semanticsandpragmatics

UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS

• Phonetics studies the physiological aspects of speech, the articulation of sound.

• Phonology focuses on the linguistic use of sounds/phonemes.

• Morphology deals with words structure based on morphemes (take into account that these are derivational and inflectional morphemes).

• Syntax studies the way words are combined to create bigger units.

• Lexicon is concerned with the words of a language.

The way they are organized is our mind is called mental lexicon. They are organized in categories known as semantic fields. Lexical items are lexemes.

FULL LISTING HYPOTHESIS VS. COMPONENT MORPHS

It seems more likely that we have all the morphemes stored in our mind and, by acquiring several grammatical rules, we build up words by combining them.

Pig/Pork: In English the difference between the animal and the food has been lexicalized; whereas in Spanish it only differs in our mental lexicon.

Different languages have different patterns of organization.

Words are also organized in our mind according to sense relations: a word makes us think of another one because of certain relation they have: antonomy, synonymy, and so on.

Pragmatics → has to do with the meaning, it studies interactional conversations and -more concretely- the intended meaning of the speakers.

SEMANTICS vs. PRAGMATICS → To relate both terms we could say that meaning is the result of semantics + pragmatics.

Semantic value is commonly used and already known by all the speakers; whereas pragmatics is more related to the context and may be different among several people.

Meaning:

• Bottom-up: we identify each part so we can presuppose bigger things before being expose to them.

• Top-down: we start from the bigger units. If someone is speaking about a topic and suddenly you don´t understand a word exactly, you are able to recognize it.

Definition of word: Although it is impossible to find one definition that suits in all languages, a word is said to be the smallest unit of language that can be used by itself, the minimum free

GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES_SEMÁNTICA Y PRAGMÁTICA_ 2011/2012_2º SEMESTRE Página 1

form. It is a sociological real entity for language uses. However there are words that can´t go free such as, but, and...

Classification of words:

• Lexical/content words (house, boy).

• Grammatical/function words (is, would).

Make a distinction between type/token and form/expression.

• Type is a different unit of something.

• Token is the number of times a unit is repeated.

• Form is the way in which a word appears.

• Expression, never mind the form but whether the meaning is the same.

In linguistics is better to talk about lexemes, rather than words. A lexeme is the abstract unit underlying a set of grammatical variances.

Lexeme = expression. Are/is/am → is the same word/lexeme because of mean. Found: find; found1 (to establish); found2 (shape by meeting).

As the definition states, “ a lexeme is an abstract unit underlying a set of grammatical variance”, goes, went, going are variation or forms of the lexeme/word/expression “go”.

PARANOMASIA:

“The reason why most people change their minds is that they never find one worth keeping”.

Minds → two lexemes (mind:anatomy / change your opinion).

MORPHEMES:

• Lexical/Grammatical and free/bound morphemes.

• Lexicalization: change from bound to free morphemes (ex → exwife, teen → thirteen).

PRAGMATICS:

Competence vs. Performance (Chomsky)

Two approaches to pragmatics: speaker meaning and utterance interpretation , taking only one of these sides has important limitations. A more reasonable approach: meaning vs. interaction; dynamic process.

“Meaning is not something which is inherent in the words alone, nor is it produced by the speaker alone. Making meaning is a dynamic process”.


Levels of meaning:

• Sentence or word meaning (expression meaning/abstract meaning).

◦ A lion ate a man / A man ate a lion → it is related to syntax because the order of words is important.

• Speaker´s meaning (utterance/contextual meaning).

◦ Can you pass me the salt? → What a speaker tries to convey when he uses the language.

The literal meaning would be if that person is capable of throwing the salt, but it is not what the speaker intends to communicate. It involves reference and truth. In speaker´s meaning it has no sense to talk about unicorns or the King of France because you are referring to something real, that exists. They only have sense in abstract meaning.

The presupposition of homogeneity is wrong because it is different according to the speaker. For me something can be beautiful but not for her.


UNIT 2: LEXICAL SEMANTICS

When we refer to the meaning of a word, we are usually talking about what semanticists would more precisely call sense (or intention).

• Sense is the defining properties of a word, the list of attributes that we find to a greater or lesser degree in the dictionary. Sense is more stable while reference is quite changeable all the time (depending on the thing/person we are referring to in a particular context).

• A word reference is the object it refers to in the real world. However, there are cases of expression which in a normal everyday conversation never refer to different things, i.e, in most everyday situations they have constant reference.

The reference to an expression is often a thing or a person in the world, whereas the sense of an expression is not a thing at all. The sense of an expression is an abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user.

A referring expression is an expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone, i.e. used with a particular referent in mind Fred hit me.

DENNOTATION VS. CONNOTATION:

Denotative meaning:

Denotative meaning is also known as cognitive, descriptive, conceptual, referential, propositional, factual or objective. The denotation of a content word is the category, or set, of all its potential referents. The relationship between a word, its meaning and its denotation is often depicted in the semiotic triangle. A word in not directly linked to its denotation but only indirectly via its descriptive meaning. (e.g. the meaning of dog is a concept that determines the category DOG of all dogs)

LEXEME SENSE DENOTATION REFERENCE

Dog A carnivorous domesticated canine animal that is often kept to guard a building

All those objects in the real word to which the lexeme dog can apply

Particular instances of dog on a particular occasion: my dog, that dog, the terrier on the chair, my aunt´s doberman

Connotative meaning:

Words often have personal and cultural associations which, although peripheral and more subjective, contributive to their meaning. These additional strands of meaning are referred to as connotations.


• Connotations are much vaguer than denotations and much more variable and culture bound, e.g. dog (Western culture vs. Arabic world).

• Words can have the same denotative meaning but differ in connotative meaning:

o Woman/Lady (both denote “an adult female human being”)

o Politician/statesman

• Words can be always positive (e.g. generous) or generally negative (e.g. mean) although in a particular context, they can be used ironically to mean just the opposite.

• Other words can be both positive and negative depending on the context. E.g. curious.

• Connotations have to be very much taken into account in issues like translation or language learning (e.g. gregarious / gregario).

• Some words have only connotative or emotive meaning because the denotative meaning has been subordinated or even eclipsed: this fucking knife!

SENSE RELATIONS:

• Paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic relationship

o Paradigmatic relations:

Synonymy:

• The term implies that there can be two or more words with the “same meaning”.

• However, strict synonymy rarely exists, it is usually partial synonymy (difficult to “exchange” one word for another, the issue of collocations, e.g. observe/look at the stars; happy/merry (but “happy birthday” and “merry Christmas”)

• Choice of synonyms may also depend on “social factors” like register or degree of formality: e.g. thorax/chest.

• In the case of English (and because of its history), we can find a fair number of doublets, with the same propositional meaning but a difference in use (the Romance word being more formal): forgive/pardon, flood/deluge.


• Differences between synonyms may be due to different varieties of a language (e.g. British vs. American English / Peninsular Spanish vs. Latin American Spanish).

• Some synonyms can be used metaphorically while others cannot. joya/alaja, pie/pata.

• It is important to notice that words “having similar meanings” do not necessarily belong to the same grammatical category. E.g. in my opinion, in my view (prepositional group) but as far as I am concerned.

• Finally, using synonyms is a sign of stylistic variation and denotes a richness of vocabulary (especially in written texts).

As opposed to synonymy (and other sense relations), antonym is often binary.

• Second, not all words have an opposite.

• Third, one word can have more than one antonym because when we talk about the “opposite” of a word, we are in fact referring to its sense (old- young/new).

• There are three main types of antonym:

o Gradable antonym.

Have a relative rather than an absolute value: big/small, good/bad, hot/cold.

Because they are gradable, we can use them in the comparative and superlative form and they can be modified by adverbs (extremely, rather, very).

o Complementaries.

They are mutually exclusive (that is, if you are one you cannot be the other) and usually come in pairs: life/death, true/false.

Although occasionally they may have “middle grounds”, married/single (separated, widowed, divorced).

o Converses.

Involve a change of perspective and interdependence of the two terms (that is, one presupposes the other):


buy/sell; teach/learn; parent/child; husband/wife; come/go.

Converses are difficult to acquire by children (and learners) who often confuse pairs like tend and borrow, teach and learn, imply and infer difficult for many adults too).

o Dichotomization is one of the most important intrinsic features of

language structure: a word tends to conjure up its antonym if there is one.

Multiple incompatibility: days of the week, seasons, physical state system…

Homonymy:

• Same form, different meaning.

• Two kinds of homonymy: homophony and homography: which/witch (homophone) wind/wind (noun-verb) (homographs but not homophones).

Polysemy:

• The same lexeme has multiple meanings; e.g cold (temperature, food, character, etc).

• There is a “thread” connecting the different meanings, they are all connected to the “basic sense”.

• This connection is not always transparent: e.g. bank (river) / bank (finance).To find out whether two expressions are polysemous or only homophones, we can resort to etymology. E.g bear (animal) and bear (suffer) are homonyms because they come from different etymons, they are thus different lexemes even if their form coincides. E.g. bank and bank are etymologically related, although this relation is not transparent to us any longer.

Superordination and hyponomy:

• The vocabulary of a language is multi-layered, with a basic level (most common terms) acquired during childhood and at least one level below and one above this basic level.

• In other words, some senses are included within others. This general sense is the superordinate and the others are the hyponyms.


• Usually, superior levels are more general (e.g. flower) and the more subordinate a level gets, the more specific the term (e.g. red vs. scarlet).

PIG

Sow Boar Piglet

TREE

Beech Oak Olive

VIRTUE

Honesty

EMOTION

Fear

NICE

Tasty

• Meronymy:

o It is a part whole concept: that is, if X is a meronym of Y, X is part of Y and

the other way round, Y is the holonym of X. From Greek meron (“part”) and holos (“whole”). Wheel is a meronym of car / sleeve is a meronym of blouse, jacket.

o As opposed to hyponymy, meronymy is not a transitive relationship. That

is, if dog is a hyponym of animal and Alsatian is a hyponym of dog, then Alsarian is also a hyponym of animal. Finger is a meronym of hand and hand is a meronym of arm but fingers are not a meronym of arm.

o The degree of integration of a part with its whole is an important variable

in meronymy (e.g. finger hand; beard-face).

LEXICAL FIELD:

• It is a group of related lexemes (according to the sense relations seen in the points above). A lexical field is characterized by the following features.

o The lexemes are of the same word class.


o Their meaning have something in common.

o They are interrelated by precisely definable meaning relations.

o The group is complete (although their size can vary and some lexical fields

are really small while others are huge).

o E.g. thick and thin from a lexical field of two members because:

The lexemes are of the same word class=adjectives.

Their meanings have something in common=descriptive physical aspect.

They are interrelated by precisely definable meaning relations=antonymy.

The group is complete (although their size can vary and some lexical fields are really small while others are huge).

COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS AND SEMANTIC FEATURES:

• According to the semantic theory of componential analysis or lexical decomposition, a word can be broken down into a small number of semantic components or semantic features sufficient to distinguish it from other words in the same semantic (lexical) field or domain (kinship terms, colour terms, the human body, plants).

HUMAN ADULT MALE

Man + + +

Woman + +

Boy + +

girl +

• The distinctive components are referred to as diagnostic components, as opposed to the common components that are the components of meaning that are common to a group of words.

• The analysis of lexemes into semantic components allows us to formally define the conceptual sense of words and it also provides an economical means of representing sense relations like hyponymy and incompatibility.


COLLOCATIONAL GRIDS:

• Abstract terms are less easy to break down into components of meaning. It is easier for us to give examples of collocations involving them rather than attempt to define them. A number of sample collocations will help to narrow down the meaning of the word in question and distinguish it from words used in similar contexts.

• Collocations can be presented on grids:

Your clothes Your mind Emphasis Out of the way

change + + +

shift + +

flowers sweetener teeth light additives eyelashes

False + +

artificial + + + +


UNIT 3: COGNITIVE SEMANTICS

ICONICITY VS. ARBITRARINESS

• Arbitrariness of language.

• Conventional (arbitrary) link between an object and its phonetic representation. The English word dog could be just as easily blat, flig, hoder or any other combination of sounds allowed by the English language.

• Saussure´s concept of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign:

• That the linguistic sign is arbitrary is immediately obvious when we remember that a particular object usually has different names (or acoustic images) in different languages: chair, silla, chaise.

• Most language is arbitrary but there are cases of iconicity, i.e. cases where language maps onto reality and seems to represent it to a certain extent.

• Resemblance between form and meaning in language.

• Different types of iconicity, the most obvious being onomatopoeic resemblance: oink-oink (pigs), crash, bang.

• “Sound symbolism” (not very “testable” but there seem to be some grounds for supporting this point up to a certain extend).

o [i] = “small, think, weak”: little, bit, thin, diminuto.

o [a], [o], [u] = “big, thick, heavy”: large, grand, grande.

• These “sounds symbols” are known as phonaesthemes” (J.R. Firth) and can be exploited by writers (e.g. Lilliput vs. Brobdingnag).

• Iconicity at the grammatical level: e.g. the plural is generally longer in practically all languages.

o CAT

o CAT-S.

CATEGORIES AND PROTOTYPE THEORY:

• Cognitive science:

o How to the human mind works, how it receives information from the

environment via the sense and processes this information, recognizing what is perceived, comparing it to former data, classifying it and storing it in the memory.


o Emphasis on the exploration of the concepts and categories we use.

• Categorization is the fundamental notion of cognitive science. Categorizing means to perceive something as something of a kind.

• The traditional view of categorization is shaped by the model of “necessary and sufficient conditions” (NSC model) that goes back to Aristotle. The traditional model of categorization (check list model) exactly matches with the componential analysis (binary semantic components) and it was characterized by the following features:

o Categorization depends on a fixed set of features.

o Each condition is absolutely necessary.

o The conditions are binary (yes-no).

o Category membership is binary too.

o Categories have clear boundaries.

o All members of a category are of equal status.

E.g. “cat”

• Mammal.

• Hair.

• Four legs.

• Whiskers.

• Tail.

• Meowing.

• See in darkness.

• However, there are times when it is not at all easy to decide what category something belongs to (fuzzy cases).

• In order to “solve” this problem, in the mid 1970s, psycholinguist Eleanor Rosch introduced what has come to be known as Prototype Theory.

• Prototype theory challenged the traditional tenets of categorization (i.e. the check-list model). Many experiments were carried out to find out whether:

o Category membership was a matter of degree more than a binary issue.


o Categories had boundaries or in fact they were fuzzy at the edge.

o The defining features were always strictly necessary and binary too.

• Categories have a “graded structure”, that is, they have some prototypical members that represent the category best and other members that do it to a lesser extend but are still good examples, while others only enjoy a marginal status and we don´t know assign them to their category automatically (i.e. the reaction time was longer in this experiments).

• Since prototypical examples are what comes to our mind first, we tend to exclude other cases (especially if they are less prototypical) as long as there is no reason to do otherwise.

o E.g. There is a bird on the window sill. (nobody would think of an ostrich

on the window sill).

• Prototypes, however, are very often culture-bound and learnt earlier.

• As opposed to the precious model of categorization, PT is characterized by the following features:

o Graded structure: the members of a category are not of equal status.

o Prototypes are best examples.

o No set of necessary conditions (some members – especially the least

prototypical – will not have some of the defining features).

o Family resemblance (Wittgenstein): category members are connected by

resemblance and by similarity to the prototype.

o Graded membership: category membership is not a yes or no matter but a

matter of degree.

o Categories have fuzzy boundaries (e.g. is the whale a fish? Is it a mammal?)

• Problems with PT:

o Prototypes cannot be “exemplars” but are surely abstract concepts that fix

certain features and leave others open.

o Which features make up the prototype? The concept of “cue validity” (i.e.

feature that applies to a high proportion of members of the category and to a low proportion of non-members; e.g. “having feathers” has a high cue validity as opposed to “having wings”, which applies to non-members of a category BIRD, i.e. insects).


o Is a family resemblance really so obvious) E.g. husky, wolf and poodle.

o In order for prototypes to serve as reference points of categorization they

must be defined by a set of crucial features. And it is these features that must be checked in order to judge the similarity to the prototype (rather than physical resemblance).

o The degree of similarity and membership depends on the given context,

namely on the range of rival categories: wolves are non-members of the category DOG, but wolves are more similar to dogs than cows. Both belong to the superordinate category CANINE. In turn, cows are more similar to dogs than crabs are (superordinate category: MAMMALS), crabs are more similar to dogs than potatoes, potatoes more similar than stones…

o The hierarchical organization (inclusiveness) of our category system.

The basic level. What is this?

o An object can always be categorized at different levels of generality. There

is a medium, level of generality that is preferred in thinking and communicating. This is called the basic level of categorization.

Level Categories

Superordinate Garment Vehicle Animal Colour

Basic level Trousers, skirt, shirt, bra, jacket

Bicycle, car, bus, truck, motorbike

Dog, cat, horse, bear, rabbit, tiger, lion

White, black, red, yellow, green, blue, brown

Subordinate Blue jeans… Racing bike… Colue… Olive green…

COGNITIVE METAPHOR AND METONYMY. CULTURAL AND COGNITIVE MODELS.

INTRODUCTION:

• The traditional view of metaphor vs. conceptual metaphor.

• Lakoff & Johnson (Metaphors we live by, 1980,2003).

• New definition of metaphor as: conceptualization of one mental domain in terms of another (pervasive in everyday language) = MAPPINGS

• Metaphorical expressions are linguistic expressions that is the surface realization of a cross-domain mapping LOVE IS JOURNEY


o Look how far we´ve come.

o They will go their separate ways.

o We are at a crossroads.

o Their marriage is on the rocks.

• Source domain/ Target domain

o Journey/Love

• Typically from more physical concepts to more abstract concepts (embodiment).

TYPES OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR

• Structural metaphors = one concept is metaphorically understood in terms of another (e.g. LOVE IS A JOURNEY).

• Orientational metaphors = spatial orientation based on our physical and cultural experiences (e.g. HAPPY IS UP / SAD IS DOWN).

o I´m feeling up.

o That boosted my spirits.

o I´m feeling down.

Physical basis: Drooping posture typically goes along with sadness and depression, erect posture with a positive emotional state.

• Ontological metaphors: derived from our need as human beings to refer, categorize, quantify, etc. We do so when counting time into hours, minutes, etc. We need to establish limits:

o Entity and substance metaphors: viewing events, activities, emotions,

ideas, etc. as entities and substances (e.g. INFLATION IS AN ENTITY).

We need to combat inflation.

Inflation is backing us into a corner.

THE MIND IS A MACHINE (I´m a little rusty today).

THE MIND IS A BRITTLE OBJECT (The experience shattered him).

o “Container” metaphors and the visual field: even when there is no natural

physical boundary that can be viewed as defining a container, we impose boundaries –marking off territory so that it has an inside and a bounding


surface. Your field of vision defines a boundary of the territory, namely, the part that you can see.

VISUAL FIELDS ARE CONTAINERS:

The ship is coming into view.

I have him in sight.

He´s out of sight now.

STATES ARE CONTAINERS:

He is in love.

He fell into a depression.

o Personification

Inflation is eating up our profits.

His religion tells him that he cannot drink fine French wines.

Life has cheated me.

Inflation has given birth to a money minded generation.

• Metaphors are coherent systems (TIME IS MONEY (spend, waste, save, invest) > TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE (run out of time) > TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY (Thank you for your time)) but there are some expressions that show somewhat isolated and unsystematic (fossilized) metaphors, which are no longer very productive.

• These appear in fixed expressions like “the foot of the mountain” or “the shoulder of the mountain” (A MOUNTAIN IS A PERSON).

• GROUNDING: we typically conceptualize the non physical in terms of the physical.

o E.g. TIME IS SPACE (prepositions).

• Cultural similarities and differences.

METONYMY:

• As happens with metaphor, it is not a rhetorical figure but one of the ways human beings conceptualize and understand reality.

• It is also reflected in everyday language, even if we are not aware of using it.


• Metaphor is principally a way of conceiving one thing in terms of another while metonymy has primarily a referential function –that is, allows us to use one entity to stand for another.

He likes to read the Marquis de Sade.

• Metonymy is not only a referential device, it also provides understanding and implies focusing on one aspect and not on another.

o We need a couple of strong bodies for our team.

o We need a couple of good heads for our team.

o We need a couple of pretty faces for our team.

*In our Western culture, the metonymy “face for the person” is very common. Our face identifies us (photographs, profiles, etc.)

• As in the case of metaphor, metonymies are not isolated but systematic.

• Typical cases:

o Part for the whole (aka synecdoque): face for the person

We need some new faces around here

Get your butt over here!

o Producer for the product:

“I have a Ford”

o Object used for user:

“The buses are on strike”

o Institution for people

“The Government is trying to fight the crisis”

o Place for the institution

“Moncloa is receiving several mandataries this week”


UNIT 4: CLAUSE SEMANTICS

Clause:

Ideational meaning

Interpersonal METAFUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE (HALLIDAY)

Textual meaning

Each of the three metafunctions is about a different aspect of the word, and is concerned with a different mode of meaning of clauses:

• Ideational (referential or experimental) metafunction is about the natural world in the broadest sense, including our own consciousness, and is concerned with clauses as representations. The clause is conceived as a representation of our experience. Language is used to conceptualize reality.

• Interpersonal metafunction is about the social world, especially the relationship between speaker and hearer, and is concerned with clauses as exchanges: how languages in texts create particular social relationships between the writer and reader.

• Textual metafunction is about the verbal world, especially the flow of information in a text, and is concerned with clauses as messages: how texts are organized to carry different meanings.

The functions of the languages are reflected in the structure of a clause, in each metafunction an analysis of a clause gives a different kind of structure composed from a different set of elements. In the ideational metafunction, a clause is analysed in terms of transitivity structure, involving the linguistic expression of process, participant and circumstance, with different participant types for different process types. In the interpersonal metafunction, a clause is analysed in terms of the mood structure. In the textual metafunction, a clause is analysed in terms of both the thematic and information structure.

We are going to focus in the ideational mode of meaning, that is, the clause as representation of our experience.

• In the process of representing, the clause “plays a central role, because it embodies a general principle for modeling experience – namely, the principle that reality is made up Of PROCESSES” (Halliday 1985: 106), that is, our experience consists of things going on around us (outer experience) an inside us (iiner experience). Those “goings on” consists of happening, doing, sensing, meaning, being and becoming.

• TRANSITIVITY is “a basic semantic system that construes the world of experience into a manageable set of process types” (Ibid).


Processes participants and circumstances:

• A process consists, basically, of three main components: the process itself, the participants in the process and the circumstances associated with the process. All of them provide the frame of reference for interpreting our experience of what goes on in the world (“who does what to whom in what circumstance”).

• “The concepts of process, participant and circumstance are semantic categories which explain in the most general way how phenomena of the real world are represented as linguistic structures”. (Halliday 1985: 109).

Type of element Typically realized by

(i) Process Verbal group

(ii) Participant Nominal group

(iii) Circumstance Adverbial group or prepositional phrase

Types of process:

• MATERIAL PRCESSES are processes of “doing”. These processes involve an ACTOR (the logical subject) or the one that does the deed (usually human but no necessarily so). Some material processes, but not all, can also have a second participant (GOAL) at which the doing is “directed”, i.e. an entity does something to another entity. Some authors also talk about PATIENT, but not all goals “suffer” the process in the same way, this is why the more general term GOAL is preferable.

E.g. The man killed the pig.

When the process is “extended” towards a goal, it has been traditionally called “transitive verbs” as opposed to “intransitive” ones. Finally, it is important to point out that material processes can also be abstract doings, not necessarily physical ones (e.g. resign).

• MENTAL PROCESSES are processes of “feeling”, “thinking” and “perceiving”. Clauses expressing material and mental processes are different in meaning (semantically) and this is reflected grammatically too. Halliday distinguishes five main differences, we can add a sixth one too:

o In a clause of mental process, there is always a participant who is human

or “humanized”: the SENSER. This explains why it would be so odd to come across a clause like “it liked…” when talking about a cat and why speakers prefer “humanizing” the subject and say “she liked the milk”. This distinction between human (or “conscious”) and non-human (or “non- conscious”) is not relevant in material processes.


o The thing “sensed” or “liked” in mental processes. It is usually a thing or a

fact. This is called PHENOMENON.

o Difference in tenses. Mental processes cannot take place in the continuous

from as opposed to material processes, especially in the opposition present simple vs. present continuous (because of the meaning or aspect of the tenses.

o Material processes can be substituted by the verb “do” since they are

processes of “doing” while mental processes cannot.

He can away What he did was run away. What did he do?

o While material processes can be of two types (transitive or intransitive), all

mental processes potentially involve both a senser and a phenomenon, even if they are not present in the clause.

Tom knows.

SUB-TYPES OF MENTAL PROCESSES: we can distinguish three main subtypes:

• PERCEPTION (seeing, hearing, etc.).

• AFFECTION (linking, fearing, etc.).

• COGNITION (thinking, knowing, understanding, etc.).

RELATIONAL PROCESSES are processes of “being”, but not in the sense of “existing”, but in the sense of establishing a relation between two elements, in English, there are three main sub-types_

• INTENSIVE: “s is a” as in “Helen is pretty”.

• CIRCUMSTANTIAL: “s is at a” as in “Helen is in Madrid”.

• POSSESIVE: “s has a” as in “Helen has a car”.

Each of these can be:

• Attribute: “a is an attribute of x” (they are not reversible). In the attribute mode, an entity /the CARRIER) has some quality ascribed to it (the ATTRIBUTE) or is being assigned to a class.

• Identifying: “a is the identity of s” (they are reversible). In other words, one entity (the IDENTIFIER) is used to identity another (the IDENTIFIED).


attributive Identifying

Intensive Helen is pretty Helen is the teacher

Circumstantial Helen is in Madrid Tomorrow is Wednesday

Possessive Helen has a car The car is Helen’s

Helen is pretty Helen is the prettiest one

• BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES are processes of (typically human) physiological and psychological behavior, e.g. breathing: coughing, smiling, dreaming, staring, etc. However, they do not have clearly defined characteristics of their own, in other words, they are partly like material processes and partly like mental processes. The participant who is behaving is called BEHAVER and id typically a conscious being (like the “sense”) but the process is more like one of “doing” and it is simply called PROCESS.

o (near material) processes of consciousness represented as forms of

behavior, e.g. look, watch, stare, listen, think, worry, dream, etc.

o (near verbal) processes manifesting degrees of consciousness, e.g. cry,

laugh, smile, frown, sigh, whine, etc.

o other physiological processes, e.g. breathe, cough, faint, yawn, pee, etc.

o (near material) bodily postures and pastimes, e.g. sing, dance, lie (down),

sit (down), etc.

• VERBAL PROCESSES are processes of “saying”. The main participant is the SAYER, which does not need to be human but anything that puts out a signal, like a notice, a watch, etc. In addition to the SAYER they can also include three more participants:

o The RECEIVER is the one to whom the saying is directed (and can become

the subject is a passive voice):

She told me the whole truth.

I was told the whole truth.

o The VERBIAGE can be the content of what is said or the name of the

saying:

She told me about her plans for the weekend.

She asked me a question. They made a statement.


o The TARGET is the entity that is targeted by the process of saying:

She always praised him to her friends.

• EXISTENTIAL PROCESSES represent something that happens or exists:

o There is a fly in my soup.

They typically have the verb “to be” but also other verbs like “to exists, remain, arise, occur, come about, happen or take place”. The object or event which is being said to exist is labeled EXISTENT.

• METEOROLOGICAL PROCESSES like “it´s raining” can be construed as:

o Existential processes: “there was a storm”.

o Material events: “the wind´s blowing”. “The sun is shining”.

o Relational attributes: “It´s foggy”, “It´s cold”.

FORCE:

• Prototypical agents include features such as animacy, intention, motivation, responsibility and control of the process:

o Tommy splashed us with mud.

• Force refers to inanimate agents. “Forces” instigate and initiate processes but cannot control it because they are not “responsible” or “intentional” agents.

o An earthquake destroyed most of the city.

o Anxiety can ruin your health.

AFFECTED SUBJECT:

• Not all material processes involve a voluntary action carried out by an Agent. When the participant (even if animate) is neither controlling nor initiating the action, we can describe it as an affected subject.

PROCESSES OF TRANSFERS:

• They are material processes which involve three participants: (e.g. give, send, lend, charge, pay, offer, owe, etc.)

o Agent.

o Recipient or beneficiary.

o Affected.


• The recipient is a central participant, encoding the one who receives the transferred material.

• The beneficiary is the optional participant for whom some service is done.

• The difference is also encoded syntactically “to” vs. “for” (indirect object).

• Both recipient and beneficiary can appear in the same clause:

o She gave me a present for my daughter.

Activity 1. Identify the italicised participant as Recipient or Beneficiary:

(1) Don’t forget to send us a postcard – RECIPIENT.

(2) My brother-in-law has been offered a job analysing mud for an oil company – RECIPIENT.

(3) Can I get you something to eat? - BENEFICIARY

(4) I think Sammy would like you to buy him an ice-cream - BENEFICIARY

(5) How much do we owe your parents for the tickets? - RECIPIENT

Activity 2. Identify each process in the following examples as a material, mental or relational process.

(1) This country exports raw materials. MATERIAL

(2) I prefer ballet to opera. MENTAL

(3) The abbey is now a ruin. RELATIONAL

(4) Do you know the author’s name? MENTAL

(5) The wounded soldier staggered down the road. MATERIAL

(6) The weather has turned warm. RELATIONAL


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semanticsandpragmatics