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Theme 2
Analyzing a Semantic Phenomenon in the text
“New Story of the Hare and Tortoise”
Group 3: BBE – K46
Le Thi Thanh Thuy – A1
Nguyen Thi Thu Ha – A2
Bui Thi Hue – A2
Nguyen Duy Khanh – A2
Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh B – A2
HÀ NỘI, 4 – 2010
1
CONTENTS
Introduction............................................................................................................2
A. Context: New Story of the Hare and Tortoise.................................................2
B. Semantics Phenomena in the story: Metaphor, Synonymy, Antonym, the
Truth of sentences, Grammaticality, Acceptability, and Meaningfulness of the
sentence....................................................................................................................7
I. Metaphor..............................................................................................................7
1. Definition.....................................................................................................7
2. Metaphor used in the text is "climb the organizational ladders"..........7
II. Synonymy and Antonymy.................................................................................7
1. Synonymy....................................................................................................7
a. Definition..................................................................................................7
b. Synonymy in “A new story of the Hare and the Tortoise”..................8
2. Antonymy....................................................................................................9
a. Definition..................................................................................................9
b. Antonymy in “A new story of the Hare and the Tortoise”..................9
III. Polysemy.........................................................................................................10
1. Definition...................................................................................................10
2. Polysemy in “A new story of the Hare and the Tortoise”.....................10
IV. The truth of the sentence...............................................................................12
1. Definition...................................................................................................12
2. Contingently true sentences in “A new story of the Hare and the
Tortoise”..................................................................................................12
V. Grammaticality, Acceptability, and Meaningfulness of the sentences.......13
1. Grammaticality.........................................................................................14
2. Acceptability.............................................................................................14
3. Meaningfulness.........................................................................................14
Introduction
2
Semantics is the study of meaning, usually in language. The word
"semantics" itself denotes a range of ideas, from the popular to the highly
technical. It is often used in ordinary language to denote a problem of
understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of
understanding has been the subject of many formal inquiries, over a long period of
time, most notably in the field of formal semantics. In linguistics, it is the study of
interpretation of signs or symbols as used by agents or communities within
particular circumstances and contexts. Within this view, sounds, facial
expressions, body language, proxemics has a semantic (meaningful) content, and
each has several branches of study. In written language, such things as paragraph
structure and punctuation have semantic content; in other forms of language, there
is other semantic content. And focusing on a context named: “A New story of The
Hare and Tortoise”, we will be looking at the Metaphor, Synonymy, Antonym,
The truth of sentences, Grammaticality, Acceptability, and Meaningfulness of
the sentences which are denoted in this context.
A. Context: New Story of the Hare and Tortoise
Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster.
They decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and
started off the race.
The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then seeing that he was
far ahead of the tortoise, he thought he'd sit under a tree for some time and relax
before continuing the race.
He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on
overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ.
The hare woke up and realized that he'd lost the race. The moral of the story
is that: Slow and steady wins the race.
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This is the version of the story that we've all grown up with.
But then recently, someone told me a more interesting version of this story.
It continues.
The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some Defect
Prevention (Root Cause Analysis). He realized that he'd lost the race only because
he had been overconfident, careless and lax.
If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could have
beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race. The tortoise agreed.
This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to
finish. He won by several miles.
What is the moral of the story? It is: Fast and consistent will always beat
the slow and steady.
If you have two people in your organization, one slow, methodical and
reliable, and the other fast and still reliable at what he does, the fast and reliable
chap will consistently climb the organizational ladder faster than the slow,
methodical chap.
It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to be fast and reliable.
But the story doesn't end here. The tortoise did some thinking this time, and
realized that there's no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently
formatted.
He thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but on
a slightly different route.
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The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping with his self-made
commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at top speed until he
came to a broad river.
The finishing line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river.
The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise trundled
along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and
finished the race.
What is the moral of the story? It is: First identify your core competency
and then change the playing field to suit your core competency.
In an organization, if you are a good speaker, make sure you create
opportunities to give presentations that enable the senior management to notice
you.
If your strength is analysis, make sure you do some sort of research, make a
report and send it upstairs. Working to your strengths will not only get you noticed
but also create opportunities for growth and advancement.
The story still hasn't ended.
The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and
they did some thinking together. Both realized that the last race could have been
run much better.
So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time.
They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank.
There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back.
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On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached
the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they'd
felt earlier.
What is the moral of the story? It is: It's good to be individually brilliant
and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team
and harness each other's core competencies, you'll always perform below par
because there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else
does well.
Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the
relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.
There are more lessons to be learnt from this story.
Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare
decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure.
The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard
as he could. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work
harder and put in more effort.
Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different.
And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.
The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson. When we stop
competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we
perform far better.
When Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO of Coca-Cola in the 1980s, he
was faced with intense competition from Pepsi that was eating into Coke's growth.
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His executives were Pepsi-focused and intent on increasing market share
0.1 per cent a time.
Goizueta decided to stop competing against Pepsi and instead compete
against the situation of 0.1 per cent growth.
He asked his executives what was the average fluid intake of an American
per day? The answer was 14 ounces. What was Coke's share of that? It is two
ounces. Goizueta said Coke needed a larger share of that market.
The competition wasn't Pepsi. It was the water, tea, coffee, milk and fruit
juices that went into the remaining 12 ounces. The public should reach for a Coke
whenever they felt like drinking something.
To this end, Coke put up vending machines at every street corner. Sales
took a quantum jump and Pepsi has never quite caught up since.
To sum up, the story of the hare and tortoise teaches us many things.
Important lessons are:
Fast and consistent will always beat slow and steady
Work to your competencies;
Pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual
performers;
Never give up when faced with failure;
Competing against the situation. Not against a rival.
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B. Semantics Phenomena in the story: Metaphor, Synonymy,
Antonym, the Truth of sentences, Grammaticality, Acceptability,
and Meaningfulness of the sentence
I. Metaphor
1. Definition Metaphor is the transference of meaning from one object to another based
on similarity between these two objects.
2. Metaphor used in the text is "climb the organizational ladders" This is a common metaphor used in everyday life. The author used the
shape of a ladder with different steps from bottom to the top to express the same
thing in life.
The idea of climbing the ladder of life gives a great metaphor for the efforts
and struggles you have to make to be successful in anything you achieve. The
success quote makes a strong point that you need to make sure that all the effort
you are making is getting you to where you want to go. If you want to achieve
something big in your life, you are going to have to work hard and make many
sacrifices; you need to be sure that what you ultimately get is what you really
want.
II. Synonymy and Antonymy
1. Synonymy
a. Definition
Synonyms are different words with identical or very similar meanings.
Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a
synonym is called synonymy.
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b. Synonymy in “A new story of the Hare and the Tortoise”
• Consistent – Steady – Reliable
- “Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady”.
- “It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to be fast and reliable”.
- “Consistent”- continuing to happen or develop in the same way
- “Steady” – continuing or developing gradually or without stopping, and not
likely to change
- “Reliable” – able to be trusted
•• Bank – Side
“The finishing line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river.
The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the tortoise
trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking
and finished the race”.
- “Bank” – land along side of the river or lake
- “Side” – (part of an area) one of the two areas that are on the left or on the
right
••• Win – Beat
- “Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady”.
- “Beat” – to get the most points / votes in a game or race or competition (=
win)
•••• People – Chap
“If you have two people in your organization, one slow, methodical and
reliable, and the other fast and still reliable at what he does, the fast and reliable
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chap will consistently climb the organizational ladder faster than the slow,
methodical chap”.
- “Chap” – a man /guy
- “People” – the plural of person to refer to men, women and children.
2. Antonymy
a. Definition
Antonymy is the words that are opposite in meanings and have the same
part of speech. The basic property of two words that are antonyms is that they
share all but one semantic property. The property which they do not share is one
present in one but absent in the other. Because of characteristic of antonymy and
polysemy, polysemantic words may have many antonyms for different meanings.
b. Antonymy in “A new story of the Hare and the Tortoise”
* Fast – slow
“Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady.”
“Fast” - moving or capable of moving at high speed but “slow”- moving at only
low speed (not quick or fast)
** Lose – win
“He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident,
careless and lax.” The word “lose” (lost) is to be failed in the race.
But, “He won by several miles.” The word “win” (won) is successful or victorious
in the race.
*** End – continue
“But the story doesn't end here” – the word “end” means a final part of something
(the story). (This sentence means the story is continued)
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“Someone told me a more interesting version of this story. It continues” – persist
this story, don’t stop.
**** Start – finish
“This time, the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish.”
- “Start” – begin the race from a particular point in time or space
- “Finish” – reach the end of the race.
***** Working as a team – individual performers
“Important lessons is pooling resources and working as a team will always beat
individual performers”
- “Working as a team” – come together as a group to achieve a common goal.
- “Individual performers”– separate or single work.
III. Polysemy
1. Definition
Polysemy is a linguistic phenomenon in which one word has different
related meanings, polysemantic word. If different meanings associated with one
form are perceived as related, they constitute a polysemantic word. Polysemy is a
property of single word. Polysemy is characteristic of most words in English.
2. Polysemy in “A new story of the Hare and the Tortoise” a. BEAT
In the sentence “Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady”,
the word “beat” is a polysemantic word. Let’s compare it with the sentences:
“They beat me” or “They beat at the door”. In original meaning, the word “beat”
means strike someone or something like two sentences above. But the word
“beat” in the essay doesn’t mean that the hare who fast and consistent strike the
tortoise who slow and steady. It expresses that the hare win the tortoise, the person
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who fast and consistent will always win the one who slow and steady. This case is
similar to the sentence:” The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that
there's no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted.”
b. PLAY
“First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to
suit your core competency.” “Play” in this sentence means put on or take part in a
recent field (career, life) which you are good at and can develop your strength. It’s
related from its first meaning – engage in a game or activity for enjoyment like in
the sentence: “The children were playing outside.”
c. POOR
Having the same source with the word “poor” in “Mark Twain is a poor
man” – lacking sufficient money to live at a standard considered comfortable or
normal in a society but the word “poor” in the sentence “It's good to be
individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able
to work in a team and harness each other's core competencies, you'll always
perform below par because there will always be situations at which you'll do
poorly and someone else does well” refers to meaning: worse than usual, expected,
or desirable of a low or inferior standard or quality. You lack skills, knowledge or
experiences and do worse than someone.
d. EAT
This word is used to show the action of putting food into the mouth and
chew and swallow it like “He was eating a hotdog”. From the same origins, the
word “eat” in this text “When Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO of Coca-Cola in
the 1980s, he was faced with intense competition from Pepsi that was eating into
Coke's growth” has related meaning. In this case, it means Pepsi bothers or
dominates Coke’s growth in market at that time.
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IV. The truth of the sentence
1. Definition
There are two types of the truth of sentences: necessarily true and
contingently true.
Necessarily true sentence: is one that is true in all possible circumstances or by
virtue of linguistic alone.
Contingently true sentence: is one whose truth – value might have been, or
might be different in other circumstances.
2. Contingently true sentences in “A new story of the Hare and the
Tortoise”
a. Slow and steady wins the race.
This sentence means that even if someone or something is slow but steady,
they still can beat their rivals and become a winner. It should especially be noted
that slow and steady will only win the race if someone’s opponent acts like a
retard in the story. In any other case, slow and steady won’t win any race at all.
For example, in the story, when the Hare fail, he did some soul - searching, he
realized that he had lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless
and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could
have beaten him, so he decided to be fast but still reliable.
b. Fast and consistent will beat the slow and steady.
In this situation, “Slow and steady” does not win the race anymore. And the
Hare is the winner who is fast but still reliable. Because the circumstance changes,
the old strategy is not suitable at all, so that the Hare beat the Tortoise.
c. Work to your competences.
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When the tortoise realized that he can never beat the Hare unless he doesn’t
change into a different route. Therefore, he identifies his core competency again
and then changes the playing field to suit his core competency: the finishing line
was a couple of kilometers on the other side of the river. The Hare, in keeping
with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and ran at
top speed until he came to this broad river. The Hare now can not finish the race
because he cannot swim, even if he was still fast and reliable, he was the loser in
the race in which the Tortoise chose the route. In this situation, “work to your
competences” is completely right.
d. Pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual
performers.
After competing in a different route, the Hare and the Tortoise, by this time,
had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized
that the last race could have been run much better. So they decided to do the last
race again, but to run as a team this time. At this time, the Tortoise doesn’t need to
change his competences anymore, because, in the first part of the race, the hare
carried the tortoise till the second part of the race, riverbank. After that, the
tortoise took over and swam across the river with the hare on his back. Both the
Hare and the Tortoise are winners now. The moral “Pooling resources and
working as a team will always beat individual performers” becomes true at this
moment.
V. Grammaticality, Acceptability, and Meaningfulness of the sentences
When mentioning the meaning of the sentence, we talk about three aspects:
the grammaticality, acceptability, and meaningfulness of it. This is another
semantic phenomenon that we consider in the text given.
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First, grammaticality means a phrase, a clause, or a sentence which follow
the grammatical rules. Second, acceptability can be understood as appropriateness,
but a linguistic item such as word, phrase, clause or sentence which can be
acceptable to one group of people is not acceptable to another. Third,
meaningfulness considers how well-formed that sentence is semantically. These
three concepts are interrelated to one another.
In the text given, we want to clarify these three aspects in the two
sentences:
“Slow and steady wins the race”, and
“Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady.”
1. Grammaticality
Firstly, in fact, these sentences don’t follow grammatical rules, and are both
considered ungrammatical. The adjectives “slow”, “steady”, “fast”, “consistent”
should be turned into nouns and the verb “win” should be used in its bare
infinitive form to make the sentences grammatical.
2. Acceptability
Secondly, in term of “acceptability”, the two sentences are unacceptable
because the verbs “beat” and “win” don’t go with either “slow and steady” or “fast
and consistent”. These verbs should be used for people only.
3. Meaningfulness
About “meaningfulness”, it is said that sometimes grammatical sentences
are not necessarily meaningful or acceptable. Even some sentences though fully
grammatical and perhaps also meaningful are, for various reasons, unacceptable.
In this case, although the two sentences are ungrammatical and unacceptable, they
are both meaningful. “Slow and steady wins the race” means that consistency,
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although progress may be slow, will eventually be more beneficial than being
hasty or careless just to get something done. “Fast and consistent will always beat
the slow and steady” implies the person who goes fast and carefully will surely
reach the goal earlier than the other who works slowly even though they are the
same consistent.
In short, the two sentences “Slow and steady wins the race”, and “Fast and
consistent will always beat the slow and steady” are examples of ungrammatical
and unacceptable but meaningful sentences. This is a normal semantic
phenomenon that we can see in language.
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