A common-sense paradigm for linguistic research

1. A common-sense paradigm for linguistic research Patrick Hanks Professor in Lexicography University of Wolverhampton

2. How does meaning work? • A central question that needs to be addressed more carefully in linguistics, in the light of corpus evidence. • A WORKING HYPOTHESIS: Meanings are interpersonal events • created and understood by pattern matching • subconsciously matching uses of words in texts and conversations with patterns of word use that have been sorted and stored in our brains.

3. The idiom principle • “Many if not most meanings require the presence of more than one word for their normal realization. [...] Patterns of co-selection among words, which are much stronger than any description has yet allowed for, have a direct connection with meaning.” – John Sinclair (1998). • This implies that lexicographers and linguists need to study collocations and phraseology in much more detail than has been done up to now. • This is now possible, thanks to the evidence of large corpora.

4. Do words have meaning? • No. They have only meaning potential. • Different aspects of a word’s meaning potential are realized in different contexts. • Corpus evidence shows that word meaning is probabilistic, dependent on patterns arranged around prototypical collocations • not defined by necessary and sufficient conditions (N&SCs), as Leibniz and other great philosophers believed.

5. Terminology vs. ordinary word meaning • Specialist terminology is defined by N&SCs. • But such N&SCs have to be defined by using ordinary words in their most normal contexts. • Terminology is not natural language.

6. Case study: What’s the meaning of ‘elephant’? • High probability: An elephant is a huge grey mammal with a trunk and tusks. Elephants are traditionally believed to have a good memory, etc., etc. …

7. Exploiting features of a word’s normal meaning • Low probability (idiom): The elephant in the room (an obvious and important fact that everyone concerned is ignoring). • Low probability (new concept) : elephant shrew (a species of shrew with a long nose, like an elephant’s trunk). • Low probability (new concept): elephant rhubarb (a species of rhubarb that grows to be unusually large). These expressions (and many others) exploit different features of the normal meaning of elephant.

8. Phraseology and allusion Some anomalous corpus lines: • [His] bitter mien suggests inner torment and an elephant’s memory for grievance. • The competition has come to resemble an elephant’s graveyard. • [Referring to a project in the 1940s to design a new kind of airliner] The project eventually became a white elephant and was scrapped.

9. Default meaning, idiom, and allusion • HYPOTHESIS: Concrete nouns such as elephant have a central default meaning. • But in phrase after phrase, corpus evidence shows that other semantic forces are at work—forces not adequately accounted for in current dictionaries, ncluding: • Idioms • Allusions to folk culture • Exploitations of phraseological norms • Etc.

10. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives • Are noun meanings different in kind from verb or adjective meanings? • THREE HYPOTHESES: • Nouns relate linguistic concepts to the world. • Adjective subclassify nouns. • Verbs relate nouns (noun concepts) to each other.

11. Resonance theory HYPOTHESIS: Meaning consists (at least in part) of three kinds of psychological resonance: • Experiential resonance • The literal meaning of a word and its associations • A word like ‘summer’ evokes all sorts of experiences, some highly personal, others shared with other speakers of a language • Semantic resonance • Metaphors and other kinds of figurative language • Intertextual resonance • Phraseology picked up from someone else • Aesop, Shakespeare, the Bible, or Fred next door

12. Norms and Exploitations • In order to understand meaning in language, it is essential to distinguish between: • norms (the basic shared conventions that S and H mutually rely on – including conventional metaphors), and • exploitations (freshly created metaphors and other tropes, unusual phrasing, etc.) • Two different rule systems. • The two rule systems interact. __ Grice (1975): relevance theory: people also communicate by exploiting norms of linguistic behaviour, as well as by conforming to them

13. Regular and irregular linguistic performance • Norms are first-order regularities of linguistic behaviour (usage) • Alternations and idioms are second-order regularities of linguistic behaviour • Exploitations are irregularities, deliberately created by a speaker or writer for rhetorical or literary effect. • It is only by exploiting norms that we can ever say anything new. • Mistakes are irregularities that occur accidentally, not deliberately

14. Exploitation rule 1: ellipsis(omitting the obvious) • I hazarded various Stuartesque destinations such as Bali and Istanbul. • Julian Barnes • In isolation, this sentence is incomprehensible. • But in context, the meaning is clear. • (The phrase “a guess at” has been omitted, “because it’s obvious”. See next slide.)

15. 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)

16. 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) • Can you vacuum a moose? ... Is it normal? • “Can you say X in English? – the wrong question to ask. Ask instead, “Is it normal?”

17. Exploitation Rule 3: Metaphor • Stoke Mandeville station is a little oasis; clean and bright and friendly. • New Town Hotel -- a relaxing oasis for professional and business men. • Driffield, which was a pleasant oasis in the East Riding of Yorkshire. • The planned open-cast site was a pleasant oasis in adecaying industrial landscape. • She regards her job as an oasis in a desert of coping with Harry’s illness • … an oasis in the midst of this desert of feuding. An oasis in English (and other European languages) is prototypically pleasant, relaxing, calm, and surrounded by barren, nasty desert. • The reality may be very different. What are the prototypical attributes of the equivalent concept in Arabic?

18. Measuring Collocations • Collocations: “You shall know a word by the company it keeps.” – J. R. Firth. • Patterns: “We must distinguish from the general mush of goings-on those elements which appear to be part of a patterned process.” – J. R. Firth. • The meaning of a word in context depends to a large extent on its collocational preferences. • Collocations in corpora can be measured, using statistical tests such as mutual information, t-score, etc. • See www.sketchengine.co.uk/

19. Salient collocates for ‘oasis’ (SkE) BNC freq for ‘oasis’: 307 Collocate Co-occurrences Salience score greenery 3 8.11 serenity 2 7.53 desert 12 7.07 calm 7 7.28 lush 2 6.82 tranquillity 2 6.76 peaceful 3 5.75 welcome 4 5.68 pleasant 3 5.12 tropical 4 5.07

20. Conclusions (1) • Nouns (typically) are referring expressions. • They represent concepts (and the world). • They ‘plug into’ verbs. • Verbs are ‘power sockets’: • Plug some nouns into a verb, and you can make a meaning, i.e. • construct a proposition • ask a question • interact socially • etc.

21. Conclusions (2) • Meanings in language are associated with words in prototypical phraseological patterns (not words in isolation). • Meanings in text are interpreted by pattern matching • i.e. mapping bit of text onto the patterns in our heads • The patterns in our heads come from ‘lexical priming’ (Hoey 2005) • Members of a language community share primed patterns • Some uses match well onto patterns; these are ‘norms’ • Some uses seem surprising; these are ‘exploitations of norms’[or mistakes]. • For each language, a corpus-driven lexical database will identify the normal phraseology associated with each word • A set of exploitation rules is needed to explain creative usage.

22. A “double-helix” theory of meaning in language • A human language is a system of rule-governed behaviour • But not one, monolithic rule system. • Rather, it is two interlinked systems of rules: • 1) Rules governing normal usage • 2) Rules governing exploitation of norms. • The two systems interact, producing new norms: • Today’s exploitation may be tomorrow’s norm.