The main features of encyclopedic semantics
The general approach to linguistic semantics adopted in cognitive semantics. There are five key assumptions which comprise this perspective.
Firstly, there is no principled distinction between semantics and pragmatics, that is there is no distinction between ‘core’ meaning on the one hand, and pragmatic, social or cultural meaning on the other.
Secondly, encyclopedic knowledge is structured: the knowledge structures that words provide access to represent an organized inventory of knowledge.
Thirdly, encyclopedic meaning arises in context of use, so that the ‘selection’ of encyclopedic meaning is informed by contextual factors. For example, the word safe can have different meanings depending on the particular context of use. Safe can mean ‘unlikely to cause harm’ when used in the context of a child playing with matches. Alternatively safe can mean ‘unlikely to come to harm’ when used in the context of a beach that has been saved from development as a tourist resort.
Fourthly, the encyclopedic approach views lexical items as points of access to encyclopedic knowledge.
Accordingly, words selectively provide access to particular parts of the vast semantic potential of encyclopedic knowledge.
Fifthly, while the central meaning associated with a word is relatively stable, the encyclopedic knowledge that each word provides access to is dynamic. For instance, the knowledge that the lexical concept (car) provides access to continues to be modified as a result of our ongoing interaction with cars, our acquisition of knowledge regarding cars.
Билет.
Corpus revolution and revision of phraseology
Corpus is a collection of texts representative of a given language, or other subset of language, to be used for linguistic analysis, and stored as an electronic database.
Corpus Linguistics is an approach that aims at investigating language and all its properties by analysing large collections of text samples.
Electronic language corpus is a new thing. It has a history of nearly half a century.
A corpus is an empirical standard, which acts as a benchmark for validation of usage of linguistic properties found in a language.There is hardly any area of linguistics where corpus has not found its utility. This has been possible due to great possibilities offered by computer in collecting, storing and processing natural language databases.
Phraseological units are (according to Prof. Kunin A.V.) stable word-groups with partially or fully transferred meanings (e.g. "to kick the bucket"). An idiom is a common expression that has acquired a meaning that cannot easily be understood from the ordinary meanings of the words, as in “It’s raining cats and dogs" meaning "it's raining very heavily". In modern linguistic literature there is a confusion of terms – the term “phraseological unit” was established by V.V. Vinogradov. Western scholars widely use the term “idiom” but this term is applied to a certain number of phraseological units.
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The characteristics of specialized phraseological expressions are:these units are institutionalized and stable expressions formed by various words, whose elements have some syntactic or semantic peculiarity.In the case of specialized phraseological units, at least one terminological unit is added, as well as its usage in a specific scope and a relevant frequency in specific texts (Bevilacqua, 2001).
Phraseology is a fuzzy part of language. It embraces the expressions such as idioms, fixed phrases,collocations and proverbs.
In linguistics idioms are widely assumed to be figures of speech that contradict the principle of compositionality; however, this has shown to be a subject of debate.
Explain why the choice of synonyms is an interdisciplinary linguistic area.
If the same meaning (function) can be assigned to two or more elements belonging to various language levels, they are identified as functional synonyms.
Synonymous elements do not necessarily belong to one language level. They need not to be identical. Modern linguistics recognizes the so-called ‘cross-level synonymy’: synonymy may be observed between grammatical units, synonyms may be morphological and syntactic. Synonymy can be expressed contextually.
The existence of functional grammatical synonymy gives the speaker a certain freedom in representing the relations of extra-linguistic reality in words. At the same time, the choice of proper means of expression of such relations is not made at random. It is a subconscious complicated cognitive process, which is, in the first place, part of a person’s language competence.
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Even compulsive grammarians have to agree that the scheme the boy’s mother = the mother of the boyholds good mainly for possession.
Revise what you must be careful about choosing between the two options:
1) structuralrestrictions:
Half an hour later he would be looking in the eyes of the woman= the woman’s eyes
2) information distribution (emphasis) + style + meanings other that possession (usually)
- John’s punishment amazed everyone. The punishment of John amazed everyone. (objective genitive)
- The death of Mrs Gerhardt hastened the final breaking up of the family.
- The father of Keesh was a brave man.
(Preference: literary and/or official style)
3) incompatibility of the two possibilities (avoiding semantic ambiguity)
Isabel’s photos = photos that belong to Isabel or those bearing her image? What’s the difference? - The speech situation, mutual involvement of the partners in the same contextual context.
Photos of Isabel = photos with her image in them.
4) the Genitive of quality/the classifying (descriptive) genitive: a doctor’s degree, cow’s milk, etc. is largely determined by the tradition of use/is nationally specific. This use is mainly discovered in such lexico-grammatical patterns as a day’s leave, a mile’s distance (equational genitive); it is easy to recognize in some universally accepted descriptions as a doll’s face, a soldier’s uniform, or is found in set phrases like a fool’s errand, a cat’s paw, a giant’s task etc.
But it is hardly ever found when classification becomes the focus of communication: For a fleeting second Dutton’s eyes seemed to glaze. Briefly they seemed the eyes of a madman. (≠ a madman’s eyes).
The problem of choice becomes acute when synonymous language units can be used interchangeably, i.e. in the case of functional semantic correspondences (synonyms that share several important features that make it possible for them to be used in the same syntactic environment: similarity of semantic function, identity of grammatical structure for the unit modified and the modifying element). Very often, the decisive role in the choice of a synonym is played by considerations of the informational structure and content of the utterance. This is true both for referential and denotative synonyms functioning on various levels of language.
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