Transcript LEXICAL TYPOLOGY OF QUALITIES

Semantic / Lexical Typology:
Verbs of Falling and Beyond
Katia Rakhilina (NRU HSE, Moscow)
“Verbs, verb phrases and verbal categories”
23-25 March
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
BEYOND:
Lexical Typology. Main objectives
•A relatively new area of linguistic typology
•Until recently, linguistic typology 
grammatical or phonological typology
•Lexical typology deals with cross-linguistic
universals and variation in lexical
categorization of conceptual domains
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Main approaches to lexical typology
 Natural Semantic Metalanguage
(Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard)
primarily determined via introspection
 Denotation-based approach: MPI Nijmegen
(Stephen Levinson, Asifa Majid et al.) < Berlin&Kay 1969
experimental approach to LT: pictures or videoclips
as stimuli and lexical reactions of native speakers
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(1) NSM: Limitations
 Which one is to choose a primitive among several
near-synonyms
xotet’ /zhelat’ in Russian or want / wish in English
 How to deal with changes in meanings?
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(2) Denotation-based approach:
limitations
+ clear tertium comparationis
(= extralinguistic stimuli)
 non applicable for domains of subjective
experience & metaphorical extensions
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(2) Denotation-based approach: limitations
PAIN
How to collect language data?
Even if one would prick
a native speaker for the sake of lexical typology, the
result would be poor, because all individuals
experience pain differently.
Thus , pain terms need another – non-experimental –
approach (Reznikova et al. 2012)
Pain is not the only case. Subjective experience
constitutes a large part of what is expressed in human
languages, cf. physical qualities, like soft or heavy.
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MLexT Methodology
• The general idea is to combine:
• the Moscow Semantic school tradition (deep
semantic analysis of the lexicon with a special focus
on synonymy)
• Tradition of grammatical typology
= Lexical typology
So, basically we take into account the “linguistic
behavior” of lexical items, i.e. combinability
restrictions (dictionaries, corpora, field work with
specially developed questionnaires)
Moscow Lexical Typology Group
projects:
Typology of activities & states:
Verbs of aquamotion
Pain metaphors
Sound metaphors
Verbs of rotation
Verbs of oscillation
Cutting & breaking
Sitting & standing
Physical qualities (‘sharp’, ‘wet’, ‘soft’…)
FALLING
Verbs of aquamotion
Majsak,
Rakhilina (eds.)
2007
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Pain metaphors
Britsyn,
Rakhilina,
Reznikova,
Yavorska (eds.)
2010
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Sound metaphors
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Suggested methodology: Main steps
• To collect all lexical items covering the field in
your own language
cf. English old
• To look for occurrences of these items in the
corpus and check the initial list of terms:
cf. old woman, old horse, old tree, old town
(+ancient), old clothes, old director (+ former)….
• To look for translations for these words in
bilingual dictionaries:
cf. Georgian : ‘old person’ → moxuci,
‘old clothes’ → dzveli,
‘old director’ → qop’ili
‘old coins’ → adrindeli
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Questionnaire
• Obtaining a semantic classification of
nouns based on dictionary data and
corpus examples.
• This classification provides the basis for a
questionnaire to be completed by native
speakers of different languages.
• We have an ___oak close to our house; my
great-grand father planted it many years ago.
• His ___ wife was kind-hearted and the new
one is beautiful but bad-tempered.
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Questionnaire and Frames
By comparing questionnaires completed for different
languages we extract a set of situations that may be
distinguished lexically (= frames)
person
• ‘having lived for many years’ (old woman)
clothes
• ‘object being in use for a long time, has become
useless and/or decayed’ (old clothes, old house)
director
• ‘the object that is no longer in use or the duty that is
not performed any more’ (old flat, old director)
coins
• ‘dating from the remote past’ (old coins, old city)
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Visualization of typological data:
Semantic maps
Dominant system
(e.g. English)
Binary system
(e.g. Japanese)
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Visualization of typological data:
Semantic maps
Distributed systems
(e.g. Bashkir)
(e.g. Ossetian)
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SHARP domain: Collocating nouns
‘knife’
‘arrow’
‘nose’
‘scissors’
‘(rose) thorns’
‘(woolen) blanket’
‘boots’
‘needle’
‘bristle’
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SHARP domain: Frames
‘knife’
‘scissors’
‘needle’
‘arrow’
‘nose’
‘boots’
Instrument with a
functional edge
Instrument with a
functional end-point
Object with a pointed
shape
‘(rose) thorns’
‘(woolen) blanket’
‘bristle’
Natural object that pricks
Surface that pricks
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SHARP domain
Surface that
pricks
(blanket, bristle)
Natural object
that pricks
(thorns)
Instrument
with a
functional edge
(knife, saw)
Instrument with
a functional endpoint
(arrow, spear)
Object with a
sharp form
(nose)
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SHARP domain: Serbian
oštar
oštar
oštro
oštar
oštar
Instrument
with a
functional edge
(knife, saw)
nož ‘sharp knife’,
koplje ‘sharp spear’,
nos ‘sharp nose’,
pokrivač ‘prickly blanket’
Instrument with
a functional endpoint
(arrow, spear)
Surface that
pricks
(blanket, bristle)
Natural object
that pricks
(thorns)
Object with a
sharp form
(nose)
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SHARP domain: Japanese
surudoi naifu ‘sharp knife’,
surudoi yari ‘sharp spear’
vs.
togatta hana ‘sharp nose’
Natural object
that pricks
(thorns)
surudoi
Instrument
with a
functional edge
(knife, saw)
Surface that
pricks
(blanket, bristle)
Instrument with
a functional endpoint
(arrow, spear)
togatta
Object with a
sharp form
(nose)
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SHARP domain: Kabardian
ŝeẑje ž’an ‘sharp knife’
vs.
ʁʷəčẉ əne pamc̣e ‘sharp nail’
, ʔandeʁʷə pamc̣e ‘sharp
elbow’
ž’an
Instrument
with a
functional edge
(knife, saw)
pamc̣e
Instrument with
a functional endpoint
(arrow, spear)
Surface that
pricks
(blanket, bristle)
Natural object
that pricks
(thorns)
Object with a
sharp form
(nose)
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Typology of verbs of falling:
research program
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Falling:
vertical motion due to gravity
Description of falling has two dimensions:
A. Substructure of the field and oppositions
between its main frames
B. Other semantic fields related to falling
either directly (1)
or through metaphorization procedure (2)
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A. Substructure of the field
Two main topologically opposed clusters of
situations:
 Falling down from an upper surface
(NB! Motion of substances)
 Falling of vertical objects “standing” on the
ground
 Non prototypical:
“Reflexive motion”
(1)
(2)
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 Falling down from an upper surface
• Locations:
• Source (initial location) and Goal (final location)
• Source is normally not marked (except for
containers: falling out of smth)
 Falling down from an upper surface
• Goal bias. Types of Goals as final locations:
liquids / hard surfaces / soft surfaces …
[NB! Onomatopoeia: falling is accompanied by
special sounds]
•
•
•
•
•
‘Trajector + location’ pair is relevant
Hard Trajector + hard surface [a huge suitcase onto
the road]
Hard Trajector + soft surface [stone into the mud]
Soft Trajector + hard surface [a piece of mud onto the
road]
A piece of glass onto the hard surface …
Splash – fall with a thud – fall with a bang…
Substances as special kinds of Trajectors
• Water can move forward, upward and fall either in a
flow or in small quants
• One general predicate or a system of classifying
verbs?
• Special term for dropping of drops?
• Sand, sugar, grain as free-flowing substances can
only move down in their own manner
• no special verb for falling of a quant ?
• Rain
• Snow
 Standing vertical objects:
orientation of the falling object
Objects with intrinsic orientation (mainly humans):
direction of the motion (could be marked with the predicates
or adverbs)
• Falling backwards, on one’s back
• Falling sideways
• Falling forwards
+ metonymy (manner)
• Stumble
• Slip
• Tumble
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“Reflexive motion” (Susan Lindner 1981)
= Motion of the parts
• Simple motion: John went out <of the house>
• Reflexive motion: Syrop spread out
“Reflexive motion”: rotation
Simple rotation:
Trajector is moving
round the Landmark
Reflexive rotation:
the fox (Tr) rolled itself into
a ball
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“Reflexive motion” & related frames
• Crash down, collapse:
about a building
the house fell down
• To fall down:
about a surface itself e.g. due to the heavy
object on it
the ice crashed
+ meton. smb. fell trough the ice
“Reflexive motion”: related frames
• Body parts (no motion)
• Teeth / Hair: come out
[+ Tail of a lizard]
[+ Tongue (a running dog)]
• Parts of artifacts (the motion is not vertical)
• May be separated due to the movement
• High speed, type of initial connection is relevant
• Break off, come off, be torn off …
Preliminary semantic map
sand/sugar
water
surfaces
(falling and destruction)
snow
buildings
hair, teeth
Falling down
vertical objects
from an upper surface
forwards/backwards
sideways
onomatopoeia
Parts of artifacts
FLYING
JUMPING
BREAKING
Preliminary semantic map: Komi
Data from a field study (Egor. Kashkin)
sand/sugar
kissylny
water
surfaces
(falling and destruction)
vöjny
snow
pörny
buildings
hair, teeth
us’ny
Falling down
vertical objects
forwards/backwards
sideways
onomatopoeia
rich subdomain
Parts of artifacts
FLYING
JUMPING
BREAKING
Preliminary semantic map: Russian
rain
kapat’
water
provalivat’sja
sand/sugar
surfaces
(falling and destruction)
sypat’sja
rušit’sja
snow
high-level falls
buildings
hair, teeth
out-of-containers
Falling down
onomatopoeia
šmjaknut’sja
pl’uxnut’sja
groxnut’sja
šlepnut’sja
brjaknut’sja
vertical objects
backwards sideways
Parts of artifacts
FLYING
padat’
JUMPING
BREAKING
B 1. Related semantic fields: flying
(Plungian, Rakhilina 2007)
• The lexical domain of ‘flying’ (‘moving through the
air’) proves not to be elementary.
• In the languages of the world it often splits into
two zones, or sub-domains.
• Active sub-domain covers staying in the air of a
living creature who abruptly moves its limbs.
• Passive sub-domain describes an inanimate
object’s movement through the air caused by an
external force applied to it.
• Cognitive distinction between them is manifested
in different strategies of conceptual assimilation
applied in the two cases:
B 1. Related semantic fields: flying
• Flying may be conceptualized either as jumping
(active flying) or falling (passive flying).
• This explains why in various languages the
meanings ‘fall’ and ‘fly’ are interchangeable in
some contexts, cf. English fall off ~ fly off.
• There are also cases when the meanings ‘fly’ and
‘fall’ are combined within one predicate (similarly
to what happens to ‘fly’ and ‘jump’); native
speakers then perceive the two meanings as
closely related to each other.
• The most known case is Sanskrit pat- which had
two meanings ‘fall’ and ‘fly’; this polysemy is
preserved in many modern Indo-Arian languages.
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B2: Metaphors of falling:
two main sources
(1) LESS IS DOWN [< G.Lakoff]
• Decrease: SAE
+ Negative evaluation
• Moral decay: Russian
B2: Metaphors of falling: two main sources
(2) LACK OF CONTROL  SUDDENNESS
• Coming out unexpectedly: Komi
• Astonishment: Russian
• Sudden death (humans: at the war // cattle: due
to disease) SAE
• + Military defeat (Syrian regime will fall …)
• Birth: Indonesian
• Unexpected occasion (good / bad luck)
< dicing, Russian
• Transformation (ice into water) < vertical
objects only! Komi
Dreams and Plans
• 20-30 languages, including Russian gesture
language
• Direct meanings & semantic maps
• Types of systems
• Metaphorical extensions
• Cases of intersection with other semantic
fields
• Statistical experiments
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And grammaticalization paths -?
Heine, Kuteva 2002: 133
• Some African Languages:
Fall > down (adverb)
• Korean, Tamil
Fall > passive suffix
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