Lexical Creativity: Patterns, Rules, and the Exploitation of Norms

Lexical Creativity: Patterns, Rules, and the Exploitation of Norms Patrick Hanks, Insittute of Formal and Applied Linguistics, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic

Outline of the talk • A natural language is an analogical, creative system • Phraseological norms • Exploiting the norms; exploitation rules • Typology of figurative langauge • Criteria for distinguishing metaphorical meaning from literal meaning • The function and structure of similes; uses of the preposition ‘like’

What is a language? Hypothesis (being explored by systematic corpus analysis): • A natural language is a sort of double helix: A) a set of constructions (words and phrases), with rules governing their normal use, intertwined with B) a set of rules for exploiting normal constructions • The function of both sets of rules is to activate, in different ways, the meaning potential of words used in a document or utterance. • The two sets of rules interact • Today’s exploitation may become tomorrow’s norm.

Words don’t have meaning • E.g. ‘fire’ …. innumerable possibilities … • So how are dictionaries possible? • Dictionaries recordmeaning potentialsnot meanings. • Even the best modern dictionaries (e.g. American Heritage or the 1-volume Oxford Dictionary of English) fail to show how the meaning potential of each word is activated. • Words only have meaning in context: contextual patterns activate meanings. • A new kind of resource is needed -- a pattern dictionary -- showing how the meaning potential of each word is normally activated.

Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA) • A project to compile a pattern dictionary of all normal verb patterns in a language (starting with English) • A resource for mapping meaning onto use • A benchmark for idiomatic text generation • A resource for language teaching: which patterns are most important? • Patterns are explicit and (mostly) mutually exclusive • Word senses in dictionaries are not mutually exclusive and need prior annotation before they can be be counted • The frequency of different patterns in a corpus can be counted and compared

What does a CPA pattern look like? hazard PATTERN1 (80%): [[Human]] hazard {guess} IMPLICATURE: [[Human]] utters [[Speech Act = Guess]] without much confidence that the proposition that it represents is true EXAMPLE: No one at this stage is prepared to hazard a guess at the outcome. PATTERN 2 (20%): [[Human]] hazard [[Entity]] IMPLICATURE: [[Human]] puts [[Entity = Valued]] at risk, typically in the hope of obtaining some [[Benefit]] EXAMPLE: ... a principle strong enough to hazard lives for. • Both patterns are transitive (V n), but they have different meanings. They are distinguished by the semantic types of the nouns. Getting the right level of semantic generalization for each n is hard.

Part 1: Phraseological norms and how to exploit them . .

Exploitation Rule 1: Ellipsis • I hazarded various Stuartesque destinations such as Florida, Crete and Western Turkey —Julian Barnes • What’s going on here? What’s the meaning? A destination is not a guess, nor is it a valued object. You don’t ‘hazard’ a destination—not one of the things English speakers do to destinations. So is this example gibberish? But Barnes is an admired stylist …

Extended context makes the meaning clear(er) Stuart needlessly scraped a fetid plastic comb over his cranium. ‘Where are you going? You know, just in case I need to get in touch.’ ‘State secret. Even Gillie doesn’t know. Just told her to take light clothes.’ He was still smirking, so I presumed that some juvenile guessing game was required of me. I hazarded various Stuartesque destinations like Florida, Bali, Crete and Western Turkey, each of which was greeted by a smug nod of negativity. I essayed all the Disneylands of the world and a selection of tarmacked spice islands; I patronised him with Marbella, applauded him with Zanzibar, tried aiming straight with Santorini. I got nowhere. • (Other exploited verb uses in this extract are in italics)

Ellipsis: unanswered questions • Ellipsis in verb arguments is very common • Under what circumstances is ellipsis possible? • What can be safely left out of a speech act because it is already understood? What information does the reader/hearer have to supply? • Like this: • [[Human]] hazard {guess {at [[Topic]]} • ‘destination’ is selected as [[Topic]] by relevance.

Exploitations are everywhere • Stuartesque (= characteristic of Stuart) is also an exploitation. • You won’t find it in any dictionary—at any rate not in Barnes’s sense. • What sort of exploitation is it?

Exploitation Rule 2: Anomalous Argument • Always vacuum your moose from the snout up, and brush your pheasant with freshly baked bread, torn not sliced. —from The Massachusetts Journal of Taxidermy, 1986 (per Associated Press newswire) • Is it normal to vacuum a moose?

The norm for ‘vacuum’ PATTERN: [[Human]] vacuum [[Room | Floor | Carpet]] IMPLICATURE: [[Human]] uses a suction machine such as a hoover to clean [[Room | Floor | Carpet]] SECONDARY IMPLICATURE: [[Human]] pushes the hoover up and down over the [[Floor]] or [[Carpet]] in a [[Room]] • A moose is not a type of floor, a carpet, or a room. But both have a surface. • “Janet was vacuuming the Axminster”, though rare, would be a norm, because an Axminster is a type of carpet. • “Janet was vacuuming her moose” is an exploitation, because it relies on a shared property of mooses and carpets – namely having a surface.

Exploitation Rule 3: Intertextual reference • As speakers and writers, we are primed by what others have said • recently | previously in our lifetime • and by what others have written • recently | hundreds of years ago • The formative influence of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Bible on the phraseology that we used in English today • but also of every English writer and speaker who ever lived – mostly unrecorded. • Only the famous ones can be tracked by scholars

Exploitation Rule 4: simile • Some ways of making similes: • like X: When the last resonances of the symphony had died, all that was left was an electronic whine. It sounded like an idiot child whistling. • I took the pastry. It tasted like sweetened cardboard. • as if/as though P: … a [supermarket] trolley that squeaked as if somebody was torturing mice • as ... as...: He was a tallish man with a mind as sharp as a razor. • -esque: Stuartesque destinations • resembling: Grandma has eyes resembling Superman’s: they can see right through you.

Exploitation Rules 5 and 6: Metaphor and metonymy • There is a vast literature on metaphor and metonymy • A necessary condition for metaphor: resonance with another (primary or literal) sense or pattern of the same word or construction • Most metaphors are secondary conventions, not creative exploitations • of little interest in the present context (creativity) • In the literature, most examples are invented • It’s an open question whether anyone has or would use these invented metaphors [I have nothing to say about metonymy]

Conceptual metaphor vs. linguistic metaphor • Much of our everyday thought is metaphorical – Lakoff and Johnson 1980 • Conceptual metaphors such as HAPPINESS IS UP; ARGUMENT IS WAR; LIFE IS A JOURNEY • Contrast with linguistic metaphors such as ‘a gnat trying to curb an elephant’ • gnat vs elephant is a conventional metaphorical contrast Many but not all linguistic metaphors can be grouped together under general headings of conceptual metaphors

Creative vs. conventional metaphor CONVENTIONAL: • He is a cunning old fox • many citations, often used CREATIVE: • Every morning he went down the three flights of stairs the mail was there to be shuffled and dealt. —(BNC) Esquire, 1992.

Similes vs. metaphors Muriel Spark (1990): Symposium (a novel). • Opening paragraph, page 1: “This is rape!” His voice was reaching a pitch it had never reached before. … It was not rape. It was a robbery. • Page 2: “Rape,” he said. “It feels like rape.” The metaphor has weakened to a simile, as the speaker’s initial shock is replaced by querulous self-pity.

Exploitation Rule 7: zeugma • In her musings, she wrings out her heart along with her dishcloth, pouring out a torrent of disillusionments and dreams. —(BNC) from a theatre review in the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post, 1993. • The concepts of each civilization, like the soil of its homeland, have been cultivated by a long tradition of directed effort. —(BNC) A. C. Graham, 1985. Reason and spontaneity.

Exploitation Rule 8: Irony and sarcasm “What have you done with your car?” … “My car is on the Tallaght bypass, burnt to a crisp.” “Stolen?” “No, did it myself last night. Nothing good on telly. Of course stolen.” —Marian Keyes, This Charming Man, p. 105

Exploitation Rule 9: Puns • a rebel without claws • Ronald Bergan, 1991, describing Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin in The Graduate • relevance (focus and genre – ref. to James Dean’s film Rebel without a Cause), as well as just word play • Leaf it off, asks BR: Landscape architects have had a special request from British Rail when it comes to tree planting alongside a busy branch line. “Please don’t plant trees which shed thick leaves in autumn.” • —(BNC) Northen Echo (1990s)

There are several more types of exploitations • More rules remain to be described. • But the ones just described are the most salient. • Not all the figures of speech described by Ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians function as exploitations. Some account for only a few (often highly contrived and stilted) utterances.

Alternations are not Exploitations • PATTERN: [[Human 1]] calm [[Human 2]] • [[Human 2]] alternates with {POSDET nerves}, {POSDET fears}, etc. • Alternation is a focusing mechanism. • Alternations gradually shade off into different patterns • ... felt better after he had taken some medicine to calm his stomach • The same meaning, or different? • [[Human 2]] also alternates with domestic animals (e.g. horses) and institutions (e.g. the Stock Market).

Part 2: Distinguishing literal and metaphorical meaning .

Metaphorical meaning • Metaphorical meaning and literal meaning are complementary or contrastive notions. • If there were no metaphors, it would not be necessary to talk about “literal meanings”. • There would just be “meanings”. • But then language would not work! • The fuzziness and flexibility that makes metaphor possible also makes it possible for language users to talk about new things • Fuzziness is an essential design feature of language

Criteria for metaphoricity (1) • Etymology or historical priority. This is the defining criterion favoured by many traditional dictionaries but it is unsatisfactory. • ‘literal’ meaning of camera= small room (!) • ‘literal’ meaning of literal= of or pertaining to letters • ‘literal’ meaning of ardent= burning (!) • ‘literal’ meaning of subject= thrown under (!)

Criteria for metaphoricity (2) • Concrete vs. abstract. If a linguistic expression has both a concrete meaning and an abstract one, the abstract one is normally a metaphorical exploitation of the concrete one. This seems satisfactory as far as it goes, but not all abstract senses of words are metaphorical.

Criteria for metaphoricity (3) • Frequency. Some people have proposed that the most frequent sense of a term must be its literal meaning. This is untenable. The conventional ‘metaphorical’ sense of a word (e.g. launch) is often much more frequent than the comparable literal sense • Thus, launching a product and launching a campaign are more common than launching a missile or launching a boat, but still it seems reasonable to regard the former pair as metaphorical and the latter as literal.

Criteria for metaphoricity (4) • Syntagmatics. The syntagmatics of metaphorical uses of a word are typically much more narrowly constrained than literal sense(s) of the same word. • e.g. a torrent of abuse, a torrent of feathers • More extensive corpus-driven studies of the syntagmatics of metaphor are needed.

Criteria for metaphoricity (5) • Resonance. A metaphor is a “non-core use” of a word expressing “a perceived relationship with the core meaning of the word.” – Alice Deignan • If one sense of an expression resonates semantically with another sense, then it is metaphorical, and if there is no such resonance, it is literal. • Strictly speaking, we should think in terms of ‘resonance potential’ rather than resonance tout simple.

Part 3: the Function, Structure, and Typology of Similes .

What is a ‘simile’? • (New) Oxford Dictionary of English (1998, 2003): a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g. as brave as a lion) • Merriam Webster’s 10th Collegiate (1993): a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses) • What the dictionaries don’t say: What is the relation between simile and metaphor? How is a simile structured? And what’s it for? The vehicle is often fantastic or unreal (a banshee, a zombie, a fairy tale, a princess, a demented lighthouse. a broiled frog), not a real-world thing

Meaning in language: logical and analogical • A natural language consists of a puzzling mixture of logical and analogical procedures • Neglect of the analogical aspect has led to serious errors • E.g. the quest for precise definition in ontologies currently being designed for the Semantic Web • In ordinary language people often make new meanings by comparing one thing with another • Not merely by asserting identity • Nor by conforming exactly to conventional phraseology • But being able to say that one thing is ‘like’ another

What are similes for? A first tentative hypothesis • Similes are used to associate the ‘new’ with the ‘given’ • e.g. describing ‘Bridget’, the vehicle designed for robotic exploration on Mars: She looks like a cross between a remote-controlled tank and Johnny Five, the irritating star of 80s robot movie Short Circuit. • Guardian science correspondent, 2006

Explaining the new in terms of the given • When a leading Jordanian Brotherhood leader suggested that his party was capable of winning an election and governing—surely a tame statement for a politician in a democratic system—the regime reacted as ifhe had issued a revolutionary threat. --Nathan Brown, ‘Taming Radical Islam: Democracy Works, only Very Slowly’ in International Herald Tribune, July 5, 2007, p. 6 We all know what a revolutionary threat is --- or do we?

Main uses of like, preposition • To compare: John is like his father • Mr Pett had been like a father to him • (An exclusive set: Mr Pett was not his father) • To make an ad-hoc set: people like doctors and lawyers • (an inclusive set, i.e. it includes doctors and lawyers) • To report perceptions or imagined perceptions: looks like, tastes like, smells like, sounds like, feels like, seems like • His mouth tasted like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. • It felt like velvet • And to report feelings/emotions: • I felt like a fool, I felt like hitting him

Donald Davidson • All metaphors are false (like lies) • The speaker deliberately says something false, to alert the hearer to some salient property. • All similes are trivially true • Everything is like everything else. • Donald Davidson (1978): What Metaphors Mean Yes, but some things are more alike than others Davidson seems to assume comparison with real, experienceable things. But the vehicles of many similes are not experiential realities at all.

Texts studied for similes • Comic fiction: • P. G. Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim (1918) • Sue Townsend: Adrian Mole novels (1982, 2004) • Non-fiction: • Jon Lee Anderson, The Fall of Baghdad (2005)

Structure of similes • Through the rich interior of this mansion Mr Pett, its nominal proprietor, was wanderinglikea lost spirit. --PJ, p. 7 • Sheisasthinasa stick insect. --SDAM, p. 105 • My grandma has goteyeslikeSuperman’s, they bore right through you. --SDAM, p. 109 • Red: topic • Blue: event or state • Green: shared property • Brown: comparator • Magenta: vehicle

Typology of similes (1) • Clear-cut cases: • like, prep.: Through the rich interior of this mansion Mr Pett, its nominal proprietor, was wanderinglikea lost spirit. PJ, p. 7 • as ... as: Sheisas thinasa stick insect. --SDAM, p. 105 • as: A long time had passed since Mr Crocker had set eyes upon a biped so exhilaratingly American, and rapture heldhimspeechless, asone who after long exile beholds some landmark of his childhood. • as if: My father chose a trolley [at a supermarket] that squeakedas ifsomebody was torturing mice. . --SDAM,p. 71

Typology of similes (2) • Less clear-cut cases: [14-year-old] Ogden Ford was round and blobby and lookedoverweight. He had the plethoric habit of one to whom exercise is a stranger.[NO EXPLICIT COMPARATOR] “Looks to meas ifyou were in with these two.” [A classification, not a simile]

Typology of similes (3) • Other borderline cases: She had come to regardMr. Pettalmost in the light ofa father. Her progress, in short, was beginning to assumethe aspect ofa walk-over. Only a wet cat in a strange back yardbears itself with less jauntiness than a man faced with such a prospect. “What’s the matter, Jerry? ... Youhave the aspect of one whom Fate has smitten in the spiritual solar plexus, or ofone who has been searching for the leak in life’s gaspipe with a lighted candle.”

Components of simile structure • Topic (typically, noun phrase): obligatory • Event or state (verb): obligatory • Property (typically, adjective): can be either explicit or implicit • Comparator: optional • Vehicle (noun, verb, or adj.): obligatory

Similes and logical form Similes licence logical mayhem, e.g. • syntactic displacement: • Helookedlikea broiled frog, hunched over his desk, grinning and satisfied. = He looked broiled and hunched like a frog • semantic anomaly: • The presence of a singlewoman in their midst actslikea demented lighthouse, enticing hapless men onto the rocks. = Common property: both send out visible signals. BUT this lighthouse is behaving wrongly – like a demented person. Real lighthouses warn sailors away; they do not entice them. Demented people also do strange things. • Such similes draw deeply on lexical semantic norms of belief

Some conventional vehicles for similes • People are conventionally compared in similes to things outside our everyday experience, e.g. a princess, a queen, a prisoner. • Events and situations are often compared in similes to unreal things, e.g. a dream, a nightmare, a miracle, a fairy tale, a demented [N], the bottom of a parrot’s cage • invoking conventional linguistic properties • not real-world properties or real things

Similes vs. comparisons • He is just like his father: COMPARISON • He has eyes like his father: COMPARISON • Close male relatives like fathers and brothers: AD-HOC SET • Laytonhad beenlikea fatherto Leonard: SIMILE • Layton was not his father

Similes vs. metaphors (1) Muriel Spark (1990): Symposium (a novel). • Opening paragraph, page 1: “This is rape!” His voice was reaching a pitch it had never reached before. … It was not rape. It was a robbery. • Page 2: “Rape,” he said. “It feels like rape.” The metaphor has weakened to a simile, as the speaker’s initial shock is replaced by querulous self-pity.

Similes vs. metaphors (2) • Linguistic metaphors can usually be reformulated as similes • Similes can’t normally be re-formulated as metaphors • Metaphors are semantically stronger than similes • Constraints on metaphor creation are more severe • Similes are used to report perceptions • Similes licence certain kinds of logical mayhem. • Similes are even more attention-grabbing

Distribution of similes in text (1) • Not all documents contain similes. • Where a document contains many similes, they are not evenly distributed, but tend to cluster. Why?

Lexical Creativity: Patterns, Rules, and the Exploitation of Norms