Semantics:
Introduction to the Study of Meaning

Link Posted: April 15, 2003
Due: Friday April 23, 5:00 p.m. in my mailbox in Herring Hall. If you need more time due to your schedule, I am amenable to extensions if you contact me by the 23rd and propose a date by which you can turn it in. Seniors need to meet the university deadline for all senior work, noon on April 29.

Graduate students do not write this assignment, but instead a paper on lexical semantic analysis on a topic of their choice.

Honor Code policy: This is an open-book, open-notes, but closed-mouth assignment. Unlike the other assignments, the policy for this assignment is to work individually and not collaboratively.

There is no requirement that you must write either or both parts all in one sitting. I imagine (without any guarantees, because people work at different speeds) that after thinking about the second topic, it would take several hours to put together a good coherent essay on it.

You can make reference to any relevant work you have read inside or outside the class, with appropriate references.

Assignments must be typed/computer-printed and in general look reasonably professional. If you happen to use any diagrams, be sure to explain them.

The assignment is worth 60 points, same as the last homework assignment. It is divided into a problem and an essay.

1. (20) The word again at an earlier stage of its history meant 'in the opposite direction, back', as illustrated in the examples below from Middle English. (This meaning actually goes back to Old English, with the first examples attested about the year 900. These two examples simply illustrate the meaning, which persisted a long time in thee language.)

Examples are preceded by the year the example was recorded.

1480: The walsshmen...were so strong that they dryuen the englysshmen agayne.
'The Welshmen were so strong that they drove the Englishmen back.'

1200: Elc cristene man maketh this dai procession from chirche to chirche and eft agen.
'Each Christian person makes on this day a procession from church to church and back again.
(eft = 'again'. )

Related senses:
'in response, in reply, in reaction, in return'
1440: He wedde a yonge gentil damiselle to wyfe; and he loviede hir moche, and she hatide him ayene.
'He married a young gentle damsel; and he loved her greatly; and she hated him in return.'

1611: Doe good and lend, hoping for nothing againe.
'Do good and lend, hoping for nothing in return.'

'back into a former position or state'
1400: From dethe to lyue I am resyn ageyn.
'From death back to life I am risen again.'
(referring to first and only time Christ rose from the dead).

Some additional examples, unclassified as to sense:

1398: A cercle that comyth agayne into itself and is renewed.
'A circle that comes back into itself and is renewed.'

1611 (King James Bible): When I come again, I will repay thee. (revised in 1881 edition into Modern English: When I come back again, I will repay thee.)

1678 (Pilgrim's Progress): Come then, Neighbour Pliable, let us turn again, and go home.

1742 (Richardson's Pamela): Go and shut the Chamber-door and come to me again.

How did the word again acquire its present meaning of 'repetition of an action' as in I did it again? Make the best hypothesis you can to explain the progression of semantic changes undergone by the word, using whatever concepts we have studied that you find useful (e.g. image schemas, profiling, incremental semantic extensions, conventionalization of inferences, or whatever applies. )

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) available in Fondren in book form and also on the Fondren website might be useful in supporting or illustrating your ideas. It has lots of examples of the usage of the word from various periods. If you do not use actual examples, for your posited historical stages, use hypothetical ones. Old English examples will not be very readable without special training, but there are enough examples from Middle English and later that will sufficiently illustrate your stages. Modern English examples may show some relations of the senses too.

(Note: Be sure you are analyzing the changes in the English word again and not the English word back. 'Back' for our purposes is simply the MEANING of the word again at an earlier stage in its history.

2. (40) All of the approaches to word meaning that we studied required breaking down the meaning into semantic properties ("features", "components", "attributes", etc.) Discuss how semantic properties of lexical items can be isolated or discovered; how they can be used to study the semantic relationships among words (whether word pairs or semantic fields) within or across languages; some of the problems one runs into in attempting to specify meaning properties; and some of the ways that analysts have used to deal with the problems, such as by introducing or using particular theoretical notions. Finally, why is the discovery of meaning properties, i.e. lexical semantic analysis, important to the enterprise of understanding human conceptualization?

In any part of your essay, you may include discussion of one or more theoretical notions that bear on your points (some of the major theoretical notions are listed below). There is no need to squeeze in discussion of all or even most of these ideas; but use the ones that you need in your discussion of methodology, problems, solutions to problems, and contributions of lexical semantic analysis to the study of human conceptualization.