Lexical Semantics. An Introduction

Lexical Semantics. An Introduction Boris Iomdin Russian Language Institute,Russian Academy of Sciences iomdin@ruslang.ru

Lecture 8. Plan • Passive and active (production) dictionaries • Existing production dictionaries • Russian Production Dictionary • Principles of RPD • Scheme of the lexical entry in RPD • Polysemy blocks • Encyclopaedic information • A sample entry: rana ‘wound’ • The scientific value of RPD

Passive vs. active dictionaries • Passive dictionaries: more traditional, used to help readers understand any given text, have to be very large (up to 450 000 words in English dictionaries) • Active (productive) dictionaries: used to help speakers use words correctly. Contain considerably fewer words (the active vocabulary of educated speakers has around 10 000 words) but much more linguistic information • Ideally, the linguistic information in a productive dictionary should correspond to the language competence of exemplary speakers

Existing production dictionaries • Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners • Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English • Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English • Maurice Davau, Marcel Cohen, Maurice Lallemand. Le dictionnaire du français vivant • Raoul Mortier. Dictionnaire Quillet de la langue française (l’art d’écrire et de bien rédiger) • Le Petit Robert de la langue française • Groβwörterbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache Purely practical, very little underlying linguistic theory

Longman dictionary • Developed in agreement with the grammar (University Grammar of English, in part written by the same authors) • Based on a large text corpus (≈300 000 000 words) • Includes a defining vocabulary (2000 most frequent and simple English words). Only these words used in the explications, and only in self-explanatory meanings. However, no syntactic restrictions • Includes “language notes” (mostly on pragmatics) • Hundreds of illustrations (pictures)

Russian Production Dictionary • No production dictionaries of Russian published as yet • The first one: a project led by Jurij Apresjan since 2006 • The prospect (general layout and sample entries) in print • The wordlist currently contains 10 000 words

Principles of the dictionary • Simplicity and clarity of formal languages • Explicitness of all information • Unification (consistency) • Individualization

Formal language • Definitions should be (1) complete, non-redundant and not tautological, but (2) formulated so that average users with no linguistic background could easily understand them • In complicated cases, a trade-off between scientific accuracy and accessibility is to be achieved

Explicit information • If a word has a linguistically relevant feature, it has to be explicitly described in the lexical entry, even if it might be deduced from other information present in the entry

Unification • If the lexical entry of a word X contains information L, the same information should be present in the lexical entry of the word Y, if Y belongs to the same lexicographic type and has the same feature

Individualization • The consistency principle in description of words of the same type is implemented until the lexical material itself does not resist the unification • Individual features of every word have higher priority than its typical features

Individualization: example • Almost all Russian verbs of iterative locomotion have two meanings: (1) ‘occupation, activity’: Oni xodili <begali, …> po dvoru ‘They were walking <running, …> in the backyard’ (2) ‘action, bidirectional movement’: Oni kazhdyj den’ xodili <begali, …> za pochtoj ‘Every day they went <ran, …> for mail’

Individualization: example • Consistency principle: all verbs of this type have these two meanings • However:brodit’‘to wander’ does not include the idea of purposeful movement (one of the main components of the bidirectional meaning): *On kazhdyj den’ brodil za xlebom‘Every day, he wandered to buy bread’ • Hence: thesecond meaning is not ascribed to brodit’

System vs. usage • The language system includes all lexical entities that could in principle be constructed according to the rules of the language, e.g. words formed by analogy • Usage includes only lexical unities that are indeed used by the speakers of the language

System vs. usage Three kinds of phenomena are linguistically interesting: • Those present both in system and in usage • Those present in system but not in usage • Those already present in usage but not yet in system All words from (1) are included

System vs. usage • Words absent in usage generally not included • Example: X–zhdy‘X times’ adverbs formed from numerals • The system includes odnazhdy ‘once’, dvazhdy ‘twice’, trizhdy ‘thrice’, chetyrezhdy ‘four times’, pjatizhdy ‘five times’, shestizhdy ‘six times’, semizhdy ‘once’, vos’mizhdy ‘eight times’, …. • The usage, however, has only the first four • Hence, the rest should not be in the dictionary

System vs. usage • Words of the third type: mistakes or innovations? Open question

Scheme of the lexical entry • Entry (name ofthe lexeme) • Grammatic information • Typical examples • Explication (and comments) • Syntactic information • Collocations • Illustrations from literary texts • Synonyms, analogues, conversives, antonyms, derivates (when available)

Polysemy blocks: VYJTI • 1.1. ‘on foot, to move outside’: vyjti iz komnaty ‘to go out of a room’ • 1.2 ‘to move outside’: sudno vyshlo iz bukhty‘the ship sailed out of the bay’ • 1.3 ‘to set out, depart’: polk vyxodit zavtra‘the regiment moves out tomorrow’ • 2 ‘to cease to be located somewhere’: vyjti iz tjur’my‘to come out of prison’ • …

Polysemy blocks: VYJTI • … • 3.1 ‘to cease to be part a or member’: vyjti iz komissii‘to leave a committee’ • 3.2 ‘to cease to be in a given state’: vyjti iz povinovenija‘to get out of control’ • 3.3 ‘to cease to do’: vyjti iz boja ‘to leave the field of battle’ • 4 ‘to come to an end, run out’: xleb ves’ vyshel‘all bread was used up’ • …

Polysemy blocks: VYJTI • … • 5.1 ‘to come, appear’: vyjti na rabotu‘to come to work’ • 5.2 ‘to appear’: vyjti na aekrany‘to be released, go to air’ • 5.3 ‘to receive access’: vyjti na zamministra‘to obtain access to the deputy ministry’ • 6 ‘to enter into matrimony’: vyjti zamuzh‘to get married (of a woman)’ • …

Polysemy blocks: VYJTI • … • 7.1 ‘to turn into, become’: vyjti v generaly‘to become a general’ • 7.2 ‘to have the makings of’: iz nego vyjdet general‘he has the makings of a general’ • 7.3 ‘to begin to exist’: iz aetoj zatei nichego ne vyjdet‘nothing will come of this venture’ • 7.4 ‘to turn out to be’: vstrecha vyshla interesnoj‘the meeting turned out to be interesting’ • …

Polysemy blocks: VYJTI • … • 8.1 ‘to result, occur’: vyshla neprijatnost’‘some trouble resulted’ • 8.2 ‘to turn out’: vyxodit, vy pravy‘it turns out that you are right’ • 9 ‘to face a certain direction’: okna vyxodjat v sad‘the windows look out over the garden’

Encyclopaedic information karta 2.1 ‘playing card’ • Value: tuz ‘ace’, korol’ ‘king’, dama ‘queen’, valet ‘jack’ [court cards];desjatka ‘ten’, devjatka ‘nine’, …, trojka ‘three’, dvojka ‘two’ [plain cards]; kozyr’ ‘trump’; dzhoker ‘joker’ • Suits: bubny ‘diamonds’, piki ‘spades’, trefy ‘clubs’, chervi ‘hearts’ • Occupations: igra v karty ‘playing cards’, pas’jans ‘solitaire’, gadanie na kartax ‘card reading’, kartochnye fokysy ‘card tricks’

Language specific expressions • figurnye karty – court cards – Bilder – les hautes cartes • koloda kart – pack of cards– Kartenspiel – jeu de cartes • tasovat’ (karty) – shuffle – mischen – battre <mêler> • sdavat’ (karty) – deal – geben – distribuer <servir> • snimat (karty) – cut – abheben – couper • …

Sample entry RANA ‘wound’, by M.Ja.Glovinskaja Definition: ‘an object on the body part P2 of a living being P1 which is a result of rather serious injury to the skin and tissues of P2 caused by an outer force or object P3, usually in the form of a hole, a cut or a tear, which is bleeding or has bled’.

Genus proximum • A wound is conceived of above all as a material object • Similar to: bruises, shiners, sores • Distinct from: dislocations, sprainings, fractures which cannot be thought of as objects

Type of injury • A wound is an injury to the skin AND tissues of a body part • Similar to: sores • Distinct from: scratches (injuries to the skin), shiners (injuries to the tissues), sprains (injuries to the ligaments), and fractures (injuries to the bones)

Attending circumstances • A wound usually implies bleeding at the moment of observation or prior to it • In this respect it is different even from sores, let alone all other injuries

Place of injury • A wound may be located anywhere on the human body • Similar to: sores, scratches, shiners • Distinct from: contusions which involve above all the brain • Slang: mouse ‘a sore under the eye’; Russian fonar’ lit.‘lantern’, fingal

Cause of injury • A wound is always a result of impact of some outer force, even when it is received accidentally • Similar to: contusions • Distinct from: sprains, strains, and twists which may result from excessive tension of some body part

Form of injury • The form of a wound is not particularly relevant • Similar to: sores and shiners • Distinct from: cuts and scratches which have elongated forms

Collocations • Mass of lexically constrained material • To present it in a unified format, collocations are ordered by semantic classes which reflect certain pragmatic aspects of the causation, existence, development and cessation of wounds

Collocations (a) APPEARANCE & CAUSATION: green wound; receive <sustain> a wound, suffer a wound; inflict a wound, rare make a wound; (b) INSTRUMENT OR IMMEDIATE CAUSE: a bullet <knife, bayonet, shrapnel> wound; a stab <gunshot, operation> wound; (c) CIRCUMSTANCES: a battle wound; (d) INJURED BODY PART: an abdominal <stomach> wound; a wound in the shoulder <in the head>; a flesh wound;

Collocations (e) FORM, TYPE & CHARACTER: lacerated <punctured, incised> wound, jagged wound, perforating wound; open <gaping> wound, contused wound; wound of entry <of exit>; (f) DEGREE: deep <superficial> wound; slight <light, minor> wound; dangerous <cruel, grievous, serious> wound; mortal <fatal> wound; (g) STATE: painful <agonizing> wound; cured <uncured> wound;

Collocations (h) PROCESSES IN THE WOUND: the wound is healing <healing up, healing over>, the wound is overcast, the woundclosed <cicatrized, repaired>; the wound is bleeding <festering, is infected>, the wound opened, the wound still rankles; (i) TREATMENT: cleanse <wash> the wound; reopen the wound; nurse the wound; dress a wound, bind (up) a wound, cure <heal> the wounds; neglect the wound; (j) CONSEQUENCE FOR THE WOUNDED: recover from the wounds, die from the wounds.

Scientific value of the RPD • Apart from the practical tasks, an active dictionary has two scientific functions: • It is an integral part of the theoretical description of the language • Once completed, it can serve as feedback for the correction of the original linguistic theory

Next lecture • Synonymy and its description. New Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Synonyms, its principles and the structure of lexical entries.

Lexical Semantics. An Introduction