Semantic / Lexical Typology: Verbs of Falling and Beyond

Katia Rakhilina (NRU HSE, Moscow)

“Verbs, verb phrases and verbal categories”

23-25 March

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

BEYOND:Lexical Typology. Main objectives

•A relatively new area of linguistic typology

•Until recently, linguistic typology grammatical or phonological typology

•Lexical typology deals with cross-linguistic universals and variation in lexical categorization of conceptual domains

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Main approaches to lexical typology

Natural Semantic Metalanguage

(Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard)

primarily determined via introspection

Denotation-based approach: MPI Nijmegen

(Stephen Levinson, Asifa Majid et al.) < Berlin&Kay 1969

experimental approach to LT: pictures or videoclips

as stimuli and lexical reactions of native speakers

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(1) NSM: Limitations

Which one is to choose a primitive among several near-synonymsxotet’ /zhelat’ in Russian or want / wish in English

How to deal with changes in meanings?

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(2) Denotation-based approach: limitations

+ clear tertium comparationis (= extralinguistic stimuli)

non applicable for domains of subjective experience & metaphorical extensions

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(2) Denotation-based approach: limitations

PAIN

How to collect language data?

Even if one would prick

a native speaker for the sake of lexical typology, the result would be poor, because all individuals experience pain differently.

Thus , pain terms need another – non-experimental – approach (Reznikova et al. 2012)

Pain is not the only case. Subjective experience constitutes a large part of what is expressed in human languages, cf. physical qualities, like soft or heavy.

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MLexT Methodology• The general idea is to combine:

• the Moscow Semantic school tradition (deep semantic analysis of the lexicon with a special focus on synonymy)

• Tradition of grammatical typology= Lexical typology

So, basically we take into account the “linguistic behavior” of lexical items, i.e. combinability restrictions (dictionaries, corpora, field work with specially developed questionnaires)

Moscow Lexical Typology Group projects:

Typology of activities & states:

Verbs of aquamotionPain metaphorsSound metaphorsVerbs of rotationVerbs of oscillationCutting & breaking Sitting & standingPhysical qualities (‘sharp’, ‘wet’, ‘soft’…)FALLING

Verbs of aquamotion

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Majsak, Rakhilina (eds.)2007

Pain metaphors

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Britsyn, Rakhilina, Reznikova, Yavorska (eds.) 2010

Sound metaphors

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Suggested methodology: Main steps

• To collect all lexical items covering the field in your own languagecf. English old

• To look for occurrences of these items in the corpus and check the initial list of terms:cf. old woman, old horse, old tree, old town (+ancient), old clothes, old director (+ former)….

• To look for translations for these words in bilingual dictionaries:cf. Georgian : ‘old person’ → moxuci,

‘old clothes’ → dzveli,‘old director’ → qop’ili‘old coins’ → adrindeli

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Questionnaire

• Obtaining a semantic classification of nouns based on dictionary data and corpus examples.

• This classification provides the basis for a questionnaire to be completed by native speakers of different languages. • We have an ___oak close to our house; my

great-grand father planted it many years ago.• His ___ wife was kind-hearted and the new

one is beautiful but bad-tempered.

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Questionnaire and Frames

By comparing questionnaires completed for different languages we extract a set of situations that may be distinguished lexically (= frames)• ‘having lived for many years’ (old woman)

• ‘object being in use for a long time, has become useless and/or decayed’ (old clothes, old house)

• ‘the object that is no longer in use or the duty that is not performed any more’ (old flat, old director)

• ‘dating from the remote past’ (old coins, old city)

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clothes

person

coins

director

Visualization of typological data: Semantic maps

Dominant system (e.g. English)

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Binary system(e.g. Japanese)

Distributed systems

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Visualization of typological data: Semantic maps

(e.g. Ossetian) (e.g. Bashkir)

SHARP domain: Collocating nouns

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‘arrow’

‘bristle’

‘knife’

‘nose’

‘scissors’‘(rose) thorns’

‘(woolen) blanket’

‘boots’

‘needle’

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SHARP domain: Frames

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‘arrow’

‘bristle’

‘knife’

‘nose’

‘scissors’

‘(rose) thorns’

‘(woolen) blanket’

‘boots’

‘needle’

Instrument with a functional edge

Instrument with a functional end-point

Object with a pointed shape

Natural object that pricks

Surface that pricks

SHARP domain

Instrument with a functional edge (knife, saw)

Instrument with a functional end-point (arrow, spear)

Surface that pricks(blanket, bristle)

Natural object that pricks(thorns)

Object with a sharp form(nose)

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SHARP domain: Serbian

Instrument with a functional edge (knife, saw)

Instrument with a functional end-point (arrow, spear)

Surface that pricks(blanket, bristle)

Natural object that pricks(thorns)

Object with a sharp form(nose)

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oštar nož ‘sharp knife’, oštro koplje ‘sharp spear’, oštar nos ‘sharp nose’, oštar pokrivač ‘prickly blanket’

oštar

SHARP domain: Japanese

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Instrument with a functional edge (knife, saw)

Instrument with a functional end-point (arrow, spear)

Surface that pricks(blanket, bristle)

Natural object that pricks(thorns)

Object with a sharp form(nose)

surudoi naifu ‘sharp knife’, surudoi yari ‘sharp spear’ vs. togatta hana ‘sharp nose’

surudoi

togatta

SHARP domain: Kabardian

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Instrument with a functional edge (knife, saw)

Instrument with a functional end-point (arrow, spear)

Surface that pricks(blanket, bristle)

Natural object that pricks(thorns)

Object with a sharp form(nose)

ŝeẑje ž’an ‘sharp knife’ vs. ʁʷəčw əne pamc�e ‘sharp nail’ , ʔandeʁʷə pamc�e ‘sharp elbow’

ž’an pamc�e

Typology of verbs of falling:research program

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Falling: vertical motion due to gravity

Description of falling has two dimensions:

A. Substructure of the field and oppositions between its main frames

B. Other semantic fields related to falling

either directly (1)

or through metaphorization procedure (2)25

A. Substructure of the field

Two main topologically opposed clusters of situations:

Falling down from an upper surface

(NB! Motion of substances) Falling of vertical objects “standing” on the ground

Non prototypical:“Reflexive motion”

(1) (2)

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Falling down from an upper surface

• Locations: • Source (initial location) and Goal (final location)

• Source is normally not marked (except for containers: falling out of smth)

Falling down from an upper surface• Goal bias. Types of Goals as final locations:

liquids / hard surfaces / soft surfaces …

[NB! Onomatopoeia: falling is accompanied by special sounds]

‘Trajector + location’ pair is relevant• Hard Trajector + hard surface [a huge suitcase onto

the road] • Hard Trajector + soft surface [stone into the mud]• Soft Trajector + hard surface [a piece of mud onto the

road]• A piece of glass onto the hard surface …• Splash – fall with a thud – fall with a bang…

Substances as special kinds of Trajectors

• Water can move forward, upward and fall either in a flow or in small quants

• One general predicate or a system of classifying verbs?

• Special term for dropping of drops?• Sand, sugar, grain as free-flowing substances can

only move down in their own manner • no special verb for falling of a quant ?

• Rain• Snow

Standing vertical objects:orientation of the falling object

Objects with intrinsic orientation (mainly humans):

direction of the motion (could be marked with the predicates or adverbs)

• Falling backwards, on one’s back • Falling sideways • Falling forwards

+ metonymy (manner)• Stumble • Slip• Tumble

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“Reflexive motion” (Susan Lindner 1981)

= Motion of the parts

• Simple motion: John went out <of the house>

• Reflexive motion: Syrop spread out

“Reflexive motion”: rotation

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Simple rotation: Trajector is moving round the Landmark

Reflexive rotation: the fox (Tr) rolled itself into a ball

“Reflexive motion” & related frames

• Crash down, collapse:

about a building

the house fell down

• To fall down:

about a surface itself e.g. due to the heavy object on it

the ice crashed

+ meton. smb. fell trough the ice

“Reflexive motion”: related frames

• Body parts (no motion)• Teeth / Hair: come out

[+ Tail of a lizard]

[+ Tongue (a running dog)]

• Parts of artifacts (the motion is not vertical)• May be separated due to the movement • High speed, type of initial connection is relevant• Break off, come off, be torn off …

sand/sugar surfaces (falling and destruction)

water snow buildings hair, teeth

Falling down vertical objects

from an upper surface forwards/backwards sideways

Parts of artifacts

FLYING JUMPING BREAKING

Preliminary semantic map

onomatopoeia

sand/sugar surfaces (falling and destruction)

water snow buildings hair, teeth

Falling down vertical objects forwards/backwards sideways

Parts of artifacts

rich subdomain FLYING JUMPING BREAKING

Preliminary semantic map: KomiData from a field study (Egor. Kashkin)

us’ny

kissylnyvöjny

onomatopoeia

pörny

?

Preliminary semantic map: Russianrain sand/sugar surfaces

(falling and destruction)

water snow

buildings hair, teeth out-of-containers

Falling down vertical objects backwards sideways

Parts of artifacts

FLYING JUMPING BREAKING

padat’

sypat’sjakapat’

provalivat’sja

rušit’sja

onomatopoeia

šmjaknut’sjapl’uxnut’sjagroxnut’sjašlepnut’sjabrjaknut’sja

high-level falls

B 1. Related semantic fields: flying(Plungian, Rakhilina 2007)

• The lexical domain of ‘flying’ (‘moving through the air’) proves not to be elementary.

• In the languages of the world it often splits into two zones, or sub-domains.

• Active sub-domain covers staying in the air of a living creature who abruptly moves its limbs.

• Passive sub-domain describes an inanimate object’s movement through the air caused by an external force applied to it.

• Cognitive distinction between them is manifested in different strategies of conceptual assimilation applied in the two cases:

B 1. Related semantic fields: flying

• Flying may be conceptualized either as jumping (active flying) or falling (passive flying).

• This explains why in various languages the meanings ‘fall’ and ‘fly’ are interchangeable in some contexts, cf. English fall off ~ fly off.

• There are also cases when the meanings ‘fly’ and ‘fall’ are combined within one predicate (similarly to what happens to ‘fly’ and ‘jump’); native speakers then perceive the two meanings as closely related to each other.

• The most known case is Sanskrit pat- which had two meanings ‘fall’ and ‘fly’; this polysemy is preserved in many modern Indo-Arian languages.

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B2: Metaphors of falling: two main sources

(1) LESS IS DOWN [< G.Lakoff]• Decrease: SAE

+ Negative evaluation• Moral decay: Russian

B2: Metaphors of falling: two main sources

(2) LACK OF CONTROL SUDDENNESS • Coming out unexpectedly: Komi• Astonishment: Russian • Sudden death (humans: at the war // cattle: due

to disease) SAE• + Military defeat (Syrian regime will fall …)• Birth: Indonesian • Unexpected occasion (good / bad luck)

< dicing, Russian• Transformation (ice into water) < vertical

objects only! Komi

Dreams and Plans

• 20-30 languages, including Russian gesture language

• Direct meanings & semantic maps• Types of systems• Metaphorical extensions• Cases of intersection with other semantic

fields• Statistical experiments

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And grammaticalization paths --?Heine, Kuteva 2002: 133• Some African Languages:Fall > down (adverb)• Korean, TamilFall > passive suffix

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