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A functional-lexematic approach to the syntagmatic axis of the semantic dimension "Prediction" in Old English

Paper · 2013 · Marta María González Orta

Summary

The paper describes the syntactic behaviour of Old English verbs of prediction, the semantic dimension glossed as "to say that something will happen". It works within the Functional-Lexematic Model of Martín Mingorance, as extended by Mairal Usón. That model combines three things: a paradigmatic axis taken from Coseriu's Lexematics, a syntagmatic axis taken from Dik's Functional Grammar, and a later cognitive axis. The method has two steps. First, the verbs of the dimension are collected from A Thesaurus of Old English. Second, their attestations are retrieved from The Dictionary of Old English Corpus. Each context is then analysed for the complement types the verb takes, so that prototypical predicate schemata can be generalised. Complements are classified by the layer of the clause they belong to and by extensional and intensional semantic properties. One reported observation is that speech-act complements are rare in this dimension: only a single instance appears, with the auxiliary sculan after forewitegian/cwæð. The study is presented as the first step toward an onomasiologically organised valency dictionary of the Old English verbal lexicon, which the author says has no existing equivalent.

Key points

  • Data sources: verbs come from A Thesaurus of Old English (Roberts & Kay 1995), and attestations from The Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Healey).

  • Layered representation: clauses follow the Layered Hypothesis, with four layers:

    • predicate (1)
    • predication or state of affairs (2)
    • proposition or possible fact (3)
    • clause or speech act (4)

    The paper illustrates this with a full predicate-frame analysis of foresecgan in a sentence about Bishop Aidan foretelling a storm.

  • Extensional properties: complements fall into six types. Three of them are descriptive (INDIVIDUALS, ACTIONS, EVENTS), while the other three are content-oriented (FUTURE FACTS, FACTS, SPEECH ACTS).

  • Intensional properties: a graded scale of certain, probable, possible and indeterminate. Speech acts are instead evaluated as felicity, misfire, abuse or infelicity.

  • Single speech-act complement: the one speech-act complement found (forewitegian + cwæð with sceal) is treated as shared by both verbs. The paper notes that sculan often accompanied Old English verbs of prediction.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Sort complements by the clause layer they denote (entity, event, proposition, speech act), so that a verb's argument slots say what kind of thing can fill them, not only which syntactic category.
  • I2. The Lexical Iconicity Principle links tight verb–complement binding to more noun-like complement morphology, and loose binding to independent, quote-like clauses.
  • I3. Each complement carries a graded certainty value (certain/probable/possible/indeterminate), kept separate from what the complement refers to.
  • I4. The pipeline goes from a meaning-organised thesaurus to corpus contexts and then to generalised schemata, building lexicon entries one semantic class at a time.
  • I5. Speech acts get their own evaluation dimension (felicity, misfire, abuse) instead of truth.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): VerbNet-based frames could record the layer type of each clausal argument, which would let the frame builder tell a reported proposition apart from an embedded quoted speech act.
  • I2 (tree): parser outputs such as ccomp versus parataxis versus nominal objects could be checked against the verb's semantic class, with mismatches flagged as likely attachment errors.
  • I3 (world): a prediction or modal complement could enter the text world with an explicit certainty level instead of being asserted as fact, which keeps answers about future events honest.
  • I4 (learn): Mova could gather silver parses for all verbs of one WordNet/FrameNet class and induce a shared argument schema, then use outliers as negative-control cases for repair rules.
  • I5 (frames): the speech-act module could attach felicity status alongside truth values, which would help with irony and insincere promises in fables.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Universidad de La LagunaSan Cristóbal de La Laguna · Spain2 works · 1 citation

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 2The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 16,039 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 15,891 works

🧭 Topics 2Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 2,263 worksHistorical linguistics & language change · 249 works

Cite

Cite as Marta María González Orta. 2013. A functional-lexematic approach to the syntagmatic axis of the semantic dimension "Prediction" in Old English. Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica 26.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.18172/cif.2222

@inproceedings{orta2013functional,
  title = {{A functional-lexematic approach to the syntagmatic axis of the semantic dimension "Prediction" in Old English}},
  author = {Marta María González Orta},
  booktitle = {Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica 26},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.18172/cif.2222},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18172/cif.2222}
}

References

17 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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