translational semantics

7/28/2019 Translational Semantics.

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TRANSLATIONAL SEMANTICS: a discussion of the second edi t ionof Geoffrey Leech's Semantics: the Study o f Meaning

Nigel I,ove

Introduction

115

I t LS widely accepted that a descript ion of a natural language shouldinclude an account of what i t lS to know the meanings of i t s expresSlonS. What wil l be referred to here as ' t rans la t iona l semantics' isthe idea that such an account can and ought to be provided in the formof t ranslat ions of (or a system for t ransla t ing) the expressions ofthe language under description into some chosen metalanguage. I t i squestionable whether (i ) t ranslat ional semantics is feasible , and i fi t is , ( i i ) whether i t i s useful .The f i r s t of these questions turns on the kind of t ranslat ion held tobe necessary. For many theor i s t s , the chosen metalanguage is onewhich must provide, inter a l i a , an exhaustively expl ic i t enumerationof the 'components' or ' fea tures ' which col lect ively comprise the meanings of units of form (e.g. 'words') , together with rules governing thesemantic interpreta t ion of combinations of those uni ts (e. g. ' sentences ' ) .Construed in this way, the t rans la t ional i s t ' s enterprise requires thatthe meanings of l inguist ic expressions be d e t e r r n i n a t e ~ [o r i f they arenot, i t wil l be unclear by what cr i te r ia a proposed feature-speci f icat ion, for ins tance, i s to be adjudged correct ( i . e . exhaust ive, expl ic i t ,and in conformity with the facts of usage of the expression concerned).I t has been argued, for example by Sampson (1980), that the expressionsof natural languages are not in fact semantically determinate. Indeed,meanings could scarcely be other than in t r ins ica l ly unstable, given theway in which native speakers of a language learn them: "we a ll spendour time guessing what sets of c r i t e r i a l features would explain theapplicat ion of given words to given things in the speech we hear around

Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 11, 1983, 115-136 doi: 10.5774/11-0-106


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us (and in the writ ing we read) while t ry to conform our own usageto each other ' s c r i t e r i a order to be understood" (Sampson 1980:48).I f this is so, the t r ans la t iona l i s t ' s demand for exhaustively explic i tand correct feature-specif icat ions wi l l not only be impossible to meetin practice but incoherent in principle , for " i t is not c ear what i tcould mean in such a context to ta lk of a standard of correctness whicha given speaker has or has not achieved with respect to his use of a

Ggiven word" (Sampson 1980:48). (1980:46) i l lu s t r a tes his pointby considering "a cal question of the kind which would have to beglven some answer la t ional N.L.] semantic descrip t ionof English: the question whether possession of a handle is a c r i t e rfeature for the appl t ion of the word cup to an object". This ques-t ion may be rephrased in various ways, depending on the descrip t iveformat with which the semanticist is workingfeature-specif icat ion for cup include the feature

e. g. 'sho.uld theHANDl ? I

' should a semantic description ofcup infer X has a handle"? ' , oranalyt ical ly t rue? ' The quest

ish contain a rule "from X is a' i s the sentence cups have handles, in \oJhatever form, ar ises because

cup is one of a group of words, including mug, tumbler, beaker , vaseand others , whose meanings are similar but not ident ical , and i t is thetask of the t rans la t ional semanticist to determine precisely what setof concepts lS summed up in the word cup, and hmV' tha t se t dif fers fromthe set summed up in tumbler, beaker, etc . But is is far from clearthat such quest ions are answerable.Less s t r ingent demands than these may be n:ade on the chos en metalanguage.A t rans la t ional semantic account of a natural language might. for in -stance, be held to be accomplished t rans la t ing a l l of i t s expressionsinto another natural This interpreta t ion would circuT.vent

on's object ion, In as much as t rans la t ion from one natural languageto another is clear possible. But even i f , by allowing another natu-ra l language to stand as metalanguage to the language under descr t ion ,we guarantee the feas ib i l i ty of t ransla t ional cs, therethe ques t ion of i t s adequacy as an account of I semantic knowl edge' .This question has been voicedproblem is tha t , i f to know the

, e.g . Evans and HcDowell (1976:x). Theof an expresslon is merely to

know t rans la t ion into a meta1.anguage, the account of semantic know-



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ledge offered encompasses the possibi l i ty that someone might know a l lthe t rans la t ional equivalences between the two languages who yet doesnot, in any ser ious sense, know the meaning of any expression 1n ei therof them. Take, by way of i l lu s t r a t ion , a monoglot speaker of Afrikaanswho has before him Harrap's French-English, English-French dict ionaryas his sale source of knowledge of both English and French. Accordingto the t raGsla t i0nal theory of meaning the fact that he has availableto him, for every word of English. i t s t rarrslat ional equivD.1ent in French(for purposes of the example the metalanguage in which the meanings ofEnglish expressions are to be explicated) implies that he knows the meanings of a l l the words of English. And i t 1S certain ly undeniable tha ti f asked what the English word dog means, he can reply ' ch ien ' , and i fasked what queen means, he can answer ' re ine ' , and so on; but i f a l l heknows about chien and reine turns out to be that they mean 'dog' and'queen' respect ively , i t is unclear tha t i t would be useful to ascribeto him semantic knowledge of ei ther English or French.

Objections to t rans la t ional semantics along both of these l ines are fa rfrom novel. One migbt therefore have expected a new, revised edi t ionof a popular textbook on the subjec t to have devoted considerable spaceto an attempt to dispose of them. The second edi t ion of Geoffrey Leech'sSemantics (Leech 1981) i s , in this respect , unsatiSfactory; 1) and theremarks that follow are offered in the hope tha t they ,,,rill provide meatthat a third edi t ion wil l see f i t to get i t s teeth in to .

2 What mean1ng 1S (not)

According to Leech (1981 :x) , "Linguistics . . . has brought to the subjec tof semantics a cer ta in degree of analyt ic rigour combined with a view ofthe study of mean1ng as an integrated component of the to ta l theory ofhow language works". The ' t o ta l theory of hOvl language works' thatLeech has in mind runs roughly as follows. Language is envisaged primar i ly as something one knows rather than something one does, and communi-cat ion by means of language is a matter of implementing tha t knowledge.Speaking and writ ing are , of course, ac t iv i t i e s , but acts of speaking orwrit ing or of understanding the speech and wri t ing of others are not



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themselves the objec t of l inguis t ic study. ThGt object i s , ra ther , the(unconscious) knowledge that permits these act iv i t ies to tJ.ke place:'."A . . , principle underlying many present-day approaches to semantics

s e e ~ n g the task of language study as the explicat ion of the LINGUISTICCOHPETENCE of the native speaker of a language; that i s , the provisionof rules and s t ructures which specify the mental apparatus a personmust possess i f he is La 'know' a given language" (p. S).wl1at one is taken to have unconSC10US knowledge of 1S not ' language'general but the one or more languages of which on e a native speaker.Languages, according to the theory, are systems of correspondencesbetween two levels of s t ructure , one of which is called ' form' , and theother of which is called 'meaning' . The native speaker of a languageis held to know the se t of forms comprised by tha t language, and these t of meanings that correspond to them. I f confronted with the ut te-rance ' I would l ike a nice juicy apple ' he understands i t (so the theoryruns) virtue of knowing the meanings of the forms ~ , apple, I , ju icy ,l ike , nice, would, and the meaning of the composite form consist ing ofa sequence of those forms in the order I , would, l ike , ~ , n i c ~ , juicy2)and apple. Conversely, i f a native speaker of English wishes toexpress a desire for a nice juicy apple, he knows tha t one way of doing

3)so is to ut te r tha t sequence of forms.Corrnnunication between speakers A and B of a language is seen as beingpossible because A and B both have access to the system of correspondences between forms and m e a n ~ n g s which const i tu tes the language. Tocommunicate with B, A encodes his m e a n ~ n g s the appropriate forms.To understand A, B matches up the forms which he hears A u t te r with thecorresponding meanings.

"mat exactly is a meaning? This 1S not a question that bothers leechunduly:

we might say tha t the whole point of set t ing up a theory ofsemantics is to provide a ' de f in i t ion ' of meaning thati s , a sys tematic account of the nature of meaning. To demanda defin i t ion of meaning before we s tar ted discussing the subjec t would simply be to ins i s t on t reat ing cer ta in otherconcepts, e.g . stimulus and response, as in some sense more



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basic and more important. A physic is t does not have todefine notions ' l ike ' t ime' , ' hea t ' , ' co lour ' , 'atom',before he s tar ts investigating the.ir propert ies. Rather,def ini t ions, i f they are needed, emerge from the studyi t se l f (p. 4).

Nonetheless, Leech is prepared to t e l l us a certa amount about ,-


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each of which wil l in tura require defin i t ion in terms of further words,and so on. In supposing that the meaning of a

ained in terms of facts about thes t ic e.xpression

ects i t referred to ,ould beBloomfield was vainly attempting to locatewhereas according to Leech

ng 'outside language',

one of the keynotes of a modern l inguist ic approach tosemantics is that there is no escape from language: anequation such as cent hundredth of a dollar or sa l t =:NaC1 is not a w th somethingoutside i t is a corres ence bet"Jeen l inguis t icexpress , supposedly having ' the same meaning' . '::'hesearch for an t ion of l i n g ~ i s t i c phenomena in termsof what is not language is as vain as the search for anex from a room which has no doors or windmvs, for theword ' explanat ion ' i t s e l f implies a statement in language.Our , then, is to be content with exploring what wehave the room: to study relat ions within... (p .

Some of the relat ions within language that Leech argues to be the propersubject-matter of semantics are: ( i ) synonymy (the re la t ion between themeanings of ' I am an orphan' and 'I am a child and have ::10 father ormother') , ( i i ) paraphrase ( ' the defects of the plan were obvious ' and' the demerits of the scheme were evident ' ) , ( i i i ) entailment ( ' the earthgoes round the sun ' and ' the earth moves'), ( iv) presupposit ion ( ' John 'sson is called Marcus' and 'John has a son ' ) , (v ) inconsistency ( ' theearth goes round the sun' and ' the earth is s ta t ionary ' ) . Synonymy is

, 4)'sameness of is taken to mean that two utterancesX and Yare synon)TffiOUS i f they have the same t ru th-value. If Y is syno-nymous ivith X, then i f X is t rue , Y is t rue, an(l vice-versa, and i f Xis fa l se . Y is fa l se , and vice-versa. Similar defini t ions can be statedfor the other semantic relat ions mentioned, according to Leech (p. 74).The tant poin t is that knowledge of these relat ions is taken to be

of the t ac i t knowledge of s ~ e a k e r ~ of language. A speaker ofish who assents to the t ruth of the earth es round the sun, for

example. is committed to assenting to the t ru th of tlle earth moves.Part of his knowledge of English semantics is the knowledge that there la t ion of entailment holds between those two sentences. The task ofthe semant ic is t is to det e and describe the knowledge of this sor tthat speakers have.



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This t ask requires t ha t tvlO important d i s t i nc t i ons be drawn. The f i r s tis between ' l i ngu i s t i c knowledge I on the one hand, and ' f a c t u a l ' or' r ea l -wor ld knowledge' on the o ther .

The speaker who kno\vs t ha t I am an orphan i s synonymous with I am ach i ld an d have no fa ther or mother knows it ln v i r tue of knowing chemeanlngs of the words concerned. The t r u th of I am an orphan, given thet ru th of I am a ch i ld and have no fa ther or mother fol lows from th e mean-ing of orphan. One does not need to knmv any fac ts about p a r t i c u l a r orphansbefore being in a posi t ion to assen t to the synonymity o f the two sen tences .Leech con t ras t s th i s case wi th what he ca l l s ' f ac tua l synonymy' (p . 75) .Char lo t t e l i ve s ln P a r i s , fo r example, i s f ac tua l ly synonymous with Charl o t t e l ives in the c a p i t a l of France. What gives u t te r ances of these twosentences the same t r u th value i s the f ac t t ha t Par i s happens to be thec a p i t a l of France. But th i s i s not a f ac t about the meanings of the Engl i sh words used to express it so much as a f ac t about the s oc iopo l i t i c a lorganisa t ion of t ha t corner of Europe , To know t ha t Par i s i s the cap i ta lof France i s to know something about the world. But it i s not s imi la r lythe case t ha t an orphan 'happens to b e ' a chi ld with no f a the r or mother .To know t ha t an orphan i s a chi ld with no f a ther or mother i s to know someth ing about Engl ish .

A comparable d i s t i n c t i o n can be drawn fo r the o the r semant ic r e l a t i o n smentioned. For example, the re l a t ion between it has been ra in ing hard andthe ground i s wet i s the ' f a c t u a l ' counte rpar t of the r e l a t i o n betweenthe ear th goes round the sun and the ear th moves, I f it has been ra1nlnghard , the ground wi l l (probably) be wet . This 1S a matte r o f the connec-t ion between phys ica l phenomena. I f the ear th goes round the sun , thenthe ear th moves. This i s a mat te r of the connect ion between the meaningof moves and the mean1ng o f goes . Semant ic i s t s are in te r es ted only inre l a t ions of t h i s l a t t e r type. They are in te r es ted in charac t e r i s ing theknowledge someone has because he 1S a speaker of h is language, not theknowledge t ha t he has because he 1S an i n t e l l i g en t i nhab i t an t of the world.

This d i s t i n c t i o n can also be brought out wi th re fe rence to two d i f fe r en t kinds of nonsense . The example Leech gives i s the d i f fe rencebetween my uncle always s leeps s tanding on one toe and my uncle alwayss leeps awake (p . 6 ) . Th e s i t ua t i ons r e fe r red to by these sen tencesare both imposs ib le , bu t they are impossible for d i f f e r e n t reasons .



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The f i r s t runs counter to what we know about the postures Ln whichsleep is possible , the second to what we know about the meanings ofsleep and avake.

An analogy may be dravn here between the rules of a languageand the rules of a game. Events within a footbal l match,for instance, may be impossible ( ~ \ ) because they violatenatura l laws regarding physical strength of human beings,the inabi l i ty of footbal ls to defy ordinary laws of motion(e .g . by moving in the a ir l ike boomerangs), etc . Thus afootbal l report that ' the centre-forvard scored a goal byheading a bal l from his own goal - l ine ' would be disbelievedas physical ly impossible , while ' the centre-forward scoreda goal by punching the bal l into his own goal-mouth' wouldbe disbelieved on the grounds that i f such a thing happened,the game could not have been football (p. 7).

The second dis t inct ion is between ' conceptual ' ( ' l i t e ra l ') and otherkinds of meanLng. This is rather more d i f f i cu l t to def ine , and Leechcontents himself with l e t t ing i t emerge by contrast with the other kindstha t he dist inguishes. For example, ' connotative meaning' "is the com-municative value an expression has by vir tue of what i t refers to , overand above i t s purely conceptual content" (p. 12). 'Biped ' , 'posses-sLng a womb', 'experienced in cookery' are a l l possible connotations ofwoman. But they are not, in Leech's terms, par t of conceptualmeanLng of woman: one may be a woman without having an y of these threea t t r ibutes . I t emerges, then, that the conceptual meaning of a vordhas to do with the charac te r i s t i cs a referent of the word m u s ~ have inorder to be correc t ly so designated. In the case of woman, Leech suggests , these character is t ics are 'human', ' f emale ' an d ' adu l t ' . Nothingcan ' l i t e ra l l y ' be a woman i f i t lacks any of these. The other qual i t ies tha t may be associated with voman, and may in some sense be said tobe par t of the meaning of the word, are to be dis t inguished from theseas lying outs ide the domain of meaning that the semantic is t is pr imarilyin teres ted in .

Another type of meanLng that Leech dist inguishes is ' soc ia l ' ( ' s t y l i s t i c 'in the f i r s t edi t ion of the book) . "SOCIAL HEANING is that which aplece of language conveys about the social circumstances of i t s use" (p.14). These two sentences are s ty l i s t i ca l ly very di f fe ren t : (i) they



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chucked a s tone a t the cops and then did a bunk wi th the 1 0 0 t and( i i ) a f t e r cas t ing a s tone a t the po l i ce they absconded with the money.These are sa id to d i f f e r in s t y l i s t i c meaning in tha t the in format ionconveyed about the soc ia l s t a tus of the speakers i s d i f f e r e n t in the twocases . But they a re nonethe less conceptua l ly synonymous: " the i r commOnground of conceptual meaning i s evident in the d i f f i cu l ty anyone wouldhave in assen t in6 to the t r u t h of one of these sen tences and denying thet ru th of the o the r " (p . 15) . Although what is meant in pr inc ip l e byconceptual meaning is f a i r l y c lea r , Leech concedes t ha t In some cases itwil l be d i f f i cu l t to t e l l whether an observable difference in communica-

t iona l e f f e c t between two sen tences i s to be explained as a d i f fe rencein conceptua l meanlng or no t . An example IS he s tuck the key in h ispocket (Leech 's (1) and he put the key in h is pocket (Leech 's (2)

He could argue t ha t (1) and (2) are conceptua l ly synonymous,and t ha t the d i f fe rence between the two is a mat te r of s t y l e( sen tence (2 ) i s n e u t r a l , while (1 ) i s co l loqu ia l an d casual ) .On the o the r hand, we could mainta in t ha t the s h i f t in s t y l ei s combined with a conceptual d i f fe rence : t ha t s t i ck in acon tex t such as (1) has a more pr ec i s e deno ta t ion than (2)and could be roughly def ined as ' t o put care les s ly and qu ick ly ' . . , Often , in fac t , the so lu t ion to a problem of demarcat ion i s to conclude t ha t quasi-synonyms d i f f e r on a t l e a s ttw o planes of meaning (p . 21) .

Having de l imi ted the focus of the s e m a n t i c i s t ' s i n t e r e s t in meanlng, wecan now go on to ask exac t ly what doing semant ics consis t s in . Producinga semant ic descr ip t ion o f , fo r example, Engl ish , involves (a) e l i c i t i n gand Cb) charac te r i s ing the knowledge of meanlngs and r e la t ions betweenmeanlngs t h a t a speaker has as a r e su l t of being a speaker of English .

E l i c i t i n g t h i s knowledge depends on conduct ing empir ica l t e s t s . Oneexample t h a t Leech gives is a t e s t of knowledge of the r e l a t i o n of e n t a i l ment (pp. 81-2) . Informants a re presented wi th two sen tences X and Yanda re i n s t ruc t ed as fo l lows:

Assuming X i s t r ue , j udge whether Y i s t rue or no t .I f you think Y must be t r ue , wr i te - 'YES ' .I f you think ~ cannot be t r u e , wri t e 'NO' .I f you th ink Y m a y o r may not be t r u e , wri t e 'YES/NO'.I f you d o n ' t know which answer to give , wri t e '? '



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For the case where X was someone kil led the HaJrid chief ot p01ice Llstnight and Y was the Hadrid chief of police died l a s t night , the responses,olere as fa llows : 'YES' 96%, 'NO' 0%, 'YES/NO' J ~ ~ , '? ' 1%. The hypo-thesis tha t speakers of English know that there is an entailment re la t ionbetween X and Y in this case was decisively confirmed.Character ising the ~ n o w l e d g e established by tes ts of this kind is a mat-te r of making i t expl ic i t by means of a formal nota t ion. The conceptualmeaning of 1.oloman is said to be ' adul t human female ' . Or, to put i t moreformally, [+HUMAN, -NALE, +ADULTJ (or, equivalently, [-+HU\1AN, +FEMALE,+ADULT] ) These are said to be the ' fea tures ' or 'components' of the

m e a n ~ n g s a f the , ...ords. All words cons is t semant ical ly of corr.binationsof fea tures . I t is sometimes claimed that there is a universal se t ofsemantic fea tures: the differences bet, ...een individual languages being amatter of differences between the part icular combinations of features

~ h i c h they represent as words.One purpose of semantic feature analysis is to provide a formal character isa t ion of the various meaning-relations. For example, there areroses in his garden entai l s there are flowers in his garden. In termsof semantic features , th is is because the specif icat ion for rose c o m p r ~ s e sa ll the features of flower, plus extra ones. In general , X enta i ls Y i fthe semantic features of Yare a subset of the features of X. Thefeature speci f icat ion for human i s , presumably, [+HU t-'lAN ] , for child[+HUMAN -ADULT], for boy [+HUMAN, -ADULT, -FEHALE]. The features ofhuman are a subset of the features of child and boy. The features ofchi Id are a subset of the features of boy. Therefore we expect t h e r ~a bOl 1n the garden to entai l both there a child the garden andthere a human ln the garden, there 1S a child ~ n the garden to entai lthere 1S a human ~ n the z,arden but not there a boy _ 1n the Earden, andso on. These arc predict ions which might be subjected to the kind oftes t with native-speaker informants i l lus t ra ted above. What ' ...e areta lk ing about here is primarily the meanings of individual words. The

m e a n ~ n g of larger l inguis t ic uni ts , such as the sentence, bears a com-plex re la t ion to the meanings of the words which compose them. The ,vordsof which the dog b i t the man consis ts are the same as those of Hhich theman b it the dog consis ts , but the two sentences d i f fe r in meaning. A largepart of Leech's book is concerned with how sentence-meanings are to berelated to word-meanings.



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3 The role of context 1n l inguist ic c o m ~ u n i c a t i o n

Leech's in i t i a l fa i lure to say jus t what a mean1ng 1S supposed to be is akey to most of the problems of this approach to semantics. It 1S takenas axiomatic that mean1ngs are at t r ibutes of l inguis t ic expressionsconsidered in the abstract , that they are ' t h ings ' that expressions' have ' , and that knowing in advance wnich expresslons have which meanings is vi ta l for communication. The theory implicit here 1S that wecommunicate in vir tue of knowing meanlngs. But considerat ion of one'sact iv i ty as a language-user fa i l s to support th is . Many speakers ofEnglish, one may hazard, do not know the word outwith. But many ofthese ignoramuses c.vill, surpr is ingly, have no dif f icu l ty 1n understand-ing utterances l ike the following: 'Scot t i sh candidates should reportdi rec t to the commissioner in Glasgow. Candidates from outwith Scotlandshould write in the f i r s t ins tance ' . Clearly, anyone previously unacquainted with the word outwith who nonetheless understands this ut te -rance does not do so in v i r tue of pr ior knowledge of i t s meaning. Onthe contrary, i t is in vir tue of understanding the utterance in which itf igures that he learns i t s meaning. This l a t te r account of the re la t ionbetween meaning and understanding seems to accord with hov.' in pract icewe learn a new word. We hear i t ut tered , we deduce from the contextwhat i t must mean, and we t e s t the correctness of that deduction by usingi t with that meaning ourselves. In so far as we thereby achieve ourcommunicational purpose ( that i s , so long as the response is not, forins tance, a blank s t a re ) , we count ourselves as having learned a newword. In pract ice i t i s rare for recourse to be had to a dict ionary .And yet , according to Leech, knowing the meaning of a word is a prerequisi te for i ts successful use in communication.Conversely, i t is by no means the case that being a native speaker of alanguage guarantees the ab i l i ty to understand utterances in i t . Considerthe following;

When dummy went down, I real ised that 6S would make i f sui tsbroke well and the diamond honours \-Jere favourably placed.I therefore decided to assume that twelve t r icks were notreadi ly availo.ble, hoping thereby to beat a l l the pairs goingdown in slam contracts and to make more t r icks than thosewho had l ingered in game. I won the opening hear t lead in



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dummy, dreVl trumps in two rounds and cashed the ace of clubs.I then ruffed a hear t in the closed hand, paving the way foran el iminat ion , and cashed the king of clubs, discarding:1diamond from dummy. W11en th e ten of clubs appeared fromEast , I did not need to look any fur ther for twelve t r i cks ;I ran the jack of clubs, throv.Ting another diamond from dummy,and subsequently discarded a third diamond on the establishednine of clubs . I was then able to ruff two diamonds in dummy,thereby col lect ing twelve t r icks bv way of five spade t r icksand two ru f fs , one hear t , one diamond and three clubs (Markus1982)

One lmaglnes that many speakers of English wil l fa i l to make much of t h i s .And yet the semantic theor i s t would be hard pressed to argue that th is lSbecause i t is not English. I t is c lear ly English, and yet speakers ofEnglish may have di f f icul ty In understanding i t . tfuat i s the source ofthe di f f icu l ty? It is not, for the most pa r t , the obscurity of the vocabulary. Apart from ruff , dummy, slam contrac t and a few others , feH ofthe words in the passage are in themselves obscure to anyone with atl eas t a s l igh t acquaintance with the pract ice of card-playing. And, apar tfrom the occasional oddity (Hhen dummy went dm.;rn, those who had l ingeredIn game, where common nouns are used without an a r t i c l e , as though theywere proper names), the syntax is qui te straightforward too. Nor does theproblem ar ise from the fact that the words are used metaphorical ly or insome other non- l i t e ra l way: what we have here lS a perfec t ly sober andprosaical ly l i t e r a l account of a game of bridge. The conclusion must betha t those who find i t incomprehensible do so because of the i r lack offamil iar i ty , not with the English language, but Hith bridge.This conclusion has an important bearing on the dis t inc t ion between'knowledge of language' and 'knO\vledge of the world ' on which, we areto ld , a viable pract ice of semantics depends. Lack of the relevant ' r ea l world ' knowledge may hinder understanding of the l inguis t ic expressionsused to describe tha t piece of the world. But the theor is t ' s posi t ionmust presumably be tha t although we understand the language of the passageas such, because we are native speakers of the language of which i t is asample, ,,,here He fa l l down is in our grasp of the s i tua t ion being described.But th is seems to be a dis t inc t ion without a difference.This point lS confirmed i f we look more close ly a t Leech's i l lu s t r a t ionof the dis t inct ion between knowledge of language and knowledge of the



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world . My uncle always s leeps s tanding on one toe i s said to be f a c tua l ly , r a the r than l i ngu i s t i c a l l y (or cont ingent ly , r a the r than neces sa r i ly )absurd . I t j u s t happens to be the case t h a t human beings cannot s leep int h a t pos tu r e . But i f th e world had been ordered d i f f e r e n t l y they mighthave been able to , an d i f they were, there \.J'Ould be nothing absurd aboutsuch a sentence . Whereas no conceivable reorder ing of the world coulde l imina te the absurd i ty of my uncle always s leeps a\vake, fo r i f my unclelS as leep then , by de f i n i t i on , he i s not aHake, an d i f he i s mvake, t henhe lS no t as leep . But the re i s no very obvious reason why these explanat ions o f the tw o kinds of absurd i ty should not be t ransposed . Ins tead ofsaying t ha t it i s the na tu r e o f s tanding on one toe t ha t makes t a lk ofs leep ing in t ha t pos i t ion absurd , why should we not locate the absurd i tyIn the conjunc t ion of the meanings of the express ions s leeps an d s tandingon one toe? Converse ly , it might be argued t ha t what makes s leepingawake inconce ivable is not the incom pa t ib i l ity o f the meanings of s leepand awake, but the i ncompat ib i l i t y of the s ta tes of consciousness r e fe r redto by those words. Our understanding of sleep and wakefulness lS sucht ha t we have no (non-absurd) use fo r sentences about crea tu res s leep ingawake. But it might have been the case t ha t t he re were animals whichexh ib i t a s t a t e of consciousness t ha t bears some of the charac te r i s t i c sof both . I f so , t a lk of them s leep ing awake might make per fec t ly goodsense . The non-exis tence o f such crea tu res , i f it i s a f a c t , i s as mucha f a c t about ' t he world ' as i s th e non-exis tence of uncles who s leeps tanding on one toe .

To put Leech ' s po in t another way, it fo l lows from the conceptua l meanlngof s leep t ha t to say of someone t h a t he s leeps awake i s cont rad ic tory .But to pu t the poin t In th i s way is to ra i se the ques t ion of how the' conceptua l meaning' of a word is determined. On e poss ib le answer i s tosay t h a t the conceptua l meaning o f , fo r i n s t ance , s leep , i s determinedby such judgements on the pa r t of nat ive speakers of Engl i sh as t ha t tot a lk of s leep ing awake is not j u s t absurd but cont rad ic tory . But (grantedt ha t na t ive speakers would make such a judgement) how do they come to doso? The only answer impl ied by t he o r i s t s ' l ike Leech i s : because theyhave as s imi la ted the form-meaning connect ion in the case of the words l eep . How can we break out of t h i s c i r c le?



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I t 1S relevant a t th is point to observe tha t semant ic is t s ' statementsas to the conceptual meanings of l inguis t ic expressions are not for themost par t arr ived at in [Hacticc ll y empiric;)i illVl'stih;lLlUI1, l 10r ;lrcthey part icular ly well supported by observat ion. Leech's book is fu l lof confident assert ions as to the meanings and re la t ions between themeanings of English words and sentences. \fuat, for example, is thebasis for the claim that the semantic features Ivhich make up the concep-tua l meaning of woman are [+HUNAN, +ADULT, +FEru\LE]? I t i s , of course,c lear that this judgement does not arUE 1n an y very obvious wa.y frommere considerat ion of how the word 1S 1n fact used. 'My fa ther is a bitof an old woman' is not , in the appropriate circumstances, an anomalousut terance , nor does i t imply a sex-change operaLion. In the conversation

- Found anything?- Yes, can ' t say more.- Just on e th ing, Chief - man or woman?- Woman. (Williams 1967:320)

the word woman refers to the recently exhumed corpse of a ten-year-old chi ld . 'The "lOman undenvent oophorectomy l a s t year 'seems an unexceptionably l i t e r a l way of expressing oneself , and yet thereis room for wondering whether i t should not in fa t t be held to be a cont radict ion , given that woman includes the feature spec i f ica t ion C + F E } ~ E JAnd so on. The point here is not that cases of th is sor t cannot beexplained away with reference to deviations of aile kind or another [romthe l i t e r a l meaning [+HUMAN, +ADULT, +FEMALEJ. The point is tha t i t isnot immediately c lear where the idea comes from in the f i c s t place thatcases where the meaning of the word "vaman can be unequivocally accountedfor Hith reference to the bundle of features [+HLl'1AN, +ADULT, +FEMALEJare the norm in terms of which others are to be explained as devia t ions.One l ikely source is the dic t ionary. And, sure enough, the Oxford Engl ish Dictionary (OED) gives as the f i r s t meaning of woman ' adul t femalehuman being ' . How do the compilers of the OeD come by that defin i t ion?By a procedure iden t i ca l , in one respect , to tha t used by anyone whohad not previously encoulltered the "vord out,vith \.]ho nonetheless understoodthe quoted ut terance containing i t . Namely, by deducing from the contextthe most plausible in terpreta t ion to be assigned to i t . Rut there is



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another respect in which the procedures are di f fe ren t . Fo r the dict ion-ary-compi le r deduces his defini t ion of a given 1.Jord from a very largenumber of examples. The conclusion that the f i r s t , primary or l i t e ra lmeaning of ~ is ' adul t female human being ' 1S a sort of summary ofwhat is common to the majority of instances of i t s use in the data onwhich the dic t ionary is based. A dict ionary defin i t ion is thus a re t ro-spective analysis of whac speakers have meant by a given word in thepast . As such i t has a number of uses . I t may, for instance , be animportant p1ece of information for someone learning the language as aforeigner. But rarely does i t play any role in the use of a word, ona par t i cu la r occasion, by a native speaker. For that purpose a dic t ion-ary defin i t ion is usually neither necessary or suff ic ient . I cannotrecal l ever having looked up the defin i t ion of defin i t ion in a dict ionary ,and indeed have only the haziest idea of what i t s defin i t ion might be.But this is no hindrance to my use of the word in , for example, the l a s tsentence but one, or to my understanding of i t when used by others .Conversely, no English dict ionary known to me offers the informationthat there may be occasions when i t is appropriate to refer to the bodyof a dead child as a 'woman'.If the dict ionary defin i t ion of a word normally plays no role in i t suse by native speakers, i t follows that it likewise plays no role in atheoret ical explanation of what is involved in the use of a word by anative speaker. But Leech's theory has i t that prior knowledge of the'conceptual meaning' ( that i s , the dict ionary defini t ion) of words 1Swhat makes communication by use of language possible. In the course ofdiscussing the difference between conceptual and connotat ive meaning,Leech says that "It can be assW1Ied, as a principle witrrOut which comJ?nA.-nication through that language would not be possible tha t on the whole[speakers of a language N.L.] share the same conceptual framework. . . " (p. 13, emphasis added). How communication through a language 1Spossible is an empirical question which has yet to be answered. Bymerely presupposing an answer, Leechian semantics merely makes i t mored i f f i cu l t to see tha t i t is a question tha t even needs to be asked.However, the Leechian answer is one which the theorist f inds i t hard inpract ice to uphold consis tent ly . Communication between speakers of a



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language supposedly depends on their being masters of onE' and the samese t of correspondences between forms and meanings. Now this may providean acceptable account of the working of cer ta in very s imple semioticsystems. For example, t r a f f i c l igh t s . I t is qui te plaus ible to suggestthat what makes communication poss ible bet,veen the operator of a se t oft r a f f i c l ights and the road-using rec ipients of his messages is sharedknowledge of the form-meaning correspondences associated with the variouspermissible combinations of l igh t s . But th is is because the se t ofmessages communicable by the system 1S f in i te and fixed. One cannot usethe system to send messages other than those laid down 1n advance bv theHighway Code. The combination of red and green l ights together , forexample, is simply uninterpretable. In contrast

the semantic system [Of a natura l language N.L.l 1Scont inual ly being extended and revised. In a language l ikeEnglish, new concepts are introduced in large numbers da yby day and week by week, and in very l i t t l e time (owing tomodern mass connnunications) becomes fami l iar to many people.These new concepts are eventual ly not f e l t to be st range ,but are fu l ly assimilated into the language and so becomepar t of standard mental equipment (p. 30) .

The t rouble with Leech's explanation of l inguis t ic communication 1S tha tit fa i l s to o f fe r any account of how this process can come about . If aspeaker ' s understanding of a new word depends on his already knowing i t smeaning, it is hard to see how i t is ever possible to communicate byuSlng a new word, or an old word with a new meaning.What is lacking here is du e recognition of the ro le of context 1n l in -guis t ic communication. Not tha t Leech has nothing a t a ll to say aboutcontext. He is aware that the meaning of an expression is somehow con-nected with the context in which i t is used, an d i l lu s t r a tes this poin twith reference to the di f fe ren t meanings of the phrase on, 1nshal l I put X on?, depending on whether X i s , for example, the por tableradio, the sweater , or the lump of '(mod (p. 67). One might supposetha t the conclusion must be tha t the meaning of put on (granted tha t i tmakes sense to talk of a unitary expression put on, with a signi f icancethat var ies according to context , ra ther than of (at leas t ) three di s -t inc t expressions with di f fe ren t meanings, tha t happen to share [he same



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form) is a summary of what lS common to i t s meanlng ln the di f fe rents i tuat ions in which i t occurs. But jus t th is is the conclusion tha tLeech rej ects: "Instead of seeing to ta l meanlng as an aggregate derivedfrom context , we see the contextual meanings as dependent on a previously established se t of potent ia l meanings" (p. 68). In other words, ameaning for put on lS somehow f i r s t established in the abstract , andi t s meaning ln a par t icula r context (e .g. in some given utterance ofput the sweater on ) is derived in the l ight of this abstract meaning.

But, outside dict ionar ies and other works of l inguis t ics , the expresSlons of a language simply never occur ' in the abst rac t ' . Languagenever manifests i t s e l f but in a context .The notion that there are abstract , decontextualised expresslons, andthat i t makes sense to talk about the i r meanings, lS of course crucia lto this approach to semantics. I t is implicit in the idea that thesemanticist " is interested in studying the communication system i t s e l f ,ra ther than what use or misuse lS made of i t " (p. 2). However, thecontrary conviction that there is no 'communication system' as such overand above the use or misuse that is made of i t is reinforced by closerconsiderat ion of some of the statements Leech makes about English.Part of a speaker 's semantic knowledge is held to be knowledge of whenthe re la t ion called 'paraphrase' holds between di f feren t sentences.Paraphrase, we are to ld , is "roughly, 'sameness of meaning'" (p. 4).Leech gives, as an example of a pair of English sentences so related,the defects of the plan were obvious and the demerits of the schemewere evident .Now the f i r s t point that cal ls for comment here is tha t defect does notnecessari ly mean 'demeri t ' . One cannot readily subst i tute demerit fordefect in a sentence l ike the defects of his teeth were obvious. Converse ly , a demerit is not ipso facto a defect . A scheme for disposingof stray dogs by gassing them may have i t s demeri ts, but i t is not onthat account necessar i ly defect ive . (On the contrary, i t may be highlysuccessful.) Similar ly , a plan is not always a scheme. One cannotparaphrase the defects of the plan were obvious by the demerits of thescheme were evident where the plan in question happens to be a plan ofthe so r t otherwise referred to as a large-scale s t ree t map. Comparable



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points apply to other statements as to the meaning-relat ions holdingbetween certain sentences that are scat tered through Leech's book.Doctors can read, we .1re informed (p. 261), is synonymolls \vi th cioctorsare l i t e ra t e . But not in the case where the u t t e r a n c ~ 'doctors canread ' is followed by ' the others must stand in the corner with the i rhands on the i r heads' . They chucked a stone a t the cops and then did abunk with the loot is supposedly s y n o n ) ~ o u s with af te r casting a stoneat the pol ice, they absconded with the money (p. 15) . But not i f the' l oo t ' in quest ion consists of jewellery and share ce r t i f i c a t e s . In a l lsuch cases, the meaning-relat ion held to be exemplified only holds provided certain assumptions are made about the context of utterance. Whatsaying tha t the demerits of the scheme were evident is a paraphrase ofthe defects of the plan were obvious boi ls down to is merely tha t i t isposs ible to envisage circumstances in which both might be uttered withreference to the same s i tua t ion , and with roughly the same communicationalef fec t . But i f th is is a l l tha t being a paraphrase amounts to , we couldequally well count as paraphrases of the defects of the plan were obvioussuch forms of words as i t was clear why i t couldn ' t be done or the proposal would, without ques t ion, have led to a complete cock-up or nobodythought the idea had much chance of working or when he'd f inished outl in ing i t , they a l l said "don ' t be daft" . But i f these are not paraphrases of the defects of the plan were obvious, Leech has fai led tot e l l us why not . And i f we are In doubt hOI" to t e l l \"hether X and Y a r eparaphrases, i t is qui te unclear \oJhat i t means to in s i s t tha t knowledgeof when the paraphrase-re la t ion holds lS par t of the nat ive speaker ' sknowledge of the semantics of his language.One poss ible unstated cr i t e r ion IS tha t the words of a would-be paraphraseof X should match those of X fa i r ly c lose ly . But hOI, closely? Demeritmay, sometimes, for some speakers , serve as a rough equivalent of defec t .At other t imes, or for other speakers , i t wil l not . ~ l a t emerges herelS tha t paraphrase, pace Leech, is not a re la t ion tha t holds bet\oJeenforms of words considered in the abs t rac t , i r respec t ive of par t icu larspeakers and par t icu lar occasions of speech.This is a point tha t Leech would perhaps claim to have circumvented bys t ress ing the importance of his semantic tes t ing procedures. Ult imate ly ,



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he would say tha t whether o r not the demeri ts of the scheme were evidentlS a paraphrase of the defec ts of the plan were obvious i s a matte r tobe decided by e l i c i t i n g the judgements of nat ive in formants . Let uslook aga in a t the example of such a t e s t already mentioned. Ninety-s ixper cent of respondents considered t h a t , i f someone k i l l e d the Madridchief of po l i ce l a s t n igh t is t r ue , then the Madrid chief of po l i ce diedl a s t night must also be t r ue . Thus, so Leech would argue , the enta i lmentre l a t ion between these two sentences has been es t ab l i shed as a matte r ofob jec t ive f ac t . Fur thermore, the in formants ' readiness to provide anunequivocal answer to the ques t ion i nd ica tes tha t it does make sense tot r e a t decontex tua l ised sen tences as having meaning in the abs t rac t .Let us consider these c la ims . F i r s t of a l l , it must be pointed out t ha tn ine ty- s ix per cent of Leech 's informants were simply wrong, a t l e a s t onone i n t e rpre ta t ion of the semant ic re l a t ion between k i l l and die . Theyover looked the p o ss ib i l i t y t ha t the po l i ce ch ie f was k i l l ed by the admin i s t r a t i o n of a s low-ac t ing poison , ln which case he might not have diedon the n igh t he was k i l l e d . Secondly, it i s simply not t rue t ha t theinformants in such an exercise are being presented with decontex tua l isedl anguage , for there i s no such th ing as decontex tua l ised language. Thecontext here i s the lanugage-game of being ca l l ed upon to answer quest ions about the meaning- re la t ions betwee pa r t i c u l a r forms of words. Andl ike any o the r language-game, th i s one has i t s own pa r t i c u l a r ru le s .One of the unsta ted ru les here i s t ha t one must take the two sentencesas re fe r r ing to one and the same event . For , of course , it i s nonsenseto suppose t ha t any sen tence , as such , en ta i l s any o the r . Everythingdepends on a t a c i t c o n t e x t u a l i s a t i o n whereby they a re taken as having apa r t i c u l a r communicational force .

A s low-ac t ing pOlson may cause dea th some t ime a f t e r i t s inges t ion . Butthe re is room fo r disagreement among speakers of Engl i sh as to whetheri t i s l eg i t imate to count the vict im of such a poison as having beenk i l l e d a t the moment of admin i s t r a t ion , or a t some l a t e r time forins tance , the t ime of death . The p o ss ib i l i t y of disagreement on such amatte r poin ts to a fu r the r problem with Leechian semantics . We areinv i ted to bel ieve in the ex i s t ence of a monol i th ic , de te rmina te s t r uc ture of correspondences between forms and meanings, ca l l ed ' E ng l i sh ' ,



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which, because i t 1S the corrunon possess1on of ' speakers of English ' ,allows them to corrrrnunicate with one another. And yet , on considera t ion,i t seems unlikely that a ll those people ,ve would want to count asspeakers of English have exactly the same knowledge of exactly the samecorrespondences between forms and meanings. This is not a point thatescapes Leech's at tent ion ent i re ly . For instance, he observes tha t" i t is too simple to suggest tha t a l l speakers of a part icular languagespeak exactly ' the same language'" (p. 13) . ElseHhere (pp. 111, 113)when discussing ' taxonomic opposit ions' of meaning betHeen Hords, he saysthat

" i t must be emphasised here, as before, that the semanticopposit ions and thei r in terre la t ions need not re f lec t categories of sc ien t i f i c thought: He are concerned with the' fo lk taxonomy' or everyday classif ica t ion of things thatis r e ~ l e c t e d in the ordinary use of language. There aremany instances where folk taxonomies involve what a sc ient i s t would consider a misclass i f icat ion: in the pasthis tory of English, for example, the word Horm has beenapplied to both worms and snakes, and the word fish hasbeen applied to whales. One of the d i f f i cu l t i e s -o f t ryingto arr ive at a f01k taxonomy for present-day English isthe in terference to varying degrees of technical taxonomies(e .g . the biologica l taxonomy in terms of classes , orders ,genera, speC1es, etc . ) in the ordinary non-specia l i s t useof language . . . "

But pointing out that there is such a di f f icul ty is not a subst i tu tefor overcoming i t . And unless i t can in principle be overcome, Leech'stheory is in jeopardy. If you think a ,.;hale is a kind of f i sh , HhereClSI think i t is a mammal, or i f Leech thinks a dog is' "an animal of thecanine species Ir (p_ 84), while everyone else knows, or thinks the knows,tha t l iv ing dogs belong to a number of di f fe ren t species, then in eachcase the semantic knoHledge of the t,vo par t i es is di f fe ren t . But successful communication, we arc to ld , depends on their semantic knm.;ledgebeing the same.

I t is a mistake to t rea t 'a language' as an independently ident i f iableent i ty tha t somehm.; exis ts in the a b ~ t r a c t over and above the commun1-cat ive acts in which i t is manifest . Heanings are not things ,.;hichexpress ions, as such, ' have ' . If they are things at a l l , they are things



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that utterances have in vir tue of the i r use at par t icular times ln part i cu la r places by part icular speakers . Communication by means oflanguage is not d matter of making use of a prearranged se t of correspondences between forms and meanings, for there is no such prearrangement.Rather, communication is a continuously creat ive form of social in te r -action in which the precise role of language wil l vary according tocircumstarrces.

Suppose I want to offer you a cigaret te . One way of doing this is toturn to face you, holding out a packet of c igare t t es , and to u t te r , withan approprate intonation pat tern , the words 'would you l ike a c igare t te ,X?', where X is your name. Another and no less effect ive way would beto make exactly the same bodily gestures , but to omit the verbal ut te -rance ent i re ly . Or, provided the intonation was correct , I couldprobably get away with accompanying the bodily behaviour with a piece ofverbal gibber ish, without detriment to my communicational success. Butnow suppose tha t , although within earshot of one another, we are ln acrowded room, engaged in conversation with di f fe ren t third par t ies , and,without looking in your direct ion , producing a packet of c igare t tes , orln any other non-verbal way indicating my in tent ion, I say 'would youl ike a cigaret te , X?' . There is a strong possibi l i ty tha t your responsewould be 'what was tha t? ' or 'were you ta lking to me?' . That i s , thecase where, for get t ing my message across, I rely exclusively on theputat ive shared code of correspondences between forms and meanings isthe very one where we are most l ikely to encounter a communicationalhi tch . The moral of the story is that language i t s e l f may be nei thernecessary or suff ic ient for communication, and tha t any attempt toexpl icate l inguis t ic meaning that fa i l s to take account of the complexways in which, in acts of communication, language is integrated withother aspects of behaviour, is l ikely to be inadequate. As Leech t ru lyobserves (p. xi ) : " theoret ical semantics can easi ly lose contact withprac t i ca l problems of communication, and so can suffer from a somewhatdis tor ted , et io la ted view of the subjec t i t is meant to be studying".



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NOTES

1. E.g. the space allocated to a discussion of cr i t ic isms of compo-nent ial analysis in the f i r s t (1974) edi t ion (pp. 122-4) i s expandedby three hundred per cent in the second (pp. 117-122), but sixpages is not, re la t ive to the length of the book, mucll of an advanceon two.

2. Whether this way of putt ing i t corresponds to how knowledge of thissor t might be represented in e.g . a generative grammar of Englishis not a t issue here.

3. Of course, non-native speakers, i f they are at a ll prof ic ient , knowthese things too.

4. It is unclear how much importance Leech attaches to the dist inct ionbetween (a) sentences and utterances and (b) sentences and proposit ions . For example, 'my uncle ~ l w a y s sleeps standing on one toe ' isintroduced as an utterance (p. 6 ) , but is then almost immediatelyreferred to as a sentence which for an English-speaker would be"unbelievable because of what he knm,s about the "orld we l ive in".Similarly, in discussing tes ts of speakers ' knowledge of logicalrelat ions between proposi t ions, he says: " i l might be worth "hi leto ask them ' i f sentence ~ is t rue , does sentence Y have to be t rue? ' "(p. 81). Leech's fa i lure to respecl these dis t inc t ions i s an important source of the d i f f i cu l t i e s encountered by his semantic theory;and since he apparently thinks tha t in pract ice there is no need toinvoke them systemat ica l ly , in what follm . s i t i s assumed, for e:.;po-si tory convenience, lhat the argument wilL be unaffected i f variousEnglish forms of words, cited by Leech as ei ther sentences o r u t t e -rances or proposi t ions, are referred to hereafter as ' sentences 'throughout.



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Evans, G.1976

Leech, G.1981

Markus, R.

L.

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REFERENCES

Language. London: Allen & Unwin.

J. McDowelTruth and m e a n i n ~ : essa.ls l.n semantics. Oxford:Clarendon Press.

Semantics: the study of mean1.ng. Second Edition.Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

1982 'Bridge ' . The Guardian Weekl.l, 5 December 1982, p. 23.

Sampson, G.1980

Williams, E.1967

Making sense. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Beyond bel ief . London: Hamish Hamilton.


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