Language theory
Lexical semantics
By Apresyan Y.D.
Nov 4, 2006, 16:13

(Y.D. Apresyan. Selected works. Volume 1. Lexical semantics. Synonymous means of language. M., 1995, pp. 3-69.)

Foreword

The current era in the development of linguistics - this is, undoubtedly, the era of semantics, the central position of which in the circle of linguistic disciplines directly follows from the fact that the human language in its main function is a means of communication, a means of encoding and decoding certain information. The consistent development of this thesis inevitably leads to the concept of linguistics as such a science, which includes, along with other disciplines, also developed semantics, which consists of a description of not only grammatical, but also lexical meanings. Thus, the dictionary turns out to be a necessary part of a complete theoretical description of the language.<…>and not just a “vocabulary monument” or a practical reference for its speakers. By analogy with theoretical and practical (school) grammar, it is advisable to talk about two corresponding types of dictionaries. On the other hand, a complete semantic description of the content units of a language, given, in particular, by a dictionary of a theoretical type, turns out to be a natural basis for a strict definition of any linguistic concepts, which are based on the idea of ​​semantic identities and differences of the corresponding linguistic objects.

This book can be viewed as an attempt to construct a fragment of such a system of semantic concepts, which could serve as a theoretical basis for a new type of dictionary.<…>

Chapter first

Basic ideas of modern semantics

The origins of semantics

Modern lexical semantics is rooted in a number of linguistic and related disciplines, of which the following are the most important:

1) Lexicography, whose practical needs constantly put theoretical semantics in front of the need to create an apparatus for an exhaustive and non-redundant interpretation of lexical meanings, characteristics of the lexical and syntactic combination of words, description of their semantic relationships with other words, etc.

Lexicography requires, first of all, an answer to the question of what words mean. Meanwhile, the theoretical semantics of the previous era was concerned almost exclusively with the question of how words mean. It is to this that the doctrine of the ways of development of meanings - narrowing and expansion, differentiation and attraction, metaphor and metonymy, etc., is devoted, as well as more subtle observations of the direction of transfers - from spatial meanings to temporal ones, but not vice versa; from nomina anatomica - to the names of physical objects, but not vice versa; from the names of properties perceived by touch, smell and taste - to the names of properties perceived by sight or hearing, but not vice versa; and a number of others.

For this reason, semantics and lexicography have developed independently for a long time. As L. V. Shcherba testifies, "19th century linguistics, carried away by the discoveries of Bopp, Grimm, Rusk, and others, as a rule, was not at all interested in the theory of lexicography" (Shcherba 1940: 78). This state of affairs largely persisted in the first half of our century and gave U. Weinreich reason to write about "the fatal abyss between theoretical and descriptive semantics, an abyss that condemns the former to sterility, and the latter to atomism" (Weinreich 1963: 115) ... However, in general, the linguistics of the 20th century is characterized by the opposite development of semantics and lexicography, reflected in the works of such remarkable linguists as L.V. Shcherba, S. Balli, E. Sapir, K. Erdman, J. Firth, V.V. Vinogradov ... Modern semantics, one way or another, has assimilated the following principles formulated by these scientists: a) the essence, called the (lexical) meaning of a word, is not a scientific, but a “naive” (according to L.V. Shcherba - a (“philistine”) concept of a corresponding thing, sometimes burdened with semantic and emotional associations that do not correspond to any essential signs of the object or fact indicated by the word<…>; b) this essence should be revealed in the interpretation of the word, performed in a special "intellectual language-identifier" ... which is built mainly on the basis of an ordinary language, but may also contain words ... that do not have direct semantic correspondences in a natural language; c) words in the language are not connected with each other quite freely, i.e. not only based on information about their meanings; the processes of constructing phrases and sentences are subject to special compatibility restrictions - lexical and constructive ...; d) even in relatively free word combinations, the meaning of a whole word combination does not always consist of the meanings of the words that form it according to the simple law of summation; there are also more interesting rules for the interaction of meanings, which give not a “sum of meanings”, but some more complex product<…>

2) Linguistic semantics of the 40s and 50s<…>, from which the concept of the component structure of lexical meanings was borrowed (in turn transferred to linguistic semantics from phonology and grammar, where analysis by differential features - phonological and grammatical-semantic - has been practiced for decades); Wed stallion= ‘Horse + male’, mare= ‘Horse + female’, male= ‘Dog + male’, bitch= ‘Dog + female’, the male= ‘Man + male + adult’, female= ‘Human + female + adult’, boy= ‘Man + male + non-adult’, girl= ‘Human + female + young’, etc.

Initially, relatively simple and closed systems such as kinship terms, names of animals, military and other nomenclatures were analyzed, and even the idea was expressed<…>that an exhaustive decomposition of values ​​into differential signs is possible only within the framework of such systems. However, in a comprehensive book by M. Mathio (Mathio 1968), the principles of differential analysis were extended to much broader layers of vocabulary.

The traditional theory of differential semantic features was substantially supplemented in the 60s with the concept of integral features, due to which the meaning of a word can include such semantic components, according to which it is not opposed to any other meanings within a certain thematic circle of words. For words a son and daughter the sign of the degree of kinship is differential, since it is he who underlies the opposition son - nephew, daughter - niece, and for the word children the same feature turns out to be integral, since the opposed children generic name for nephews and nieces in Russian, no. In this regard, it was observed that equipolent rather than privative oppositions prevail in the vocabulary (cf. boron =‘Large dense coniferous forest’ - grove =‘Small, usually deciduous forest’ with no one word expression for the meanings “small dense coniferous forest”, “large deciduous forest”, etc .; see Shmelev).

Along with essential semantic features of meanings (differential and integral), it was considered necessary to consider in a number of cases insignificant features called "associative" (Shmelev 1969: 26) or "potential" (Gak 1972: 382); Wed With. 67. For the word lightning, for example, such a sign is speed, for words grandfather and grandma - old age, for words uncle and aunt - the fact that they are usually older than the ego, etc. Consideration of associative features is important because in many cases they serve as the basis for various metaphorical transfers, cf. lightning telegram; uncle and aunty in circulation, etc.

At the same time, valuable thoughts were expressed about the relationship between signs in the composition of the interpretation. Although the decomposition of the lexical meaning into differential semantic features, in principle, does without syntax ( stallion= "horse + male" = "male + horse", that is, the lexical meaning is represented as an unordered set of junctively connected components), many authors were not satisfied with this representation. So, W. Goodenough and F. Lounsbury postulated the relation of possessiveness between the names of signs, at least when writing the meaning at the denotative level (nephew ="the son of a brother or sister").

A different idea of ​​the hierarchical organization of meaning was discussed later in the works of Potier 1965, Heller and Makris 1967, Tolstoy 1968, Hack 1971.

Studying color designations, G. Heller and J. Macris established the following hierarchy of semantic components ("parameters") in the dictionary and, apparently, in the interpretation of the corresponding words: the main component is tone (wavelength, cf. red, yellow, blue etc.); dependent components - intensity (degree of unmixedness with white, cf. dark, thick, light) and brightness (amount of reflected light, cf. bright, dim); the basis for this conclusion is the fact that tone occurs without the other two components, and these latter do not occur without tone, cf. red - purple, pink, scarlet, crimson.

Tolstoy (1968: 345, 361 et seq.) Distinguishes in the composition of semantic features, or semes, forming a given meaning, semes of two types - supporting (concrete and unmarked) and accompanying (abstract and marked, serving as the basis for oppositions; cf. birch= "birch + forest + youth + small value"; the supporting seme is recruited in a row).

According to V.G. Gaku (following B. Potier in this respect), on the contrary, the core of the meaning of the lexeme is, apparently, the seme of the generic meaning ("archiseme"), and an additional element - "Differential semes of species value" (Gak 1971).

Thus, the theory and practice of "component analysis of meanings" is characterized by the recognition of the hierarchical organization of meaning based on its differential features, which has common features with the idea that any lexical meaning has a certain syntactic structure<…>

3) The philosophical and logical tradition of interpreting the meanings of words, dating back to the times of antiquity (Aristotle), richly represented in the 17-18 centuries (Locke, Leibniz, Spinoza) and reviving in our time<…>In works typical of this direction, the concept expressed by the word is analyzed as part of the whole utterance and in connection with the situation that it describes, and an attempt is made to reduce a large number of complex concepts to a small number of simple ones and effectively distinguish between any two concepts. Interpreting, for example, difficult words such as hope, fear, confidence, despair, Spinoza introduces the concept of the future and two simple binary features: "good" - "bad" and "random things" (they may or may not come) - "necessary things" (they must come). This allows him to build deep, although not entirely correct interpretations, an idea of ​​which can be given by the following examples: “If we know about a future thing that it is good and that it can happen, then as a result the soul takes the form that we call hope ... On the other hand, if we believe that a thing that might come is bad, then a form of the soul arises, which we call fear. If we believe that a thing is good and will come with necessity, then peace arises in the soul, which we call confidence ... When we believe that a thing is bad and will come with necessity, then despair arises in the soul "Benedict Spinoza (Selected Works. M., 1957, T. 1, p. 128-129).

4) The calculus of statements of mathematical logic, which gave the metalanguage of semantics the foundations of recursive syntax with the rules of formation and transformation; the essential features of this syntax are: a) the distinction between the names of relations, or predicates, and the names of objects, in relation to which the predicates play the role of syntactically dominant elements, used by linguistic semantics to define and record lexical meanings, for example, A shows B X-y= shows(A, B, X) = "A causates (X sees B)" = "causates (A sees (X, B)); b) the idea of ​​higher and lower order predicates, by virtue of which a lower order predicate can take the place of a subject variable in a higher-order predicate; compare in our example the second place of a two-place predicate causate, occupied by the double predicate see, whose order is one lower than the order of causate; c) transformations with connectives and quantifiers, with the help of which some well-constructed formulas are translated into other formulas equivalent to them and also well-constructed (Reichenbach 1947; see also Russell 1940, Tarski 1948, 1956, Quine 1953, 1960, Church 1960). In the same direction, the generative grammar of N. Chomsky (Chomsky 1957), with its idea of ​​semantically invariant transformations, developed in modern semantics into a very meaningful theory of synonymous periphery, and modal logic, from where definitions of elementary modalities and operations on them (Modal logic 1967; from the works of linguists see Adamec 1968, Vezhbitska 1969): necessary P= "it is impossible not P", possibly P= "it is not true that P is not necessary", etc. In the so-called deontic modal logic (logical theory of norms and normative statements), the concept of necessity corresponds to the concept of obligation, the concept of possibility - the concept of permissibility and the concept of impossibility is the concept of forbiddenness, so that required P ="it is impossible not to P", allowed P= "not necessarily P", prohibited P= "not necessarily P". All these definitions and equalities are assimilated by modern linguistic semantics and are used by it in the analysis of the corresponding words.

The internal logic of the development of linguistic semantics and the impulses that it received from related sciences acted in the same direction, and by the end of the 60s the ideological discord of the previous era had become to a large extent the property of history. Perhaps one of the most remarkable indicators of the maturity of modern semantics, despite the fact that subjectively it causes many grief, is the fact that the same results are obtained by linguists working completely independently of each other. The trend towards integration in modern semantics is indisputable and clearly manifests itself in the development of various directions, although many of them still retain their fundamental features.

Modern semantics as part of the general theory of language

Many modern linguistic schools are characterized by the understanding of semantics as a special component of a complete description of a language, which in turn is thought of as a formal device that simulates the linguistic behavior of people. To get an idea of ​​the language model as a whole and its semantic component in particular, it is necessary to understand what skills make up the phenomenon called "language behavior", "language proficiency", etc.

People who know a particular natural language can perform the following operations with its help:

1) Build a text in this language that expresses the desired meaning (ability to speak), as well as extract meaning from the perceived text (ability to understand). The inability to choose words and constructions that express the required meaning leads to a semantic error, for example, the following: The criminals hijacked several state and private cars. This sentence is either wrong (I should have said private, but not own), or right, but ridiculous (criminals robbed themselves by stealing their own cars). The error is explained by the fact that the author of the above statement confused two words that are close, but do not coincide in meaning: privateX ="X belonging to an individual" and ownX ="owned by the person who uses X".

2) It is idiomatic to combine words with each other, that is, in accordance with the prevailing in a given language and sometimes difficult to motivate norms of syntactic, semantic and lexical compatibility. You can't say Russian squander or wag the money(necessary: squander or wind money), come to the blues(necessary: fall into a blues), although there is no semantic error here: the form instrumental case money can have the object meaning required by the meaning (cf. litter or throw money), a verb come - the meaning required by the meaning "to begin to be in the state indicated by the dependent noun" (cf. get furious).

3) Establish various semantic relations between statements, in particular: a) relations of synonymy, cf. There is no business in the world more difficult than compiling a dictionary = Compiling a dictionary is the most difficult oebusiness in the world; b) relations of logical consequence, cf. The boy was cured=> The boy recovered=> The boy is healthy. When speaking, this ability manifests itself in the ability to paraphrase the constructed text in many different ways, leaving its content unchanged or changing the latter in a strictly defined way, and in understanding it, in the ability to see the complete or partial semantic identity of externally different texts.

4) Establish various semantic properties of sentences, in particular: a) distinguish semantically correct sentences from semantically incorrect ones, b) distinguish semantically connected texts from semantically incoherent ones.

We emphasize that here we mean skills based on the possession of purely linguistic (vocabulary and grammatical), and not encyclopedic information. Text He swam 100 meters crawl in 45 seconds. for any native speaker of the Russian language it means: "Swimming with the crawl style, he covered a distance of one hundred meters and spent 45 seconds on it." For those who know not only Russian, but also the table of world achievements in swimming (an element of encyclopedic, not linguistic information), the same sentence may turn out to be much more meaningful. It can be perceived as a sensational message about a phenomenal world record, as a reminder of the limitless physical capabilities of a person, etc.

It is enough to know only the grammar of the language and the vocabulary meanings of words in order to construct paraphrases He crawled a hundred-meter distance (one hundred meters) in 45 seconds, It took him 45 seconds to crawl for a hundred meters, he crawled a hundred meters in 45 seconds, He spent 45 seconds on then, to crawl a distance of 100 meters, he crawled a hundred meters in 3/4 minutes and many others. The sports connoisseur will also have completely different possibilities of peripheralization: He crawled the shortest Olympic distance in 45 seconds, at a 100-meter distance with a crawl, he improved the previous world record by 10 seconds etc.

If a person possesses only linguistic information, he will not be able to say whether the texts are semantically coherent: He swam 100 meters crawl in 45 seconds, thus setting a phenomenal world record. and He swam 100 meters crawl in 45 seconds, barely completing this Thus, the rate of the third category. If a person also possesses the corresponding encyclopedic information, the first sentence will be semantically coherent for him, although it is implausible, and the second one is incoherent or false.

So, we are talking only about modeling language knowledge, not knowledge of reality. Within the specified framework, native speakers perform all the listed operations intuitively and do not realize on what basis they choose this or that solution.Let's consider, for example, the sentence A good pastry chef does not fry brushwood on the gas stove. Its meaning is immediately obvious to every person who speaks Russian, although one can doubt that an ordinary native speaker will be able to theoretically satisfactorily explain the essence of the law, which he intuitively uses when understanding this sentence. However, the model cannot appeal to intuition, which it does not have, and if we want it to perform human-readable operations with texts, we must explicitly put the necessary information into it. This information consists primarily of knowledge of phonetic, morphological and syntactic units and rules and knowledge of the dictionary, but, of course, it is not limited to this. There are still some semantic rules for the interpretation of texts; below we explicate one of them, assuming that the syntactic structure of the sentence and the meanings of the words included in it are already known<…> .

Leaving aside the ambiguity of words good, no, na, Let's write down in the column the meanings of all other words.

Confectioner fry brushwood gas stove

1. 1. 1. 1. 1.

"one who makes" to make food "dry fallen off" consisting of a "flat piece

sweets "by heating on / in the" gas "branch (cloud) of solid material

riala oil

2. 2. 2. 2. 2.

"sweets dealer" "heat" "biscuits making"

hot boiling gas "device for

in oil "manufacturing

"owner" working for

confectionery "energy is burned

my gas "

If the model does not know the law by which the meaning of the sentence is built from the meanings of words, nothing prevents it from understanding this statement, for example, in the following sense: "A good candy dealer does not heat dry fallen branches on a flat piece of metal that produces gas." This insight is the result of this combination of meanings: pastry chef 2, fry 2, brushwood 1, gas 2, stove 1; the total number of fundamentally conceivable combinations of meanings and, therefore, fundamentally possible readings of a sentence within the given information reaches 3 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 2 = 72. Of these, only one is optimal in terms of its information content and naturalness. In order to formulate the law, on the basis of which a native speaker unmistakably chooses it, let's take a closer look at the meanings of words that give an optimal understanding of the sentence. These are the values pastry chef 1, fry 1, brushwood 2, gas 3 and plate 2; they are characterized by the presence of a number of common semantic elements, namely the element "to make" ("the one who makes", "to make food", "made", "to make food"), the element "heating" ("by heating on / in oil "," made by boiling "," energy of the combustion gas "," heating device "), the element" food "(" sweets "," to make food "," by boiling in oil "). The choice of the named values ​​ensures the maximum repetition of semantic elements within the sentence; it is easy to see that for any other interpretation of the sentence, the repetition of semantic elements will be less high.

This is the basic semantic law that regulates the correct understanding of texts by the listener: such an interpretation of a given sentence is chosen in which the repetition of semantic elements reaches a maximum. This law is a strict formulation of an old principle, by virtue of which the desired meaning of the polysemous word is "clear from the context"; it is sometimes called the rule of semantic agreement (Hack 1972).

Now it is possible to formally explicate, at least in the first and most crude approximation, the concept of the semantic coherence of the text: the text is semantically connected if there are repeated semantic components in the lexical meanings of syntactically related words; if this rule is not observed for any pair of syntactically related words, the text is not semantically related.

This example already shows that an attempt to model a person's understanding of semantically connected texts or his ability to distinguish semantically connected texts from incoherent ones leads to a serious question about the language in which the meanings of words are described. It is obvious, for example, that since only parts of complex meanings can be repeated in the text, and not these values ​​as a whole, each of the complex meanings must be represented as a combination of simpler meanings, and each of these simple meanings must (in formal language) always be called the same: if the same simple meaning is called differently depending on whether it is included in the complex meaning "A" or "B", the fact of its repetition in a phrase AB cannot be directly installed.

The foregoing allows us to conclude that the sought language differs significantly from the natural language, at least in that its words are semantically much simpler than the words of a natural language and do not have synonyms. In the future, we will deal with this issue in more detail; here it is enough to emphasize that we would inevitably come to exactly the same conclusions if we considered the requirements arising from the formal formulation of the problem of modeling any other ability from among those that together make up "language proficiency". In particular, without a special language for writing meanings, it is impossible to formally model the ability of a native speaker to construct texts with a given content.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the question of the language for recording the meanings of words and, more broadly, of whole utterances has become the focus of attention of many modern schools and directions of semantics, which is now given a very important role: it not only "studies the meanings of words", but is responsible for the development of a language for records of semantic information and (partly) rules for the transition from sentences of this language to sentences of a natural language. In this regard, at least two levels of expression representation are distinguished: semantic (for some authors - deep syntactic) and surface syntactic (cf. Zholkovsky and Melchuk 1965, 1967, Lamb 1966, Vezhbitska 1967b, Lyons 1967, Lakov 1968, McCauley 1968b, Fillmore 1969, Breckle 1969, Bellert 1969, Boguslavsky 1970, Shaumyan 1971, Barkhudarov 1973). In the works of recent years (see in particular Mel'chuk 1974a, 19746), the number of levels increases to five or six: semantic, deep-syntactic, surface-syntactic, deep-morphological, surface-morphological, phonological. However, this concept of levels and the corresponding terminology did not take shape immediately. At the end of the 60s, many researchers still did not distinguish between semantic and syntactic information. Not wanting to modernize the works we selected for the review, we in most cases kept the terminology used in them. However, the reader should keep in mind that the terms "deep level" and "deep structure" in many of them (especially in the works of J. Lakov and J. Lyons) are not used to denote what is now commonly called the deep-syntactic level and deep -syntactic structure, and to indicate the semantic level and semantic presentation of the statement.<…>

<…>More noticeable was the impact on the modern semantics of the ideas of N. Chomsky's transformational grammar, which in the very first versions was thought of as a device that generates all grammatically correct sentences of a given language and does not generate a single incorrect one (Chomsky 1956, 1957). By assumption, such a grammar models the side of language proficiency, which manifests itself in the ability to distinguish right from wrong in a language. Subsequently (Chomsky 1965) the concept of correctness began to be considered not at one, but at two levels: competence - knowledge of the language and performance - the use of language, that is, actual speech practice. What is approved by linguistic competence does not necessarily occur in speech practice, and vice versa.

Initially, work in the field of transformational grammar was carried out without taking into account the obvious fact that the grammatical correctness of sentences significantly depends on their lexical content. By the mid-1960s, transformationalist theorists had freed themselves from illusions on this score (see, for example, Klima 1965, Chomsky 1965), but it was not immediately possible to draw correct conclusions from the new understanding of the relationship between grammar and vocabulary.

For at least three years<…>Attempts were made to find a compromise between the original version of N. Chomsky's generative grammar and some form of participation in it of dictionary information. The compromise proposed by J. Katz, J. Fedor and P. Postal and accepted by N. Chomsky is as follows.

The generating device first builds the deep syntactic structure of the future sentence, which is then fed to the input of the interpreting semantic device. This device 1) determines the number of possible interpretations of a given sentence, 2) writes down the meaning of each generated sentence with the help of semantic components, 3) detects semantic anomalies (for example, notes the meaninglessness of a sentence Geranium got married inconsistency Singles married etc.), 4) determines which semantically non-anomalous sentences are analytically true, that is, true by virtue of the meanings assigned to words (cf. Singles unmarried), and which ones are synthetically true, that is, true by virtue of their correspondence to facts (cf. The sun- the source of life on earth), 5) establishes relations of equivalence between sentences, i.e., peripheral relations, and solves a number of other issues.

The construction of a deep syntactic structure of a sentence is provided by the usual rules of neural network grammar. As for the semantic interpretation of a sentence, it is carried out using a special vocabulary and the so-called semantic projection rules.

In the dictionary, each word in each of its meanings receives a syntactic characteristic (for example, noun, animate, countable, concrete); elementary semantic features are attributed to it (for example, bachelor ="unmarried", "male sex"); finally, it is supplied with an indication of what semantic features it requires from the words combined with it (for example, honest is supplied with a note that the dominant noun must have a sign of animateness).

Projection rules receive at the input the values ​​of units that are directly constituents of any construction (for example, the values ​​of words honest and bachelor in AN construct), and combine these values ​​into a new complex value. By checking whether a given pair of words satisfies the requirements for combining features, what meanings of these words can in principle be combined, etc., the addition rules generate information about the number of possible interpretations of a sentence, their anomalous-non-anomalousness, etc.

Without going into the details of this system<…>, we emphasize its main property: the generation of a sentence begins with the generation of its deep-syntactic structure, which is subsequently subjected to semantic interpretation.<…>This is a tribute to the first, now rejected version of transformational grammar and evidence of the half-hearted nature of its restructuring. The unnaturalness of such an order of generating operations becomes obvious when they are considered from the point of view of the problems of peripheralization. The ready-made deep syntactic structure severely limits the freedom to choose options for expressing a certain meaning: since the syntactic component of the transformation grammar generates character chains of classes like N, V, A, Adv, it turns out to be impossible to directly establish the synonymy of sentences built on the basis of different parts of speech, for example, Hans loves work(NVN) and Hans works willingly(NVAdv)<…>, She salted the soup - She pours salt into the soup, They were expecting him yesterday - He was supposed to arrive yesterday, She pretended to be deaf - She pretended to be deaf - She pretended to be deaf - Her deafness was imaginary (feigned). To formalize such peripheral relations, a semantic notation free from the restrictions of syntax is needed, which would make it possible to present superficially completely different sentences as realizations of one semantic representation. In other words, from the point of view of peripheralization problems, the reverse order of operations looks more natural - from the value at the input to the syntactic structures at the output, as it was provided for in Zholkovsky et al. 1961. It is not surprising that in the model under consideration, paraphrasing is reduced to a few semantically invariant grammatical transformations and substitution of lexical synonyms: such transformations do not affect or hardly affect the syntactic structure of the sentence, and less trivial transformations require its restructuring.

As a result of a critical revision of the model by J. Katz, J. Fodor and P. Postal, the idea of ​​a semantic interpretation of a ready-made syntactic structure gave way to the idea of ​​synthesizing a sentence with a given meaning. In this regard, questions about the "semantic deep structure of a sentence" (from the current point of view, about the semantic representation of an utterance), about recoding a deep structure into a superficial one, about dictionaries focused on solving this problem, and about the semantic analysis of a word in such a dictionary.

Exploration of the deep structure proceeded in two ways. Some linguists have been content with the principled statement that for some sentences with very different surface structures, for a number of reasons, one and the same deep structure has to be postulated; however, no language was proposed for recording the deep structure. Other linguists have focused on developing a language for recording deep structures and the forms of their fixation.

<…>The characteristic features of the first approach were fully and clearly manifested in the work of J. Lakov (Lakov 1968), devoted to the analysis of sentences with instrumental adverbial turns of type 1) Seymour sliced ​​the salami with a knife In previous transformation studies, they were assigned a syntactic structure that was fundamentally different from the syntactic structure of sentences like 2) Seymour used a knife to slice the salami ‘Seymour used a knife to slice the salami’. The first sentence was qualified as simple, with an instrumental circumstance, and the second - as complex, representing a transformation of two simple sentences: Seymour used a knife + Seymour sliced ​​the salami.

J. Lakov drew attention to the fact that these proposals are periphery of each other. If we consider that they are completely different in their structure, it will be necessary to introduce two different rules of semantic interpretation, which would assign the same meaning to them. Meanwhile, a number of facts indicate that the differences between the sentences under consideration concern only the superficial syntactic structure; their deep structure is identical, and therefore, in their transformational generation, one rule of semantic interpretation can be dispensed with. At the same time, according to J. Lakov, all the prohibitions that limit the possibilities of lexical and syntactic transformations of such sentences will be explained.

First of all, the meaning of the goal is expressed in sentences of both types. For sentences with an infinitive turnover, this thesis does not need proof; as for clauses with instrumental with, they can be two-valued, cf. I cut my finger with a knife ‘I cut my finger with a knife’ (with a purpose, intentionally) and ‘I cut my finger with a knife’ (for no purpose, to cut myself, inadvertently, accidentally). Sentences with inappropriate with differ from sentences with unambiguously targeted with in that they do not occur 1) in the form of an extended form (I was cutting my finger with a knife - unambiguously targeted), 2) with modal verbs can 'can', try 'try' and others under. (I tried to cut my finger with a knife - definitely target), 3) in the imperative (Cut your finger with a knife - definitely target).

Another common property of both types of sentences is the presence of a verb with the meaning of action. In sentences that do not contain such a verb, there can be neither the instrumental with nor the use verb. So, sentences with the stative verb know 'to know' - * I knew the answer with a sliderule - 'I knew the answer with a slide rule', * I used a sliderule to know the answer 'I used a slide rule to know the answer' - incorrect, although sentences with the active verb know as opposed to learn 'learn' are perfectly acceptable: I learned the answer with a sliderule 'I learned the answer with a slide rule', I used a sliderule to learn the answer 'I used a slide rule to find out the answer '.

The third common property of clauses with the instrumental and the verb use is that the animate is obligatory; sentences, the subject of which denotes an inanimate actor, cannot, for obvious reasons, contain either an instrumental with or a use verb; Wed incorrect sentences * The explosion killed Harry with a stone ‘The explosion killed Harry with a stone’ and * The explosion used a stone to kill Harry ‘The explosion used a stone to kill Harry’.

The meaning of the observations made by J. Lakov is, in our opinion, that he equalizes the lexical meanings of the preposition with and the verb use: both of these words are used to express the idea of ​​instrumentality (and could be considered as purely syntactic supplementary derivatives if prepositions and verbs were linked by productive word-formation models). To draw this conclusion, generally speaking, no other arguments are required, except that the sentences Seymour sliced ​​the salami with a knife and Seymour used a knife to slice the salami are situationally equivalent: since, apart from with and use, all other lexical units of these sentences are the same and it is difficult to assume the action of any rules for adding values ​​other than simple “summing”, we are forced to conclude that the lexical meaning of with and use is also the same. This immediately implies that the sentences under consideration correspond to the same sentence semantic language... All other properties observed by J. Lakov (by no means redundant, because they are necessary to explain the facts of compatibility - the incongruity of various elements in the composition of surface sentences) are not a proof, but a manifestation of semantic identity.<…>

Another approach to the study of the deep structure is presented in the works of Charles Filmore<…>... This author proposes a language for writing deep structure and some rules for translating deep structures into superficial ones, which is associated with very interesting experiments in the interpretation of meanings. Therefore, his system deserves a more detailed analysis.

C. Filmore accepts the hypothesis of the component structure of meaning and the idea of ​​sequential decomposition of the lexical meaning of each word into increasingly simple components - up to the final<…>... They are not only abstract concepts such as 'identity', 'time', 'space', 'body', 'movement', 'life', 'fear', but also “undefined terms that directly indicate aspects or objects of cultural and the physical universe in which people live ”(Fillmore 1969: 111). Another essential element of the language, with the help of which lexical meanings are described, is the predicate-argument syntax. Full-valued words of the language (verbs, many adjectives and nouns, some - for example, causal - conjunctions, etc.) are described in the dictionary using predicate-argument structures that remove the differences between parts of speech (there are no parts of speech in the deep structure).

Sharing the widespread views on the argument structure of predicates (buy 'to buy' is a four-argument verb, rob 'to rob' is a three-argument verb, touch 'to touch' is a two-argument verb, ascend 'to rise' is a one-argument verb), C. which considers it necessary to indicate not only the number of arguments of a given predicate, but also their semantic content, or role. The role structure of a predicate is established on the basis of an inventory of meanings usually considered in case theory, and therefore is sometimes called its case structure. C. Filmore establishes the following deep cases, or roles, of arguments: 1) An agent is an animate initiator of events described by the corresponding verb, for example, He says<…>; 2) Counterparty - the force against which the action is directed, for example, resist anyone ; 3) Object - a thing that moves or changes, the position or existence of which is the subject of attention, for example, break up window, condemn someone for being late, A rock fell; 4) Place (judging by the examples) - the physical body, which is directly influenced by the agent, for example, hurt someone nose ; the place differs from the object in that it allows periphery of the type hitting someone's nose - hitting someone on the nose; in the case of an object, such a periphery is unacceptable, cf. break someone's nose - * smash someone on the nose; 5) The addressee (goal), judging by the examples, is a person in whose favor or to whose harm the action is performed, for example, condemn anyone, teach anyone sell something anyone, buy something from anyone ; 6) A patient is a thing that experiences the effects of an action, for example, He condemns Peter, rob anyone, steal something from anyone ; 7) The result is a thing that arises as a result of an action (Fillmore has no clear examples of this role); 8) Instrument - a stimulus or immediate physical cause of an event, for example, hit someone whip, go up on your feet ; 9) Source - a place from (from) which something is directed, for example, He teaches me math He sells a book.

There is no one-to-one correspondence between roles - elements of deep structure and arguments - elements of surface structure. Therefore, a) one argument can fulfill several roles (in He teaches me math the subject denotes both the Agent and the Source); b) the argument may be required, but the role it performs is optional (cf. John fell where there is a required object - John's body - and an optional Agent - John himself, if he fell on purpose; if John fell unintentionally, then the value of the Agent in the proposal under consideration is not expressed); c) the role can be required and the argument optional; the verb blame ‘to condemn’ has four semantically necessary roles - syncretically (with one argument) expressed Source and Patient (condemning), Object (wrongdoing) and Addressee (subject of wrongdoing). Mandatory at the superficial level, i.e. realized in any sentence with the verb blame, C. Filmore considers only the last role; all other roles may not be expressed at the superficial level, cf. He was blamed ‘He was condemned’; d) the role can be expressed implicitly, without any superficial exponents: in To climb up the stairs) and kiss contains an implicit indication of the Tool (legs and lips, respectively).<…>

It remains for us to consider one more question before proceeding to the presentation of the methods of fixing the deep structure and the rules for translating it into the superficial one. We are talking about the second innovation of Charles Fillmore, which consists in the fact that he proposed a more subtle than the traditional concept of lexical meaning. Traditional concept of meaning<…>proceeds from the idea that the content side of linguistic units is multilayered. In addition to meaning in the proper sense of the word (sens intellectuel, Begriffsinhalt, denotation), it also includes secondary meaning, or a shade of meaning (nuances, Nebensinn, contextual meaning in the sense of J. Firth), as well as stylistic and emotionally expressive elements of meaning (register, valeur é motive or affective, Gef ü hlswert, Stimmungsgehalt, feeling, tone)<…>; the assessment of these aspects of meaning with the help of a special system of stylistic labels has long been the alphabet of lexicographic work. C. Fillmore goes further than his predecessors in that he splits into two essences the previously single concept of proper meaning. These entities are meaning and presupposition. Let us explain the last concept.

Presuppositions mean conditions that must be satisfied in order for a proposal to function as a question, order, statement, etc. Presuppositions of a request Please open the door are formed from two assumptions of the speaker about the knowledge that the addressee of speech has: 1) the addressee knows which door the speaker has in mind, 2) the addressee knows that this door is closed. Speaking Harris accused Mary of writing an editorial, the subject of the speech suggests that Harris was negative about Mary's activities, and argues that Harris claimed that Mary was the person who wrote the editorial. Speaking Harris criticized Mary for writing an editorial, the subject of the speech suggests that Harris considered Mary to be the front-runner, and claims that Harris had a negative opinion on the writing of the article. The use of the verb chase "to pursue" implies that the victim of the persecution is moving with great speed, and the use of the verb escape "to escape" implies that at some time before the escape, the subject was forcibly detained in some place. Tall "tall, tall" and short "low, squat", in contrast to high "high" and low "low", suggest that the object to which these properties are attributed is located in the vertical plane and has contact with the ground. Blame 'to condemn' assumes that the accuser is the person, and accuse is the accuser and the accused.

The difference between presupposition and meaning in the proper sense of the word is manifested, for example, in the fact that they react differently to negation: only meaning, but not presupposition, falls into the area of ​​negation. By virtue of this principle, it turns out, for example, that in the interpretation of the word bachelor -"an adult man who has never been married" - only those semantic components that stand to the right of the comma form the actual meaning: it is they that are denied in the sentence Peter is not a bachelor. The two remaining components - "adult male" - form presuppositions bachelor, because the offer Peter is not a bachelor under no circumstances can it be understood as denying the fact that Peter was a grown man. In other words, under negation only the meaning of the utterance changes, but not its presuppositions.<…>

This brief overview of examples of presuppositions shows that they include three fundamentally different classes of semantic elements: 1) elements of encyclopedic knowledge, that is, knowledge of the "current situation", which under no circumstances can be included neither in the interpretation of the lexical meanings of words, nor in the description of their compatibility (cf. the very first example - presuppositions of a request); 2) elements that can be included directly in the interpretation, but not in the description of the compatibility (compare the analysis of the verbs accuse "to accuse", criticize "to criticize", chase "to pursue", escape "to escape", adjectives tall "high" and short "short"); these also include elements that form a modal frame of interpretation (cf. the doctrine of the modal frame of an utterance, developed by the Polish linguists A. Boguslavsky and A. Wierzbicka<…>); 3) finally, elements that can be included in the description of the collocation of a word rather than in the interpretation of its meaning (cf. Agent's animate presuppositions for the verbs accuse and blame "to blame", "to condemn").<…>

Of great interest is the semantic language (lingua mentalis) for recording the meaning of statements, developed by A. Vezhbitskaya<…>based on the ideas of her teacher A. Boguslavsky<…>... If the works considered above are characterized by the desire to construct a semantic language as an extension of the logical language of predicate calculus, then A. Vezhbitska constructs his lingua mentalis as a contraction of a natural language. This is the simplest vocabulary and syntactic part of a natural language, namely, its minimal vocabulary and the minimal set of syntactic constructions, recognized as sufficient to describe the meanings of all other lexical and grammatical means of a given language.

The lingua mentalis vocabulary consists of several dozen undefined semantic elements like ‘want’, ‘not want’ (equally complex modalities independent of each other), ‘count’, ‘do’ and a few others. Obviously, it is possible to reduce the real variety of meanings to such a limited set of meanings only on condition of a very deep analysis of semantic units, usually taken as elementary. In this regard, the semantic description of such seemingly indecomposable concepts as ‘possibility’, ‘possession’, ‘truth’, ‘assertion’, ‘denial’, and a number of others, proposed by A. Vezhbitskaya, deserves attention; according to A. Vezhbitskaya, I can means ‘I’ll do it if I want’ I own a thing means ‘I have the right (= society wants me to be able) to do whatever I want with the thing’<.…>; truth= ‘A judgment that we must take’, should P= ‘Can’t help but P’<…>; S there is P(statement) = ‘I want you to think that S is P’; S do not eat P(negation) = ‘I don’t want you to think that S is P’ (thus, the concept of negation is associated with the concept of will); know= ‘To be able to tell the truth’; understand P= ‘Know what P means’ (cf. Dumb= ‘Difficult to causate A to understand’); And he is interested in X= ‘A wants to know about X’ etc.

However, the main difference between lingua mentalis and other semantic languages ​​of this type lies not in the area of ​​the dictionary, but in the area of ​​syntax, namely, in the syntactic structure of its sentences. Usually, the two main elements of the semantic representation of a simple sentence are considered to be the n-place predicate object variables denoting its arguments (cf. Philmore's concept of role structure). A. Vezhbitska proceeds from the fact that in the “deep structure” all predicates are one-place names of properties and the only argument of each predicate is the subject S, to which the given property P is attributed: S is P. However, this formula does not exhaust the structure of the statement; as it is clear at least from the above examples, A. Wierzbicka supplements it with a third element - a modal frame M (in some works one more element appears - the designation of the time when a given property characterizes a given object). As a result, the general structure of a sentence in lingua mentalis takes on the following form: M, which is S is P. In the transition from lingua mentalis to natural language, this structure is transformed according to certain rules, including, in particular, the rules for removing modalities (Vezhbitska 1967b: 36).

The very idea that every sentence of a natural language expresses modality (and time) and that, therefore, a sentence of a semantic language that interprets it must have special means for fixing the corresponding meanings, of course, is not new. It is not even new that in the structure of the interpreting sentence a special place is provided for symbols that explicitly reflect the implicit modalities of the interpreted sentence of a natural language - already A. Seshe and S. Bally believed that sentences of the type It's raining in reality they mean something like 'I think it is raining' (cf., for example, S. Balli's doctrine of mode and dictum; Balli 1955: 43 et seq.). What is new is a) a set of modalities ('I want', 'I think', 'I understand', 'I think', etc.), b) understanding the modal frame as a complex structure with separate places for the modalities of the message subject and the addressee messages (cf. 'I believe that you understand that ...'), c) the idea that the modal frame is implicitly present in any sentence of a natural language and, therefore, must be explicitly presented in the sentence of the semantic language interpreting it, d) the use of this apparatus to describe lexical meanings. The modality apparatus developed by A. Vezhbitskaya provides a semantic analysis of large layers of vocabulary - first of all, particles, introductory words, conjunctions and adverbs like completely, all, even, still, fortunately, finally, but, in essence, rather, only, already, whole, although etc. - on a much deeper basis than before (compare one of the first interesting experiments in this direction - Mushanov 1964). It will hopefully have a fruitful influence on lexicographic practice, which invariably reveals its weakness when faced with such words. Note, in particular, that the use of modalities such as 'opinion', 'expectation', 'guess', etc. allows you to describe very subtle semantic differences, usually not noticed by explanatory dictionaries; Wed He brought only 10 books= ‘Know that he brought 10 books; I suppose you understand that this is not enough '; He only brought 10 books= ‘Know that he brought 10 books; do not think that it is more '; Even John came= ‘Others have come; John came; I expected John to not come. '

So in general formula sentences on lingua mentalis - M, that S is P - we analyzed the structure of the first element. Let us now turn to the structure of the second element, that is, the subject. Here the most important innovation of A. Vezhbitskaya is that there is a fundamental difference between the names of persons and non-persons: it is believed that nouns of the type person, man, woman, Peter, Maria do not have one meaning, as was commonly thought, but several different ones. when we talk John lay on the floor, or John weighs a lot, we mean John's body; if John is assigned not physical, but "mental" predicates ( John doesn't believe this story, John is kind), we do not mean John's body, but himself, his ego, his personality; finally, in cases like John was moving both of the above values ​​are realized, according to A. Vezhbitskaya: John was moving so, roughly speaking, 'John's body was moving because John (= John's personality) wanted it to move.'

A. Vezhbitska sees one of the manifestations of the difference established by her in the fact that sentences of the type Ivan kissed Elena's hand are converted to sentences like Ivan kissed Elena on the hand, and sentences like Ivan kissed the lid of the box<руку трупа> - No * Ivan kissed the box on the lid<труп в руку> ). This is explained as follows. B sentences like Ivan kissed Elena the position of the object has not been replaced; the real object of action is not Elena (the name of a rational and willful creature), but her hand (a physical object), which makes expansion possible Ivan kissed Elena on the hand. Not so in sentences like Ivan kissed the box; here the position of the object is already replaced by the word box denoting a physical object, and therefore the extension of the sentence at the expense of the object into the lid impossible<…>.

Apparently, these examples can just as little substantiate the concept put forward by A. Vezhbitskaya, as the examples given below can refute it: the distance between the semantic presentation of a sentence and the prohibitions operating in its surface structure is too great. However, drawing attention to conflicting examples is helpful if only to provide a more objective picture of the facts.

A. Vezhbitska ascribes a special status to nouns with the meaning ‘person’. Meanwhile, the syntactic behavior described by A. Vezhbitskaya is typical for a much wider class of nouns, hallmark which is semantically not too meaningful, highly grammatical component ‘animation’. Noun Deceased(Unlike dead body) in Russian and some other languages ​​is interpreted as animate, and therefore a construction like kiss a dead man on the forehead with him is quite possible, although Deceased like dead body, can hardly be described as an intelligent, willed and capable of expedient reactions being. Apparently, animals, insects, etc. also do not have these attributes, but syntactically appropriate names behave exactly the same as nouns with the meaning ‘man’, cf. hurt the bear in the ear, grab the fish by the tail, pat the beetle on the back. Note, finally, that constructions of the type under consideration, although not typical for nouns denoting inanimate objects ( boat, chair etc.), but not completely alien to them; Wed hook the boat to the stern with a hook, take the chair by the back, and I'll take it by the legs.

Let us emphasize that we do not doubt the usefulness of distinguishing three types of noun meanings, but only that it can be substantiated in this way.

Finally, consider the last element of a sentence in a semantic language - its predicate. We will briefly list those theses and conclusions of A. Vezhbitskaya that draw attention to completely new aspects of the old predicate problem, even if they do not seem to be absolutely fair. 1) A predicate is a property of an object, but not an event<…>; 2) typical predicates are adjectives, verbs with a state meaning ( sleep), feelings-states ( afraid), position in space ( be) and a few others<…>; 3) all other verbs, that is, any transitive verbs (including verbs of perception and actually causative verbs), verbs of movement and physical actions are not predicates. They include the meaning of the cause (causation); but causes bind events, not objects, and, therefore, are not predicates, but unions. Here are some examples of analysis: John saw a fox= ‘John ​​had a fox image because John’s eyes came into (indirect) contact with a fox’, John broke the window with a hammer= 'The window shattered because the hammer came in contact with the window, because the hammer was moving, because John's body was moving, because John wanted his body to move, because John wanted the window to break'; 4) this analysis provides a basis for the conclusion that in the semantic structure there are no elements with object, local, instrumental and other similar meanings, but there are only subjects and predicates assigned to them. “… From a semantic point of view, the concept of an object is meaningless (or at least unnecessary): the“ object of action ”is simply the subject of a situation causated by some other situation” (Vezhbitska 1967a: 34). Similarly, an element with an instrumental meaning “always hides in itself the subject of an independent sentence with a pronounced or unexpressed predicate ( John broke the window with a hammer VS. John smashed the window with a hammer blow) and an exponent of the causal relationship (because) ”(Vezhbitska 1967a: 15-16); elements with the meaning of place in the deep structure also perform the functions of a subject, etc.

The system outlined above, in essence, is completely extracted from the first postulate of A. Vezhbitskaya: predicates are attributed only to objects, but not to other predicates. This postulate can, apparently, be disputed, but regardless of our attitude to it, it must be admitted that it allows A. Vezhbitskaya to realize the goal of many semantics theorists - to reduce multiplace predicates to unary ones - on such a broad and deep basis, equal to which it was not possible to build to nobody else.

We emphasize that the conclusions of A. Vezhbitskaya, if they are recognized as fair, do not in any way prevent the cause, the mode of action, and similar meanings from being interpreted as predicates at levels less deep than the level of the lingua mentalis, nor from the fact that the object, place and other elements were treated at the same levels as actants.

In conclusion of this review, we emphasize once again that, despite some discrepancies between representatives of various directions and schools of modern semantics, there is a certain minimum of ideas common to all of them. This minimum includes the idea that semantics is a component of a complete linguistic description, thinkable in the form of a model that can 1) construct correct natural language sentences from given values ​​or extract values ​​from given sentences, 2) paraphrase these sentences, 3) evaluate them in terms of semantic connectivity and perform a number of other tasks. The main means for solving all these problems is recognized as a special semantic language for recording the content of an utterance, as well as dictionaries and rules with the help of which a correspondence is established between sentences of natural and semantic languages ​​translating each other.<… >

Chapter 2. Semantic language as a means of interpreting lexical meanings.

Linguistic sign and the concept of lexical meaning.

Saussure's concept of a linguistic sign as a two-sided unit characterized by the signifier and the signified<…>, opposed by C. Morris's sign theory<…>, which originally developed in semiotics, and recently, in a significantly revised and supplemented form, was transferred to linguistics (Melchuk 1968). Within the framework of this theory, a linguistic sign is characterized not only by a name (signifier) ​​and semantics (signified), but also by two more parameters - syntactics and pragmatics.<…> .

We will consider the concept of a name rather obvious and therefore leave it without explanation. In most cases, semantics means information about a class of things called a sign with common properties or a class of non-linguistic situations that are invariant with respect to some properties of the participants and the relations connecting them. The syntactics of a sign means information about the rules for connecting this sign with other signs in the text. The pragmatics of a sign is understood as information that fixes the attitude of the speaker or addressee of the message to the situation in question. Let us consider the semantics, syntactics and pragmatics of a sign in more detail, but only to the extent that is necessary for the exploitation of the concept of lexical meaning.

The semantics of a linguistic sign reflects naive the concept of a thing, property, action, process, event, etc. The simplest example of the discrepancy between naive and scientific ideas was given by L.V. Shcherba, who believed that special terms have different meanings in general literary and special languages. "A straight line (line) is defined in geometry as" the shortest distance between two points. " But in literary language this is obviously not the case. I think that in everyday life we ​​call a straight line a line that deviates neither to the right nor to the left (and also neither up nor down) ”(Shcherba 1940: 68). Separating "philistine concepts" from scientific ones, LV Shcherba says in the same place that it is not necessary "to impose on the common language concepts that are not at all peculiar to it and which - the main and decisive one - are not any factors in the process of verbal communication". Subsequently, R. Halling and W. Wartburg, developing a system and classification of concepts for the ideological dictionary, set themselves the goal of reflecting in it "the idea of ​​the world that is characteristic of the average intelligent native speaker and is based on pre-scientific general concepts provided by the language." (Hallig and Wartburg 1952; XIV). They called this view of the world "naive realism." The same ideas formed the basis of the lexicographic experiments of a number of Moscow linguists we examined in the first chapter.<…>

A naive picture of the world that has been developing for centuries, which includes naive geometry, naive physics, naive psychology, etc. reflects the material and spiritual experience of the people - the bearer of a given language and therefore can be specific to it in two respects.

First, a naive picture of a certain part of the world can be strikingly different from a purely logical, scientific picture of the same part of the world, which is common for people who speak a wide variety of languages. Naive psychology, for example, as evidenced by the meanings of hundreds of words and expressions of the Russian language, singles out the heart or soul as an organ where various emotions are localized. One can doubt that this is in line with scientific psychological concepts.

To correctly interpret the meaning of the word numb related to freeze approximately the same as frenzy refers to excitation, ecstasy- To delight, panic- To fear, we must mentally draw a more complex picture of the human psyche, including the idea of ​​two types of fundamentally different devices: a) devices with which we feel (soul, or heart), logically master the world (mind) and physically behave (body); b) devices that monitor our behavior and control it (will). Verb freeze it means, according to the IAS, "to become completely motionless"; verb numb denotes a process related to fading, with the clarification, however, that physical behavior is out of the control of the tracking device; Wed Suddenly a telegram: one bomb tore apart the crew, another- king. Naturally everyone freezes, deathly silence(Yu. Davydov).

To describe meanings that are semantically more complex lexical units, denoting the internal states of a person ( Hair stands on end with fear, Goosebumps crawl up the back with horror, A lump rises to the throat with excitement and so on), it is required, as L.N. Iordanskaya (1972) showed, an addition to the model of the psyche in the form of a list of human physical systems considered as manifestants of certain classes of feelings, and a list of types of their reactions ( My eyes went up to my forehead in surprise -"extraordinary performance", Breathing is interrupted -"stop functioning", etc.).

The task of the lexicographer, if he does not want to leave the soil of his science and become an encyclopedist, is to reveal this naive picture of the world in the lexical meanings of words and reflect it in the system of interpretations. The first attempts in this direction showed how difficult this task is. It would seem that the use of Russian words height, high, low is quite governed by the following dictionary definitions: height ="the length of the object from bottom to top", high ="large in height" low ="small in height". However, an analysis of the naive geometry associated with them shows that the language has a more complex system of rules for the use of these words, reflecting different features of their meaning, which are excellently mastered and intuitively used in speech practice by native speakers of the Russian language. Below we will outline some observations concerning only the word height(cf. Birwish 1967).

In the language of Euclidean geometry, this word means "a perpendicular dropped from the top of a geometric figure to the base or its continuation." This concept differs from the naive concept of height in at least the following features: 1) There are as many Euclidean heights for a geometric object as there are vertices; there is only one naive height for a physical object. 2) Euclidean height continues to be height, even if it is located in the horizontal plane; naive height is vertical or tends to be vertical (cf. Euclidean and the usual height of a modern architectural structure, which looks like a rhombus and rests on the ground with one of its peaks). 3) In Euclidean geometry, any polygons and polyhedra have a height; in naive geometry, understanding one of the dimensions of an object as heights depends on its internal structure, its shape, the place of attachment to another object, the proximity of other bodies, etc. The measurement that a hollow object (for example, a box, casket) is interpreted as height, the object has exactly the same external shape, but with a solid internal structure would rather be understood as thickness(cf. book, metal casting). A window of a certain shape can be named narrow and high, and a painting with exactly the same outer frame (compare, for example, the traditional form of Japanese painting) is thought of as narrow and long. Items with a compact form (boxes, backpacks, tables) height can be attributed regardless of whether they rest their bottom on another object or not, but to objects with an elongated shape (pipes, poles, portable ladders) height usually attributed when they have a point (line, edge) of attachment or support below: a wooden staircase can be high, and the rope ladder is always long, even if it touches the ground. A stand-alone factory chimney is faster high, how long, and the metal rod of the lightning rod running along its wall is rather a long, how high, because it does not stand autonomously, but adjoins another, larger body. 4) For Euclidean height, it does not matter how much it is inferior to other linear dimensions of the body: even if it is an order of magnitude smaller than the base of the figure, it remains height. The naive height, at least for some objects, cannot be an order of magnitude inferior to other linear dimensions of the object: if the vertical size of a solid round object is an order of magnitude smaller than its diameter and if the object itself is not too large, we should talk about it thickness, but not height(Wed, e.g. a coin).

Secondly, naive pictures of the world, extracted by analysis from the meanings of words different languages, may differ in detail from each other, while the scientific picture of the world does not depend on the language in which it is described. From the “Russian” point of view, the sofa has length and width, and from the “English” point of view, according to Charles Fillmore, it has length and depth. In German, you can measure the width of a house in the windows (zehn Fenster breit "ten windows wide" - an example of M. Birwisch), but in Russian this method of measurement is at least unusual, although understandable. For a long time it was assumed that, despite the differences in the division of the color spectrum in different languages, the system of differential signs on the basis of which colors are distinguished is the same in different languages ​​and consists of hue, saturation and brightness (see Heller and Makris 1967) ... This is indeed the case in European languages. There are, however, languages ​​that not only divide the spectrum differently from the European ones, but which use completely different characteristics. In the Hanunoo language (Philippines) there are four color designations: they differ in terms of "light" - "dark" (white and all light chromatic colors - black, purple, blue, etc.) and "wet" - "dry" (light - green, yellow, coffee - chestnut, orange, red). It turns out, therefore, that the signs of tone, saturation and brightness are not universal: “... oppositions, in terms of which the substance of color is defined in different languages, may depend mainly on the association of lexical units with culturally significant aspects of objects of the surrounding reality. In the example with the words from Hanunoo, one of the dimensions of the system seems to be prompted by the typical appearance of fresh, young ("wet", "juicy") plants ”(Lyons 1968: 431). Facts of this kind do not so much disprove the hypothesis of the universality of elementary meanings<…>how many testify to the benefits of the principle,<…>by virtue of which abstract and concrete vocabulary should be described in different ways. In particular, the best description of both European color designations and hanunoo color designations would be pictures, and not interpretations using differential signs: after all, pink is hardly represented as a color red in tone to a Russian speaker either, high degree brightness and low saturation.

The propositions about a naive and scientific picture of the world (and, naturally, about naive and scientific physics, psychology, geometry, astronomy) have a fundamental meaning. The fact is that the program for describing the meanings of words with the help of a finite and not too large set of simple concepts, proclaimed by Leibniz, has recently been criticized as completely utopian<…>, since it is tantamount to describing the entire encyclopedic body of human knowledge. As applied to Leibniz, this criticism may be valid, but the distinction between a naive and a scientific picture of the world with a further lexicographical description of only the first of them makes this criticism pointless.

Until now, speaking about the semantics of the sign, we have not dismembered it in any way. Meanwhile, in the logical literature, starting with the classical work of G. Frege on meaning and meaning, the semantics of a sign is usually considered at two levels - denotative (referential) and significative.<…>... The denotate of a sign is the class of facts designated by it, and the signification is the common features of all facts of this class. Perhaps, in this way, the denotative identity of signs with their significative difference. A classic example this discrepancy are phrases center of gravity of the triangle and median intersection point: these names really define one and the same object of reality, but allow one to think of it in different ways.<…>

The question of the syntactics of a word in the aspect of interest to us is reduced to one of the central questions in modern semantics about the difference between the lexical meaning of a word and its compatibility.<…>

<…>We face a more difficult problem when some information X, which we have to attribute to the semantics of a sign or to its syntactics, turns out to be semantic. In other words, it is more difficult to distinguish between the lexical meaning of a word and its semantic compatibility. There are three different solutions to this question.

1. Some semantic information can only be interpreted as a feature of the semantics of a word. Consider in this connection the verbs prick and chop. In dictionaries, they are interpreted as follows: prick ="crush, dissect, divide into pieces", hack ="striking with something sharp, divide into parts, cut off, grind." The adverbial turnover in the second interpretation - "hitting with something sharp" - describes a very important feature chop, which does not have prick: chop always with a tool, and prick it is possible without resorting to any special tool. Indeed, by throwing a piece of ice on the floor, you can split, but not at all chop; With on the other hand, if we are wielding an ax, then a piece of ice can be chop and split, although, perhaps, the situation itself is somewhat unusual. These, however, are the differences between prick and chop are not exhausted. Prick only solid and non-viscous objects are allowed (cf. chop wood, sugar, nuts, ice), a in use chop there are no restrictions on this (cf. chop wood, knotted trunk, meat, ropes, rubber bands, cabbage). Insofar as prick contains an indication of the hardness and invisibility of the object, splitting implies instant disconnection, disintegration of the resulting parts, which is not typical for felling (this, in particular, leads to the fact that when splitting an object with a fibrous structure, the blow is usually directed along the fiber, and when this is optional). Thus, at chop and prick there are certain semantic features, the consideration of which is necessary for the correct use of these words, and we must decide in what form it is most correct to describe them. Let us first assume that the indications "tool", "hardness and non-viscosity of the object" are not part of the values chop and prick respectively, and their combined characteristics: chopis combined with the name of the instrument, and prickis combined with the name of a solid and non-viscous object. The fallacy of this assumption is obvious if only from the fact that chop can be such a thing, the name of which in the dictionary cannot be attributed to the semantic attribute "instrument", cf. chop a frozen block of snow with a board or with the butt of a gun. The point is not that they are chopping with a thing, which by its very nature is a tool, but that a certain thing in a given situation is given the function of an instrument. Thus, "tool" is not a semantic feature of the word with which the verb is combined chop, but the property of a real participant in a specific situation and, therefore, not a feature of the semantic compatibility of the verb, but a necessary element of its meaning. Nowhere, except in the interpretation of the word, this element cannot be reflected. The question is solved in a similar way with the verb prick.

2. A certain semantic feature of a word can only be described as a feature of its compatibility. In one of its meanings, the noun a handful of can be interpreted as a first approximation as "a very small number". However, it does not describe any objects and not even any living creatures, but mainly people (see ALS): a handful of defenders, people, brave men, but not * a handful of cats, * a handful of wardrobes. Let us assume that the specified property is not a feature of the word collocation, but a feature of its meaning: a handful of= "very few people". Since the word a handful of in the meaning under consideration, it strongly controls the noun, and this noun cannot be anything but the name of a person, the interpretation of the corresponding phrases will always contain a semantic repetition: a handful of brave men= "a very small number of people + brave people", which semantically equals the expression "a very small number of brave people". In other words, one occurrence of the semantic component "people" always turns out to be superfluous and is removed from the interpretation of any word combination. But this means that the meaning we postulated is never fully realized, and from this it inevitably follows that its interpretation contains an excessive semantic component.

3. A certain semantic feature of a word can be interpreted either as a feature of its meaning, or as a feature of its semantic compatibility - a situation of non-uniqueness of semantic descriptions, which has become the subject theoretical analysis only in the most recent years. For nouns like will, quality, temperament and others under. two main classes of word usage are characteristic: (1) with adjectives and verbs that have the meaning of degree or increase (decrease) of degree; For example, strong or weak will, high or poor quality, stormy or sluggish temperament, quality increases or goes down etc.; (2) without such adjectives and verbs; for example education of will, quality mark, Well, temperament! In the second case, they explicitly denote a greater degree of property: education of will, for example, this is the "education of great will," that is. will -"a great ability to achieve the fulfillment of their desires or intentions." Let us now assume that the component "large" is included in the meaning of these words in the first case (semantic solution). Then we must postulate the following rules for adding values: if a noun of the type will combined with a word whose meaning includes the component "large" or "greater" (cf. strong will, high quality, quality rises), This results in a phrase with repetition of the component "large" or "greater", which must be abbreviated once: strong will ="great great ability ..." = "great ability ...". If such a noun is combined with a word whose meaning includes the component "small" or "less" (weak will, poor quality), it turns out a semantically contradictory phrase (weak will ="small great ability ..."), and the "large" component from the cumulative interpretation of the phrase should be deleted. Now let's consider a compatible solution: let's say that in (1) the noun denotes not a large degree of a property, but simply a scale of a certain property. Then it will be necessary to indicate that the given meaning of the noun is realized only in combination with words, the meaning of which includes the components "large", "small", "more", "less". So, a semantic solution does not require splitting values, but involves the use of a special rule for adding values, and a compatible solution requires splitting values, but does not need a special rule. Both solutions provide a complete and consistent picture of the facts, and if we wanted to give preference to one of them, some additional considerations would have to be brought in.<…>

<…>Finally, consider the pragmatics of the sign. It includes a wide range of phenomena, ranging from expressive elements of meaning, which in different time or different authors called Gef ü hlswert, feeling, tone, valeur é motive, semantic associations, associative signs, connotations, etc., and ending with those modal components of meaning (associated not with the described situation, but with the communication situation), which A Wierzbicka described it as a modal frame of the utterance, and C. Fillmore - as presuppositions. All these signs have the common property that they characterize the attitude of the speaker or the addressee of the message to the reality described by the sign. However, different pragmatic elements must, apparently, be recorded in different zones of the description of the sign.

Let's start with semantic associations, or connotations, - those elements of pragmatics that reflect cultural ideas and traditions associated with the word, the prevailing practice in a given society of using the corresponding thing and many other extra-linguistic factors. They are very capricious, differ greatly in words of the same or similar meaning in different languages, or even in the same language. With the word ass, for example, the idea of ​​a readiness to work without a murmur is associated (cf. works like a donkey; good donkey, I'm not a donkey for you(I will not fuss for everyone)), but with the word donkey - its exact synonym in the main meaning is the idea of ​​stubbornness and stupidity ( stubborn or stupid as a donkey; What a donkey you are; Enough ass! etc.). The noun dog there are connotations of a hard life ( doggy life, live in a doggy environment), devotion ( look like a dog) and bad ( Oh you dog !, dog post); at the noun dog - servile devotion ( tsarist watchdog) and bad ( dog son); at the noun bitch - bad ( bitch children); finally the noun male - lust ( When will you come to your senses, damned dog?).

Such signs, despite the fact that they are not directly included in the semantics of the word, are of primary interest to her, because in many cases it is on their basis that the word is regularly metaphorized, included in comparisons, and participates in word formation and other linguistic processes. As a result, a feature that is associative and pragmatic in one lexical meaning acts as essential and semantic in another. This is, for example, the case with the verbs cut and to nag. With all the external similarity of the actions they denote (up to the reciprocating movement of a sharp instrument over an object, which has the goal of dividing the entire object or its surface into parts), completely different connotations are associated with them - harshness and pain for the verb cut, and monotony and boring for the verb to nag. This is evidenced by their figurative meanings: The light hurts my eyes, I have a cacophony that hurts my ears as opposed to She always saws him. It is interesting that in the richest nomenclature of types of pain - cutting, stabbing, shooting, breaking, pulling, burning, sore, aching etc. - no pain sawing. The same way footman and servant are close synonyms in direct meanings, but due to the difference in connotations they sharply diverge in figurative meanings; Wed surround myself lackeys and sycophants but servant people.

Connotations should be written in a special pragmatic or connotative zone of the corresponding vocabulary entry and serve as a support for the interpretation of such figurative meanings of a word that do not have common semantic features with the main meanings.

As for those pragmatic elements of the sign that were called the modal frame and which reflect the assessment of the described situation by the speaker or listener, they, as was foreseen by A. Vezhbitskaya, should be included directly in the interpretation of the word: Even A acted ="Others acted; A acted; the speaker did not expect A to act." WholeX(in sentences like He ate two whole watermelons, He was three whole years old, He brought as many as 10 books)= "X, and the speaker thinks it is a lot." OnlyX(in sentences like He only ate two watermelons, He is only the captain, He only brought 10 books)= "X, and the speaker thinks it is not enough." As you can see, a necessary element of the lexical meaning of all these words is the speaker's assessment of the likelihood of the situation; it is in this case that it forms the modal frame of meaning.

The meanings of other words implicitly contain a reference not to the speaker or listener, but to the perceiver, the observer - another person who is also an outsider in relation to the direct participants in the described situation. Let's compare, for example, phrases get out of smth. and get out of smth. in their basic spatial meaning. The use of the first of them is completely independent of the position of the observer relative to the moving object. He can say The boy left the room and in the case when he himself is in the room, and in the case when he is outside it (for example, in the corridor). Not so with the second phrase. The boy came out from behind the screen can be said only in the case when the perceiving person is not himself behind the screen and observes not the disappearance, but the appearance of the boy. Therefore, in the interpretation of the phrase get out of smth. and other similar ones, an indication of the position of the observer (perceiver) relative to the moving object and obstacle must be included in some form. It is also wise to include such instructions in the modal frame.

Introduction to the interpretation of the modal framework, of course, complicates it, but the loss of simplicity in this case reflects the real complexity, multi-layeredness of the object.

The difference between the semantics of a sign and that part of its pragmatics, which, although included in the interpretation in the form of a modal frame, is an object of a fundamentally different nature, is manifested objectively. Note, in particular, that the same semantic difference generates completely different semantic relations between signs, depending on whether it is included in the semantics of signs or in their pragmatics (modal frame). The opposition "more" - "less" generates antonymy, if it is included in the semantics of signs; if it is included only in their pragmatics (see above the interpretation of the words whole and only), then the antonymic relationship does not arise.<…>

Now we can explicate the concept of lexical meaning: the lexical meaning of a word is understood as the semantics of a sign (a naive concept) and that part of its pragmatics that is included in the modal framework of interpretation. The lexical meaning of a word is found in its interpretation, which is a translation of the word into a special semantic language.<…>

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1 Boron hence, most likely, not 'a large dense coniferous forest', but 'a pine forest consisting of large trees'.

If the car (shirt or pen), which a certain person A uses for its intended purpose (drives, wears, writes), belongs to him, then we can speak of it as his own car (shirt or pen) of this person.

The values ​​are very approximate here.

If we use this term, then it should be borne in mind that there is an essential difference between grammatical and semantic agreement: the word A, grammatically consistent with V, borrows from the latter certain meanings in a given text; meanwhile, words L and B, semantically consistent with each other, do not acquire common semantic elements in the text, but have them in the dictionary. It is indisputable, however, that the concept of agreement (the repetition of some elements of linguistic information) can be generalized in such a way that grammatical and semantic agreement will appear as its special cases.

It should be added that the incompatibility of the non-target meaning with the forms of the imperative, verbs with the meaning of attempt, etc. is explained precisely by the fact that the latter includes the meaning of the goal; for example, an imperative, or urge, is a message about the speaker's desire for the addressee to perform a certain action, and an attempt to cause the addressee to perform it.

The names of the roles are written with a capital letter so that the reader does not have associations with the usual semantic and syntactic concepts; Philmore's use of words does not correspond to either the etymology of words or the linguistic terminological tradition. In cases of complete correspondence between English and Russian predicates, English examples are sometimes replaced by Russian ones.

For similar observations, see Gack 1966: 256 et seq., Fillmore 1969 (see above), Zolotova 1973.

For further conclusions, it is essential that all verbs with the meaning of position in space have a deep meaning of contact, which connects not the subject and the place, but two subjects.

Considering the material given in paragraphs 1 and 2, we can notice that in both cases some compatible restrictions are imposed on the use of the word, cf. wrong * chop ice O stone, * stabbing flexible rubber bands, * a handful of cabinets. However, in the first case, they are semantically motivated, follow directly from the meaning of the word, and in the second, they are not. Note further that both can be violated for stylistic purposes, cf. The rain walks along Tsvetnoy Boulevard, roams around the circus.,. suddenly goes blind and loses confidence(Yu. Olesha), Water muttered under the snag(K. Paustovsky) - violation of semantically motivated compatibility; The bus ... rushed headlong(A. Eisner), ... an open dun car drove up(M. Bulgakov) - violation of semantically unmotivated compatibility. A developed semantic theory should provide for the possibility of such violations and be able to predict the corresponding stylistic effects. As a hypothesis, we would like to suggest that a stylistic violation of a semantically motivated rule of compatibility leads to metaphor or metonymy, and a violation of a purely compatible rule leads to various kinds of humorous effects.

An additional consideration in this case could be the following circumstance: the semantic solution does not agree well with the fact that in the Russian language (and not only in Russian) there is not a single class of words for which the rule of crossing out the repeated meaning of a high degree would undoubtedly be valid. Another is characteristic; if each of two syntactically related words has a high degree of meaning, then the latter, so to speak, is doubled, cf. very deep lake(not so easy deep, very deep). Thus, if we, along with the general rule of “doubling the repeated value of a high degree, introduced into the system the corresponding rule of striking out, both rules would lose their generality, and the scope of each of them would have to be determined by numerous particular conditions.