Reference theory

Word-meaning. Three approaches.

Meaning. Word-meaning.

LECTURE 12

Elaboration on vocabulary exchange as a method of studying the language of translation.

Vocabulary exchange is a process of re-lexification which replaces one lexical item by a functionally suitable item from the TL. This method is used either to study the suitability of a given translation in a translated text, or to locate the lexical item needed in a given translation. Vocabulary exchange is a deductive / inductive method based on the study of social and linguistic context. It cannot be used to investigate linguistic level higher than the lexical level. It has no application whatsoever on the textual level. Neither can it offer any help concerning the questions of adding, omitting, adapting or manipulating textual information in any way.

Main points:

1. Reference theory.

2. Componential analysis.

3. Meaning postulates.

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Among the possible ways of approaching the description and explanation of word-meaning, three stand out as particularly interesting:

1) reference theory which would express the relationship between word and entity in some term such as “word X refers to entity Y”.

2) componential analysis which would make use of an analogy from chemistry -“each word contains a number of atoms of meaning”.

3) meaning postulates which would relate meaning to meaning through the conventions of set theory - “a tiger is a mammal, is an animal” i. e. a tiger is a kind of mammal and mammal is a kind of animal or animal includes mammal, includes tiger”.

Reference theory seeks to provide the answer to the question: “What is the relationship between the phenomena observed through the senses and the words that are used to refer to those phenomena?” There are two traditional and contrary answers to the question which go back to Ancient Greece: a) a link between the word and the “object” to which it refers is a natural and necessary one which is determined by the structure of the universe (Plato’s position) or b) the connection is arbitrary one constrained by no more than social convention (Aristotle’s position).

The first naturalist position cannot be correct in spite of existence of such English words as cuckoo, hoot, thud, tinkle, etc. Such example of “sound symbolism” are extremely rare and overwhelming majority of words in any language demonstrate no recognizable relationship whatsoever with the “object” to which they refer.

De Saussure provides a rather more explicit model of the relationship in which the link is shown to be between the linguistic sign and the “object”. He sees the linguistic sign as being composed of two indivisible elements, the concept and the acoustic image which realizes it.

Linguistic sign = Object

Bell proposes to model another scheme: we now see the sign in the bilingual mind as a polyhedron with the concept inside it and on each of the faces an appropriate realization in one of the languages.

Baum

derevo arbre

The concept tree

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11