Four ways of breaking the circle
2.1 Meaning and the dictionary
The concept of a word’s meaning is closely linked to the concept of defi ni- tion, which was fi rst made explicit in Greek philosophy by Aristotle.
Defi nitions have been particularly important for conceptual theories of meaning (1.6.2), which traditionally assumed a close link between con- cepts and defi nitions: knowing the concept HORSE, for example, is simply the ability to use the word horse in a way that accords with or fi ts its defi ni- tion. If I have the concept HORSE, I will be prepared to utter, or assent to, a large number of propositions, including the following, which depend on the defi nition of horse as ‘a large, four-footed mammal with hooves and a mane’:
(1) a. If X is a horse, X is an animal.
b. If X is a horse, it has a mane.
c. X is a rooster, so X is not a horse.
d. If X is a horse, it is a large four-footed mammal with hooves and a mane.
As a result, an understanding of defi nition is necessary for any attempt to develop a conceptual theory of word meaning. Furthermore, when people think of a word’s meaning, they are inclined to think of something like its defi nition in a dictionary. Since about the sixteenth century, dictionaries have played an extremely important role in the way we think about and use our own language, and their existence and popularity can be related to a complex of pretheoretical ideas about the nature and role of lan- guage: a whole linguistic ideology. As a result, it is important to clarify the similarities and differences between the defi nitions that might be proposed in theoretical linguistic semantics, and the types that can be found in dictionaries.
2.1.1 Semantics and lexicography
Dictionary-writing, or lexicography, is, in the words of Landau (1984: 121),
‘a craft, a way of doing something useful. It is not a theoretical exercise to increase the sum of human knowledge but practical work to put together a book that people can understand.’ Linguistic semantics, by contrast, while also interested in the meanings of words, is exactly the sort of theo- retical exercise with which Landau is drawing a contrast. Nevertheless, the model of the dictionary or ‘lexicon’ (an older term for the same thing) has been decisive in the way that many linguists conceive of the nature of language:
Language exists in the form of a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of each member of a community, rather like a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed to each individual. It is, thus, something that is in each of them, while at the same time common to all and existing independently of the will of any of its possessors.
(Saussure 1967: 38)
According to a common assumption, our brains holds a ‘store of words in long term memory from which the grammar constructs phrases and sen- tences’ ( Jackendoff 2002: 130). This stock of words and associated mean- ings is usually referred to as the mental lexicon. On this view, the primary task of linguistic semantics would be the specifi cation of the stored meaning representation – the ‘entry’ – associated with each lexeme in the mental lexicon:
For the speaker/writer, accessing ‘words’ is a matter of mapping ideas onto those stored meaning representations in the mental lexicon that are associated with stable word forms, which can then be used to imple- ment a spoken or written output. For the listener/reader, the major task is to map portions of the linguistic signal onto the stored neurosensory traces in the mental lexicon; once activated, these will in turn stimulate their associated meaning representations.
(Garman 1990: 240–241)
The process of matching a meaning with a word is analogous to that involved in consulting a dictionary. Just as a language-learner discovers the meaning of an unknown word by looking it up in a dictionary, the production and understanding of ordinary speech is conceived of as a process of matching between stored word-forms and the stored mean- ing representations associated with them in long-term memory. Like dictionary defi nitions, these meaning representations are imagined as discrete and relatively fi xed. And just as dictionaries aim for a maxi- mum degree of concision, it has been assumed that the mental lexicon also seeks the most effi cient, least redundant listing of lexemes’ mean- ings.
In order to serve the purposes of serious linguistic description, the entries in the mental lexicon must be much more detailed than is usual in ordinary dictionaries. As well as containing information about words’ meanings, they must also specify their grammatical prop- erties, and contain a representation of their phonological structure.
Consider for example the Concise Oxford Dictionary entry for the verb pour:
v. 1 intr. & tr. (usu. foll. by down, out, over, etc) flow or cause to flow esp.
downwards in a stream or shower 2 tr. dispense (a drink, e.g. tea) by pour- ing. 3 intr. (of rain, or prec. by it as subject) fall heavily. 4 intr. (usu. foll. by in, out, etc.) come or go in profusion or rapid succession (the crowd poured out; letters poured in; poems poured from her fertile mind). 5 tr. discharge or send freely (poured forth arrows). 6 tr. (often foll. by out) utter at length or in a rush (poured out their story).
This entry presents, at fi rst sight, a rather comprehensive description of the verb. But there are a number of aspects of pour’s meaning and use which the defi nition does not cover. First, constructions like (2) corre- spond to sense number two, ‘dispense by pouring’, but are intransitive, contrary to the dictionary’s specifi cation.
(2) Shall I pour?
Furthermore, the dictionary is silent about the conditions under which pour in sense one is ‘usually’ followed by a preposition or prepositional phrase. Whereas (3a) and (3b) are quite acceptable without any following prepositional phrase, (4a) and (4b) seem more questionable, whereas (5a) and (5b) are perfectly acceptable:
(3) a. I was pouring the tea when the phone rang.
b. They were pouring the concrete when the phone rang.
(4) a. ?I was pouring the rainwater when the phone rang.
b. ?I was pouring the mud when the phone rang.
(5) a. I was pouring the rainwater over the ground when the phone rang.
b. I was pouring the mud down the hole when the phone rang.
Clearly, then, the dictionary’s statement that pour in this sense is ‘usu- ally’ followed by down, out, over etc., needs signifi cant fl eshing-out.
Similarly, the Concise Oxford does not tell us the limits on the preposi- tional and subject combinations with which pour is acceptable: why are the (a) examples in (6) and (7) clearly acceptable, but the others less so?
(6) a. The crowd poured down the hill.
b. ?The fi remen poured down the pole.
(7) a. The tourists poured into the museum.
b. ?The surfers poured into the ocean.
c. ?The passengers poured into the bus.
d. ?Fifty workers poured into the lift.
Extended or metaphorical uses of the verb raise a host of similar ques- tions. What is it that determines the acceptability of (8), the unacceptabil- ity of (10), and the ‘punning’ quality of (9)?
(8) The government are pouring money into healthcare.
(9) ?With its funding of a new dam, the government is pouring water into the driest parts of the country.
(10) ??The government are pouring money out of education.
These and other questions all need to be answered in a comprehensive description of the mental lexicon entry for the verb pour.
QUESTION Can you refine the description of the meaning of pour in order to explain the facts in (2)–(10)? What other aspects of the meaning and use of pour are not made explicit by the quoted definition?
The history of the dictionary
Dictionaries are extremely popular tools. This has not always been the case, however: monolingual dictionaries did not exist in the West until about the sixteenth century (Matoré 1968). Different sorts of
‘proto-lexicographical’ document existed in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the glossaries or word lists used to keep a record of words which had fallen out of use in everyday language, but which continued to be used in specialized speech genres like poetry. In China, Japan and India, similar documents are also known from an early date: the earliest Chinese proto-lexicographical work, for instance, the Erya (a title which means ‘approaching what is elegant and correct usage’), which is not a dictionary in the modern sense but simply a collection of semantic glosses on classical Chinese texts, probably dates from the third century BC (Malmqvist 1994: 5–6).
More surprising, perhaps, than the historical recency of the mod- ern dictionary, is the fact that the monolingual dictionary is a later invention than the bilingual one: the direct precursor of the modern monolingual dictionary is the bilingual Latin-vernacular dictionary or ‘lexicon’ which became popular in Europe between the end of the fourteenth and the end of the fifteenth centuries (Auroux 1994: 119).
As noted by Auroux (1994), the novelty of the modern monolingual dictionary lay in the fact that it was intended not for people who wanted to acquire a language which they did not yet command, as had been the case for the earlier bilingual dictionaries, but for people who wanted guidance in the use of a language which they already spoke. So completely has the monolingual dictionary eclipsed the bilingual one as the lexicographical standard that, as pointed out by Rey (1990: 19), we now largely think of definitions as exclusively monolingual: whereas a bilingual dictionary contains equivalents or translations, only a monolingual one contains definitions.
Word-based and meaning-based approaches to definition The definitions found in dictionaries are the result of a word-based, or semasiological approach to meaning. This sort of approach starts with a language’s individual lexemes, and tries to specify the meaning of each one. This is not the only possibility, however, for the analysis of meaning in linguistics. The other approach, the onomasiological one, has the opposite logic: start with a particular meaning, and list the various forms available in the language for its expression. Thus, whereas a semasiological analysis would start with a list of verbs, say scare, frighten, terrify, startle, spook, and panic, and specify a slightly different meaning for each (startle, for instance,
referring to a considerably weaker form of alarm than panic), an ono- masiological analysis would start with a general concept, FRIGHTEN, and list all of these verbs as its possible realizations. The difference between the two approaches corresponds to the difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus. As a semasiological tool, a dictionary is a list of words, and one accesses meanings through words. A thesaurus, on the other hand, is a list of concepts: for a particular concept, the thesaurus gives access to the different words through which the con- cept could be expressed.
Semasiological and onomasiological analysis are in no way exclu- sive: the semasiological approach emphasizes differences between lexemes, the onomasiological one similarities. Furthermore, both are necessary to a full description of the processes underlying commu- nication. A complete description of linguistic performance will show how a speaker achieves the mapping between the concept or meaning she wishes to express and the word forms actually chosen: given the need to express the concept or meaning FRIGHTEN, for example, what are the onomasiological principles according to which one of the pos- sible verbs listed above is chosen? For the hearer, however, a semasio- logical approach is called for. Hearing or reading the word frighten in a particular context, what is the meaning which the hearer will assign to this verb?