From 74774.157@compuserve.com Sat Nov 4 12:45:56 1995 Date: 04 Nov 95 00:15:05 EST From: Jeffrey Henning <74774.157@compuserve.com> To: BlindCopyReceiver: ; Subject: MODLANG 6 - Meaning - 1 of 2 MODEL LANGUAGES The newsletter discussing newly imagined words for newly imagined worlds ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Volume I, Issue 6 -- October/November, 1995 MEANING 1 THE BOTHER OF _BROTHER_ 3 TRANSLATIONS (MEANINGS ACROSS LANGUAGES) 5 PROTOTYPES FOR THE BIRDS 6 CONCLUSION 7 SIDEBAR: RELATIVE TERMS FOR RELATIVES 8 GENERATIONS 8 LINEAGE 8 SEX 8 SIDE OF FAMILY 8 RELATIVE BIRTH ORDER 10 PERSON 10 KINDEEP EXAMPLES 10 TABLE OF KINSHIP TERMS 11 SEN:ESEPERA KINSHIP TERMS 12 Perseus Language Maker for Windows helps you to quickly invent preliminary lexicons for your model languages. Check it out at the end of this document! MEANING I won't use words again They don't mean what I meant They don't say what I said They're just the crust of the meaning With realms underneath Never touched Never stirred Never even moved through If language were liquid It would be rushing in -- Suzanne Vega, "Language" If language *were* liquid, we could enter a submersible and use sound waves to reveal the subterranean terrain. For each word floats like a buoy, anchored to some unseen spot far below. The meanings of the word _brother_ seem easy to pick out from the waters, but in fact the possible meanings stretch deeper than you might expect, ranging from "full brother" to "any kinsman" to "any fellow human" to "anything related" (as in _the brother vices of greed and selfishness_). Since we can't use sonar, how can we sound out the meanings of words? It used to be thought that any word could be described in terms of semantic primitives. For instance, M. Bierwisch, writing in 1970, said that semantic features do not differ from language to language, but are rather part of the general human capacity for language, forming a universal inventory used in particular ways in individual languages. According to this theory, every word can be broken up into primitive kernels of meaning, called _semantemes_ (also called _semantic features_ or _semantic components_). Some sample definitions using semantemes: WORD SEMANTEMES --------------------------------- father male + parent mother female + parent son male + offspring daughter female + offspring brother male + sibling sister female + sibling The process of breaking words down into semantemes is known as _componential analysis_ and has been most often used to analyze kinship terms across languages. The components are often given in more detail. For instance, kinship terms like those shown above might have three components: sex, generation, lineage. Sex would be male or female; generation would be a number, with 0 = reference point's generation, -1 = previous generation, +1 = next generation; lineage would be either direct, colineal (as in siblings) or ablineal (as in uncles and aunts). This is obviously a highly technical way to define words we all know and use without overdue consideration, but -- by using these components -- you can concisely define a variety of English kinship terms. WORD GENERATION LINEAGE SEX -------------------------------------- mother -1 Direct Female father -1 Direct Male aunt -1 Ablineal Female uncle -1 Ablineal Male sister 0 Colineal Female brother 0 Colineal Male daughter 1 Direct Female son 1 Direct Male niece 1 Ablineal Female nephew 1 Ablineal Male This can be the starting point of a more detailed analysis of English terms. One advantage of isolating and identifying each component is that it then becomes possible to identify "holes" in a language's vocabulary, areas for which it lacks a direct term. For instance, English lacks a genderless word for an aunt or uncle; you can't fill in the blank for the statement "_parent_ is to _mother_ and _father_, as ____ is to _aunt_ and _uncle_". You can still express this concept in English (we typically refer to _aunts and uncles_ but you can more formally refer to _parents' siblings_), but you will likely express it less often than you would if there was a word for it. Another gap is the lack of words for either "male cousin" or "female cousin". The paradigm _parent/mother/father_, _sibling/sister/brother_ is just not carried out for _cousin_. This is unlike other Germanic languages, including Danish (_Faetter_ and _Kusine_ for male and female cousins respectively), Dutch (_neef_ and _nicht_) and German (_der Vetter_ and _die Kusine_). Old English probably also made this distinction, but lost it under influence of Norman French, which -- like most, if not all, Romance languages -- does not make this distinction. The following table more fully fleshes out the distinctions English does make in kinship terms. WORD GENERATION LINEAGE SEX ------------------------------------------- parent -1 Direct mother -1 Direct Female father -1 Direct Male [parent's sibling] -1 Ablineal aunt -1 Ablineal Female uncle -1 Ablineal Male sibling 0 Colineal sister 0 Colineal Female brother 0 Colineal Male cousin 0 Ablineal [female cousin] 0 Ablineal Female [male cousin] 0 Ablineal Male child, offspring 1 Direct daughter 1 Direct Female son 1 Direct Male [niece or nephew] 1 Ablineal niece 1 Ablineal Female nephew 1 Ablineal Male There are many more "holes" or gaps in the vocabulary than those labeled here. What about terms where the generation is not specified? Where the lineage is not specified? Please note that the combination of {Generation 0, Lineage Direct} is meaningless (except for some backwater place -- choose your own to make fun of -- where brothers marry their sisters and people can be their own fathers). Since the sense of {Lineage Colineal} only applies to a generation of 0, it could be thought of as the manifestation of Direct in that area. (The term Ablineal can apply to any generation.) A fuller componential analysis (yes, fuller) of kinship terms is presented in a sidebar below. While componential analysis is useful for some exercises, it is not a representation of how language works; no linguist has ever been able to develop a complete list of semantic primitives. Invariably, some of the primitives identified are actually molecules that can be broken down into new atoms. For instance, _parent_, _offspring_ and _sibling_ are all interrelated terms; the word _parent_ can be defined as "a person who has offspring" and _sibling_ can be defined as "a person with a parent who has other offspring". If semantic primitives were to exist, they would number in the thousands and would resemble a mathematical logic system more than the mind's loom of language. THE BOTHER OF _BROTHER_ While Suzanne Vega sings of language being liquid, the rigidity of componential analysis makes language seem like frozen liquid: ice cubes. While semantemes have their place, especially to compare and contrast languages' lexicons, they do not indicate how we actually define terms in our minds. One of the problems with semantemes is that they assume words have a single basic meaning. Take _brother_, which was defined above first as "male sibling" and then as {Generation 0, Sex Male, Lineage Colineal}. The English word actually has a much broader meaning than either of these definitions, with many degrees of _brother_-ness radiating out from a core meaning of "male sibling", as shown below in a no-means exhaustive list. brother-german (male sibling) half brother stepbrother kinsman comrade fraternity member co-religionist lay person racial brother fellow man Defining these labels in more detail we have: 1. A male having the same biological parents as another person: a brother-german. 2. A male having one biological parent in common with another person: a half brother. 3. The son of one's stepparent by a previous spouse or lover: a stepbrother. 4. A male with the same ancestor as another person: a kinsman. 5. A male friend who is loved as if he were a biological brother: a comrade. 6. A male friend who belongs to the same fraternity: fellow fraternity member. 7. A man who follows the same religious beliefs: a co-religionist. 8. A male lay member of a religious order: a monk or lay person. 9. A person of the same race or nation. 10. A fellow man. 11. Something that closely resembles another in kind. Even this radius of meaning is not exhaustive: a _brother_ can mean a "brother-in-law", a _brother_ can be an adopted son raised by your parents, a _brother_ can be used in the strict sense of "a fellow African American". The gender of a brother does not even have to be male -- _we must help our brothers in the Fatherland_ uses _brother_ to include both men and women (as illustrated in meaning #9 above). As this example shows, people think of words not as fixed definitions composed of semantic primitives, but as examples or prototypes. The prototypical brother has the same biological parents as another person and has an emotionally close relationship with his siblings. On a scale of _brother_-ness from 0 to 100 the prototype is 100. A 90 might be a brother who was twenty years older than another person and as a result was never close to him, or the brother who was abusive and was disliked -- even though these examples are biologically brothers, they do not share in that emotional closeness of true _brother_-ness. A best friend can be considered a _brother_ on the basis of emotional closeness, rather than kinship. The brother virtues of love and charity are considered brothers only because they resemble one another -- this is a metaphorical use of the primary sense of _brother_, scoring perhaps a 10 out of 100 on our hypothetical scale of _brother_-ness. The word _brother_, then, is defined not in terms of semantic primitives, but in terms of a network of associations with other words. The human brain recursively defines words by words (just like a dictionary). TRANSLATIONS (MEANINGS ACROSS LANGUAGES) When you decide to translate _brother_ into your model language, you will have to decide which of its many meanings you wish to convey. Too often we assume that an English word has exact counterparts in other languages. We say that English _brother_ = Spanish _hermano_, when in fact _hermano_ has different connotations. For one thing, _hermano_ is the expression of a root form _herman-_ with a masculine ending; give it a feminine ending and you have _hermana_, "sister"; _hermano_ has less of a distinctively masculine connotation than _brother_ does. Rather than considering the breadth of the meaning of _brother_, let's take a simpler example. It is tempting to say that _casa_ in Spanish equals _house_ in English, like 1+1=2. _casa_ = _house_ In fact, _casa_ also equals _home_, since Spanish does not distinguish between _house_ and _home_ with separate words. (Spanish does make a similar distinction, but it does so grammatically, by saying _el casa_, "the house", contrasted with _casa_, "home".) _casa_ = _home_ Of course, in English _house_ and _home_ are different. _house_ <> _home_ If this is so, then: _casa_ <> _casa_. Clearly, semantics can never be reduced to an algebra of translation. As further evidence that words with common meanings are not exactly equivalent, review some double-translations. The story is told of an American in the USSR who received a telegram, _Your daughter was hung for juvenile crimes._ In fact, the Soviet censor had translated the telegram into Russian, and then back into English. The original English telegram read _Your daughter was suspended for delinquency._ The words _suspended_ and _delinquency_ had different prototypes (different spheres of meaning) than the Russian words they were paired with. Words in other languages will make different distinctions. Some will encompass a wider range of meanings than corresponding English words. For instance, Rick Harrison's planned language Vorlin has some interesting words: the basic sense of the word _bat_ is "a ball-hitting tool", with its radiated meanings including "bat, hockey stick, and tennis racket", while the word _sop_ means "soup" and "stew". Other Vorlin words cover a smaller range of meanings, so that _for_, "form, shape", does not include other senses of English _form_ like "a paper document to be filled in", "a molding to be filled with concrete" or "manners or conduct". As you determine what the words in your model language mean, you have to keep in mind that they will not exactly equal English words. But, as a practical matter, you probably don't want to create words for each separate meaning of _brother_ and have each word assigned only to that meaning, like the following English words: _brother german_ ("full brother"), _half-brother_, _stepbrother_, _brother-in-law_, _comrade_, _fellow_, _kinsman_, _fraternity member_, _coreligionist_. Doing so loses much of the flexibility of _brother_. As an example, here's how I translated the different realms of _brother_ into the model language Negasi. _nemi_ [< Nagada _nama_.] - A brother, ranging from the meanings of a full biological brother to a distantly related kinsman, but excluding the broader senses of fellow man, fraternity member, or coreligionist. _sanami_ [< Nagada _dunama_ < _du_ + _nama_, "near brother".] - A half-brother, a stepbrother or a brother-in-law. _henami_ [< Nagada _hanama_ < _ha_ + _nama_, "far brother".] - A comrade, fellow or kinsman. _sanemi_ [< _sa_ + _nemi_, "near brother".] A best friend. _lunanemi_ [< _luna_ + _nemi_, "divine brother".] A coreligionist, though for this imagined culture it would refer to a specific religion. Translating the English word _comrade_ into Negasi _henami_ will result in totally different associations. The Negasi view comrades as close to kin, and their word that would be translated _comrade_ of course has no taint of communism. So the word _henami_ has a stronger familial association than English _comrade_ does. While an English-to-Negasi dictionary might list _henami_ = _comrade_, this oversimplifies the relationship between the prototypes represented by each word. The words intersect; they are not mutually inclusive. As an aside, please note the difference between _sanami_ and _sanemi_. The word _sanami_ was coined in the Nagada language, so its literal meaning of "near brother" has been forgotten, since it underwent sound change differently than _sa nemi_ -- "near brother" as two words -- did. This allowed the literal meaning "near brother" to be used to coin a new word in Negasi, in this case referring to "a best friend", a previously absent word meaning. PROTOTYPES FOR THE BIRDS Another useful example to describe semantic prototypes or semantic stereotypes is birds: the prototypical bird has feathers and wings and can fly. Yet penguins, ostriches and Big Bird are considered birds, even though they can't fly. A duck-billed platypus, on the other hand, isn't considered a bird, despite the fact that it lays eggs and has a beak; it is not considered a bird since it has no feathers, no wings and can't fly. Prototypes are also a more useful way to describe meaning than semantic primitives, because prototypes embrace the connotations of a word, rather than just the denotations. The notion of prototypes can be used to show how words overlap. For instance, the following table roughly summarizes different types of body builds: --------------------------------------------------------- ABOVE-AVERAGE WEIGHT { obese fat { { chubby { plump thin { skinny BELOW-AVERAGE WEIGHT { scrawny --------------------------------------------------------- The words _skinny_ and _scrawny_ as meanings are subsets of _thin_; _plump_, _chubby_ and _obese_ are subsets of _fat_. Noticeably absent are any words for average weight. English, like many languages, rarely has words to describe midpoints, only extremes. Words are often grouped together like this in semantic networks. However, these word sets can be exceedingly complicated. For instance, the words used to describe body builds each have complex connotations as part of their prototypes: _plump_ is used more often to describe food such as meat and fruits than _fat_ is; similarly, _chubby_ is more often used for little boys (or girls) than _fat_ is. The word _scrawny_ also suggests _bony_; there are other words not shown on this list that also have connotations and specific uses, like _lean_, which suggests "muscular", and _slim_, which suggests "tall", and _slender_, which suggests "graceful". Connotations are not specified in dictionaries and are rarely articulated. Besides connotations, there are habits governing what other words to use with a word. The synonyms _pursue_ and _chase_ are almost interchangeable, except that _pursue_ is preferred when the object to be chased is highly desirable - _pursue truth, pursue wisdom, pursue happiness_, but _chase a thief, chase a bus, chase a fox_. You could write an essay on the difference between _he pursued love_ and _he chased love_. Obviously, it is very difficult to translate these prototypes from one language to another. Failure to properly account for the radius of meaning of a word often has comical results, as evidenced by this sign in a Bucharest hotel lobby: _The lift is being fixed for the next day. During the time we regret that you will be unbearable._ Historically speaking, the word _unbearable_ had began with a strict literal meaning, but over time its radius of meaning had expanded to include a figurative sense as well. The combinations of connotations and detailed usage preferences for any word are not articulated, but mastering them is one of the hallmarks of literary writing. CONCLUSION Meaning is therefore a combination of prototypical examples. The important thing to keep in mind, when creating your own languages, is that the words you invent will not exactly equal the English words you define them as. While, for practical purposes, you will define most words very straightforwardly in English, you will want to highlight the unique culture of your language's speakers by noting how the range of meanings and the range of possible uses distinguishes your invented lexicon from English words. No wonder Suzanne Vega sang, "I won't use words again. They don't mean what I meant. They don't say what I said."