LINGUIST List 22.2076 Sat May 14 2011 Review: Applied Ling; Lexicography; Semantics: Feller (2010) Editor for this issue: Monica Macaulay <monicalinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     Ksenia Shilikhina , Lexical Meaning in Dialogic Language Use Message 1: Lexical Meaning in Dialogic Language Use Date: 14-May-2011 From: Ksenia Shilikhina <shilikhinyandex.ru> Subject: Lexical Meaning in Dialogic Language Use E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-4200.html AUTHOR: Feller, Sebastian TITLE: Lexical Meaning in Dialogic Language Use SERIES TITLE: Dialogue Studies 9 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2010 Ksenia Shilikhina, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Voronezh State University, Russia SUMMARY Meaning is one of the most challenging issues in the study of language. Sebastian Feller's ''Lexical Meaning in Dialogic Language Use'', the 9th volume of Dialogue Studies Series (DS) published by John Benjamins, is a discussion of how exactly words mean in discourse. The text is a revised and extended version of Feller's thesis defended at the University of Muenster. The approach to lexical meaning advocated by Feller is based on two key ideas: language and meaning as its integral part are dialogic in their nature; predication is the major function of lexical expressions. Feller states that ''Lexical expressions are used to predicate on the world, i.e., to construct and communicate an image of reality'' (p. 7). Language-in-use, or rather, meaning-in-use becomes the focal point of the book. The author argues that the dialogic nature of language-in-use makes meaning a part of social action. Feller draws his data from BNC and COCA. The study is carried out on a set of contexts which contain one of the four English verbs 'to support', 'to pay', 'to carry' and 'to say'. The book comprises seven chapters, a list of references and a subject index. Chapter 1, ''The whole and its parts'', introduces a holistic approach to human language and explicates the aims of the research. The main questions that the book attempts to answer are the following: how is the predicative function of lexical units represented? How can a lexical unit be defined? Is there such a thing as lexical ambiguity? How does extra-linguistic knowledge affect our understanding of linguistic expressions? From the outset the author argues that language cannot be reduced to a system of grammatical rules. Instead, language is recognized as an instrument of communication. Consequently, the intentional aspect of dialogic discourse comes to the foreground. Intentionality lies at the heart of human communication and it guides our understanding of what is said in a particular context. Feller illustrates these points with two short dialogues. Taken out of the immediate context, the utterances lose their meaningfulness. However, further explication of the circumstances in which the conversations had occurred made the dialogues sound natural again. The author pinpoints the major difference between the conventional handling of meaning in linguistics and his own approach: while orthodox semantic theories treat meaning as something that exists independently from language users, Feller argues that meaning emerges as a result of a dialogic interaction between the speaker and the hearer. Chapter 2, ''State-of-the-art theories'', presents a succinct critical overview of several approaches to lexical meaning. Starting from the structuralist models the author traces the development of linguistic ideas in both formal and functional directions. The scope of theories includes prototype theory, logical semantics, generative approaches to lexicon and meaning, cognitive theories, action-theoretic models of meaning, use theories. Special attention is given to corpus approaches to lexical meaning. Feller discusses converging ideas (e.g. Jackendoff's conceptual structures and Fillmore's notion of scenes). In the final section of the chapter Feller concludes that existing structuralist and formal theories cannot offer adequate explanation of how language speakers arrive at meaning in discourse. Feller argues that the majority of existing semantic theories are eclectic; they do not give a holistic picture of lexical meaning. Chapter 3, ''Theoretical foundation'', starts with the introduction of Weigand's idea of predication as the main function of lexical units. This, in turn, raises a question of the boundaries of lexical units -- obviously they cannot be reduced to single words. Feller discusses several theoretical attempts at definitions, and claims that they should be checked against real language use. This chapter is very important for understanding further semantic analysis. Feller addresses several questions which remain controversial. The first question is the relation between encyclopedic and linguistic knowledge. While many linguists treat these types of knowledge separately, Feller claims that they cannot be separated: people need both types of knowledge for successful communication. Another stumbling block of semantics addressed by Feller in this chapter is the concept of polysemy. Unlike most linguists, Feller claims that because language users derive meaning from multi-word units, they hardly ever have to face the problem of multiple meanings of words in context. In Chapter 4, ''Methodological preliminaries'', the author explains his choice of examples, the test set-up and metalanguage which is used for semantic representation of lexical meaning. Feller discusses the problem of corpus data interpretation -- in cases where the nearest co-text was not informative enough, he had to make additional information searches to complete ''the meaning building process'' (p. 59). The subsequent two chapters are devoted to the detailed analysis of the semantic structures of four English verbs -- 'to support', 'to pay', 'to carry' and 'to say'. Chapter 5, ''The semantic analysis (Part I) -- The semantic interplay of subject-NP and VP'', presents a thorough description of the nearest co-texts of the verbs. In particular, Feller discusses how NPs in subject positions specify the exact meanings of the verbs. E.g., the verb 'to pay' is included in the predicating field BUSINESS TRANSACTION when it collocates with NPs like 'the Milk Marketing Board', but when the same verb collocates with an NP like 'the price for his illegal action' it has a different meaning and is included in the predicating field of PENALTY. Predicative functions of the verbs are shown in detailed schematic representations. In Chapter 6, ''The semantic analysis (Part II) -- New lexical entries: A pilot study'' the author presents a large-scale investigation of how the four verbs are used in different contexts. More predicating fields and subfields are described (e.g. the predicating field GIVE+AID for the verb 'to support' is further subdivided into ANCILLA, SPONSORING and SOCIAL BEHAVIOR). The choice of a particular subfield is again determined by the verb's collocates in subject and object positions. Chapter 7 -- the final chapter of the book -- is a Conclusion, where Feller offers his own definition of the lexical unit and proposes several types of practical application of his approach to lexical meaning in context. The sentential formula for the lexical unit looks as follows: [S: NP+VP]. Though this is very similar to the syntactic representation of an utterance, Feller reminds the reader that the two should not be confused: a lexical unit is used for predication, while utterances have illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect. As for practical implementation, Feller suggests that his approach can be used in electronic dictionaries and language teaching. The author's final comments address the question of switching from lexical units to lexical concepts -- a more abstract level which allows for taking into account other cognitive means of predication. This can be the next step of analysis because the human ability to use language and create meaning is intertwined with other cognitive abilities. EVALUATION The intended audience of the book are researchers interested in linguistic semantics and pragmatics. The book has a very ambitious aim -- to give a full and precise description to such a recalcitrant phenomenon as lexical meaning. By claiming that ''[s]peakers do not memorize single words together with their corresponding list of senses but words embedded in their concrete ways-of-use'' (p. 66) Feller tries to make his semantic theory not only theoretically, but also psycholinguistically plausible. The book is interesting in many respects. It challenges traditional approaches to lexical meaning and tries to give coherent explanations of how speakers understand meanings of words in utterances. Modern lexical semantics can be seen as a continuum of theories with two radical poles: there are linguists who believe that meaning exists independently from language users and every word can be given an objective dictionary definition. The opposing theories claim that meaning is created in context and it never exists outside of it (similar ideas were expressed by the Russian linguist Alexander Potebnya more than a century ago -- see for example Potebnya 2007). Feller's concept of meaning-in-use is close to this radical approach. Throughout the book the author discusses the idea of relativity of meaning. He shows how one's personal knowledge and cognitive abilities are used in interpretation of utterances. The text itself and the algorithm of semantic analysis have a very clear structure. Another good point of Feller's research is metalanguage which allows for a very detailed description of word meanings. The author questions the traditional notion of polysemy -- he argues that from a language user's point of view no such thing exists. Feller contrasts his way of analyzing polysemy with what he calls ''orthodox semantic theories'' (p. 65). While the latter try to solve the problem of polysemy by describing how language users choose one meaning from the set of possible meanings, Feller does exactly the opposite -- he shows how meaning is constructed by context and thus rejects the idea of polysemy in general. Some doubts remain about the position of the hearer: in the first chapter the author claims that the roles of the speaker and the hearer are equally important. However, only a few examples of real-life dialogues are included to illustrate the point. Instead, Feller discusses contexts from BNC and COCA and his own interpretation becomes the only source of semantic analysis. Most conclusions made by Feller may work well for people with rich language experience. The question that remains unanswered is how inexperienced users (e.g. children or language learners) arrive at meaning. What happens if the hearer does not know the exact meaning of NPs that surround verbs and does not have instant access to the Internet? Does this mean that she will not be able to understand the whole sentence or can she still get some vague idea about its meaning on a more general level? Another point of potential criticism is the author's approach to traditional lexicography. He claims that dictionary entries are not informative enough as they cannot describe all potential meanings which a word can acquire in a new context. However, the experience of using dictionaries by many generations is somewhat different -- quite often it is the dictionary that gives us primary ideas about the potential meaning of a word in context. The approach to lexical meaning presented by Feller is justified when we analyze utterances. However, the number of potential contexts in which a word can occur can be indefinitely large. No dictionary (even a computerized one) would be able to enumerate all potential collocates of a word. Other radical statements (e.g. the idea that a pre-defined meaning of a word is absolutely implausible due to the cultural and cognitive diversity of language speakers) can also add fuel to the fire of semanticists' discussions. A possible more practical application for the semantic metalanguage used in the book can be offered: it might be useful for typological description of lexemes (similar ideas of semantic maps which present different word meanings in various languages depending on the collocation can be found in Koptjevskaya-Tamm 2008). REFERENCES Koptjevskaya-Tamm M. (2008) ''Approaching Lexical Typology'' in ''From polysemy to semantic change: towards a typology of lexical semantic associations'', ed. by M. Vanhove, 4-54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company Potebnya A. (2007) Mysl' i jazyk (in Russian). Moscow: Labyrinth. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Ksenia Shilikhina is an associate professor of linguistics at Voronezh State University, Russia. Her main research interests include semantics and pragmatics with a special focus on verbal irony. Another area of interest is corpus linguistics. She teaches courses in Linguistic Typology, Semiotics, Applied and Computational Linguistics and Formal Models in Linguistics. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 14-May-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.