Four ways of breaking the circle
2.6 Problems with definitions
These problems disappear if NSM’s claim to universality is abandoned, since only universal theories of semantic primitives are open to the sorts of criticism just advanced. If your theory only commits you to the existence of indefi nable primitives within a single language, problems about cross- linguistic equivalence do not arise. This is the approach of, for example, Apresjan (2000: 228), for whom ‘[s]emantic primitiveness is determined . . . by the structure of the lexicon of the language being described: lexeme L is considered a primitive if the given language has no L1, L2 . . . Ln via which it might be explicated’. In the next section, however, we will see that even this type of practice is threatened by quite general problems with the notion of defi nition.
investigation reveals that our intuitions on this are in fact mistaken:
when these defi nitions are subjected to scrutiny, it readily emerges that they are not, in fact, successful (for more examples, see 7.1.2).
A possible response here would be to claim that it is only the extreme brevity of the defi nition of bachelor which accounts for its inadequacy. If a defi ner tries hard enough, satisfactory defi nitions can be achieved: it is just that no one has yet taken the time to do so. This is exactly the point made by Wierzbicka (1996). According to her, the true defi nitions of most ordinary words are signifi cantly longer than the brief statements we are used to reading in dictionaries. Here, for example, is her ‘imperfect fi rst approximation’ defi nition of paint:
X painted Y with Z. = (a) X did something to Y (b) like people do
(c) when they want something to look good (d) when X did it
(e) X put some stuff Z on all parts of Y that one could see (f ) if someone looked at Z at that time
(g) this person could say what colour Z was
(h) at the same time, this person could think that part of Z was water ( i ) X wanted Z to be like part of Y
( j) after X did it, Z was like part of Y. (Wierzbicka 1996: 254–255) As Wierzbicka points out, this defi nition is both longer, and structurally different from the types of defi nition familiar from dictionaries. It is essentially a defi nition by context, specifying ‘a fairly complex scenario, with a number of temporal and causal links between the components’
(Wierzbicka 1996: 255). Even in this complex, detailed form, however, the defi nition’s accuracy can be challenged. If I have painted a car with red car enamel, there are many visible parts of the car which are not painted – the glass, the bumper bar, the headlights, the number plate, etc. Similar remarks apply to the sentence She painted her face with rouge. This invali- dates component (e) of the defi nition. Components (i) and ( j) are also problematic: if I painted a box with red paint, do we really want to say that I wanted the red paint to be like part of the box and that when I had fi nished the red paint was like part of the box? Maybe we do, maybe we don’t: in any case, it doesn’t seem clear enough to warrant inclusion in a defi nition.
Similarly, the whole defi nition is equally appropriate as a defi nition of the word spray, as in the sentences I sprayed my arm with insect repellant or I sprayed the fl ower with water. I did this in order for my arm/the fl ower to look good (in the case of the arm, so that it would not be covered with ugly bites (component (c)), anyone looking at the repellant or the spray at that time, as at any other, could say what colour it was (component (g) – white, or transparent), the spray is clearly water-like (h) and I wanted the spray to become like part of the arm/the fl ower (components (i) and ( j)). But since spray and paint are intuitively not synonyms, the defi nition of paint should exclude spray. (Note that spraying is also not a kind of painting; we cannot
defi ne spray simply by adding some extra components to the defi nition of paint.) This objection is possible because of the defi nition’s description of the physical action of painting as putting stuff on the visible parts of the object. There are several ways of putting stuff on the visible parts of an object which observe all the conditions in (a) to (j) but which are not paint- ing: as well as spraying, the process of dipping comes to mind. Apparently, then, increasing the length and detail of a defi nition does not necessarily increase its accuracy. (See Geeraerts 1993 for more discussion.)
One typical response to criticisms of defi nitions has been to claim that the defi nition captures the core, central, or prototypical part of the defi nien- dum’s meaning, and that the respects in which the defi nition fails all involve special or peripheral aspects (for a discussion of the notion of pro- totype, see Chapter 7). Thus, Wierzbicka introduces components (b) and (c) into the defi nition of paint in order to take account of cases like painting something with a special solution in order to protect it against rust: this is not strictly done in order to make something look good, but it is like other acts of painting which do have this goal. Similarly, one could respond to the above criticism of component (e) by saying that the usual case when painting something is that the thing being painted be com- pletely covered, and that other cases are somehow derived from this one.
And to return to our earlier examples, a linguist could claim that ‘unmar- ried male’ is still a legitimate defi nition of bachelor in spite of the counter- examples of widowers, etc., because it captures the core sense of bachelor.
These sorts of response are reasonable insofar as it does seem to be true that many words have a central set of typical applications, and a set of less typical ones. Bachelor, for instance, does indeed very often refer to unmar- ried males, even if not all unmarried males can be described as bachelors.
We will consider this type of view of word meaning in Chapter 7. But with- out a principled way of delimiting what does and does not count as a core meaning or a prototypical instance of a word, it is too easy for the defi ner to simply dismiss any counterexample to a defi nition as simply relating to a ‘non-core’ aspect of the defi niendum’s meaning. Fodor puts this option with characteristic bluntness:
‘Core meaning’ and the like are not, however, notions for which much precise explication gets provided in the lexical semantics literature. The upshot, often enough, is that the definitions that are put on offer are isolated, simply by stipulation, from prima facie counterexamples.
This strikes me as a mug’s game, and not one that I’m tempted to play.
I take the proper ground rule to be that one expression defines another only if the two expressions are synonymous; and I take it to be a neces- sary condition for their synonymy that whatever one expression applies to, the other does too. (1998: 48)
Under this view, a defi nition has to be substitutable for the defi niendum in every single context. As we will see in the next chapter, given the infi - nite variety of language use, it would seem that any word can be used in any context (to see this, think of errors, joke contexts and fantasy): as a result, a comprehensive defi nition would seem unattainable.
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Many linguists, however, would reject the argument that the heteroge- neity of uses renders comprehensive defi nition impossible. For them, the fact that any word can be used in any context is only true in a trivial sense:
there are clear differences between core and non-core uses, and defi ni- tions are possible for the former.