Bridging the conceptual and the contextual using evidence from corpus data

Zhuo and Gries (to appear) (Schematic meaning and pragmatic inference: The Mandarin adverbs 'hai', 'you', and 'zai' ) could contribute to the development of a method to investigate my data in view of identifying the semantic and image-schematic profiling characteristics of Fr-Engl IL 'may' and 'can'.

In their paper, Zhuo and Gries are concerned with the relation between the abstract schematic meaning of specific lexical items and the variety of concrete contextual messages those lexical items give rise to. The authors use the case of Mandarin adverbs 'hai', 'you' and 'zai', all loosy translating into 'again', to demonstrate that although the three lexical items belong to a common semantic system [the term is understood here as refering to a 'semantic notion'; the authors also refer to the term semantic substance to express the same idea], each individual lexical item refers to a specific facet of the semantic system it is a member of. Within specific systems, all members contrast semantically with one another:

"[W]e shall treat the three adverbs as signs in semantic opposition. We shall assign each word a schematic meaning as a salient component of a semantic system in which they contrast" (p.7)

Although schematic meanings can be contextually enriched (via idiosyncratic lexical input, encyclopaedic knowledge of a particular word or the human factor), they are considered by the authors as semantic values and are to be dissociated from contextual inference. Further, Zhuo and Gries recognise that "the human ability to utilize all kinds of knowledge including knowledge of language as well as world and cultural knowledge and the ability to pick up contextual cues in discourse" (p.8) is part of the contextual enrichment process of the schematic meaning of a particular lexical item.

One of the core issues addressed in the paper is that of semantic compatibility bewteen a particular lexical item and its discourse environment. On the basis of discourse coherence and semantic compatibility, the authors predict and confirm that due to their individual schematic meaning, the three lexical items 'hai', 'you' and 'zai' show in discourse different collocation preferences, thus bringing evidence that different lexical items from a common semantic system do profile, semantically, different facets of that system.

Methodologically, the authors investigated a small corpus made out of two subcorpora. Their data are multifactoral, based on 4 variables: CORPUS: narrative vs. non-narrative, TEMP_REF: non-past vs. past, ADVERB: 'hai' vs. 'you' vs. 'zai'.

In principle, Zhuo and Gries' s study reminds me of a paper by Clausner and Croft (1999) and that I briefly mentioned in this post. Despite the fact that Clausner and Croft are concerned with image-schemas and Zhou and Gries are concerned with schematic -- but yet linguistic, meaning, both studies have in common the idea of a general category including various contrasting members. Clausner and Croft (1999) make a case for image-schematic domains and they argue that image-schemas are a subtype of domain. They also argue that image-schematic domains show internal structure and that the image-schemas included within a specific image-schematic domain stand in various relationships and profile different aspects of the image-schematic domain they belong to. This parallel between the two studies raises the question of whether Zhou and Gries' s methodology (i.e. investigating discourse collocations as a way to differentiate members of a semantic system) could be applied at image-schema level.

Should Zhuo and Gries's methodology be applied to my project, one may speculate that:

Preffered collocation sets for 'can' and 'may' would generally allow for the identification of individual image-schemas. In the case of 'may' and 'can' as produced in native English , the preferred collocation sets would be expected to confirm Talmy's (1998) finding. In the case of 'pouvoir', the preferred collocation set would be expected to be in line with Achard's (1996) finding. Ultimately, the investigation of the preferred collocation sets for native English 'may'/'can' and native French 'pouvoir' would contribute to the identification of the image-schematic representation of 'may' and 'can' in Fr-Eng IL. In other words, this method could be useful in the identification of the profiling characteristics of IL 'may'/'can' at conceptual level [by 'conceptual level' I mean pre linguistic level], and in contrast with native English 'may'/'can' and native French 'pouvoir'.

So in sum, an analysis of the cross-linguistic collocation patterns of 'may', 'can' and 'pouvoir' in native and second language English and native French corpora could provide a way of bridging the contextual, the linguistic and the conceptual in bilingual mental meaning representation.