In this section, the framework of “Emergent Lexical Semantics” is introduced to explain why there are various meanings of kěài in different contexts found in this study.
Hopper (1987, 1988) proposes the term “Emergent Grammar” to capture the
26
view that grammatical structures are arising out of discourse practice. He takes the term “emergent” from an essay by the cultural anthropologist James Clifford, and argues that the grammar of language is just like culture, which is “always deferred, always in a process but never arriving, and therefore emergent” (Hopper 1987: 141).
Besides, Hopper (1987) also views the structure of language as a real-time social phenomenon, and therefore is temporal, emergent and disputed just like culture. With this view, the notion of Emergent Grammar is meant to argue that “structure, or regularity, comes out of discourse and is shaped by discourse as much as it shapes discourse in an on-going process” (Hopper 1987: 141). Hopper (1987: 141) further suggests that grammatical structures are not “fixed templates but are negotiable in face-to-face interaction in ways that reflect the individual speakers' past experience of these forms, and their assessment of the present context, including especially their interlocutors, whose experiences and assessments may be quite different.”
The theory used in this study to explain the extended meanings of kěài in Mandarin is not Emergent Grammar, even though the notion is closely related, but
“Emergent Semantics”, namely the dynamic nature of meaning of lexical entities.
While there are extensive studies elucidating Emergent Grammar in different languages, relatively little has been done to explore the emergent nature of semantics.
As has been discussed by Huang (1998), Bybee (1998), and Tao (2003), the principles
27
of Emergent Grammar can be applied to lexical semantics, and they argue that the lexical meanings are emergent and negotiable between participant interactions. The following subsections introduce the findings of Emergent Semantics by Huang (1998), Bybee (1998) and Tao (2003) respectively.
2.3.1 Huang (1998)
Based on the extension of the idea of Emergent Grammar, Huang (1998: 129) argues that “meaning is not merely a fixed relation between utterances and objective reality.” Toward an emergent view of semantics, Huang (1998: 129) suggests that the fixed meanings codified in traditional dictionaries are “merely sedimented or stabilized structures that emerge as negotiated recurring patterns that have achieved cross-textual consistency”. He points out that based on sense frequency, lexicographers tend to seek the common meanings of lexical items cross-textually and present these meanings as normative while deliberately leaving out the emergent and the negotiated meaning as insignificant, giving the impression that lexical semantics is static and fixed. Even though the most common and usual meaning of a word may work quite well in most cases, Huang suggests that such normative view may mislead in cases where potential meanings of a word is implicated in processes of “social contestation”. He proposes that in actual daily interactions, speakers and addressees
28
usually do not assume a general normative approach to get the meaning of lexical entities because what they are more interested in is to negotiate the “particulars” that are closely related to their life experiences. In other words, Huang argues that interactional processes between participants may shape the meaning of lexical items, and the meaning emerging from conversation practices in actual interaction may bear little resemblance to the dictionary definition.
Within interactions, Huang (1998) suggests that participants may utilize all sorts of information available to them in the context because the meaning they try to make sense of each other is context-sensitive. He believes the central project of semantics is to paraphrase Hopper’s (1987) idea: not of 'semantics', but of 'semanticization' of negotiated pragmatic meanings; that is, the speaker meaning is what really matters in
daily interactions. Thus, Huang (1998: 142) argues that “the purpose of language use is not to endorse conventional meanings, but to achieve interactional ends −
understanding of the particularities of speaker meaning”.
2.3.2 Bybee (1998)
Different from Hopper’s (1987) goal to explicate the view of grammar that arises from Emergent Grammar, Bybee’s (1998) goal and basic point is the view of the lexicon entailed by such a theory. She proposes that not only language structures (i.e.,
29
grammar) but also lexical storage are highly affected by language use in our everyday practices. Bybee (1998: 421) argues that a lexicon is emergent from the storage of
“linguistic experience” rather than “a storage area for all and only the content words or morphemes of a language” that the traditional conception of a lexicon would suggest. The point of her paper is to explore the properties of stored linguistic experience from an emergent view. She suggests that not only words, but phrases and utterances of a person's experience are not separately stored in our memory and this is because our “brain is a powerful categorization device for the efficient sorting and storing of the pieces of our experience, including the units of language use” (Bybee 1998: 431). According to Bybee, the role of the “linguistic context” is extremely important since the context itself may activate linguistic units, which makes relevant words and phrases easy to access under appropriate situations. But she also points out that the same units may be hard to perceive and interpret correctly or to access in production when they are in other contexts. In other words, textual use affects the meaning of the lexicon and different meanings of the same linguistic entity may emerge within different contexts and conditions.
2.3.3 Tao (2003)
Tao (2003) points out that although traditional semantic studies conduct extensive
30
etymological research on meaning changes of lexical entities, postulating such mechanisms as meaning expansion, meaning reduction or meaning shift, these studies only focus on individual items without explaining the dynamic nature of meanings and the role of participant interaction in shaping the lexicon. Using his own data, which consists of everyday conversations, Tao (2003) found that there is a special way in which meaning can emerge and be negotiated between participants. He suggests that in a situation, speakers may discuss the definition or some important attributes of a lexical item; what they are really focusing on is some aspects of meaning that interest them most when conversing, and these aspects of the meaning of the lexical entity may be totally different and absent from its standard definitions. For example, the dictionary definition of héchàng (合唱) ‘chorus’ refers to “different singers and different divisions of voice”. However, in one of Tao’s examples, the meaning of héchàng ‘chorus’ has been redefined to “require a conductor” in a situation when two speakers are conversing and one of the speaker says méi zhǐhuī bú jiào héchàng (沒指揮不叫合唱) ‘without a conductor it should not be called a choral
composition’ and the other speaker says hǎoxiàng jiùshì dǎ pāizi (好像就是打拍子)
‘(the conductor) just controls the beat’. According to Tao (2003), the reason why the meaning of héchàng ‘chorus’ has been radically redefined is for the communicative purpose at hand since what interests the participants most is that the conductor is
31
important to the chorus. Another way for speakers to negotiate meaning suggested by Tao (2003) is by providing apparently novel and ad hoc taxonomies for the reference of a term, and even though this taxonomy is not complete, it would still suffice the communicative demands. For instance, a speaker in one of Tao’s examples was trying to establish two novel categories for the reference of the term shǎzi (傻子) ‘fool’:
“those who are overzealous (tèbié rèqíng 特別熱情) and those who pretend to be cool (tèbié kù 特別酷)” (Tao 2003: 842). According to Tao, whether these two taxonomies can be legitimately established or not after the conversation is unknown and not important since these taxonomies have already helped the speaker to make a point in the conversation and this suffices the communicative needs of the moment.
Viewed in this light, Tao (2003: 851) suggests that “speakers constantly negotiate meanings or aspects of meanings which may be absent from the perceived abstract lexicon of the language, but which are significant in terms of life experiences or communicative needs at the moment of talking”. Still another way that Tao (2003) suggests to look at the effect of language use on the emergence of lexical meaning is to compare the meanings of a set of synonyms and their association patterns, and from the distributions of synonymous lexical items in different contexts, the impacts of textual use and communicative demands are apparently seen. In other words, Tao argues that textual practice and communicative needs are the main factors
32
contributing to those synonyms’ emergent patterns and use.
Since the instances of his own data can be appropriately accounted with the framework of Emergent Semantics, Tao (2003: 839) proposes that an emergent view
of lexical semantics could entail minimally the following:
a. Semantic meanings of lexical items and lexical combinations may emerge, be negotiated, and be acquired through language use.
b. Meaning in isolation may be at variance with meaning in use.
c. It is therefore indispensable to examine actual discourse practice to understand the nature of lexical semantics.
2.3.4 Why Emergent Semantics is Adopted in This Study
The above review of the theory of Emergent Semantics indicates that Huang (1998), Bybee (1998) and Tao (2003) all suggest that the meanings of lexical entities are not static and fixed, rather they are dynamic and highly affected by “language use”
in our everyday interactions and practices. Emergent Lexical Semantics is adopted in this study because this theory applies well to explicate the meaning extension of the word kěài. The original meaning of kěài codified in the dictionary is “adorable” or
“lovable”; however, some meanings which are quite different from these two are found in the two sets of data retrieved from the Sinica Corpus and social media platforms. In other words, the meaning of kěài is dynamic and varies with contexts
33
and times. Viewed in this light, the extended meanings of kěài can be explicated under the framework of Emergent Semantics since this theory suggests that different meanings of a lexical entity may emerge due to textual use and the communicative needs at that moment.