Филологические науки/3.Теоретические проблемы исследования языка

Blagodarna O.M.

Karazin Kharkiv National University

ALANYSE OF WORK LEXEME IN THE FRAME OF GENERATIVE LEXICON PARADIGM (GLP)

Lexeme WORK defines an anthropocentric notion that is rooted work-based relations of modern post-industrial European society. The object of our research is to study the meaning of this lexeme reflects the deeper conceptual structures in the cognitive system, and the domain it operates in. To get access to these structures we would like to apply the generative lexicon paradigm (GLP) that gives us a new approach to lexical-semantic analysis from compositional point of view.

There are two distinct approaches to the study of word meaning: primitive-based theories and relation-based theories. Those advocating the former [10; 4; 5; 8] assume that word meaning can be exhaustively defined in terms of a fixed set of primitive elements and inferences are made through the primitives into which a word is decomposed. In our opinion this theory finds its reflection in componential analysis method [6; 9]: the decomposition of the sense of a lexeme into its component parts, namely sense-factors. The second approach claims that there is no need for decomposition into primitives if words (and their concepts) are associated through a network of explicitly defined links. This view relies on logical rules of inference to establish the connectedness between lexical meaning and propositions. In a sense, linguistic data are just another application of a general, more powerful set of reasoning devices needed for commonsense inference, naïve physics and micro-world modelling.

In our research we would make use of the second way of decomposition - looking more at the generative or compositional aspects of lexical semantics. As argued by J.Pustejovsky and B.Boguraev [1; 2; 3] GLP suggests an approach to decomposition, where lexical items are minimally decomposed into structured forms (or templates) rather than sets of features. This will provide us with a generative framework for the composition of lexical meaning, thereby defining the well-formedness conditions for semantic expressions in a language.

For any category we can potentially distinguish three distinct dimensions along which the elements of that category can be analyzed semantically. With respect to nouns, the interpretation can vary according to the three dimensions below:

1. argument structure – how many arguments the nominal takes, what they are typed as (true, default, shadow arguments);

2. event structure – what events the nominal refers to, both explicitly and implicitly (state, process, transition);

3. qualia structure – what the basic predicative force of the nominal is, and what relational information is associated with the nominal, both explicitly and implicitly (formal, constitutive, telic, agentive roles).

By defining the functional behaviour of lexical items at different levels of representation we hope to arrive at a characterization of the lexicon as an active and integral component in the composition of sentence meaning. This approach will enable us to conflate different word senses into a single meta-entry, encoding regularities of word behaviours dependent on context. “I call such meta-entries lexical conceptual paradigms (lcps)” [7: 62].

If lexical items are to be thought of as carrying several parameters (or dimensions) of interpretation, then the question immediately arises as to how a particular interpretation is arrived at in a given context. This question is answered in part by the semantic operation of type coercion: in the construction of a semantic interpretation for a phrase or sentence a lexical item is able to coerce an argument to the appropriate type only if that word or phrase has available interpretation of the expected type.

A set of generative devices connects these four levels – the most important of them is type coercion, which captures. Type coercion captures the semantic relatedness between syntactically distinct expressions and is interpreted as “a semantic operation that converts an argument to the type which is expected by a function, where it would otherwise result in a type error” [7: 61].

Thus, the lexeme work is both the event of performing aim-oriented activity and the result of such performance. This is the polysemy on the nominal work, represented in the following example:

Process-product lcp	ARGSTR	A1 = human A2 = product (tangible/intangible)
	EVENTSTR	E1 = process E2 = state
	QUALIA	CONSTITUTIVE = (C) result of FORMAL = (F) production TELIC = (T1) aim-oriented activity (T2) consumption AGENTIVE = (AG1) obligation (AG2) motivation

AC6 1925 I told Dana I could no longer bear the atmosphere of the city, the right-wing bullies, the Allergists, the deadening work of teaching mostly bored and resentful students (A1, E1, T1, AG1).

EA9 371 However, most people who join the industry feel that the interesting nature of the work and career opportunities more than compensate for the unusual hours they are expected to work (A1, E1, F, T1, AG 2).

CA6 1035 Elizabeth had particularly suffered from the Snowbound school of reviewers; being insensitive to the charm of her work, they found it trivial (A2, E2, C, F, T2).

The above-given schema shows that the lexical item directly denotes an event, as well as an information type of “product”, whereas the event and the product are related by the formal relation of production and constitutive of product vs. result. The logical polysemy, therefore, arises from the combination of the inherent polysemy possible in the type of information object of product and the event of performing work itself.

We believe that application of GLP will contribute to the explaining the polymorphic nature of language and characterizing the semanticality of natural language utterances.

References:

1. Boguraev, B. and J. Pustejovsky. “Lexical Ability and The Role of Knowledge Representation in Lexicon Design”, Proceedings of COLING – Helsinki, 1990.

2. Boguraev, B. and J. Pustejovsky. “A Richer Characterization of Dictionary Entries” in B. Atkins and A. Zampolli (eds.), Automating the Lexicon – Oxford University Press, 1994.

3. Boguraev, B. and J. Pustejovsky. Eds. Corpus Processing for Lexical Acquisition – MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996.

4. Katz, J. Semantic Theory – Harper and Row, New York, 1972 – 464p.

5. Lakoff, G. “On Generative Semantics” in Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader, D. Steinberg and L. Jakobovits, eds. – Cambridge University Press, 1971.

6. Lyons, J. Language, Meaning and Context – Fontana Paperbacks, 1980, 256p.

7. Pustejovsky, J. The Generative Lexicon – The MIT Press, 1995 – P.62.

8. Schrank, R. Conceptual Information Processing – Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1975, 374p.

9. Wierzbicka, A. Semantic Primitives – Frankfurt/M: Athenaeum Verlag, 1972 – 235p.

10. Wilks, Y. “A Preferential Pattern Seeking Semantics for Natural Language Inference,” Artificial Intelligence – 1975. – P.53-74.