Re: Jackendoff's "Semantic (?) Structures"

Philippe Caquant wrote:

>At least Father Amazon brought me Ray Jackendoff's
>"Semantic structures", and I opened it with much
>curiosity. [snip]
>
>The point (as I understand it) is about comparing:
>- Bill loaded the books onto the truck
>- Bill smeared paint onto the wall.
>So we try to find out what is the Patient in both
>cases, by reformulating these sentences like:
>
>- What Bill did to the books was load them on the
>truck
>- What Bill did to the truck was load it with books
>- What Bill did to the paint was smear it on the wall
>- What Bill did to the wall was smear paint on it [and
>more]
>
>I wonder about these "thematic relations being the
>same". To me, it's very different, conceptually
>speaking. In one case Bills move a physical thing from
>one place to another (and lays it according to the
>laws of gravity), in the other case Bill changes the
>external appearance of a (vertical) part of something,
>by means of applying a (liquid) substance on it. What
>has it to do together ? The answer is clear: the
>syntax is the same. Huh, I thought we were talking
>about semantics ?
Your statements point out quite clearly the flaw in approaching semantics
from a syntactic perspective, as Jackendoff does.  IMHO, the only group of
linguists so far who are on the right track when it comes to semantics are
the cognitivists such as Leonard Talmy, Gilles Fauconnier and George
Lakoff.  Talmy's 2-volume set "Toward a Cognitive Semantics" has been
extremely influential in my own conlanging efforts.

>
>Besides, reformulations like "What Bill did to the
>paint was smear it on the wall" makes little sense to
>me. I could have said "Bill smeared the wall with
>paint". Where is the Patient ? Is there any Patient at
>all ? Are they two of them ? The author refers to "the
>syntactic frames of verbs like 'load' and 'smear'".
>This is, once more, about syntax, and of course, about
>some special syntax, the English one. To me, if we
>want to talk about semantics, we should do it the
>opposite way: starting from the possible concepts,
>whatever the natlang, and then come to the
>implementations in languages.
You may not realize it, but you've just stated the basis for the cognitive
approach to semantics.

>
>He also seems to take for granted, without any further
>inquiry, that "major ontological categories", or
>"conceptual parts of speech", are "Thing, Event,
>State, Action, Place, Path, Property, and Amount". To
>me it is clear that Human Being, for ex, can hardly be
>described just as a "Thing", even having special
>properties. To me Human Being IS a major ontological
>category, even if it shares some properties with
>Animals or Artefacts or Natural Objects. (And also,
>where is Modality for ex ?) He also thinks in terms of
>"arguments", for ex: "to run" implies a Path (if I
>remember well), and if the path (the direction for ex)
>is not expressed, than it is understood from the
>context (I can't find the exact quotation). In other
>terms, if you run, than you run toward some place, or
>from some place, or whatever, but you can't just
>"run". I disagree: "What have you been doing this
>morning ? - Running" (meaning: having physical
>exercise by the action of running). Maybe I ran on a
>training outfit, not moving one step forwards ! In "to
>run", there are clearly two concepts: 1/ to go in a
>fast way; 2/ to move one's body in a special way. You
>can focus on either concept, or on the combined one.
>Only if you focus on concept 1, or on concept 1+2, you
>may say that there is a Path implied. (Maybe this is
>even more evident with "to swim").
Yes, I agree with your assessment of supposedly mandatory "arguments."  I
strove to avoid such contstraints in Ithkuil.  I let the case-marking
handle the underlying semantic roles of participant entities and place no
such constraints on their associated verb.

--John Q.

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