whi we get English telegraphy , was concocted on the basis of
Greek τηλέ (tēlé – ‘far off’) and γραφíα (graphía – ‘writing’). Another possibility,
as the télégraphe –telegraph example shows, and as we shall see later, is to
borrow a relevant term from the language of a community already familiar with
the concept in question. Yet a further possibility is to press into service a word
already present in the language of the community in whi the phenomenon
concerned makes its appearance by means of some kind of metaphorical
extension. e above-cited example of mouse is a case in point. Whoever first
applied the word mouse to the cursor-controller of a computer presumably did so
because of some kind of perceived similarity between the tenological device
and the small rodent – in terms, notably, of shape, size, rapidity of movement, and
possession of a ‘tail’ (the connecting flex in the case of the computer mouse).
Other recent computer-related metaphorical extensions include those affecting the
words hardware, net and window.
Metaphor is in fact a major factor in semantic ange, and not just in relation to
new concepts, For example, the word seethe comes from an Old English word
meaning ‘to boil’, and this remained the primary meaning of to seethe well into
the Modern English period. However, these days for most English speakers to
seethe means ‘to be very angry’; few have any idea that this meaning arose from
the metaphorical extension of a cooking term. To take another example, this time
from Fren, the word chef, whi means ‘boss’ or ‘ief’ in Modern Fren,
comes from the Latin word caput, whi meant ‘head (of a person, animal etc.)’.
is meaning was extended in mu the same way that the English word head
has been (head of department, head of a company, head of a school etc.) and in the
end the metaphorical meaning eclipsed the erstwhile literal meaning.
A further factor in semantic ange is that of context. One dimension of this
factor is confusion between meanings of words arising from their frequently
occurring in the same kinds of context. For instance, the verbs to imply and to
infer are both associated with contexts where the subject maer is the inexplicit
communication of messages. To imply refers to the imparting of inexplicit
messages – as in: Susan’s absence seemed to imply disapproval – while to infer
refers to the extraction of inexplicit messages – as in: Mike inferred from Susan’s
absence that she disapproved. However, this difference of meaning has become
blurred in many English-speakers’ minds, to the extent that to infer is very oen
used as a synonym of to imply – as in: What are you inferring by saying that?
Similarly with to deny and to refute, both associated with the negation of claims
made by other people, but the meaning of to refute carrying the additional
element of the demonstration of falsity – as in: He refuted the accusation by
showing that he had been in Stockholm at the time. Many English-speakers
(including many politicians and journalists) no longer observe this distinction and
use to refute as a synonym of to deny – as in: I refute that! Sometimes su
confusions arising from appearance in similar contexts are reinforced by formal
resemblances; thus, to mitigate is oen used in the sense of to militate and to
appraise is oen used in the sense of to apprise.
Another contextual element in semantic ange is the impact of recurring
shared contexts. For example, guests at wine receptions hearing the words Red or
white? have no difficulty interpreting the question as if it had contained the word
wine. Su context-induced abbreviations oen ‘sti’. For instance, in military
contexts the word private rather than private soldier is now the normal way of
signifying the lowest military rank, and in the terminology of the professions
undertaker is now the usual expression for what used to be called a funeral
undertaker. In the sexual domain too su foreshortenings occur. us, intercourse
is now typically used to mean what previously was denoted by sexual intercourse.
e cases of the development of undertaker and intercourse may well be
further influenced by an additional factor – the avoidance of taboo language. It
may be significant in these cases that the words that are dropped explicitly evoke
topics whi are oen skirted around – death and sex. e expression sexual
intercourse actually started out as a euphemism, but, as we have seen, its
subsequent evolution has ironically resulted in the word intercourse – whi used
to mean simply ‘communication’ or ‘interaction’ – acquiring ‘sexual act’ as its
normal first meaning. Other expressions whi now have one foot in the semantic
field of sexuality, because of having been deployed as sexual euphemisms, include
jump, the other and tumble. Likewise with words associated with other intimate
bodily functions. In earlier times there were even taboos in respect of certain
animals, whi were accordingly given euphemistic ninames, whi in turn
eventually became the normal terms for the animals in question. So it is with the
word bear in English, whi is related to brown, and whi originally meant
simply ‘the brown one’, and with the word renard (‘fox’) in Fren, whi derives
from the personal forename Reginhard.
8.5 Changes in lexical distribution
In Chapter 7 we saw that some communities are aracterized by the alternation
between ‘High’ and ‘Low’ linguistic varieties, depending on seing, subject-
maer, relations with the addressee etc. We also saw that language use in all
communities involves some degree of style-shiing – adjusting one’s accent, one’s
grammar and one’s lexis in accordance with the degree of formality of a situation.
What needs to be added to this general picture is that items whi at one point
may figure in the High variety may move into the Low variety – and vice versa –
and that items associated with one kind of style may subsequently become
associated with a different style.
One of the diglossic situations discussed in the last apter was that whi
obtains in Haiti, where Haitian Creole constitutes the Low variety and Fren the
High variety. In fact, this is a simplification. ere is a continuum extending from
the ‘pure’ or least Fren-like creole at one end, through varieties where Fren
influence is stronger, to the ‘pure’ prestige variety, Haitian Fren, at the other.
Su situations are to be found wherever a creole whose vocabulary mostly
comes from a major European language is used in a community where that same
European language serves as the High variety. Linguists label the ‘pure’ creole in
su cases the basilect (cf. Greek βάσις – básis – ‘base’), the ‘pure’ prestige variety
the acrolect (cf. Greek (άĸρον – ákron – ‘summit’) and the intermediate varieties
the mesolects (cf. Greek µέσος – mésos – ‘middle’). ere is a tendency in su
instances for speakers of basilectal varieties to try to enhance their social standing
by including in their spee elements from varieties higher up the continuum,
with the result that there is a gradual trend towards decreolization. us, to return
to Haitian Creole, very close approximations to Fren expressions – especially
high-status tenology-related expressions like radio (‘radio’) and changement de
vitesse (‘gear-shi’) – have in fact been widely adopted by even ‘pure’ creole
speakers.
e above case represents an example of a situation where words are adopted
from a more prestigious into a less prestigious variety. ere are also instances of
movement in the opposite direction. For example, the word for ‘horse’ used in
Latin in all formal contexts – literary, administrative etc – right down to the end
of the Western Roman Empire was equus (from whi our words equestrian and
equine derive). However, there was another Latin word for horse whi was used
in less formal contexts. is was caballus – from whi Fren cheval, Italian
cavallo, Spanish caballo etc. descend. Caballus was occasionally used in a jokey,
insulting sense in wrien Latin – to mean something like ‘old nag’, but in the
informal, colloquial Latin of the streets, farms and taverns it became the usual
word for ‘horse’, and in due course it was accepted with this sense into more
formal Latin. us, in clauses dealing with horses in the sixth-century Salic Law
we find the word caballus, not equus.
Coming ba to our own times, we can observe both downward and upward
adjustments of lexical distribution in Modern English. For instance, the word
excellent was, up to less than 20 years ago, rather a formal item – mu more
likely to be used by soolteaers at the ends of essays or by wine critics in
Sunday newspaper columns than by ordinary mortals having a at. is same
word is now on the lips of every teenager and is applied in every context from
sport to sexual araction. e word fabulous underwent a similar fate in the
1960s. As far as upward movement is concerned, we can cite the case of ‘bad
language’. e extent of the ange can be gauged from the fact that, whereas in
1966 the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan was instantly saed from the BBC for
saying on a late-night arts discussion programme that people were no longer
shoed by the word fuck, these days in Britain one can hear multiple renditions
of the word fuck in films screened aer 9 pm on any annel on any evening of
the week. at is not to say that fuck is now ‘respectable’, but it has progressed a
considerable distance towards acceptability in public seings. What used to be its
Fren equivalent – foutre – has gone mu further along this road; for many
Fren-speakers it is simply a slangy synonym of faire (‘to do’) – as in Qu’est-ce
qu’on va foutre cet après-midi? (‘What are we going to do this aernoon?’) or Il y
a rien à foutre (‘ere’s nothing to be done’).
Some historical linguists would apply the term melioration to the way in whi
foutre has developed in Fren, by whi they would mean that the sense of the
word has ‘improved’ (cf. Latin melior – ‘beer’) from being obscene or insulting
to being relatively neutral. Likewise for the case of Latin caballus, whose meaning
in formal contexts ‘improved’ from ‘old nag’ to simply ‘horse’. e opposite term
to melioration is pejoration (cf. Latin peior – ‘worse’). is might be applied to the
development of the word excellent, the force of whi (‘pre-eminent’) has been
somewhat diluted in recent years. e terms melioration and pejoration are
applied to meanings rather than distributions of words. e example typically
cited of melioration is the evolution of queen, whose Old English forebear, cwen,
simply meant ‘woman’ (cf. Modern Swedish kvinna – ‘woman’), but whi now
means ‘female sovereign’; as for pejoration, the example oen cited in this case is
that of knave, whose Old English forerunner, cnafa, meant ‘boy’ (cf. Modern
German Knabe – ‘boy’), but whi now means ‘rogue’. Melioration and
pejoration do not always result from anges of distribution in terms of High/Low
variety or formal/informal style, but there is clearly oen a connection between
su anges of distribution and the direction of semantic ange, as some of the
earlier examples demonstrate.
8.6 Lexical anges associated with language contact
What were described as anges in lexical distribution in the last section can, from
another perspective, be seen as a kind of borrowing – the High variety borrowing
from the Low variety, the informal style borrowing from the formal style etc.
Su borrowing is not possible, of course unless the varieties in question are in
contact in some way. In the above cases the contact was extremely close.
However, borrowing between language varieties is certainly not confined to
situations where there is this degree of closeness of contact.
For example, ai has borrowed lexis from both Fren and English without
there ever having been a presence of Fren-speakers or English-speakers in
ailand remotely comparable to, for example, the Fren presence in Haiti. An
example of a ai borrowing from Fren is (in Roman transcription) pang
(‘bread’ – cf. Fren pain), and an example of a ai borrowing from English is
computer. ere is, on the other hand, a common factor between Fren influence
on the development of Haitian Creole and Fren and English influence on ai –
namely the role of prestige: Fren and English are both high-status international
languages associated with well-respected literature, art etc. and with economically
and militarily powerful nations.
In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period in western Europe, the language
whi served as the most important lexical ‘quarry’ was Latin, a language whi
was no longer spoken as a mother tongue in any country, but whi, being
associated with the past glories of Roman civilization, and as the administrative
and liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Chur, nevertheless had no
shortage of prestige. Su was its power of araction in lexical terms that even
Romance languages, su as Fren, whi had evolved from Latin, began to
borrow more pristine or ‘learned’ versions of words they already had in less
Latin-looking form. e result: a series of lexical doublets, many of whi are
eoed in English. Some examples follow:
NATURALLY EVOLVED FRENCH LATER, ‘LEARNED’ LATIN
FORM BORROWING
chance cadence cadentia
(cf. English chance) (cf. English cadence)
frêle fragile fragilis
(cf. English frail) (cf. English fragile)
poison potion potio
(cf. English poison) (cf. English potion)
sûreté sécurité securitas
(cf. English surety) (cf. English security)
A point worth making in this connection is that prestige of a kind that prompts
lexical borrowing is not necessarily dependent on political power. For example,
the Romans, who for centuries dominated Greece militarily and who eventually
incorporated Greece into the Roman Empire, were nevertheless in constant awe
of Greek literature, music and art, and borrowed large numbers of terms from
Greek in these domains: metaphora (< Greek µεταϕορά – metaphorá –
‘metaphor’) musicus (< Greek µονσικóς – mousikós – ‘musical’), poeta (< Greek
ποιητής – poiētḗs – ‘poet’) etc. Even more dramatic is the case of those Vikings
who by force of arms won for themselves (in 911) the territory we now know as
Normandy (Norman = ‘Northman’). So bedazzled, apparently, were these intrepid
warriors by the aractions and comforts of their new home that they borrowed
not just a few items of vocabulary from their new subjects but an entire language
– so that when the Norman invading forces hit the shores of England 155 years
later, it was with bale songs in Old Fren, not Old Norse, on their lips.
Apart from borrowing born of the esteem in whi a given language and
culture (or aspects thereof) are held, borrowing may also occur as a convenient
way of covering lexical gaps in a language. e word telegraph has already been
briefly discussed. It provides a good illustration of the notion of convenience
borrowing. e first electrical telegraph was built in Geneva in 1774 by a Fren-
speaking scientist, Georges Lesage, and so, naturally enough, the first word for
this new invention was a Fren term (though constructed on Greek roots – see
above), namely télégraphe. When British and American scientists developed the
tenology further in the nineteenth century, they simply took over the Fren
term and gave it an English form. e ai borrowing of the English word
computer – also mentioned earlier – is a further case in point. Actually, not only
ai but other languages as well have borrowed this word – German, for
example. Although early calculating maines were invented by the Fren
philosopher Pascal and by the German philosopher Leibniz, the work leading to
the development of what we now know as computers was mostly carried out in
Great Britain and the United States, and so it is hardly surprising that the English
word (coined on a Latin base) came to international prominence and was
imported into other languages.
Oen though, let it be said, the crucial factor in what word is borrowed in these
kinds of instances is not the language of the inventors or the developers of the
concept in question, but the language of the group responsible for bringing the
concept concerned to a community previously unfamiliar with it. For example, the
Christian Chur and its theology and practices were not originally invented by
Latin-speakers but rather by Aramaic-, Hebrew- and Greek-speakers. However,
in western Europe these concepts and activities were mediated and disseminated
through Latin, whi is why in the languages of western Europe, including the
non-Romance languages, so many words relating to ures and what goes on in
ures derive from Latin; thus, for instance, in Irish, the words for ‘altar’,
‘blessing’, ‘alice’, ‘consecration’, ‘introit’, ‘sacrament’ and ‘incense’ are,
respectively: altóir (< Latin altare), beannacht (< Latin benedictio), cailís (< Latin
calix ), coisreacan (< Latin consecratio), intróid (< Latin introitus), sacraimint (<
Latin sacramentum) and túis (< Latin tus).
8.7 e case of proper names
In the context of a discussion of lexical ange it is worth considering the
particular case of the development of proper names. Typically, proper names have
their origins in expressions whi mean something in a general kind of way and
whi then become aaed to specific places, people or things. In a fair number
of instances these origins are perfectly obvious even to the casual observer. In
relation to towns called Newcastle, for example, we can fairly safely assume that
at some stage in their history a new castle was erected; indeed, in many cases we
can e our assumption by actually inspecting the castle in question. Similarly, a
place called Whitecliffs is likely to boast or at some stage to have boasted white
cliffs, a place called Foxholes is likely to be or to have been the abode of foxes, and
a place called Greystones is likely to feature or to have featured grey stones.
With regard to family names, these originate in ninames – the original sense
of surname (cf. Fren surnom) was precisely this. Individuals were identified by,
for example, some aspect of their personal aracteristics (Armstrong, Greenhorn,
Grey, Long, Short, Sharp, Sweet etc.), by their profession (Brewer, Miller, Tanner
etc.) by their family origins (Johnson, Peterson, Richardson etc.), or by where they
came from. In this last case the name in question might relate to a particular
topographical feature (Field, Mount, Woods – cf. Fren Deschamps, Dumont,
Dubois) or to a particular place-name with its own history (e.g. Hardcastle,
Newhall, Redwood). Forenames, or ‘given names’, are for their part assigned to
ildren oen on the basis of the impression made by a particular infant or on the
basis of aspirations for the ild’s aracter (thus, Bonny, Grace, Prudence etc.).
Alternatively, a name may be given in honour of some other person (an ancestor,
a saint, a current hero etc.) who may – in the parents’ fond dreams – perhaps
serve as a model for the ild. Names given to institutions and products may be
similarly aspirational and/or flaering, for example Golden Wonder (potato
crisps), Mother’s Pride (bread), Swiftpost (express mail system), The Open
University (university specializing in distance learning), The Independent
(newspaper).
In all of the above cases, the ordinary meanings of the names in question are
transparent to speakers of Modern English. However, in many other cases the
original meanings are obscured by historical ange and/or by the fact that the
items in question have been borrowed from other languages. With regard to the
obscuring of the original meaning through historical ange, Modern English-
speakers will probably recognize sheep-herd in the surnames Shepherd, Sheppard
etc. (because shepherd still exists as a common noun in English), but will probably
not recognize calf-herd in Calvert, hog-herd in Hoggart or sow-herd in Seward.
Similarly, on the personal aracteristics front, most Modern English speakers no
longer connect the surname Blount with blond, Gosse with goose, nor
Pennyfeather with penny-father (= ‘miser’). As far as borrowing is concerned, this
is well illustrated by English forenames, most of whi are borrowed from other
languages Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Fren, Gaelic (both Scots and Irish), Welsh etc.
To take a few Latin examples, how many of us know that Amanda, Benedict,
Cara, Dominic, Felix, Leo, Margarita, Miranda, Paul and Septimus come from
words meaning, respectively, ‘to be loved’, ‘blessed’, ‘dear’, ‘of the Lord’, ‘happy’,
‘lion’, ‘pearl’, ‘to be wondered at’, ‘small’, and ‘seventh’? Oen the origin of a
proper name is obscured both by its foreign roots and by the fact that it has
undergone ange since being borrowed. For instance, I puzzled for many years
over my mother’s maiden name, Ayley; I eventually discovered that this unusual
surname is a mu-altered version of a Middle Fren term – aillier (‘garlic-
seller’).
In the case of place-names, these may contain elements from languages spoken
in the area in question at any time over several millennia. For example, in Great
Britain place-names may have Celtic, Latin, Old English, Old Norse or Fren
origins – or may contain elements of two or more of the languages in question.
us:
• Celtic: all rivers called Avon (and the county of that name) derive from a Celtic
word whi simply meant ‘river’ (cf. Modern Welsh afon – ‘river’).
• Latin: Chester and all -chester -cester and -caster elements in English place-
names have their origin in Latin castra whi meant ‘(military) camp’.
• Old English: Hampton derives from Old English ham, meaning ‘homestead’ and
tun , meaning ‘enclosure’. Similarly with other English place-names containing
the elements ham(p) and/or to(w)n.
• Old Norse: Normanby descends from Old Norse Nor manna býr –
‘enclosure/selement of the Northmen’; most English place-names ending in -
by are Norse in origin (cf. Modern Swedish by – ‘village’, ‘hamlet’; Modern
Danish and Norwegian landsby – ‘village’).
• Fren: Beaulieu (pronounced /bju:lI/ – i.e. as if wrien Bewley) is derived from
the Fren expression beau lieu – ‘beautiful place’. Other British place-names in
whi beau figures (Beauchamp, Beaufort, Beaumont) are also of Fren origin.
• Examples of blends: Dorchester (Celtic element *dor- or *dur- (also in Dorset) –
from the name of the Celtic tribe who inhabited the region (known in Latin as
Durotriges) – plus chester from Latin castra – ‘(military) camp’; King’s Lynn
(English king plus Celtic *linn – ‘pool’ ); Forde Abbey (English ford plus Old
Fren abbeie – ‘abbey’).
A final point about proper names: while su names, as has been indicated,
typically develop from expressions with general denotations into labels aaed
to particular persons, places etc. in given contexts, sometimes the process operates
in the opposite direction. One area where this frequently occurs is the area of
taboo language. ‘Pet-names’ are oen created in particular families or groups to
refer to entities or actions around whi linguistic delicacy is felt to be required.
us, for example, the penis has been ristened, among other things, Dick,
Horatio, Jimbo, Jim Johnson, John Thomas, Micky, Percy, Roger and Willy . Some
of these expressions (dick and willy in the English-speaking world at large, micky
in Ireland) have evolved into common nouns, and another has given rise to the
verb to roger (‘to have sex with’). A further category of proper names whi
frequently spawns words of more general application is that of brand-names.
Some obvious examples here are band-aid, biro and walkman, whi began as
names for particular brands of, respectively, stiing plaster, ballpoint pen and
personal stereo, but whi later came in ea case fairly widely to be used of the
whole class of products in question. ere is, in addition, a dimension of the
question of proper names acquiring more general meanings as a result of the
deliberate aament of general denotations to su names. We shall examine this
third dimension a lile more closely in the next section.
8.8 Lexical engineering
is last section of the apter deals with language ange that is brought about
deliberately. We have already toued on this kind of ange in our discussion of
anges in spelling and in our discussion of the coinage of new terms. We shall
return to the conscious creation of new terms in the present section and we shall
then home in on the ideological dimension of ‘lexical engineering’. is laer
aspect involves not only the coining of new expressions but also the modification
or in some cases the suppression – or aempted suppression – of existing
expressions.
e conscious creation of new terms has already been toued on. We have
seen that when a new invention, discovery or idea arrives on the scene, it oen
occasions the invention in turn of a linguistic label by whi the newly developed
or observed phenomenon may be identified. We have seen also that the new
coinages are oen simply descriptive expressions – either in the language of the
inventor(s) (e.g. traffic-warden) or based on a language, su as Greek or Latin,
with ancient pedigree (e.g. télégraphe, computer). Another possibility we have
noted in su instances is the metaphorical extension of an existing expression –
as in the case of mouse applied to a cursor-controller in a computing context. It is
also clear from earlier discussion that not every new development leads to the
creation of new terminology. e example of cab – evolving from horse-drawn to
motorized but retaining its name – was given earlier.
A dimension of deliberately concocting new expressions whi has so far been
only briefly mentioned (at the end of the last section) is the incorporation into the
new terms of the personal names of individuals closely associated with the
inventions, discoveries or ideas in question. Many examples of this phenomenon
are to be found in the medical sciences, where there is a tradition of naming
diseases aer the researers who identified and/or described them; thus we have
Down’s syndrome – named aer the British physician J. L. H. Down (1828–96),
Hodgkin’s disease – named aer the British pathologist omas Hodgkin (1798–
1866) – and Parkinson’s disease – named aer the British physician James
Parkinson, (1755–1824). Similarly, engineers have pieces of tenology named
aer them (e.g. Archimedes’ screw), horticulturists have roses named aer them
(e.g. Gibson’s Scarlet), and political philosophers have political movements named
aer them (e.g. Marxism). In some cases an individual’s name is used as it stands
to supply a very basic term within the discipline in whi he/she was prominent;
thus in physics the basic unit of measurement of electrical resistance is the ohm,
whi is named aer the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1787–1854), and
the basic unit of measurement of radioactivity is the becquerel, whi is named
aer the Fren physicist Henri Antoine Becquerel (1852–1908).
Overlapping with the deployment of personal names in deliberate lexical
innovation is the invention of brand-names. Sometimes, aer all, a brand-name is
based simply on the name of the founder of the relevant company. So it was with
the Hoover range of vacuum-cleaners, whi took their name from the
manufacturer W.H. Hoover – a brand-name so successful that – as in the case of
band-aid, biro etc. – hoover passed into common parlance as a way of referring to
all vacuum-cleaners. Brand-names whi are not based on a personal name tend
to be fashioned so as to evoke associations relevant to the product – tenological
(e.g. Technet – computer network consultants – cf. technical, technological etc),
washing whiter then white (e.g. Daz – washing detergent – cf. dazzle),
environmentally friendly (e.g. Ecover – biodegradable washing-up liquid – cf.
ecology, eco-system etc.), meaty (e.g. Oxo – beef sto cube – cf. ox), clean (e.g.
Kleenex – tissues – cf. clean ), and so on. Inventors of brand-names, like inventors
of other kinds of words, also sometimes borrow elements from other languages;
thus, Bovril (beef drink – cf. Latin bos (genitive bovis) – ‘ox’), Lux (soap – cf. Latin
lux – ‘light’), Blue Stratos (aershave – cf. Greek στρατóς – stratós – ‘army’) etc.
Finally let us not forget the contributions of the literary world to the deliberate
coinage of new words,. Below are cited two stanzas from Lewis Carroll’s
‘Jabberwoy’ (from Alice through the looking-glass, 1872).
One two! One, two! And through and through
e vorpal blade went snier-sna!
He le it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing ba.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwo?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He ortled in his joy.
ese two stanzas alone were responsible for the institution of three new words in
English – galumph, frabjous and chortle – defined by the Concise Oxford
Dictionary as follows:
galumph 1 move noisily or clumsily 2 go prancing in triumph
frabjous delightful, joyous
ortle ule gleefully
As with Carroll, so with many other writers, and as with English, so, no doubt,
with all other languages possessed of literatures.
e lexicon has also been shaped by deliberate aempts to impose notions of
beering society. ese have tended to focus on what have been perceived as
sexist, racist, classist and ageist usages and on the lexicalization of sexual
orientation and mental and physical handicap. We shall look here at just the first
of the above, but this should suffice to exemplify the kinds of approa that are
being taken more generally.
Concerning sexism in language, a large number of expressions have been
singled out by feminists as demeaning to women. ese include terms su as
bird, bitch, cow, chapess, chippy, girl (applied to an adult female), popsy, tabby,
tootsy, totty and wren . Terms su as these are said to insult women by
dehumanizing them (comparing them to other species, e.g. bird, bitch), by
diminishing them (implying they are immature, e.g. girl, comparing them to small
creatures, e.g. bird, wren, or representing them via diminutives, e.g. chippy,
popsy ) and by classifying them in male terms (representing them as non-males,
e.g. chapess). On this view, su expressions, as ways of referring to women,
should be simply expunged from the language.
In addition, feminists have objected to the fact that certain functions in society
have traditionally been signified by words whi imply that the person fulfilling
that function has to be male: chairman, fireman, postman, salesman etc. In this
case two options present themselves: one can try to balance things up by creating
‘female’ versions of the words in question – chairwoman, saleswoman etc. – or
one can aempt to render the items concerned gender-neutral – chairperson,
chair, firefighter, postal operative etc. In English, both of these options have been
implemented to some extent, but the laer is the one that is clearly favoured by
feminists.
In other languages – su as Fren – the response to the problem of sexism in
language has been to feminize rather than to neutralize. For instance, there are in
Fren many words, su as professeur (‘teaer’) and auteur (‘author’), whi are
masculine in form and take the masculine articles le (‘the’) and un (‘a’), but whi
are applicable to both males and females. Other similar-looking words, su as
chanteur (‘singer’) and acteur (‘actor’), have feminine forms – chanteuse, actrice –
whi are used when the individuals referred to are female. In recent years su
feminine forms have deliberately been multiplied. e forms professeure and
autrice, for example, have been coined. ere remains the problem that
traditionally in Fren the masculine form constitutes the default form; that is to
say, for example, a member of the acting profession whose sex is unknown is
referred to via the masculine acteur, and a mixed group of male and female
members of the acting profession is referred to via the masculine plural form,
acteurs. Obviously, the creation of forms like autrice does not of itself solve this
problem.
To return to the basic foundations of aempts to render language less sexist,
racist etc., these seem to stand in need of some further exploration and comment.
To begin with, who is to decide whi terms are insulting and therefore
inappropriate? ere oen seems to be a gap between the perceptions of those
abolishing ‘offensive’ terms and those to whom the terms refer. For example, the
‘politically correct’ expression hearing-impaired is totally rejected by large
numbers of deaf people, who dislike the implicit medical perspective on their
situation and way of life, and who prefer to identify themselves as the Deaf (with
a capital D to make the point that they constitute a culture). Even the status of a
term like nigger is not necessarily as straightforward as it might appear. As Vivian
Cook points out, ‘the solidarity principle asserts itself and these discriminatory
terms become signs of group membership’ to the point where a group ‘may wear
the detested term with pride as a badge of identity’. He cites in this connection the
Bla rap group Niggas with Attitude and the Mikey Smith poem ‘Nigger Talk’.
Another issue worth considering in relation to conscious endeavours to address
socio-politically undesirable features and deficiencies in the lexicon is how far this
can of itself really ange perceptions and aitudes.
8.9 Summary
is apter began with some general comments on language ange and on the
fact that during the nineteenth century linguistics was almost exclusively
concerned with tracing su ange and theorizing about it. A brief account was
then given of the two principal resear methods developed by historical linguists
– the comparative method and the internal reconstruction method, aention
being drawn to the importance of the lexical dimension of ea of these methods.
e apter went on to describe and exemplify different types of lexical ange –
anges in lexical form, anges in lexical meaning, anges in lexical distribution
and anges associated with language contact. A number of factors were
suggested as contributing to the causation of su anges, including concern with
social prestige, cross-linguistic influence, avoidance of homonymic clash;
avoidance of taboo words (and words resembling taboo words) and the need to
provide labels for new tenology, institutions etc. In the final two sections of the
apter some discussion was devoted to the origins and development of proper
names (typically from expressions with more general application) and to the issue
of deliberate intervention in lexical ange – on the one hand the conscious
invention of new terms and, on the other, aempts to shape the lexicon in a socio-
politically more acceptable direction.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 8.1.e Chaucer quotation is from Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2 (lines 22–6).
e two quotations from Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in general linguistics are
cited from Wade Baskin’s translation (revised edition, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins,
1974); the first quotation is to be found on p. 77 of this volume and the second on
p. 140.
See 8.2 .e discussion of the origins of comparative-historical linguistics owes
mu to apters 6 and 7 of R. H. Robins’s book A short history of linguistics
(second edition, Harlow: Longman, 1979), and the content of both 8.2 and 8.3 is
informed by (and borrows some examples from) J. A. Anderson’s book Structural
aspects of language change (London: Longman, 1973).
See 8.3. e Modern Welsh examples relative to lexical diffusion are cited by J.
Aitison in her book Language change: progress or decay (London: Fontana,
1981, 95–6) from M. Chen’s article, ‘e time dimension: contribution toward a
theory of sound ange’ (Foundations of Language 8, 457–98). Aitison’s book
(especially apters 7, 8 and 11) is one of the sources for the discussion of the
causes of language ange; other sources for this discussion include Chapter 9 of
R. Antilla’s book An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics
(second edition, New York: Macmillan, 1988) and Chapter 10 of W. P. Lehmann’s
Historical linguistics: an introduction (London: Routledge, 1992). e exceptional
status of esprit is referred to by A. Ewert in his book The French language
London: Faber & Faber, 1933, 286–7) and by P. Riard in his book A history of the
French language (second edition, London: Unwin Hyman, 1989, 65). is laer
work (especially Chapter 4) in addition supplies many of the examples relative to
anges in Fren orthography. e scyttan/shut example is taken from A. M. S.
McMahon’s Understanding language change (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994, 332–3). e iland/island example is borrowed from S. Poer’s book
Our language (revised edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966, 45), on p. 72 of
whi is also to be found Dr Johnson’s definition of flower in the sense of flour.
e delit/delight example is borrowed from E. Weekley’s The romance of words
(new edition, London: John Murray, 1961, 103, fn. 6). e information about the
simplification of Chinese aracters is taken from L-J. Calvet’s Histoire de
l’écriture (Paris: Plon, 1996, 101).
See 8.4. e case against seeing anges in conceptualization as anges in
meaning is put by (for example) H. Putnam in his article ‘Meaning and reference’
(in A.W. Moore (ed.), Meaning and reference, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993). e Late Latin examples are based on resear I undertook many years ago
in connection with my doctoral thesis (A structural survey of the vocabulary
denoting social status in Late Imperial and Early Merovingian Latin , University
of Cambridge, 1976). e bear and renard examples are borrowed from p. 41 of R.
L. Trask’s Historical linguistics (London: Arnold, 1996).
See 8.5. e source of the idea of the creole continuum and the aendant
terminology is D. Bierton’s book The dynamics of a creole system (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975). e Haitian Creole examples are borrowed
from p. 53 of Hélène Seligman’s unpublished undergraduate dissertation Haitian
Creole: a sociolinguistic and sociocultural exploration (Dublin: Trinity College,
Department of Fren, 1988).
See 8.6.e ai examples were provided by Jennifer Pariseau. e remarks about
later Latin borrowings in Fren follow Chapter 8 (‘e Latinizing tendency’) of
my lile book French: some historical background (Dublin: Authentik Language
Learning Resources, 1992).
See 8.7.e discussion of family-names draws on the examples given in Chapter
12 of E. Weekley’s The romance of words (new edition, London: John Murray,
1961). e treatment of place-names was in general informed by a visit to the UK
English Place Name Database, whi may be consulted at the following website:
hp://www.connections.ndirect.co.uk/pnamesdb.html e Normanby example
was borrowed from p. 28 of S. Poer’s Our language (revised edition,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966). e treatment of the evolution of proper names
into common nouns etc. was generally informed by A. Sholl’s interesting and
amusing book Bloomers, biros and Wellington boots: how the names became the
words (Oxford: Past Times, 1999).
See 8.8.
e discussion of deliberate lexical innovation owes some of its inspiration
to Chapter 7, Section 3, of A. M. S. McMahon’s Understanding language change
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Cook’s astute comments on the
use of discriminatory terms as badges of identity are to be found on pp 244–6 of
his book Inside language (London: Arnold, 1997).
Accessible introductions to language ange and historical linguistics include:
J. Aitison, Language change: progress or decay (London: Fontana, 1981);
R. Antilla, An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics (second
edition, New York: Macmillan, 1988);
T. Crowley, An introduction to historical linguistics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992);
W. P. Lehmann, Historical linguistics: an introduction (third edition, London:
Routledge, 1992))
R. L. Trask, Historical linguistics (London: Arnold, 1996).
Readers wishing to deepen their understanding of language ange would do well
to go on to consult:
W. Labov, Principles of linguistic change, I: internal factors (Oxford:
Blawell, 1994);
W. Labov, Principles of linguistic change, II: external factors (Oxford:
Blawell, forthcoming);
A. M. S. McMahon, Understanding language change (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994);
S. Romaine, Bilingualism (Oxford: Blawell, 1989).
Readers with a reading knowledge of Fren who would like to know more about
the development of the different language-groups and languages in Europe would
have mu to gain by consulting:
H. Walter, L’aventure des langues en Occident: leur origine, leur histoire, leur
géographie (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1994).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. In 8.2 we briefly looked at various branes of the Indo-European family of
languages (Celtic, Germanic, Romance, Slavic etc.). Can you say to whi
bran ea of the following languages belongs (and where it is/was in use)? If
in doubt, consult an encyclopedia or other reference materials.
Avestan Occitan
Faroese Old Chur Slavonic
Frisian Punjabi
Galician Pictish
Macedonian Yiddish
2. Consider the following set of cognates from Dut, English, Swedish and
Standard German. Can you – on the basis of these data – say something about
the anges in the pronunciation of consonants whi separated German off
from the rest of the Germanic family? (NB in German ch following a, o or u is
pronounced /x/, and z is always pronounced /ts/).
DUTCH ENGLISH SWEDISH GERMAN
boek book bok Buch
eten to eat äta essen
haat hate hat Hass
hopen to hope hoppas hoffen
koken to cook koka kochen
peper pepper peppar Pfeffer
pijp pipe pipa Pfeife
tien ten tio zehn
tand tooth tand Zahn
3. Try to come up with explanations as to how the following underlined
expressions acquired their meanings:
The specialist he went to has diagnosed the big C.
A pint of bitter please.
We’ve saved all the data on floppy .
He’ll need some help at first because he’s a bit green .
Does this watch have a second hand?
Shall we go and fly your new kite. Chris?
You can open up the throttle a bit on this stretch of the road.
Dad’s father passed away when I was nine.
He always wears shorts in July and August.
There is an emergency exit adjacent to each wing of this aircraft.
4. e following expressions are all included in The Oxford Dictionary of Slang
(compiled by J. Ayto, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) in the section
dealing with the area of fear. Are all of these expressions in fact equally
‘slangy’? If not, whi of them have begun to move out of the slang category,
and whi of them are definitely still tied to highly informal contexts?
blue funk shake in one’s shoes
cold feet shitless
get the wind up spooked
hairy sweat blood
put the fear of God into the creeps
run a mile (from) the shits
scaredy-cat white-knuckle
scary yikes
5. On the basis of what was said about place-names in 8.7, what would you
deduce about the history of the following places in Great Britain and about
features that may be or may have been associated with them:
Avonmouth Gatenby
Beauly Greenham
Cirencester Kirkby
Clion Lileton
Fordham Sevenoaks
6. Try to create your own brand-name for ea of the following; in ea case
explain why you decided on the name you are proposing (and why you
rejected any other names you may have thought of).
a ocolate bar containing pistaio nuts;
an ice-cream flavoured with exotic fruit;
a dandruff shampoo;
a highly perfumed luxury soap;
a garage specializing in fast repairs;
a hypermarket with very low prices;
a record label specializing in light classical music;
a record label specializing in heavy ro music;
a men’s magazine;
a women’s magazine.
9
Acquiring and processing lexis
9.1 e ‘mental lexicon’
Up to this point in the book we have been treating the lexicon as an important
dimension of language that needs to be addressed in any description of the
phenomenon of language or indeed in the description of any particular language.
In the present apter we shall be looking at the lexicon whi ea speaker
carries around ‘inside his/her head’, that is to say the lexical knowledge, or mental
lexicon , upon whi all use of any given language heavily depends. We shall look
at the process by whi lexical knowledge is internalized in the course of the
acquisition of the mother tongue, we shall explore some ideas about how the
mental lexicon is organized and how it functions, and we shall also examine some
of the questions that arise in situations where more than one language is known
by an individual.
A question that immediately arises when we start to talk about lexical
knowledge is: what does it mean to know a word? We can make a fairly
reasonable aempt at answering this question just by observing ordinary
language use and noting what aspects of a word’s profile we need to be familiar
with in order to be able cope with it in su ordinary language use. On this basis
we can straightaway say that knowing a word involves:
• knowing what it sounds like – so that we can recognize it and produce it in
spee;
• (at least in literate societies) knowing its wrien form – so that we can
recognize it and produce it in writing;
• knowing what it means – so that we can understand it and deploy it
appropriately;
• knowing how it behaves morphologically – so that we can recognize and use its
different forms (singular, plural etc.);
• knowing how it behaves syntactically – so that we can identify its function in
phrases and sentences and so that we can use it in different roles in phrases and
sentences.
All of the above are fairly obvious. However, conclusions emerging from
discussion in earlier apters would lead us to go further. us, what was said in
Chapter 4 about the various effects whi accrue when a given word participates
in specific compounds, collocations, fixed expressions and idioms strongly
suggests that we cannot really be said to know a word unless we know about ‘the
company it keeps’ and the different impacts on its meaning and usage whi
result from participation in particular combinations. Context and meaning were
dealt with in a more general way in Chapter 5, and this discussion reinforces the
notion that knowing a word must include knowing how its interpretation shis in
accordance with the different contexts in whi it may occur. Finally in this
connection, the discussion of the association of particular words with particular
social groupings and contexts in apters 7 and 8 implies that knowing a word
must involve knowing its social associations and knowing the kinds of social
contexts in whi it would and would not be likely to occur.
9.2 Meeting the lexical allenge
Some linguists claim that language is su a vast and complex phenomenon and
the language input supplied to the infant by his/her caregivers so limited in nature
that no ild could ever acquire language if it were not for the fact that every
human being is born with an inbuilt language faculty – a subsystem of the
mind/brain whi has evolved to deal specifically with the processing and
acquisition of language. is contention is known as the poverty of the stimulus
argument. According to this view, the inborn or innate language faculty enables
the young ild to distinguish linguistic from non-linguistic data and provides a
guiding framework for the organization of linguistic information so that language
development may proceed swily and systematically. Customarily this line of
argument is applied in respect of the acquisition of syntax. However, a similar
argument can be, and has been, applied to lexical acquisition.
Whatever may be the truth of the maer regarding an innate language faculty,
it is possible to point to other facilitating factors whi have to do with the nature
of the input encountered by the ild. It has been observed that in many cultures
adults behave differently towards ildren in linguistic terms from the way in
whi they behave towards ea other. ey talk to ildren more slowly, using
shorter uerances, in a higher pit, and with repetition of key elements. It is
thought by many language acquisition researers (though not all) that su
features of what is variously called motherese, parentese, caretaker-talk and child-
directed speech make it easier for ildren to identify the units out of whi
uerances are composed. One aspect of ild-directed spee that seems to be
particularly relevant in this connection is ostensive definition – the definition of
single words by pointing at what they refer to and naming them; in this case
individual word-units are ready-isolated for the ild by the caregiver, as well as
being explicitly connected to particular meanings.
is laer semantic aspect of the lexical allenge is obviously vitally
important. Extracting word-units from the spee stream would be of lile
benefit to the ild in communicative terms without the aament to the units in
question of appropriate meanings. A further feature of spee directed at very
young ildren whi is relevant in this connection is that su spee is largely
focused on the ‘here and now’. Obviously, with or without explicit ostensive
definition, it must be easier for the ild to make links between words and
meanings where these meanings relate to his/her present and immediate
environment than would be the case if the reference were to objects, people,
events etc. not accessible to the ild’s senses at the time of the interaction.
With regard to later stages in ildren’s lexical development, further major
lexical allenges await them during their sool years. With the acquisition of
literacy skills, they are required to add an orthographic dimension to the entries
already present in their mental lexicons and to all entries acquired subsequently.
While mastering the orthographic aspects of lexis is no easy maer, it does yield a
certain pay-off in lexical-developmental terms. Once literacy skills have begun to
be acquired, this significantly increases the range of opportunities for word-
learning – both via ostensive routes and through the use of context. With regard
to ostension, this is provided by a whole gamut of combinations of pictures and
wrien words and by all the wrien definitions of words in terms of other words
that teaers and textbooks provide from the earliest stages of sooling. As for
use of context, the precise extent of its role in reading has been a maer of some
controversy. However, resear certainly does show that pre-readers and
beginning readers rely heavily on context, and the general assumption is that the
process of decoding unfamiliar words in context – in reading as in the handling of
spoken language – leads to lexical acquisition.
9.3 Before the first words
Children begin to produce recognizable words around the age of 12 months.
However, before that point a number of phenomena can be observed whi
appear to be relevant to lexical development. ese include: the capacity of even
new-born babies to discriminate between particular spee sounds, the
development of concepts well before the onset of word production, and the
gradual dri of the ild’s pre-lexical ‘babbles’ towards incorporating features of
the language of the environment.
With regard to spee sound discrimination, the results of a number of
experiments suggest that that new-born infants are sensitive to critical voice onset
time (VOT) differences. VOT refers to the point at whi the vocal cords begin to
vibrate relative to the release of the closing off of the flow of air in voiceless
plosives su as [p] and in voiced plosives su as [b]. In the case of a voiceless
plosive there is a clear delay before the vocal cords begin to vibrate, whereas in
the case of a fully voiced plosive the vocal cords vibrate throughout. Even if vocal
cord vibration does not begin immediately, however, a sound will still be
perceived as voiced if the time-lapse between the release of the stop and the
beginning of vocal cord vibration falls within certain limits.
It is possible to investigate infants’ sensitivity to spee sound differences via a
tenique based on the fact that the longer human beings (and indeed other
species) are exposed to a particular sensory input the less it stimulates them. is
is known as the habituation effect. In the experiments in question the ild is
given a ‘blind nipple’ to su on and is exposed to certain sounds. As long as what
the ild perceives as the same sound continues to be played, his/her rate of
suing gradually decreases. If then an adjustment to the sound triggers an
increase in the rate of suing, this is interpreted as indicating that the ild has
noticed the ange, and that the habituation effect has thus been disrupted.
According to evidence yielded by this kind of tenique, infants of just one month
can discriminate between synthetically produced sounds whi in terms of their
VOT values would be categorized as voiced and voiceless plosives respectively,
while failing to distinguish between sounds whose differences failed to cross the
voiced-voiceless boundary.
Su results have been interpreted by some researers as indicating the
presence of a biological endowment specifically related to the particularities of the
phonology of human language and part of an innate language faculty unique to
humankind. Unfortunately for this point of view, it has been shown that other
species, su as inillas and rhesus monkeys, are also able to discriminate
between voiced and voiceless spee sounds, and so it is unlikely that this ability
represents a specifically linguistic meanism. Nevertheless, it seems fair to
assume that the general capacity of very young ildren to distinguish between
different types of sound does constitute an aid to language development –
including, of course, lexical development.
With regard to concept development, there is no doubt about the existence of
concepts in the ild’s mind before the first words begin to appear, but it is not so
easy to answer the question of where su concepts come from and that of how
early conceptualization relates to later lexical development. Resear in this area
– as in the case of resear into sound discrimination in young ildren – oen
uses teniques whi rely on the habituation phenomenon. For example, it is
well known that infants who have been familiarized with a particular visual
stimulus and who are then offered a oice between the familiar stimulus and a
new stimulus will usually opt for the novel experience on offer and will look
longer at the new stimulus.
Further evidence of conceptualization prior to word production is provided by
the observation of interaction between babies and their caregivers. For example, it
appears that by around 8–9 months infants fairly consistently look in the same
direction as their caregivers, a phenomenon whi researers interpret as shared
reference, involving a deliberate endeavour on the part of the ild to locate the
referent of the caregiver’s gaze. Su behaviour is taken to indicate not only some
understanding on the infant’s part of the fact that aention typically refers to
something but also a general conception of the range of likely objects of the
aention in question.
With regard to the origins of concepts, as we saw in the last section, some
researers have suggested that concepts are innate. If this were the case, what
might be the level of specificity and detail of su concepts? Would they be ri
and well-developed or elementary and highly general? e first proposition runs
up against the problem of finding a plausible explanation as to how su a
fulsome concept-structure might have evolved, and the second runs up against the
problem of appearing to fly in the face of evidence that ildren’s first concepts
are of a moderate level of generality rather than being elementary and universal
in nature. Although neither of these points necessarily rules out the notion of
innate concepts, both demonstrate that the innateness solution to the question of
where concepts come from is by no means a straightforward one.
It is, on the other hand, possible to envisage a contribution of innate
meanisms to concept development without actually taking the view that the
concepts themselves are innate. us, for example, the Swiss psyologist Jean
Piaget claimed that concepts were the result of, on the one hand, the nature of the
biological ‘hardware’ with whi the infant comes equipped into the world (e.g.
the particular aracteristics of the human senses) and, on the other, the
interaction between the ild’s innate mode of general intellectual functioning and
the environment. According to this view, the development of concepts about
objects are, as John Harris puts it, ‘closely linked to the ild’s growing
understanding of space, spatial relations and the notion of objects and people
being located in a common space’, this understanding being arrived at through the
ild’s exploration of the world in terms of actions and their effects. Another
proposal regarding the role of innate factors in concept development is that of the
American psyologist Jerome Bruner, who suggests that there may be ‘some
special features of human action and human aention’ whi are inborn and
whi help the ild to decode various kinds of communicative behaviour and
thus facilitate the establishment of concepts su as agent, effect, location etc.
Turning now to the question of the relationship between the ild’s late
‘babbles’ and first words, our first step in this context must be to situate babbling
in the general seme of things. Babbling is the second of the four early
developmental milestones whi are most consistently referred to in accounts of
ild language. ese four milestones are:
• cooing (onset 1–4 months, aracterized by vocalizations with a vowellike
quality);
• (onset 4–8 months, aracterized by combinations of vowel-like and
babbling
consonant-like sounds, including reduplications su as baba, mama);
• one-word utterances (onset around the end of the first year);
• two-word utterances (onset 18–24 months).
Babbling thus immediately precedes what is sometimes called ‘true spee’, that
is, meaningful one-word uerances. A question that fairly obviously arises,
therefore, is whether the babbling stage and the one-word uerance stage blur
into ea other or are entirely separate developments.
One perspective on this question is that there is a babbling drift (otherwise
known as babbling shift) under the effects of whi the ildren’s babbles
gradually take on more and more of the aracteristics of the language to whi
they are being exposed. Evidence in favour of the idea of babbling dri includes
that whi shows that adults are able to distinguish Fren, Arab and Chinese
ildren of eight months on the basis of their babbles. Linguists who take a
strongly nativist approa to language acquisition, on the other hand, tend to
dismiss the notion of continuity between babbling and early uerances. eir
dislike of this suggestion has to do with their distrust of any aribution of an
important role to environmental factors, whi they see as running counter to
their theoretical stance assigning an overwhelmingly predominant role to innate
meanisms. It is noteworthy in this connection that one of the earliest
publications of the ar-nativist Noam Chomsky was a virulent aa on the view
of language acquisition propounded by behaviourist psyology, according to
whi language acquisition is a process whereby early vocalizations are gradually
shaped into communicative ‘verbal behaviour’ through the ‘selective
reinforcement’ of responses appropriate to particular stimuli.
It must be admied that not all of the evidence in this area supports the
babbling dri idea. It is also interesting to note that that the more persuasive
evidence of babbling dri in the period prior to the onset of word production –
including the evidence mentioned above – comes from studies of intonation. For
evidence of dri at the level of sound segments we have to go to studies of
ildren in their second year and who have thus already begun to produce
meaningful one-word uerances. It may well be that babbling dri affects only
intonation during the period prior to word production, and that segmental
paerns begin to shi in the direction of the language of the environment only
aer the onset of word production.
e babbling dri/shi debate addresses the question of continuity of babbling
and ‘true spee’ with reference to phonetic/phonological form. However, there is
also a dimension to the continuity issue whi has to do with meaning. For
example, it is clear that from an early stage, particular types of babbling may be
associated with particular activities, emotions and needs. Examples to be found in
the literature include an indicator of pleasure at seeing something come into view
([i i i]) and a vehement protest sequence ([nǝ nǝ nǝ nǝ nǝ]). Babbling – ‘true
spee’ continuity is supported in the meaning domain by the fact that when
adult-like forms begin to be used they also seem to have – in the main –
situational, general pragmatic rather than labelling functions. Su forms seem
oen to start as imitations in specific contexts. For example, one ild being
studied by researers was observed to imitate her mother saying ‘Uh oh, where’d
it go?’ as the mother dropped rings into a jar; later the ild spontaneously
produced a version of uh-oh when she dropped a comb and to perform a version
of where’d it go when her mother dropped a brush and said ‘Uh-oh’. It appears,
then, that the early adult-like forms used by the ild oen become aaed in a
quasi-ritual manner to specific actions or action-sequences (in this case the
dropping of objects) in mu the same way that particular types of babbling do at
a slightly earlier stage.
9.4 First words and beyond
An o-cited instance of the early use of an expression whi is associated with a
very particular set of circumstances, is the use by a 12-month-old ild of the
uerance dut (‘du’), whi he produced excitedly as he knoed a toy du off
the edge of the bath at bathtime but whi he never uered when the du was
actually floating in the water. Not all early uses of lexis are context-bound,
however. A minority of the expressions deployed by ildren at the beginning of
the one-word uerance stage are used to refer context-flexibly to particular
objects or classes of objects. An example of su context-flexible use of an
expression would be where the word shoes might be used by a ild as a
comment on a picture of shoes, on a real pair of shoes or on the shoes of a doll. It
is also worth noting, perhaps, that not all of the items deployed in a clearly
meaningful way by ildren at the one-word uerance stage are derived from
adult input; sometimes they are the ild’s own creations.
With regard to the way in whi lexical development proceeds once the first
words have appeared this seems to be a process in three phases: (1) a phase during
whi the ild is working out what words are, how they can be used to refer to
things, people etc. and whi words go with whi entities, actions etc.; (2) a
‘vocabulary explosion’ phase, during whi very large numbers of words are
acquired very rapidly; and (3) a phase during whi lexical knowledge is
consolidated, revised and reorganized.
In Phase (1) – up to the point where about 30 words have been acquired –
progress tends to be quite slow. ere is, however, significant variation among
ildren as far as the rate of early vocabulary acquisition is concerned. A factor
that has been identified as relevant to later vocabulary development is variation
from ild to ild in the degree of efficiency with whi they are able to create
short-term memory codes for lexical forms they hear. For example, the degree of
accuracy with whi ildren show themselves to be able to repeat unfamiliar
phonological word-shapes correlates significantly with the quantity of vocabulary
they subsequently acquire, and phonological short-term memory has been
discovered to be a greater factor than either non-verbal intelligence or age in
certain language disorders in ildren. It seems reasonable to assume that
phonological memory variation is also a contributory factor in relation to
individual differences in respect of the very early stages of lexical acquisition.
Four (not incompatible) kinds of statement are to be found in the literature
about word meanings at this early stage:
• that su meanings are vague and fluid;
• that they are over-extended relative to the meanings of the words in question as
used by adults;
• that they are under-extended relative to the meanings of the words in question
as used by adults;
• that they reflect a ‘basic’ level of categorization.
An example of the vagueness and fluidity of early word meaning comes from a
study conducted by the Fren researer P. Guillaume of his own son’s language
development in the 1920s. e form under scrutiny here is blablab.
‘blablab’ refers to the act of making the lips vibrate with the finger, then the
mouth, especially that of a ild’s in a picture, then any picture of a person,
any drawing, illustrated cards … any piece of paper with writing or printing
on it, a newspaper, a book, but also expresses the act of “reading” or the
desire to read.
In relation to over-extension, common instances are: the use of the term apple
to refer to oranges, peaes, pears etc. as well as apples; the use of the term dog or
doggy to refer to cats, rabbits and even cows and horses as well as dogs; and the
use of the term sweet or sweety to refer to absolutely anything with a sugary taste
– cake, ice-cream, syrup etc. ere is clearly a connection between the notion of
over-extension and vagueness and fluidity of meaning. It is precisely because the
meaning of an item is still vague as far as the ild is concerned that he/she uses it
across a wider range of situations than an adult would – on the basis, it seems, of
perceptual cues su as shape, colour, feel, taste, sound etc., functional
aracteristics (e.g. pears, like apples, are things one eats) and situational factors
(e.g. icecream and sweets may be associated with similar kinds of situation –
reward, relaxation etc.).
Under-extension has already been alluded to with reference to cases where
expressions are used by the ild in very specific sets of circumstances. Under-
extension is not, however, confined to this sort of instance. ere is a second sort
of under-extension whi is not situation-bound, and whi has rather to do with
narrowness of reference. us, for example, Margaret Harris reports ‘early uses of
“clo” to refer only to wall clos, “music” to refer only to a hi-fi system in the
ild’s home, and “light” to refer only to ceiling lights with a conventional shade.’
Some researers have suggested that, typically, a ild will begin by under-
extending the meaning of a word and then apply it to an increasingly wide range
of phenomena – in some instances over-extending its application. is kind of
scenario is, once again, entirely compatible with the notion that the ild’s early
understanding of word meanings is uncertain and angeable.
Concerning the notion of a ‘basic’ level of categorization, the claim is that in
coming to grips with the world around him/her, the ild begins by classifying
objects in su a way that: (i) the aributes of ea category are predictable; (ii)
items belonging to the category in question behave or are used in the same way;
(iii) items belonging to the category can be readily identified; (iv) ea category is
easy to image; and (v) the categories concerned have a high utility value. Su
categories are designated as ‘basic’. For example, the category flower is seen as
basic, whereas the category plant is not. Flowers by and large share a large
number of aracteristics in terms of what they look and smell like and what
people do with them; it is easy to identify and to form a mental image of a flower;
and knowing what a flower is will be extremely useful across a range of situations
and interactions. e plant category, on the other hand, is highly heterogeneous in
nature (including as it does seaweed, climbing creepers, grasses etc. as well as
flowers), and for this reason poses more problems in respect of identification and
imaging than the flower category; and the higher level, more inclusive plant tends
to be less frequently referred to in most situations than the more concrete flower.
Empirical evidence supports the suggestion that basic categories come first in the
ild’s lexicon.
Moving on to Phase 2, the particular aracteristic of the stage beginning from
the point where the ild has acquired upwards of 30 words is what is sometimes
called a ‘vocabulary explosion’ – that is to say, a very marked increase in the rate
at whi new words are acquired. e ‘explosion’ in question is aributed by
some researers to the arrival by the ild at a particular developmental
landmark, a ‘naming insight’, that is to say, a sudden realization on the part of the
ild that the world is composed of things that have names. is is a controversial
claim, but it is noticeable that this phase is aracterized by a rapid acquisition of
one particular type of word – nouns whi name objects. A further dimension of
this last point has to do with imageability. Some resear suggests that nouns are
generally easier to ‘picture’ than other grammatical categories and that this may
be why they are more easily learned. ere is certainly evidence from other
sources in favour of the notion that words around whi images are created are
more readily retained.
Two features whi accompany the acceleration in lexical development during
Phase 2 are, on the one hand, a sort of naming obsession and, on the other, ‘fast
mapping’, a capacity to learn new words aer minimal exposure. is is the time
when ildren go around asking for the names of virtually everything and
everyone they encounter – the ‘what’s that’/‘who’s that’ phase, as it is sometimes
known. Remarkably, there is evidence to suggest that at least as far as objects and
colours are concerned new items may be acquired by the ild at this stage aer
just one occasion of exposure. e ild’s hunger for naming data during this
period appears, in other words, to be correlated with an extraordinary capacity to
digest and retain su data both rapidly and efficiently.
A few words, finally, on Phase 3. is period of consolidation and revision
seems to have its onset in the pre-sool period, but some of the reorganizing
processes that begin at this point clearly continue through the years of primary
sooling and, indeed, into adulthood. One aspect of the re-organization process is
the clustering together of related words, whi allows the ild to represent
information about links between lexical items. What eventually emerges from the
clustering of related words in the mental lexicon is a set of classificatory
hieraries. e ild starts by associating words from the same semantic area
ever more closely (e.g, dog, cat, rabbit etc.) and then starts puing su groups of
words under the headings of superordinate terms (e.g. pet, animal etc.). ese
hieraries gradually build upwards to the point where the superordinate
expressions become quite abstract (e.g. something that’s alive, living thing).
Evidence for su development comes from word-association tests, whi show a
shi from a predominance of syntagmatic (i.e. combinatory) associations (of the
kind Daddy – working, dog – barks, red – apples) in the early stages to a later
predominance of paradigmatic (i.e. substitutional) responses (of the kind: Daddy –
Mummy, dog – cat, red – green ).
Finally in this section it is perhaps worth emphasizing that lexical development
does not come to a halt at the end of ildhood, or indeed, it seems, at any stage
prior to our last exit. Two American researers, John Carroll and Karl Diller
concluded some years ago – on the basis of having examined a range of lexical
studies – that lexical acquisition continues through adulthood. Carroll drew from
his reading of the relevant resear the message that vocabulary tends to increase
significantly up to at least the age of 40 or 50 while Diller reported resear
suggesting that there is no point before death at whi lexical acquisition can be
predicted to cease.
9.5 Models of lexical processing
Having considered various aspects of lexical development, we come now to the
vexed question of how lexical knowledge is organized and retrieved once it has
been acquired. A distinction is sometimes made between direct and indirect
models of the processing of lexical information. e indirect type of model
assumes that the processing of lexical knowledge follows the same kind of paern
as looking up a word in a dictionary – or extending the metaphor slightly –
finding a book in a library. is kind of model sees lexical access as involving
more than one component or step. Direct models, on the other hand, portray
accessing lexical knowledge as a one-stage process; a metaphor whi has been
used in this connection is that of a computer soware paage whi allows items
stored by name to be accessed simply by the typing in of as many leers as are
sufficient to distinguish the relevant name from all other stored names. Two
mu-discussed representatives of the direct kind of model are the logogen model
and the cohort model, whereas an o-cited representative of the indirect type of
model is the so-called search model of lexical access. We shall look at ea of these
in turn, go on to examine W. Levelt’s highly influential ‘blueprint for the speaker’,
whi has mu to say about lexical processing, and finally focus briefly on two
general (but lexically relevant) perspectives on language processing – the
modularity hypothesis and connectionism.
The logogen model
e logogen model – the brainild of the British psyologist John Morton –
began as an aempt to account for the fact that words are recognized more
quily in contexts where they are very likely to occur than in contexts where
they are less likely to occur. For example, the word station will be more quily
recognized in a context su as He waved a railway ticket at me and asked the
way to the station than in a context like The three-star seafood restaurant was a
splendidly converted station . Morton postulates that when an item is accessed in
the mental lexicon there is an ‘event’ in a part of the nervous system whi, in his
early writings, he labels simply as neural unit and to whi he later applies the
term logogen.
e essential components of Morton’s model are: the logogen system, the
cognitive system and the response buffer. e term logogen is concocted from
Greek lógos (λογος– ‘word’) and the Greek and Latin root gen (as in Greek
génesis – γένεσις – ‘birth’; Latin generare – ‘to bring to life’). e logogen system
is conceived of as a set of meanisms – one for ea word in a given individual’s
lexicon specialized for collecting perceptual information and semantic evidence
concerning the presence of words to whi the logogens correspond. When the
information, including contextual information, pointing in the direction of a
particular word reaes a critical threshold, the relevant logogen ‘fires’, and the
word concerned is ‘born’ or ‘brought to life’, i.e. either recognized in the incoming
signal or identified as the appropriate item to be used for productive purposes.
e cognitive system is envisaged as a collection of semantic information of
various kinds, including information relating to context and contextual
probabilities. As for the response buffer, this is the component in the model to
whi responsibility for generating spoken or wrien word production is
aributed.
A basic principle of operation of the model is that a given piece of input will in
most cases supply evidence to more than one logogen. For example, in the case of
the processing of the printed word rat, the output from the visual analysis will
include su aributes as <three leer word>, <tall leer at the end> etc. Su
information is relevant not only to rat but to other words too. Accordingly, the
aributes <three leer word> and <tall leer at the end>, for example, will be
expected to excite not only the logogen for rat but the logogens for all three-
leer words ending in tall leers (cat, cut, eat, eel, red, rod etc.). Hence the need
for the model to incorporate thresholds: it is necessary that, of all the logogens
stimulated by a particular piece of input, one logogen should – on the basis of all
the available data – rea su a level of excitation that it ‘fires’, in order that the
appropriate word should be selected.
The cohort model
One criticism whi has been levelled at the logogen model is that some of the
concepts on whi it is based – su as ‘threshold’ and ‘activation level’ are
difficult to be precise about. e cohort model, developed by the British
psyolinguist William Marslen Wilson, offers a possible answer to this problem,
since it aspires to specify for ea word exactly where the critical activation level
occurs.
e cohort model postulates a set of word-detectors whi are activated by
input from a spoken word and whi start operating as soon as someone within
earshot begins to produce a word. As soon as the first sounds of the incoming
item are processed, all the detectors for words beginning with that particular
sequence of sounds – otherwise known as the relevant word-initial cohort – are
fully activated. Ea of the detectors in this cohort then continues to monitor
subsequent input. Mismates are in this way progressively removed from the
running, until a single word-candidate finally corresponds precisely to the input.
In contradistinction to the varying levels of activation posited by the logogen
model, the early version of the cohort model allows for just two states of
activation for a particular item: on (for as long as it forms part of a cohort of
word-candidates) or off (when it fails to be selected for the word-initial cohort or
is eliminated from the cohort). However, later versions of the model envisage
that, instead of immediately eliminating themselves, non-mating members of a
cohort will go into an activation decline in the absence of further support from
incoming data.
In principle, the cohort model identifies the uniqueness point for word
recognition, that is, the precise point at whi a word is recognized. To illustrate
this, let us take the word elephant (/¹εlıfǝnt/). On the basis of the incoming data
from the uering of the first two syllables of this word – /¹εlı/ – the cohort of
word-candidates would include words su as elevate and element. However, at
the point where the /f/ sound occurs the cohort will have only elephant and its
inflectional variants (elephants, elephant’s, elephant’s) le, since no other word in
English begins with the sequence /¹εlıf/. is then is the uniqueness point for
elephant. Su a system would appear to be maximally efficient. A system whi
plumped for elephant before the occurrence of /f/ would run the risk of
generating erroneous identifications, whereas a system whi delayed
identification beyond that point would increase processing time without
increasing accuracy levels. e cohort model also defines the point at whi non-
words are recognized. is is the point at whi the sequence of phonemes uered
fails to correspond to any word in the language in question. For instance, in
English, the non-word recognition point in tnot will be the occurrence of /n/, since
no English word begins with /tn/, while in the case of daffodip the critical point
will coincide with the very last sound /p/, since until this is uered the possibility
of a mat still exists.
ere is a fair amount of experimental evidence in favour of notion that word
recognition proceeds as the cohort model suggests – at least in broad terms. To
take one example of a relevant finding from among many, it has been shown that
the time taken to recognize non-words is shorter where recognition points come
early in words and longer where recognition points come late. On the other hand,
it is most unlikely that things happen quite as neatly as is suggested by the cohort
model. We know, for example, that sound segments do not rea the ear as
separate entities, but are to an extent interwoven with ea other, so that any
given point in the spee signal will show evidence of preceding and succeeding
elements. Accordingly, the idea that the perception of the spee signal revolves
around precise judgments about points at whi particular elements occur is not
particularly plausible. However, this does not undermine the model in any crucial
way.
Context was mentioned as important preoccupation of Morton’s in relation to
his development of the logogen model. Marslen-Wilson’s interest in context
effects is no less strong. e cohort model, like the logogen model assumes that
available contextual information assists lexical processing. However, whereas the
logogen model suggests that context effects are the result of information passing
through the cognitive system, whi is separate from, though connected to, the
logogen systems, the cohort model posits that ea and every entry in the mental
lexicon is equipped with a set of procedures for determining whi, if any, of the
meanings of a word are applicable in any given context. However, the model does
not represent contextual information as pre-selecting words, Marslen-Wilson’s
view being that context-driven pre-selection would be highly inefficient in the
open-ended, unpredictable circumstances of everyday language use.
The search model of lexical access
e most widely discussed sear model of lexical access is that whi was
elaborated by the American psyologist Kenneth Forster. In this model the
process of accessing an item in the mental lexicon is represented as a series of
steps, involving first a sear for a mating from a phonological, orthographic,
grammatical/semantic starting point and then a guided retrieval of the full word.
As has already been noted, su a two-stage process is comparable to what
happens when we look up a word in a dictionary or look for a book in a library.
Obviously, we come to the task of lexical access from different points of
departure on different occasions – depending on whether we have heard the
word, read it, or have a meaning and category that we wish to express – just as
we approa the task of, for example, finding books in a library on the basis of
different kinds of information available to us at different times (author, title,
subject area etc.). In Forster’s model the initial sear is represented as proceeding
with the help of a number of peripheral access files, one organized along
phonological lines, one organized according to orthographic properties, one
organized on a syntactico-semantic basis etc. ese correspond to the different
library catalogues. e peripheral files are envisaged as containing listings of
entries in the respective modes and also pointers (corresponding to shelf-marks)
to the precise location of ea entry in its complete form in a master file
(corresponding to the library shelves).
According to the model, if one is listening to spee, one processes ea spoken
word by going first to the phonological access file; if one is reading wrien
language one goes first to the orthographic access file; and if one is producing
language on the basis of particular meaning intentions, one goes first to the
syntactic/semantic access file. e access file in question then facilitates access to
the master file, and once this has been accessed, it supplies whatever is necessary
for any kind of further operations on the word in question – whether this be in
the realm of speaking, writing or understanding.
With regard to the master file, this is seen as a collection of individual (fully
specified) lexical items and is envisaged as having to contain some provision for
meaning connections between the items in question. Any lexical model needs to
account for the fact that, for example, when we hear the word doctor we process
any subsequent occurrence of the word nurse more rapidly than if we had not
heard the word doctor. e logogen model deals with this phenomenon of
semantic priming via the cognitive system; the cohort model deals with it via
word-specific context-sensitive procedures; Forster’s model, for its part, posits
cross-references in the master file between words that are related in meaning.
us, in relation to the above example, the idea is that calling up doctor in the
master file will cause nurse to be processed via a direct link within the master file
without the necessity for a return to the relevant peripheral access file. However,
experimental studies have failed to produce any really convincing evidence that
this is how things work. Su la of experimental support has led to doubt being
cast on the whole idea of a distinction between access files and master file and
thus the very notion of two-stage lexical processing.
Levelt’s ‘blueprint for the speaker’
Up to this point we have been looking at models whi are wholly focused on the
mental lexicon. e model whi we now come to is different, insofar as it seeks
to address language processing in a more general way. However, its lexical
dimension is particularly highlighted by its creator, the Dut psyolinguist,
Willem Levelt, who has a particular interest in lexical processing. e work in
whi the model is elaborated is entitled Speaking: from intention to articulation,
and, true to this title, the primary perspective of Levelt’s ‘blueprint’ is a
productive one, although receptive aspects of processing are not entirely le out
of the account.
e model comprises two categories of component, declarative knowledge and
procedural knowledge. e former is conceived of as ‘knowledge that’, knowledge
as facts, whereas the laer is conceived of as ‘knowledge how’. Declarative
knowledge required for language processing, according to Levelt, includes general
information about the world (encyclopedia), information about particular
situations (situational knowledge), and information about stylistic appropriacy
relative to specific circumstances (discourse model). Also included under the
heading of declarative knowledge is lexical knowledge, both semantico-
grammatical (lemmas) and morphophonological (forms). As far as the procedural
components are concerned, these include: the conceptualizer (responsible for
message generation and monitoring), the formulator (responsible for giving the
pre-verbal message a syntactic and phonological shape), the articulator
(responsible for executing as overt spee the phonetic plan emerging from the
formulator), the audition component (responsible for analysing the incoming
spee sounds) and the speech comprehension system, responsible for making
sense of the phonetic strings received).
As far as the lexical component is concerned, this, as has been mentioned, is
represented as containing, on the one hand, lemmas and, on the other, forms.
According to the model, a word’s lemma specifies its basic meaning, its syntactic
category, its conceptual argument structure, its grammatical profile (e.g. in the
case of a verb, whether or not it takes a direct object), and its ‘diacritic
parameters’ of variation (tense, aspect, mood etc.). e lemma also includes a
‘lexical pointer’ to the precise place in the lexicon where morphological and
phonological information about the word in question is located. e implication
here is that lexical sear happens in two stages, whi means that Levelt’s model
is in this respect comparable with Forster’s model With regard to lexical forms,
these are seen as specifying the precise morphological information that is
necessary in order for phonological encoding to be able to take place.
e role of the lexicon in spee production is seen by Levelt as central; for him
the entire set of formulation processes is lexically driven, the particular syntactic,
morphological and phonological properties of an activated lexical item triggering
the grammatical, morphological and phonological encoding procedures
underlying uerance generation. is designation of the lexicon as the mediator
between conceptualization and grammatical and phonological formulation –
referred to as the lexical hypothesis – sits well with the evidence discussed in
apters 1 and 2 of the interpenetration between lexis and grammar. On the other
hand, the separation posited by the model between lexical meaning and
encyclopedic knowledge is problematic; many linguists are highly dubious about
the possibility of making a distinction of this kind. A further issue arises in relation
to the representation of lexical knowledge as purely declarative. is appears to
fly in the face of evidence relating to su phenomena as word formation, lexical
ange and context effects whi suggest that the lexicon is a highly dynamic
rather than a static entity.
The modularity hypothesis
We turn now to a view of language processing – the modularity hypothesis –
whi claims that the entire language faculty is a fully autonomous module. e
hypothesis can be summarized as follows:
e mind is not a seamless, unitary whole whose functions merge
continuously into one another; rather, it comprises – perhaps in addition to
some relatively seamless, general-purpose structures – a number of distinct,
specialized, structurally idiosyncratic modules that communicate with other
cognitive structures in only very limited ways.
e kinds of systems that are seen as modular within this perspective include
input systems, su as certain components of the perceptual and the language-
reception systems, and output systems, su as aspects of motor control and
language production.
e modular view of the mind has two very influential advocates in the persons
of the theoretical linguist Noam Chomsky and the psyolinguist Jerry Fodor.
Between these two, however, some differences exist: whereas Chomsky discusses
modularity essentially in relation to language acquisition (in connection with his
notion of an innate language faculty – see above), Fodor’s concerns are largely
processing-oriented. Since in the present section we are concerned with language
processing, we shall focus on Fodor’s account.
e cornerstone and the most controversial aspect of Fodor’s conception of
modularity is the notion that modules are ‘informationally encapsulated’ – the
notion that, with regard to language processing, for example, general knowledge,
contextual information etc. play no part in the operations of the module while
those operations are in progress. e claim in this regard is that any connections
between modular processing and other knowledge take place beyond the
operating domain of the module. In the case of language reception, for example,
the idea is that general and contextual information interact with linguistic
information only at the point where the linguistic forms in question have been
fully processed and analysed by the meanisms of the language module. One of
Fodor’s arguments for the informational encapsulation of modules takes the line
that su encapsulation is necessary to the efficient operation of the modules. One
example he uses in this connection is drawn from the realm of visual perception;
this is the case of someone cating sight of a ‘yellow stripey thing’ in New York
and having to decide very rapidly whether what they are seeing is a tiger. Fodor
argues that in su circumstances a perceptual system that took account of
contextual expectations while perceptual processing was actually going on would
not process information quily enough to avoid disaster, and that therefore
modular processing needs to be immune to online penetration by anything whi
is extraneous to the specific focus of the module in question.
Against this line of reasoning it is easy enough to find instances of people not
believing and therefore not reacting appropriately to the evidence of their senses.
us, in relation to language, the following example, related by a native speaker
of Finnish, is not untypical:
My sister, while studying in France, was once addressed on the street in
Finnish. Only aer several aempts by the speaker did she understand her
own native language, the point being that she was expecting Fren. I have
had a very similar experience trying to make Finnish out of something that
was easy enough to understand when I realized it was English.
Fodor’s position is further undermined by what we know about the effects of deep
hypnosis. At the hypnotist’s suggestion, a hypnotized subject may fail to perceive
objects or persons whi are present and/or perceive and interact with objects and
persons whi are not present. Even reflexive responses may, apparently, be
affected by hypnosis. For instance, hypnosis can suffice to anaesthetize patients
undergoing surgical operations, and even to arrest salivation and bleeding. If
something as fast and as automatic as a physiological reflex can be influenced by
information or pseudo-information implanted by an external source, there has to
be a question-mark over the notion of informational encapsulation in language
processing.
In any case, as Fodor himself anowledges, the idea of informational
encapsulation does not appear to sit very happily with the findings of
psyolinguists – notably from experiments involving reduced-redundancy
procedures like cloze (where subjects have to fill in the blanks in a gapped text). It
is universally recognized that in cloze tasks the more predictable the target items
in relation to the blanks in the given context, the more successful will be the
aempts of those performing the task. For example, of the two sentences below,
the first is a great deal easier to complete than the second.
I was so thirsty that I absolutely had to have something to _____.
I was so happy that I absolutely had to _____.
is looks like strong evidence of the meanisms involved in su tasks having
access to subjects’ expectations based on general knowledge and context. To
aempt to deal with evidence of this kind Fodor deploys two lines of argument.
His first is to question whether the meanisms involved in the ‘highly
aentional’ process of reconstructing degraded linguistic stimuli are the same as
those involved in the ‘automatic and fluent’ processes of everyday language use;
and his second is to suggest that what looks like interference by general and
contextual knowledge with the processes of the language module could in fact be
explained in terms of lexical forms activating other forms to whi they are
linked without any involvement of considerations of contextual meaning. us, in
the case of the first sentence above, he would say that the forms thirsty and drink
are connected in the lexical network and that, accordingly, when thirsty is
activated, drink is too, irrespective of meaning and context.
e advantage for Fodor of limiting his conception of the language module to
that of a formal processor with no semantic role is that it does not confront him
with the problem, discussed above, of where to draw the line between linguistic
and non-linguistic meaning. However, his aempts to explain away context
effects are less than persuasive. Regarding his nonstandard processing argument,
there is in fact nothing especially abnormal about having to process language
whi is incomplete in some way. Who has not from time to time, for example,
had to work hard at understanding someone with an unfamiliar accent, strained to
cat what was being said over a craly telephone line, pored endlessly over a
leer penned in the handwriting from hell, or struggled to read a bloty or faint
photocopy? With regard to what Fodor says about the excitation of complexes of
lexical forms, this seems plausible enough as a non-semantic account of what
looks like a meaning-related phenomenon until we stop to consider the nature of
the links it presupposes. ere is certainly plenty of evidence that su interlexical
links exist (as we have already seen), but what is interesting to note is that they
are (in the proficient language user) primarily based on semantic relatedness.
Indeed, if the excitation posited by Fodor were not assumed to proceed along
pathways linking semantically related items then the ‘mimiing’ of contextual-
semantic effects of whi he writes would remain unaccounted for. is must cast
doubt on his suggestion that it is possible to explain away apparent context effects
in terms of purely formal processes. A mu more straightforward, and therefore
more plausible, position is that what look like online context effects are actually
online context effects.
Connectionism
Finally in this discussion of models of lexical processing, we turn to an approa
whi, like the modularity hypothesis, encompasses mental operations in general,
but whi, unlike the modularity hypothesis, draws no essential distinction
between language processing and the processing of other kinds of information.
is is the perspective known as connectionism or parallel distributed processing.
e term connectionism relates to the fact that this approa takes its inspiration
from neurophysiological activity in the brain – with its network of interconnected
neurons sending signals to ea other. e connectionist model takes the analogy
of brain-style neuronal interactions as its metaphor for the workings of the mind,
although in this case the suggestion is that the analogy in question may be more
than just a metaphor. e alternative label, parallel distributed processing, refers
to the claim made by connectionists that different portions of information are
simultaneously processed independently of one another (‘in parallel’) on different
levels (‘distributed’).
e connectionist view of mind is usually taken to be incompatible with the
modular position discussed above. However, some linguists posit different
networks of connections for the parallel but totally autonomous processing of
different types of information, whi they see as a merely a connectionist
translation of the modularity idea. It is worth noting that connectionism belongs
to a mu broader parallel processing perspective whi stands in opposition to
the serial processing perspective. e issue here is not strictly about simultaneity
versus sequentiality. Sequences of operations are found within parallel models,
where successively presented aspects of the language to be dealt with obviously
have to be dealt with as they arise; and simultaneity of operations is found in
serial models, where different levels of operation may be simultaneously active
though working on different domains – for example, the processing of item x may
be beginning at one level while the processing of item y is nearing completion at
another. e real distinction between the parallel perspective and the serial
perspective is that the former posits the independence of the different processing
operations whi are triggered by particular events and stimuli, whereas the laer
sees processing as organized in stages, with ea stage dependent on the output of
the previous stage. e notion of independence of different processing operations
in parallel models su as the connectionist model is not, however, in any real
sense comparable to the idea of informational encapsulation. Independence of
processing in parallel models refers to micro-operations, and is not to be identified
with a barrier between, for example, ‘higher level’ semantic processes and ‘lower
level’ formal processes. On the contrary, parallel processing models are usually
interpreted as envisaging a high degree of interactivity between semantic and
formal processing.
A further respect in whi connectionism has been seen to pose a allenge to
the Chomskyan/Fodorian view of language and mind (and to most others) lies in
its rejection of what is sometimes called the symbolic paradigm, the idea that
mental operations involve the manipulation of symbols. So far in this apter the
entire discussion has been based on this notion, assuming, with regard to language
that there are entities stored in the mind referring to external phenomena whi
can be retrieved from memory and combined according to rules or paerns whi
are also stored. e connectionist paradigm calls all of this into question,
representing knowledge in terms of connection strength rather than in terms of
rules or paerns. According to connectionists it is not the paerns that are stored
– not even the paerns of features that make up what we know as words,
morphemes and phonemes – but rather the connection strengths between
elements at a mu lower level that allow these paerns to be recreated.
Computer simulations have provided some evidence in favour of su a view by
showing that quite simple networks can be trained to supply appropriate
morphological and phonological structure on the basis of frequency of occurrence
of the relevant configurations, without any kind of rules being involved in the
training process. ere are sharply differing views about significance of su
findings, and the debate whi has developed around them has been quite fierce.
However, there have also been aempts to reconcile the symbolist and the anti-
symbolist positions. In any case, it is clear that there is significant overlap between
some features of connectionism and other models of language processing. For
example, the cohort model also relies on the notion of parallel processing.
Moreover, the influence of connectionism is now so wide and powerful that other
models are increasingly evolving in a connectionist direction. It has to be said also
that connectionism is itself evolving; whereas in its early versions it was focused
purely on formal aspects of language, there are now signs of a connectionist
concern to take account of semantic issues.
9.6 L2 dimensions
We end this apter with a brief exploration of the issue of how the mental
lexicon is constructed and organized when more than one language is in question.
Su a situation arises not only in cases of early bilingualism/multilingualism,
where a ild acquires more than one language from infancy onwards but also in
cases where an individual acquires languages in addition to his/her first language
at a later stage – whether at a subsequent stage of development during ildhood
or in adolescence or adulthood.
As far as early bilingualism/multilingualism is concerned, the phases passed
through are, broadly speaking, the same for ea language as described in 9.3 and
9.4 in respect of a single language. On the other hand, where languages are
acquired later in ildhood or beyond the ildhood years there is no question of
the individuals in question having to revisit the various ‘milestones’ that are
associated with spee development in infancy. Su learners do not coo or
babble, and when they begin producing uerances in their target languages su
uerances are from the outset mostly comprised of combinations of meaningful
elements. Accordingly, most of the discussion in 9.3 and 9.4 vis-à-vis the
relationship between pre-verbal development and ‘true spee’ and mu of what
was said about lexical development aer the onset of word production is
irrelevant to the acquisition of additional languages beyond infancy. However,
there are some points of contact, since the lexical allenge faced by the later
learner of additional languages in crucial respects resembles that whi confronts
the infant, involving as it does the isolation of lexical units in the spee stream
and the making of connections between su units and the meanings they are
intended to communicate
With regard to the phonetic/phonological domain, just as the infant has to
struggle to come to grips with the sound-shapes of the language of his/her
environment from a starting-point – babbling – whi is not necessarily very
helpful phonetically, so the later acquirer of additional languages has to deal with
sounds of these languages that may differ markedly from those of his/her first
language. Also, while later learners have internalized the principle of phonemic
distinctions and its role in differentiating between lexical items, they, like the
infant, still have to work out whi phonetic differences are phonemic and whi
are not. Moreover, the fact of having one phonological system already in place
can be a source of hindrance as well as of help in this maer. It is also interesting
to note that the relative efficiency of phonological working memory is as
important in determining the rate of second language lexical development as it is
in determining the rate of first language lexical development, and that therefore
processing of phonological form is particularly crucial in the early stages of
acquiring a new word.
In relation to the conceptual/semantic domain, learners of additional languages
are obviously at a more advanced stage of concept development than infants
acquiring their mother tongue. Indeed, many of the meanings and meaning
hieraries that have already been internalized in the course of the acquisition of
first language will be re-applicable with only minimal adjustment in other
languages. However, whatever the extent of the conceptual overlap between two
language communities, there will always be areas of meaning in whi the
languages in question differ. In some instances the difference is su that totally
new concepts need to be mastered; more oen (and perhaps more
problematically) the meanings of the two languages – reflecting the cultural
particularities of the respective language communities – are differently structured
and distributed. It is hardly surprising, in su circumstances, that lexical fluidity,
over-extension and under-extension, familiar from what is observed in first
language development, also occur in lexical development when additional
languages are learned. Another meaning-related feature shared by first and
second language lexical development is that easily imageable words tend to be
more readily acquired than words with meanings that are less easy to ‘picture’.
Finally in the context of meaning-related aspects of lexical development
observable in both first and second language development, we can note that, in
the laer case as in the former, as the acquisition of a word proceeds, the manner
in whi its meaning is integrated anges. Initially it is primarily associated with
the meanings of words with whi it collocates (this being reflected in
syntagmatic word associations – see above – su as blue – sky). Subsequently
this kind of association tends to give way to a more hierarical organization,
with words covering the same broad area of meaning becoming linked in
networks based on paradigmatic relations as synonymy (e.g. little – small),
oppositeness of various kinds (e.g. fat – thin) hyponymy (e.g. carrot – vegetable).
Despite su similarities between first language lexical development and lexical
development in additional languages, there is a quite widely held view that the
second language mental lexicon is qualitatively different in structure from the first
language mental lexicon. is view claims that, whereas in the first language
mental lexicon the connections between the lexical units are predominantly
semantic, in the second language mental lexicon they are predominantly
phonological Evidence in favour of this claim has been cited from word-
association test data, whi, so it is claimed, indicate the predominance of
phonological links in the second language mental lexicon, the source of the
response being in ea case a word whi is phonologically connected to the
stimulus.
e opposite point of view – namely, that the first language mental lexicon and
the second language mental lexicon function in essentially the same manner – is
also advocated and supported. According to this perspective, whether on a given
occasion the processing of a lexical item relies predominantly on meaning-based
links and associations or on phonological relationships will depend not on the
status of the language in whi the item occurs (whether or not it is a first
language or an additional language), but rather on the degree of familiarity of that
particular word to that particular speaker at that particular time. is laer
position assumes that newly encountered items tend to trigger form-focused
processing because they have not yet – because of la of relevant evidence –
become connected up to the speaker’s internal semantic semata, whereas very
familiar items are predominantly handled in terms of their meaning. Evidence in
favour of this point of view comes from studies whi show that as second
language proficiency increases so does the proportion of semantically motivated
responses produced in word-association tests, and that advanced second language
learners confronted with second language vocabulary whi is more or less within
their grasp, will, in word-association tests and tests involving gapped texts,
produce very small numbers of responses that are not semantically motivated.
A further issue is whether the second language mental lexicon is separated
from or integrated with the first language mental lexicon. One indication of
separateness comes from cases of language loss due to brain damage where one
language is recovered before another. One very interesting instance of this
phenomenon reported in the literature is that of a native speaker of Swiss German
who first recovered Fren, a language he had learned imperfectly as an adult,
who then recovered Standard High German, whi had been the language of his
formal education, but who failed to recover his L1, Swiss German. A not
dissimilar case is that of the British Classics solar who recovered Ancient Greek,
Latin, Fren and English (his native language) in that order. Obviously, if
languages – including the lexicons of these languages – can be recovered one by
one in this kind of way then it is difficult not to infer that they are separately
stored and organized.
Integrationist arguments are not difficult to find either. e British linguist
Vivian Cook who has for some years been puing the case for ‘multicompetence’
-i.e. the notion that language competence is unitary, no maer how many
languages are involved – cites lexical evidence su as the following:
• reaction time to a word in one language is related to the frequency of its
cognate in another known language;
• morphemic similarities between two known languages influence translation
performance;
• bilinguals consult the lexical stores associated with both their languages when
taking vocabulary tests in one of their languages.
Su evidence certainly supports the notion that the first language mental lexicon
and the second language mental lexicon are connected, but it does not necessarily
argue for total integration of the first language and second language lexical
operations. A position whi takes account of this evidence but also the evidence
noted earlier of sequential language recovery is one whi sees the first language
and the second language mental lexicon as neither completely disconnected from
ea other nor totally integrated with ea other.
Some interesting suggestions in this connection are to be found in the relevant
resear literature. One su suggestion is that pairs of translation-equivalents
with concrete meanings in the two languages known to an individual and pairs of
words perceived as cognates across the two languages are stored in a ‘compound’
manner (i.e. as two forms with a shared meaning), whereas pairs of abstract non-
cognate translation-equivalents in the respective languages are stored in a ‘co-
ordinate’ manner (i.e. as distinct items in both their formal and their semantic
aspects). Another suggestion is that second language forms whi are perceived as
related to first language words (e.g. Fren table – English table) are stored as
variants of the first language vocabulary. e kind of evidence that is used in
support of these ideas includes, for example, the fact that translating between
cognates is mu faster than translating between non-cognates (e.g. English table
will tend to be translated as Fren table more rapidly than armchair will be
translated as fauteuil). ere is also some evidence of a learning environment
factor and a proficiency factor in the degree to whi the first language and
second language lexicons are integrated; that is to say, it seems to be the case that
the more the first language is involved in the environment in whi the second
language is learned, the greater will be the degree of integratedness between the
two mental lexicons, and that, as second language proficiency increases, the
second language mental lexicon becomes less and less dependent on and more
and more separate from the first language mental lexicon. In sum, the precise
relationship between a given entry in the second language mental lexicon and a
given entry in the first language mental lexicon probably appears to depend on
how the words have been acquired, how well they are known, and to what extent
formal and/or semantic similarity is perceived between them
9.7 Summary
Chapter 9 has been concerned with the internal or mental lexicon. It has
examined some aspects of the acquisition of the mental lexicon in the course of
first language acquisition; it has addressed some proposals regarding ways in
whi the mental lexicon might be organized and accessed; and it has explored
some of the lexical issues that arise when more than one language is acquired and
used by a given individual. Under the heading of lexical acquisition, topics dealt
with included: the allenge posed for the language acquirer by the problem of
isolating lexical units in the spee signal and connecting them with relevant
content, the relationship between the first meaningful words produced by the
ild and everything that precedes this milestone, and the different phases of
lexical development whi follow the onset of word production. With regard to
lexical processing, the apter has summarized and assessed various
psyolinguistic models concerning the organization and functioning of the
mental lexicon – Morton’s logogen model, Marslen-Wilson’s cohort model,
Forster’s lexical sear model, and Levelt’s ‘blueprint for the speaker’ – and has
also given consideration to modular and connectionist perspectives on lexical
processing. Concerning the second language dimension, the apter has noted a
number of similarities between first language and second language lexical
development, as well as some differences, and it has also looked at the issues of
similarity/difference and integration/separation in respect of first language and
second language lexical organization and processing.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 9.2 .
e poverty of the stimulus argument is rehearsed widely in publications
by Chomsky and Chomskyans. It is accessibly discussed by N. Chomsky in his
book Language and problems of knowledge: the Managua lectures (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1988, Chapter 1) and by V. Cook and M. Newson in their volume
Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: an introduction (Oxford: Blawell, 1996, 81 ff.).
e sources for the treatment of ild-directed spee include: O. Garnica’s article
‘Some prosodic and paralinguistic features of spee to young ildren’ (in C.
Snow and C. Ferguson (eds), Talking to children, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977); M. Harris, D. Jones and J. Grant’s article ‘e non-verbal
context of mothers’ spee to ildren’ (First Language 4, 1983, 21–30), J.
McShane’s book Cognitive development: an information processing account
(Oxford: Blawell, 1991, 140ff.); E. Markman’s article ‘Constraints ildren place
on word meanings’ (in P. Bloom (ed.), Language acquisition: core readings,
Hemel Hempstead: HarvesterWheatsheaf, 1993); and C. Snow’s article
‘Conversations with ildren’ (in P. Fleter and M. Garman (eds), Language
acquisition: studies in first language development (second edition, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986). e comments on the different kinds of
allenge posed by different kinds of writing system draw on relevant discussion
in M. Clark’s book Young fluent readers (London: Heinemann, 1976) and O. Tzeng
and W. S.-Y. Wang’s article ‘e first two R’s’ (American Scientist 71, 1983, 238–
43). e source for the remarks about early readers’ use of context is A.
Biemiller’s article ‘e development of the use of graphic and contextual
information as ildren learn to read’ (Reading Research Quarterly 6, 1970, 75–96).
See 9.3. An overview of experimental evidence regarding sound discrimination in
infants is to be found in P. Eimas’s article ‘e perception of spee in early
infancy’ (Scientific American 252, 1985, 46–52). e studies dealing with sound
discrimination in inillas and rhesus monkeys are reported in P. Kuhl and J.
Miller, ‘Spee perception by the inilla: voice-voiceless distinction in alveolar
plosive consonants’ (Science 190, 1975, 69–72); P. Kuhl and J. Miller, ‘Spee
perception by the inilla: identification functions for synthetic VOT stimuli’
(Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 63, 1978, 905–17); and P. Morse and
C. Snowdon, ‘An investigation of categorical spee discrimination by rhesus
monkeys’ (Perception and Psychophysics 17, 1975, 9–16). A mu-cited
experiment relating to pre-linguistic concepts is that reported by P. Bomba and E.
Siqueland in their article, ‘e nature and structure of infant form categories’
(Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 35, 1983, 295–328). Evidence of pre-
linguistic concepts from infant-caregiver interaction is discussed by M. Scaife and
J. Bruner in their article, ‘e capacity for joint visual aention in the infant ‘
(Nature 253, 1975, 265–6). e discussion of the level of generality of innate
concepts is based on R. Campbell’s article ‘Language acquisition and cognition’ (in
P. Fleter and M. Garman (eds), Language acquisition: studies in first language
development, second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). e
quotation from J. Harris is from his book Early language development:
implications for clinical and educational practice. (London: Routledge, 1990, 82).
e quotation from J. Bruner is to be found on p. 2 of his article ‘e ontogenesis
of spee acts’ (Journal of Child Language 2, 1975, 1–19). Some of the evidence in
favour of babbling dri is summarized by M. L. Moreau and M. Rielle on p. 50
of their volume L’acquisition du langage (Brussels: Pierre Mardaga, 1981). Typical
of the representatives of the nativist anti-babbling dri position is H. Goodlu –
as indicated by remarks on p. 21 of her book Language acquisition: a linguistic
introduction (Oxford: Blawell, 1991). N. Chomsky’s mu-cited early aa on
behaviourism is his review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal behavior (New York:
Appleton–Century–Cros, 1957), whi was published in the journal Language
(1959, 35, 26–58). e [i i i]example is borrowed from p. 54 of M. L. Moreau and
M. Rielle’s book L’acquisition du langage (Brussels: Pierre Mardaga, 1981) and
the [nǝ nǝ nǝ nǝ nǝ] example from p. 90 of L. Bloom’s book One word at a time:
the use of single word utterances before syntax (e Hague: Mouton, 1973). e
‘Uh oh, where’d it go?’ example is taken from p. 158 of M. Vihmann and R.
Miller’s article ‘Words and babble at the threshold of language acquisition’ (in M.
D. Smith and J. Loe (eds), The emergent lexicon: the child’s development of a
linguistic vocabulary , London: Academic Press).
See 9.4. e dut example comes from M. Barre’s article ‘Early semantic
representations and early semantic development’ (in S. Kuczaj and M. Barre
(eds), The development of word meaning, New York: Springer, 1986). e co-
existence of context-bound and context-flexible usages in the very early stages of
word production is reported and discussed by M. Harris in her book Language
experience and early language development: from input to uptake (Hove &
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992, 77ff.). Harris also discusses and advocates –
in the same book (pp. 69ff.) – the three-stage view of early lexical development.
e importance of phonological working memory in vocabulary development
emerges from studies reported in S. Gathercole and A. Baddeley’s articles
‘Evaluation of the role of phonological STM in the development of vocabulary in
ildren: a longitudinal study’ (Journal of Memory and Language 28, 1989, 200–
13) and ‘Phonological memory deficits in language-disordered ildren: is there a
causal connection?’ (Journal of Memory and Language 29, 1990, 336–60). e P.
Guillaume quotation is cited (in my translation) from p. 8 of his article ‘Les débuts
de la phrase dans le langage de l’enfant’ (Journal de Psychologie Normale et
Pathologique 24, 1927, 1–25). Over-extension is very mu a leitmotiv of the work
of E. Clark and is mu discussed in her book The lexicon in acquisition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). e M. Harris quotation about
under-extension is to be found on p. 71 of her 1992 volume (see above). An
advocate of the ‘under-extensions first’ position is P. Griffiths – see, for example
his article ‘Early vocabulary’ (in P. Fleter, and M. Garman (eds), Language
acquisition: studies in first language development, second edition, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986). ‘Basic’ categories are primarily associated with
the work of E. Ros and her colleagues – see, for example, E. Ros, C. Mervis,
W. Gray, D. Johnson and P. Boyes-Braem, ‘Basic objects in natural categories
(Cognitive Psychology 8, 1976, 382–439). Evidence in support of the notion that
basic categories come first in lexical development summarized by S. Waxman in
her article ‘e development of an appreciation of specific linkages between
linguistic and conceptual organization’ (in L. Gleitman and B. Landau (eds), The
acquisition of the lexicon , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994). e naming insight
in relation to the ‘vocabulary explosion’ is discussed by J. McShane in his book,
Cognitive development: an information processing approach (Oxford: Blawell,
1991, 143ff.). e notion that imageability is a factor in word retention is treated
by N. Ellis and A. Beaton in their articles ‘Factors affecting the learning of foreign
language vocabulary: imagery keyword mediators and phonological short-term
memory’ (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental
Psychology 46A, 1993, 533–58) and ‘Psyolinguistic determinants of foreign
language vocabulary learning’ (in B. Harley (ed.), Lexical issues in language
learning , Ann Arbor/Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Language Learning/John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995). Evidence in favour of ‘fast mapping’ is
cited by S. Carey and E. Bartle in their article ‘Acquiring a new word’ (Papers
and Reports on Child Language Development 15, 1978, 17–29) and by K. Nelson
and J. Bonvillian in their article, ‘Early language development: conceptual growth
and related processes between 2 and 4½ years’ (in K. Nelson (ed.), Children’s
language. Volume 1, New York: Gardner, 1978). e principal sources for the
discussion of the development of hierarical relations are J. Anglin’s books, The
growth of word meaning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970) and Word, object and
conceptual development (New York: Norton, 1977). J. B. Carroll’s conclusion is to
be found on p. 124 of his article ‘Development of native language skills beyond
the early years’ (in C. Reed (ed.), The learning of language, New York: Appleton-
Century-Cros, 1971); K. Diller’s comment is on p. 29 of his book, Generative
grammar, structural linguistics and language teaching (Rowley, MA: Newbury
House, 1971).
See 9.5.e distinction between direct and indirect access models of the lexicon is
made by, for example M. Garman in his book, Psycholinguistics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990, 260ff.). e term ‘neural unit’ is used as a
forerunner of the term logogen in, for example J. Morton’s article, ‘A preliminary
functional model for language behaviour’ (in R. Oldfield and J. Marshall (eds),
Language: selected readings, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; originally published
in International Audiology 3, 1964, 216–25). e classic cohort model is outlined in
W. Marslen-Wilson and A. Welsh’s article, ‘Processing interactions and lexical
access during word-recognition in continuous spee’ (Cognitive Psychology 10,
1978, 29–63); a modified version of the model is presented in W. Marslen-Wilson’s
article ‘Functional parallelism in spoken word recognition’ (Cognition 25, 1987,
71–102). e evidence concerning the recognition of non-words was presented in
W. Marslen-Wilson’s paper ‘Sequential decision processes during spoken word-
recognition’ at the Psyonomic Society meeting, San Antonio, Texas, 1978. e
argument about the interwoven nature of spee sounds is put by M. Garman on
p. 288 of Psycholinguistics (cited above). e cohort model’s account of context
effects is dealt with in W. Marslen-Wilson and L. Tyler’s articles ‘e temporal
structure of spoken language understanding’ (Cognition 8, 1980, 1–71) and
‘Against modularity’ (in J. Garfield (ed.), Modularity in knowledge representation
and natural-language understanding , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). e
account of K. Forster’s sear model is based on his article ‘Accessing the mental
lexicon’ (in R. Wales and E. Walker (eds), New approaches to language
mechanisms, Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1976). e account of W. Levelt’s model
is a simplified summary of what he has to say in his book, Speaking: from
intention to articulation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). e quotation
summarizing the modularity hypothesis is to be found on p. 1 of J. Garfield’s
editorial introduction to the above-cited collection of essays entitled Modularity
in knowledge representation and natural-language understanding . e account
of J. Fodor’s perspective on modularity is mostly based on his book, The
modularity of mind: an essay on faculty psychology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1983). e ‘yellow stripey thing’ example is discussed in his article ‘Why should
the mind be modular?’ (in A. George (ed.), Reflections on Chomsky, Oxford:
Blawell). e example relating to Finnish in France figured in a personal
communication to me some years ago from the Finnish psyologist Elisabet
Service. e material on hypnosis was culled from M. Orne and A. Hammer’s
article ‘Hypnosis’ (in Macropaedia, Volume 9, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974) and
L. Chertok’s book, Hypnose et Suggestion (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1989). e account of connectionism given here is derived principally from D.
Rumelhart, J. McClelland and the PDP Resear Group (eds), Parallel distributed
processing: explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume 1: Foundations
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986) and J. McClelland, D. Rumelhart and the PDP
Resear Group (eds), Parallel distributed processing: explorations in the
microstructure of cognition. Volume 2. Psychological and biological models
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986)). Further insights were gleaned from J. Elman’s
articles, ‘Finding structure in time’ (Cognitive Science 4, 1990, 179–211) and
‘Representation and structure in connectionist models’ (in G. Altman (ed.),
Cognitive models of speech processing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)). An
example of an aempt to reconcile connectionism with modularity is to be found
in M. Tanenhaus, G. Dell and G. Carlson’s article, ‘Context effects in lexical
processing: a connectionist approa to modularity’ (in the above-cited 1987
volume edited by Garfield). A version of connectionism with a semantic
dimension is sketed in for example, B. MacWhinney and J. Leinba’s article
‘Implementations are not conceptualizations: revising the verb learning model’
(Cognition 48, 1991, 21–69).
See 9.6. e role of cross-linguistic influence is very widely discussed in the
literature of second language acquisition – see, for example T. Odlin’s Language
transfer: crosslinguistic influence in language learning (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press). Specifically lexical dimensions of cross-linguistic influence are
dealt with by B. Laufer in articles su as ‘Words you know: how they affect the
words you learn’ (in J. Fisiak (ed.), Further insights into contrastive linguistics,
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990) and ‘Appropriation du vocabulaire: mots
faciles, mots difficiles, mots impossibles’ (Acquisition et Interaction en Langue
Etrangère 3, 97–113). Evidence of the importance of the role of phonological
working memory in second language acquisition is presented in, for example, A.
Baddeley, C. Papagno and G. Vallar, ‘When long-term learning depends on short-
term storage’ (Journal of Memory and Language 27, 1988, 586–95); C. Papagno, T.
Valentine and A. Baddeley, ‘Phonological short-term memory and foreign-
language vocabulary learning’ (Journal of Memory and Language 30, 1991, 331–
47); E. Service, ‘Phonology, working memory and foreign-language learning’
(Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 45A, 1992, 21–50). e
syntagmatic-paradigmatic shi in second language lexical development is
documented by T. Söderman in her article, ‘Word associations of foreign language
learners and native speakers: the phenomenon of a shi in response type and its
relevance for lexical development’ (in H. Ringbom (ed.), Near-native proficiency
in English, Åbo: Åbo Akademi, English Department Publications, 1993). e point
of view that the second language mental lexicon is qualitatively different from the
first language mental lexicon is advanced by P. Meara in e study of lexis in
interlanguage’ (in A. Davies, C. Criper and A. P. R. Howa (eds), Interlanguage,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Meara’s position is allenged in, for
example, D. Singleton and D. Lile, ‘e second language lexicon: some evidence
from university-level learners of Fren and German (Second Language Research
7, 1991, 61–82). e Swiss case of language recovery is reported by F. Grosjean in
Life with two languages: an introduction to bilingualism (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982, 260); the British case of language recovery is
reported by H. Whitaker in ‘Bilingualism: a neurolinguistics perspective’ (in W.
Ritie (ed.), Second language acquisition research: issues and implications, New
York: Academic Press, 1978, 27). V. Cook pleads the case for multicompetence in
‘Evidence for multicompetence’ (Language Learning 42, 1992, 557–91). e
suggestions regarding different factors in the precise ways in whi entries in the
first language and the second language mental lexicon are to be found in A. De
Groot ‘Determinants of bilingual lexicosemantic organisation’ (Computer Assisted
Language Learning 8, 1995, 151–80); K. Kirsner, E. Lalor and K. Hird, ‘e
bilingual lexicon: exercise, meaning and morphology’ (in R. Sreuder and B.
Weltens, The Bilingual Lexicon, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1993); U. Weinrei,
Languages in contact, New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1953).
An excellent first introduction to ild language acquisition in general is:
S. Foster-Cohen, Language development in children (London: Longman,
1998).
Another title whi, though not strictly introductory, is accessibly wrien and well
worth consulting in this connection is:
M. Harris, Language experience and early language development: from
intake to uptake (Hove/Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1992).
Good introductory works on language processing include:
A. Ellis and G. Beaie, The psychology of language and communication
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986);
M. Forrester, Psychology of language: a critical introduction (London: Sage,
1996);
M. Harris and M. Coltheart, Language processing in children and adults
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
e best introduction to all aspects of the mental lexicon is:
J. Aitison, Words in the mind (second edition, Oxford: Blawell, 1994).
In a somewhat less introductory mode, the mental lexicon is also fairly
comprehensively dealt with in:
M. Garman, Psycholinguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
On the topic of second language mental lexicon readers may wish to consult:
D. Singleton, Exploring the second language mental lexicon (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. Imagine that in the room with you is a two-year-old ild and imagine
yourself talking to this ild about the various features of the room and the
objects in it. Write down the dialogue you imagine and then compare what you
have wrien with the description in 9.2 of typical features of ild-directed
spee. If there is a young ild in your family or home environment observe
the way in whi adults (including yourself) actually do talk to this ild and
assess how far what you observe corresponds to what is suggested in 9.2.
2. In many cultures words like baba and mama are used by adults when talking
to young ildren. Why do you think this might be, and how do you think it
might complicate the task of sorting out the relationship between babbling and
later language development?
3. Suggest some likely responses to the following word association stimuli from
(i) a pre-sool ild acquiring English as his/her first language and (ii) an adult
native speaker of English:
ask go
cake hot
mummy sweet
doll two
eat water
4. Give a brief account of how the cohort model would deal with the receptive
processing of the words bottle, egregious, endeavour, policy and sterility. What
is the ‘uniqueness point’ in ea case?
5. Write down the translations of the following English words into any other
language you know:
apple quality kiosk totality
beautiful red lamp unbelievable
charity real meaning vary
desk seat note vapour
kindness terrible piety wash
In the light of the discussion in 9.6, whi of the pairs of translation-
equivalents you now have before you (if any) would you expect to have a
particularly close relationship in terms of the organization of the mental
lexicon – and why?
10
Charting and imparting the lexicon
10.1 Dictionaries and didactics
Having explored the lexicon in its various linguistic dimensions – syntactic,
morphological, phonological etc., having looked at its social and historical
dimensions, and having examined some aspects of lexical development and
lexical processing in the individual, we turn now to two time-honoured ways
in whi the individual’s lexical proficiency is supported and advanced –
namely, through the elaboration of dictionaries and through the promotion of
vocabulary learning in the context of formal education.
Dictionaries have a long history, and dictionary-making, or lexicography
has been through a succession of anges in its orientation and its
methodology. What has remained stable amidst all this flux is the status of the
dictionary, whi remains high. Indeed, the fact that dictionaries are
increasingly based on vast computerized corpora of language data derived
from real instances of language in a variety of uses has, if anything, enhanced
their authority. In the first part of this apter we shall trace the evolution of
lexicography from ancient glossaries down to dictionaries on the web – with
particular (though not exclusive) reference to dictionaries of English, and we
shall note the ways in whi the impossibility of seeing lexical phenomena in
isolation from other aspects of language has allenged lexicographers.
With regard to lexis in the classroom, it is also true to say that language
teaing is a practice and a profession with a past. Like lexicography, it has
been through many different forms. In the second part of the apter we shall
explore some different approaes to the lexical learning and teaing in the
context of formal language education, and we shall consider, in the light of all
that has been said in previous apters, to what extent it is possible to
conceive of lexical instruction as separable from the teaing of other
dimensions of language.
10.2 Lexicography: a potted history
As we saw in Chapter 8, the forms and meanings of words evolve over time –
sometimes, as we saw, over a relatively short period of time. is presents a
problem when it comes to understanding and interpreting texts whi may be
decades or centuries old and whi reflect a no longer current state of affairs
as far as lexical forms and meanings are concerned. is problem is especially
acute when the texts in question are of great significance to a given
community. One option in su cases is to update the texts – to ‘translate’
them into the contemporary idiom. However, factors su as the fear of
destroying the aesthetic integrity of a text or taboos around the altering of
‘the word of God’ oen militate against revisions of this kind. e alternative
route is to provide commentaries on and explanations or glosses of the forms
and senses whi are no longer current. In the modern world this is what we
see in, for example, sool editions of the works of Shakespeare. In earlier
times the same principle was applied, for example, in first century AD Greece
to older Greek literary texts, and in northern France of the eighth-century AD
to the Latin version of the Bible (the Vulgate).
With regard to the Greek case, by the first century AD mu of Homer’s
language, and that of writers su as Plato, was opaque to users of the Greek
of that time. Accordingly, glossaries of the difficult elements in su texts were
compiled from this time onwards by commentators su as Pamphilus of
Alexandria, Diogenanius and Zopyrion. As far as the eighth-century Latin
glosses are concerned, these are to be found in a document now known as the
Glosses of Reichenau, and what they do is to explain a number of Latin words,
iefly from the Vulgate, in terms that an educated user of the ‘Latin’ or
Romance used in that region at that time would understand. Some examples
of su glosses are:
Ager: campus (‘field’)
Cecenit: cantavit (‘he/she/it sang’)
In foro: in mercato (‘in the marketplace’)
In ore: in bucca (‘in the mouth’)
Semel: una vica (‘once’)
Explanations of the above kind are essentially translations between words
used at one stage in the development of a language and words used at a
subsequent stage. However, in other cases translations between two distinct
languages were involved. For example, in Ancient Mesopotamia, when the
Sumerian language began to die out as a mother tongue (around 2000 BC),
giving way to the group of Semitic varieties known as Akkadian, it
nevertheless remained an important vehicle of important elements of
Mesopotamian culture – rather like Latin in western Europe in the middle
ages. Accordingly, it was formally taught in the sools so that important texts
could continue to be understood, and one element used as an aid in this
context was a large corpus of Sumerian-Akkadian vocabulary-lists and
treatments of Sumerian morphology. A lile closer to our own era, in early
Anglo-Saxon times it was common practice in the monasteries to insert Old
English equivalents of difficult Latin words between the lines of Latin
manuscripts. As a time-saver, the custom subsequently arose of providing the
relevant glosses either in lists in the margins of pages or in pages appended to
the manuscripts. ese kinds of collections of Latin-Old English translation-
equivalents go ba as far as the eighth century AD.
None of the above would constitute what we nowadays call a dictionary,
but we can see in all of them the beginnings of the dictionary idea. As
glossaries grew in size and scope the question of how to organize the material
started to loom large – a question whi continues to allenge lexicographers
even today. One solution was to group words according to topic; so, one list of
words might comprise Latin names of plants with English (Fren, German
etc.) equivalents, another might be focused on names of animals, another on
parts of the body etc. Su specialized classifications – forerunners of today’s
tenical dictionaries – were known as nomenclatores – the Latin word
nomenclator having originally been applied to a slave who told his master the
names of the persons he met. Some nomenclatores were not just bilingual but
multilingual – notably the sixteenth-century work by Hadrianus Junius,
Nomenclator omnium rerum (‘Namer of all things’) (1567) whi gave
equivalents in Latin, Greek, Fren and English. ematic dictionaries are still
with us. For example, the thesaurus type of dictionary, su as Roget’s
Thesaurus or the Oxford Thesaurus, provide collections of words under entries
su as border (edge, margin, hem …) nimble (agile, lively, active …), scatter
(spread, diffuse, shower …) etc. and some dictionaries are organized on rather
broader thematic lines; for example, the Oxford Dictionary of Slang is
arranged in sections with headings like ‘People and Society’, ’Money
Commerce and Employment’, ‘Behaviour, Aitudes and Emotions’, ea of
whi is divided up on the basis of subtopics.
e other approa to arranging the content of glossaries in cultures using
an alphabetic writing system was to sequence items according to their wrien
form and following the conventional sequence of leers in the relevant
alphabet. Embryonic Latin-English dictionaries of this kind appear as early as
the fieenth century. Aer the invention of printing rather larger alphabetized
Latin-English dictionaries became available, and in due course a printed
dictionary appeared with the Latin words placed aer the English words. is
was the Abdecedarium Anglico Latinum compiled by Riard Huloet (1552). It
has to be said that alphabetization was somewhat approximate in these early
glossaries and dictionaries. us, for instance, in the fieenth-century
Catholicon Anglicum’ to Nee as a horse (‘neigh’) and Negligent come before a
Nede (‘need’).
e first monolingual dictionaries devoted to modern vernaculars began to
appear in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. is was, of
course, at a time of when interest in the languages of Ancient Greece and
Rome was extremely high. Paradoxically, this led solars and writers in
various European countries to wish to bring their own languages and cultures
to the point where they could begin to emulate Classical Greek and Latin in
terms of riness, orderliness, stability etc. Hence the efforts to codify,
regularize and enhance the vernacular languages of Europe through the
production of not only dictionaries but also treatises on various aspects of the
languages in question. With regard to dictionaries, the fact that the dictionaries
whi had been around prior to vernacular dictionaries had focused on Latin,
and the fact that there was a tradition – going ba to the medieval glossaries
– for su dictionaries to concentrate on difficult words had a strong influence
on what was included in and excluded from the content of early vernacular
dictionaries. us, the first monolingual English dictionary, The Table
Alphabeticall (1604), compiled by Robert Cawdrey, set itself the task of
defining 2560 ‘hard vsual English wordes gathered for the benefit & helpe of
Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other vnskilfull persons’. Examples of su ‘hard
usual words’ can be seen in the first eight entries under O in Cawdrey’s work
– obdurate, obeisance, object, oblation, oblectation, obliged, oblique, oblivious
– all of whi are derived from Latin and Fren, and most of whi would
have been ‘usual’ only in learned discourse. Of less hard words su as oaf,
oak, oar, oath, oats or obey, The Table Alphabeticall has nothing to say
whatever.
Other English dictionaries based on the ‘hard word’ policy swily followed;
these included John Bullokar’s English Expositor (1616) and omas Blount’s
Glossographia (1656). Indeed, the ‘hard word’ tradition in dictionary making
continued through many centuries, and its influence persists even into modern
times. However, some lexicographers, even in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, had a wider perspective. us, for example, Henry Coeram’s
English Dictionarie (1623) listed ‘vulgar’ terms and glossed them with more
refined equivalents and also included everyday items su as hair, tavern and
yellow . A dictionary published anonymously some decades later, the
Gazophylacium Anglicanum (1689) was even broader in scope. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century a fairly explicit break with the ‘hard
word’ approa came with John Kersey’s New English Dictionary (1702),
whi included a larger number of ‘ordinary words’ than any previous
dictionary.
Nathaniel Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary (1721), whi became
the standard dictionary of its time, continued with the policy of including
everyday words, and also included illustrative quotations. is laer practice
was familiar from ancient times. It was to be found in limited form in
bilingual and multilingual dictionaries su as Cotgrave’s Dictionarie of the
French and English Tongues (1632), and in very fulsome form in continental
dictionaries su as that of the Académie Française (1694). Illustrative
quotations had also figured in Blount’s Glossographia (see above) and were
very mu a feature of the best-known English dictionary of the eighteenth
century, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
Johnson’s dictionary set out to encapsulate the ‘best’ usage of the period,
while rendering certain older usages accessible to the eighteenth-century
reader. To this end it incorporated earlier senses of words as well as the then
current senses, supporting its definitions with more than 100,000 quotations.
Johnson’s manner of proceeding was in fact a forerunner of the ‘historical
approa’ later Adopted by the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary.
However, Johnson’s insistence on focusing exclusively on what he considered
the best usage and his exclusion of authors whi did not meet his approval
meant that the histories of many of the items he dealt with were somewhat
incomplete. Incidentally, some of the authors excluded by Johnson were ruled
out not on linguistic or stylistic grounds but because Johnson disagreed with
them. us, for example, Johnson did not cite the philosopher omas Hobbes
because he did not like his ideas.
Other English dictionaries produced in the eighteenth century tended to
take a rather different line, principally focusing on spellings, correct usage and,
increasingly, pronunciation. On the other hand, lexicographers interested in
the historical method continued to make their presence felt. John Jamieson, for
instance, in his Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808), gave
the earliest authority for every sense specified for ea headword. Jamieson
was, indeed, more Adventurous than Johnson in his wide-ranging use of
sources, and was in fact criticized by his reviewers for the lowliness of some of
his authorities.
Across the Atlantic Johnson’s method was only partially taken on board by
the father of American lexicography, Noah Webster. He thought that Johnson
had expended too mu space on the ‘useless’ illustration of well-known
words by quotations. He was also highly prescriptive in his outlook, whi
was out of keeping with an approa that was prepared to take account of
variation and development in meaning. Webster’s own American Dictionary
of the English Language (1860) focused on etymologies and definitions, with
quotations being assigned a relatively minor role.
e last great landmark in lexicography in respect of English up to the
Advent of information tenology was a dictionary whi explicitly declared
itself in its title to be based on an historical approa. is was A New English
Dictionary on Historical Principles (1884–1928), more popularly known as the
Oxford English Dictionary or the OED. e ief originator of the dictionary,
Riard Cheveix Tren, believed that it was possible to make judgments
about given lexical usages, but, on the other hand, he did not believe in
excluding what he considered less acceptable usages from the dictionary. As
we have seen, ‘historical principles’ figured in earlier English dictionaries,
including Johnson’s, and so it is possible to see the OED as the culmination of
an already established tradition in English lexicography. However, there was a
further very important – perhaps crucial – influence on the shaping of the
method used in the preparation of this dictionary – namely the work of the
German lexicographer Franz Passow, who in 1812 published an essay in whi
he strongly Advocated the provision of ronologically arranged citations in
the service of showing forth the history of ea word. Passow’s approa had
a major impact on the work of H.G. Liddell and R. Sco, compilers of The
Greek-English Lexicon Based on the Work of Franz Passow (1843). When the
first editor of the OED, Herbert Coleridge, wished to explain the approa he
and his team had adopted, he simply quoted from the Preface of Liddell and
Sco’s lexicon the proposition that every word ‘should be made to tell its own
story’. A second edition of the dictionary began to be prepared in 1983 under
the Administrative direction of Timothy Benbow and under the editorship of
John A. Simpson and Edmund S.C. Weiner, and was published in 1989.
e great leap forward in dictionary making in very recent times has been
the use of information tenology in both lexicographical resear and the
production and presentation of lexicographical material. On the resear front,
as was mentioned in Chapter 4, there has been a massive investment since the
1980s in the construction and exploitation of computerized corpora of
naturally occurring language, both spoken and wrien. As was indicated
earlier, the leader in the field in this connection was the COBUILD (Collins
Birmingham University International Language Database) project, involving
a partnership between the Collins (now HarperCollins) publishing house and
the Sool of English of the University of Birmingham, whi has assembled a
corpus of naturally occurring English data, now known as the Bank of English,
running to more than 300 million words. A number of reference works –
aimed primarily at Advanced non-native learners and users of English – have
been based on this corpus, including the Collins COBUILD English Language
Dictionary (Glasgow: Collins, 1987), the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary
(Glasgow and London: HarperCollins, 1995), the Collins COBUILD Dictionary
of Idioms (Glasgow and London: HarperCollins, 1995) and the Collins
COBUILD English Words in Use (Glasgow and London: HarperCollins, 1997).
Other previously mentioned corpora whi have informed recent dictionary
production – again especially, though not exclusively, in the area of
dictionaries intended primarily for advanced non-native learners of English –
are the British National Corpus (90 million words of wrien British English
and 10 million words of spoken British English), the Longman-Lancaster
Corpus (30 million words of spoken and wrien British and American
English), and the Cambridge International Corpus (95 million words of
wrien English plus a spoken language annexe, comprising five million words,
known as the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English).
e British National Corpus was used in the preparation of su dictionaries
as the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (third edition, London:
Longman, 1995) and the Oxford advanced Learner’s Dictionary (fih edition,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), and recent dictionaries published by
Longman, including the Longman Dictionary of American English (second
edition, London: Longman, 1997) have also been informed by the Longman-
Lancaster Corpus. e Cambridge International Corpus, for its part, was
drawn on in the preparation of the Cambridge International Dictionary of
English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Advantages of using corpora in dictionary making include the following.
First, the existence of su vast amounts of aested English means that
examples are readily available for citation in respect of every usage of the
word to whi the lexicographer wishes to refer. Corpus-based dictionaries
tend to follow ‘historical principles’ to the extent that they rely exclusively on
‘real’ rather than made-up examples in support of their definitions; they differ
from dictionaries su as the OED in this connection only insofar as they focus
on just one historical phase of development (current usage) rather than tracing
development over several centuries and insofar as the examples they deploy
draw on sources whi extend beyond ‘serious’ writing. Second, the fact that
the databanks in question are computerized means that it is extremely easy to
extract information from them about the frequency of occurrence of any
given item in any given variety (spoken, wrien, British English, American
English etc.) and generally. Even more interestingly, using concordancing
teniques, it is a straightforward maer to obtain information about the
combinations in whi any given word appears, and with what frequency, in
different varieties and generally. Accordingly, lexicographers using corpora no
longer have to rely on their own intuitions and impressions when making
decisions about whi items and usages are ‘mainstream’ and whi are more
peripheral. Data emerging from frequency counts and concordancing
procedures can also be used in decision-making about the ordering of
information provided in association with any given entry – whether, for
example to present and illustrate more typical usages earlier than less typical
usages. Finally, the kind of information made available by computerized
corpora enables the lexicographer to provide accurate and useful profiles of
the discourse marking functions of words like well and right whi were
largely ignored in traditional dictionaries for example, the use of right to
signal drawing a line under one point or topic and moving on to another, as in:
That’s how Descartes saw the matter. Right. Now let’s have a look at what
the Empiricists had to say about this issue.
Turning now to the use of information tenology in the production and
presentation of lexicographical material, the reference here is, essentially, to
dictionaries on CD-ROM and dictionaries on the Internet. In principle,
electronic dictionaries of this kind could solve large numbers of the problems
faced by lexicographers over the centuries – specifically those having to do
with the question of the amount of material to be included and that of the
ordering of material. With regard to the former, a traditional book-type
dictionary obviously presents severe constraints on how mu information can
be included under any given entry. Electronic dictionaries are not subject to
su constraints, and, with their capacity to offer links to other entries and to
other sources of information, may indeed be virtually limitless in respect of
the quantity of information they can make available. As far as the ordering of
material is concerned, since in an electronic dictionary it is possible to provide
sear facilities whi operate instantly on more or less whatever information
the user has at his/her disposal to key in (word-form, definition, common
collocates etc.), the quest for a self-consistent and user-friendly way in whi
to sequence lexical material – whether on a formal basis (e.g. alphabetically)
or within a thematic framework – is no longer su a major issue in this
context.
An example of a dictionary whi has recently appeared in a CD-ROM
version is the above-mentioned Oxford advanced Learner’s Dictionary. e
CD-ROM version can be used in a book-like fashion – to the extent that it can
be scrolled though as continuous text. However, it can also be instantly
seared by inpuing various kinds of information. Moreover, the searing
facilities provide instant access to usage notes, to maps, illustrations and
photographs, and to tens of thousands of corpus-based examples. A further
dictionary from the Oxford stable with a CD-ROM version is the Oxford
American Wordpower Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). is
is a dictionary aimed at intermediate students of American English as a second
language whi sets out to bridge the gap between basic survival vocabulary
and a broader lexical range. In this connection, as well as containing the usual
kind of information that one might expect to find in a dictionary (plus special
sections on American culture and appendices dealing with areas su as
irregular verbs, numbers and place-names), it includes ‘study pages’
presenting information on, for example, collocations, phrasal verbs and study
skills in a sematic, uncluered way. It thus begins to blur the distinction
between dictionary and learning materials. e CD-ROM version goes mu
further in this direction; as well as providing a sear facility giving instant
access to any part of the text, it makes available hundreds of pictures, video
clips illustrating the use of difficult words, audio elements modelling
pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary exercises, and educational games.
With regard to dictionaries available on the Internet, many of these are
quite disappointing in terms of their failure to use the extraordinary
possibilities offered by the tenology, some being lile more than rather
crude glossaries with very limited sear facilities. Other online dictionaries
present large amounts of flexibly searable information but without really
going beyond the book form of the texts in question in terms of types of
information available. ere are, however, a number of dictionaries on the
Internet whi take fuller Advantage of the tenology and whi Adventure
beyond traditional formats. One su is the Newbury House Online
Dictionary , available at hp://nhd.heinle.com/. is is an electronic version of
the Newbury House Dictionary of American English (third edition, Boston:
Heinle & Heinle, 2000). e major Addition to the online version is a database
of 50,000 photographs, whi can be accessed by cliing on a ‘Related
Photograph’ buon in respect of any given entry. More impressive still is the
Larousse Multimédia Encyclopédique sur CompuServe, a subscription
encyclopedic dictionary to be found at hp://larousse.compuserve.com, whi
offers, alongside definitions and other information whi one might expect to
find in a normal dictionary, the possibility of accessing not only relevant visual
displays but also articles on related topics.
10.3 e lexicon – lexicographer’s bane!
e clear message of earlier apters of this book has been that the lexicon is
a great deal more complex, a great deal broader in scope and a great deal
more bound up with other areas of language than has traditionally been
anowledged. What this means from the lexicographer’s point of view is that
the material he/she has to try to organize presents many more problems than
are ever imagined by the ‘dictionary-user in the street’.
We can begin to explore some of these problems by looking at those
aspects of the dictionary whi are oen thought of as its basic functions – the
provision of the accepted spelling of a given entry and the definition of its
meaning. With regard to spelling, despite the fact that there is a popular
demand for prescriptiveness in this area – one ‘correct’ spelling for any given
item – dictionary makers oen find it difficult to meet this demand. For
example, with regard to English, as we saw in Chapter 7, within the English-
speaking community, different spellings are accepted in different countries.
Accordingly, lexicographers aiming their work at the entire population of
English speakers have no oice but to note spelling variants associated with
different parts of the English-speaking world.
Even within a given country more than one spelling may be accepted in
respect of particular words. us, for example, in the current standard English
of Britain and Ireland ea of the following pairs represents an acceptable
spelling of the word in question:
connection : connexion
jail: gaol
publicize: publicise
wagon: waggon
yogurt: yoghurt
Similarly with the following (identically pronounced) pairs in current
‘metropolitan’ Fren:
bistrot: bistro (‘bistrot’)
essaie: essaye (first and third-person singular present of the verb essayer
– ‘to try’)
paiement: payement (‘payment’)
remerciement: remercîment (‘thanks’)
serre-freins: serre-frein (‘brakesman’, ‘brake Adjuster’).
Again, the dictionary maker has to take account of su variation in the forms
he/she includes.
With regard to non-alphabetic writing systems, these are also subject to
variation. To take an example already referred to (in Chapter 8), in the 1950s
the government of the People’s Republic of China decreed the simplification
of the forms of several hundred Chinese aracters. However, the
simplifications in question were not implemented in Singapore or Taiwan and
were not accepted in the Chinese diaspora. Accordingly, any account of the
wrien forms targeted in the above-mentioned reform whi aspired to
completeness would have to include the ‘classic’ as well as the reformed
versions of the aracters involved.
Moving on now to the definitions of meaning supplied by dictionaries, two
major problems whi arise for the lexicographer in this area are the question
of how mu information to provide and the question of how many meanings
to specify. It is not at all clear that there is a straightforward theoretical way of
seing up a strict demarcation between the ‘basic’ sense of a term and a fuller
account of its meaning. Looking at the issue in a more practical perspective,
presumably what the lexicographer has to aim for is a definition whi (at
least within the constraints of a book-type dictionary) is maximally
economical while supplying enough information for dictionary-users to be
able to understand the item in question and indeed to use it appropriately
themselves. e problem is that, as far as traditional formats are concerned,
there is a price to be paid for a more ‘encyclopedic’ approa to definitions,
either in terms of a significant increase in the length of the dictionary or in
terms of a reduction in the number of entries. In principle, however, there is
no reason why dictionaries and encyclopedias should not blur into ea other.
e long-standing existence of ‘encyclopedic dictionaries’ demonstrates this
point quite clearly. An example of su a dictionary is the Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique Général (published by Haee), whi includes proper
names as well as common nouns (and other parts of spee), whi runs to
1587 pages of text, incorporating some 3500 graphic illustrations, and contains
in addition a number of appendices (neologisms, Anglicisms, an atlas etc.). As
we saw in the last section, the new tenologies have the potential to develop
the encyclopedic dictionary idea mu further than could have been envisaged
in traditional book mode.
e encyclopedic approa has been notably absent from bilingual
dictionaries. e definition of meaning in su dictionaries tends to be in the
form merely of the provision of translation-equivalents in the other language.
On the other hand, as we have seen, some of the monolingual dictionaries
produced with advanced non-native learners in mind have begun to move in a
more encyclopedic direction. e Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (see
above) is a case in point. Again, information tenology may in the end
transcend the above categories, having the potential to provide access via a
single set of sear facilities to translations into other languages, traditional
monolingual dictionary-type definitions, more accessible advanced learner
dictionary-type definitions and/or more encyclopedic information – according
to the demands of particular users at particular times.
Concerning the question of multiple meaning, one part of the traditional
solution to this has been, following the distinction made by semanticists
between homonymy and polysemy, to distinguish between cases where the
meanings aaing to a particular form are connectable in some way and
cases where they are wholly unrelated. In the laer cases, the different
meanings are seen as betokening different words, whi are handled as quite
separate dictionary entries, whereas in the former cases the different but
related meanings are seen as belonging to the same word and are handled
within the framework of a single entry. A good illustration of the above is the
treatment of the meanings associated with the form kip in The Concise Oxford
Dictionary . is form is treated in four separate entries, where the respective
definitions given are as follows:
kip1 1 a sleep or nap. 2 a bed or eap lodging house. 3 a brothel.
kip2 the hide of a young or small animal as used for leather.
kip3 the basic monetary unit of Laos.
kip4 a small piece of wood from whi coins are spun in the game of
two-up.
Whereas the three meanings listed under kip1 can all be seen as interrelated
insofar as they all denote things that happen in or customarily require the
presence of beds, the meanings of kip2, kip3 and kip4 appear to have no
obvious connection with sleeping, lodging or fornicating – or with ea other.
One problem that arises in making the above kind of distinction is that
meanings of a word arrived at by metaphorical extension – and therefore
linked to other, earlier or more ‘central’, meanings of the word in question –
may nevertheless be as far removed from these other meanings as ‘nap’ is
from ‘small piece of wood’. For example, the English word cool means
something like ‘fairly cold’. By extension, in the emotional realm it means
‘calm’ or ‘unexcited’. By further extension, it has come to refer to a relaxed
style of playing music (especially jazz) and by further extension still it is used
as a term of praise – roughly equivalent to ‘excellent’. e question for
lexicographers is whether cool meaning ‘fairly cold’ should be treated together
with cool meaning ‘excellent’ or whether these meanings are now so
divergent as to warrant separate entries under cool1 and cool2. ere is no
easy answer to questions su as this.
Even where it is clear that a set of meanings is linked, a further question
that needs to be aended to is to what extent the meanings involved need to
be specified and to what extent they can be taken to be supplied by context. In
some instances, almost all the meaning of a particular expression seems to
derive from the context in whi it is used. A good example of this is the way
in whi the word nice is used in current English (cf. Chapter 4) as an
indicator of approval. e precise sense associated with the approval in
question is a function of the particular combination in whi it occurs, the
particular type of entity being referred to and the nature of the uerance – as
the following sentences demonstrate:
She has nice hair. (‘aractive’)
He’s a very nice man . (‘kindly’)
Nice shot, my son! (‘well-executed’)
Nice girls don’t kiss on first dates. (‘morally sound’)
He said some very nice things about you. (‘complimentary’)
In this sort of case it would be not only impractical and superfluous but also
misleading to include every possible contextual interpretation of nice.
However, it would also misleading to give too limited an account of the
possible contextual interpretations. What is in fact required in this kind of
instance is a general indication that nice in this sense ‘adds a plus sign’, as it
were, to anything to whi it is aaed, and some representation through
examples – clearly labelled as selective illustrations – of the great variety of
contexts in whi it may fulfil su a role.
Having discussed the difficulties presented to lexicographers by even the
types of information whi have traditionally been thought of as basic to the
content of the dictionary, let us now range a lile more widely over other
elements of information that are found in dictionary entries. One su
element, whi we explored in some depth in apters 1, 2 and 3 is grammar
– both syntax and morphology. We saw in these earlier apters that syntax is
very largely determined by word-oice and that morphology, in both its
derivational and its inflectional dimensions, is quintessentially a lexical issue.
Accordingly, any description of lexis – including the practically oriented kinds
of description to be found in dictionaries – cannot avoid grammar, the proof
of this particular pudding being that dictionaries always do include
grammatical information – to a greater or lesser extent. One of the problems
faced by lexicographers in this connection is precisely whether the extent of
their treatment of grammar is to be greater or lesser. If they decide to opt for
a fairly fulsome treatment of grammar, a further problem arises: how to
present grammatical information in su a way that it is as complete as
possible while remaining reasonably economical (in book-type dictionaries)
and accessible.
An example of a minimalist approa to grammar in the dictionary is
provided by the Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary: English-Greek, Greek-
English, edited by D.N. Stavropoulos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
In the English-Greek section of this dictionary the basic grammatical
categories of the entries are given – noun (n), adjective (adj), adverb (adv),
preposition (prep) etc. and in addition in the case of verbs information is
supplied as to whether a verb is transitive (vt) or intransitive (vi) or both (vti),
and as to whether a verb is irregular (irreg). e Greek-English section follows
exactly the same paern except that Greek nouns are specified for gender –
masculine (nm), feminine (nf) or neuter (nn). e advantage of su a system
is that it is highly transparent, with no very specialized knowledge being
required to make sense of the labels in question. e disadvantage is that it
leaves a large gap between the information on offer and what the learner
actually needs in order to interpret or deploy a given word in context. For
example, labelling the verb give as vt irreg does not prepare the user for the
fact that this item is actually ditransitive, typically requiring an object and an
indirect object; nor for the fact that its objects may be configured in different
ways – thus: I gave the cat to my sister – I gave my sister the cat; nor for the
specificities of its irregularity: give, gave, given.
An example of more ambitious approa to grammar can be seen in the
third edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1974). Here a
complex coding system was Adopted for the representation of syntactic
paerns. us, for example, the first two meanings given for the verb
determine are defined and illustrated as follows in this dictionary:
decide; fix precisely; to___the meaning of a word; to___a date for a
meeting
calculate; find out precisely; to___the speed of light/the height of a
mountain by trigonometry
In the first case the codes VP6A and VP10 are specified, and in the second case,
VP6A. ese codes are explained elsewhere in the dictionary in the following
terms:
VP6A Subject + vt noun/pronoun
VP10 Subject + vt dependent clause/question
Obviously, the information provided by codes in question, indicating as they
do the kinds of objects that come into the frame in relation to particular
usages of this verb, is extremely useful – especially to non-native users of
English. e problem is that, in order to profit from the encoded information,
the dictionary user has to invest time and effort either in learning the (not
very transparent) codes or in constantly consulting the key to the codes. It is
not by any means evident that most dictionary users are prepared to make
this kind of investment.
e latest (fih) edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995)
tacitly recognizes this last point by incorporating a coding system whi is
rather easier to master. us, the coding for verbs is based on the leers,
words or parts of words whi can be related to their syntactic profile in a
fairly straightforward manner. For example:
[V], [Vpr], [VADv], [Vp]
Intransitive verbs do not take an object. When used alone aer a subject
they are coded [V]:
• A large dog appeared.
Some intransitive verbs are oen used with a prepositional phrase, an adverb
or an ADVERBIAL PARTICLE (an adverb like down, out or over). e codes
and examples show whi type of word or phrase can be used with a
particular verb:
• [Vpr] (verb + prepositional phrase)
He doesn’t care about other people’s feelings.
• [Vadv] (verb + adverb)
Well done, you guessed right!
• [Vp] (verb + particle)
Sit down and tell me all about it.
Similarly, transitive verbs are coded as [Vn] (verb + noun phrase),
ditransitive verbs are coded as [Vnn] (verb + noun phrase + noun
phrase), and copulas (linking verbs) are coded as [V-adj] (verb +
adjective complement – as in Her voice sounds hoarse) or [V-n] (verb +
noun phrase complement – as in Elena became a doctor).
is dictionary succeeds fairly well at providing a large amount of
grammatical information in an economical fashion in its entries, using
abbreviations and codes whi are readily associable with what they refer to
and whi therefore do not over-tax the dictionary user’s memory or
patience. As in other dimensions, the new tenologies, with the possibilities
they make available for multi-media cross-links, have the potential to
improve the grammatical aspects of dictionaries still further; in an electronic
dictionary instant access from within a given entry can be provided to full
grammatical explanations, to large numbers of examples – including audio
and video illustrations, and indeed to relevant grammatical exercises.
Since, as we saw in apters 1 and 6, words are sound shapes as well as
being semantic, grammatical and orthographic entities, it is natural enough
that dictionaries should aempt to give some account of how they are
pronounced. Two major difficulties that stand in the way of this enterprise are
that (i) within any language community there is likely to be variation – across
geographical areas etc. – in the ways in whi particular lexical items sound,
and (ii) most users of dictionaries are not familiar with systems of
phonological transcription, and so the lexicographer working in print is faced
with a real allenge when it comes to representing pronunciation.
With regard to (i) even if there is a recognized standard variety of the
language being dealt with, this is almost bound to be aracterized by
acceptable alternative pronunciations. For example, as far as English is
concerned, in standard North American, Irish and Scoish varieties, the words
bar, fear, hire etc. are pronounced with a final r-sound, whereas in the
standard English, Australian, New Zealand and South African varieties words
su as these are pronounced without an r-sound (except where they appear
immediately before a word beginning with a vowel – as in Let’s hire another
van ). e Concise Oxford Dictionary tries to cope with this by giving a
transcription of hire – /haıǝ(r)/ – whi simply allows for possibility of the
occurrence of the ‘post-vocalic r’. is is a neat solution from one point of
view, since it also encompasses the case of occurrence of the ‘post-vocalic r’
before following vowels in English, Australian, New Zealand and South
African varieties. On the other hand, it fails to inform the dictionary user
whi pronunciation is typical of whi parts of the English-speaking world.
As in the case of orthography, even within a given geographical area, more
than one pronunciation may be acceptable as standard. For example, within
the standard English of south-east England the word controversy may be
acceptably pronounced with its main stress either on its first syllable
(controversy) or on its second (controversy). Similarly, the word either may be
pronounced as either /¹aıða/ or /¹ı:ðs/, the word garage may be pronounced /
¹gæra:dᴣ/ or d /¹gærıdᴣ/, and scone may be pronounced as either /skan/ or
/skǝɒn/. In these sorts of instances lexicographers have to give an account of
all the relevant possibilities.
Turning to the question of representation of pronunciation, a fairly common
device whi has been used by lexicographers over the years has been to take
the most common pronunciations of particular leers or sets of leers in the
dictionary users’ orthographic system and to use these as the basis for a
pronunciation guide. For example, the 1969 edition of the Hugo Pocket
Dictionary: Dutch-English, English-Dutch represents Dut pronunciations to
English-speaking users of the dictionary in precisely this way – thus:
blad, blat (‘leaf’)
huis, howss (‘house’)
is kind of system looks as if it might be readily accessible. However, in fact,
explanation of the conventions it Adopts is still necessary, for example:
a indicates a sound similar to the English a in ‘was’
ow to be pronounced as ow in ‘now’
Moreover, a pronunciation guide based on this kind of approa will
necessarily provide only approximations – sometimes rather inadequate
approximations at that. For example, the pronunciation of English ow
resembles the pronunciation of Dut ui (/œy/) only if the English being
spoken is that of certain parts of Ulster; the standard pronunciation of ow (/
ǝʊ/) elsewhere in the English-speaking world is fairly distant from that of the
Dut diphthong. For these kinds of reasons, most dictionaries now represent
pronunciation by means of the symbols of the International Phonetic
Alphabet, the reasoning being, presumably, that if one has to provide a key to
symbols anyway, why not use symbols whi are capable of providing a really
accurate account of the relevant sounds and whi have international
currency?
Once again the new tenologies are in principle able to resolve more or
less all of the above difficulties relative to the phonological dimension of
lexicography. An electronic dictionary has the potential to provide instant
access from within a given entry to a key to the symbols used in the relevant
phonological transcription and also, at the cli of a buon, to model the
pronunciation of any given word in audio mode. Indeed, an electronic
dictionary could supply a whole range of audio models of the pronunciation of
any specific item, signalling whether the pronunciations are in free variation
or labelling the provenance of ea pronunciation (American, Australian etc.)
as appropriate.
Another important dimension of the lexicon treated earlier in the book
(especially in Chapter 4) is the whole area of collocation. is aspect of things
poses a number of allenges to the lexicographer, of whi we shall look
here at just two: (i) the arbitrariness of identifying combinations of words
whi warrant their own entries and (ii) the difficulty of communicating how
fixed or flexible a given combination may be. Concerning (i), we saw in
Chapter 4 that there was no principled way of distinguishing between fixed
expressions and compound words, and that the rule of thumb applied in this
connection was a highly arbitrary orthographic one – so that, for example,
greenfinch, school-teacher, teapot are treated as compound words, while blue
whale, bus driver and tea caddy are treated as fixed expressions. In
lexicographical terms what this tends to mean is that – for no very good
reason – the former are accorded their own separate dictionary entries,
whereas the laer are not. ere is no real sign in recent printed dictionaries
of any aempt to move beyond the limitations of orthographic conventions in
this connection. Electronic dictionaries, in allowing for non-linear sear and,
in providing the possibility of using collocates as a trigger for sear
meanisms, offer the best ance of transcending su limitations, but they
will not entirely solve the problem, since some kind of judgment will always
have to be made as to whether or not a particular combination occurs
frequently enough to constitute a partnership to be included in the category of
collocations/fixed expressions.
As far as specifying the degree of openness or fixedness of fixed expressions
in dictionaries is concerned, again the discussion in Chapter 4 is relevant.
ere we saw that some fixed expressions are more fixed than others. us,
whereas in expressions su as seeing is believing and the more the merrier
only minimal anges are admissible, in other cases, su as the other side of
the coin , anges in the syntax and in the actual components of the expression
can be made without any resultant undermining of the force of expression.
Dictionaries can easily enough indicate when expressions are absolutely
invariable, but, in the case of expressions whi allow for some degree of
flexibility, indicating what kinds of variations are possible and where precisely
the limits of flexibility are is highly problematic. Some interesting
developments in this context came out of the compilation of The Oxford
Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English (1975/1983), in whi, for example,
the kinds of subject and object that a verb is likely to take are specified, and in
whi severe collocational restriction is marked with a warning exclamation
mark. For example, the expression blow up, in the sense of ‘make bigger’, is
shown as taking objects (O) applying only to images:
O:! negative, photograph, picture, snap
However, this kind of device, useful as it is, has to be seen as merely a modest
beginning in the light of the bewildering array of collocational probabilities
and improbabilities associated with expressions of different degrees of fixity –
oen without any discernible rhyme or reason. Tenology can help to a
certain extent both in terms of establishing what are and are not the usual
combinatorial paerns and in terms of providing ready access in electronic
dictionaries to relevant commentary and sets of examples, but even with su
tenological support, the task is a daunting one.
Reference has been made in the foregoing to variation of spelling and
pronunciation. As we saw in Chapter 7, however, variation affects other areas
of language too. For example, the very occurrence of a particular lexical unit
may be more likely in some regional, social, ethnic etc. varieties of a given
language than in others; and/or it may be more likely occur at one or other
end of the formal-informal continuum in terms of style. e obverse of su
sets of probabilities is that a given expression may be aracterized by a set of
associations or connotations in respect of the categories of speakers/writers
who are likely to use it and the typical circumstances of its use.
Lexicographers have traditionally made some kind of effort to communicate
su associations to dictionary users. Unfortunately, the classification that has
traditionally been used in this context has been rather crude: the geographical
labels (‘British’, ‘American’ etc. ) take no account of variation within the areas
in question; lile aention is given to variation associated with social class,
gender or ethnicity; and the usual stylistic indicators (‘colloquial’, ‘poetic’,
‘obscene’ etc.) suggest categories with hard and fast boundaries rather than
points along a scale. On the other hand, very recent dictionaries are tending to
provide more finely differentiated information in these areas, and the
possibilities of electronic dictionaries in this connection regarding
contextualized exemplification are beginning to be usefully exploited.
Meanings and grammatical paerns associated with particular expressions
are also subject to variation. For example, as we saw in Chapter 5, meanings
may vary from context to context. us, the word note, whi in the context
of correspondence means ‘short leer’ in the context of music means ‘sign
representing pit and duration of a musical sound’. Dictionaries have
traditionally indicated this kind of context-related semantic variation by
labelling meanings – e.g. with Mus. for ‘musical’. Other kinds of context-
related variation in meaning – those having to do with the developing context
of the discourse – e.g. whether kick the bucket is interpreted literally as ‘strike
the pail with one’s foot’ or as ‘die’ (see Chapter 5) – have been addressed in
dictionaries only insofar as different meanings have been illustrated by
examples. Semantic differences are also associated with variation related to
geography, social class, ethnicity and gender as well as with stylistic variation.
Again, dictionaries have taken account of su variation to some extent, using
lables su as slang, colloquial, poetic etc. With regard to grammar, an obvious
example of variability is the different morphological paerning of a verb like
get in the English of the United States (get – got – gotten ) as compared with
its paerning in most other parts of the English-speaking world (get – got –
got). Here too, dictionaries have traditionally coped with su variation by the
application of labels like Brit., US. etc. In all these cases, mu the same kinds
of comments could be applied as in the previous paragraph in respect of the
deficiencies of most lexicographical practice, and also in respect of the
opportunities offered by tenological advances.
Finally in this section, let us look very briefly at the question of how lexical
ange (see Chapter 8) is reflected in dictionaries. Many widely used
dictionaries (su as the Concise Oxford Dictionary) include brief treatments
of the etymological origins of the items they contain – giving the forms from
whi the words in question derive in Old English, Old Fren, Latin, Ancient
Greek etc. with the meanings of these ancestor forms. As we saw in the last
section, a number of other dictionaries – su as the OED – adopt a more
general ‘historical approa’ to the words with whi they deal, traing and
illustrating the evolution of their usage over the decades and indeed centuries.
is laer aspect of the lexical ange dimension of dictionary entries is a
good deal more problematic than the former, requiring as it does, a decision
on the part of lexicographers as to how far ba to go in their aempts to take
account of and illustrate anges in the lexicon that relate to the needs of the
current user of the language concerned. It also involves decision-making about
how quily to incorporate new lexical developments.
With regard to how far the lexicographer should rea ba into the history
of the language being treated, a complicating factor is that forms and
meanings whi may not have been current for hundreds of years may still be
of relevance to dictionary users who may be reading Cervantes, Dante,
Luther, Rabelais, Shakespeare etc. Moreover, an expression or usage whi
may no longer be current amongst one group of speakers may still be
extremely common amongst other groups. For instance, the word press was
once widely used in English to mean ‘large cupboard’. It is no longer used
with this meaning in the everyday English of England, but in Ireland is still
very frequently used in this sense. Dictionaries typically deal with forms and
meanings whi may be encountered in reading but whi are no longer in
current use by labelling them as ‘araic’ or ‘dated’, but determining whi to
include and whi to exclude is no straightforward maer. Nor does su
labelling address the kind of variability that was noted above in relation to
press.
As for the question of how quily to recognize new coinages or new
meanings in dictionary entries, this is, if anything, an even thornier issue. An
example of a new meaning becoming fairly rapidly associated with an
existing form is provided by the instance of the English word hopefully, whi
in the late 1960s was beginning to be widely used in the sense of ‘it is hoped’
in addition to continuing to be used to mean ‘in a hopeful manner’. How were
lexicographers to know whether the new usage of hopefully was a mere
passing fad or whether (as has turned out to be the case) it was going to be a
development of a more lasting kind? In fact, lexicographers tend to bide their
time, to ‘wait and see’, before including su innovations. Su conservatism
no doubt yields benefits vis-à-vis the authority of dictionaries, insofar as it
reduces the ances of incorporating forms and meanings that are truly
ephemeral. On the other hand, it does no service to the dictionary user, whose
need for information about unfamiliar words and usages he/she encounters is
not dependent on their pedigree or longevity, and whose lexical gaps may
well principally relate to precisely those very recent lexical innovations whi
the lexicographer spurns.
10.4 Approaes to lexis in the language classroom
We turn now to the topic of lexical dimensions of language instruction in the
first language. As was mentioned in Chapter 9, a major focus of teaing as
far as the first language lexicon is concerned is on enabling ildren to read
and write words whi they are already able to understand and use in spee.
However, as Chapter 9 also makes clear, the introduction of new vocabulary
in various ways is also a concern of first language lexical instruction. With
regard to classrooms where languages other than the first language are being
taught, the typical scenario in this case is that when learners begin to be
exposed to a second language in a formal educational seing, all aspects of the
words they encounter are new to them, whi clearly presents those
responsible for designing and teaing the lexical component of second
language programmes with a allenge of some magnitude.
In both the first language and the second language classroom the approa
to lexis – across virtually the entire gamut of methodologies – has typically
involved a combination of, on the one hand, instruction and/or activities
focused on particular expressions and, on the other, reliance on the assumption
that a certain amount of new vocabulary will be pied up ‘incidentally’
through simple exposure to dialogues, reading passages etc. containing the
new items in question, whether or not teaing is specifically focused on them.
Interestingly, there seem to be arguments in favour of this general perspective
from what we know about naturalistic lexical acquisition by young ildren,
whi as we saw in Chapter 9, appears to proceed on the basis of both a
certain amount of special teaing – notably via ‘ostension’ and acquisition
from context.
A visit to almost any early primary sool class during a reading lesson will
provide copious illustration of the above-sketed combination of approaes.
Around the walls of the room there are likely to be brightly coloured posters
and arts with pictures of animals, plants and other natural phenomena, with
individual items lexically labelled. Also likely to be hung up in prominent
positions are ordered lists of words referring to sequences su as the days of
the week, the months of the year and the four seasons. All of these constitute
instances of pedagogic focus on particular words. ere may in addition be
wallarts with pieces of texts on them – poems, short sayings etc. ese can
be seen as relevant to the more context-based, incidental dimension of lexical
instruction. With regard to the actual reading activities, whether the teaer is
working ‘frontally’, involving the whole class collectively in su activities, or
whether the activities are happening on a groupwork, pairwork or individual
basis, they will include both the allenge of decoding the meaning of the text
being read – that is to say, aention to the overall developing context of the
passage – and also a frequent homing in on specific expressions. Guiding and
reflecting this twopronged strategy, reading textbooks will typically contain
not only commentaries on and questions about the message being
communicated by the passage but also explanations, definitions, illustrations
and perhaps exercises relating to individual words and phrases. Furthermore,
the nature of the teaer’s input will usually assist contextual learning by
being ‘tuned down’ to the lexical level of the pupils, whi allows new items
to be interpreted with the help of more familiar expressions in its
environment. e teaer’s input will more oen than not address specific
lexical units too – offering definitions either explicitly (e.g. ‘is means X’) or
implicitly by intonation (e.g. ‘a triangle?’ ‘It’s got three sides’).
At later stages in the educational process some elements of the above
ange: as the pupils’ mother-tongue lexical proficiency comes closer to adult
levels, the brightly coloured wallarts disappear, the number of explanations
of specific expressions declines, and the teaer’s input becomes less obviously
‘tuned down’. Nevertheless, the dual approa is still discernible. As time goes
on there may be mu more emphasis on the individual pupil’s interaction
with texts, but unfamiliar words and phrases still need occasionally to be
focused on – in particular, when their context is an insufficient guide to their
meaning, their syntactic profile etc. As previously, su focusing may happen
in teaer talk, in classroom activities and/or in the commentaries of
textbooks.
With regard to second language lexical instruction, basically the same
paern emerges. Again, a visit to more or less any second language classroom
would confirm this. Second language teaers also make use of labelled
wallarts and posters. Another device sometimes used in second language
teaing areas – especially where beginners are being taught – is the labelling
of features of the room and items of furniture (the window, the door, the
cupboard, the teaer’s desk, the blaboard etc.) with the relevant words in
the target language. On the other hand, connected texts in the target language,
su as poems and song-lyrics, are also frequently on display in su areas. As
far as class activities are concerned, the input for these typically comprise
audio-recorded dialogues, printed texts, video-clips, songs and other similar
‘unks’ of language in use from whi an overall meaning is derivable and
whi require different parts of a context to be related to ea other in order
to be interpreted. However, as in the case of mother-tongue teaing,
individual expressions are oen drawn from su ‘unks’ for particular
aention – whether explanation or exercises – and indeed, especially in the
early stages of a second language course, single words may be focused on for
definition and practice in complete isolation from any context. e content of
second language textbooks is also typically aracterized by a mixture of
context-based and atomistic approaes in terms of their exposition of
linguistic material. In addition, instructed second language learners, like pupils
undergoing mother-tongue teaing also seem to be in receipt of input-tuning
on the part of teaers. Second language spee addressed by teaers to
pupils tends to be more standard-like in terms of pronunciation, to contain
more lexical items with general meanings, to include fewer idiomatic
expressions and to be syntactically simpler than discourse addressed to adult
native speakers – all of whi features clearly add up to an aempt (whether
conscious or unconscious) to enhance the comprehensibility of what is said
and the possibility of incidental acquisition. Finally, second language teaers,
no less than first language teaers, frequently home in on specific words or
phrases for ‘ostensive definition’ whether by reference to visual, aural or
tactile data (a picture, an object in the room, a sound, a texture etc.), to other
words in the target language, or to a translation-equivalent in the learners’
first language.
It may be worth pausing at this point to observe that both incidental
learning and learning based on ostension have their place in naturalistic lexical
acquisition, and that, as we shall see in what follows, both context-based and
individual word-focused approaes are efficacious in formal instructional
seings also. Concerning the role of context in lexical acquisition, resear
suggests (i) that words are acquired incidentally from context in the normal
course of reading and oral interaction, although the number of words acquired
from any given context on any given occasion is likely to be rather limited; (ii)
that the relevance of an unknown word to the informational needs of the
learner is a determining factor in relation to the amount of aention the
learner gives to that word; and (iii) that making an effort to derive the
meaning of unknown words from contextual and formal clues improves su
words’ ances of being retained. A further sidelight on this question is cast by
resear looking at the differential effects on vocabulary acquisition of (a)
reading plus comprehension exercises plus further reading and (b) reading
plus comprehension exercises plus further related exercises involving selective
aention to words: word (form and meaning) recognition, morphosyntactic
manipulation of words and word-parts, interpretation of words in context,
production of words in context (the same amount of time being taken up by
either set of activities). e results of su resear indicate that, while both
treatments resulted in considerable gains in vocabulary, the gains of the
groups who did the further exercises were significantly greater than those of
the groups who did not. It appears from these results that, in terms of lexical
gains, contextualized activities focused on individual expressions can improve
on processing for meaning unaccompanied by su activities.
With regard to atomistic approaes, the time-honoured way of dealing
with individual expressions in the classroom has been to require pupils to
learn lists of words together with their definitions (or, in the second language
context, together with their first language translation-equivalents). Another
atomistic tenique mu discussed in the literature is the encouragement of
learners to make semantic-associative links between new words they
encounter and other words they know already and/or images. Again, there is
evidence that su processes happen naturally in lexical acquisition. us,
while language acquisition is certainly not reducible to mere imitation,
imitation and rehearsal (whether aloud or subvocally) have nevertheless been
demontrated to be important aspects of the process of constructing memory
codes for the phonological form of new items encountered by ildren
acquiring language – but also by older learners of both first and second
languages. Interestingly, from some of the very studies that show the
importance of rehearsal in the creation of faithful replications in short-term
memory of the phonological form of the target items, it also emerges that
success in learning new words also depends on the exploitation, where
possible, of semantic associations between the target words and words already
internalized.
ere is also a long and venerable tradition in verbal memory resear
whi indicates, on the one hand, that recall of memorized items is improved
by a ‘longer opportunity for rehearsal’ and that ‘more extensive processing …
may increase the durability of a memory code’, and, on the other, that verbal
input is made more memorable by ‘“deep processing” in whi a variety of
relations are established between the newly learned and the pre-existing
knowledge’. Some verbal memory resear suggests – rather like the above-
cited resear relating to incidental lexical acquisition – that a combination of
strategies yields the best results; thus, for example, it seems that the rote-
learning of lexical forms pure and simple is less effective than aending to
meaning as well as to form. Especially interesting in this connection in the
light of what was noted earlier regarding the relevance of individual needs in
incidental vocabulary acquisition is the finding that in verbal memory
experiments accurate recall of verbal material is more likely in relation to
‘statements with personal significance for the participants’.
A particular mnemonic tenique whi has been found to work well in
both first language and second language lexical learning is the so-called
keyword tenique. is involves the learner in constructing a mental image
whi links the newly encountered word with a word whi is already
known, whether in the same language or some other language. e
vocabulary acquisition and testing researer Paul Nation exemplifies this
tenique as follows for the case of an Indonesian learner of English trying to
learn the English word parrot.
First, the learner thinks of an Indonesian word that sounds like parrot or
like a part of parrot-for example, the Indonesian word parit, whi
means ‘a dit’. is is the keyword. Second, the learner imagines a
parrot lying in a dit! e more striking and unusual the image, the
more effective it is.
In fact, while the keyword tenique is certainly to be classed as an atomistic
strategy, the use of image as a general approa is applicable to longer
stretes of language too – with very beneficial effects in terms of what is
retained. us, resear has shown that visualization in the course of reading –
whether in a first or a second language – greatly enhances the impact of the
text in question not only in terms of comprehension but also in terms of the
retention of specific content (including lexical content). Visualization appears
to be less frequent among second language readers than among first language
readers, but the second language readers who do visualize are those who do
best in recalling the text. Su resear indicates that encouraging readers to
visualize while reading for comprehension and pleasure is likely to boost
incidental lexical acquisition, whi in turn means that the construction of
mental images is a strategy whose effectiveness transcends the atomistic-
incidental divide.
A particular feature of second language learning and teaing in formal
educational seings is that it has been through some fairly radical anges
even in the past five or six decades. ree methodologies have successively
dominated the second language education scene during that period: the
grammar-translation method, the audio-lingual method and the
communicative approa. ese are not the only methods whi have been on
offer, but they do constitute the landmarks by reference to whi other
approaes can generally be situated.
e grammar-translation method essentially aempted to apply to living
languages the same approa that had for centuries been used in the teaing
of classical languages (notably Latin and Ancient Greek). at is to say, mu
emphasis was laid on the conscious memorization of grammatical paradigms
(noun declensions, verb conjugations etc.) and rules (word order in various
types of phrase and clause etc.), and these memorized forms and rules were
then practised largely by translating sentences and longer passages into and
out of the target language (usually in writing). e goal of this approa was
primarily to give learners access to the literary treasures of the language in
question.
e audio-lingual method had its origins in objectives whi were fairly
remote from the accessing of literary treasures. It started life as the ‘army
method’, that is to say, an approa developed in the United States during the
laer years of the Second World War whi was designed to prepare
American military personnel for duties in mainland Europe. Consequently its
goals belonged to the realm of the concrete and practical rather than that of
the aesthetic, and its orientation was in the first instance towards the oral-
aural aspects of the languages in question. It was created in large measure by
structuralist linguists rather than members of departments of modern
languages and literature, and it was heavily influenced by the prevailing
psyolinguistic model of the time – namely, the application of behaviourist
psyology to language acquisition and use. We have seen that American
structuralist linguistics was particularly interested in observable forms
(phonology, morphology and syntax) and tended to disregard meaning
because of its perceived resistance to scientific analysis (cf. Chapter 5). We
have also noted that behaviourist psyology viewed language acquisition as
habit formation via selective reinforcement and imitation (cf. Chapter 9). In
view of these givens, it is hardly surprising that the methodology arrived at by
the linguists involved focused especially on the manipulation of form and
involved large amounts of repetition and structural ‘drilling’. Aer the war
this methodology became known as audio-lingualism, and, as more visual
aids (su as slides and filmstrips) began to be used in classrooms, it formed
the basis of the approa of many of the so-called ‘audio-visual’ courses that
were used in second language classrooms around the world in the 1960s and
1970s and indeed into the 1980s.
e original motivation for the development of the third of the above-
mentioned approaes, the communicative approa, was also very practical
in nature – namely the need to equip the more mobile members of the
European workforce with linguistic skills whi would enable them to meet
their professional and personal requirements in countries and languages other
than their own. Out of this situation arose a whole set of ideas relating to the
analysis of learners’ communicative needs, the definition of course objectives
in terms of the meanings that would need to be understood and/or expressed
in order to meet su needs, the early exposure of learners to authentic
samples of the target language, and the development of pedagogical activities
whi were clearly related to activities associated with real-life needs. In other
words, the concern of the early theorists of the communicative movement was
to connect language teaing and learning in the classroom as transparently
and as closely as possible to the likely uses of the target language that learners
would be called upon to make. When su ideas began to be applied to second
language learning in primary and secondary sools, a broader view had to be
taken of needs, since – in contrADistinction to the case of migrant workers
aempting to survive far from home – it was not at all clear to most pupils
beginning to learn a second language at sool (nor indeed to their teaers)
what su pupils’ real-life needs in the target language might be. Accordingly,
the notion of needs was given a broader interpretation in respect of the sool
context, so that interests and expectations could be included in the picture.
Also, aention began to be paid to the needs of learners relative to their life
within the language classroom as well as their life beyond its walls. Despite
su adjustments, the essential features of the communicative approa have
not anged; it remains commied to founding the entire language teaing
enterprise on an analysis of what the learner needs, wants or expects to be
able to do with the target language, and it takes as given not only the
proposition that the mediation of meaning is the core function of language but
also the proposition that it is principally through the experience of the
meaning-mediating dimension of language that language acquisition
progresses.
Let us consider now how ea of these three methodologies relates to the
different dimensions of lexical acquisition that were discussed earlier. With
regard to the grammar translation method, the typical composition of a lesson
taught within this framework is: an introductory passage in the target
language for reading and translation, glosses for new words introduced in the
passage, explanations of grammatical points exemplified in the passage,
grammatical exercises, exercises involving translation into the target
language, and supplementary activities su as the learning of poems, songs
etc. in the target language. By way of illustration, let us explore a apter of
textbook conceived within a grammar-translation perspective. One su
textbook is a volume entitled Heute Abend (‘is Evening’), intended for
English-speaking learners of German as a foreign language, whi was first
published in 1938 but whi continued to be used into the 1950s and beyond.
e content of Chapter 15 of this book (pied more or less at random)
includes the following.
• a four-page text to read and translate entitled Am Bahnhof’ (‘At the
station’);
• a list of vocabulary whi appears in the text plus English translation-
equivalents and some information about the grammatical profiles of the
words in question (e.g. gender specification through the provision of the
appropriate form of the definite article and plural markers in the case of
nouns, irregular third person singular forms in the case of verbs, irregular
comparative forms in the case of adjectives etc.);
• a vocabulary revision section in the form of a list of numbered German
items and a separate list of English equivalents tagged with numbers
corresponding to those of their German counterparts;
• grammar exercises focusing on the morphology of verbs, pronouns, articles,
adjectives and nouns;
• comprehension questions in German relating to the text (whi learners are
required to ask ea other);
• a passage to translate from English into German (about a holiday in the
Bavarian Alps);
• a short song to learn.
If we examine this material in the light of opportunities it presents for
incidental vocabulary learning, we can see that the text whi opens the
lesson provides just su an opportunity. e lexis is embedded in a context
with an overall meaning whi, presumably, learners endeavoured to work
towards in their exploration of the text. Other possibilities for incidental
learning include the instructions and examples associated with the exercises,
most of whi are in German and indeed the meaningful contexts within
whi the relevant morphological adjustments are supposed to be made (e.g.
‘Es tut mir leid, aber ich (können) morgen nicht zu meinem Freund gehen’ –
‘I’m sorry but I (to be able) go to my friend’s tomorrow’). Translating into the
target language also comprises an element of incidental lexical acquisition, in
the sense that in striving to render the English text accurately into German,
learners would have been very likely to retain some of the expressions they
deployed, even in the absence of any aempt at conscious memorization. One
final opportunity for incidental vocabulary learning is furnished by the text of
the song at the end of the apter.
With regard to atomistic lexical learning, the most obvious way in whi
the apter addresses this dimension of learners’ coming to grips with German
vocabulary is through the provision of a glossary referring to the text, the
contents of whi are intended to be learned by heart, for example
der Bodensee (kein Pl. [no pl.]), Lake Constance
:
die Eisenbahn (en ), railway
abfahren, fährt ab , leave
hoch, höher, high, higher etc.
Notable in this connection is, on the one hand, the presence of semantic
information, whi, as we have seen, appears to assist in the creation of
durable memory codes for lexical items, and, on the other, a focus on
morphological aracteristics, whi, again as we have seen, seems to be
relevant to the kind of processing that results in lexical gains. e fact that the
German words are placed alongside their English equivalents can also be seen
as an encouragement to construct semantic-associative connections of the
kind: hoch and high mean the same thing and both begin and end with h.
Mu the same can be said of the lexical revision section.
Grammatical exercises would also have led the learner to focus on specific
lexical units in their various realizations. Moreover, since in many cases the
focus on form was situated within a meaningful context, there would have
been a semantic as well as a formal dimension to the aention whi the
learner was called upon to give to ea item, whi, as we saw in our
discussion of verbal memory resear, would have ‘deepened’ the processing
and increased the ances of items being retained. Similarly with the text
completion exercises whi appear in the apter.
All in all, the grammar-translation approa appears to have supplied
plenty of opportunities for the operation of both incidental and specific item-
focused lexical acquisition. e great drawba of this method was that it
tended to be taught largely through the medium of the learners’ mother
tongue. is meant that exposure to the target language in the classroom was
largely limited to the passages and exercises presented in the textbook.
Another aspect of this limitation was that the target language input received
by learners was principally in the wrien medium, whi obviously restricted
their ances of becoming fully familiar with the phonological shapes of
words. Furthermore, although, as has been indicated, there was certainly a
semantic dimension to su passages and to at least some of the exercises, the
relevance of the meanings in question to the interests of learners would not
always have been obvious. For example, the text of the song in Chapter 15
speaks of a man who can no longer mar (‘ich kann nicht mehr
marschieren’) because he has lost his lile pipe from his knapsa (‘Ich hab’
verlor’n – mein Pfeiflein aus meinem Mantelsack’).
Moving on to the audio-lingual method and the way in whi it deals with
vocabulary, this approa can be exemplified by an audio-visual course in
Fren as a foreign language whi was published by the Centre de Reere
et d’Étude pour la Diffusion du Français in 1972 under the title of De Vive Voix
(‘Live’, ‘In person’). Lesson 4 of this course opens with two filmstrips
accompanied by audio-recorded dialogues, entitled in the Livre du maître
(Teaer’s book’) respectively ‘Chez Mireille’ (‘At Mireille’s place’) and ‘Deux
vieilles dames curieuses’ (‘Two curious old ladies’). Ea of these is then
followed by a series of exercises in whi the teaer is instructed to have the
learners practise forms and constructions that crop up in the relevant
dialogues. e lesson is also associated with a baery of exercices de réemploi
(‘exercises in re-use’, i.e. structural drills) recorded on separately available
audio-tapes and intended for use in a language laboratory.
Incidental lexical learning opportunities are obviously presented by the two
dialogues and the accompanying visual aids. e dialogues in question tell a
story, whi is linked to a larger narrative theme whi runs through the
entire course (essentially the developing relationship, way of life and activities
of the two principal aracters, Pierre and Mireille). While the stories in
question hardly constitute high drama, they contain enough of interest –
especially when listened to in the context of the aractively produced
filmstrips – to motivate aention to their meaning. On the other hand, they
are short, taking up in total just two fairly generously spaced pages of the
Livre du maître.
As in the case of the grammar-translation method, further potential
learning opportunities are provided by the exercises associated with the lesson
– both those orestrated by the teaer immediately aer the dialogues and
the further exercices de réemploi performed later by learners in the language
laboratory. An example of an exercise suggested by the Livre du maître for
the phase immediately following the presentation of the dialogue ‘Chez
Mireille’ is one involving personal pronouns and various ways of expressing
possession (à + X – literally, ‘to + X’, de + X – ‘of + X’ and son/sa + X – ‘his
(or her) + X’). e suggestion is that these should be elicited from learners by
carefully devised questions referring to the dialogue – thus:
estion: À qui est ? (‘Whose is ?’)
Expected response: Elle (il) est à X (‘It’s X‘s’)
e exercises referring to the dialogues are thereby contextualized and
therefore have a clear semantic dimension; in contrast, the exercices de
réemploi , although involving sentences whi in themselves have meaning, do
not connect with or into a larger meaningful context, and would appear to be,
for that reason, less facilitative of incidental lexical acquisition.
Finally with regard to incidental lexical learning opportunities in the audio-
lingual framework, it should be noted that all teaing conducted under the
auspices of this method had to proceed entirely in the target language, whi
means that, quite apart from the material in the dialogues and exercises,
learners were receiving additional second language input from the teaer in
the form of commentaries on the dialogue, explanations relating to activities,
instructions having to do with classroom management etc. Obviously, learners
would have had to aended closely to the meaning of su input in order to
keep abreast of what was happening and what they were supposed to be
doing, and in the process they would have been likely, whether they wanted
to or not (!), to acquire at least some of the terms that recurred in classroom
discourse.
As far as atomistic dimensions of lexical learning in the audio-lingual lesson
we have been examining are concerned, a first point, there are particular
sections in the part of the Livre du maître devoted to Lesson 4 whi are
headed ‘Vocabulaire’ (‘Vocabulary’). e vocabulary teaing recommended
in association with the dialogue ‘Chez Mireille’ is centred on politeness
formulas su as Excusez-moi (‘Excuse me’) and on words relating to furniture
and objects featuring in the film images – étagère (‘set of shelves’), livre
(‘book’) etc. e vocabulary section relating to ‘Deux vieilles dames curieuses’,
for its part, encourages the teaer to supply the expression that is used to
pluralize un jeune homme (‘a young man’) and to refer to un jeune homme +
une jeune femme (‘a young man + a young woman’) – namely, des jeunes gens
(literally, ‘young people’).
In fact, however, many of the other activities recommended under the
heading of ‘Pratique’ (‘Practice’) are also lexical in nature. For example,
among the elements recommended for practice in connection with ‘Chez
Mireille’ are the masculine and feminine forms of adjectives su as petit
(‘small’), gentil (‘kind’) and bon (‘good’) and different forms of the verb avoir
(‘to have’), and among the elements recommended for practice in connection
with ‘Deux vieilles dames curieuses’ are the pronoun complementation paern
of verbs su as parler (‘to speak’) and dire (‘to say’, ‘to tell’) – i.e. the use of
lui (‘to him/her’) with these verbs – and the noun clause complementation
paern of the verb dire, e.g. Il lui dit que… (‘He tells her that…’). Since, as was
mentioned earlier, these activities relate to a meaningful context, they have a
clear semantic as well as a formal dimension. On the other hand, the structural
exercises intended for language laboratory use, whi cover similar points, are
not linked in to the dialogues and are, therefore less well supported in terms
of meaning.
us, the audio-lingual approa seems to offer a set of conditions in whi
both incidental and particular item-focused lexical acquisition can readily
occur. A point that has not been made so far but whi perhaps needs to be, is
that the lavish visual support supplied by the filmstrip might well have
encouraged the construction of internal images in association with particular
words on the part of learners, who might subsequently have reaped the
earlier-discussed benefits of visualization in learning terms.
One drawba of the approa in this connection is that the range of
vocabulary it makes available tends to be somewhat limited. us, for
example, De Vive Voix draws the vocabulary it deploys from Le Français
Fondamental (‘Basic Fren’), a corpus of the most frequently occurring and
most generally available expressions in Fren – as established by a resear
project conducted in the 1960s. e restrictedness of the vocabulary and the
fact that the words in question have a high frequency and/or availability value
gives the De Vive Voix materials a certain blandness. is is compounded by
the fact that the primary purpose of the texts of the dialogues from the
course-writers’ point of view was to illustrate aspects of Fren grammar and
the usage of basic vocabulary rather than to amuse or entertain. Although the
texts were semantically coherent and, as has already been indicated, probably
had enough of a story-line to hold learners’ interest in some measure, they
certainly did not have mu of the savour of real-life conversations, and are
unlikely to have engaged learners’ interest to the point where they felt that
the content of the dialogues actually maered to them or had any connection
with their own lives. All of this, as we have seen, would have had implications
for depth of processing and durability of memory traces. It should be said that
in the grammar-translation approa the texts used in textbooks were also
oen concocted by the textbook writers with the exemplification of grammar
points in mind. However, in the grammar-translation case these artificial texts
were typically supplemented with and progressively replaced by song-lyrics
and literary texts whi were ‘authentic’ in the sense of having originally been
created with the entertainment or illumination of native speakers of the target
language in mind. e problem in this laer case was that, as we have also
seen, the oice of texts was not always inspired or inspiring from the
learners’ point of view.
A further point worth noting in relation to lexical acquisition in the audio-
lingual framework is that the audio-lingual approa did not explicitly
promote the making of connections between target language items and
familiar mother-tongue expressions. Indeed, audio-lingual methodology set its
face against any use of the learners’ first language in the second language
classroom whatsoever – even to gloss newly introduced words. While the use
of the target language as a medium of instruction undoubtedly brought many
benefits in terms of incidental learning, the complete interdiction on any use
of the learners’ mother tongue in class may have impoverished their more
atomistic aspects of the vocabulary-learning process by failing to support the
making of semantic-associative links between second and first language
expressions. More seriously, it led to many misunderstandings regarding the
meanings of the words encountered. According to numerous reports,
explanations in the target language were oen not fully understood and
images were oen misinterpreted.
A third disadvantage associated with the audio-lingual approa in respect
of lexical acquisition was its emphasis on oral-aural aspects of the target
language to the point where wrien language was totally excluded oen until
relatively late in the teaing programme. e idea behind this was to try to
ensure that learners had a firm grasp of the spoken language before they had
to cope with the complexities and inconsistencies of its orthographic system.
e problem was that learners were already typically using wrien notes in
other subject areas to help fix in their minds the material they were being
taught. Naturally enough, they adopted the same strategy in second language
classes, and since they were not being given access to the orthography of the
second language, they invented their own (usually highly idiosyncratic)
system of transcription, whi meant that the orthographic entries they had
for target language words in their mental lexicons oen bore lile
resemblance to the actual orthographic forms of these words. Denying
learners access to literacy skills in the target language over a substantial length
of time also deprived them during that period of the opportunity to acquire
target language lexis incidentally through reading.
Turning, finally, to the communicative approa, this is a rather difficult to
define and describe because it is an extremely ‘broad ur’ in
methodological terms. All versions of the approa try to address the learner’s
needs, interests and expectations, and all deal with su needs, interests and
expectations in terms of meaning in a social as well as a conceptual sense – in
terms, for example, of giving and receiving various kinds of information, of
expressing and understanding views, preferences etc., of participating in the
organization of social interaction – inviting and being invited, requesting and
being the recipient of requests etc. etc. However, there is variation among
different versions of communicative language teaing when it comes to
issues like the use of the learners’ mother tongue, the explicit teaing of
grammar and the ways in whi the course objectives are presented (as
general communicative functions, e.g. greeting, warning, expressing dislike, or
in terms of communicative tasks, e.g. ordering food in a restaurant, shopping
for clothes and food, speaking on the telephone).
e particular coursebook we shall consider as a source of illustration of the
communicative approa – the third part of a course intended for Irish
learners of Fren entitled Salut! (‘Hi!’), first published in 1985 and still in use
– takes a fairly relaxed aitude towards the classroom use of the mother
tongue; is not averse to explicit grammatical instruction; and expresses
learning objectives in terms of tasks. Unit 6 of this book, for instance, is
referred to in the contents as follows:
In this unit you can learn how to speak to friends on the telephone and to
give and take phone messages.
It comprises:
• a summary of what learners might encounter or want to express in the
context of telephone communication (e.g. answering the phone: Allô!
J’écoute – literally ‘Hello. I’m listening’).
• four brief dialogues in Fren involving telephone conversations whi are
presented on audio-tape and incomplete versions of whi are also
presented in the book; learners are asked to fill in the gaps in the printed
versions of the dialogues;
• four further dialogues in Fren involving telephone conversations
presented on audio-tape and in print;
• an introduction in Fren describing the different ways one can telephone in
France (from public telephone kiosks, from cafés etc.);
• a large number of short texts taken from Fren telephone directories and
other Fren sources providing instructions about different aspects of
telephone use (using a public telephone box, consulting the talking clo,
reserving a wake-up call, telephoning different Fren regions, abroad etc.;
visual support for these texts includes photographs, drawings, symbols,
diagrams and maps (for example the instruction mettez les pièces – ‘put in
the coins’ – is accompanied by a drawing of coins).
• some examples (in Fren) specifically relating to calling Ireland from
France;
• some short audio-taped Fren dialogues involving telephone calls, ea
followed by a comprehension question or two in Fren;
• some examples of notes in Fren based on telephone messages;
• some exercises involving learners in simulating making telephone calls in or
from France;
• a grammar section dealing with the present and imperfect tenses of the
verbs pouvoir (‘to be able to’), vouloir (‘to want’) and devoir (‘to have to’);
• some exercises asking learners to express particular meanings in Fren (e.g.
‘You can’t go to the cinema tonight, you have to do your homework’);
• A page-long text (also available on the audio-tape) about the Fren ro-
group Téléphone accompanied by a photograph of the group and followed
by a comprehension question in Fren;
• a page-long text in Fren about a solar-powered house accompanied by a
photograph and an annotated diagram of the house and followed by
questions/exercises in Fren.
As can be seen from the above outline, the unit in question is extremely
ri in both listening and reading material. e material is mostly related to
the telephone theme and therefore connects broadly to an overaring
context, and ea dialogue or text also constitutes a meaningful whole at an
individual level. Moreover, mu of the material is in one way or other
supported by appropriate visual aids. In keeping with the communicative
philosophy of basing language courses on learners’ needs, interests and
expectations, the content of material relates to an activity (using the telephone
in France) that learners probably think of as something that they might well
have to cope with in the not very remote future (on holiday, on a sool trip
etc.) and to topics (ro music, the environment) in whi many of them are
likely to be interested. In addition, mu of the textual material is authentic, in
the sense noted earlier, and so brings the flavour of life beyond the sool
walls right into the classroom. All of these aributes are calculated to
encourage learners to listen and read for meaning and to use the relevant
contexts and visual supports to this end. e fact that possible future personal
needs and personal interests are addressed by the material offers further
encouragement towards treating what it says and how it says it with some
aention. In short, the input supplied by the unit constitute a fairly favourable
set of conditions for incidental lexical learning.
Other opportunities for incidental learning are furnished by the questions
and exercises in Fren whi relate to the various dialogues and texts, for
example:
Quelle heure veulent-ils se lever? (‘What time do they want to get up?)
Où se donnent-ils rendez-vous? (‘Where do they agree to meet?’)
Cherche les mots qui font penser (‘Look for the words that make you think
au soleil. of the sun.’)
In addition, although the version of communicative language teaing
adopted here allows for some use of the learners’ mother tongue in class, the
normal understanding would be that, as far as is practicable, the teaer will
use Fren as the medium of instruction. Clearly, as in the case of the audio-
lingual approa, this implies many further opportunities for incidental lexical
learning.
With regard to opportunities for more atomistic types of lexical learning in
the unit, one su is the text completion task associated with the first four
dialogues, whi bring particular expressions into focus (ça va? – ‘how are
things?’, désolé – ‘sorry’ – etc.) within a meaningful context; another is the
detailed treatment of various forms of the verbs pouvoir, vouloir and devoir,
accompanied by commentary on their meanings and usage; and a third is the
word-sear exercise following the text about the solar-powered house. Also,
the juxtaposition of English expressions with Fren expressions in the
opening summary (e.g. Asking if you can take a message: Voulez-vous laisser
un message?) may encourage the making of mnemonic connections between
the expressions in question (e.g. the Fren word for ‘message’ is spelt exactly
the same as the English word). Finally, as in the case of audio-lingual
methodology, the provision of a visual material, oen in close association with
particular expressions, may not only assist comprehension but may well
promote the creation of mental images in respect of su expressions.
ere is obviously quite a lot to be said in favour of the communicative
approa in terms of lexical learning. At least in the version exemplified
above, it seems to combine the advantages of the grammar-translation
method (ri textual input, association between target language and mother
tongue forms, explicit focus on the grammatical profile of words, availability
of wrien forms) with the advantages of the audio-lingual method (classroom
discourse in the target language, visual support, provision of substantial oral–
aural input). Furthermore, it addresses learners’ needs, interests and
expectations in a way that the other two methods do not, and thus in principle
ought to deliver teaing and learning materials whi have more personal
significance for learners than what is delivered by the other methods. at is
not to say, however, that everything in the garden is rosy as far as lexical
learning in the communicative approa is concerned. Communicative
materials have not always been as aentive as they might have been to the
more atomistic aspects of vocabulary learning, with, for example, lile or no
encouragement being offered for the rehearsal of new target items, and with
oen all too few exercises being on offer whi have a specifically and
explicitly lexical focus. Another problem faced by communicative courses is
that the authentic material by whi they set su store dates extremely
rapidly. us, for example, the long-distance and international dialling
instructions set out in Unit 6 of the 1985 version of Salut! (3) have been out of
date for years. Obviously, su built-in obsolescence is likely to undermine
somewhat the claim of communicative language teaing to be in tou with
learners’ needs in respect of their use of the target language in the ‘real world’.
One possible solution to the problem of obsolescence is to liberate
communicative language teaing from the constraints of rarely updated
textbooks and instead to equip teaers and indeed learners with strategies for
‘didacticizing’ – i.e. turning into usable teaing/learning material – any
authentic sample of the target language – conversational, humorous,
journalistic, literary, tenical etc. – whi is relevant to the language use
objectives of the learners and therefore to the teaing/learning objectives of
the course. ere is nothing arcane about su didacticizing strategies; they
include the provision of aids to comprehension of one kind or another (e.g.
visual supports, explanations of particular expressions) and the devising of a
range of exercises and tasks to exploit the target language sample in question
to the maximum. In relation to vocabulary learning, the tasks and exercises
might include not only diverse types of reading comprehension exercises but
also tasks involving the extraction and grouping of words from the same
lexical subsystem, the analysis of contextual meanings of words into
denotational and/or connotational components, the gathering from texts of
evidence about the collocational possibilities of particular words, and so on.
Samples of the target language can be didacticized in this way not only by
teaers for learners, but also, as has been mentioned, by learners for ea
other and for themselves. is last point brings us to the notion of learner
autonomy.
In a way, a concern to ‘autonomize’ the learner is the logical conclusion of
the learner-centredness of the communicative approa. If communicative
language teaing is focused on the learner, then, logically, it has to be
concerned with empowering learners to play as wide a role as possible in their
own learning. e Dublin-based researer David Lile, who has spent the
last 20 years exploring the idea of learner autonomy, defines it as ‘a capacity…
for detament, critical reflection, decision-making and independent action’.
e relevance of learner autonomy for vocabulary acquisition has to do with
the earlier-made point about the effect on depth of processing of learners’
seeing an activity as having personal significance for them. Where learners are
allowed to make their own decisions about oice of target language reading
maer, topics for discussion, project themes, exercises etc. and have been
brought to the point where they can make su decisions both confidently and
wisely, the interest and commitment that they then bring to the activities in
question is bound to bear fruit in higher levels of retention of lexical (and
other) material than where they are simply following a path pre-ordained for
them from on high.
10.5 Lexical learning and other aspects of language learning
Since the message of this entire book has been that the lexicon is inextricably
intertwined with language at large, the message of this last section of the
present apter – namely, that lexical acquisition is not sealed off from coping
as a learner with other areas of language – need not be laboured. Let us
simply look at some specific instances of procedures leading to lexical learning
– in both incidental and atomistic mode – in the above perspective, and see
what we find.
e following passage represents a typical case of an ideal opportunity to
pi up a new word from reading for meaning. e word in question,
pygostile, is embedded in a context whi actually defines it:
‘One of the fossils we heard about was a dinosaur in Mongolia that had a
pygostile – the fused vertebrae that support a bird’s tail feathers …’
Even in a straightforward case like this the interpenetration of lexis and other
linguistic areas in the reader’s dealings with the word is evident. e reader
interprets pygostile as a noun, because it functions as the object of a verb
(had), because it is preceded by an article (a), and because the phrase it is
equated with is also a noun phrase (involving another article: the). Whether or
not the reader has access to terminology su as noun, verb, article etc., he/she
will know from this mu evidence that pygostile may also be preceded by
ADjectives (e.g. a small pygostile) and prepositions (e.g. beneath the pygostile)
and may function as the subject of a verb (e.g. the pygostile was the final
proof). From the context it is also clear that pygostile keeps company with
words referring to anatomical features (e.g. vertebrae) and to birds (e.g.
feathers). From the wider context – an article in the National Geographic
Magazine – and from the general look of the word it may also be inferred
that pygostile is a learned item more likely to occur in scientific discourse than
in casual conversation. e reader will also probably try out some possible
pronunciations of pygostile. (Does py sound like pie or like the pi in pig? Is
stile like style, steel or still?). If, aer all this, the word is retained, it will
undoubtedly be retained with its grammatical, collocational, stylistic and
(intelligently guessed) phonological profile as well as its spelling and its
meaning.
A number of examples of components of classroom activities leading to
atomistic word-learning have already been cited. Let us return to the most
traditional strategy – namely, rote-learning word-lists – as exemplified by the
earlier discussed extracts from the German coursebook Heute Abend! (re-cited
below).
der Bodensee (kein Pl. [no pl.]), Lake Constance
die Eisenbahn (en ), railway
abfahren, fährt ab , leave
hoch, höher, high, higher etc.
As was noted when these lists were referred to in the previous section, they
contain information not just about the orthography and meaning of the items
in question, but also about different forms of the word associated with other
grammatical environments (plural forms of nouns, third-person singular
present forms of verbs etc.). e lists also indicate certain facts about the
impact of particular words on other words with whi they combine in
sentences. For example, by supplying the appropriate nominative (subject
case) form of the definite article alongside ea noun included, they specify
that the noun in question requires a particular set of forms of the elements
whi surround it su as definite and indefinite articles, quantifiers (viel –
‘mu’, ‘many’, mehrere – ‘several’ etc.), demonstratives (dieser – ‘this’, jener –
‘that’), adjectives etc.
Oen, word-lists of the above type go so far as to indicate the kind of
syntactic paerning that is associated with a particular word in a particular
sense. For example, Actualités Françaises (‘Fren Current Affairs’), an
Advanced Fren course for English-speakers, systematically includes, aer
ea text it presents, a list of verbs whi appear in the text together with
their complementation paerns, for example:
résister à qch. [quelque chose]: to resist sth.
se rendre compte de qch.: to realise sth.
apprendre à faire qch.: to learn to do sth.
permettre à qqn. [quelqu’un] de faire qch.: to allow s.o. to do sth.
insister pour faire qch.: to insist on doing sth.
At the very least, then, word-lists of the traditional kind, i.e. designed to be
learned off by heart, tend to contain morphological information as well as
orthographic and semantic information, and they may well also contain
syntactic information. Some lexically oriented pedagogical activities take su
multidimensionality mu further, as the following example – borrowed from
a fairly well-known book on learning foreign languages from authentic texts
– illustrates. e activity in question can be thought of as having both an
incidental learning aspect and a more atomistic aspect.
Preparatory task relating to the reading of a German text on an accident
involving a car originally believed stolen : sort a jumble of nouns and
verbs (e.g. Polizei – ‘police’ – Wagen – ‘car’ – stehlen – ‘to steal’ –
melden – ‘to report’) into categories according to meaning; create a story
from combinations of nouns and verbs; re-order a set of sentences
containing the above words into a coherent accident report; use this
report to edit the story created; read the authentic text (whi contains
all the words in the original jumbles).
is task demands aention to form and meaning, to morphology and syntax,
and to collocation paerns and context. As far as context is concerned, for
example, the task requires a coming to grips with the fact that the word
Wagen , whi in other contexts may mean ‘cart’ or ‘(railway) carriage’, means
‘car’ when used of a motor vehicle.
In the light of the discussion in the previous section, and indeed in the light
of discussion in the rest of the book, the more dimensions lexical learning
tasks can incorporate, the more effective they are likely to be, not only in
terms of addressing the fact that lexical knowledge has to be multidimensional
in order to be of any use, but also in terms of promoting the deeper kinds of
processing that are likely to result in lexical knowledge actually being added
to in a durable manner. ere is a lesson here too for lexical testing. Too oen
lexical tests have focused solely on words in isolation. Not only has this kind
of testing failed to tap into aspects of lexical knowledge whi are absolutely
vital to its functioning in language use, but the ‘washba effect’ of su tests
on classroom practice – that is the consequence of teaers’ teaing towards
su tests – has frequently been a severe impoverishment of the lexical
components of language instruction. If lexical tests are to be valid measures of
the kind of lexical knowledge that can be deployed to some purpose, and if
they are to encourage teaing and learning activities that lead to the
construction of su knowledge, they must – whether individually or
collectively – demand a great more of the testee than simply the
decontextualized recognition or regurgitation of isolated items.
10.6 Summary
is apter has looked at two ways in whi support has been offered to
lexical knowledge and its advancement: the making of dictionaries and the
promotion of lexical learning in the classroom. It has provided a brief history
of lexicography – with particular reference to the evolution of English
dictionaries – and has demonstrated some of the allenges for the
lexicographer that arise from the multifaceted nature of the lexicon. In this
laer connection it has suggested that a full and imaginative use of the new
tenologies may solve some (though not all) of the problems that dictionary-
makers have traditionally had to face. e apter has gone on to provide an
overview of different approaes to the lexicon in the classroom, including an
exploration of how lexical learning has been approaed in three important
methodologies used in the teaing of second languages. e message of this
section of the apter has been that, whatever the teaing approa used,
lexical learning in the classroom has had both an incidental and an atomistic
dimension, and that both dimensions can be shown to have a valuable
contribution to make to the process. Finally, the apter has looked at some
specific lexical learning opportunities and procedures and has demonstrated
that in all cases they are aracterized by a certain multidimensionality –
reflecting the fact that the knowledge aimed at is itself multidimensional.
Sources and suggestions for further reading
See 10.2 .General sources for this section were Chapter 1 of K. Whiaker’s
book Dictionaries (London: Clive Bingley, 1966), N. E. Osselton’s article, ‘On
the history of dictionaries’ (in R. R. K. Hartmann (ed.), Lexicography:
principles and practice, London: Academic Press, 1983) and A. Walker-Read’s
article, ‘e history of lexicography’ (in R. Ilson (ed.), Lexicography: an
emerging international profession , Manester: Manester University Press,
1986). e examples from the Glosses of Reichenau are selected from those
cited by P. Studer and E. G. R. Waters in their edited volume Historical French
reader: medieval period (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924, 14–19).
Treatments of Sumerian-Akkadian glossaries and grammars are to be found
in J. A. Bla’s article, ‘e Babylonian grammatical tradition: the first
grammars of Sumerian’ (Transactions of the Philological Society 87, 1989, 75–
89) and T. Jacobsen’s article, ‘Very ancient linguistics: Babylonian grammatical
texts’ (in D. Hymes (ed.), Studies in the history of linguistics: traditions and
paradigms, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974). e thesaurus
examples are from The Oxford Thesaurus: an A–Z dictionary of synonyms
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), compiled by L. Urdang. The Oxford
Dictionary of Slang was compiled by J. Ayto (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998). e comments on alphabetization in early dictionaries are based
on Chapter 12 of N. E. Osselton’s Chosen words: past and present problems for
dictionary makers (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1995). e relationship
between the first European vernacular dictionaries and the Renaissance is
discussed by, e.g. R. Harris and T. J. Taylor in Landmarks in linguistic thought
I: the western tradition from Socrates to Saussure (second edition, London:
Routledge, 1997, 94). e O examples from Cawdrey’s dictionary are
borrowed from p. 16 of N. E. Osselton’s article ‘On the history of dictionaries’
(cited above). e brief discussion of the moves towards the inclusion of
everyday words in English dictionaries has its source in Chapter 3 of N. E.
Osselton’s Chosen words: past and present problems for dictionary makers (see
above); the quotation from John Kersey’s Preface is to be found on p. 26 of this
apter. e discussion of The Oxford English Dictionary is largely based on
H. Aarsleff’s article e original plan for the OED and its baground’
(Transactions of the Philological Society 88, 1990, 151–61). e quotation from
H. G. Liddell and R. Sco’s Preface is cited on p. 160 of Aarsleff’s above-
mentioned article. e discussion of the use of electronic corpora in dictionary
making is informed by J. Sinclair’s edited volume Looking up: an account of
the COBUILD Project in lexical computing (London and Glasgow: Collins,
1987), the same author’s book Corpus, concordance, collocation (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991), and by Chapter 6 of R. Carter’s book
Vocabulary: applied linguistic perspectives (second edition, London:
Routledge).
Information about and links to online dictionaries are available from
Internet sites su as:
• hp://www.facstaff.bunell.edu/rbeard/diction.html
• hp://clicnet.swarthmore.edu/dictionnaires.html
• hp://www.encyberpedia.com/glossary.htm
• hp://cctc.commnet.edu/librooi/dictionaries.htm
See 10.3. e source of information about Chinese spelling reform and its non-
acceptance outside the People’s Republic of China is L-J. Calvet’s Histoire de
l’écriture (Paris: Plon, 1996, 101). e Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Général
was compiled by J-P. Mével, V. Chape and A. Mercier (second edition, Paris:
Haee, 1996). e definitions of kip are taken from p. 651 of the Concise
Oxford Dictionary (eighth edition, see above). e discussion of the
grammatical coding system used in the third edition of the Oxford Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary and the associated examples are based on pp 155–7 of R.
Carter’s book Vocabulary; applied linguistic perspectives (second edition,
London: Routledge, 1998). e account of the grammatical coding system of
the fih edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, edited by J.
Crowther (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), is drawn from pp B1–B8 of
the dictionary (especially p. B4) and also refers to the dictionary’s entries for
give (pp 499f.) and drop (pp 357f.). e entries from the Hugo Pocket
Dictionary: Dutch-English, English-Dutch (London: Hugo’s Language Books
Ltd, 1969) are cited, respectfully, from pp 37 and 107; the ‘Explanation of the
Imitated Pronunciation’ (guide to symbols used in representations of Dut
pronunciation) is to be found on p. xi of this dictionary. e brief account of
the Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English (Oxford: Oxford
University Press) is based on pp. 160ff. of R. Carter’s book Vocabulary: applied
linguistic perspectives (see above). e dictionary appears in two volumes, the
first of whi was edited by A. P. Cowie and R. Main and published in 1975,
and the second of whi was edited by A. P. Cowie, R. Main and I. R.
McCaig and published in 1983.
See 10.4. e source of the point about explicit and implicit definitions in
teaer input (and the related illustrations) is E. Hat and C. Brown’s book,
Vocabulary, semantics and language education (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995, 401). e discussion of incidental vocabulary acquisition
is largely based on W. Nagy’s article ‘On the role of context in first- and
second-language vocabulary learning’ (in N. Smi and M. McCarthy (eds),
Vocabulary description, acquisition and pedagogy , Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), and on the relevant section of Chapter 4 of my own
book, Exploring the second language mental lexicon (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999). e resear on combining context-based with word-
focused activities is reported in T. Paribakht and M. Wese’s article
‘Vocabulary enhancement activities and Reading for meaning in second
language vocabulary acquisition’ (in J. Coady and T. Huin (eds), Second
language vocabulary acquisition: a rationale for pedagogy . Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997). Studies dealing with the role of rehearsal
in the construction of memory codes for newly encountered words include: A.
Baddeley, C. Papagno and G. Vallar, ‘When longterm learning depends on
short-term storage’ (Journal of Memory and Language 27, 1988, 586–95); S.
Gathercole and A. Baddeley, ‘Evaluation of the role of phonological STM in
the development of vocabulary in ildren: a longitudinal study’ (Journal of
Memory and Language 28, 198.9, 200–13); C. Papagno, T. Valentine and A.
Baddeley, ‘Phonological short-term memory and foreign-language vocabulary
learning’ (Journal of Memory and Language 30, 1991, 331–47); E. Service,
‘Phonology, working memory and foreign-language learning’ (Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology 45A, 1992, 21–50; E. Service ‘Phonological
and semantic aspects of memory for foreign language’ (in J. Chapelle and M-
T. Claes (eds), Actes: 1er Congrès International: Mémoire et Mémorisation dans
l’Acquisition et l’Apprentissage des LangueslProceedings: 1st International
Congress: Memory and Memorization in Acquiring and Learning Languages.
Louvain-la-Neuve: CLL, 1993). A widely cited study on associative strategies
in second language vocabulary learning is: A. Cohen and E. Aphek, ‘Retention
of second-language vocabulary over time: investigating the role of mnemonic
associations’ (System 8, 1980, 221–35). e quotations concerning the findings
of verbal memory resear regarding rehearsal and extensive processing are
taken from A. Wingfield and D. Byrnes’s book, The psychology of human
memory (New York: Academic Press, 1981, 290), and the quotation concerning
deep processing is taken from R.M. Gagné’s book, The conditions of learning
(third edition, New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1977, 197). e quotation
about the recallability of statements with personal significance is from p. 251
of A. Ellis and G. Beaie’s book, The psychology of language and
communication (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986). e keyword
tenique example is borrowed from p. 166 of I. S. P. Nation’s book, Teaching
and learning vocabulary (Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle, 1990); the
effectiveness of the tenique is noted by, among others, N. Ellis and A.
Beaton in their article, ‘Psyolinguistic determinants of foreign language
vocabulary learning’ (in B. Harley (ed.), Lexical issues in language learning,
Ann Arbor/Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Language Learning/John Benjamins,
1995). e more general resear on visualization is reported by B. Tomlinson
in his article, ‘Helping L2 readers to see’ (in T. Hiey and J. Williams (eds)
Language, education and society in a changing world, Clevedon:
IRAAL/Multilingual Maers Ltd., 1996). Heute Abend was wrien by M.
Kelber and was published in London by Ginn and Company in 1938. De vive
voix was wrien by M.-T. Moget with the assistance of J. Boudot and was
published in Paris by Didier in 1972. Salut! (3) was prepared by participants in
the Institiúid Teangeolaíota Éireann (Linguistics Institute of Ireland) Modern
Languages Project under the leadership of J. Sheils and S. McDermo; it was
published in Dublin by the Educational Company in 1985. A variety of ideas
relative to didacticizing authentic materials are to be found in D. Lile, S.
Devi and D. Singleton’s book, Learning foreign languages from authentic
(Dublin: Authentik Language Learning Resources,
texts: theory and practice
1989). e D. Lile quotation on autonomy is taken from p. 4 of his book,
Learner autonomy 1: definitions, issues and problems (Dublin: Authentik
Language Learning Resources, 1991).
See 10.5. e quotations from the National Geographic Magazine are both
from Vol. 196, No. 5 (1999); the first appears in a piece entitled ‘Feathered
dinosaurs’ on a unnumbered page in the preambulatory section headed ‘On
assignment’, and the second appears on p. 44 (in an article wrien by Johan
Reinhard entitled ‘Frozen in time’). e Fren verb-list is quoted from p. 32
of the second volume of Actualités Françaises (wrien by D. O. No and J. E.
Triey, London: e English Universities Press, 1971). e final example of a
lexical task cited in 10.5 is from pp 51–3 of D. Lile, S. Devi and D.
Singleton’s book, Learning foreign languages from authentic texts: theory and
practice (Dublin: Authentik Language Learning Resources, 1989).
Good treatments of the evolution of lexicography (in addition to those in
publications already mentioned) are to be found in:
J. Green, Chasing the sun: dictionary-makers and the dictionaries they
made (London: J. Cape, 1996);
T. McArthur, Worlds of reference: lexicography, learning and language
from the clay tablet to the computer (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986).
Shorter introductions to this topic (with particular reference to English) are
provided by a number of the articles in the Oxford companion to the English
language (ed. T. McArthur, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Other recommended publications on lexicography are:
H. Béjoint, Tradition and innovation in modern English dictionaries
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994);
M. Benson, E. Benson and R. F. Ilson, Lexicographic description of
English (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986);
R. R. K. Hartmann and G. James, Dictionary of lexicography (London:
Routledge, 1998);
F. J. Hausman, O. Reimann, H. E Wiegand and L. Zgusta (eds),
Wörterbücher/dictionaries/dictionnaires. An international
encyclopedia of lexicography(Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989–91);
D. A. Walker, A. Zampolli and N. Calzolari (eds), Automating the lexicon;
research and practice in a multilingual environment (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995);
L. Zgusta, ‘Problems of the bilingual dictionary’ (Lexicographica
International Annual 2, 1–161).
With regard to lexical learning in the classroom, the kinds of issues discussed
in 10.4 and 10.5 are explored at greater length and from various points of view
in:
R. Carter and M. McCarthy (eds), Vocabulary and language teaching
(London: Longman, 1988);
J. Coady and T. Huin, Second language vocabulary acquisition: a
rationale for pedagogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997);
E. Hat and C. Brown, Vocabulary, semantics and language education
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
N. Smi and M. McCarthy (eds), Vocabulary: description, acquisition
and pedagogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Books dealing with concrete strategies for dealing with lexis in a formal
instructional seing (apart from the Nation volume and the Lile, Devi and
Singleton volume mentioned above) include:
R. Gairns and S. Redman, Working with words: a guide to teaching and
learning vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986);
M. Lewis, The lexical approach: the state of ELT and a way forward
(Hove: Language Teaing Publications, 1993);
M. Lewis, Implementing the lexical approach: putting theory into
practice (Hove: Language Teaing Publications, 1997);
M. Wallace, Teaching vocabulary (London: Heinemann, 1982);
M-C. Tréville and L. Duquee, Enseigner le vocabulaire en classe de
langue (Vanves: Haee, 1996).
Focusing questions/topics for discussion
1. Try to think of some different sets of circumstances in whi the authority
of a dictionary is used to sele disputes about language.
2. List the major advantages an electronic dictionary has over a traditional
printed dictionary, and try to think of some advantages a traditional printed
dictionary may have over an electronic dictionary.
3. Examine the way in whi any dictionary with whi you are familiar
deals with multiple meaning. Try to come to some conclusions about the
principles underlying the approa in question, and suggest some possible
improvements to the approa, giving reasons for your proposals.
4. Devise a connected sequence of classroom activities (for use in the context
of a mother tongue or a second language teaing programme) whi
contains opportunities for both incidental and atomistic learning of lexis.
5. Try to create a lexical learning activity (for use in the context of a mother
tongue or a second language teaing programme) whi includes a
stylistic dimension alongside other dimensions.
Conclusion
Given the range of topics covered in this volume, and given the fact that a
concluding summary is provided at the end of ea apter, it does not seem
sensible to refer to all the elements of the book’s content in these concluding
remarks. Instead, the focus here is on the general theme that has run through
every apter – namely, the very considerable extent to whi the lexicon
interacts with dimensions of language whi have traditionally been
regarded as relatively separate from it. Indeed, in the light of all that has
been said the question that poses itself at this point is whether we are
justified as treating the lexicon as, on the one hand, having any kind of
existence whi is distinct from the rest of language and, on the other, forms
a component whi can be seen as cohesive and unitary.
In relation to the issue of whether it is possible to separate out the lexicon
from language at large, it is not that linguists have anged their
fundamental view that the lexicon is that part of language whi deals with
‘idiosyncratic information’, but rather that their resear and reflections on
su resear have led them to the conclusion that very mu more of the
functioning of language than they had previously imagined is idiosyncratic.
e response to su findings has been, essentially, to ‘slim down’ the
generalizing elements in linguistic models and to assign more and more
responsibility to the lexicon. It appears at times as if this process is at some
stage soon going to rea the point where the notions of lexicon and of
language will become interangeable.
e usual line of argument offered in favour of continuing to see the
lexicon as distinguishable from other dimensions of language is that,
however many aspects of language can be addressed in lexical terms, it is
nevertheless still possible to identify linguistic phenomena whi can be
described without reference to lexical particularities. For example, all human
languages are aracterized by what is sometimes known as double
articulation . at is to say, as we saw in Chapter 6, they are organized into
two levels. At one level, meaningless units (phonemes, leers) combine to
form meaningful units (inflections, affixes, words etc.), and at a higher level
small meaningful units (morphemes, words etc.) combine into larger
meaningful units (phrases, sentences etc.). General design features of
language su as this, although certainly ri in implications for the lexicon,
clearly do not depend on the lexical specificities of any particular language.
ere are other features of linguistic organization whi are more specific
in nature – insofar as they relate to particular domains of language (syntax,
phonology etc.) – but whi operate universally, irrespective of the lexical
aributes of the units involved. Structure-dependency is one su feature.
is is the principle, common to the syntax of all languages, according to
whi the ways in whi sentences relate to ea other have structural
dimensions. For example, in English, in order to produce an ‘interrogative
version’ of a statement, we have to take account not just of how the words
are sequenced but also of how they cluster into constituents and how those
constituents are organized and hierarized in respect of ea other. Let us
consider in this connection the following two sets of sentences, the third
member of ea is ill-formed.
e tall ap is one of the men she has been seeing.
Is the tall ap one of the men she has been seeing?
* Has the tall ap is one of the men she been seeing
e tall ap who kissed her is one of the men she has been seeing.
Is the tall ap who kissed her one of the men she has been seeing?
* Kissed the tall ap who her is one of the men she has been seeing
Whereas the first set of sentences might lead us to believe that making a
question out of a statement might be simply a maer of puing the first
verb in the sentence to the front, the second set shows that this ‘linear’ rule
does not work, and that in moving elements around in su cases we have to
take account of – among other things – whi words in the sentence
constitute the main clause (The tall chap is one of the men) and whi
constitute subordinate clauses (she has been seeing, who kissed her).
It is true that, as we have noted, many linguistic phenomena whi were
previously viewed as independent of lexical considerations are now widely
anowledged to be essentially lexical in nature, and that, on this basis, there
is always the possibility of further shis of perspective in a lexical direction
in the future. However, it still seems plausible to suppose that, whether or
not one accepts the Chomskyan notion of Universal Grammar, there will
always remain aspects of language that have to be seen as standing outside
the lexical specificities of individual languages.
With regard to the question of whether the various facets of the
multifaceted lexicon can be genuinely be seen as cohering into a unitary
level of linguistic reality, numerous voices have been raised against this
notion in recent years. Interestingly, the voices in question come largely
from the realm of psyology and psyolinguistics, and, even more
interestingly, they come from two sools of thought whi in most other
respects are in sharp disagreement with ea other – namely, on the one
hand, advocates of the Fodorian version of the modularity hypothesis and,
on the other, advocates of connectionism.
As we saw in Chapter 9, two defining features of Fodor’s conception of
the language module are informational encapsulation (the notion that
language processing meanisms are, as it were, blinkered with regard to
data other than the specifically linguistic data on whi they are designed to
operate) and shallowness of intramodular processing (the idea that language
processing within the language module is an essentially formal maer, with
no semantic analysis taking place ‘inside’ the items being processed). We
noted in Chapter 9 that the advantage for modularists of limiting their
conception of the language module to that of a formal processor with no
semantic role is that it does not confront them with the problem of where to
draw the line between linguistic and non-linguistic meaning. e implication
of this point of view is that, since the formal lexicon falls within the
informationally encapsulated lexicon and that the semantic lexicon falls
outside of it, lexical knowledge of a semantic kind has no role in the
processing of lexical form.
is position would seem to gain some support from the fact that the
lexicon appears to be organized both along formal lines and along semantic
lines – as evidenced, for example, by the fact that slips of the tongue
sometimes involve the substitution of a word whi is phonologically close
to the target item, for example antiquities for iniquities, and sometimes the
substitution of a semantically related word, for example, finger for hand
(meronym– holonym), asleep for awake (complementaries) etc. On the other
hand it departs from the classic view of modern linguistics – strongly
enunciated by its founder, Ferdinand de Saussure – that the formal and
semantic aspects of a linguistic sign are as intimately connected as the two
sides of a piece of paper. It also falls foul, as the discussion in Chapter 9
indicates, of evidence of ‘online’ context effects in the processing of words.
Regarding the connectionist perspective, as again we saw in Chapter 9,
this represents knowledge in terms of connection strength rather than in
terms of paerns. According to this approa it is not the paerns that are
stored – not even the paerns of features that make up what we know as
words, morphemes and phonemes – but rather the connection strengths
between elements at a mu lower level that allow these paerns to be
recreated. What this obviously implies is that there is no level at whi even
words have a stable psyolinguistic existence as symbols, still less a level at
whi collections of words have su an existence.
It may be worth mentioning in this context the way in whi natural
scientists are constantly on their guard against reductionism, recognizing that
the fact that a particular phenomenon can be reduced to component parts
does not necessarily mean that su a reduction constitutes a complete or
useful account of the phenomenon in question. e illustrative example that
is sometimes deployed in this context is that of a sign made up of coloured
light bulbs – AMUSEMENTS, BAR, CIRCUS, DANCING, SOUTH PIER etc.
Analysing su signs as simply a number of individual light bulbs would
provide an account of su phenomena at only one level. A complete
account would require the recognition of both higher levels of analysis, for
example, the shape of the configuration at leer-level, the shape of the
configuration at word-level, the meaning of the configuration etc., and lower
levels, su as the component parts of ea light bulb, the emical elements
of ea of these components etc. To return to connectionism and the lexicon,
the fact that it is possible to analyse lexical knowledge in terms of
connection-strengths at a micro level does not exclude the notion that there
may be other possible levels of analysis.
Both the modularist and the connectionist approa to the lexicon would
appear to be called into question by the fact that, as we noted in Chapter 1,
the word – in all its complexity – is so widely perceived as the basic
ingredient of language. It is difficult not to see this perception as strongly
suggesting that a high degree of psyological reality aaes to the idea of
a multidimensional but coherent lexical level of analysis. is should surely
give some pause to those inclined to consign the lexicon concept to
fragmentation and the four winds.
Nevertheless, despite arguments su those put in the foregoing few
pages in favour of continuing to demarcate an area of language under the
heading of lexicon and of treating that area as some kind of coherent reality,
we have to anowledge that it may eventually prove that the lexical
construct is neither theoretically nor empirically dissociable from other
linguistic or psyolinguistic domains. Given the exciting advances in
tenologies that now allow the direct observation of brain functioning, the
clining arguments may in the end come not from linguistic theory or
psyolinguistic experiments but from neuroscience.
In the meantime it seems very likely that resear and publications on and
around the lexicon will remain a ‘growth industry’ within all the many
mansions of linguistics. Aer decades upon decades of being treated by most
language specialists as the least interesting aspect of language, words have
returned to the very centre of linguists’ field of vision. And not before time.
In support of this last remark I offer as my parting shot a quotation not from
a linguist but from a writer of science fiction. Here is what one of the
aracters in the Dan Simmons’s novel Hyperion (London: Hodder, 1989) has
to say on the topic of words:
It might be argued that the Siamese-twin infants of word/idea are the
only contribution the species can, will or should make to the reveling
cosmos. (Yes, our DNA is unique but so is a salamander’s. Yes, we
construct artefacts but so have species ranging from beavers to … ants
… Yes, we weave real-fabric things from the dream-stuff of
mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scrat a
circle and π peeps out … But where has the universe hidden a word
under its outer layer of biology, geometry or insensate ro?)
Index
Aarsleff, 230
Abelson, 82
affix, 34, 85, 89, 235
agent, 19, 23, 32, 165
Aijmer, 60
Aitison, 82, 83, 101, 156, 158, 190
Akmajian, 43
Allen, 13
Allerton, 29
allograph, 96, 103
allomorph, 34–5, 40–41, 42
allophone, 3, 5, 96
Altenberg, 60
Altman, 188
Anapol, 129
Andersen, 13
Anderson, J. A., 56
Anderson, R., 82
Anglin, 187
Antilla, 156, 158
Aphek, 232
Aronoff, 43
Ashen, 43
Asher, 29
Atkins, 81
audio-lingual method, 215, 216, 219–22, 225
audio-visual courses, 216
Austin, 122–3, 129
authentic materials, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 232
awareness of words, 2–3, 12, 13
Ayto, 160, 230
babbling, 163, 165–7, 180, 181, 185, 190
babbling dri/shi, 166, 185
baness, 86
Baus, 128–9
‘bad’ language, 114, 117–18, 129, 147
Baddeley, 186, 189, 231, 232
Bailey, 196
Baker, 30
Bank of English, 51–4, 198
Barre, 186
Bartle, 187
basic level of categorization, 168, 169, 186
Baskin, 81, 156
Beaton, 187, 232
Beaie, 190, 232
behaviourism, 166, 185–6, 216
Béjoint, 233
Benbow, 198
Benson, E., 233
Benson, M., 60, 233
Berger, 101
Bernstein, 113, 128
Bierton, 157
Biemiller, 185
bilingualism, 183, 189
binary antonymy see complementarity
bivalent verb, 21–2, 31
Bla, J. A., 230
Bla, M., 81
Blom, 129
Bloom, L., 186
Bloom, P., 185
Bloomfield, 43, 67, 81
Blount, 196
‘blueprint for the speaker’, 171, 174–6, 184
BNC, 54–5, 198
Bollinger, 82
Bomba, 185
Bonvillian, 187
borrowing, 148–50, 156, 157
Borsley, 29
Boudot, 232
Boyes-Braem, 186
brand-name, 152, 153–4
Brédart, 13
Bresnan, 29
Brice, 101
Bright, 102
British National Corpus see BNC
Brown, C., 60, 83, 231, 234
Brown Corpus, 54
Brown, K., 29, 30
Bruner, 165, 185
Bullokar, 196
Byrne, 232
Calvet, 101, 102, 157, 231
Calzolari, 233
Cambridge and Noingham Corpus of Discourse, 198
Cambridge International Corpus see CIC
Campbell, 185
caretaker talk see ild-directed spee
Carey, 187
Carlson, 188
Carney, 102
Carr, 102
Carroll, 129, 170, 187
Carstairs-McCarthy, 43
Carter, 13, 58, 59, 60, 81, 83, 230, 231, 233
Casagrande, 129
Cawdrey, 196, 230
centrality, 86
Cervantes, 210
Chambers, 128
Chape, 231
Chapelle, 232
Chaucer, 133, 156
Chen, 101, 156
Chertok, 188
Cheshire, 130
Cheveix Tren, 197
ild-directed spee, 162, 184, 190, 212, 213
Chomsky/Chomskyan, 17, 22, 23–8, 30, 32, 43, 44, 55, 59, 76, 82, 166, 176, 179, 184, 185–6, 236
CIC, 55, 198, 199
circumfix, 34
citation form, 5
Claes, 232
Clark, E, 13, 186
Clark, M., 185
classificatory hierary, 170
cloze, 177–8
Coady, 231, 233
Coates, 131
COBUILD, 19, 20, 52–4, 55–6, 59, 60, 198, 230
Coeram, 196
code-switing, 116, 119–22, 129
conversational, 116, 121
metaphorical, 121, 129
situational, 119–22
cognate, 134–6, 159, 183
cognitive linguistics, 64, 77–80, 83
Cohen, 232
cohort model, 171, 172–3, 184, 187, 190
Coleman, 82
colligation, 17, 68
collocation, 11, 12, 20, 47–62, 68, 162, 200, 208–9, 226, 227, 228
collocational range, 47, 48–9, 58, 61
Coltheart, 190
combinatorial relations see syntagmatic relations
communicative approa, 215, 216–17, 222–6
comparative method, 134–6, 137, 138, 156
complementary/complementarity, 71, 72, 83, 237
component, 75–7
componential analysis, 75–7, 80, 81–2, 83–4
composition see compounding
compound/compounding, 35–6, 44, 47, 49–51, 58, 61, 162, 208
compound organization, 183
computational linguistics, 17, 18–20, 28
concept/conceptualization, 65–6, 67, 68, 77–80, 123–7, 129, 143, 144, 145, 157, 163, 164–5, 175, 181,
185, 186, 187
conceptual semantics, 77–9, 82
connectionism, 171, 178–80, 184, 188, 237, 238
content word, 6, 10, 14
context, 6, 10, 11, 20, 25–6, 31, 32, 33, 38, 40, 51–4, 56, 68, 69, 77, 80, 92, 105, 107, 108, 113, 119–23,
127, 130, 131, 145, 146, 147, 162, 163, 166–7, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176–8, 185, 186, 187, 188, 204–6,
210, 227, 229
context-related variation see language variation: situational
continuum of variation, 107–8
converse/converseness, 73–4, 83
cooing, 165, 180
Cook, 30, 101, 102, 118, 129, 130, 155, 158, 183, 184, 189
co-ordinate organization, 183
corpus/corpora, 18, 19, 47, 52–5, 58, 59, 60, 193, 198–9, 221, 230
Cotgrave, 196
Coulmas, 102, 128, 129, 130
Coulthard, 128
count noun, 20, 21, 31
Coupland, 130
Cowie, 59, 231
creativity, 55–6
creole, 119, 146–7, 148, 157
creole continuum, 146–7, 157
Criper, 189
Cromer, 129
Crowley, 158
Crowther, 231
Cruse, 13, 60, 81
c-structure, 23
Culler, 81
culture, 106, 114, 115, 116, 123–7, 129, 131, 155, 200
cuneiform, 93–5, 142
Daniels, 102
Dante, 210
daughter language, 135, 138
Davies, 189
declarative knowledge, 171, 176
Defoe, 117, 129
DeFrancis, 101
De Groot, 189
Dell, 188
Demers, 43
denotation, 64–6, 68, 78, 80, 81, 118, 226
Dependency Grammar, 22, 23, 29
depth of processing, 214–15, 219, 221, 226, 229, 232
derivational morphology, 35–6, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44
Devi, 232, 233, 234
diaronic linguistics, 133–8, 156, 158
dialect, 106–7, 130
dictionary/dictionary-making, 1, 5, 10–11, 12, 51–2, 56, 59, 60, 61, 76, 86, 133, 170, 173, 193–201, 202–
3, 206, 208, 209, 229, 230, 233, 234
diglossia, 119–21, 129, 146
Diller, 170, 187
Diogenanius, 194
direct model of access, 170–73, 187
distinctive feature, 86
ditransitive verb, 22, 31
double articulation, 85, 100, 235
Drosdowski, 101, 102
Duquee, 234
Eco, 82
Edwards, 115, 129, 130
effect, 165
Eimas, 185
elaborated code, 113–14
electronic dictionary, 199, 202–3, 206, 208, 209, 230, 234
Ellis, A., 190, 232
Ellis, N., 187, 232
Elman, 188
empty word, 6
encyclopedic dictionary, 202–3
encyclopedic knowledge/meaning, 175–6, 202, 237
entailment, 69–74, 79
environment see context
ethnicity, 114–16, 127, 128, 130, 131
euphemism, 49
Ewert, 157
Farmer, 43
Fasold, 130
fast mapping, 169, 187
Fawley, 82
felicity conditions, 123
Ferguson, 119–21, 129, 184
Fin, 13
Firth, 20, 51, 52, 58–9
Fishman, 82, 128
Fisiak, 188
fixed expression, 47, 49–51, 55, 58, 61, 162, 208
Fleter, 185, 186
fluid meaning, 168, 181
focal sense see prototype
Fodor/Fodorian, 82, 176–8, 179, 188, 237
form word, 6, 10, 14
Forrester, 190
Forster, 173–4, 184, 188
Foster-Cohen, 189
frame, 79–80, 82–3
Frege, 81
Fren, M. A., 101
frequency, 199
Fries, 112, 128
Fromkin, 42, 43, 100, 130
frontness, 86
f-structure, 23
full word, 6, 9
function word, 6
Gairns, 234
Garfield, 187–8
Garman, 185, 186, 187, 190
Garnica, 184
Gathercole, 186, 231–2
GB, 25, 30
Gea, 81
gender, 76, 105, 107, 116–18, 119, 127, 131, 154–5
George, 188
Giegeri, 102
Giglioli, 129
Gleitman, 186
Goetz, 82
Goldsmith, 102
Goodlu, 185
Government and Binding see GB
gradable antonymy see polar antonymy
grammar, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17–32, 33–45, 47, 49, 53–4, 55–6, 68, 85, 88–9, 91, 92, 97–9, 100,
105, 110, 112–14, 115–16, 146, 161, 162, 173–4, 175, 176, 193, 200, 204–6, 209–10, 213, 214, 215–16,
217–19, 220, 221–2, 223, 224, 227, 228, 230, 231
grammar-translation method, 215–16, 217–19, 220, 221–2, 225
grammatical word, 6, 9
Grant, 184
grapheme, 96, 100, 103
Gray, 186
Green, 233
Griffiths, 186
Grosjean, 189
Guillaume, 168, 186
Gumperz, 129
Haas, 101
Hall, 44
Halliday, 20, 29, 58
Hammer, 188
Harley, 187, 232
Harnish, 43
Harris, J., 43, 165, 185
Harris, M., 168, 184, 186, 189, 190
Harris, R., 230
Hartley, 129
Hartmann, 230, 233
Hat, 60, 83, 231, 234
Hausman, 233
Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar see HPSG
Hiey, 232
hierarical classification, 181–2, 187
hieroglyph, 95–6
Hird, 189
historical linguistics, 133–8, 156, 158
Hobbes, 197
Holmes, 130
holonym/holonymy, 74–5, 83, 237
Homer, 194
homograph, 68, 96, 98–9, 142
homographic clash, 142
homonym/homonymy, 68, 139–40, 142, 156, 203–4, 234
homonymic clash, 139–40, 156
homophone, 68, 96, 98–9, 103, 139–40, 142
homophonic clash, 139–40, 142
Howa, 189
HPSG, 19, 23, 25, 29, 31
Huin, 231, 233
Hudson, 101, 130
Hughes, 129
Huloet, 195
Humboldt, 126
Humphreys, 29, 30
Hymes, 129, 230
hyponym/hyponymy, 68, 70–71, 74–5, 76, 81, 83, 143, 182
ideogram, 94
idiom, 50, 55, 56–8, 60, 61, 162, 213
Ilson, 60, 230, 233
imageabilitv, 169, 181, 187, 215
incidental vocabulary learning, 212, 215, 218–26, 228, 229, 231, 234
incompatible/incompatibility, 68, 71–4, 76, 81, 144
indirect model of access, 170, 187
Indo-European, 135–6, 140, 158
infix, 34
inflectional morphology, 35–42, 43, 44
informational encapsulation, 176–8, 179, 237
Ingemann, 43
innateness, 26, 78–9, 162, 164, 165, 166, 184, 185
internal reconstruction, 134, 136–7, 138, 156
internal stability, 9
intransitive verb, 21, 26, 31
Jaendoff, 78–9, 82
Jason, 13
Jacobsen, 230
James, 233
Jamieson, 197
Jaworski, 130
Jean, 101, 102
Jensen, 43
Johnson, D., 186
Johnson, Dr Samuel, 142, 157, 197
Jones, D., 184
Jones, Sir William, 134, 135
Käge, 101
Kaplan, 29
Kass, 82
Katamba, 42, 43, 100, 101, 102
Katz, 82
Kay, 82
Kelber, 232
Kennedy, 59, 60
Kenstowicz, 101, 102
kernel structures, 24
Kersey, 196, 230
keyword tenique, 215, 232
Kiparsky, 43, 101
Kirsner, 189
Kjellmer, 60
Koerner, 29
Krishnamurthy, 59
Kuczaj, 186
Kuhl, 185
labiality, 86
Labov, 82, 128, 130, 158
LADL, 18, 29
Lakoff, 82, 117–18, 129
Lalor, 189
Lamiroy, 29
Landau, 186
language acquisition, 2–3, 12, 13, 18, 26, 26, 161, 162–70, 180–87, 188–9, 193, 211–12, 213, 214
ild language development, 2–3, 12, 13, 26, 161, 162–70, 180–87, 189, 211–12, 214
second language development 161, 180–84, 188–9, 211–12, 214
language act, 122–3
language ange, 7, 11, 12, 13, 133–60, 194, 210–11
language faculty/module, 26, 162, 171, 176–8, 179
language processing, 18, 170–80, 187, 193, 237
language teaing, 193, 211–29, 234
L1 teaing, 211–12, 234
L2 teaing, 211, 213, 215–26, 228–9, 234
language variation, 12, 105–32, 199, 201–2, 206–7, 208, 209–11, 227, 234
ethnic, 105, 107, 114–16, 119, 127, 130, 131, 146, 162, 209–10
gender-related, 105, 107, 116–18, 119, 127, 131
geographical/regional, 12, 105, 107, 108, 109–11, 119, 127, 130, 131, 199, 201, 202, 206–7, 208, 209–
11
situational, 12, 105, 107, 108, 109, 119–23, 127, 131, 146, 209–10, 227, 234
social, 12, 105, 107, 109, 111–14, 119, 127, 128, 130, 131, 209–10
Laufer, 188
Lawton, 128
learner autonomy, 226, 232
learner needs, 216–17, 222, 225
Lee, 82, 83
Lehmann, 157, 158
Lehrer, 82
Leinba, 188
lemma, 175
Levelt, 171, 174–6, 184, 188
Lewis, 14, 234
lexeme, 5, 9
lexical diffusion, 90, 101, 138
lexical distribution, 146–8
lexical doublets, 148–9
lexical engineering, 152–5, 156, 158, 160
lexical field, 66–7, 68, 80
Lexical–Functional Grammar see LFG
lexical hypothesis, 175–6
‘lexical’ morphology, 35–42, 43
lexical parameterization hypothesis, 27–8, 30
Lexical Phonology, 89, 101
lexical processing, 170, 184
lexical subsystem, 68
lexical testing, 229
lexical unit, 48, 56–8, 60, 67, 181, 184, 209, 219
lexical word, 6
lexicogrammar, 20, 29
lexicography see dictionary
lexicology, 1
LFG, 17, 19, 22–3, 25, 29, 31
Liddell, 198, 230
literacy/literacy skills, 2, 7, 12, 163, 185, 211, 222
Lile, 189, 226, 232, 233, 234
Lloyd, 82
loanword, 89–90, 92, 99, 148–50, 156, 157
LOB Corpus, 54
location, 165
Loe, 186
logogen model, 171–2, 173, 174, 184, 187,
logogram, 94
London-Lund Corpus, 54
London Sool, 17, 20–21, 28
Longman-Lancaster Corpus, 54, 198, 199
Lucy, 131
Luther, 210
Lyons, 13, 14, 42, 66, 67–75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83
maine translation, 18, 19
McArthur, 233
McCaig, 59, 231
McCarthy, 59, 60, 231, 233, 234
McClelland, 188
Maccoby, 129
Maclaran, 101
McDermo, 232
McEnery, 60
McIntosh, 58
Main, 59, 231
McMahon, 157, 158
McShane, 185, 186–7
MacWhinney, 188
Mansion, 58
Manzini, 30
Markman, 185
Marshall, 187
Marslen-Wilson, 172–3, 184, 187
Martinet, 85, 100
mass noun, 20, 21
matrix, 86
Mahews, 42
Mauro, 81
meaning see semantics
meaning postulate, 69
Meara, 189
melioration, 147–8
mental lexicon, 12, 161–91
Mercier, 131
meronym/meronymy, 74–5, 81, 83, 237
Mervis, 186
metaphor, 50, 144–5, 153
Mével, 231
Miller, J., 29, 30,
Miller, J. L., 185
Miller, R., 186
Mills, 131
Milroy, J., 101, 128
Milroy, L., 128, 130
Minimalist Programme, 28, 30
Minsky, 82
Mitford, 128
modularity, 171, 176–8, 179, 184, 188, 237, 238
Moget, 232
Monohan, 101
monovalent verb, 21, 31
Moon, 59, 60
Moore, 157
Moreau, 185, 186
morpheme, 4, 9, 14, 33, 34–42, 44, 85, 89, 98, 180, 183, 235
bound morpheme, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 42, 44
derivational morpheme, 35–8, 39, 41, 42, 44
free morpheme, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44
inflectional morpheme, 35–42, 44
morphemic alternation see allomorph
morphology, 4, 12, 33–45, 83, 92, 110, 115–16, 161, 175, 180, 193, 195, 204–6, 210, 214, 216, 218, 228,
235
Morse, 185
Morton, 171–2, 184, 187
motherese see ild-directed spee
Müller, 102
multicompetence, 183, 189
multilingualism, 183, 189
multiple meaning see polysemy
Myers-Scoon, 131
Myking, 127
Nagy, 231
Nakht, 128
naming insight, 169
nasal/nasality, 86, 103
Nation, 215, 232, 234
negation, 69
Nelde, 128
Nelson, 187
Newcomb, 129
Newson, 30, 184
non-word recognition, 173, 187
No, 233
nuclear sense see prototype
Odiin, 188
Ogden, 80, 81
Ogden Nash, 112, 128
Oldfield, 187
one-word uerance, 163, 166–7
onomatopoeia, 88, 101
Orne, 188
orthographic ange, 141–2, 156, 157, 231
orthography, 6–7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 22, 33, 50, 68, 85–103, 109–10, 137, 156, 141–2, 157, 161, 163, 173–4,
201–2, 206, 207, 208, 222, 227, 228, 231, 235
Osselton, 229–30
ostension/ostensive definition, 162–3, 212, 213
over-extension, 168, 181, 186
Palmer, F., 14, 58
Palmer, H. E., 52, 59
Pamphilus, 194
Papagno, 189, 231, 232
paradigmatic relations, 68–75, 80
paradigmatic response, 170, 182, 189
parallel distributed processing see connectionism
parameter, 26–8, 30, 32
Head Parameter, 26–8, 32
Pro-Drop Parameter, 32
parentese see ild-directed spee
Paribakht, 231
Pariseau, 100, 157
Passow, 198
patient, 19, 31
patois, 115–16, 129
pause, 7, 10
pejoration, 147–8
performative, 122–3
Peters, 60
phoneme, 3, 5, 8, 14, 85–90, 91–2, 96, 100, 101, 180, 181, 235
phonetics, 4, 7, 10, 90, 98, 163–4, 166, 175, 181, 185
phonological working memory, 167–8, 181, 186, 187, 189, 214, 231–2
phonology, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7–8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 22, 33, 40–42, 50–51, 68, 85–103, 105, 107–10, 117, 138–41,
146, 156, 157, 159, 161–4, 166, 167–8, 173–4, 175, 180, 181, 185, 187, 189, 193, 200, 206–8, 214, 216,
219, 227, 231, 235
phrase structure rules, 24–6, 28
Piaget, 165
pictogram, 93–6, 142
pidgin, 119
Pinker, 14
Plato, 194
plosive/plosiveness, 86, 107, 137, 140–41, 163–4
polar antonym/polar antonymy, 71, 72–3, 83
Pollard, 29
polysemy, 68, 203–4, 234
Popla, 129
positional mobility, 9, 14
Poer, 157
poverty of the stimulus, 162, 184
prefabrication, 47, 55–6, 58, 60
prefix, 34
primary level of articulation, 85
principles, 25, 26, 27
Projection Principle, 25, 26
procedural knowledge, 175
pronunciation see phonology
proper name, 150–52, 156, 157
prototype/prototypical sense, 77–80, 82–3, 84
Pulgram, 101
Pulman, 82
Putnam, 157
intus Ennius, 126
Rabelais, 210
race, 114, 154
Radford, 30
rebus principle, 95
Redman, 234
Reed, 187
reference, 64–6, 68, 80, 81, 83, 157
referent, 64
rehearsal, 214–15, 225, 231, 232
Reimann, 233
Reinhard, 233
relational oppositeness, 73–4
restricted code, 113–14
Reynolds, 82
Riards, 80, 81
Rielle, 185, 186
Riard, 157
Ringbom, 189
Ritie, 189
Robey, 81
Robins, 43, 156
Robinson, 128
Rodman, 42, 43, 100, 130
Roeper, 30
Romaine, 101, 158
Rondal, 13
Ros, 82, 186
Rosen, 128
Ross, 112, 128
Rummelhart, 188
Saeed, 82
Sag, 29
Sampson, 29, 102
Santambrogio, 83
Sapir, 2, 7, 126–7, 129
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 126–7, 129
Saussure, 66, 80, 81, 133–4, 156, 237
Scaife, 185
Sallert, 82
Sank, 82
Satzmann, 128
sema, 79–80, 82–3
Smid, 83
Smi, 59, 60, 231, 234
Solze-Stubenret, 102
Sreuder, 189
Sco, 198, 230
Script, 79–80, 82–3
sear model, 171, 173–4, 184, 188
secondary level of articulation, 83
Seligman, 157
semantic association, 214, 218–19, 222, 225, 232
semantic ange, 143–6, 156, 157, 159, 160, 211
semantic feature see component
semantic field, 67, 68
semantic marker see component
semantic priming, 174
semantics, 4, 6, 8–9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 22, 31, 33, 35, 49–50, 51, 56–8, 60, 61, 63–84, 85, 88–9, 91, 92–6,
97–9, 100, 142, 143–6, 150–55, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 161, 166, 168–9, 170, 173–4, 175,
178, 179, 180, 181–2, 201, 202, 209–10, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223,
225, 227, 228, 232, 234, 237
sense, 68–77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 143–4, 170, 181–2, 183, 184, 186, 234, 237
sentence construction/structure see syntax
Service, 188, 189, 232
Shakespeare, 194, 210
Shapiro, 30
shared reference, 164–5, 185
Shiels, 232
Shirley, 129
Sholl, 158
Short, 60
simple antonymy see complementarity
Simpson, 198
Sinclair, 20, 29, 52, 55–6, 59, 60, 230
Singleton, 101, 157, 189, 190, 231, 232, 233, 234
Siqueland, 185
Skinner, 185–6
slip of the tongue, 237
Smith, M. D., 186
Smith, Mikey, 155
Snow, 184, 185
Snowdon, 185
social class, 107, 109, 111–14, 127, 128, 130, 131
sociolinguistics, 105–32
Söderman, 189
sound ange, 138–41, 156, 157, 159
sound structure see phonology
spee, 1, 2, 4, 18, 47, 48, 56, 85–103, 123, 131, 147, 162, 166, 174, 175, 180, 185, 188, 199, 222, 225
spee act, 122–3
spee synthesis, 18
spelling see orthography
Spencer, 43, 44, 102
stereotypical sense see prototype
Stowell, 30
Strauss, 128
stress, 7, 8, 10, 50–51, 85–8, 96–7, 100, 102–3
Strong-Jensen, 43
structuralism, 66–77, 81, 216
structuralist semantics, 66–77, 78, 81–2
structure-dependency, 236
Stubbs, 102, 125, 129
Studer, 230
style-shiing , 108, 122, 146, 209–10
substitutional relations see paradigmatic relations
suffix, 11, 34
superordinate, 70–71, 83, 170
‘swear-words’ see ‘bad’ language
Swerdlow, 102
synronic linguistics, 133–4
synonym/synonymy, 6, 63–4, 68, 69–70, 76, 77, 81, 83, 144, 145, 182
syntagmatic relations, 68, 79–80
syntagmatic response, 170, 181, 189
syntax, 2, 3, 4, 12, 17–32, 38, 49, 53–4, 55–6, 66, 83, 113, 162, 175, 193, 204–6, 213, 214, 216, 228, 235,
236
taboo, 49, 89, 139–40, 145, 152, 194
Tanenhaus, 188
Taylor, 230
teaer input, 213, 231
theme, 23
thesaurus, 195, 230
omas, J., 60
omas, L., 30
thought paerns, 106, 123–7, 129, 131
token, 5, 7, 9
Tomlinson, 232
tone, 85–8, 97, 100
transformation, 24–5
transitive semantic relation, 70, 74
transitive verb, 21–2, 25, 31
Trask, 157, 158
Tréville, 234
Triey, 233
Trier, 67, 81
trivalent verb, 22, 31
Trudgill, 128, 130
Tsohatzidis, 82
two-word uerance, 166
Tyler, 187
Tzeng, 185
Ullmann, 13, 81
under-extension, 168–9, 186
Ungerer, 83
uniqueness point, 172, 190,
Universal Grammar, 26, 30, 236
U/non-U, 112, 128
Urdang, 230
vague meaning, 168, 181, 186
Valency Grammar, 17, 19, 21–2, 23, 25, 28, 29, 31
Valentine, 189, 232
Vallar, 169, 231
Van Der Wouden, 60
variable, 107–9, 127
variety, 107–9, 127, 199
Vihmann, 186
Violi, 83
visualization, 215, 221, 232
vocabulary explosion, 167, 169–70
vocabulary teaing, 212, 215, 218–26, 227, 229, 231–3
atomistic, 212, 215, 218–26, 227, 228, 229, 231, 234
context based, 212, 215, 218–26, 228, 229, 231, 234
voice onset time see VOT
voiced/voiceless, 86, 107, 137, 140–41, 163–4
VOT, 163–4, 185
vowel-harmony, 8, 10
‘vulgar’ language see ‘bad’ language
Wales, 188
Walker, D.A., 233
Walker, E., 188
Walker-Read, 230
Wallace, F., 81
Wallace, M., 234
Walsh, 187
Walter, 158
Wang, W., 101
Wang, W. S.-Y., 185
Wardhaugh, 127, 130
Wasow, 29
Waters, 230
Waxman, 186
Webster, 197
Weekley, 157
Wehrli, 30
Weiner, 198
Weinrei, 189
Weltens, 189
Wermke, 102
Wese, 231
Wexler, 30
Whitaker, H., 189
Whitaker, K., 229
Whorf, 126–7, 129
Widdowson, 14
Wiegand, 233
Wierzbia, 131
Williams, E., 30
Williams, J., 232
Wilson, 60
Wingfield, 232
Winston, 82
word association, 170, 181–2, 190
word-form, 5, 7, 9, 175, 200
word-structure see morphology
writing systems, 6–7, 50, 91–100, 101, 102, 142, 185
alphabetic, 6–7, 91–2, 95–6, 97, 98, 99–100
ideographic, 94
logographic, 7, 92–6, 98, 99, 142
pictographic, 92–6, 98, 142
syllabic, 92, 96, 98, 99
wrien language, 6–7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 22, 33, 47, 48, 50, 68, 85–103, 109–10, 123, 131, 141–2, 147, 161,
163, 174, 199, 211, 216, 217, 219, 222, 225
Yang, 101
Zampolli, 233
Zgusta, 233
Zopyrion, 194
Zwiy, 43
You might also like
- (Ebook) Judicial Process in America by Robert A. Carp, Kenneth L. Manning, Lisa M. Holmes, Ronald Stidham ISBN 9781544316697, 1544316690 2024 scribd download100% (10)(Ebook) Judicial Process in America by Robert A. Carp, Kenneth L. Manning, Lisa M. Holmes, Ronald Stidham ISBN 9781544316697, 1544316690 2024 scribd download69 pages
- Lexicology - A Short Introduction (PDFDrive) PDF100% (1)Lexicology - A Short Introduction (PDFDrive) PDF124 pages
- Halliday - Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics90% (10)Halliday - Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics191 pages
- Lexicology As A Linguistic Discipline Its Tasks and Objectives. Relation of Lexicology To Other Linguistic FieldsNo ratings yetLexicology As A Linguistic Discipline Its Tasks and Objectives. Relation of Lexicology To Other Linguistic Fields96 pages
- Httplibrary - Navoiy Uni - Uzfilesmuminov.20lexicology20of20the20english20language PDFNo ratings yetHttplibrary - Navoiy Uni - Uzfilesmuminov.20lexicology20of20the20english20language PDF160 pages
- Skripta Week 1 To Week 4 Semantika Zic-FuchsNo ratings yetSkripta Week 1 To Week 4 Semantika Zic-Fuchs27 pages
- Lipka, Leonhard (1992) An Outline of English Lexicography100% (2)Lipka, Leonhard (1992) An Outline of English Lexicography218 pages
- Lexicology. Lesson 1. The Object of LexicologyNo ratings yetLexicology. Lesson 1. The Object of Lexicology15 pages
- ENG 221 Intro To Eng Morphology Notes 14082021No ratings yetENG 221 Intro To Eng Morphology Notes 1408202157 pages
- Lecture 1. Introduction. Lexicology and LexicographyNo ratings yetLecture 1. Introduction. Lexicology and Lexicography2 pages
- Lexical Meaning and Semantic Structure of The Word100% (4)Lexical Meaning and Semantic Structure of The Word9 pages
- Linguistics and Bilingual Dictionaries -- Qāsimī, ʻalī , 1940- -- Leiden, Netherlands, 1977 -- Leiden_ E_J_ Brill -- 9789004047877 -- 129636a30cc3dced1ee79ad608ff943e -- Anna’s ArchiveNo ratings yetLinguistics and Bilingual Dictionaries -- Qāsimī, ʻalī , 1940- -- Leiden, Netherlands, 1977 -- Leiden_ E_J_ Brill -- 9789004047877 -- 129636a30cc3dced1ee79ad608ff943e -- Anna’s Archive152 pages
- 53omuminovlexicologyoftheenglishlanguagepdfNo ratings yet53omuminovlexicologyoftheenglishlanguagepdf221 pages
- Where can buy The Lexicon: An Introduction 1st Edition Elisabetta Jezek ebook with cheap price100% (1)Where can buy The Lexicon: An Introduction 1st Edition Elisabetta Jezek ebook with cheap price55 pages
- 1 - Lexicology and Lexicography I - First ClassNo ratings yet1 - Lexicology and Lexicography I - First Class19 pages
- Understanding Language Use in the Classroom: Including Teaching Materials for College EducatorsFrom EverandUnderstanding Language Use in the Classroom: Including Teaching Materials for College EducatorsNo ratings yet
- The Semantics of Word Division in Northwest Semitic Writing Systems: Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and GreekFrom EverandThe Semantics of Word Division in Northwest Semitic Writing Systems: Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite and GreekNo ratings yet
- Critical Analysis of Nelson Mandela's LeadershipNo ratings yetCritical Analysis of Nelson Mandela's Leadership11 pages
- Feminist Judgments Rewritten Tax Opinions 1st Edition Bridget J. Crawford - The newest ebook version is ready, download now to explore100% (3)Feminist Judgments Rewritten Tax Opinions 1st Edition Bridget J. Crawford - The newest ebook version is ready, download now to explore66 pages
- From The Joe Madisia Biography Series IINo ratings yetFrom The Joe Madisia Biography Series II16 pages
- Download complete Liberating Language Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth Century Black America 8th Edition Shirley Wilson Logan ebook PDF file all chapters100% (2)Download complete Liberating Language Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth Century Black America 8th Edition Shirley Wilson Logan ebook PDF file all chapters72 pages
- Predicting and Evaluating The Popularity of Online News: He Ren Quan YangNo ratings yetPredicting and Evaluating The Popularity of Online News: He Ren Quan Yang5 pages
- Superman: The Silver Age Newspaper Dailies, Vol. 1: 1958 - 1961 Preview100% (7)Superman: The Silver Age Newspaper Dailies, Vol. 1: 1958 - 1961 Preview20 pages
- The University of Sheffield: How To Succeed At: Writing ApplicationsNo ratings yetThe University of Sheffield: How To Succeed At: Writing Applications3 pages
- Westcott, W. Wynn, MB, DPH - Collectanea Hermetica - Volume 05No ratings yetWestcott, W. Wynn, MB, DPH - Collectanea Hermetica - Volume 0572 pages
