Cognitive Linguistics Research 13

Editors René Dirven

Ronald W. Langacker J ohn R. Taylor

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin . New York

Historical Semantics and Cognition

Edited by

Andreas Blank Peter Koch

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin . New York 1999

Mouton de Gruyter (forrnerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin

@ Printed on aeid-free paper whieh falls within

the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure perrnanence and durability.

Library 01 Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Historieal semanties and eognition I edited by Andreas Blank, Peter Koeh

p. cm. - (Cognitive linguistics researeh ; 13) Ineludes bibliographieal references and indexo ISBN 3-11-016614-3 (c1oth ; alk. paper) l. Semantics, Historieal - Psyehologieal aspeets. 2.

Cognition. l. Blank, Andreas. 11. Koeh, Peter, 1951- . III. Series. P325.5.H57H48 1999 401'.43-de21 99-32695

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Die Deutsche Bibliothek - Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Historical semantics and cognition I ed. by Andreas Blank ; Pe­ter Koeh. - Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1999

(Cognitive linguisties researeh ; 13) ISBN 3-11-016614-3

© Copyright 1999 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-I0785 Berlin

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Preface

The papers collected in this volume evolved frorn a symposium that was held Septernber 19-21, 1996, at the "Clubhaus" of the Freie Universitat Berlin. The syrnposium was organized with the double intention of providing a forum in which synchr<;>nically and dia­chronically oriented scholars would have to exchange their ideas and where American and European cognitive linguists would be con­fronted with representatives of different directions in European structural sernantics. While the confrontation indeed happened as planned, the expected synergetic effects were perhaps not as inten­sive as we had hoped. However, we are convinced that sorne of the discussions we had will bring long-tenn results, thanks to the op­ponents' rnodified perception of each other generated by this en­counter.

We would like to express our gratitude to the "AuBenamt" of the Freie UniversWit Berlin for all its various forms of support, and es­pecially to the Volkswagen-Foundation, without whose grant this symposium would not have been possible.

All the work, the preparations ineluding the program and the schedule of rneetings, the duplication and distribution of hand-outs and papers, as well as the organizing of coffee-breaks, restaurants, accomodations and transfer from airports to hotels, could not· have been done without a devoted team of co-workers. We take this op­portunity to thank once again Mary Copple, Genevieve Gueug, Paul Gévaudan, Richard Waltereit and especially Sigrid Kretschmann whose experience and readiness were an enonnous support and con­tributed to the success ofthe symposium.

Ideas of how the proceedings could best be published were dis­cussed during the Berlin symposium itself. Due to changes in both our acadernic affilations, sorne time went by until it was decided that a greater part of the papers read at the Clubhaus should be published in a volume rounded off with two artieles that tit the volume's the-

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics

John R. Taylor

This contribution is not specifically about historical semantics. My focus, rather, is sorne basic issues in semantic theory, especially as these arise from a confrontation of Structural Semantics and Cog­nitive Semantics.

By "Structural Semantics" 1 refer to the well-established conti­nental European tradition, represented aboye alI by Coseriu (e.g. 1977). Structuralist approaches are also evident in Lyons (1968) and Cruse (1986). Structuralism has profoundly influenced historical lin­guistic studies, especially as these have pertained to the familiar European languages (e.g. Coseriu 1974).

By "Cognitive Semantics" 1 refer to the study of semantics within the framework of "Cognitive Grarnmar", as developed aboye aH by Langacker (1987, 1991). The work of Lakoff (1987), Ta1my (1988), and many others, is broadly compatible with Langacker's approach. Studies of grammaticalisation, e.g. Reine (1993, 1997), can also be assimilated to the Cognitive Grarnmar prograrnme. For lexical histo­rical semantics within the Cognitive Grarnmar frarnework, especially important is the work ofGeeraerts (e.g. 1985, 1997).

Coseriu (1990) sees a profound gulf between Structural Seman­tics and the Cognitive Grarnmar approach to semantics. In recent years, however, others (e.g. Koch 1995, 1996) have been keen to in­corporate insights of Cognitive Grarnmar into historical linguistic studies, without, however, wanting to give up sorne of the basic as­sumptions of Structuralism. In this connection, it should be noted that the aspect of Cognitive Semantics that has been most cornmonly seized upon, has been the idea of categorisation by prototype. Al­though "cognitive semantics" appears in the title of Coseriu (1990), the only aspect of Cognitive Semantics that is dealt with in any depth in the artiele is categorisation by prototype. This emphasis on proto-

I S John R. Taylor

types is unfortunate, in that there is much more to Cognitive Gram­mar than categorisation by prototype!

1 have several aims in this chapter. One is to dispel what appear to be sorne current misunderstandings about Cognitive Grarnmar. 1 also question sorne of the assumptions underlying Structural S emantics , arguing that sorne of the postulated distinctions may be unnecessary, and, to the extent that these distinctions do have validity, they can be incorporated unproblematically into the Cognitive Grarnmar model. 1 also tentatively point to sorne aspects of the Cognitive Semantics ap­proach that 1 believe are likely to be especially relevant to historical semantic investigations.

1 begin by observing that although Cognitive Grarnmar and Struc­turalism have developed independently, with little mutual interac­tion, the two approaches can be seen to have a cornmon origino Both, namely, have developed, albeit indifferent ways, sorne basic insights of Saussure.

1. The Saussurian heritage

Not the least of the achievements of Ferdinand de Saussure was to have established Linguistics as an autonomous academic discipline. Contrary to the naive view ofthe matter, it is not, according to Saus­sure (1916: 23), the existence ofa certain subject matter (in our case, language, and languages) that justifies and circumscribes a dis­cipline, but rather a "point of view", a distinctive way of treating the subject matter. Scholars with all manner of interests have had things to say about language. Yet if it is to achieve disciplinary autonomy, Linguistics cannot simply be the grand sum of whatever literature students, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, etc. say about language. Paradoxically, the very centrality of language to human existence sharpens the need to define the proper object of Linguis­tics. As is well known, Saussure's proposal was that the distinctively "linguistic" study of language had to treat language as a semiotic system. The proper object of linguistic inquiry is therefore the "lin-

Cognitive Semantics and Structura/ Semantics 19

guistic sign", the symbolic association of a signifier (an "acoustic image") and a signified (a "concept").

Cognitive Grarnmar is strongly cornmitted to the symboIic nature of language, and in this respect is profoundIy Saussurian in spirit. 1

On the Cognitive Grarnmar view, a Ianguage is essentialIy a vast in­ventory of"symbolic units", each ofwhich associates a phonological representation (analogous to Saussure's "acoustic image") with a se­mantic representation (Saussure's "concept"). But whereas Saussure had illustrated his notion of the linguistic sign maiñly on the exam­pIe of lexical items (such as arbor 'tree'), Cognitive Grarnmar takes patterns ofword formation (morphology) and phrase formation (syn­tax) to be also inherently s"ymbolic in nature. Although sentences, phrases, and words may differ in their degree ofinternal complexity, in their status as symboIic units sentences, phrases, and compIex words form a continuum with the morphemes of a Ianguage.

In order for the symbolic enterprise to be feasible, it is obviously necessary to allow phonological and semantic representations of considerable internal complexity, in a manner that was probably not foreseen by Saussure, also to postulate various kinds of relations be­tween linguistic units, i.e. between signs, between their phonoIogical poles, and between their semantic poles. After all, if the symbolic thesis is to be taken seriously, symbolic units and their properties have to bear the fulI weight of what in other linguistic theories is carried by various modules ofthe grarnmar (phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, etc.). Thus, a crucial notion in Cognitive Seman­tics is that the meaning of an expression is not exhausted by the ex­pression's designation. Designation (or "profiling", in Langacker's terminology) always takes place against a (more or less compIex) network of background knowledge. (1 return to this point in section 4.) Concerning the relations between linguistic units, three kinds need to be recognised. One is the "is-a" relation. One unit instanti­ates (can be regarded as a more fulIy specified instance of) a more schematically characterised unit. A second relation is the "part-of' relation. One unit is part of a larger, more complex unit. A third re­lation is the "is-like" relation. One unit resembles another unit, in

20 John R. Taylor

sorne respect(s), and can thus be assimilated to it, as a marginal instance to a prototype.

A special case of the "is-a" relation obtains between the use of an item on a specific occasion and the item as stored in a speaker's memory? When the word free is uttered with reference to a specific tree, the semantic pole of the utterance (the specific tree referred to, or, to be more precise, the speaker's conceptualisation ofthe tree) is an instance of the more abstractly characterised tree-concept associ­ated in the speaker's mind with the stored lexical item. In parallel manner, the pronunciation of the word on a specific occasion is an instance of the more abstractly characterised phonological represen­tation stored in the speaker's mind. Note that the properties ofthe in­stance may not fully match the more abstract schema. (Suppose that the word free is applied, not to a "prototypical" tree, but to a date palm, or that the word is pronounced in a non-standard way.) In such cases, the instances may still count as instances of the symbolic unit [TREE] in virtue of the "is-like" relation; the usage would count as "marginal", but would still be attracted to the stored unit in virtue of its similarity to it.

A related point, is that there is no need to make a principled dis­tinction between "Iinguistic meaning" and "encyc1opedic knowI­edge".3 Consequently, Cognitive Grarnmar does not draw a distinc­tion in principIe between "sentence meaning" and "utterance mean­ing". Traditionally, sentence meaning is the meaning that a sentence has in virtue of the "linguistic meaning" of its parts, whereas utter­ance meaning is the meaning that an utterance acquires in a particu­lar cornmunicative context. Both kinds of meaning properly belong in the semantic representation associated with the symbolic unit, and both need to be characterised reIevant to appropriate background knowledge. Naturally enough, "utterance meaning" may need to be characterised against a much richer array of background assump­tions, which appeal to specific aspects of the speech situation. But this fact is fully consistent with the view that utterance meaning stands in an "is-a" relation to sentence meaning. Sentence meaning, to the extent that the notion is valid at aH, is schematic for the range

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 21

of utterance meanings that an expression lllay have on specific oc­casions of its use.

1 have emphasised the Saussurian roots of Cognitive Grammar, in order to better contextualise a comparison with Structural Semantics. Structural Semantics has al so drawn its inspiration from Saussure, albeit with an emphasis on other aspects of Saussure's thought. Saussure, as we all know, asserted that the link between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (Saussure 1916: 100-102). There are, to be sure, slightly different (though not incompatible) ways of under­standing "the arbitrariness of the sign". In the rust place, the sign is arbitrary in the sense that there is no inherent association between sound and meaning. On this view, arbitrariness contrasts with moti­vation. A sign may be motivated, to the extent that the language user can perceive sorne reason why the signifier should have the meaning that it does (and vice versa). Intemally complex signs are usually motivated, to varying degrees. On a slight1y different understanding of arbitrariness (and it is this understanding that is especially em­phasised in Cognitive Grammar), the linguistic sign is arbitrary in the sense that it is the product of conventionalisation. Speakers act in the belief that the signifier-signified relation (at least for established units, cf. footnote 3) is shared by other members of a speech com­munity. And, as Saussure (1916: 104) pointed out, a speaker is un­able to single-handedly modify the established and shared conven­tions.

Saussure (1916: 155-157) goes further, and maintains that it is not onIy the signifier-signified relation that is arbitrary, the signifiers and the signifieds in any given language are themselves arbitrary, in the sense that there is no intrinsic reason why just these meanings should receive syrnbolic expression, nor why just these phonological forms should serve as signifiers. Saussure emphasised that the signs that make up a language do not constitute a nomenc1ature, i.e. they are not labels for an independent1y given list of concepts. It is the lan­guage itself that structures cognition, thereby creating the concepts through the very process of syrnbolising them. Likewise, there is no­thing intrinsic to a sound that renders it suitable to function as a lin­guistic signifier. Sounds have the status of speech sounds only in

22 John R. Taylor

virtue of the structuring of sound by the semiotic system that is a language.

If pursued, Saussure's views on the arbitrariness of concepts and sound pattems must inevitably lead to a position of radical rela­tivism, of a fonn that perhaps not even Whorf would have wanted to endorse!4 Research on semantic and phonological universal s has, of course, revealed rather severe constraints on the concepts and sound pattems that may come together in symbolic association, while still allowing, within the boundaries set by these constraints, consider­able cross-Ianguage diversity.s But perhaps the most challenging component of Saussure's thought, and one that has fired the imagi­nation of generations ofhis readers, Hes in his thesis that units on the phonological and semantic levels have a status within the language only by virtue of the relations which they contract with other units on the same level (phonological or semantic). Saussure (1916: 158-160) introduced the tenn "value" to refer to this aspect of the lin­guistic signo A "concept" receives its "value", not in virtue of any in­trinsic semantic content, but in virtue of the relations (syntagmatic and paradigmatic) which it contracts with other symbolised con­cepts. Likewise, sound units have a value in the language system in virtue of the sound units they contrast with, and combine with. Para­doxically, the value of a linguistic unit is detennined, not by its in­trinsic content, but by what it is not, by "ce qui existe en dehors de lui" [what exists outside ofitself] (1916: 160).

In proposing the notion of "value", Saussure is not denying the obvious fact that signs do have a positive content, alongside their contrastively defmed value. Structuralist Semantics captures this dis­tinction by the tenns "signification" and "designation" (or, in Ger­man, "Bedeutung" and "Bezeichnung,,).6 The "signification" of a sign is the concept understood contrastively i.e. in tenns of its rela­tions to neighbouring concepts; the "designation" is the concept un­derstood in its positive aspects, i.e. in tenns of its potential to refer to actual states of affairs in the world. To give a simple example: the morphophonemic category [SINGULAR] has the same designation, both in a language which has a simple two-way contrast between singular and plural, and in a language which has a three-way contrast

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 23

between singular, dual, and plural. Yet the signification (''value'') of [SINGULAR] is different in the two cases. In the one, [SINGULAR] en­ters into a simple binary contrast with [PLURAL], in the other, it en­ters into a temary contrast with [DUAL] and [PLURAL].

We can make a further distinction, between "signification" and "designation" on the one hand, and "reference" on the other. Here, we need to return once again to Saussure. Saussure (1916: 98) made it very clear that for him, the linguistic sign was a mental entity. The linguistic sign [TREE] did not associate a particular tree growing in the yard with a specific utterance [tri:]. The semantic content of the sign was a "concept" in the mind ofthe language user. Saussure like­wise insisted that the acoustic image was a mental representation, distinct from any physical manifestation, and thus neutral with re­spect to pronunciation and perception. But in any particular act of speech, there is, obviously, a specific articulatory/acoustic/perceptual event, probably (though not necessarily) associated with reference to a particular entity in the real world. Thus, it is easily possible for two signs to be used with the same reference, but having different desig­nations (and eo ipso, different significations). To extend on the earli­er example: The category [PLURAL], in the two kinds of languages mentioned above, has the same reference when used of a group of three entities. But the designation (and signification) of [PLURAL] is different in the language which on1y has the two-way contrast be­tween singular and plural, from the designation that it has in a lan­guage which knows a three-way contrast between singular, dual, and plural.

Saussure represented the sign as a simple bipartite entity (Fig. 1). More elaborate schemas have been proposed; the "semiotic penta­gon" in Fig. 2 has been adapted from Koch (1996), who attributes it to Raible (1983). As mentioned, the sign for Saussure was a purely mental entity. In order to link the two elements ofthe sign to entities outside the mind (i.e. to an acoustic-phonetic event on the one hand, and, on the other, to a referent in the world), the bipartite sign is ex­tended to include a "name" and a "referent". A fifth element is intro­duced, in order to capture the distinction between signification and designation.

24 John R. Taylor

(linguistic sigo)

sigoifier

, , ,

Figure l. The Saussurean sign

signified

~--- -----------------

name referent

designation

(act of speech)

Figure 2. The "semiotic pentagon" (after Raible 1983/ Koch 1996)

1 have already hinted at what might be the Cognitive Grammar approach to the issues touched on above. The distinction between an acoustic-phonetic event and a signifier (Saussure' s "acoustic im­age") is an "is-a" relation, Le. the relation between a fully specified

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 25

instance and a more abstractly characterised schema. The sarne goes for the relation between a referent and the designationlsignification of a linguistic unit. A further point is that the distinction between the extra-linguistic, extra-conceptual aspects ofthe sign as used in a spe­cific cornmunicative context and its linguistic-conceptual aspects (the distinction is represented by the broken line in Fig. 2), also falls away. It is an error to suppose that people use language in order to refer directly to ''things in the world", Le. to things outside of the mind. Language is used to refer to mental "projections" of the world (Jackendoff 1983: 29), or, to put it more generally, to elements in what Fauconnier (1985) has called "mental spaces". A mental space may purport to be a model ofthe world as it is. But equally, the mo­del may be of a world that is imagined, drearnt, represented in a pic­ture, novel, film, and so on. There is no linguistic difference between a fictional narrative and a narrative which purports to portray events that "really" happened. Concerning the phonological pole of the sign, it is also an error to suppose that acoustic-phonetic aspects of an utterance are any les s "cognitive" than a phonological (or se­mantic) representation. Sounds, as categorised by a speaker/hearer, are also conceptual entities.

What all this means, is that, from a Cognitive Grarnmar point of view, the bipartite structure of the linguistic sign, as depicted in Fig. 1, is perfectly adequate as it stands, it is in no need of further elaboration along the lines of Fig. 2. Given the austerity of Fig. 1, the challenge of Cognitive Grarnmar is to describe languages in all their complexity and variety - including aspects of their use and their variation over time - in terms of the essentially Saussurian no­tion of the bipartite "signe linguistique".

2. Signitication vs. Designation, or: Where are prototypes?

A major point of disagreement between Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics concems the special status accorded in the latter to "signification" in contrast to "designation" and "reference". What is at issue here, essential1y, is whether it is justified to postu-

26 Jóhn R. Taylor

late a level of purely "linguistic" meaning, in contradistinction to a level of encyclopedic knowledge, between "una semántica lingüís­tica" [a linguistic semantics] and "una semántica de las cosas" [a se­mantics ofthings] (Coseriu 1990: 281).7

For Coseriu (1990: 267), Cognitive Semantics cornmits "el error más grave y más elemental que pueda cometerse en semántica" [the most serious and most error that it is possible to cornmit in seman­tics]; this is the capital error of confusing linguistically structured meaning with experientialIy derived knowledge about the states of affairs that linguistic expressions refer too The confusion manifests itself, according to Coseriu, in the treatment of prototype effects. On the Structuralist view, prototype effects lie outside the language sys­tem proper; they have to do with difficulties a person may encounter in properly applying a word to a state of affairs, i.e. they are matters of designation and reference, not of signification. That it might be difficult to detennine, at a given time and place, whether it is "night", or "day", in no way entails that the significations of the words night and day are "fuzzy" or indeterminate, or structured around a prototype. On the contrary, Coseriu argues, prototype ef­fects arise precisely because the linguistic meanings of night and day are absolutely clear-cut; were this not the case, we could have no confidence in asserting that a certain state of affairs constitutes a good example, or a less good example, of the application of the word (Coseriu 1990: 258). Likewise, penguins and ostriches can only be recognised as "marginal" examples of the bird category if the cate­gory is already clearly defined. In order for a bird to be a "less good" example of the category, it must already have been categorised as a bird (1990: 279). And the clear-cut concept of what a bird is, is a matter of signification, not of designation, or of associating exem­plars with a prototype. Whether birds, as entities in the world, constitute a clear-cut category or not, is a matter of biology, not of linguistics.

Coseriu (1990: 268) observes that Cognitive Semanticists have selectively focussed onjust those words (such as to lie, and names of natural kinds) whose real-world applications tend to give rise to pro­totype effects, whilst ignoring linguistic-semantic contrasts which

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 27

are c1ear-cut, not only on the level of signification, but also on the le­veIs of designation and reference. He mentions the example of mo­tion verbs. Spanish venir and ir contrast with respect to 'motion to the place of the 1st person' vs. 'motion to the place of the 2nd/3rd person'. In Italian and Catalan, the contrast between venire/andare, venir/anar, is drawn differently, between 'motion to the place of the 1st/2nd person' vs. 'motion to the place of the 3rd person'. (Hence, Catalans, speaking Spanish over the telephone, will tend to make the error of saying * Mañana vengo a verte 'Tomorrow I come to see you', instead of the correct Mañana vaya verte 'Tomorrow 1 go to see you'.) Moreover, the notion of "structure", and of a "structured lexicon", suggests that a semantic contrast might serve to differentia­te more than one word pairo And indeed, the above mentioned con­trast in Spanish shows up with verbs of carrying: traer vs. llevar. (In Italian, though, the contrast is not made: portare serves for both senses.) It is difficult to imagine, Coseriu remarks, what "proto­types" could be associated with these c1ear-cut meanings, and what deviations therefrom could look like. There is a further point. This is that the distinctions in question are language-specific, and therefore cannot plausibly arise from any natural categorisation of non-linguis­tic reality. By focussing on the referential possibilities of lexical items, and on the naming ofreal-world (and therefore universally ac­cessible) categories, Cognitive Semantics has ignored the structured, language-specific relations that exist between significations. In brief, Cognitive Semantics falls into the trap that Saussure wamed us about, of viewing a language' s lexicon as a nomenc1ature, a list of names for pre-existing categories.

With respect to its allegedly onomasiological orientation, Coseriu brings in a third player, in addition to Structural Semantics and Cog­nitive Semantics, namely the theory of word definition by necessary and sufficient conditions. Although FiUmore (1975) presented proto­type semantics in opposition to "check-list" theories of meaning, Co­seriu groups both together as examples of onomasiologically orient­ed approaches, and both stand in contrast to Structuralism, which looks in the [ust place at relations of contrast between linguistic units, not at states of affairs in the world. Thus, for Coseriu (1990:

28 John R. Taylor

245), the Katz and Fodor (1963) analysis of bachelor, which defines the word as a conjunction ofthe features [HUMAN], [ADULT], [MALE],

[NEVER MARRIED], suffers from the same fault as prototype theories, in that it defines the word in terms ofthe conjunction of(real-world) features of its potential referents (i.e. in terms of the word's designation), rather than in terms ofthe word's linguistic value.

In evaluating Coseriu's critique, let us first consider the content of the proposed contrasts at the level of significations. Let us accept that day and night stand in a simple two-way contrasto The contrast has to do, presumably, with the presence vs. absence of sunlight (as­suming an open-air environment). Note that the contrast appeals in­trinsically to a real-world phenomenon, one that can only be appre­hended empirically, through experience of the world. Coseriu, gen­erally, is quite happy to give natural language glosses (in French, German, Spanish, or whatever) to the content of distinctive semantic features. Now, Jackendoff (1990: 33) has remarked that one cannot create a semantic feature simply by taking any old expression and putting a pair of square brackets around it. Behind JackendofI's quip is the idea that if linguistic meanings are to be distinct from encyclo­pedic knowledge, the features that go into the linguistic definitions must be ontologically distinct from attributes ofthe real world. For if there is no such distinction between linguistic-semantic features, and attributes of extra-linguistic reality, the methodological basis of the distinction becomes vacuous.

And indeed, a cornmon strategy of many two-Ieve! theorists (see footnote 7) is to propose that semantic features have the special status of semantic primitives, presumably innate to human cognition, and that are independent of experience. Jackendoff, for example, postulates a set of "conceptual constituents", of the kind [THING] , [PLACE], [GO], [STAY], [MOVE], [CAUSE], etc., which are combined in accordance with "conceptual weIl-formedness rules". These generate the general architecture of all possible concepts, whose substance is filled in by information derived from acquaintance with the world.

Such an approach wiIl tend to emphasise the universality of se­mantic structures, at least at a certain level of abstraction. Coseriu, on the other hand, makes no pretence that distinctive semantic fea-

Cognitive Semantics and Structura/ Semantics 29

tures ("semes") might be, or might be built up out of, universal se­mantic primitives.8 Distinctive semantic features have to be deter­mined case by case, according to the structural relations obtaining in a given language, and are as simple or complex as the data requires. Furthennore, significations are not "built up" out of features; it is the features that emerge from the contrasts, not vice versa (Coseriu 1977: 17). Coseriu (1990: 261) cites with approval Pottier's (1964) well-known analysis of seating objects in French, which lists such real-world features as "avec pieds" [with feet] , "ávec bras" [with arms], "avec dossier" [with back]. Note here that the very notions of a "(chair)-leg", "(chair)-arm", and "(chair)-back" already presuppose (encyc1opedic) familiarity with the domain offumiture, and with the conventional practice of naming parts of fumiture metaphorically in terms ofanimal (or human) body parts.9 It would indeed be "patently ridiculous" (Jackendoff 1990: 33) to propose "avec dossier" as a uni­versal semantic feature. But it is also difficult to imagine what the "linguistic" meanings of chaise, fauteuil, tabouret, etc., could be, if not knowledge of what these kinds of objects actually are, and how they are to be differentiated one from the other. 10

Since, for Structuralist Semantics, the distinction between the lin­guistic and encyc10pedic levels does not reside in the content of the distinctive features, we need to ask whether there are other charac­teristics of significations, which render this level of description onto­logically distinct from designation and reference. Two aspects ap­pear to be relevant for Coseriu. The first 1 have already mentioned. This is that significations (within a given semantic field) are c1early contrastive, and betray no "fuzziness" or prototype effects. A corol­lary of contrastiveness, which 1 shall address in the next section, is that significations are taken to be unitary entities, i.e. betray no poly­semy. The second aspect is the possibility of neutralisation (Coseriu 1977: 17-18). The notion is familiar from phonology. In certain en­vironments, the contrast between two otherwise contrastive pho­nemes is suspended. A well-known example concems the neutralisa­tion of the voicing contrast in word-final obstruents in Gennan and Russian. Coseriu (1990: 260) views neutralisation as a specifically linguistic (not a conceptual) phenomenon; consequently, the possibi-

30 John R. Taylor

lity of neutralisation can serve as a diagnostic, as it were, of a contrast at the level of significations. Thus, the contrast between day and night can be neutralised, as when day is used, not in opposition to night, but to cover the 24 hour period comprising both day and night. (It do es not follow, therefore, that day is polysemous between two meanings.) The possibility of neutralisation must be determined on a case-by-case basis. Whereas Spanish allows neutralisation of the gender contrast between hermano and hermana (in that herma­nos can mean 'brothers andlor sisters'), no comparable neutralisation is posssible between brother and sister in English, and this in spite of the fact that English does allow (or at least, used to!) gender neu­tralisation between he and she, man and woman (as when he and man are used as gender neutral items).

Let us take the second point frrst. 1 suspect that semantic neutra­lisation, as described by Coseriu, is in fact a multifaceted phenome­non, and which therefore cannot be explained in terms of a single mechanism. In many cases, established polysemy cannot be ruled out. The fact that Spanish hermanos can have a meaning which is not simply the plural of hermano, indeed suggests this. On the other hand, the use in English of he as a gender-neutral pronoun (as femi­nist critics never tire of reminding us!), arguably do es represent a conceptual bias, which views "male" as the default value for human beings (females simply do not count); it is therefore not just a "struc­tural" fact about the language system. Concerning the day and night example, this plausibly represents an instance of metonyrny; the 24 hour period is designated by its (for most people) most salient com­ponent. (Hoteliers calculate the duration of a guest's stay in terms of so many nights.)

The other aspect of significations that Coseriu emphasises, is their clearly contrastive character. The first point to make here, is that there is absolutely nothing in the Cognitive Grammar framework that precludes the proper characterisation of the clear-cut contrast between e.g. the motion verbs venir/ir in Spanish, or venire/andare in Italian. (What a Cognitive Semanticist would be inclined to look at, though, would be extended uses of these verbs, uses which do not literally denote motion to the place of a person, but which can never-

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 31

theless be conceptually related to the "basic" motion sense.) Further­more, there is no inherent conflict between prototype categorisation and semantic contrasto On the contrary, Rosch (1978) argued that "basic level" categories achieve salience largely because their proto­types maxirnise the distinctiveness of the categories (cf. Taylor 1995: 50-51). Neither is it fair to charge Cognitive Semantics with undue concem with real-world, and hence "universal" (Coseriu 1990: 252) categories, for which a language merely supplies a list of names. From its very inception, Cognitive Granunar has emphasised the role of "construal" in semantics; linguistic expressions do not refer "directly" to states of affairs in the world, but to speakers' conceptualisations of these states of affairs (Langacker 1987: ch. 3). Furthermore, it is fully accepted that different languages may make available to their speakers different sets of "conventionalised" modes of construal.

Secondly, it is not always the case that words contrast so c1early as in the examples that structuralists like to quote. This is most ob­vious in the case of (near) synonyms. Cruse (1986: 266) characte­rises (near) synonyms as items which have "a low degree of implicit contrastiveness". Thus, in declaring that a building is "high", one is not implicitly denying that it is "tall" (and vice versa). Although high and tal! do not share exactly the same meamng, the difference can hardly be stated in terms of the presence vs. absence of sorne distinc­tive semantic feature. II Cruse (1986: 285) also drew attention to what he called "plesionyms" - sets of words that are only weakly contrastive, and which stand mid-way, so to speak, between (near) synonyms on the one hand, and fully contrastive word sets on the other. Take Cruse's examples fog, mist, haze. Whereas other words for meteorological phenomena, such as rain, snow, hail, arguably do form a clearly contrastive set, this is certainly not the case withfog, mist, haze. Precisely because the words are only weakly contrastive, the boundaries of their meanings are not clearly defined - either con­ceptually, or referentially. Even so, 1 still have a fairly clear concep­tion of what a prototypical fog etc. is like. Consequently, if 1 attempt to apply one of these words to a specific state of affairs, 1 can do no other than appeal to a conception of a prototypical fog, etc., and as-

32 John R. Taylor

sess how well the actual situation conforms to the prototype(s), and on this basis, decide which of the three words might be most appro­priate. But if this is the case, there is no reason to suppose that a similar process does not apply when 1 use the words snow and hail, day and night. The onIy diffeá:nce is, that in the Iatter case, the pro­totypes are c1early distinct, and characterisable in terms of the pre­sence vs. absence of sorne easily statable attribute, whereas the prototypes ofjog, mist, haze are not.

3. The question of polysemy

For Structural Semantics, as for other "two-level" approaches, it is axiomatic that the linguistic meanings ("significations") of words are unitary entities, i.e. that at the level of significations, polysemy does not exist. It is not denied that a word may be used in a variety of senses. 12 But these senses onIy arise when uniquely specified values get filled out with semantic content, either as a matter of conven­tional usage, or in a specific discourse context. In this connection, we may refer to Coseriu's well-known distinction between "system", "norm", and "discourse". The "system" is specified at the level of the language-determined significations, the "norm" comprises estab­lished elaborations of significations, while "discourse" pertains to specific readings that emerge within a text. (The phonological arta­

logy should be obvious. Phonemic contrasts pertain to the "system", while the "norm" comprises ~stablished allophonic realisations.) Co­seriu's position is that Cognitive Semanticists are inclined to find polysemyeverywhere, because oftheir fixation on "norm" (and even "discourse"), and their neglect of the "system".

As with prototypes, there is unfortunately sorne misunderstanding of what the Cognitive Grammar position is with regard to polysemy. It is certainIy true that Langacker (1988: 50) has asserted that the normal, expected state of affairs in lexical semantics is that a word (especially a word in frequent use) wiIl be polysemous, i.e. wiIl have a range of established senses. Thus, the semantic pole of a symbolic unit may need to be represented as a network of units, linked by rela-

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 33

tions of schematicity and resemblance to a prototype. Although the matter has not been as extensively studied in Cognitive Grammar, the phonological pole, to the extent that a unít may receive a variety of pronunciations, may also need to be represented as a network of possibilities. 13

A number of "case studies" of individual lexical items pursued within the Cognitive Grammar tradition, have portrayed these as sometimes highly polysemous, and this fact may well have contri­buted to the perception that Cognitive Grammar encourages the pro­liferation ofpolysemy.14 On the other hand, whether or not an item is to be regarded as polysemous is an empirical question, to be deter­rnined case by case. There is certainly nothing in the Cognitive Grammar framework which excludes the possibility that a linguistic unit may have a constant, invariant value. And sorne analyses have indeed ernphasised the unítary value of sorne linguistic signs. This is especia1ly the case with respect to grammatical categories. Thus, Langacker (1987) argued that the lexical categories [NOUN] and [VERB1 can be associated with a single, highly abstract (schematic) value. s

With regard to many lexical items, however, polysemy is surely a brute fact, which simply cannot be argued away.16 Consider Fill­more's (1982) well-known analysis of climb. FiUmore, it will be re­called, postulated a prototypical sense, which involves the features "c1ambering (with the limbs)" and "ascending". Both are present in climb a tree. But in climb down a tree, the feature "ascending" is de­feated. Coseriu (1990: 256-257), addressing Fillmore's analysis, observes that the very possibility of "climbing down" a tree demon­strates that Fi1lmore's anaIysis was incorrect; the proper characteri­sation should be, not "ascend", but "(move) in a vertical or inclined plane" (sobre un plano vertical o inclinado). Concerning the feature "c1ambering", given that monkeys, snails, and even plants can c1imb, the proper characterisation should be "keeping hold with the extre­mities" (agarrándose con las extremidades). The fact that, in the ab­sence of specifications to the contrary, "climbing" is taken to be in an upward direction, is a default interpretation, associated with the "norm", not with the "system".17

34 Jahn R. Taylor

Unfortunately, this proposal fails to cover sorne further uses of climb (which Coseriu does not address). The plane climbed lo 30,000 feet is fine (even though a plane has no extremities with which to hold itself in place). But we can not say that the plane climbed down to 20,000 fiet. With reference to an airplane, upward motion is paramount, contrary to the conc1usion drawn with respect to "c1imbing down a tree". As 1 see it, there is simply no way in which these various senses can be brought under a single semantic formula. The only feature that all the uses of climb have in common, is probably "move". But at this level of abstraction, it would not be possible to differentiate climb from other verbs of motion in English (inc1uding move).18 Neither is it plausible to c1aim that climb is hom­onyrnous. The various readings overlap, and are therefore not in­dependent of each other.

As mentioned, Coseriu is inc1ined to locate the specific readings of a lexical item on the level of "norm", while general meanings be­long on the level of "system". It is not disputed that to be proficient in a language, a speaker needs to be familiar with the norms prevail­ing in that language (Coseriu 1990: 281). But if this is true - which it surely is! - the question arises, whether a person could be profi­cient in a language, knowing only the "norm", but remaining igno­rant of the "system". Suppose a person has leamed to use the verb climb (or any other word, for that matter) in its full range of estab­lished readings. Would not this fact, ofitself, guarantee the speaker's full mastery ofthe word? Values and contrasts at the level of signifi­cation need play no role whatsoever in a speaker's performance.

In Structural Semantics, however, the unity of meanings at the level of signification is a logical necessity, rather than an empírical matter. Coseriu (1977: 8-10) writes that meaning variants can be de­rived from meaning invariants (significations), but not vice versa; it is only on the basis of unitary meanings that meaning variants can be established at all (Coseriu 1990: 270). The very fact that different readings are recognised as such, rests on the prior knowledge of the invariant meaning. Furthermore, it is the unitary meaning that sets a limit on the extent of meaning variation; a word cannot end up meaning "n'importe quoi" [anything at all] (Coseriu 1977: 10).

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 35

These are curious arguments. We can surely recognise that climb has a range of different readings, and we can state them quite preci­sely, and point to their similarities (as Fillmore did), irrespective of whether there is (or whether we recognise that there is) a unitary meaning. However, to the extent that a speaker is creatively extend­ing the usage range of a word, it may weIl be true that the speaker does need to recognise sorne cornmonality between an accepted usage A and the new usage situation B. 19 (Still, the pertinent mean­ing invariant cornmon to A and B need not coincide with the invari­ant which justifies the extension of the word from A to another situa­tion C, which is tantamount to c1aiming that there wiIl be no invari­ant that unifies aH three readings.) In Cognitive Grarnmar terms, these cornmonalities would be captured by meanS of low-Ievel sche­mas that cover the relevant cases. But with respect to a range of al­ready established (and conventionalised) uses, nothing exc1udes the possibility that these uses are simply learned, on the basis of input data. Indeed, without sorne such assumption, it would be difficult to explain how different readings of a word can drift so far apart over time. A speaker ofmodem English probably no longer perceives anY relationship at all between type 'kind' and type 'printer's character' (cf. Geeraerts 1985), or between buff 'dull pale-brown' and buff 'amateur enthusiast'.

Not on1y is the structuralist level of signification not strictIy ne­cessary in order to guarantee a person's adequate use of a language, it is difficult to imagine how significations, as understood by Cose­riu, could be leamed in the frrst place. Recall that significations do not emerge from usage events: "le relevé des procédés employés dans la production des phrases ne pourrait jamais amener a la délimi­tation du signifié" [listing the procedures employed in the production of sentences could never lead to the delimitation of significations] (1977: 12). A little further down, we read that from "des acceptions ou des variantes isolées", "on ne peut pas, en principe, déduire d'une falfon irnmédiate le signifié" [from isolated readings or variants, it is not possible, in principIe to directIy deduce the signification]. Signi­fications, in fact, appear to inhabit an idealist world, distinct from the world in which and of which language is used: "el mundo de los

36 John R. Taylor

significados es un mundo ordenado; no es el mundo caótico y con­tinuo de las 'cosas'" [the word of significations is weIl-otdered; it is not the chaotic and continuous world of 'things'] (Coseriu 1990: 277). And even if we do succeed to bring sorne structure into the chaotic world of things, there is no assurance that the categories thus derived wiIl match up with the categories provided by language, for "las clases de 'cosas' no coinciden con las categorías mentales" [the classes of 'things' do not coincide with mental categories] (1990: 262); Coseriu (1977: 12) doubts whether 1inguistic structures can be based at all on the "structures des contenus d'une pensée prélingu­istique" [structrures and contents ofprelinguistics thought].

In other theories that postulate a special level of linguistic seman­tics, such as Jackendofrs, the problem of acquisition does not arise; if linguistic-conceptual categories (or at least, their basic building blocks and skeletal structure) are innate and universal, they do not have to be learned on the basis of experience. Coseriu, however, em­phatically rejects the idea of the universal, or even the non-linguistic basis of linguistic-semantic structuring. He speaks merely of a per­son coming to recognise the "unidad intuitiva" (1990: 278) of a men­tal category, while the linguist's task is to "reveal" (revelar), to "make manifest" (poner de manifesto) the intuitive unity?O While it might make sense to suppose that a person do es have (or may come to have) an intuition about the unity of, say, the bird-category, this probably has as much to do with beliefs about natural kinds as with the supposedly linguistic meaning of bird. But with respect to vast areas ofbasic vocabulary, it is surely a nonsense to claim that speak­ers become intuitively aware of the linguistic-semantic unity of the items in question, or even to suppose that they need to do so. Differ­ent uses of e.g. climb certainly stand in a family resemblance to each other, and speakers ofEnglish can readily generate mental images of a person "climbing (up) a tree", "climbing (down) a mountain", or a plane "climbing into the sky". But the only cornmon denominator to these states of affairs is the fact that they are designated by the same phonological form, not that they elaborate a unique semantic con­tent!

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 37

Any linguistic theory has to be evaluated, not on1y in tenns of its theoretical postulates and inherent plausibility, but also in tenns of the research results which it generates. In spite of the reservations expressed aboye, it might be objected that Structuralist Semantics has indeed pro ved an invaluable tool in explicating semantic change. The distinctive contribution of Structuralism is to have pointed to changes in the "system"; for example, contrasts at the level of signi­fication are abandoned or created, a distinctive feature is lost or comes into being. If we take a long-tenn perspective, we can indeed note a drastic change in the "value" of Latin passer 'sparrow' as it evolves into Spanish pájaro '(small) bird'. Such changes are as clear-cut as the significations themselves are claimed to be. But pre­cisely for this reason, focus on structural relations alone can say tittle about the mechanics of language change. For this, we need to focus again on the "nonn" and on "discourse", i.e. on speakers' concep­tualisations and categorisations. Coseriu (1990: 260) certain1y allows the possibility of "categorización de emergencia" - the one-off appli­cation of a word to a novel situation. With increasing frequency, this designation can enter the "nonn", and can even effect a change in the signification. But not, Coseriu insists, by adding a new nuance to the signification, or, even less, by introducing an element of polysemy. Rather, the change will effect "todo el significado" (original empha­sis). But at what point in historical development does the change in signification occur, and on what basis can one state with confidence that the change has occurred? Coseriu (1990: 260) suggests that sorne residual problems with his analysis of English c/imb, e.g. the fact that the word can be used of a snail (which lacks "extremities"), might be "exceptional", or even metaphorical, and thus betray a de­signation "de emergencia". But given this loophole, the theory of in­variant significations becomes vacuous?1

18 John R. Tay/or

4. Concepts

Although Saussure used the word concept to designate the semantic pole of the linguistic sign, many semanticists have been reluctant to appeal to concepts at aH. Concepts, by definition, are private, mental entities; a person can have no access to another person's concepts -except, of course, through the medium of language. But if language is defmed as a means for symbolising concepts, there is no methodo­logy for independently establishing the nature of another person's concepts. Appeal to concepts, therefore, could be circular (cf. Lyons 1977: 113). Interestingly, Lyons (1968: 443) favoured a structuralist approach to semantics precisely because it frees the linguist from the need to refer to "concepts". The meaning of a word becomes nothing other than the set of relations that the word contracts with other lexical items.22

1 do not think that "concepts" need be such mysterious entities as Lyons and others make out (cf Taylor, in press a). A common view amongst psychologists is that a concept is a principIe of categorisa­tion (Komatsu 1992). To "have" a concept, is to have the means to categorise entities as examples of that concepto Put crudely, to have the concept TREE, is to have the ability to recognise a tree when one sees one. Understood as schemas for categorisation, concepts are by no means restricted to nominal entities. One of Langacker's major achievements is to have proposed a theoretical apparatus for the elu­cidation of the conceptual structure, not only of various relational units, such as verbs, prepositions, and adjectives, but also of "func­tiona!" morphemes such as the artieles and case categories.

What goes into a concept? Coseriu (1990: 261) - rightly - criti­cises the view that concepts might be "imágenes de las cIases" -mental representations ("pictures") of categories. A crucial notion of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987: 183-185) is that the meaning of an expression involves the "profiling" (or designation) of an enti­ty, against background assumptions. (These latter are referred to variously as domains, frames, idealised cognitive models, etc.) The (by now) e1assic example is the word hypotenuse (Fillmore 1985). The word designates a straight line, no more, no less. A hypotenuse,

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 39

however, is eategorised (recognised) as such, in virtue of the fact that the straight line functions as part of a non-designated (non-pro­filed) entity, namely, a right-angled triangle. It is not the straight line as such, nor the right-angled triangle, that constitutes the coneept HYFOTENUSE, but the profiling of the straight line against the notion of a triangle.

The example of hypotenuse is relatively simple, in that the eon­eept presupposes a fixed, and easily eircumseribed domain of knowl­edge. Most eoneepts need to be eharaeterised agaínst multiple do­mains, of varying eentrality, whieh may be seleetively aetivated on particular oeeasions of their use. (Thus, read a book, print a book, drop a book, etc., eonstrue BOOK slightly differently in each case, and high1ight different background domains, even though the pro­filed entity arguably remains the same.) Concepts, therefore, turn out not to be fixed entities, but rather "emerge" in the aet of conceptuali­sation. By the same token, complex expressions are rarely fully com­positional, in the sense that their meaning can be eomputed from the fixed meanings of their component parts. Combining concepts is not just a matter of combining the profiles, it also involves the integra­tion of background knowledge.

Coseriu accuses Cognitive Linguists of exaggerated eoncem with "objective" categories; there are classes of things out there in the world, which the words of a language piek out. This view, 1 think, seriously misunderstands the Cognitive Grarnmar programme. Ob­jeetively speaking, 1 dare say there is much in common between writing (with a pen) on a piece of paper and drawing (with a peneil) on a piece of papero Both involve a person holding a slim instrument and making marks on a surface. Why do we not categorise the two kinds of events in the same way? The Structuralist view would be that it is the language system itself that presents us with the struc­tured opposition between write and draw. But there is surely more to it than this. Writing and drawing are understood against broader eon­stellations ofknowledge. Murphyand Medin (1985), not inappropri­ately, speak of "theories", which serve to give coherence to catego­ries?3 Writing is understood against a theory of written linguistic cornmunication, drawing against a theory of visual representation. It

40 Joh" R. Taylor

is in virtue of the background theory, that writing (with a pen) and writing (with a word processor) - two very different kinds of activ­ity, objectively speaking - are nevertheless both categorised as in­stances of "writing".

Changes in word meaning are likely to have as much to do with changes in background assumptions, i.e. domain-based knowledge configurations, as with designation ("profiling"). Indeed, the aspect of Cognitive Semantics that promises the greatest scope for insight­fui studies of meaning change, could well be the importance attribut­ed to background assumptions. The development of Latin scribere from 'make marks on a surface' to 'write', and the development of legere from 'pick out' to 'read', are not just a matter of "restriction" or "specialisation" of meaning (nor of the addition, or subtraction, of semantic features). In each case, the profiled activity remains much the same. What has changed are the background assumptions (the "theories") against which this activity is profiled.

s. Conclusion

Let us return to Saussure's original insight that a "concept" needs to be characterised both positively (in terms of its actual content), and negatively (in terms of what it is not). Structuralist Semantics chose to separate out these two aspects, proposing a level of designation (the positive content of the signified), and a level of signification (the signified in contrast to other signifieds). This, 1 think, was an er­ror. Just as the Saussurian sign resided in the integration ofthe signi­fied and the signifier, so too the signified resides in the integration of designation and signification. Cognitive Grammar achieves this inte­gration by means of the notion of profile and base. The profile is the concept in its positive aspects, i.e. the entity (or category) actually referred too The base comprises background knowledge that is not specifically designated. But without the base, there can be no profile, and the base, without profiling, lacks structure.

The major achievement of Structuralist Semantics is to have em­phasised the semantic relations between lexical items. Sorne of the

Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics 41

earlier studies of lexical items within the Cognitive Semantics tradi­tion (e.g. Brugman 1981; Coleman and Kay 1981) probably did tend to study words in isolation from other lexical items with which they stand in contrasto But it would certainly not be fair to say that Cog­nitive Semanticists have in general been insensitive to matters per­taining to lexical fields, and to implicit contrasts between lexical items. These implicit contrasts belong in the domain-based knowl­edge against which an entity is profiled. The background knowledge against which a concept is profiled may comprise riot just "encyc1o­pedic" knowledge pertaining to a conceptual domain, but equally, "linguistic" knowledge pertaining to the paradigmatic and syntagma­tic relations that the linguistic unit contracts with other linguistic units.

Notes

1. Cf. Langacker (1987: 11): "Language is symbolic in nature. It makes available to the speaker - for either personal or comrnunicative use - an open-ended set of linguistic signs or expressions, each of which associates a semantic representation of sorne kind with a phonological representation" [hold in original]. Lakoff's (1987: 473) characterisation of constructions as "pairings of form and meaning" can also be taken as an endorsement of the symbolic nature of language.

2. Whether or not an item is stored in memory is a function of"entrenchment" (in tum a function of frequency of successful use; Langacker 1987: 59). Obviously, entrenchment is a matter of degree. There is therefore no clean cut-offpoint between "stored" units and ad hoc coostructed units.

3. This is not to deny that certain facets may be more intrinsic to an expres­sion's meaning, and relevant to just about all its uses; nevertheless, even highly central aspects can sometimes be defeated, and outweighed by other, more circumstantial aspects. See Langacker (1987: 158-161).

4. As a matter of fact, Saussure (in the representation of his thought that has come down to us) appears to shy away from the full implications of his theory. Thus, he observes (1916: 160) that if, ofthe three "synonyms" re­douter, craindre, and avoir peur, redouter did not exist, its meaning would be shared out amongst its competitors. Saussure, therefore, appears to pre­suppose the existence of a conceptual content, which is independent of lan­guage, and which has to be lexicalised, sorne way or other.

42 John R. Taylor

5. This was the principal theoretical import of Berlin and Kay's (1969) work on colour categories. Essentially, Berlin and Kay demonstrated for a se­mantic domain (colour) the same kinds ofuniversal constraints that Jakob­son (1968) had claimed for phonology.

6. Terminology, however, is far from uniformo 7. In maintaining this distinction, Structuralist Semantics aligns itself with a

number of other "two-Ievel" approaches to semantics (e.g. Searle 1980, Bierwisch 1981, Kirsner 1993, Wunderlich 1993). Although these ap­proaches may differ in their details (especially conceming the manner in which "linguistic" meanings are represented and get projected onto ency­clopedic meanings), a common theme is tbe assumption that linguistic meanings are unitary, clearly-defined entities, which lack the rich detail de­rived from experience ofthe world. For discussion, see Taylor (1994; 1995: ch. 14). .

8. For Coseriu, "universals" are to be found, if anywhere, in extralinguistic reality and its categorisation, not in significations. Thus the label "semánti­ca 'universal''' is applied to both prototype theories and theories of neces­sary and sufficient conditions (Coseriu 1990: 252). Coseriu (1977: 10-11) even charges generative grammar with an exclusively onomasiological (and therefore universalist) perspective: "la grarnmaire générative part de la réalité extra-linguistique désignée, ou bien d'une pensée prélinguistique 'universelle' (c'est-a-dire non encore structurée par telle or telle langue), et passe pour ainsi dire a travers et par-dessus les langues pour aboutir a la parole." [generative grarnmar starís from designated extra-linguistic reality, or from 'universal' prelinguistic thought (Le., from thought which is not yet structured by a particular language), and by-passes, so to speak, the lan­guage system, in order to arrive at the utterance.]

9. The proverbial linguist from Mars, on learning that afauteuil is an object for sitting on, which has arms, legs, and a back, could be excused for sup­posing tbat a man giving a piggy-back to his young son, is a fauteuil. The point of this flippant example, of course, is that word meanings are not the ''minimalist'' (cf. Coseriu 1990: 263) constructs envisaged by Structuralist Semantics, but are likely to be extremely rich in detail and background (encyclopedic) assumptions. E.g. knowledge of seating objects pertains not only to the parís of which they are composed, but also to how humans typi­cally interact with these objects.

10. Conceming Pottier's analysis, Coseriu and Geckeler (1981: 42) do indeed raise the question whether we are here dealing with "an analysis of linguis­tic content" or "a description of a series of ... objects, which is to say, of a part of extralinguistic reality". The authors. maintain that although Pottier begins his analysis by considering the objects as such, and the real-world

CognWve Semantics and Structural Semantics 43

features that distinguish them, he proceeds to eliminate the linguistically ir­relevant features, thereby arriving at the (linguisticaIly) "pertinent features". Still, it is legitimate to ask what these "pertinent features" are supposed to be, if not the necessary and sufficient features of check-list theories.

11. For discussion of high and tall, see Dirven and Taylor (1988) and Taylor (in press b).

12. Cf. Coseriu (1977: 10): "Poser l'existence des unités fonctionneIles ne sig­nifie nuIlement qu'on n'admette dans chaque cas qu'une seule 'significa­tion' (= acception), mais au contraire qu'on s'efforce justement de définir les limites, données par la langue, a I'intérieur desqueIles une infmité d'ac­ceptions peuvent se présenter." [To postulate the existence of functional units by no means entails that we aIlow, in each case, only one 'significa­tion', or reading; rather, we attempt to circumscribe the limits, set by the language system, within which an infinity of readings are possible.] (Note that in this passage, "signification" appears to be used in the sense of "de­signation", while ''unité fonctionneIle" corresponds to my"signification".)

13. For sorne observations, see Taylor (1995: 223ss.). 14. Particularly influential has been Brugman' s (1981) analysis of over, sub se­

quently elaborated by Lakoff (1987). 15. In Taylor (1996), I argued, within the Cognitive Grammar framework, for a

unitary, schematic account of the possessive morpheme in English, and against the adequacy of prototype accounts.

16. Sirnilarly, for many grammatical categories, it would be fruitless to search for a unitary phonological representation. In this connection, it is notewor­thy that while Jakobson (1936) insisted on the methodological necessity to assign a constant, albeit highly abstract, semantic value to each of the Rus­sian cases (otherwise, he argued, the linguistic sign would fracture into nu­merous fonn-meaning relationships), he was quite unperturbed by the ab­sence of a unique phonological representation for each of the cases. If the absence of a unique representation can be tolerated with regard to signi­fiers, one wonders why polysemy should be outlawed with signifieds?

17. Coseriu notes that the phenomenon is not unknown in other languages, cf. Gennan steigen. Or consider the English verb grow. His debts grow day by day would be understood to mean that his debts get bigger (Le. that they grow "upwards"). (The example is mine, not Coseriu's.) But it is equaIly possible to defeat the default interpretation: His debts are growing smaller day by day. Coseriu would probably argue, therefore, that "upward motion" is not intrinsic to the semantics of grow - the word "reaIly" means 'change in the vertical extent of an entity'. However, still other uses, e.g. The sound 01 the music grew less as the band marched away (LDCE) suggest an even more schematic sense, i.e. 'become', 'change in state'. But now, the seman-

44 Jo.hn R. Taylor

tic content of grow has become so impoverished, that it is scarcely possible to differentiate the word from other change-of-state verbs, such as become.

18. It is noteworthy that in addressing the linguistic value of c1imb, Coseriu proceeds by abstracting what is common to a range of specific uses. Curi­ously, he fails to implement what is surely the central idea of a structuralist semantics, namely, the possibility of semantic contrasts between c1imb and other items in the same lexical field.

19. But note that metonymic extensions are not based on similarity at aH, but on contiguity (within a conceptual domain). The development of English bead had nothing at all to do with the "similarity", at any level of abstraction, be­tween a prayer and a spherical object on a string.

20. Cf. Coseriu (1977: 17): "Les unités fonctionnelles correspondent d'une fa­Ifon immédiate a des intuitions globales unitaires." [Functional units corres­pond immediately to global unitary irituitions.]

21. No doubt, the use of mouse to refer to the computer gadget, was once a "ca­tegorización de emergencia". Now, however, mouse is the standard termo (What else is one to call the thing?) Do we therefore say that the "value" of mouse as a name for the small mammal has changed? Surely not. Mouse has simply acquired an additional meaning, and the two meanings (which are related in a fairly transparent way) happily coexist.

22. Structuralism is not the only conceivable alternative to a conceptualist se­mantics. On a behaviourist semantics, knowledge of a word resides in fol­lowing the rules for using the word correctly. This is the essence of Witt­genstein's (1978: §43) aphorism that "the meaning of a word is its use in the language".

23. The notion of''theories'' can help explain the conundrum touched on at the beginning of this section, viz., by what right can we base a theory of lan­guage on such irredeemably, subjective entities as "concepts"? One answer is, that each of us attributes to other people a mental life (replete with "concepts") which is very much of a kind with our own, precisely on the basis of a "theory" that other human beings function in much the same way as we do. Cf. Fodor (1980).

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