How context determines meaning
Patrick Hanks | RIILP, University of Wolverhampton (WLV) and BCL, University of the West of England (UWE)
It is an extraordinary fact that, although most speakers and
writers of the English language (or, we may presume, any other language)
believe that they are capable of expressing any meaning that they want to
with considerable precision, the behaviour of the words they use is highly
variable, with much variation in phraseology as well as subtle semantic
distinctions. Even more extraordinary is the fact that only some of the
logically predictable variants of any given phrase are accepted by native
speakers as idiomatic.
This chapter shows how meanings are associated with
phraseological norms rather than with words in isolation. It also
illustrates the phenomenon of alternation among phraseological norms and
shows how phraseological norms are not merely conformed to, but also
exploited creatively in ordinary language use. Underlying this paper is the
proposition that words in isolation do not have a determinable meaning per
se. Instead they have meaning potential, different facets of
which are activated in different contexts.
By detailed corpus pattern analysis of the verb
blow, which typically expresses the causation of
movement, we explore the relationship between core meaning and a rich set of
patterns of idiomatic phraseology – phrasal verbs, idioms, and proverbs.
Article outline
- 1.Patterns and valency
- 2.The verb is the pivot of the clause
- 3.Collocations and lexical sets
- 4.Core meaning
- 5.Phrasal verbs
- 6.Exploiting established phraseology
- 6.1Phraseology that is both literal and figurative
- 7.Exploiting a proverb
- 8.Other IDIOMS with ‘blow’
- 9.Conclusion
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Notes
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References
References (4)
References
Hanks, P. (2004). Corpus pattern analysis. In G. Williams, & S. Vessier (Eds.), Euralex Proceedings. Lorient, France: Université de Bretagne-Sud.
Hanks, P. (2013). Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Tesnière, L. (1959). Éléments de syntaxe structurale [Elements of Structural Syntax]. Paris, France: Klincksieck.
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