Читать книгу Collocations, Creativity and Constructions - Cordula Glass - Страница 14

Combinatorial unpredictability has frequently been regarded as a defining feature of collocations (> 2; Howarth 1996; Hausmann 1984; Palmer 1976). However, in allowing for variation, the question is, what exactly is an unpredictable combination? This is usually answered ex negativo by contrasting native speakers’ evaluations or corpus data with combinations which in terms of general semantic understanding of a lexeme and its semantically related units (such as hyponyms, co-hyponyms, hyperonyms, and synonyms) should be both possible and acceptable. If these combinations then do not or only rarely occur in a corpus or are rejected by a group of native speakers for no apparent reason, this is often referred to as unpredictable combinatorial behaviour. A variation, on the other hand, is then its positive equivalent, namely, semantically related words which are possible as well as accepted and hence can share the same collocate. To account for the fact that these variations belong to the same item, Halliday introduced the term lexical set, which refers to a group of these words (Halliday 1966: 152–153). Take for example the following instances of pretty:

(16)	BNC JYA 2304	Lina was a pretty girl, with a totally natural smile and tangled dark curls.
(17)	BNC BN1 644	The poor young woman, a pretty creature, flushed scarlet and said […]
(18)	BNC CAD 3130	If you take away the image all that's left is a bunch of exceptionally pretty boys making some very ordinary music.
(19)	BNC ANK 1635	You are a pretty boy, isn't he a pretty boy, Bob?

Girl, woman, and boy could be seen as co-hyponyms of the hyperonym human beings, as such, they share a considerable amount of features, in fact from a structural semantics point of view, their only discerning components would be ± ADULT, for girl/woman, and ± FEMALE, for girl/boy. Yet sentences (16) and (17) might be the only undisputable “natural” co-occurrences here, belonging to the lexical set of [pretty+N], while (18) and (19) seem to be somewhat special, if not strange. Therefore, Frank Palmer argues in the first edition of Semantics (1976: 97) that any phrases which contain a noun and pretty as its collocate should be seen as an idiosyncratic combination, as the adjective does not co-occur with every noun but is restricted in its combinatorial behaviour. Of course, including ‘+female’ in the word’s definition would easily explain why lexemes with a (potential) female reading are more likely to collocate with pretty, but Palmer dismisses this thought as “rather perverse” (Palmer 1976: 96). However, in the second edition he admits:

It would, however, be a mistake to attempt to draw a clear distinguishing line between those collocations that are predictable from the meanings of the words that co-occur and those that are not. […] For one can, with varying degrees of plausibility, provide a semantic explanation for even the more restricted collocations, by assigning very particular meanings to the individual words. (Palmer ²1981: 77)

Furthermore, he suggests subdividing collocational restrictions into three types: combinations which are very unlikely to occur because of the items’ individual semantics, such as green cow (type 1); collocations which only admit a certain collocational range such as pretty, which, in its attributive use, seems to be restricted to any noun with the inherent concept of femininity (type 2); and very strict restrictions which only allow a certain collocate in order to express a certain concept, such as rancid for bacon which is not fresh anymore (type 3) (Palmer ²1981: 79). This introspection, however, leads Palmer to a very conservative reading of a word’s meaning and its combinatorial properties. A BNC query – admittedly a tool which was not available at that time – for pretty or rancid yields a plethora of examples which Palmer would have classified as unacceptable, such as rancid Stilton (BNC_{CHA 4470}), rancid words (BNC_{HNJ 309}) or pretty boys. In fact, it is especially these more or less unexpected uses that demonstrate the scope of interpretative value which accompanies a combinatorial choice like in (18) or (19). For it is the implied aspect of femininity which gives boys in (18) a kind of androgyne flavour1 and makes pretty boy in (19) a provocation, implying in this case unwanted homosexual tendencies, rather than a regular address. The same works of course for rancid which, as the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OLAD) points out, can refer to any kind of fat which “[…] tastes or smells unpleasant because it is no longer fresh” (OALD 7: rancid). Therefore, one would expect rancid Stilton to have a different olfactory quality than mouldy or smelly Stilton, the latter being rather a default feature of this type of cheese. This study will therefore refer to accepted alternations, which, so to say, belong to the same lexical set, as variation or established alternations, while combinations which might seem acceptable but potentially need some more interpretation will be called creative alternations. Of course, one could argue that these more creative uses of a collocate are, to a certain degree, just metaphorical extensions from the fully accepted collocation, but these readings seem to live on within more creative combinations. To a certain extent, this makes Palmer’s typology of collocational restrictions superfluous, first and foremost because, as Herbst stresses, an image such as green or purple cow might seem unusual but is in no way related to any language-inherent restrictions (Herbst 1996: 386). Especially in fields like literature, news, advertising or internet-talk one might come across the most unusual combinations. However, just because a green cow is a phenomenon one might not simply encounter on a trip to the countryside, this does not mean that, within the right context, it is not as acceptable as a red dragon or a blue unicorn. So the imaginary nature of the concept as such cannot and should not influence a linguistic analysis of restricted language use. Collocational restrictions like type 2 and 3, on the other hand, paint a more diverse picture than Palmer leads his readers to believe. One, because his supposed restrictions yield actual instances within a modern corpus like the BNC, but also because in some cases these more or less unconventional combinations add a new semantic dimension to the concept of collocation.

The mere fact that these interpretations exist shows that under certain circumstances collocates could contribute their own level of meaning. To some degree, this is of course something most words do, but what is striking here is that this additional reading seems to stem from more prototypical and generally accepted collocations a word has been used in before, like ‘+ female’ from pretty girl or ‘+ fat that is not fresh anymore’ from rancid bacon. This, however, yields two questions: first, whether these additional semantic dimensions are inherent knowledge which all native speakers of a language share and also whether they all share the same understanding and interpretative boundaries. Furthermore, it is also questionable whether, assuming this phenomenon of collocational meaning transfer exists, it is a feature of the collocation or rather a reinterpretation furthered by other factors such as context2 or a kind of no-nonsense3 principle (Clark/Clark 1977: 72–73). Hausmann (1984), for example, also acknowledges a kind of more or less creative, even pun-like use of collocational structures. However, here they stand in contrast to institutionalised co-occurrences like collocations, which, according to his typology, consist of one freely selected (base) and another restricted element (collocator), whereas counter-creations, as he calls the more creative, collocationally inspired co-occurrences of words, are freely selected and characteristic of a more individual, rather literary style (Hausmann 1984: 399).

As has been mentioned before, Hausmann would presumably label examples (18) and (19) as counter-creation. But each of these sentences contains a euphemistic or even cynical tone, created by a somewhat creative use of [pretty+N]. Thus, it is questionable whether these instances of [pretty+N] are anything more than instances of one author’s unique and individual style. As ever, so often the choice of collocates within a collocation and their general acceptance by a language community might be subject to gradience, with highly frequent and well-established instances like pretty girl at one and pretty man at the other end of the spectrum (Klotz 1998: 88–95, Herbst 1996, Palmer ²1981: 75–79). Yet, the choice of one collocate alone already seems to guide the recipient’s thoughts towards a certain interpretation for the second part of a collocational pair. Thus even rather unusual fillings for the second collocate, like boy or man, which at first glance might not seem to fit the semantics of a collocation, can be interpreted against the backdrop of its more established reading. This yields the question whether readings such as [pretty+N_{<female (human) being>}] or [rancid+N_{<s.th. which literally or metaphorically tastes or smells unpleasant because it is no longer fresh>}] work with any filling for the [N]-slot as long as it does not contain a semantic feature which actively prevents an even more creative reading (cf. Bybee/Eddington 2006). Bisecting established and creative alternations into two different phenomena, however, disguises the fact that both cases might refer to the same, to a certain extent prototypical, reading (cf. Bybee 2013).

This interpretation is similar to a phenomenon Sinclair (1991, 1987b) observed during his corpus research; studying lexical patterns such as set in or happen, he realized that they are almost exclusively connected to a negative NP such as impoverishment or accident (Sinclair 1991: 73–75, 111–112). This led him to the conclusion that there might be an additional semantic-pragmatic level, which requires a certain semantic quality, for collocates of a node. In an analogy with phonology4, Louw (1993) later coined the term semantic prosody for this sort of “consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates” (Louw 1993: 157). Several publications have defined, analysed and re-defined semantic prosody since, amongst them Stubbs (2001, 1995) and Bublitz (1995), who contributed several sample analyses, Partington (2004, 1998), Tognini-Bonelli (2001) and Xiao and McEnery (2006), who approached the subject from a contrastive, partly pedagogic perspective as well as Hunston (2007) and Stewart (2010), who tried to structure some of the terminological debate. But besides a general understanding which assumes that semantic prosody is a meaning-related phenomenon which can be observed across different established alternations of a collocation, there are also points of disagreement (Hunston 2007: 250). Since most of these aspects are also going to be relevant for the study at hand, the next lines will outline these aspects against the backdrop of established and more creative alternations of collocations.

A first, fundamental question is, at which level does semantic prosody operate? Since it is a phenomenon which has predominantly been studied for collocates of a node word, it might work on a combinatorial and syntagmatic as well as a variable, paradigmatic level. Hence, it could either be part of the extended meaning, or function, of a lexical unit (Partington 2004: 132–133) or belong to the overall features of a collocational sequence (Sinclair 2004: 35). The methodology behind most analyses suggests semantic prosody to be a property of a single lexical unit, since collocates of a node are searched for mutual aspects of meaning in order to find an overarching reading for the companions of the word. Yet, if semantic prosody is part of a word’s meaning, it would follow that this reading is always applicable, independent of the pattern in which a word is used. For pretty for example, the consequence would be that ‘somewhat female features’ are always implied, but this is only true for NPs, while [pretty+Adj] instead triggers a reading of pretty as an intensifier similar to very, as in pretty obvious or pretty difficult. Of course, this reasoning only holds if [pretty+N] and [pretty+Adj] are seen as two different uses of the same lexical item. Thus, within an approach which regards both instances as separate entries in the mental lexicon, the implication of semantic prosody could well be interpreted as part of the word meaning. Chapters 4 and 7 will pick up on this question and discuss it against the background of a construction grammar dimension.

A second aspect in the scope of semantic prosody is its potentially binary nature. Initially, the phenomenon had been treated as the tendency of a node to co-occur with more positively or negatively charged collocates (Sinclair 1987b). Some approaches maintained this view, defining semantic prosody as a property with a binary quality (Partington 2004; Channell 2000; Louw 1993). Other researchers, such as Sinclair (1991: 110–115), argue for more diverse implications. Take again the example of [pretty+N]: assuming that the choice of pretty as a premodification does indeed influence the interpretation of a [N] as in sentences (1), and (16) to (19)5, a primary division into an either positive or negative reading, it would follow that ‘somewhat female features’ are either good or bad. But, while examples (18) and (19) might have negative implications, neither (16) nor (17) or even the more creative (1) convey a bad or even rude meaning. So, unless one wishes to postulate an additional binary division into male/female, a more detailed description of an item’s semantic prosody might be more useful for a fruitful interpretation of this kind of additional level of meaning.

The third and probably most complex question concerns the pervasiveness of semantic prosody. This aspect falls into two subcategories: pervasiveness within genre or discourse-related context and pervasiveness outside a certain context. In short, the question here is about the exact scale of semantic prosody. Within a certain context, Partington (2004), for example, reasoned there might be instances which are more prone to a reading along the lines of their semantic prosody than others, while Sinclair (2004) would argue that semantic prosody is an obligatory property which, if it can be observed, holds for all instances within a sequence. In this case, this feature would trigger a certain reading in any given context. Whitsitt (2005), however, challenged this position, observing that while [cause+NP] yields a negative interpretation for the filling of the [NP] in a genre like ‘news’, the same pattern has instead a neutral reading in academic publications. Applying these observations to the example of [pretty+N], this would imply that the reading of ‘somewhat female features’ applies to all kinds of nouns, irrespective of the [N] as such or the context in which it occurs. Interestingly, as the examples in chapter 1 showed, this interpretation carries into various contexts such as literature, media or everyday conversation. Yet, while applicable to quite a few, even less expected [N]s such as face, man or boy, not every noun seems to embrace the underlying reading of ‘somewhat female features’ with the same vigour. In connection with a noun-collocate referring to a human being, this relation holds quite well, and even for animals, as in (20), pretty and handsome appear to be used within a female or male context respectively. However, comparing the effect of the premodifications pretty and handsome on inanimate [N] referents, the picture becomes hazier. For sentences (21) and (22) it already takes some imaginative effort to construe a more female or male reading; in these cases, a pretty house actually seems to be the more common and neutral expression, whereas a handsome house might have a kind of pretentious grandeur to it. It is highly questionable though whether this is because women are more frequently associated with the interior, domestic domain while men’s sphere is claimed to be the outside world of business and politics. Neither would it explain the derogatory tone in (23) nor why there are only very few hits for pretty+landscape and none for handsome+landscape in the whole of the BNC.

(20)	BNC A17 1047	Competitions for the most handsome dog and prettiest bitch need no explanation.
(21)	BNC H7H 505	It was a pretty house too; being built beside beautiful entrance gates, gates hinged to cut stone posts, dignified as pillars in a temple, gate lodges were designed with appropriate distinction.
(22)	BNC HGY 371	Because although it's a handsome house, and the gardens are extensive, they in no way compare to those of the castle which is just up the road.
(23)	BNC CHH 375	Each turn along the coast path reveals a beautiful sandy cove, or jagged rocks giving lie to the notion that this is just a pretty landscape.

In example (23), however, the choice of just also seems to contribute to the slightly negative reading of pretty landscape. This indicates that semantic prosody might also be influenced by other lexical as well as structural factors, as for example Klotz (1997) shows for the case of cause. Nevertheless, these examples show that semantic prosody can be regarded as a rather pervasive feature, although there are also items which refuse to be coerced into a certain interpretation. At the same time, the fact that phrases like pretty creature or pretty boy receive an implicit female interpretation through their analogy to pretty woman is difficult to deny. To shed some more light onto these apparently contradictory tendencies, it might be useful to explore where semantic prosody comes from in the first place.

Louw, for example, speculates that the “prosodic aura of meaning” develops through a period of diachronic change (Louw 1993: 164) and Bublitz (1996) too believes that over time and through repetitive use, “the word adopts semantic features from an adjacent item” (Bublitz 1996: 11). Yet, the concept of a formal sequence of items, which is closely linked to a certain semantic or functional dimension of meaning, has also been one of the main topics within cognitive linguistics. In fact, the idea of form-function pairings which operate on every linguistic level constitutes part of the basis of cognitive, usage-based approaches, like emergentist approaches (> 4.2.1), Complex Adaptive Systems (> 4.3.3) or construction grammar6 (> 4.3.1). Like semantic prosody within corpus linguistics, attempts to view phraseological phenomena such as collocations as a combination of form and meaning were part of cognitive linguistic approaches from a very early stage on. Initial studies within this, then fairly new, field of linguistics, such as Lakoff’s (1990) survey of the different constructions of there, or Fillmore, Kay and O’Connor’s (1988) report on the construction let alone, quintessentially dealt with phraseological chunks and their function within a text or discourse. However, very often this meant that a sequence of words, like let alone, was assigned a rather idiomatic meaning. Basically, it resulted in treating these items as a kind of more or less fixed multi-word unit. Later, research on phraseological items with respect to different groups of speakers was able to show that this kind of idiomatic meaning is not necessarily available to every native speaker at any time. In Nippold and Duthie’s (2003) research study on idiom comprehension in school-age children and adults, for example, children aged 12 still experience difficulties in detecting all levels of idiomatic meaning, which indicates that the inventory of phraseological items might be subject to a kind of acquisitional process. In addition, Wray (1999: 222) believes that “[t]he increasing automatisation of language […] is marked by a switch from a preference for literal interpretations of standard formulaic sequences (e.g. she has him eating out of her hand) to their metaphorical counterparts, a process which is not complete until late teenage […]” (> 4.3.2).

A combination of both approaches could then introduce a new level of reasoning to each conception and thus strengthen their respective explanatory value: incorporating a usage-based perspective into semantic prosody would lead to a lexically semi-fixed collocational construction, while a usage-based approach might be able to answer the partly restricted pervasiveness of semantic prosody. This would be the case if collocations, for example, enter a kind of life cycle, starting off as a rather fixed, almost compound like expression, which through frequent encounter and concomitant entrenchment, transition into a more flexible, semi-lexicalised structure which takes its basic meaning from a more established prototype. On the one hand, this would make the definition of collocation fuzzier, since collocational combinations then do not represent examples on a gradient scale, but should instead be seen as early (for established pairs) or late (for more creative versions) snapshots of a collocational structure, depending on the collocation’s developmental stage. On the other hand, identifying a kind of collocational meaning could not only facilitate EFL teaching but also improve teaching materials such as dictionaries and workbooks or even help to make the output of software, like online translations or other NLP applications more fluent and/or native-like. An important prerequisite for this kind of usage-based model of collocations and creativity is a firm anchoring of creative processes as a part of human cognition. This is not self-evident, since creativity is often understood as the exceptional faculty of only a few outstanding individuals, such as professional authors, composers or artists in general. Thus, the next chapter will show that this conception does not do justice to the pervasive character of creativity.