prof. dr. Maja BRALA

INSIDE BABEL;

THE MEANING OF MEANING

Faculty of PhilosophyUniversity of Rijeka

Academic year 2008/2010

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In place of a Foreword – The structure of Babel

KLJSKHIEROUWEPOIJSADLYFJIUHWOEUPQWIEŠPO&%(/uzreuwziwzeirzqp.

This is not language. I doubt anyone could successfully pronounce the sequence of graphic symbols above. I doubt anybody could sensibly view it as belonging to any natural language. The above sequence does not have structure, and it does not have meaning. It, simply, is not language.

All natural languages, or more generally human language as a faculty of the human cognitive system, have a structure. As shown in Fig. 0.1. this structure is realised at three levels: the phonetic (or phonological), the grammatical (or morpho-syntactic) and the semantic.

STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE

PHONOLOGY GRAMMAR SEMANTICS

morphology syntax

study of the (structure of) study of the formation study of the formation study of the (structure of)sounds of language i.e. structure of words i.e. structure of sentences meaning in language

sound form meaning

Fig. 0.1. The structure of language

Now, we can learn how to pronounce a foreign word, we can be told if it is a noun, a verb, or, say, a preposition, but unless we are told its meaning, we shall not be able to employ this word for communicative purposes. At the same time, we all know people who can’t hear or can’t speak (or both), but who are nevertheless very successful communicators (usually thanks to their ability to use sign language1), since they can exchange meanings. All this should be enough to explain why meaning can’t but be at the centre of linguistics, i.e. it’s main tenet. Language, after all, is all about conveying MEANING.

Even though linguistics comprises sub-field other than semantics, it can be said that in a way all linguistic subdisciplines – from phonology to pragmatics – serve the ultimate function of meaning. If you do not think such is the case with phonology, just contrast three words: ‘pit’ vs. ‘bit’ vs. ‘fit’. After this random example it should be perfectly clear how the analysis of sounds in terms of place and manner of articulation is deeply rooted in meaning. Or think of the phonological difference covering the technical terms ‘allophone’ vs. ‘phoneme’; the difference is based exclusively on the issue whether differences in the quality between two or more sounds determine a difference in meaning or not. The next level of linguistic analysis, i.e. morphology, is equally ‘meaning-grounded’. Morphemes are namely defined as ‘minimal units of meaning’. Syntax, i.e. the ‘ordering of words’ is, in ultimate analysis, all about meaning. Just contrast the meanings between two sentences: a) Bob killed Bill vs. b) Bill

1 A language that does not have sounds but has a structured form, and that is recognised as a language a la pair with other natural languages.

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killed Bob. Given the fact that swapping subject and object places is much more than sheer form (in this case, it is a matter of life and death!), it might seem justifiable to state that syntax is basically in the service ‘at the court of semantics’. To sum up, let us state that ultimately all levels of linguistic analysis can be reconduced to meaning. Once again, we cannot but reiterate that expressing meaning is what languages are all about.

Given this central role of meaning in all aspects of linguistics, it might come as a surprise that semantics – defined as the study of linguistic meaning – is still a pretty opaque endeavour, more an ongoing effort than a fully fledged science with many concrete answers. The aim of this course, rather than providing definite and definitive answers, is perhaps better described as a journey in search of meaning, a basic review of what is known about meaning (analysis) up to this point, so that students are better equipped for further critical evaluations of some key issues in semantics.

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Chapter 1SEMANTICS AND LANGUAGE; SOME GENERAL ISSUES

As already said, semantics (from the Greek, semantikos, meaning 'significant'), is usually defined as the study of meaning. However, this definition is too broad for our purposes; one could actually fruitfully explore the meaning of life, the meaning of some tribal rituals, the meaning of love, the meaning of famous paintings or the meaning of some nice pieces of music ... From our linguistic perspective, we thus ought to redefine ‘semantics’ as the study of meaning of linguistic signs in natural languages2. Semantics is concerned with the meaning of words, expressions, and sentences.

Next we note that the focal question semanticists have to answer is usually stated as ‘what is the meaning of word ‘X’? Unfortunately, again, this ‘traditional’ way of viewing semantics, even linguistic semantics, conceals in part the true scope and the scientific perspective adopted by semanticists. It is namely possible to try and offer answers to this question and yet – not be ‘doing’ semantics. Here are a few examples.

Let us take a really simple word, say ‘mug’. Suppose your friend who has just started to study English asks you one day: ‘What does the word ‘mug’ mean’. Now, after a few moments you reply something like: ‘Well, a mug is a sort of a large cup, which however frequently lacks handles’. But what if your friend has not mastered the English word ‘cup’. Definitions of words in terms of other words are not what meaning is. And also, what would happen in your friend asked you to translate ‘mug’ and ‘cup’ into Croatian. You are stuck, right, since Croatian does not provide two lexical items to cover what in English are two distinct lexical categories3. Yet, suppose you were not someone who gives up easily. You could take your friend to your kitchen and show him a mug (as well as a cup), and pointing your finger towards the objects you could precisely show ‘the mug’, and ‘the cup’. But is this really a god way to explain what ‘mugs’ and ‘cups’ are? Are you sure that after this ‘pointing exercise’ your friend will be able to state without doubt whether a tiny coffee cup (SAUCER?) is still a cup, and the your friend will know that a large fruit bowl is not a mug (so where does the ‘meaning’ of ‘cup’ start, where does it end, where does the meaning of ‘mug’ start, where does it end, where does the meaning of ‘bowl’ start, where does it end …?). And, still another problem, what about the meaning of words such a ‘bird’ - which are generic, so if you point to a parrot or a pidgin, are you sure your friend will know that an ostrich is also a bird? Or words such as ‘unicorn’ that neither you nor me nor any of our friends have actually ever seen. Or ‘love’? Or ‘passion’? ‘Desire’ ….

These few examples of typical ‘semanticists problems’ were meant to suggest that the ‘prototypical’ semanticists’ question is perhaps better restated as: ‘how is that word ‘X’ means?’ (or: ‘how does word ‘X’ get its meaning’?). We might safely state that the goal of semantics is to pin down (describe, define) the mappings4 (matching) between the meanings of signs (what signs stand for) with the (mental) process of assigning those meanings.

2 Natural languages are those that develop without conscious planning, as opposed to artificial languages (languages invented by men as Esperanto, or computer languages such as C++).3 These examples touch upon the issue of cultural specificity and linguistic relativity, that we will address in Chapter 4.4 A technical term that means 'the process of matching between A and B'.

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Having slightly sharpened our focus on semantics, let us sharpen the focus on the key term in semantics, i.e. let us ask ourselves what do we intend (‘mean’) when we say ‘meaning’. Answering this query is practically doing semantics!

1.1. What is meaningful in Meaning

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

Lewis Carroll, ‘Through the Looking Glass’

Language as viewed by Humpty Dumpty would not be language at all, in that it would not enable communication. If when by uttering ‘chair’ I once referred to a chair, once to a table, and once to my car, my interlocutors would never know which option is being used and could not create a link between the word heard and the referent they should pick out in the world as the entity being referred to by the word used. Language, used in such an arbitrary, chaotic way, could not serve communication, would not be useful, and would thus – in a sense at least - not be language.

What has just been said stresses one very important aspect of language: language is a structured system (cf. de Saussure, in Appendix), more precisely it is a structured communication system. If we want to really understand this statement, i.e. if we want to really understand the nature of language (and thus also the nature of meaning), two immediate questions follow:

1) what kind of system are we talking about, i.e. how is the linguistic system structured?

2) what is communicated in terms of this system?

The answer to question one is quite straightforward: the linguistic system is a semiotic system (or rather, a system of signs). Namely, in 1938 the philosopher Charles Morris, in order to describe the ability of signs to stand for something other than themselves, coined the term semiotics. This term ‘semiotics’ comprises also the answer to our second question. Namely, what is communicated in terms of linguistic system are signs, or more precisely the meanings of signs. Namely, we all know that signs stand for something, and if we do not understand the signs (if we do not understand the meaning of these signs), we actually do not have communication i.e. we do not have language. We see that the central issue that we are addressing is actually ‘what do signs stand for?’.

When Charles Morris started developing semiotics, he divided the science of signs into:

syntax – or the study of the combinatorial properties of words, or rather the study of the formal relation of signs to one another;semantics – or the study of meaning, i.e. of the relation of signs to the entities to which they are applied;pragmatics – or the study of the relation of signs to users, i.e. the study of language usage.

Understanding language is thus understanding how signs are combined, and what do they stand for in the specific way in which they are used. Doing semantics is actually answering

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how do signs stand for what they actually stand for. Following from Morris’ position we might wish to state that semantics is a scientific endeavour aimed at exploring the nature of the relationship between words (signifiers) and that what words refer to (the signified – see de Saussure, and Plato in the Appendix).

As we have already remarked, language, apart from following certain structural rules (syntax), needs to be used systematically and coherently from the point of view of meaning or semantics. Semantics, in its structured order (but also in its structured ‘disorder’ – just think of e.g. metaphors), is a field of scientific inquiry. Every scientific research programme, and thus also semantics, has three key aims: description, explanation, and prediction. Of these three, description takes logical precedence (since it represents the grounds for the other two). However, meaning seems o defy a clear, unambiguous description. Unlike phonetics (which can be clearly read from spectrograms), or syntax (clearly outlined by means of syntactic trees or relations), meaning can’t be ‘seen’ (this is the well known problem of the ‘invisibility’ of meaning). We do not know where to look for meaning (in the head of the speaker? of the listener? in the word? in the world? in the linguistic relation? in syntax?).

Many of the abovesaid problems stem from the fact that meaning has a multifaceted nature. Somewhat paradoxically, even the term itself is quite ambiguous. Consider the following list of sentences (after Lyons, 1977: 1-2; and Palmer, 1981: 3):

i) I did not mean to hurt you. - (outcome of the action)ii) He means well, but he is rather clumsy. - (intention)iii) Life without love has no meaning. - (purpose of life)iv) Fame and richness mean nothing to the true scholar. - (importance attributed)v) Dark clouds mean rain. - (natural sign, semiotic relation, language independent)vi) A read light means stop. - (pure semiotic relation, language independent)vii) It was John I meant, not Harry. - (extralinguistic ‘thing’, the referent for the term)viii) He never says what he means. - (private meaning)ix) She rarely means what she says. - (discrepancy between speaker’s meaning or rather beliefs and word meaning)

These examples, and the sense in which ‘meaning’ is used in them, are not what the semanticist is concerned with. Semantics is not about private meaning (the Humpty Dumpty problem explains why), but rather about the social, cultural side, nicely illustrated by the following example:

x) Calligraphy means ‘beautiful writing’.

We shall call this the basic meaning of words. However, this basic or linguistic meaning does not really exhaust our problem. Consider:

xi) In saying ‘It’s getting late’, she meant that we should leave.

Now, although some might argue that this example is very close to example ix) above i.e. the idea of ‘private meaning’ there is one aspect of xi) that makes the whole difference. Namely, sentence xi) uttered in an adequate context (say by a guest at a party at midnight, who would like to invite his friends to leave without giving the impression to the hosts that the party is not enjoyable), and with appropriate intonation (and possibly other non extralinguistic devices, such as nodding with the head in the direction of the door), is not understood as a

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statement about time but rather as an invitation to leave by everyone. In this respect, although somewhat removed from the basic, linguistic meaning aspect of the words said (stating that it is late), the statement is correctly semantically interpretable (‘we should leave’) in the social context. This type of meaning outlined in xi) is frequently referred to as speaker meaning or intended meaning.

Although the topic of the study of semantics is the basic meaning of words, it is impossible to address the problem of meaning in language (where language is primarily a social phenomenon) without taking into consideration the problem of speaker and intended meaning (which is usually deal with within the subdiscipline of pragmatics, which will be discussed in Chapter 3).

Even addressing the problem of ‘basic meaning’ is not without problems. What is the basic meaning of the word ‘kangaroo’? Is it, as the dictionary says, ‘a large Australian herbivorous marsupial’? Hm, what if you are not sure of the meaning of ‘herbivorous’ or ‘marsupial’, could we say that the definition got us any further on our way towards the meaning of the word ‘kangaroo’. Not really, since what we obtain from dictionaries is nothing other than a definition of one word in terms of other words, a sort of a vicious circle. Would pointing our finger to the object (in this case animal) that stands for a kangaroo solve the problem? Yes, to an extent and in this case perhaps. But what is rather than being after the meaning of the word kangaroo we were after the meaning of a word ‘animal’. Which animal would we point our finger at? Or, still, what if we were after the meaning of the words hatred, passion, desire, lust?

The problems we have just been considering have been discussed in philosophy well over two thousand years and we shall come back to them in Chapter 2. These problems are currently also discussed within the field of lexical semantics (see Chapter 3). First, however, in order to try and define meaning i.e. try and get a better grasp of what ‘basic meaning’ is, we need to recall the main features of communication and the characteristics of human language, as a particular communication system. Namely, animals communicate as well, but the ‘basic meaning’ shared in animal communication does not correspond to the ‘basic meaning’ studied by linguistic semantics. Let us take a closer look at the issue, trying to grasp the essence of meaning communicated between human beings.

1.2. The meaning of language

What is it that we do without language? Not much, really. Language is the according to many the most important invention for the human race.

In his famous study of animal vs. human communication Hockett (1959, 1960, 1961) proposed several universal characteristics shared between language and other modes of communication. Although the number of universal varied from seven to sixteen in the different presentations of his views, we shall briefly review just the six universal features of communication that received the most attention. They are:

- Semanticity: Language signals are symbols that convey meaning. In linguistic terms, language symbols are associated with (or, more properly, refer to) ‘something’ (from objects to abstract notions to intentions) in the world.

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- Arbitrariness: Language signals are arbitrary in that there is no resemblance, no necessary connection between the signal (in this case the linguistic form) and whatever the signal represents (the sign’s meaning). In other words, linguistic signs are in an arbitrary relation to what they are used to indicate. ‘Dog’, ‘cane’ or ‘pas’ have been more or less arbitrary chosen to denote the furry four-legged barking creature, but none of these words resembles the creature in any way. In other words, there is no a priori reason, why these words stand to represent the four legged barking animal; the connection between these signs and their meanings is purely a matter of convention i.e. agreement5.

- Discreteness: Language signals are discrete. This means that they are clearly distinct, that they do not vary continuously. Language sounds are discrete (cf. ‘p’ vs. ‘b’ in English, Italian or Croatian). The tone of voice and many gestures are not discrete. They vary along continuous parameters, which have no clear boundary between one and the other.

- Duality of patterning: Sometime referred to as ‘double articulation’ or simply ‘duality’. This is the property of language signs to occur at two levels, a limited level of (meaningless) units interacting with a unlimited level of meaningful combinations of these units. In other words, on one level we have discrete and arbitrary symbols (such as phonemes) and on the other (upper) level, we have combinations of these symbols which are meaningful (such as words). In a more general overview of levels, phonemes make morphemes, morphemes make words, and words make sentences. This is an economical feature of language, whereby with a limited set of distinct units we can produce endless combinations. This type of structure is immensely important since the alternative would mean that what we can express is limited to (the necessarily limited number of elements) used for expressive purposes.

- Productivity: Known also as creativity, or open-endedness, productivity refers to the fact that the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite. It also refers to the fact that children can produce sentences they have never heard before (whereas it would appear that animals can only learn by imitation). Basically, this is our (infinite!) ability to use language to say anything at all, including all the things we have never said (or thought of) before.

- Displacement: This feature allows users of language to refer to things and events that are physically and temporally displaced (‘non here and non now’ thought and talk), and even about things that do not even exist. We namely have no difficulty in talking about last night’s party, or our own childhood, or our plans after retirement, or the possible aspects of man’s setting foot on Venus.

Out of the six universals, the first four deal with the nature of the elements that make up a language, and the fifth and sixth are features of language use. Although some of them are found in some forms of animal communication, only human language exhibits all of these

5 Sometimes, both in language and elsewhere, we find elements which are not arbitrary, but rather iconic. Iconicity is a direct (motivated) correlation between form and meaning. A good example of iconic signs are onomatopoeic words (e.g. splash, buzz, quack, boom …).

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characteristics. In particular, it is the structural complexity of both sound and form, and the creativity of human language that cannot be found in the natural communicative behaviour of any other species and which, thus, make human language unique and differentiate language from other forms of communication. ‘Basic meaning’ is then very much an issue of the unique properties of the human language, the make-up of the so-called human language faculty6, and today generally accepted and adopted by the scientific community as the term used to refer to the cognitive make-up of the ability that enable people to acquire and use language.

Linguistic knowledge in humans comprises:- knowledge of the sound system- knowledge of the meaning (of words)- creativity- acceptability ‘knowledge’ (judgements) (is something ‘linguistically’ acceptable or

‘correct’, or ‘grammatical’ or not)

We might be lead to believe, at this point, that having language i.e. exchanging meanings is all there is to language. But the functions of human language go beyond that simplistic view, and include:

- CommunicationThis means that through language we communicate i.e. transfer information, primarily those that relate to knowledge and skills.

- Social interactionThanks to language we are able to fully function in society, create social networks, express emotions, understand, respect and forward both social norms and culture. If communication is essential for the development of our rational beings, social interaction is what helps us develop the social and emotional aspects of our being human.

- Cognitive growthWhile most if not all animals can communicate, and some animals can and actively do socially interact, only humans can, thanks to the language faculty, have thoughts of the ‘not here non now’ type. This, in turn, enables us to think about reality from different perspectives, but it also enables us to have imaginary thought, to speculate, to lie.Imaginary thought or the ability to speculate (‘if – then – else’ sort of cognitive algorithms) represents the backbone of scientific progress, thus the backbone of human cognitive growth. We can then conclude this section by stating that just as a certain degree of cognitive development is essential for the appearance of language (i.e. for the human language faculty), so the human language faculty enables

It is language in all the aspects underlined above that makes the subject matter of linguistics, thus also semantics. So, when in this work we ask questions about language, we are not (only) trying to understand what does it mean to communicate, but rather, what are the structural elements and operational principles of the human language faculty.

We are now equipped with all the tools we might need in order to start doing some ‘semantics proper’. As we proceed, it would be useful if, as you take a look at every new notion and

6 A term introduced into linguistics by the famous American linguist Noam Chomsky.

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problem introduced, you tried to view it from the perspective of the general issues introduced in this first chapter. Namely, as you are about to see, as intellectual climates change, the points of view adopted for the analysis of some scholarly problems change too. What remains, and what is of essence if one wishes to thoroughly explore some scientific problem (such as the problem of linguistic or basic meaning), is the grounding of the discipline in terms of its key tenets. Do keep them in mind as we move on.

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Chapter 2:MEANING – HISTORY OF THOUGTH

As we have already said, languages are all about expressing meaning, and understanding the mechanisms of linguistic meaning is all semantics is about. But what sort of ‘thing’ is meaning? How do we recognize ‘(a) meaning’ when we see (hear) one? And where does it come from? In other words, what is meaning, and who gave things their ‘first’ names?These are some questions that are frequently said to represent the ‘origin of linguistics’, i.e. the first scholarly approach to the study of linguistic issues. Such awareness of language is found in many early civilizations, but in particular, language analysis of this type was first addressed by the philosophers and grammarians of Ancient Greece, Rome, and India.

Anyone interested in linguistics in general, and in semantics in particular, will sooner or later come across references to philosophy. This fact is not surprising as many modern disciplines have actually developed from ideas which date back to centuries before the discipline itself (in this case linguistics, i.e. semantics) came into being.

2.1. Meaning as an exclusively philosophical problem

‘I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.’‘Then you should certainly lecture on Philosophy’, said the Dragon-fly; and he spread a pair of lovely gauze wings and soared away into the sky.

(Oscar Wild, ‘The Remarkable Rocket’, 1888)

Pinning down meaning is an enterprise that was first undertaken within philosophy. Philosophers were the first ones who worked on and developed the first theories of meaning. It ought to be noted here that philosophy of language is sometimes referred to as philosophical semantics, although it should be pointed out that philosophy of language is probably a wider field of inquiry than traditional semantics would recognise as falling within its scope of inquiry. The main thing philosophical semantics is concerned with is the relationship between words and their meaning (some call it the relationship between words and things – or referents – but as we shall see below, this view tends to be reductive).

Talking about semantics within the paradigm of philosophy, before moving on, we need to recall a distinction proposed by Grayling (1982, pp. 173-5) between the linguistic philosophers and the philosophers of language. The former are interested in solving complex philosophical problems by examining the use of certain terms in language. The latter are interested in the connection between the linguistic and the non-linguistic, or, as already proposed, the connection between language and the world.

In view of the above we conclude that it is the philosophers of language who are crucial to the development of a theory of meaning. Thus, philosophy of language is also known under the name of philosophical semantics (see Malmkjaaer, 1991; 329-339). Let us take a closer look at this subdiscipline, beginning where it all started: in ancient Greece.

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2.1.1. The issue of meaning in classical philosophy

Perhaps the most influential and best known of all classical philosophers, Plato (427 – 347 BC) and his pupil Aristotle (384-322 BC), are the first known thinkers who considered the relationship between words and things. The earliest surviving linguistic debate is found on the pages of Plato’s writings. As most of Plato’s writing, the one on language also takes the form of a dialogue. Plato’s famous dialogue about the origins of language and the nature of meaning is entitled Cratylus (see Appendix, Text 1). In general, Plato’s dialogues propose one character who acts as a teacher, and who guides one or more students towards a better understanding of a topic. The teacher does so by asking his pupils a number of leading questions. In Plato’s early writings, the teacher is called Socrates (FT: generally taken to represent the ideas of Plato’s own teacher Socrates).

The dialogue Cratylus comprises two parts; the first one is between Socrates and Hermogenes, and next is the dialogue between Socrates and Cratylus. Hermogenes holds the view that language is a product of convention, which also implies that the relationship between words and things is arbitrary. Such a view later came to be associated with a stream of thought called ‘conventionalism’, and the people supporting it – ‘conventionalists’.Cratylus, on the other hand, holds an entirely opposite view. His position is that language came into being naturally. This view also presupposes an intrinsic link or relationship between words and things. The main argument presented by Cratylus in support of his position is God as a ‘a greater power which assigned first names to things’, and as divine, this argument could not be questioned further.Plato’s positions are from today’s scholarly perspective entirely untenable, but they are interesting in that they introduce the dichotomy between the already mentioned ‘conventionalists’ and the ‘naturalists’, i.e. thinkers who subscribe to (some kind of) natural origin of meaning.

The next interesting development of the problem of meaning is found in Plato’s student Aristotle. In his essay De Interpretatione (On Interpretation) Aristotle proposes a view of words, i.e. meaning seen though the lens of our senses i.e. perceptions, i.e. impressions. When he writes that ‘no name exists by nature, but only by becoming a symbol’ Aristotle also argues that (these) signs vary between individuals, since they are mental experiences (i.e. collections of impressions which form our mental experiences). This view is developed many centuries later, in the work of the British Empiricists, primarily in the writings of John Locke.

2.2. Theories of meaning – philosophical semantics proper

The philosophers of language, trying to focus on the connection between language and the world, are actually attempting to pin this connection down. In other words, they are trying to explain how is it that language manages to establish a link between words and the world. This link between the word and the world is seen by the philosophers of language as crucial to the development of the theory of meaning. Thus, this very problem is central to philosophical semantics, and our primary concern in the pages to follow.

Over the centuries, philosophers have developed a large number of theories of meaning.

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In a nutshell, they can be subdivided as follows:

Theory of meaningcan be construed of the basis of

facts OR usagetruth conditions role

As linguistics ‘views’ usage and roles as falling under the domain of pragmatics, semanticist are left to explore the ‘factual’ or ‘truth conditional’ or rather word – world avenue of the approach to the problem of (construing a theory of) meaning.

From the point of view of the relationship between the word and the world – which, as we have seen, is the focal area for philosophical semanticists – three broad lines of conceiving meaning can be distinguished. They are:

a) word concept (idea) (connotation, properties implied or suggested, intension of a word)

b) word thing (referent) (denotation, extension of a word, particular referent(s) that words refer to)

c) word referent mediated through concept (speaker)

Let us take a look at each of them separately.

2.2.1. THE MEANING OF A WORD ISA CONCEPT IT EXPRESSES

When it comes to the development of the theories of meaning, the first name that needs to be recalled is that of the British empiricist philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), and his ideational theory of meaning. In a nutshell, this theory proposes that words are signs necessary for communication, and that these signs stand for ideas which, in turn, are then the proper and immediate signification of signs i.e. words. Put in simpler terms, ideas are the meaning of words. Under this view it is assumed that meaning is attached but separable from words, because meaning originates in the mind, in the form of ideas. So, when we use a word such as ‘bird’ we are describing the idea (our own idea!), or the impression, that we have received through our sensory experiences of a bird (or of all birds that we have ever seen, heard …?)

Viewing ideas as images or representations of external objects, Locke basically argued that our words simply stood for such ideas. Language could be considered as a kind of tool that we use to convey ideas to each together. On the other hand, he also maintained that all that we have direct access to are our ideas, which we can contemplate by use of our understanding. He maintained that it is exactly to these ideas that that we refer when we use a word. In his ‘An Essay concerning human understanding’ he introduced the idea that ‘a speaker is able to use words as signs of internal conceptions’ and he sees the purpose of language as being to convey ideas from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the hearer (see also Chapman, 2000: 17-21).

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On this view, the meaning of words resides in speakers’ heads and truth may be understood in terms of correspondence i.e. ideas are considered true if they accurately represent objects in the external world. However, these views of meaning and truth have numerous critics and so Locke’s theory is open to some criticism. Some problems with Locke’s theory include:

1) the separation of thought and language. Where do we draw the line? How do we differentiate between the two? and

2) Wittgenstein’s (1958) anti-private – language argument. Ludwig Wittgenstein (see below, under 2.2.5.) strongly argued (like many others, on the other hand) that language is more than one person’s ideas. Language is developed and used in society, it is a social creation. It can never be seen as reflecting only one person’s ideas, but rather as a reflection of a collective enterprise – and of collective interests and characteristics. Wittgenstein rejected Locke’s views and put forward the view that meaning could best be understood as use. De Saussure argued that meaning of words was essentially conventional in nature, relying on social norms for meaning, and that language was best understood as a “system of differences” where individual words derived their meaning more from their relation to other words than from their relation to ideas.

Summarizing, we may wish to conclude that by viewing meaning as being contained inside speakers’ heads, Locke took a view that cognition should be given priority over language, that the subject should have primacy over practices and social interaction. From today’s perspective, this position is unacceptable, as it has been completely reversed through most twentieth century thought on meaning and language. Namely, many 20th century thinkers of a Wittgensteinian and/or poststructuralist leaning, view language as primary to cognition (albeit this is not necessarily the case with all linguists, especially those of Chomskyan learning). However, both 20th century philosophers of language and linguistic philosophers agree on the view that meaning is not private but rather essentially public, social and intersubjective in nature. Human beings are nowadays viewed as being socialised into linguistic practices that actually enable them to perform complex cognitive processes. Meanings are things that are always negotiated between people and arrived at in practice, in response to the demands of situations.

Briefly speaking, it became clear at one point that a link between words and (private) ideas could not yield a successful theory of meaning. The next proposal then was to try and establish a link between words and the real world. Within this context, we have to recall the contribution of another brilliant scholar, the British philosopher Bertrand Russel.

2.2.2. THE MEANING OF A WORD IS THE THING THE WORD REFERS TO

Bertrand Russel (1872-1970) proposed what came to be known as the primitive reference theory, suggesting that words have meaning in that they stand for something other than themselves. Russel said that the meaning of the word is the object that it stands for (where ‘thing’ includes also properties, relationships, and the ‘syncategorematic’ words which get their meaning ‘in context’, such as ‘if’ and ‘but’).

Russel opened the way for a series of scholars who pursued to construct a theory of meaning following the idea that things are the meaning of words. It however soon became clear that this position was also faced with a number of serious flaws.

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Here are some problems with the primitive reference theory:

1) It can’t account for co-referring terms which have different meanings.If I say: ‘the man who invented the parking meter’ and ‘the man who invented the yo-yo’, we can’t say that these two expressions have the same meaning. But what would happen if Bob Smith had invented both. Bob Smith would, in that case, be the referent ob both the expression ‘the man who invented the parking meter’ as well as the expression ‘the man who invented the yo-yo’. On Russel’s view, having the same referent, these two expressions would necessarily have to be equated in meaning, which, obviously, they are not (albeit referring to the same person);

2) Reference-lacking terms are not meaningless If I say ‘the present King of France is bold’ we all understand what this means. And yet, there is at present no King of France (France being a Republic). This example stands to show that an expression which lacks a referent has meaning, and this latter stands to show that the referent is, then, not a necessary condition for meaning, i.e. the referent of an expression is not to be equated with the meaning of that expression.

3) This theory cannot account for linguistic structure. It does not explain the difference between expressions such as ‘Bob broke the window’ and ‘The window was broken by Bob’.

So if meaning of a word cannot successfully be equated neither with the idea we individually have in our heads when we use that word, nor with the referent – the ‘thing out there’ – that we refer to when we use the word, which alternatives do we have for explicating meaning? One possibility we have not looked into yet is that of viewing meaning as truth conditions.

2.2.3. MEANING AS TRUTH CONDITIONS

A more sophisticated (and newer) version of the ‘meaning equals reference’ theory is expressed by the proponents of the idea that meaning is a relation between an expression and a state of affairs in the world. In other words, on this view the meaning of a sentence is equated with the conditions in the world which have to be met in order for the sentence to be true. The idea comes from the study of logic, and theories based on this approach are known as theories of truth-conditional relations.

Truth conditions are the conditions that obtain precisely when a sentence is true. In other words, the sentence "It is raining in New York" is true precisely when it is raining in New York. Truth conditions are construed as theoretical entities. We could illustrate this claim in following terms: suppose that, in a particular truth theory, the word "Clinton" refers to the former U.S. president Bill Clinton, and "is alive" is associated with the set of all currently living things. Then one way of representing the truth condition of "Clinton is alive" is as the ordered pair <Clinton, {x: x is alive}>. And we say that "Clinton is alive" is true if and only if the referent of "Clinton" belongs to the set associated with "is alive", that is, if and only if Clinton is alive.We note, however, that we will be able to understand the sentence ‘Clinton is alive’ even after his death. Thus, it ought to be stated that in semantics the truth condition of a sentence is almost universally considered to be distinct from its meaning. The meaning of a sentence is conveyed if the truth conditions for the sentence are understood. Additionally, there are many sentences that are understood although their truth condition is uncertain. One popular

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argument for this view is that some sentences are necessarily true; they are true whatever happens to obtain. All such sentences have the same truth conditions, but arguably do not thereby have the same meaning. Likewise, the sets {x: x is alive} and {x: x is alive and x is not a rock} are identical - they have precisely the same members - but presumably the sentences "Clinton is alive" and "Clinton is alive and is not a rock" have different meanings.To sum up, while being very influential within the philosophical realm of meaning exploration, truth conditions are not viewed by applied linguists as being a viable tool for explicating linguistic (lexical) meaning. The main difficulty with truth-conditional approaches is raised by the question: how are truth – conditions themselves to be stated? Furthermore, truth-conditional relations can account only for meanings that express a relationship between a linguistic expression and aspects of an ‘objective’ world. But what about meanings that are highly subjective, or moral, aesthetic, religious and philosophical ones?

What alternative approaches to meaning do we have at this point? Let us try by viewing meaning as knowledge.

2.2.4. MEANING AS KNOWLEDGE

Another proponent of a well known theory of meaning, the American linguist Leonard Bloomfiled (see his text in the Appendix), a behaviourist, thought that meaning should be treated as a stimulus – response relationship between a speech form and the speakers knowledge about the world. However, viewing meaning as scientific knowledge is not a satisfactory way to go about defining meaning since speakers who do not know that LIVER is a ‘large glandular organ in the abdomen of the vertebrates secreting bile’, and that RED is ‘the point in the spectrum approaching its least-refracted end’, are very likely to use the words ‘liver’ and ‘red’ appropriately and successfully for the purposes of communication.

2.2.5 MEANING AS (MEANING IN) USE

The next view of meaning that we shall explore in this review of past attempts to describe and define meaning is the view of meaning as something ‘taking place only when used’. This view of ‘meaning in use’ is most frequently associated with the name of the famous Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951, see his text in the Appendix). However, stating that the word gets its meaning only when used still lacks something really vital from the point of view of science. Namely, in order to describe what meaning in use is, we need to describe what IT IS that speakers know about the use of single words.

2.2.6. MEANING AS SENSE PLUS REFERENCE

In order to try and answer this latter question, i.e. in order to try and solve most criticisms raised above with respect to most philosophical views of meaning, we have to abandon the analysis of meaning as a two point relation between:

the WORD ---------------------------------- the WORLD / IDEA

and replace it by something more complex.

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This view has its roots in the groundbreaking proposal by Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925). Frege criticised the view of meaning as being simply understood as reference and proposed the following equation:

MEANING = SENSE + REFERENCE

In Fege’s proposal, references are what exists in the non-linguistic realm (in the world) and sense is the crucial link between the real world and the linguistic world. When we talk of sense, we deal with the relationships inside the language (relative to I-language), whereas when we talk of reference we deal with the relationship between language and the world (relative to E-language). By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things (real, abstract, relations, emotions …) in the world are being talked about. Even when abstract, reference is not an abstraction. On the other hand, sense is always abstract, in that it is entertained in the mind of a language user. When a person understands fully what is said to him/her, it is reasonable to say that s/he grasps the sense of the expression s/he hears.

It is important to note that while every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference (see handout on Frege).

In more recent times, this view is best reflected in the ‘semiotic triangle’ by Ogden & Richards (1923, cf. Appendix):

Thought

Symbol --------------------Referent

This view denies a direct link between words and things, arguing that a relationship can be made only through the use of language users’ minds. Thus, in order to analyse, meaning, we no longer consider a two point relationship (between the world and the word), bur rather have to start looking at a three-point relation, i.e. a triangle:

the speaker,the mind

( SENSE )

linguistic expression_____________________________the world( REFERENCE )

Meaning is a triangulation, mediated through the users of language. For every word, there would be an associated concept.

The main criticism of this approach is similar to the criticism moved to Locke’s ideational theory of meaning, i.e. the insuperable difficulty in identifying ‘concepts’. Some words have meanings that are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which

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might come to mind when I, the author of these lines, use the word ‘table’ (not to use the more complex lexical item ‘meaning’) is exactly the same as the one you, the reader of these lines, might bring to mind when hearing this same word(s).

This latter problem is well known within the philosophical tradition of semantics, and is usually identified with W.v.O. Quine (recall his ‘Gavagai’ problem – see your handouts). Most of Quine’s criticisms were solved by Davidson and his ‘Principle of charity’, which states that the concepts underlying the meaning of words we share might not be identical, but that they are sufficiently similar as to allow communication. It is important to note that the introduction of the speaker into the picture once again eclipses the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics.

We shall now turn to another perspective on meaning, i.e. descriptive semantics. It is a traditional approach, which rather than ‘explaining’ meaning or accounting for aims at describing it.

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Chapter 3TRADITIONAL (DESCRIPTIVE) SEMANTICS

3.1. General considerations about the relationship form - meaning

Historically, people have tried to approach the issue of meaning as a philosophical problem. However, there is another very influential approach to basic meaning, and it is the one aimed at describing primarily lexical meaning. This approach is known as the traditional or descriptive approach. It is focused on the (basic, core) meaning of the sign.

As we have already remarked, language, apart from following certain structural rules (syntax), needs to be sued systematically and coherently from the point of view of meaning. Namely, language is, above all, a means of connecting form and meaning. The study of meaning of forms used in language is known under the name of semantics. That branch of semantics which studies the meaning of words – as the most easily understood "package" of form and meaning – is known under the name of lexical semantics. In other words, we can say that lexical semantics deals with the complex meanings of words, and their interrelationships.

Now, an early formalization of the notion of "form + meaning" was the sign as defined by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).

De Saussure pointed out that every linguistic sign has two components:

1. the signifier (French signifiant): the "sound image" or form, i.e. pronunciation

and

2. the signified (French signifié): the concept represented, i.e. meaning

Semanticists, particularly lexical semanticists, focus primarily on the signified.

De Saussure also emphasized the arbitrariness of the sign: any meaning can, in principle, be associated with any form (and vice versa). It should be noted, however, that there are certain iconic tendencies in language, where the form reflects the meaning in some way.

Sound symbolism is one type of iconicity. For example, vowels with a small opening in the vocal tract have a slight tendency to be associated with small things or meanings (little), while vowels with large openings are more associated with big things or meanings (large). Most words do not reflect this tendency: cf. big and small!

Onomatopoeia is another type, since here the name sounds like the thing it refers to. Many birds take names that evoke their call (cuckoo, chickadee, whooping crane), and the names of sounds often are onomatopoeic (boom, splat, snort, tick-tock). There is still a significant arbitrariness -- not all languages use the same words for these birds and sounds! -- but there's an influence on the sound of the word.

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Another aspect of language that Saussure emphasized as its status as a system of oppositions -- meanigs contrasting with meanings, forms contrasting with forms. We'll see examples of meaning contrast further down in this chapter.

3.2. Lexical semantics

In the previous chapter we have taken a look at how people have tried to cope with the problem of (word) meaning from the philosophical and in the next chapter we shall take a look at how people have tried to deal with this intriguing issue from the cognitive (mental) perspective. In this section we are addressing what is perhaps, in some ways at least, the closest to what most people identify with semantics proper; the field of lexical semantics.

Lexical semantics can be defined as the study of word meaning. The very definition implies that lexical semantics is primarily a descriptive endeavour, aimed at answering two main challenges:

a) representing the meaning of each word in (a) language;b) showing in which ways the meanings of words in (a) language are

interrelated.

Scholars who work within the framework of lexical semantics work on the definition of particular words, hoping that they can ultimately propose a general theory of how word meaning should be represented. This is not an easy task. Even the representation of single words might be more problematic that one would generally think.

Take, e.g., the English word ‘bachelor’. How would you define it, how would you represent it in a dictionary (as dictionaries are the best example of ‘lexical semantics in action’)? Would you say that a bachelor is ‘an unmarried man’. How about ‘My 16 year old brother is a bachelor’? Is 16 too young (although many 16-year olds would argue that they are men!). Perhaps ‘an unmarried adult man’? If this is indeed so, why is the sentence ‘The Pope is a bachelor’ rated as totally unacceptable by most English native speakers? Should we amend the definition and say ‘a bachelor is an unmarried adult man legally eligible for marriage’? But what about a man who has been happily living for 7 years with a woman he has never officially married, or an illegal immigrant who expediently marries a native platonic friend, or a successful entrepreneur living in a penthouse apartment (all examples from Winograd, 1976)? None of these men could be referred to as bachelors?

Some have argued that the word ‘bachelor’ is not a good example, in that it is too culturally bound. Let us then turn to a simpler lexical entry, the basic verb ‘to paint’. If ‘to paint’ means ‘cause to e covered with paint’, why isn’t it painting when one spills some paint on the floor, or when a paint factory explodes and ‘paints’ the surrounding area? Perhaps because there is no conscious will implied? OK, but what about Michelangelo dipping his brush into the paint can (Fodor, 1981)? That should be ‘painting the brush’ by all means, and yet, in terms of semantic representation of English native speakers, none of these examples correspond to ‘painting’, just as none of the examples above correspond to the meaning of ‘bachelor’.

Is there any hope to solve these and similar problems. Doing so is exactly the main goal of lexical semantics.

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We already know that lexical semantics aims at solving these problems by a) representing (i.e. defining) the meaning of each word in (a) language (doing, basically, what lexicographers i.e. compilers of dictionaries do), and b) examining sense relations, i.e. showing in which ways the meanings of words in (a) language are interrelated. We shall now examine each of these challenges.

3.2.1 The problem of defining the meaning of words – LEXICOGRAPHY

''Dictionary', (noun) – A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic'

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

We have already said that one of the goals of the traditional descriptive aims of many semanticists has been that to define i.e. represent the meaning of each word in a given language. But how are we to approach this huge task? And how huge is it?

Webster’s Third International Dictionary of the English Language contains over 450,000 entries. Of course, most speakers, even native speakers, do not know all these words. Nevertheless, every speaker of every language knows tens of thousands of words. Language acquisition researchers have estimated that a six year old child commands around 13.000 words. An average high school graduate knows the meaning of about 60.000 words. The number goes up sharply with education. Yet, notwithstanding education, we learn new words throughout our lives. How many new words did you learn reading this script?

We will talk about the way we learn, represent and access word meaning in the following chapter. In this chapter, we want to focus on the following question: what is the best way to describe i.e. represent word meaning?

In order to do this, we need to define the very word ‘word’. Are ‘play’, ‘played’, ‘playing’ and ‘player’ instances of one word (‘play’), two words (one verb and one noun), or four distinct words? Are ‘couch’ and ‘sofa’ two words, or one (since they have the same meaning).

How do we know what a word is? What would you say, is antidisestablishmentarianism an English word? What about knsidngksksjaai? Would you say that the former is indeed an English word, whereas the latter is not? Why? If you do agree, your opinion is totally in line with that of 400 native English speaking students who were presented with the word antidisestablishmentarianism and suggested that it is the longest word in the English language. The fact that they could not provide a meaning for it, did not seem to represent a problem. The word observed all rules of English word formation. In other terms, this word is morphologically plausible. Following the same principles, we can safely state ‘couch’ and ‘sofa’ are two words because they are represented by two totally different strings of words (i.e. they are morphologically not related), and the closeness of the meaning between these two words will be explored later, under the subheading of Sense relations (x.x.)

On the other hand in the case of knsidngksksjaai we can be certain (as the English native students were) that this could not be an English word. This word does not respect the rules of English phonology. It does not have any

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However, if you were asked, could this be a word in some language you do not know? The answer is likely to be yes. Why? Well, it looks like a word. For literate speakers, it possible to identify words at the level of spelling, or orthography, as units of sound-meaning association preceded and followed by a blank (FT: What happens at the level of sound or hearing, ie. the level of spoken language. How do we identify words at that level?)

What then about 'play', ‘play’, ‘played’, ‘playing’ and ‘player’. Are ‘walk’, ‘walking’, ‘walked’ and ‘walker’? Is ‘walking’ the same word in ‘walking stick’ and ‘John is walking too fast’. According to what has just been said, we are looking at four distinct words. Well, the real answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Here is why.

3.2.1.2. Lexical vs. functional words

Words are usually defined as minimal free units of meaning. As said, words can be identified at the level of writing by virtue of their being separated by a white space on both ends (and then we talk of orthographic words). At the level of phonology, we can identify them only the basis of sense, or meaning.

All languages and linguists make a distinction between lexical words (know also as content words) and grammatical words (of function words). The former, including all verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives belong to a category that can be freely augmented with new additions (members). They are thus known as open class words. The latter, i.e. functional words – prepositions, interjections, articles – do not change form and cannot the class of words to which they belong cannot be augmented. They are thus known as closed class words.

But this is not the end of the story. Grammatical categories such as verb, noun, preposition, article etc. are traditionally primarily defined (as such) at the level of syntax and morphology. They do, however, reflect deep semantic differences. Nouns are not only to be understood as lexical items that fall into the place of a subject or object. And nouns are not only lexical items derived from the addition of prefixes or suffixes which result in new noun coinage (such a the prefix 'ex-' to mean 'former' or the suffix '-s' to mean plural). They can also be recognised in terms of expressing a meaning that can be identified as describing an object or an idea. Just as verbs can be identified as words expressing the maning of action, state of process. In terms of ‘word units’ the basic, infinitive (without ‘to’) form of the verb is considered to be the ‘proper lexical entry’ or lemma (cf. Saed p.56).

But how are lemmas represented in dictionaries. The answer is very straightforward: lemmas are represented in dictionaries in terms of definitions. A definition is ‘an attempt to show the meaning of one word (or other linguistic expression) by means of some other words which ‘say the same thing’ (Goddard, 1998: 26). Defining is basically paraphrasing. But defining (the meaning) of a word is not a simple task. Here are some of the best known pitfalls. They should help us understand what a definition should not be, thus also bringing us closer to hat a good definition is.

3.2.1.3. The pitfalls of defining

In order to identify, and thus try to avoid the pitfalls of defining, we first need to agree on what makes a good explanation? The answer to this question can be found en route to the

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answer to another question: what is the purpose of defining? We generally agree that the primary scope of defining words is that of trying to explain, clarify their meanings, make their content and usage more accessible. A definition is a kind of paraphrase the scope of which making the term being defined easier to understand and use. It would follow that a good explanation should be a) simpler than the term it is used for; b) helpful, i.e. useful, i.e. clarifying. This is often not the case. Here are some problems related to defining that are occasionally encountered in practice:

ObscurityDefinitions at times tend to be more complicated, i.e. contain terms that are more complex than the original term being defined. If a definition is not framed in terms of simpler, more easily understood terms, it is an obscure definition, i.e. a definition that does not serve its purpose. Some examples from various dictionaries (following Goddard, 1998: 27) include:

fire: state of combustionpepper: a pungent condiment obtained from the dried berries of various plants, either whole of groundhiccup: involuntary spasm of respiratory organs, with sudden closure of glottis and characteristic sound.

We notice that someone who does not know the meaning of the word ‘fire’ is not likely to know the meaning of the word ‘combustion’, someone who does not understand ‘pepper’ or ‘hiccup’ is not likely to understand ‘condiment’, ‘spasm’ or ‘glottis’.

CircularityBlatant examples of circular definitions – i.e. definitions in which a term is explained in terms of paraphrases which employ this same term – are examples such a Palmer’s (1976) definition of ‘salt’ as ‘the stuff we add to salty food’. A more subtle form of circularity is found in ‘vicious circles’, i.e. criss-crossings of definitions. Namely, if we look up the definition for the word ‘demand’ and read ‘to claim as a right’, and then look up ‘claim’ and read ‘demand as a right or due’, we see an example of circular defining which does not serve its purpose because it does not help in the case of a person who does not understand both ‘claim’ and ‘demand’. Other pairs or terms which are frequently defined in a circular fashion include ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’, ‘receive’ and ‘accept’, and even three-element items such as ‘appropriate’, ‘fitting’ and ‘suitable’.

Superfluous components and disjunctionsIn Aristotle’s words, a superfluous component is one ‘upon whose removal he remainder still makes the term that is being defined clear’ (Topica). In other words, superfluous components are those which do not contribute in any way to the clarity and the accessibility of the definition, but usually reiterate elements of meaning that have already been explicated. An illustrative example is found in Longman’s Dictionary (1978, cited in Goddard, 1998) under the entry weapon.

weapon: an instrument of offensive or defensive combat; something to fight with

First of all we notice that offensive or defensive combat, apart from making the definition more obscure, do not add to the clarity of the meaning of weapon (as offensive or defensive

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does not contribute to the semantics of weapon). Furthermore, in terms of superfluous components, we notice that the second part of the definition (something to fight with) contributed to the definition exactly in the same way as does the first part of the definition (instrument of combat).A special subcategory of superfluous components are the so-called disjunctions. Disjunctions are all elements that follow after ‘or’ as in the example of ‘tempt’from the Oxford Paperback Dictionary:

tempt: persuade or try to persuade by the prospect of pleasure or advantage.

Both disjunctions ‘or’ in the above case are superfluous. We could simply say that to tempt means ‘to try to persuade by the prospect of something good’. Trying to persuade often results in the effect of persuading so both persuade and try to persuade are included, whereas ‘the prospect of something good’ includes both pleasure, advantage and other positive outcomes which might lead someone to yield into persuasion, and which are not listed under ‘pleasure or advantage’. This latter remark also makes us see how ‘or’ is frequently used by lexicographers in order to avoid saying explicitly what A and B (in ‘A or B’) have in common.

The issue of accuracy: too accurate (too broad) or inaccurate (too narrow)When it comes to definitions, accuracy is probably one of the most delicate issues. As Goddard (1998: 31) put it ‘there is no universal agreement about how accurate one is entitled to expect a definition to be’. The general rule of thumb is that a good definition of a term is one that predicts the appropriate range of use of that term (ibid.). However, this goal is frequently not achieved. Definitions are not so rarely either too broad (containing too many components are leading towards interpretations which are actually not within the range of use of the word being defined), or inaccurate or too narrow (missing elements of points of meaning, too restrictive). A good example of a definition which is too broad is provided by the term ‘bachelor’ and ‘cashier’ (both cited in Goodard, 1998: 31, 32) defined as follows:

bachelor: an unmarried mancashier: person in charge of cash

According to the above definitions my 15 year old brother or, for that matter, the Pope, would be bachelors, and I could be named a ‘cashier’ after every visit to the cash machine (none of these usages are, of course, acceptable).

A few examples of definitions (from the Macqurie Dictionary) that are too narrow include:

browse: to glance at random through a book or books

since ‘browse’ is nowadays even more frequently used for, say, computers, and

appointment: a time when you have arranged to go and see someone

as having someone come and see us (not necessarily even at a given time) is also an ‘appointment’.

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Open-ended (non predictive) definitionsOpen-ended definitions are those which rely on vague terms such as ‘etc’, ‘esp’ (i.e. especially’, ‘and so on’ and all other lexical devices which introduce open ended categories (categories of which we do not know neither the members nor the criteria for defining them). Such devices make definitions untestable, as one cannot know what are the items that belong into the ‘etc’ category (and thus cannot test them to see whether they fit the definition or not). Such definition are also known under the name of ‘non-predictive’ since it is impossible to predict which criterion is to be used to create the ‘etc’, ‘esp’, ‘and similar’, and all other open-ended categories. Albeit being totally unhelpful for the users, this is one of the favourite devices of lexicographers; examples of open ended categories can be found on virtually every page of every dictionary. The device has rightly been called ‘the lexicographer’s security blanket’.

False componentsFalse components are (usually semantic) elements in the definition of a word, which make the reader of the definition predict some inaccurate i.e. inappropriate usages of the word being defined. In other words, a definition that contains false components will predict a range of usages of the word being defined which does, indeed, overlap with the actual usage range but is either too broad or too narrow. For example, the definition of the word ‘sure’ provided by the Concise Oxford Dictionary is given in the following terms: ‘Having or seeming to have adequate reason for belief’. Although this seems correct, it is not entirely so. Namely, we can at times say that we are sure of something even though we lack adequate reason for this belief; we can say that we are sure of something simply on the basis of our intuition, or because we wish to believe (in) something, or … ‘Adequate reason’ for belief is neither a necessary nor a sufficient component for the definition of the lexical item ‘sure’.

The description of meaning in terms of ‘components’ just observed above, is based on an older tradition – that of semantic features, an approach to meaning that introduces the second challenge of lexical semantics, i.e. describing sense relations.

3.2.2. Describing sense relations

We have said that the description of sense relations aims at showing in which ways the meanings of words in (a) language are interrelated. One approach which haims at construing the web of a) semantic components included in each word, and b) how the semantic components of each word are related (opposed) to the semantic features of all other words in a language is known as ‘analysis semantic features’.

3.2.2.1. Semantic features and other ‘structural’ meaning analyses

Consider the following sentence:

‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.’ (Chomsky, 1957)

or, still, the following sentences:

‘My brother is an only child.’‘That bachelor is pregnant.’

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‘The rock sang a book.’

Notwithstanding the fact that all the above utterances are syntactically well formed, there is something’s terribly wrong with the statements they express. In linguistic terms, we may wish to state that these sentences express nonsense, i.e. that they are semantically odd. In other words, their meaning does not make sense7. What is the source of this oddness? In general terms we may wish to say that in each of the sentences above there are elements of meaning of some words which are in sharp contrast (i.e. mutually exclusive) with the meaning of some other words. Namely, is something is ‘green’ it can’t be ‘colourless’; a ‘brother’ is a sibling (thus ‘non only child’) by definition; a ‘bachelor’ is ‘male’ and ‘male’ cannot be pregnant, and in order to sing the performer of the action needs be ‘animate’, which a ‘rock’ is not. Features such as ‘color’, ‘male’, ‘only child’, ‘animate’ etc. are (in various combinations) at the core of the meaning of words, and are known as semantic features. We can think of them as some sort of semantic properties of words that speakers agree upon, which makes communication possible (thus avoiding the problem of the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ type, as exposed in the opening lines of this chapter).

Let us consider a set of words defined in terms of semantic features:

table cow girl woman boy man animate _ + + + + +human _ _ + + + +male _ _ _ _ + +adult _ _ _ _ _ +

Table 3.1.: Example of feature analysis

The analysis just proposed in Table 3.1. may seem neat and straightforward, but is not without problems. Try and draw a similar semantic features’ chart for the following threesomes: ‘love, passion, desire’, or ‘threat, intimidation, warning’, or still ‘hope, wish, desire, dream’. Not all that easy, right?

Another problem with the analysis of words in terms of semantic features is that if we were to describe the entire vocabulary, the list of features would end up being extremely long, and its use would become questionable. In order to solve the types of problems as the ones just outlines, linguists thought of characterising words not in terms of their inherent, isolated meaning, but in terms of the relationships of words to other words. A ‘tulip’ can thus be described as a ‘type of flower’, ‘big’ as ‘opposite of small’, and ‘broad’ as ‘the same as wide’. This procedure is knows as the analysis of lexical relations. The types of lexical relations which are usually considered by linguists include:

Synonymy

7 Sure, as Igor Babić, one of my students, insightfully pointed out, we can try and construct an interpretation for each of them where we would attribute a metaphoric meaning to the single words – e.g.‘colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ can be interpreted as: environmentalists’ ideas without any vigour (or support, or financial backing) are not achieving results and this is making their proponents angry, furious. However, what we are talking about here is the literal meaning.

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Synonyms are two or more lexical forms, the meanings of which are very closely related. These forms are often (but not always) intersubstitutable in sentences. Examples of synonymy are pairs: broad – wide, hide-conceal, almost – nearly, cab-taxi, freedom-liberty, answer-reply.The idea of ‘sameness of meaning’ should be used very carefully, and clearly distinct from ‘total sameness’. The best test for the degree of closeness (sameness) of meaning is the ‘exchangeability test’ – seeing whether one word in one sentence can be exchanged with a synonym. E.g. although ‘answer’ and ‘reply’ are very close synonyms, in the sentence ‘Karen had only one answer correct on the test’, replacing ‘answer’ with ‘reply’ would sound odd.

Antonymy

Two forms with opposite meanings are called antonyms. Common examples are quick-slow, big-small, long-short, old-young, above-below, male-female, alive-dead.Antonyms can be subdivided in the following ways:

- gradable antonyms (e.g. big-small) can be used in comparative constructions (bigger than, smaller than) and the negative member of the pair does not necessarily imply the other (not big is not necessarily small, it can also be ‘medium’);

- non-gradable antonyms (e.g. dead-alive), also known as complementary pairs, comparative constructions are not normally used, and the negative member does imply the other (not dead implies alive).

Hyponymy

When the meaning of one lexical form is included in the meaning of another, the relationship between the two forms is described as hyponymy. Some typical examples are pairs: daffodil-flower, dog-animal, poodle-dog, carrot-vegetable, birch-tree etc. The concept of ‘inclusion’ or ‘hyponymy’ involves the idea that if A is a hyponym of B, the A is certainly also B (or the meaning of A is included in the meaning of B – e.g. daffodil is a hyponym of flower, it is also a flower). Term B (in our case ‘flower’) is called superordinate term.Hyponymy is a type of hierarchical lexical relation.

Homophony, homonymy, and polysemy

Same sounds, or rather, same words, sometimes mean different things. When two or more written words have the same pronunciation we speak of homophony. Same examples are bare –bear, flour-flower, meat-meet, sew-so, pail-pale.When, similarly, we encounter one written form (both written and spoken) which has two or more unrelated meanings, we speak of homonymy. Examples of homonymy are bank (of a river and financial institution), mole (small animal and spot on the skin), pupil (student and ‘dot’ in the eye).However, there are cases of words that apart form having the same surface form are related in meaning. In this case we speak of polysemy. A good example is provided by the words head, which can be applied to refer to the ‘thing’ on top of your body, as well as the top of a glass of beer, the top or just the general manager of a company.A rule of thumb for differentiating between homonyms and polysemous words is to see whether two words of the same form are cited as two separate entries in the dictionary (in

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which case we talk of homonyms) or whether the different (but related) meanings are cited as subentries under the same lexical entry in the dictionary.

Thematic or ‘theta’ roles

The relations between words are not exhausted by the above list. We can think of the relations of words also from the syntactic point of view, whereby e.g. verb subcategorisation is defined in terms of ‘zero’, ‘one’ or ‘two’ valency, depending on the number of object verbs ‘select’ (or ‘need’) from the point of view of their meaning. So the verb ‘to sleep’ selects no object (and is thus ‘zero-valent’), the verbs ‘to find’ selects one object (find WHAT), and the verb ‘to put’ selects two objects (put WHAT and WHERE).

In the sentence ‘The boy put the toy into the box.’, the NP ‘the boy’ is called the agent (or ‘doer’), the NP ‘the toy’ is called the patient (or ‘theme’ or ‘recepient’),and the PP ‘into the box’ is called the location. The semantic relationships that we have here called ‘agent’, ‘patient’, and ‘location’ are in linguistics known as the thematic relations or (Greek ‘theta’) roles. Other thematic relations are goal (where the action is directed, e.g. ‘run up to the house’), source (where the action originated, e.g. ‘fly out of the nest’), and instrument (referring to the object used to accomplish the action, e.g. ‘I broke the window with the brick’).

Although the semantic relations that we have just described are not just part of all verbs, and more generally words, and irrespective of the fact that they are most certainly part of every speaker’s linguistic competence, none of the analysis or explanations of the meaning of words (and more generally of the meaning of language, particularly of language in use) does not account unequivocally for all words and all meaning in language: where does it come from, how does it come about, how do we interpret it, how do we use it, and twist it. The task outlines in the latter sentence is, again, another broad definition of semantics, a task that scholars have been working on for centuries.

3.3. Greater than words - Pragmatics

‘Don’t tell me of a man’s being able to talk sense; everyone can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?’

William Pitt

We already know that semiotics, or the science of signs, comprises: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, where the latter one is viewed as the study of the relation of signs to users, i.e. the study of language usage.

It is impossible to talk about semantics neglecting the relation between words and users of words, or rather pragmatics. Before we take a closer look at some pragmatics issues let us recall once again that the boundary between the syntax, semantics and pragmatics is not clearly defined, and that it is only the continuous interaction between the three that allows language users to create and interpret meanings. However, all speakers know (without having ever studied!), and linguists generally agree that in communication people do more than just attend to what is actually being said by way of (variously combining) words. They also

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compute what is implied, either by the choice of words, by way of intonation patterns, and thanks to the extralinguistic context in which the communication is taking place.

Let us take a look at two real life situations:

Situation 1:Person A (sitting in a room) says to person B (standing by the window): ‘It is cold in here.’ Person B understands or rather interprets A’s words as: ‘Please, close the window’and shuts the window.

Situation 2:Person A says to person B:‘Do you have a watch?’Person B replies:‘Yes’and walks away.

We have just seen two very familiar examples of implied or intended meaning and successful (Scene 1) or rather unsuccessful uptake (Scene 2).

The study of ‘intended speaker meaning’ is another way to describe the scientific scope of pragmatics.

Not all linguist agree on setting a boundary between semantics and pragmatics. Fillmore, Lakoff and Langacker, to mention but a few, are among those scholars who argue that it makes no sense to draw a hard distinction between semantics and pragmatics as both participate in the creation of meaning and are undiscernable when it comes to (theories of) linguistic communication. However, given the fact that notwithstanding the development of semantics there are, and it is very likely that for the foreseeable future there will be aspects of meaning that cannot be accounted for in terms of existing semantic theories, we shall leave the explanation of those aspects of meaning to a related, but distinct linguistic sub-field, namely pragmatics. Is simpler terms, we may wish to say that pragmatics is that part of linguistic analysis that ‘takes care’ of the (part of) meaning that is ‘left unaccounted for’ after syntax and semantics have ‘done their job’.

Some examples of linguistic phenomena that are studied within pragmatics include:- violation of semantic rules (metaphor, anomaly, idiomaticity) and- co(n)text dependency (context proper, deictic expressions, presuppositions)

3.3.1. Violation of semantic rules

The rules of language are nor like rules of physics; unlike the latter ones, the former ones are ‘violable’ to a degree, this ‘violability’ being another one of the ‘rules’ of language. There are three main kinds of rule violation:

1) anomaly 2) metaphor, and3) idiomacity.

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- Anomaly

Let us recall the sentences introduced in 3.2., i.e.:

a) This is my sister’s brother.b) My brother is an only child.c) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

Nonsense?Not necessarily. Look:

a) My father had a daughter in his second marriage. This daughter is my sister. My father’s first wife had a son from her first marriage. This is my sister’s brother.

b) I no longer want to have anything to do with him (or with my parents). orb1) When I was 12 my parents adopted a boy. This boy – who is now my brother - was an only child to his natural parents.c) Igor’s explanation. Green party very weak, have many ideas that would be great, but

can’t be realised.

When something semantically uninterpretable can be understood thanks to some extralinguistic devices (e.g. context).

We’ve already taken a look at anomaly proper, let us now turn to metaphor and idioms.

- Metaphor

‘Walls have ears.’Cervantes

‘Our doubts are traitors.’Shakespeare

Metaphor is a kind of ‘interpretative stretching’ of the meaning of a word. It occurs when the literal meaning is so unlikely to be the case, that the listener has to stretch their imagination or contextual reading so as to find a plausible, sensible interpretation of the metaphoric expression. The ‘stretching’ or transfer of semantic properties is based on some kind of equivalence (resemblance) that can be established between one element of the metaphoric expression and some properties of the other element of the metaphoric expression (the one with which the ‘comparison’ is being made).To interpret metaphors we need to know both the literal meaning, as well as some facts about the world. This is especially true of metaphors relative to social i.e. cultural values. E.g. the metaphor:‘Time is money’makes sense only in a culture where many people share the view that money is essential and the time you spent not working is equivalent to a gift (not making money).

- Idioms

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‘Jane put her foot in her mouth’.

Many non native speakers of English are likely to interpret this sentence as describing a situation where e.g. a ten-month old baby, while being changed, grabs her foot and puts it into her mouth’. This is not funny. Do you know how do native English speakers understand this phrase? If not, do take a look at a dictionary of English idioms. Clear?

Idioms are fixed phrases consisting of more than one word the meaning of which cannot be inferred from the meanings of individual words. The main characteristic of idioms is that they are frozen in form, i.e. they do not readily allow the word order to change, and do not enter into other combinations (or rather, when this happens, the idiomatic meaning of the phrase is lost).

3.3.2. Co(n)text dependency

- Co(n)text analysis

The context of a linguistic act can be textual and / or physical.The textual context of a linguistic situation (say of a word) is a set of other words used in its immediate proximity and relation. In the sentence: ‘Take the money to the bank’, the word ‘bank’, notwithstanding the fact that it is a homonym (‘river bank’ and ‘financial institution’) will be interpreted as ‘financial institution’ thanks to the reference to money. This is a clear example of how linguistic context, or co-text (co-occurring text) can provide a strong effect on what we think a word means, i.e. can crucially influence the interpretation of meaning.

However, if we were to imagine a situation where a criminal, having just robbed a person, is running towards an accomplice who is to take the make and immediately take it to another accomplice, waiting in a motor boat by the river bank, and if the first robber told the second robber: ‘Take the money to the bank’, thanks to our knowledge of the physical context (robbers wanting to escape with the money using a motor boat), we would interpret the word ‘bank’ as ‘river bank’ and not as ‘financial institution’. Linguistic situations of this kind are said to be interpreted thanks to the situational or physical context, or simply, context.

To sum up:

surrounding text: CO-TEXT (linguistic context) surrounding (physical, situational, world event) situation: CONTEXT (physical context)

- Deictic expressions

There are quite a few words in every language which cannot be interpreted out of co(n)text. Think e.g. of words such as: then, yesterday, here, there, you, he, him. When is then? Where is there? Who is he? Or take the more complex example of the following sentence: ‘We can’t do this here because they have not done that then.’ Not telling us much as it stands, right?

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Words that cannot be interpreted without ‘access’ to surrounding co(n)text are known under the name of deictic expressions.

Deictic expressions are interpreted either:

- on the basis of text i.e. co-text (it, there, then, she)or- on the basis of the physical context (I, you, here, this, yesterday, now)

- Presupposition

An utterance such as: ‘I am here’ (or just: ‘Here’)said by the teacher in front of the class, apart from using a deictic expression ‘here’ uses another pragmatic device, i.e. ‘presupposition’. Namely, that utterance or rather the teacher (in saying that utterance) involves the assumption i.e. makes the presupposition that the listeners (students) know which location is involved (does the teacher mean on the floor, in front of the desk, in the room, in the school, in Rijeka, in Croatia ????)

Speakers continually design their linguistic messages on the basis of the assumptions about what their hearers already know (this is an economy principle; we can’t be constantly repeating what we think our listeners know!!!!). So we simply say: ‘My brother is waiting’ and not: ‘I have a brother. My brother is waiting for me’.

OR think of the question: ‘Bob, where did you buy the cocaine?’. If Bob simply answers the ‘where’ question, he confirms that the ‘Bob bought the cocaine’ presupposition is correct. If he were not guilty, he would not address the question ‘where’ at all, but rather the presuppostion that he must have bought the cocaine.

What the speaker assumes is true or known by the hearer is called a presuppositon.

3.3.3. Speech act theory

Another important aspect of pragmatics is that it studies the fact that language is not used only saying, but also for doing things.“It was for too long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a ‘statement’ can only be to ‘describe’ some state of affairs or to ‘state some fact’ which it must do either truly or falsely’. These is a famous quote by Austin who in 1955 pointed out that words are not only used to ‘say’ something, but that they can also be used to ‘do’ something.

There are three levels of the ‘force of words’. They are locution, illocution and perlocution. Let us take a look at each of them:

1) LOCUTION – saying something‘He said to me ‘You can’t wait’’. All sentences that begin or can be paraphrased beginning with ‘He said that …’Locutionary act – the act of saying something, i.e. uttering something PHONETIC ACT (phonemes) – uttering certain noises

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2) ILLOCUTION – certain force in saying something‘He protested against me doing it’. All sentences that begin or can be paraphrased beginning with: ‘He argued that …’PHATIC ACT (phemes) – uttering of vocables or words that belong to a certain vocabulary and conform to a certain grammar

3) PERLOCUTION – the achieving of certain effects by saying something‘He stopped me and brought me to my senses’.All sentences that begin or can be paraphrased beginning with :‘He convinced me that …’RHETIC ACT – the performance of an act of using vocables from a certain vocabulary with a certain more-or-less definite sense and reference.

I order to understand the difference between illocution and perlocution, consider: ‘In saying it I was warning him’ (I do not know whether my warning produced an effect, but my saying had a force of warning) vs. ‘By saying it I convinced her’. (I achieved an effect; she changed her mind).

Also, take a look at the sentence: ‘Shoot her’Analysed in terms of the speech act theory, it looks as follows:Locution: He said to me ‘Shoot her’ meaning by ‘shoot’ – shoot, and referring by ‘her’ to her.Illocution: He urged (advised, ordered) me to shoot her.Perlocution: He persuaded me (got me, made me) to shoot her.

Austin also made a difference between Direct and indirect speech acts:

Direct speech act: ‘Pass the salt, (please).’ (command / request) ‘Tell me the time, (please).’ (request) Did you eat the food?’ (question)Indirect speech act: ‘Do you know the time?’ (not about your ability, but tell me the time) , ‘Could you pass the salt?’ ‘Did you leave the door open?’ (close it)

Some cultures only use indirect speech acts

Austin clearly pointed to the fact that when studying language we need to study not just words or sentences, but the ‘issuing of an utterance in a speech situation’. Stating IS performing an act.

Now, this act of stating has some rules. Some of them are linguistic (as we saw in chapters about language proper), and other are extra-linguistic (and lie with the speaker, with the speech situation (context and cotext), or with the society and / or culture of the speaker / hearer).

3.3.4. Gricean conversational maximsPolonius: ‘What do you read, my lord?’

Hamlet: ‘Words, words, words’.

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Hamlet’s reply not very useful … also ‘Do you know the time’ – yes. Violates some conversational conventions. These conventions were irst described by H. Paul Grice in the William Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1967. The best known convention or maxim of conversation is called the Cooperative Principle. It states:

COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE – Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction or the talk exchange in which you are engaged.This principle has got four subprinciples:

2. Maxims of quantity (amount of information)1. Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of he exchange.2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

3. Maxims of quality Supermaxim: Try to make your contribution one that is true). More specifically:2. Do not say what you believe to be false.3. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

4. Maxims of relation: Be relevant!5. Maxims of manner (relative not so much to what is said, but rather to how it is said).

Supermaxim: Be perspicuous.More specifically:1. Avoid obscurity.2. Avoid ambiguity.3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity)4. Be orderly.

What is behind is RATIONALITY, i.e. reason is the basis of all maxims, and of language!

Having reviewed some historical and traditional approaches to meaning, we shall now take a look at the most recent way of analysing language and meaning, i.e. the conceptual or cognitive approach, which studies meaning and just one part of the human cognitive capacity. Nowadays word meaning is no longer viewed as a ‘world referring’ affair, but rather as a mental, pycholinguistic issue.

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Chapter 4CONTEMPORARY (COGNITIVE) SEMANTICS

As we have already said in Chapter 2, modern linguists agree that in order to describe meaning we need to describe what is it that people know about the use of a word that permits its understanding and use (this is basically describing Chomskyan COMPETENCE). Thus, we need to make a clear distinction between I-language (COMPETENCE; or what is known about language – part of the human cognitive system), and E-language (PERFORMANCE, what we say and hear, what we share). This dichotomy means that word meaning is no longer a bipolar issue, but rather a triangulation, as first proposed by e.g. Frege and later developed by Ogden & Richards (see Appedix). We thus establish a following threepolar system:

the speaker,the mind

linguistic expression_____________________________the world

Contemporary semanticists’ view meaning as a triangulation, mediated through the users of language.

As already pointed out, Frege’s account of meaning as sense + reference represents a turning point, since – by proposing that meaning is more than referring - it finally ‘internalised’ the search for meaning, i.e. it turned the search for meaning away from a search concentrated exclusively on the external (surrounding) world. Sense, as Frege proposed it, is in modern terminology close to concept, and concepts are today generally believed to represent the best answer to the issue of meaning. Meaning is thus today described, analysed (and even predicted) as a structured idea or ‘concept’ in the mind of the person using that expression. Yet, this is far from being a ‘Humpty – Dumpty’ reading of ‘meaning’. Why? Because these concepts are not arbitrarily structured and operated upon, but are, rather, linked to the physiological reality of the human brain, i.e. the working of the human mind.

So: The new answer (challenge) to semantics today: we have to look for meaning in the human brain!

Refining the triangle above, we may wish to propose a new ‘semantic triangle’:

concept or meaning

SIGN

form entity in conceptual and

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experiential world

Chomsky’s distinction between I-language and E-Language (i.e. competence vs. performance) has established a new task for all linguists (including semanticists): analyse E to get to I. (understand what is in our brains!)

How do we do so? – By asking which subsystems of the human cognitive system are easily comparable with language.The main idea is that language expresses ideas and thoughts, and is underpinned by them, or structured around them. This is why language must – at least in part - be structured on the same basis as other conceptual (perceptual) cognitive sub-systems.

4.1. In search for the innate part of language

Departing from Chomsky’s (1957) hardly disputable observations relative to the creativity and productivity of children’s language8, and subsequent appealing interpretations, many linguists embraced his mathematically precise descriptions of language and ventured down the ‘transformationalist’ avenue, or down its derivatives, to find the ‘innate’ part of language. The search for the biologically determined principles underlying language has been underway for almost half a century now. And yet, to quote Langacker (1983) ‘there is still an amazing lack of consensus among serious scholars about the proper characterisation of even the simplest or most fundamental linguistic phenomena’ (ibid.:31).

Ever since the advent of Chomskyan views revolutionised the scientific study of language, we have been expecting to see groundbreaking results relative to the workings of the human brain, those that the consensus about the abandonment of behaviourism was perhaps somewhat naively but most certainly expected to yield. The consensus about some degree of language universality, representing a wide door into the workings of the human language faculty, was justifiably expected to bring about more and closer collaboration of the scientific community that had so enthusiastically embraced the idea of the innate basis of language. Unfortunately for the discipline, this has not been the case. The key question now is: why?

Simultaneously with increasing linguistic data undermining elements in the Chomskyan extremely formal (and to many intelligible) apparatus, research in psychology on the nature of human categorisation (Rosch, e.g. 1973) provided impetus for a birth of a new cognitive movement. Interestingly, this movement, which in the early 80-s still did not have a name, has in the last decade grown to become the most rapidly expanding linguistic paradigm, today known as Cognitive Linguistics.

As we shall see in more detail in the next subsection, the ‘new cognitivists’ depart from the premise that language is part of human cognition. Having given up on formal logic as an adequate way to represent conceptual systems, their new aim, and method, is to integrate discoveries about conceptual systems stemming from various sub-fields of cognitive science into the theory of language (which, ultimately, should grow into a theory of mind). Most cognitive linguists namely share the presupposition that mental representations, including the

8 As is well known, Chomsky's argument refers to children's ability to derive structural regularities of their native language (i.e. grammatical rules) from the utterances of their parents, and then to extend them to create novel, original constructions, they have never heard before.

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linguistic ones, can be studied and described structurally. Let us take a closer look at the cognitive linguistic paradigm.

4.2. THE COGNITIVE PARADIGM

As we briefly mentioned, language is within the paradigm of Cognitive Linguistics considered and studied as an integral part of the human cognitive system. As such, it is expected to reflect – both through structure and functioning – other cognitive abilities. Albeit there being much disagreement to the modes and extent of the ‘shared’ between the ‘language specific’ and ‘the rest’ in the human brain, the cognitive view is premised on the study of language within the overall human cognitive system and does, as such, presuppose that at least to a minimal degree language should reflect and point to structural elements and operational principles that pertain to sub-systems of human cognition other than the language faculty.

This basic point of departure is reflected in a few common views on language and cognition advocated by most of those working within the cognitive paradigm. This consensus gives coherence to the framework, which otherwise, given the great diversity with respect to perspectives, criteria, methodologies and evaluation tools advocated by various cognitive linguists, we would hardly be justified tagging ‘a paradigm’. In a nutshell, these common views - stemming form a few basic findings - could be stated as follows:

1) language is part of human cognition, intimately linked with other cognitive domains and as such mirrors (the interplay between) various sub-domains of the human cognitive system. We can understand language only if we study it in the context of conceptualisation and mental processing, thus only in relation to the whole system, and this calls for interdisciplinary research;

2) linguistic structure depends on, and possibly to some degree influences, conceptualisation. Conceptualisation, filtered through perception, reflects the interaction of cultural, communicative, psychological, functional and neuro-physiological considerations. The language-cognition relation is to be investigated from both ends;

3) meaning is what drives language. Meaning is not constrained in the lexicon, but ranges through the linguistic spectrum. Furthermore, many (but not all) cognitive linguists view meaning as ‘embodied’, i.e. as having its ‘roots’ in the shared human experience of bodily existence. ‘Access’ to meaning involves access and manipulation of knowledge structures (labelled as ‘scenes’, ‘cognitive models’, ‘conceptual domains’, ‘image schemas’ etc.). The meaning of a linguistic unit is a conceptual structure associated with it;

4) at the surface level of language, the linguistic spectrum (see point 3 above) is differently partitioned in or rather by different languages. We say that at the crosslinguistic level languages differ in terms of their categorisation patterns. This also means that large portions of cognitive linguistic research need to involve the crosslinguistic level, where most or rather all results should also be verified;

5) grammar is motivated by semantic considerations. This assumption is however to be understood within another, broader consideration, which can be asserted as follows: given the interaction between language and other domains of cognition, as well as the interaction among language subcomponents, the various autonomy theses proposed in the (traditional) linguistic literature have to be abandoned; a strict separation of syntax,

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morphology and lexicon is untenable. As pointed out in 3 above, meaning is at the basis of all linguistic phenomena.

Data analyses and theoretical assumptions which to varying degrees reflect the above points can at present be found in proposals advocated by e.g. Gilles Fauconnier, Charles Fillmore, Mark Johnson, Ronald Langacker, George Lakoff, Leonard Talmy, Mark Turner, and Anna Wierzbicka, to mention just some of the leading researchers developing theories within the cognitive framework. The scholars just mentioned are at the forefront of the ‘new cognitivist movement’, currently establishing a research programme grounded in the premises stated above.

4.2.1. Main concepts in Cognitive Linguistics

The main feature that distinguishes cognitive linguistics from generative grammar relates to the place attributed to meaning within the theory. Namely, in the generative model the structure of linguistic expressions is deemed to be determined by a formal rule system that is largely meaning independent. By contrast, as already pointed out, cognitivists argue that the linguistic structure is a direct reflex of cognition, both in the general sense that every linguistic expression is a reflection of the (underlying) structure of the human cognitive system (in which the expression in rooted), as well as in the more particular sense that very linguistic expression is associated with a particular way of conceptualising a given situation.The cognitivists’ idea that there is an interrelationship between thought, meaning, and linguistic structure underpins (and is at the same time underpinned by) the major concepts in the theory. They are (following Lee, 2001): construal, perspective, foregrounding, metaphor and frame.

ConstrualIn contrast with a long tradition in linguistics that encapsulates the belief that language represents a mapping between elements of the external world and linguistic form, cognitive linguists argue that there is no such direct mapping, i.e. that one and the same external world situation can be ‘construed’ (conceptualised) in many different ways and thus encoded in language in many different ways. To illustrate this point, let us consider the difference between sentences a) and b) below:

a) John gave the book to Mary.b) John gave Mary the book.

The traditional (and generative) view is that these two sentences express the same meaning. However, given the fact that there are some cases in which one of the two sentences is unacceptable (e.g. ‘John gave the fence a new coat of paint’ is OK but ‘John gave a new coat of paint to the fence’ is odd, and by many native speakers rated as unacceptable – see Langacker, 1990:14), it is suggested within the cognitive paradigm that constructions a) and b) above involve different ways of construing ‘the same situation’ and since different mental construals imply different meanings, we see how one and the same situation can be associated with two meanings (i.e. that there is no direct mapping between words and the world, and meaning is mediated though mental construals).

Perspective

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One of the factors that determine the creation of (alternative) mental construals in known under the name of perspective. Perspective (or perspective taking) is an issue of point of view, in general (sentences a1 vs. a2 below) or with respect to a reference point in a scene (sentences b1 vs. b2 below). As an example let us consider:

a1) The path falls steeply into the valley.vs.a2) The path climbs steeply out of the valley.

and

b1) The lamp is above the table.vs.b2) The table is under the lamp.

(All examples from Lee, 2001).

With respect to b1) and b2) i.e. with regards to perspective taking relative to some reference point(s), it ought to be noted that in cognitive linguistics the entity that is construed as the reference point is known under the name Ground (or also Landmark), whereas the entity or element located (or moved) with respect to the reference points is termed Figure (or Trajector). The choice of Figure and Ground is in part ‘predetermined’ (usually the Figure is the smaller, more movable, closer to us etc. and the Ground is larger, more fixed etc… which goes to add to the ‘naturalness’ i.e. cognitive predisposition for certain ways of linguistic coding), but it can also be determined by pragmatic factors (as in ‘John is sitting in Mary’s lap’ vs. ‘Mary is holding John in her lap’).

ForegroundingAlternative construals of one and the same objective situation also have to do with the (relative) prominence of some components of this situation. This point is illustrated below:

a) You won’t be able to open the door with this key.vs.b) That key won’t open that door.

Either sentence could be used in a situation where the addressee is about to try to open a door with a particular key. Basically, in a) the addressee is highlighted i.e. given greater prominence in the situation. It is said of the prominent element that it is foregrounded (vs. other elements of the scene that are backgrounded). Contrast also:

c) The frog is on the grass.vs.d) The frog is in the grass.

Basically, we are lead to differently construe the reference point ‘grass’. In c) the grass is flat (so not very high), i.e. what is foregrounded is the flat surface of the grass serving as ‘support from below’ for the frog. In contrast in d) the grass is construed as a volume (high grass), i.e. what is foregrounded is its ability to serve as a ‘container’ for the frog.

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This observation can be applied more generally to word meanings. Namely, one way to think about the meaning of words is to see them as tools for causing speakers to access specific parts of their knowledge base (Moore & Carling, 1982: 11). At any given moment, individuals have a huge store of knowledge available to them, and the function of words (or, more generally language) is to cause us to home in on a very specific region of that knowledge base, specifically on those neural structures that constitute the store of knowledge concerning the mental construal of a certain linguistic situation (and its links to reality as perceived via other subsystems of our cognition). This would also suggest that there might exist a closer link between language and the cognitive processes associated with other areas of human perception than tradition (particularly traditional linguistics) would have us believe. This point will be further developed in the discussion of the notion of frames, below.

Metaphor

The concept or rather notion of construal is linked to another important element of analysis of cognitive linguistics, the concern with metaphor. Metaphor has traditionally been thought within literary streams, linked to discourse, pragmatics, and quite removed from theories of language. However, influential pioneering work by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) put metaphor centre stage within the cognitive linguistic paradigm. It is nowadays generally accepted by cognitive linguists that metaphor results from the notion of construal by virtue of the fact that different ways of thinking about a particular situation / phenomenon (that is different construals of that situation / phenomenon) are not just possible, but also based on some universal (cognitive) elements and principles.

Metaphor is essentially a device that involves the conceptualisation of one domain of experience in terms of another domain of experience. E.g. ‘There is no need to be so sharp with him.’, or ‘That was a cutting remark.’, or still ‘I’ll be blunt with you’, we see aspects of interpersonal behaviour being conceptualised in terms of physical properties. As these examples show, source domains tend to be relatively concrete areas of experience and target domains tend to be more abstract. It ought to be stressed that metaphor involve not just ways of talking about phenomena, but also ways of thinking about them. Metaphor is in fact used as a prime manifestation of the cognitive claim that language and thought are inextricably linked (the way we talk about things is the way we think about things, and the way we think about things is the way we talk about them – see Kress, 1985 for the interesting analysis of metaphors applied through time to nuclear weapons, to make them (less) palatable to the public).

Frame

The notion of frame is closely linked to the notion of foregrounding explained above. We could say that foregrounding equals to making prominent one element in the overall frame, which however is not one fixed and unidimensional, but rather a multidimensional mental space.

The concept of frame might become clearer if we tried to illustrate it with an example. For non native speakers of English the word ‘wicket’ might (with a high degree of probability) represent a problem. A non native speaker, faced with that word and not knowing its meaning, might decide to consult the dictionary for help. The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the

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following definition: ‘Wicket: one set of three stumps and two bails’. How much this means to a non native speaker of English, who furthermore knows nothing about the game of cricket, is not difficult to understand. Namely, if one really wanted to explain the meaning of the word cricket (and not just compile a dictionary! and get paid for it!! and go!!!), it would be natural to say not only what a wicket is but also something about the game of cricket, i.e. its overall role in the game. For example: in the game of cricket, one person (known as ‘bowler’) tries to knock the wicket (explained as above) down, by throwing a ball at it in a special way, while another person (known as the ‘batman’) stand in front of the wicket and tries to prevent the ball from hitting it by using a wooden instrument called the bat. In other words, a good understanding of the word ‘wicket’ (as of all words) requires a significant amount of knowledge that extends well beyond the strict dictionary (strict word relative) definition. We refer to this background knowledge as the ‘frame’.As said, frames are multidimensional. For example, the word ‘mother’ belong to the ‘family frame’, the ‘social frame’, the ‘genetic frame’ (Consider: ‘This is my mother’ vs. ‘Sue is not cut out to be a mother’). There can also be many frames of mental spaces associated with a word in a given co(n)text. When I say ‘here’ this can mean ‘the classroom’, ‘my city’, ‘my country’ etc.

4.3. The language – thought relationship

Cognitive semantics (as all of cognitive linguistics), investigate the relationship between language and thought. This relationship can be viewed in three ways:

1) Thought influences Language, i.e. languages are based on and shaped upon conceptual notions that precede lexical labelling and grammatical constructs. EXPLAIN …

T → L knows as the MENTALISTIC approach

2) Language, at least to some degree, influences Thought (explain)

L → T knows as the DETERMINISTIC approach

3) There is a mutual interrelationship between Language and Thought. EXPLAIN

L ↔ T knows as the RELATIVISTIC approach

It is the third, i.e. the relativistic approach – in the sense of ‘new relativism’ (discussed in 4.3.1.) that is seen as most influential by most (cognitive) linguists. Given this, and also given the fact that the relativistic approach encompasses elements of both mentalistic and deterministic positions, we shall focus our attention on this, middle ground(s) position.

4.3.1. The (development of the) relativistic view of language and cognition

The ‘relativistic view of language’ takes its name after the famous Principle of Linguistic Relativity, the best known theoretical axiom (to be understood as a shared postulate or

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assumed background of understanding, see Foley, 1997: 192) developed within the Boasian tradition. The Boasian tradition, on the other hand, is the name given to the American school of anthropological linguistics which flourished in the first half of the twentieth century. It derives its name from that of Franz Boas (1858-1942), a German psycho-physicist who, having moved to the United States, became one of the central figures in the early American tradition of anthropology and anthropological linguistics.

Franz BoasAt the turn of the 19th into the 20th century, when Boaz arrived to the US, many anthropologists and linguists were working on recording American Indian languages before they disappeared. These records i.e. the descriptions of these languages (often called ‘primitive’) were, however, entirely based on categories derived from Indo-European languages (thus inappropriate for the description of the peculiar linguistic systems under consideration). The first person to note this inadequacy was Franz Boas, who, in the preface to his ‘Handbook of American Indian languages’ pointed out that it was the task of the linguist to discover and describe language specific (grammatical) structures and categories. In other words, distinctions such as past/present, singular/plural etc, which might seem natural from the perspective of, say, English, are not found in American Indian languages, which, on the other hand, present distinction unimaginable from the perspective of English (such as different articles to denote ‘animate moving’ vs. ‘animate at rest’, vs. ‘animate long’, vs. inanimate high’, vs. ‘inanimate collective objects’). In other words, Boas was the first one to point out that languages, both through their grammatical structure and through their lexis, do not all ‘view’ the world in the same way, offering to their speakers language specific categories through which to interpret the world. We will see below that this observation paved way for mentalist linguistics in general, and the relativistic view in particular. It ought to pointed out, however, that Boas still did not make any claims about the relationship between the mind and language. In fact, he states: ‘Apparent differences in linguistic sophistication do not reflect cognitive differences, merely different emphases of their cultures (Boas, 1966 [1911]: 3). In other words, Boas was not a relativist (see below) in the mentalist sense, but only in the cultural sense. In other words, he expanded anthropological theories of his time by adding cultural relativism to it. Cultural relativism is a position which suggest that differences in peoples are the results of historical, social and geographic conditions and states that all populations have complete and equally developed culture. Boas also believed in historical particularism. Historical particularism deals with each culture as having a unique history and posits that one should not assume universal laws governing how cultures operate. Both these positions worked strongly against the then-dominant scientific theories of racial superiority. In fact, in one of his most influential works, the book entitled 'The Mind of Primitive Man' (1911), Boas worked hard toward demonstrating that there was no such thing as a "pure" race or a superior one.Boas was a professor, and his ideas were further developed by some of his students. The most brilliant of them was, beyond doubt, Edward Sapir.

Edward SapirEdward Sapir (1884 – 1939) was Boas’ talented student who later became one of the most illustrious American (socio)linguists of the 20th century. Apart from further developing the themes introduced into sociolinguistic studies by his mentor, Boas, Sapir further expanded them by adding to the idea of categories (representing a classificatory system of experience) a structuralist vision of language as a coherent system of interlocking subsystems. His main contributions to linguistics lie in the field of phonology, as well in his analyses of the role of meaning in grammatical form and the relationships of these to the use of language.

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He took Boas’ idea of cultural relativism a step closer toward mentalist relativism (though never really subscribing to it, but rather maintaining a ‘middle ground’ position). In other words, while famously asserting that languages were systematically incommensurable to each other (see Sapir’s text in the Appendices) and that passing from one language to another requires a major shifting of the coordinates of experience, he also maintained that such shifting is well within the abilities of all humans. Basically, Sapir viewed variation across language as an indication not of cognitive deficiencies (or differences), but rather only of cognitive predispositions. His position was that languages ‘guide’ or ‘channel’ thought (a principle known as the Principle of Linguistic relativity – see below), rather than determining it (the Principle of Linguistic Determinism – see below). This latter, quite extreme view is, on the other hand, the view famously assumed by Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Benjamin Lee WhorfA flamboyant, out of the ordinary person, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) was not a trained linguist, having received his B.Sc. in chemical engineering (in 1918) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, Whorf joined the Hartford Fire Insurance where he became an expert in industrial fire prevention. At his job, Whorf noticed a very curious thing: his co-workers who were in charge of handling gasoline drums, did so with much more care in the case of full drums, than in the case of empty ones. People were found smoking around empty gasoline drums, tossing cigarette butts about, etc. This was quite strange as empty gasoline drums present a greater hazard than full ones, since the former contain highly explosive vapour – a fact well known to the people handling drums. Yet, Whorf supposed, the very word ‘empty’ written on these drums made people feel ‘safer’ with these drums. It was, in his opinion, a clear example of so called ‘cognitive-appropriation’ or ‘the use in thought for its own ends of a structure or relation deriving from some other domain’ (Lucy, 1992:46). In other words, the ‘empty’ label on the drums was meant in the sense ‘not containing gasoline’ but was understood by speakers (through metaphorical extension) in the polysemouos sense of ‘void, null, inert’, thus also ‘not containing / representing danger’. Albeit being rationally very clear, this process is a subconscious process, whereby our language guides our thoughts: people behave to the world as their linguistic categories predispose them to (Foley, 1997: 204).

Having developed a very strong interest in linguistic, especially in Indian languages and the way in which linguistic expressions (meaning) can affect thought, Whorf enrolled in a course on American Indian Linguistics, given at Yale University by Sapir (see below). In the field of Linguistics, Whorf worked in the areas of Linguistic Anthropology, Psychological Linguistics, Mayan hieroglyphics and he also compiled a dictionary of Hopi languages

Whorf is the name most intimately associated with the Principle of Linguistic Relativity (a formulation carefully phrased after Einstein’s Relativity Theory), although much of his work was under the direct influence of Sapir.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Linguistic Determinism and The axiom of Linguistic Relativity)

We have already said that Whorf and Sapir started their work together as student and teacher. Actually, they had met briefly in 1928, 1929 and 1939 at various scientific meetings, but they got to know each other well only in 1931, when Sapir went to Yale University as Sterling Professor of Anthropology, and Whorf enrolled in his course on American Indian Linguistics.

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When Sapir wrote of ‘linguistic categories guiding thought’ (Sapir, 1949), the only ‘relativity’ he referred to was one of ‘concepts’ or ‘forms of thought’, and never of the process of thinking, which in Sapir’s view, having a neurological basis, was universal, i.e. part of the psychic unity of humanity (see also Foley, 1997: 198). He and his student Whorf agreed on the view that language affects how people perceive their reality, that language coerces thought. This position came to be known the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Simply stated, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis says that the content of a language is directly related to the content of a culture and that the structure of a language is directly related to the structure of a culture.

The Sapir-Whorf theory is a so-called mould theory of language. Mould theories represent language as a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast9.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be described as consisting of two associated principles. The first one, the so-called principle of linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language (a strong, extreme position). According to the second principle, that of linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently, but are not necessarily viewed as being different in terms of their cognition.

Whilst few linguists would today accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strong, extreme or deterministic form, many now accept a weak, more moderate, or limited Whorfianism, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use. Moderate Whorfianism differs from extreme Whorfianism in at least three ways:

- the emphasis is on the potential for thinking to be 'influenced' rather than unavoidably 'determined' by language;

- it is a two-way process, so that 'the kind of language we use' is also influenced by 'the way we see the world';

- emphasis is given to the social context of language use rather than to purely linguistic considerations, or, let alone, cognitively based considerations.

Indeed, we are nowadays witnessing an impetus that can be described as ‘linguistic relativity rethought’. Namely, an increasing number of scholars, including those working in the field of cognitive linguistics, believe that it is indeed possible to reconcile linguistic relativity and language specificity on the one hand, and cognitive universality as the basis of the human language faculty on the other.

4.3.2. In search of common grounds; Can the cognitive do without the universal?

The basic cognitivist assumption that there are things that are shared between the human language faculty and other subsystems of human cognition (for a thorough examination of this point cf. e.g. Talmy, 2000) translates into the following two way equation: by examining language we should gain insight into the structure and operational principles of the mind, just as by examining multifaceted aspects of various cognitive processes taking place in the human brain we can gain insight into the meanings expressed by linguistic forms.

How do we reconcile this position with the well known fact that linguistic structure and the categories expressed by various languages across the world vary to a considerable

9 Mould theories are in opposition to so-called cloak theories, which represent the view that 'language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers' (Bruner et al., 1956).

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degree (and that furthermore there seems to be plenty of evidence suggesting that this linguistic variation does, indeed, influence the way in which we perceive the world around us.

xxxxxxxxx

Most cognitive linguists and psycholinguists take the first road and try to search for answers about the language-mind riddle departing from language, i.e. linguistic data, and posing the following hypothesis: if the human language faculty is constrained in structural and operational terms (let us think about this as some kind of ontological knowledge, or 'pre-knowledge') then it is quite likely that this same ontology (or parts thereof) will be constraining other subsystems of human cognition as well.

Generally speaking, cognitive linguists work from data toward theories, and much more rarely in the other direction. This is not necessarily negative (else we just might run the risk of ‘adjusting’ our data so as to fit the theory), but it does have the fault of being simply descriptive, thus lacking the virtue that every ‘serious’ science should have: that of being predictive. Although some cognitive linguists (e.g. Janda, Croft) try to justify this weakness by the fact that in language we have too many variables, and that all the data is necessarily contaminated, this might just not be a promising scientific reply to well grounded criticism.

As specified above, cognitivists view meanings – the focal point of their scholarly efforts - as involving access to and manipulation of conceptual or knowledge structures. One immediate question follows: ‘Over precisely what kind of information are computations in the brain carried out’ (cf. Jackendoff, 1992). The answer to the question might be found en-route to answers to another question: which subsystems of human cognition are easily comparable with language and what is universally shared between these systems and the way we talk about them. We shall return to this question below.

First however, since we are talking about the human brain, or, if one wishes, about its ‘contents’ i.e. the mind, we cannot dismiss the idea that there have to be some elements to language which will be shared not just between the human language faculty and other sub-systems of human cognition, but between all natural languages of the world. Or, to put it into ‘historic’ or ‘developmental’ terms, if Chomskian cognitivist were after the syntactic universals, the new cognitivists, having recognised the primacy of meaning over all other manifestations of language, might perhaps be best off embarking on a search for semantic universals.

The idea is by no means new. The search for core meanings i.e. semantically primitive expressions which remain after a completely exhaustive semantic analysis has been carried out, and which cannot be defined any further, has been around, as an idea, since Old Greece. Methodologically, or empirically, it dates back to the seventeenth century, when Pascal, Descartes, Arnauld and Leibnitz all saw the need for semantic primitives.

‘I say it would be impossible to define every word. For in order to define a word it is necessary to used other words designating the idea we want to connect to the word being defined. And if we then wished to define the words used to explain that word, we would need still others, and so on to infinity. Consequently, we necessarily have to stop at primitive terms which are undefined’

Arnauld and Nicole, 1996 1662: 64

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Leibnitz even undertook a programme of lexical investigation aimed at discovering not only the primitive elements underlying words, but also the rules of composition guiding the formation of complex notions and words (see review in Ishiguro, 1972). His studies were premised on the idea that ‘all expressions should be reduced to those that are absolutely necessary for expressing the thoughts in our minds’ (Leibnitz, 1973 1679: 281), since ‘if nothing is conceived and understood through itself, nothing could be conceived and understood at all’ (ibid.: 430).

In modern times, the idea of semantic primitives (or ‘elementary meaning components’, ‘atomic concepts’, ‘semantic primes’, ‘simples’ etc.) has been advocated by many researchers (Srenson, 1958; Greimas, 1966, Boguslawski 1965; Benedix, 1966; Katz and Postal, 1964, Fillmore, 1971; McCawley, 1968; Greenberg, 1978, Lakoff, 1970; Jackendoff, 1983, 1990; Wierzbicka, 1972, 1996; Talmy, 1996, 2000 and many others).

Some of them work within the cognitive paradigm, others do not. Most, if not all of them, have however been developing their own version of ‘semantic primitiveness’, contributing to a general sense of chaos in (cognitive) linguistics. Yet, one of the proponents of semantic universality stands out. Anna Wierzbicka, the main developer of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) has for the past thirty years been working on an ‘irreducible semantic core’, a ‘mini-language’ of the form of simple and further indefinable meanings that can be found in every natural language of the world. She has developed what is one of the most exhaustive and yet simplest10 sets of semantic universals around. Crucially:

a) NSM has much in common with many cognitive proposals that have been put forward much after the advent of Wierzbicka’s efforts, and

b) NSM has much to offer to anyone wanting to see more light and coherence within the cognitive movement itself.

Let us see what exactly is meant by this.

4.4. NSM; The simple story, the rich parallelisms, and the far reaching implications

As already said, many contemporary linguists are proposing that there must be a set of universal semantic primitives underlying language. One of the most persistent proponents advocating and searching for semantic atoms is Wierzbicka, whose thirty years of research life have been devoted to the quest for universal meanings which, according to her, must be embodied or rather realised in surface expressions, most probably words (Wierzbicka 1972, 1996).

Departing from a programme of trial and error investigations aimed at explicating meanings of diverse types in several languages, Wierzbicka (e.g. 1972) formed a hypothesis about a set of primitive concepts. The main criteria guiding the empirical evidence were ‘defining power’ (what role does a concept play in defining other concepts), and ‘universality’ (the range of languages in which a given concept has been lexicalised). These two independent criteria yielded over time a set of semantic primes which, at present, looks as follows:

10 Here, consider Lyons' positions that 'every formalism is parasitic upon the ordinary everyday use of language, in that it must be understood intuitively on the basis of ordinary language' (Lyons, 1977: 12)

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Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE, PEOPLE/PERSON, (SOME)THING, BODYMental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEARSpeech: SAY,WORD, TRUEActions, events: DO, HAPPEN, MOVEExistence: THERE IS, HAVELife: LIVE, DIEDeterminers: THIS, THE SAME, OTHERQuantifiers: ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MANY/MUCHEvaluators: GOOD, BADDescriptors: BIG, SMALL, (LONG)Time: WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT

TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENTSpace: WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE,

INSIDE, (TOUCHING)Interclausal linkers: BECAUSE, IFClause operators: NOT, MAYBEMetapredicate: CANIntensifiers: VERY, MORETaxonomy: KIND OF, PART OFSimilarity: LIKE

Table 4.1. Proposed semantic primitives (after Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2002)

These concepts, seen as being inherent in every human language, are interesting for a myriad of reasons. Scholars working within the narrow NSM framework, view them as important because they are extremely useful and versatile in framing explications and, on the other hand, are themselves resistant to (non-circular) explications. Furthermore, the fact that these elements have a counterpart i.e. an exact translation – either in the form of bound morphemes or fixed phrases - in most if not all human languages, adds weight to the proposal.

It ought to be noted at this point that NSM research stops at the surface level, and does not venture into speculations about the deep structure of these concepts11, nor does it try to draw parallels between the proposed primitives and elements that have been singled out as structural items in disciplines studying other cognitive sub-domains (vision, hearing, motor control, manipulation of haptic information etc). From the cognitive perspective, this is at least surprising, not to say unacceptable, and is probably the reason which has confined NSM research to the margins of the cognitive linguistics movement. There are, however, two aspects of NSM that single it out with respect to all current cognitive frameworks, and make its findings of particular interest for cognitive science. We are talking about the simplicity of the NSM machinery, and, much more importantly, about the basis (of ‘self-definiability’ and ‘universality’) that the approach is grounded in. Let us take a look at each of these two arguments.

- Simplicity and conceptual primitiveness of NSM

11 Although Wierzbicka (1992) states: 'It is clear that if we are to find truly universal human concepts, we must look for them not in the world around us but in our own minds' (ibid: 8).

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Language, including also language about language, exists first and foremost to be understood. True, weary of pressures from exact sciences like physics or mathematics, linguists (especially the MIT branch) have worked hard on developing complex symbolic devices and formalisms. Unfortunately, these machineries ended up making the theories underlying them quite intelligible and accessible to just the few specialist, without, and here lies the catch, providing much gain at the explanatory level. None of the codes so far developed in linguistic science managed to do much more than rendering what is being said – opaque. This is not what a language, even less ‘language about language’, should be about.

As Lyons (1977) has put it:

'It is … a matter of considerable philosophical controversy whether we should take ordinary language, with all its richness, complexities and alleged inconsistencies as something basic and irreducible, or think of it as being, in some sense, derived (or derivable) from a … kind of language with properties similar to those embodied in formal languages’

Lyons, (ibid: 12)

Wierzbicka’s ( 1993) position on the matter is quite clear:

'Whether or not words such a person, this, think, say, want or do are absolutely universal, they do have semantic equivalents in countless languages of the world, and they differ in this respect from words such as animate, deictic, cognition, locutionary, deontic and agency. Whether or not we can find a set of concepts which would be truly clear, truly simple, and truly universal, if we want to understand and explain what people say, and what they mean, we must establish a set of words which would be maximally clear, maximally simple, and maximally universal’

Wierzbicka, (ibid.: 36)

The other aspect of NSM which I wish to draw attention to, since it is of paramount relevance to the key premises of the Cognitive movement, relates to the basis of the framework, i.e. the main criteria on which NSM corroborates empirical evidence: ‘defining power’ of the semantic primes, and their ‘universality’. The importance of these two parameters for cognitivists could be asserted as follows:

a) we cannot talk about the cognitive without talking about the primitive, self-explanatory. In this context it should be noted that NSM’s ‘defining power’ is intrinsically linked to the ‘inherent in our cognitive systems’, to the ‘innate’, and to the ‘bodily basis of language’ i.e. the ‘embodied meaning’ advocated by many cognitivists, such as Lakoff and Johnson, who maintain that meaning, thus language, is grounded in our shared human experience of bodily existence12;

b) we cannot talk about the cognitive without talking about the crosslinguistically universal. If there are some cognitive basis to language, they have to be typical of the human species, and such they should be reflected in all human languages.

NSM is premised on the notions of ‘defining power’ and ‘universality’, these are two basic criteria guiding empirical evidence within the framework.

Another virtue of NSM is that it readily lends itself to comparisons with findings stemming from research carried out under the premises of various linguistic approaches and sub-fields.

12 This experience is, of course, filtered through perception, so we cannot expect concepts to faithfully mirror all aspects of the real world. The idea is to explore and describe ways in which meaning, largely based on the 'embodiment', is motivated by human perceptual and conceptual capacities. It is because of this interplay between perception and conception that Talmy (1996) coined 'ception' as an umbrella term.

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- What is shared between NSM and some current (cognitive) linguistic findings

If we take a closer look at Table 4.1 i.e. at the concepts there posited as being semantically primitive, we can observe that all elements in the table strikingly reflect one or more aspects of language previously individuated as being some of the defining aspects of (human) language. As we shall see below, Wierzbicka’s primitives impressively mirror many linguistic ‘roles and rules’, well known from other cognitive and / or traditional analyses.

Taking things one at the time, we shall start with some intuitive but very immediate observations. Let us consider the first line of items in the table, i.e. the substantives. I and you clearly reflect the distinction between ‘speaker’ and ‘addressee’, and someone can be seen as the primitive ‘justifying’ e.g. the markedness of the 3rd person singular in English. Next, people vs. person, but also the quantifiers one vs. two reflect the ‘primitiveness’ of the distinction between the ‘singular’ and the ‘plural’. In the group of quantifiers (one, two, and all vs. some), we also find further support for the posited primitiveness of the notion of ‘definiteness’ (unique identifiability) vs. ‘indefiniteness’, usually expressed in languages either with the system of definitive vs. indefinite articles, demonstratives or others (cf. Lyons, 1999, Trenkic, 2001). Some and part of clearly tie into the primitiveness of what is in the linguistic jargon known as ‘partitivity’ (as case or construction), and like, more, very and the same bear strong relation to ‘comparativeness’ (as construction and inflection) in language. Other traditional syntactic and pragmatic notions such as ‘modality’ (can, maybe), tenses (before, now, after), and ‘durativity’ (for short / long time) also find ‘conceptual’ support in NSM.

There is more. Let us first recall a very influential paper by Landau & Jackendoff (1993), in which the authors posit a clear distinction of the way our minds organise conceptual content relative to (names of) object vs. that relative to their location, i.e .between the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ cognitive domains. The subcategorisation in NSM between ‘substantives’ and ‘space’ (where / place), nicely mirrors this proposal. Furthermore, if we concentrate on ‘space’, an old time favourite of cognitive science, we note that ‘NSM evidence’ for many elements that have been proposed (by Lakoff, Langacker, Talmy and many others) as primitive conceptual features, e.g. ‘boundedness’, ‘directionality’, ‘volume’ (interior), ‘surface’ or ‘orientation’ (cf. in Table 1: above vs. below, inside, side etc.). Other ‘basic spatial elements’ such as e.g. ‘circle’, frequently proposed as conceptually primitive (cf. Bloom et al., 1996; Bowerman & Levinson, 2001, Talmy, 2000 etc.), find no relation to any of the elements proposed as primitives in NSM. This can either mean that NSM has not taken it into account as a potential primitive (and which, given the evidence from other frameworks, should be done), or other analyses have not been exhaustive enough, and have, in the case of ‘circle’, stopped at a level higher than that of atomic meanings. Maybe, after all, a ‘circle’ is just a ‘line’ with not ‘boundedness’.

The example of ‘circle’ just mentioned is interesting for two more reasons. First, it is very curious to note that size seems to be quite prominent in NSM (big vs. small feature as primitives), whereas shape does not. This is surprising because many current psycholinguistic findings seem to suggest that both size and shape are encoded across languages, having both also been shown to influence performance in non- verbal categorisation tasks (cf. e.g. Levinson, 1992; Bloom et al. passim). Furthermore, the concept of ‘circle’ has been crucial for explicating some categories of (crosslinguistic) usage of the spatail prepositions ‘in’ and

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‘on’ (cf. also Brala, 2002). Absence of any relevance of the notion of ‘circularity’ in NSM might be a warning sign indication reconsideration of some aspects in either NSM of our own studies.

Before moving on, I would like to spend a few more words on ‘causativity’, known to be a characteristic of linguistic expression and mirrored within NSM in the interclausal linkers because and if, and in the particular distinction within the action / events items (do, happen, move). While the intercalusal linkers directly point to the ‘cause’, the group of three verbs in the action / event category is particularly interesting, much more so than might appear at the first glance. The distinction between do, happen and move becomes particularly striking if one relates it to some recent psycholinguistic findings by Choi and Bowerman (1991), who have shown that a) Korean makes a rigid distinction between the verbs for caused and spontaneous motion (do + move vs. happen + move). It has furthermore been shown (ibid.) that children show a very early sensitivity to this language specific trait, categorising instances of caused and spontaneous motion according to their language specific patterns as early as 17 months. The ‘threesome’ do, move, and happen bears a particularly impressive relation to much work done on space (both location and motion) within the cognitive paradigm, and as such reinforces our conviction that more collaboration and integration is needed between various frameworks.

- Some implications and suggestions for further developments

One of the goals of NSM is to build some sort of metalanguage, which would be maximally universal, maximally self-explanatory and intuitively intelligible. On its own, this cannot be said to be a satisfactory goal of any cognitive linguistic framework, but it most certainly more than a useful tool on our way toward a theory of the human language faculty. As I have tried to show above, NSM can be useful for our cognitive explications of both the compositional elements of language (semantics, pragmatics), as well as that of its combinatorial principles i.e. rules (syntax, pragmatics).

As already stated, this latter, explicative goal is not even set out, let alone achieved by NSM. Interestingly, Wierzbicka does at some points in her writing (e.g. 1993: 39), make claims that in her crosslinguistic work she is comparing conceptual systems. This statement seems a bit far fetched, since what is currently being done within NSM is the comparison of languages i.e. lexicons. No attempt has been made to posit anything specific about the deep, conceptual structure of NSM universals. How are they encoded and accessed, and how are they related to other parts of language, as well as other sub-systems of human cognition? This remark is not meant to be a criticism of the framework, but rather a pointer to the need of empirically buttressing the existence of all proposed language universals by making a rigorous comparison of these universals with respect to what is known about the ‘conceptual systems’ embodied in other sub-domain of the human cognitive system. This can, starting from within the linguistic science, be done in at least the following three ways:

1) Probe the primitives against evidence from language acquisition, particularly first, but possibly also second13. As far as one can tell from the current literature, most of the proposed semantic primitives appear to be attested in early child speech, and most

13 The 'unlearnability' of certain linguistic traits of the first language (and the 'learnability' of others) is particularly interesting in this context. We always wish to ask 'why', and universals might provide at least a few 'because'.

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certainly all appear to be well in evidence by the age of five (cf. Bloom, 1991; Carey, 1985; Clancy, 1985, Clark & Clark, 1977, Ervin – Tripp, 1970, Slobin, 1985, Johnston, 1985, Peterson, 1990, Wirzbicka, 1996). Much less is known about the status of these universals with respect to findings stemming from second language acquisition research.

2) Combine the research on semantic universality with research on syntactic universality, i.e. extensively and systematically address the issue of universals on the semantico – syntactic interface. As Wierzbicka (1993, 1996) points out, the criteria of ‘defining power’ and ‘universality’ should, in a through cognitive linguistic analysis be complemented with that of the ‘building blocks’ (after Leibnitz). This means that the simples should not be just clear, indefinable and universally attested in all human languages, but should also be demonstrably active as ‘building blocks’ in the construction of other concepts. What is interesting here, is the ability of the primitives to generate other concepts and constructions. It is exactly this aspect of the ‘potential’ of the primitives that should be investigated at the level of he semantico-syntactic interface. It is namely very interesting to observe what happens when a primitive is ‘shifted’ from one to another syntactic category. What is the effect of the addition and removal of a certain concept from within a lexical item. How does meaning change? Does a lexical item change syntactic properties after addition / subtraction of a universal (cf. Levin & Pinker, 1991)?

3) Systematically probe universals at the interdisciplinary level. Some points of departure, that especially psycholinguistic have already worked at quite notably, are (language of) space and (language of) motion. Findings (about universals) stemming from this research should be compared with those resulting from research on e.g. vision, manipulation of objects, motor control and outputs of other subsystems of human cognition.

4.5. Conclusion: what makes a good (cognitive) theory

The discussion proposed in this paper has been motivated by some critical aspects of the (incoherent) state of the art within the cognitive linguistics movement. But how do we rate what is a good hypothesis, method or theoretical construct? How do we judge if one is better than another? Albeit there not being a straightforward answer, we are probably not mistaking if we state that linguistic premises and tools are best evaluated in the light of the results they produce in actually describing and explaining language, and predicting both language learning and acquisition (supposing one allows that the two differ, else just the acquisition phenomenon). And if language is essentially a vehicle for expressing meaning, than it is the nature of meaning that should be the primary focus of our attention, and the successfulness of its description and prediction the primary focus of our evaluation efforts.

Within the cognitive paradigm, the problem of meaning translates into the issue of the mapping between concepts and lexical forms. For each cognitive subdiscipline this means focusing on a different aspect of the language-mind binomial: psycholinguistic focus on child language and language impairment, syntacticians on universals in grammatical structures, semanticists on crosslinguistically recurrent units of meaning etc. What is inherently common to all the approaches is the ‘universality’. From the perspective of the linguistic body of knowledge that we command today, it would appear that the human mind, thus also the human language faculty, cannot be studied and understood without constantly drawing into the pool of ‘universality’.

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As Langacker (1983) points out:

'The primary need of linguistics today … is a conceptual framework … which permits the unified description of the many facets of language structure that present theories insist on forcing into separate boxes’

Langacker, (ibid: 31),

or, to close with Wierzbicka’s (1993) words:

'It is particularly important that the preeminence of English in the profession does not result in a unified framework based on unconscious Anglocentric assumptions. … What we need is a framework in which both the language specific and the language independent aspects of meaning can be adequately described.’

Wierzbicka, (ibid: 24)

Language production is one of the most complex cognitive linguistic and motor skills14. Still, the mechanics of language is not what concerns us when we are involved in communication. What we are conscious of, and very careful about, is meaning; selecting information, planning utterances and packaging the whole according to language specific principles. Having mastered the ‘simple’ bit, i.e. the mechanics of language production (speech), time has come for linguists to face their ‘responsibilities in full’, i.e. tackle the more complex but also more revealing part of studying language: its deep, mental mechanisms. Put in more straightforward terms we might wish to conclude by saying that having understood the physiology of language, linguists are now faced with its psychology or, rather, neurology.

4.6. Meaning in the brain

Having come a long way since we first introduced the issue of meaning, do we have an answer to the question ‘where is the ability to use language in general – or to use linguistic meaning in particular – located’? At this point, the most plausible answer seems to be ‘in the human brain’. But if this is so, how are we to account for the well known case of Phineas Gage?

Mr. Gage, a construction worker from Vermont, U.S.A., became famous in 1848 when, while working with a construction crew in charge of blasting away rocks to lay a new stretch of railway line, he fell victim to an accident. Namely, as Mr. Gage was handling gunpowder some of it accidentally exploded and sent a 90 cm long tamping rod up through Phineas’ upper left cheek and out from the top of his forehead. No one expected Phineas to recover from his injury but, almost miraculously, he did. A month later Mr. Gage was up and about, with no apparent damage to his senses or his speech. This incident clearly shows that if language ability is located in the brain, it is clearly not situated in the right and at the front (as this was the part of his brain that was heavily injured).

14 If we consider speaking, we note that we make around fifteen speech sounds per second, producing two or three words (Levelt, 1989, preface and p.2), and involving the co-ordinate use of around a hundred muscles (ibid., p.413).

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Of course, neurology has come a long way since 1848. Today, we indeed do know how come Mr. Gage came out of his incident with his speech ability intact. In order to understand this better, we need to take a closer look at the human brain.

4.6.1. The basic structure of the human brain

On average, the human brain weighs about 1,4 kg and looks a bit like a large pinkish-grey walnut.

The visible surface of the brain is known as the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of the higher level functions and intelligence. Below the cerebrum we find various other structures, which tend to be associated with more basic functions such as movement, balance, hormonal balance, heartbeat etc. Divided down the middle lengthwise, the brain has two roughly identical halves known as the left and the right hemispheres. The two hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum (or ‘callous body’).

The two hemispheres are not identical, neither in size nor in structure. These differences offer grounds for hypotheses relative the first major brain specialization for language: the so called lateralization – specialization of language to the left hemisphere. Namely, in as many as 90 percent of the right handed people the left hemisphere accomplishes most language processing functions. In non-right handers (including left-handed and ambidextrous people), language functions are far more likely to involve the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is dominant for right-handed people de to contralateralization: the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa. In right handers the distribution of right – left hemisphere ‘tasks’ might be approximated as follows:

Left hemisphere Right hemisphereLanguage Spatial abilitiesMath Face recognitionLogic Visual imageryReasoning Music

The above distinction is supported by ample evidence which seems to suggest that the non-dominant hemisphere plays a primary role in functions that are just one step beyond the essential language functions of relating form to (literal) meaning. These include determining the emotional state of a speaker from his or her tone of voice, and appreciating humour and metaphor.

Apart from being divided by the main, longitudinal fissure into two hemispheres, the brain is also divided by two further major fissures: the central fissure and the lateral fissure. The central fissure – known also as the Rolandic fissure - occupies a central position in the cortex in the anterior-posterior dimension. It separates the frontal lobe from the parietal lobe. The lateral fissure – often referred to as the Sylvian fissure – separates the temporal lobe from the parietal and frontal lobes.

It follows that within each hemisphere the fissures divide the cerebral cortex into four lobes. The four lobes and their general functions are as follows:Frontal lobe: Concerned with reasoning, planning, parts of speech and movement (motor cortex), emotions, and problem solving. The frontal lobe includes the so-called Broca’s area (to be discussed below).

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Parietal lobe: Concerned with perception of stimuli related to touch, pressure, temperature and pain.Temporal lobe: Concerned with perception and recognition of auditory stimuli (hearing) and memory (hippocampus). It includes the so-called Wernicke’s area.Occipital lobe: Located at the back, it is concerned with many aspects of vision.

Over the past couple of hundred years, most of what we know about how language is processed in the brain has come from studies of the functional consequences of localized brain injury, due to stroke, head trauma or localized degenerative disease. More recently, tools for "functional imaging" of the brain, such as fMRI, PET, MEG and ERP, provide a new sort of evidence about the localization of mental processing in undamaged brains. All of these techniques have their limitations, and so far they have mainly confirmed and refined earlier conceptions rather than revolutionizing them. One of the important conclusions is that we have two main areas for langugaae: the so called Broca’s area and the so-called Wernicke’s area. These two areas came to be known a long time before PET and MRI scans began.

Namely, apart from neurological evidence, psycholinguistis use other other types of evidence for creating the neurological chart of the language faculty. As in other cases, in figuring out how the mind works, one standard line of inquiry is to look at how it fails. Scientists this look at:

a) Medical evidence, i.e. analysis of speech of patients who suffer from aphasia b) Tips of the tonguec) Malapropismsd) Slips of the tongue (further subdivided into assemblage errors and selection errors)

4.6.2. Aphasia

The term aphasia is a medical term used to denote a particular disorder, and it means "partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas... due to brain damage."

A note of caution: functional localization (the place in the brain where language functions are located) varies, sometimes considerably, across individuals. Brain injury (most commonly caused by stroke) is usually widespread enough to affect several different functional areas. Thus each patient is individual both in terms of symptoms and in terms of the correlation of symptoms to area of damage. Nevertheless, there are broad syndromes of deficit-associated-with-local-damage, that are characterized as Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia.

Broca’s aphasiaIn 1865, Paul Broca described patients of his who were characterized by the sudden lack of the ability to speak, and a right hemiparesis (paralysis of the right side of the body, usually right arm and/or leg). He theorized that this was due to damage to a language area in the brain. Following the patients' death and post mortum examination, Broca demonstrated the region was in the left posterior frontal lobe, around the area of the operculum. Broca's discovery spawned the notion that the brain was lateralized and compartmentalized. Cerebral localization became a popular research topic as many new areas of specialization were discovered.

Broca's aphasia is characterized by nonfluent speech, few words, short sentences, any many pauses. The words that the patient can produce come with great effort and often sound distorted. The melodic intonation is flat and monopitched. This gives the speech the general

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appearance of a telegraphic nature, because of the deletion of functor words and disturbances in word order. Moreover, the repetition of words and phrases is impaired. However, aural comprehension for conversational speech is relatively intact. There is often an accompanying right hemiparesis involving the face, arm, and leg.

Broca's aphasia is sometimes called disfluent aphasia or agrammatic aphasia. It is named after Pierre-Paul Broca (1824-1880), a French surgeon and anthropologist who first described the syndrome and its association with injuries to a specific region of the brain.

Agrammatism typically involves laboured speech, and a lack of use of syntax in speech production and comprehension (although patients with agrammatic language production may not necessarily have agrammatic language comprehension).

An example of agrammatic speech, i.e. speech produced by patient suffering from Broca’s aphasia:  

PATIENT: “Ah ... Monday ... ah, Dad and Paul Haney [the speaker] and Dad ... hospital. Two ... ah, doctors ... and ah ... thirty minutes ... and yes ... ah ... hospital.  And, er, Wednesday ... nine o'clock. And er Thursday, ten o'clock ... doctors. Two doctors ... and ah ... teeth. Yeah, ... fine”.

Wernicke’s aphasiaA language disorder that impacts language comprehension and the production of meaningful language. The disorder is related to damage to the Wernicke’s Area. Individuals with Wernicke’s Aphasia have difficulty understanding spoken language but are able to produce sounds, phrases, and word sequences. While these utterances have the same rhythm as normal speech, they are not language because no information is conveyed.

Wernicke's aphasia is sometimes called sensory aphasia or fluent aphasia. The speech of a Wernicke's patient is often a normally-intoned stream of grammatical markers, pronouns, prepositions, articles and auxiliaries, except that the speaker has difficulty in recalling correct content words, especially nouns (anomia). The empty slots where the nouns should go are often filled with meaningless neologisms (paraphasia).

The patient in the passage below is trying to describe a picture of a child taking a cookie.

PATIENT (C.B.): “Uh, well this is the ... the /dodu/ of this. This and this and this and this. These things going in there like that. This is /sen/ things here. This one here, these two things here. And the other one here, back in this one, this one /gesh/ look at this one”.

EXAMINER: “Yeah, what's happening there?”

PATIENT (C.B.). “I can't tell you what that is, but I know what it is, but I don't now where it is. But I don't know what's under. I know it's you couldn't say it's ... I couldn't say what it is. I couldn't say what that is. This shu-- that should be right in here. That's very bad in there. Anyway, this one here, and that, and that's it. This is the getting in here and that's the getting around here, and that, and that's it. This is getting in here and that's the getting around here, this one and one with this one. And this one, and that's it, isn't it? I don't know what else you'd want”.

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Wernicke's patients seem to suffer from much greater disorders of thought than Broca's patients, who often seem able to reason much as before their stroke, but are simply unable to express themselves fluently.

T o sum up, the language problems associated with damage to Broca's and Wernicke's area are quite different from one another:

To sum up, the language problems associated with damage to Broca's and Wernicke's area are quite different from one another:

Damage to Broca's Area(Broca's aphasia)

prevents a person from producing speech

person can understand language

words are not properly formed

speech is slow and slurred.

Damage to Wernicke's Area(Wernicke's aphasia)

loss of the ability to understand language

person can speak clearly, but the words that are put together make no sense. This way of speaking has been called "word salad" because it appears that the words are all mixed up like the vegetables in a salad.

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Chapter 5APPENDIX

(Original texts)

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Plato: Cratylus. Benjamin Jowett in the Dialogues of Plato, ed. W. Chase Greene. New York: Liveright. pp. 173-175

Socrates: You were saying, if you remember, that he who have names must have known the things which he names; are you still of the opinion?Cratylus: I am.S: And would you say that the giver of the first names had also a knowledge of the things which he named?C: I should.S: But how should he have learned or discovered things from the names if the primitive names were not given? For, if we are correct in our view, the only way of learning and discovering things, is either to discover names for ourselves or to learn them from others.C: I think that there is a good deal in what you say, Socrates.S: But if things are only to be known through names, how can we suppose that the givers of names had knowledge, or were legislators before there were names at all, and therefore before they could have known them?C: I believe, Socrates, that true account of the matter to be, that a power more than human gave things their names, and that the names which are thus given are necessarily their true names …S: But if that is true, Cratylus, then suppose that things may be known without names?C: Clearly.S: But how would you expect to know them? What other way can there be of knowing them, except the true and natural way, through their affinities, when they are akin to each other, and through themselves?C: What are you saying, I think, is true.S: Well, but reflect have not several times acknowledged that names rightly given are the likeness and images of the things which they name?C: Yes.S: Let us suppose that to any extent you please you can learn thing through the medium of names, and suppose also, that you can learn them from the things themselves – which is likely to be the nobler and clearer way; to learn of the image, whether the image and the truth of which the image is the expression have been rightly conceived, or to learn of the truth whether the truth and the image of it have been duly executed?C: I should say that we must learn of the truth.S: How real existence is to be studied or discovered is beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. NO; they must be studied and investigated in themselves.

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Ferdinand de Saussure. 1966. Course in General Linguistics. MacGraw Hill.

p.19Language exists in the form of a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each member of a community, almost like a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed to each individual. Language exists in each individual, yet is common to all. Nor is it affected by the will of the depositaries. Its mode of existence is expressed by the formula:

1+1+1+1 …………….. = I (collective pattern)

What part does speaking play in the same community? It is the sum of what people say and includes: a) individual combinations that depend on the will of the speakers, and b) equally wilful phonation acts that are necessary for the execution of these combinations.Speaking is thus a collective instrument: its manifestations are individual and momentary. In speaking there is only the sum of particular acts, as in the formula:

(1+1’+1’’+1’’’ ……)

pp.66-67The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our sense. The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it ‘material’, it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract.The psychological character of the sound-images becomes apparent when we observe our own speech. Without moving our lips or tongue, we can talk to ourselves or recite mentally a selection of verse. The linguistic sign is then a two-sided psychological entity that can be represented by the drawing;

Concept

Sound-image

The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other. Whether we try to find the meaning of the Latin word arbor or the word that Latin uses to designate the concept ‘tree’ it is clear that only the associations sanctioned by the language appear to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be imagining. Our definition of the linguistic sign poses an important question of terminology. I call the combination of the concept and a sound-image a sign.

‘tree’

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arbor arbor

I propose to retain the word sign (signe) to designate the whole and to replace the concept and sound-image respectively by signified (signifie) and signifier (significant): the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts.

p.103.The two-sided linguistic unit has often been compared with the human person made up of a body and a soul. The comparison is hardly satisfactory. A better choice would be a chemical compound like water, a combination of a hydrogen and oxygen: taken separately, neither element has any of the properties of water.

pp.112-113The characteristic role of language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for expressing ideas but to serve as a link between thought and sound, under conditions that of necessity bring about the reciprocal delimitations of units.Thought, chaotic by nature, has to become ordered in the process of its decomposition. Neither are thoughts given material forms nor are sounds transformed into mental entities: the somewhat mysterious fact is rather that ‘thought-sound’ implies division, and that language works out of its units while taking shape between two shapeless masses. Visualize the air in contact with a sheet of water: if the atmospheric pressure changes, the surface of the water will be broken up into a series of divisions, waves; the waves resemble the union or coupling of thought with phonic substance …Language can also be compared with a sheet of paper; thought is the front and the sound is the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time. Likewise, in language one can neither divide sound from thought not thought from sound; result would be pure either pure psychology or pure phonology.

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Bloomfield, Leonard. 1969. Language. London: George Allen & Unwin Lts.

pp.21-33Suppose that Jack and Jill are walking down the lane. Jill is hungry.

She sees an apple in a tree. She makes a noise with her larynx, tongue and lips. Jack vaults the fence, climbs the tree, takes the apple, brings it to Jill, and places it in her hand. Jill cuts the apple.

This succession of events could be studied in many ways, but we, who are studying language, will naturally distinguish between the act of speech and the other occurrences, which we shall call practical events. Viewed in this way, the incident consists of three parts, in order of time:

A. practical events preceding the act of speechB. speechC. practical events following the act of speech

We shall examine first the practical events A and C. The events in A concern mainly the speaker, Jill. She is hungry; that is, some of her muscles were contracting, and some fluids were being secreted, especially in her stomach. Perhaps she was also thirsty; her tongue and throat were dry. The light-waves reflected from the red apple struck her eyes. She saw Jack by her side. Her past dealings with Jack should now enter into the picture. Let us suppose that they consisted in some ordinary relation, like that of brother and sister or that of husband and wife. All these events, which precede Jill’s speech and concern her, we cal the speaker’s stimulus.

We turn now to C, the practical events which come after Jill’s speech. These concern mainly the hearer, Jack, and consist of his fetching the apple and giving it to Jill. The practical events which follow the speech and concern the hearer, we call the hearer’s response. The events which follow the speech concern also Jill, and this in a very important way: she gets the apple into her grasp and eats it …

The lone Jill is in much the same position as the speechless animal. If the animal is hungry and sees and smells food, it moves toward the food: whether the animal succeeds in getting the food, depends upon its strength and skill. The state of hunger and the sigh or smell of food are the stimulus (which we symbolize by S), and the movement toward the food are the reaction (which we symbolize by R). The lone Jill and the speechless animal act in only one way, namely:

S - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R

Language enables one person to make the reaction (R) when another person has the stimulus (S).

The speaker, Jill, moved her vocal cords, her lower jaw, her tongue, and so on, in a way which forced air into the form of sound waves. These movements of the speaker are a reaction to the stimulus S. Instead of performing the practical reaction R – namely, starting realistically off to get hold of the apple – she performed these vocal movements. In sum, then, Jill, as the speaking person, has not one but two ways of reacting to a stimulus:

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S - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R (practical reaction), orS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - r (linguistic substitute reaction).

When we Jack doing anything (fetching an apple, say), his action may be due not only, as are in animal’s actions, to a practical stimulus (such as hunger in his stomach, or the sight of an apple), but, just as often, to a speech-stimulus. His actions, R, may be prompted not by one, but by two kinds of proddings:

practical stimulus S - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R, andlinguistic substitute stimulus s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - R.

If we represent this connection by a dotted line, then we can symbolize the two human ways of responding to a stimulus by these two diagrams:

speechless reaction S - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rreaction mediated by speech s - - - - - - - - - r ………… s- - - - - - - - - R

The difference between the two types is evident. The speechless reaction occurs always in the same person as does the stimulus; the person who gets the stimulus is the only one who can make the response. The response, accordingly, is limited to whatever actions the receiver of the stimulus can make … The arrows in our diagram represent the sequence of events within one person’s body – a sequence of events which we think is due to some property of the nervous system. Therefore the speechless reaction can take place only in the body which received the stimulus. In the reaction mediated by speech, on the hand, there is al ink, represented by a dotted line, which consists of sound waves in the air: the reaction mediated by speech can take place in the body of any person who hears the speech. The possibilities of reaction are enormously increased since different hearers may be capable of a tremendous variety of acts. The gap between the bodies of the speaker and the hearer – the discontinuity of the two nervous systems – is bridged by the sound-waves.

David G. Mandelbaum. 1968. Selected writing of Edward Sapir. University of California Press.

p.160Language is a guide to ‘social’ reality. Though language is not ordinarily thought of as of essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to

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imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication and reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predisposed certain choices and interpretation.

p.11 ??A further psychological characteristic of language is the fact that while it may be looked upon as a symbolic system which reports or refers to or otherwise substitutes for direct experience, it does not as a matter of actual behaviour stand apart from or run parallel to direct experience but completely interpenetrates with it. This is indicated by the widespread feeling, particularly among primitive people, of that virtual identity or close correspondence of word and thing which leads to the magic of spells. On our own level it is generally difficult to make a complete divorce between objective reality and our own linguistic symbols of reference to it; and things, qualities, and events are on the whole felt to by what they are called. For the normal person every experience, real or potential, is saturated with verbalism. This explains why so many lovers of nature, for instance, do not feel that they are truly in touch with it until they have mastered the names of a great many flowers and trees, as though the primary world of reality were a verbal one and as though one could not get close to nature unless one first mastered the terminology which somehow magically expresses it. It is the constant interplay between language and experience which removes language from the cold status of such purely and symbolic systems as mathematical symbolism or flag signalling.

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Benjamin Lee Whorf. 1956. Language, Thought and Reality. The MIT Press.

pp.213-214We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our minds – and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organise it into concepts, and ascribe significancies as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way – an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees… We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence, to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic background is similar, or can in some way be calibrated.

p.156How does such a network of language, culture and behaviour come about historically? Which was first: language patterns or the cultural norms? In main they have grown up together, constantly influencing each other. But in this partnership the nature of the language is the factor that limits free plasticity and rigidifies channels of development in the more autocratic way. This is because language is a system, not just an assemblage of norms. Large systematic outlines can change to something really new only very slowly, while many other cultural innovations are made with comparative quickness. Language thus represents the mass mind; it is affected by inventions and innovations, but affected little and slowly.

p.252Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of a person’s thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematisation of his own language. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others by which the personality not only communicates but also analyses nature, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.

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Ogden, C. K. & Richards, I. A. 1930. The Meaning of Meaning. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

pp.9-12.

Symbolism is the study of the part played in human affairs by language and symbols of kinds and especially their influence on thought, It singles out special inquiry the ways in which symbols help us and hinder us in reflecting things.

Symbols direct and organize, record and communicate. In stating what they direct and organize, record and communicate, we have to distinguish as always between Thought and Things. It is Thought (or as we shall usually say reference) which is directed and organized, and it is also Thought which is recorded and communicated. But just as we say that the gardener mows the lawn we know it is the lawn-mower which actually does the cutting, so though we know that the direct relation of symbols is with thought, we also say that symbols record events and communicate facts.

By leaving our essential elements in the language situation we easily raise problems and difficulties which vanish when the whole transaction is considered in great detail. Words, as everyone knows, ‘mean’ nothing by themselves. It is only when a thinker makes use of them that they stand for anything, or, in a sense, have ‘meaning’. They are instruments. But besides this referential use which for all reflective, intellectual use of language should be paramount, words have other functions which may be grouped together as emotive. These can best be examined when the framework of the problem of statement and intellectual communication has been set up. The importance of the emotive aspects of language is not thereby minimized, and anyone chiefly concerned with popular primitive speech might well be led to reverse this order of approach. Many difficulties indeed, arising through the behaviour of words in discussion, even among scientists, force us at an early stage to take into account these ‘non-symbolic’ influences. But for the analysis of the senses of meaning with which we are chiefly concerned, it is desirable to begin the relations of thought, words and things as they are found in cases of reflective speech uncomplicated by emotional, diplomatic, or other disturbances; and with regards to these, the indirectness of the relations between words and things is the feature which first deserves attention.

This may be simply illustrated by a diagram, in which the three factors involved whenever any statement is made, or understood, are placed at the corner of the triangle, the relations which hold between them represented by the sides. The point just made can be restated by saying that in this respect the base of the triangle is quite different in composition from either of the other sides. Between the thought and the symbol causal relations hold. When we speak, the symbolism we employ is caused partly by the reference we are making and partly by the social and psychological factors. When we hear what is said, the symbols can cause us to perform an act of reference and to assume an attitude which will, according to circumstance, be more or less similar to the act and the attitude of the speaker.

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THOUGHT OR REFERENCE

CORRECT ADEQUATE (symbolizes (refers to other a causal causal relation) relation)

SYMBOL REFERENT

(stands for imputed relation)

Between the Thought and the Referent there is also a relation, more or less direct (as when we think or attend to coloured surface we see) or indirect (as when we ‘think’ or ‘refer’ to Napoleon), in which case there may be a very long chain of sign-situations intervening between the act and its referent; word – historian – contemporary record – eyewitness – referent (Napoleon).

Between the symbol and the referent there is no relevant relation other than the indirect one, which consists in its being used by someone to stand for the referent. Symbol and Referent, that is to say, are not connected directly (and when for grammatical reasons we imply such a relation, it will merely be an imputed, as opposed to a real relation) but only indirectly round the two sides of the triangle.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1958. Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell.

p.20.Let us first discuss this point of the argument: that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it. It is important to note that the word ‘meaning’ is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that ‘corresponds’ to the word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When Mr. N. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have meaning it would make no sense to say ‘Mr. N. N. is dead’.…For a large class of cases – though not for all – in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

p.21The demonstrative ‘this’ can never be without a bearer. It might be said: ‘so long as there is this, the word ‘this’ has a meaning too, whether this is simple or complex.’ But that does not make the word into a name. On the contrary: for a name is not used with, but only explained by means of, the gesture of pointing.…What lies behind the idea that names really signify simples? Socrates says in the Theaetetus: ‘If I make no mistake, I have heard some people say this: there is no definition of the primary elements – so to speak – out of which we and everything else are composed; for everything that exists in its own right can only be named, no other determination is possible, neither that it is nor that it is not … But what exist in its own right has to be … named without any other determination. In consequence it is impossible to give an account of any primary element; for it, nothing is possible but the bare name; its name is all it has. But just as what consists of these primary elements is itself complex, so the names of the elements become descriptive language by being compound together. For the essence of speech is the composition of names’.

p. 31… Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these linguistic phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all ‘language’. I will try to explain this.Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’’ – but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of

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them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.…I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.

p.33But if a concept ‘game’ is uncircumscribed like that, you don’t really know what you mean by ‘game’. When I give the description: ‘The ground was quite covered with plants’ – do you want to say I don’t know what I am talking about until I can give you a definition of a plant.

p.34One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges. ‘But is a blurred concept a concept at all?’ Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?

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Jean Aitchinson, 1996. The Seeds of Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

p.177

A possible list of absolute universals – features found in all languages runs as follows:

All languages:

1. have consonants and vowels,

2. combine sounds into larger units,

3. have nouns – words for people and objects,

4. have verbs – words for actions,

5. can combine words,

6. can say who did what to whom,

7. can negate utterances,

8. can ask questions,

9. involve structure-dependence,

10. involve recursion.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Structure dependance: frogs; fat old frogs; large fat old frogs; the old, old frog; the old, old frog swallowed a very very very large fly but not the old frog frog caught a very large fly fly.

Recursion: language can re-run the same sentence structure again and again, by repeatedly reapplying the same rules. This reapplication is known as recursion. Example: This is the frog which swallowed the fly which settled on the water lily which grew by the river which flowed through the fields which adjoined the village ….

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Susanne Langer. 1951. Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

pp.126-128

The transformation of experience into concepts, not the elaboration of signals and symptoms, is the motive of language. Speech is through and through symbolic, and only sometimes signific. Any attempt to trace it back entirely to the need of communication, neglecting the formulative, abstractive experience at the root of it, must lead us in the sort of enigma that the problem of linguistic organs has long presented. I have tried, instead, to trace it to the characteristic human activity, symbolic transformation and abstraction, of which pre-human beginnings may perhaps be attributed to the highest apes. Yet we have not found the commencement of language anywhere between their state and ours. Even in man, who has all the prerequisites, it depends on education not only for its full development, but for its very inception. How, then, did it ever arise? Any why do all men possess it?

It could only have arisen in a race in which the lower forms of symbolic thinking – dream, ritual, superstition fancy – were already highly developed, i.e. where the process of simbolization, though primitive was very active. Communal life in such a group would be characterized by vigorous indulgence in purely expressive acts, in ritual gestures, dances, etc., and probably by a strong tendency to fantastic terrors and joys. The liberation from practical interests that is already marked in the apes would make rapid progress in a species with a definitely symbolic turn of mind: conventional meanings would gradually imbue originally random act, so that the group life as a whole would have an exciting, vaguely transcendental tinge, without any definable or communicable body of ideas to cling to. A wealth of dance-forms and antic poses and manoeuvres might flourish in a society that was somewhat above the apes’ in non-practical interests, and rested on a slightly higher development of the symbolic brain functions. There are quite articulated play-forms, verging on dance-forms, in the natural repertoire of the chimpanzees: with but a little further elaboration, these would become most obvious material for symbolic expression. It is not at all impossible that ritual, solemn and significant, antedates the evolution of language.

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Study questions:

Plato

What is the main problem in the dialogue (Cratylus)? How do we learn about things? Who gives things the first names?

de Saussure

What is the difference between language and speaking? What does the linguistic sign consist of? How do sound image and concept differ? What is the relationship between language and thought?

Bloomfield

What is the speaker’s stimulus? What are the two ways of responding to the speaker’s stimulus? How does this approach fit the behaviourist explanation of meaning?

Mandelbaum (Sapir)

In which way is language envisaged as a guide to reality? Do we live in the objective world alone? Explain. Does language only report and refer? Does our experience run parallel to language? Explain.

Whorf

How do we dissect nature? How is the world organised by our minds? State the principle of linguistic relativity. What is the relationship between language and culture? Explain the difference between language relativism and language determinism. Which hare the possible objections to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Ogden, C. K. & Richards

What is the triangle of meaning? State the relationship among the three sides of the triangle. What is the meaning of ‘symbol’ in O & R? What is the referential use of language (give examples)? What is the emotive use of language (give examples)?

Wittgenstein

Where do words acquire their meaning? Explain the difference between the meaning of a name and the bearer of the name. What is a language game and what is common to all games? Explain the notion of ‘family resemblances’.

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Aitchinson

What are language universals? Enumerate them and comment on each. Give examples of structure dependence. Give examples of the recursions. Which relation can you observe between the universals proposed by Aitchinson and the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) framework proposed by Wierzbicka and Goddard?

Langer

What is the motive of language? Where do we find the beginning of language? Where does Langer trace the origin of language? What are your objections to Langer’s position?

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