3.3 Semantic Meaning Analysis…
3.3.2 Categorization of the First Pattern of [VP P up/down ]
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express a spatial idea – the specific point in time – so we grouped it as a metaphorical preposition.
3.3.2 Categorization of the First Pattern of [VP Pup/down]
After reviewing previous research, this study used four semantic meaning categories proposed in previous studies to interpret [VP Pup/down] in terms of how an action happens, regardless of the literal or metaphorical preposition in it.
Researchers in previous studies, such as Larsen-Freeman and Celce-Murcia (1999), categorized the meaning of [VP P] pattern into three categories: literal, aspectual and idiomatic. For the purpose of their work, they focused more on the [VP P] pattern with the aspectual meaning. In their discussion of the aspectual [VP P]
pattern, they had four types of the aspectual meaning – ‘Continuative’, ‘Completive’,
‘Inceptive’, and ‘Iterative’ – which are composed of different types of VP and a
preposition (e.g., activity verbs or accomplishment verbs). These aspectual meanings of the patterns were discussed by considering the lexical semantic meaning P
contributes (e.g., the ‘Completive’ pattern, burn down, uses down to indicate an action that is complete). However, for the purpose of our research, we think that it might not be an appropriate way to categorize [VP P] patterns by only considering the
preposition’s meaning and neglecting the meaning of VP. The semantic meaning of
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the [VP P] pattern should be determined by all the components in the pattern rather than a single lexicon in this pattern. We think that it could be more appropriate and systematic to determine the aspectual meaning of the [VP P] pattern by taking both VP and P into account rather than simply considering the lexical semantics of P. In this thesis, we first decode what action meaning the whole [VP P] pattern refers to (e.g., stand up in you could stand up in court refers to the action of moving into an upright position), and determine how the action happens in terms of its aspect (e.g., stand up in you could stand up in court refers to an completed action when the agent
reach the upward position so stand up has a ‘Completive’ aspectual meaning). The aspectual semantic meaning categories and their definitions used in this study are summarized in Table 3.6.
Table 3.6
Semantic Meaning Categories and Definitions of [VP P]
Semantic Meaning Categories Definitions
Continuative It describes an action continuing for a period of time.
Completive It refers to a completed state of an action.
Inceptive It refers to the beginning state of an action.
Iterative It refers to the repetition of an action.
All of the four categories were adopted in the thesis to analyze the case of [VP P]
when the preposition is either up or down (i.e., [VP Pup/down]).
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The [VP Pup/down] constituents carrying the ‘Continuative’ meaning refers to an action which lasts for a period of time such as in examples (3.5a) and (3.5b).
(3.5) a. (Continuative) Such treatment does not improve germination (they are protected by a hard endocarp during their animal passage), but seedlings
grow up in dung piles in clearings: the species is shade-intolerant.
b. (Continuative) It’s all right to build bridges with South Africa, but if bridges are falling down in Wales something must be done about it.
In example (3.5a), the [VP Pup] pattern, grow up, describes the lasting action for the seeds to develope as the time passes. The action is ‘Continuative’. The [VP Pdown] in (3.5b) refers to a coming down action which continues for a period of time, so the [VP Pdown] pattern has a ‘Continuative’ meaning.
Instances containing ‘Completive’ [VP Pup/down] could be seen in the examples (3.6a) and (3.6b).
(3.6) a. (Completive) A NEW charity to help care for the terminally ill has been set up in Liverpool.
b. (Completive) The flitches – that’s the hams – were laid down in salt and
saltpetre to cure, then hung up on hooks.
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The [VP Pup] constituent in (3.6a) refers to the completed action of the establishment of the charity organization, and the [VP Pdown] in (3.6b) describes the completed action of placing down the hams in a position containing the seasoning. The semantic meanings of the [VP Pup/down] pattern in both examples are ‘Completive’.
As for ‘Inceptive’ [VP Pup/down] patterns which describe the beginning state of an action, examples are presented in (3.7a) and (3.7b).
(3.7) a. (Inceptive) I prayed that we wouldn't crack up in laughter.
b. (Inceptive) By January, Soviet troops had cracked down in Lithuania, Soviet troop withdrawals from central Europe had ominously stopped.
Example (3.7a) shows an ‘Inceptive’ [VP Pup] pattern because crack up refers to the action of beginning to laugh in a sudden way. For the example in (3.7b), the [VP Pdown] pattern conveys a beginning state of the action as well. Cracked down describes the beginning action carried out by the troops who started punishing people in
Lithuania in a very strict way, so it has an ’Inceptive’ meaning.
All the four semantic meaning categories and their definitions of the [VP P]
pattern proposed in the previous research (in Table 3.6) were used and applied to the analysis of the targeted pattern in this study (i.e., [VP Pup/down]), but no instances were
found for ‘Iterative’ [VP Pup/down].
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It is to be noticed that in analyzing the data, different semantic meaning categories would apply to a set of [VP Pup/down] patterns which shares a same root form due to: (a) the aspect differences of the VPs and (b) the polysemous
characteristics of the VPs. Below we list three examples in which VPs in the [VP Pup] patterns are considered as the same type – set up – while the [VP Pup] patterns in these examples carry different semantic meanings. Firstly, the aspect influence of the VP is illustrated by examples (3.9a) and (3.9b).
(3.9) a. (Inceptive) Mattocks Roses go back 4 generations to 1875 when Mark's great grand-father, John Mattock set up in business in Headington in Oxford.
b. (Continuative) If, if you're setting up in business as a childminder, not doing it as a, for a friend, for just nominal expense.
c. (Completive) A subsidiary company, Frippak Feeds, was set up in Batley, West Yorkshire to manufacture the feed -- the only one which can be used
exclusively, without the need for supplements.
The [VP Pup] patterns in examples (3.9a) and (3.9b) share the same verb root, set, and they refer to an identical concept (i.e., to start operating a business). However, with distinct aspect (i.e., progressive aspect for the example (3.9b)), the meanings of these
[VP Pup] patterns differ. In (3.9a), set up refers to the ‘Inceptive’ state in which the
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business begins to work; in (3.9b), setting up refers to the ‘Continuative’ action of
operating the business. Examples (3.9a) and (3.9c) exemplify the polysemous
influence of the VPs which lead to different semantic meaning of the [VP Pup] pattern, set up. Set up in (3.9a) refers to the action of starting to operate a business, while set
up in (3.9c) means to establish a firm called Frippak Feeds. These [VP Pup] patterns also share the same VP form, set, and both of the patterns use past tense, but they carry different aspectual semantic meanings. In example (3.9a), it denotes an
‘Inceptive’ meaning referring to the action of begin to operate the business, while in
example (3.9c), it has a ‘Completive’ meaning since the establishing action ends when the firm is created.
It is also to be noticed that, we found that tense does not influence the aspectual semantic meanings of the [VP Pup/down] patterns. Tense only affects the moment the action happens but not how the action happens, and thus will not lead to distinct aspectual semantic meanings of the [VP Pup/down]. Take examples (3.10a) and (3.10b) for instance.
(3.10) a. (Continuative) As in the earlier case of David II, sent as a child to France in 1334 in exactly the same circumstances, when the English were menacing
southern Scotland, the presumption was that she could grow up in safety,
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until she could return as an adult to rule her kingdom.
b. (Continuative) I grew up in Australia, and when I was about fourteen I saw a guitar and that was it: I just fell in love, just totally obsessed.
In the above examples, both grow up and grew up describe a ‘Continuative’ state of the developing action while the only difference lies in the action of growing happens in the past in the example (3.10b).
In sum, when analyzing the semantic meaning of the [VP P] pattern, we, unlike previous research which based only upon the meaning of P in the pattern, do not neglect the VP. We consider both the aspect influences of the VP and the polysemous characteristics of the VP (checked by looking at a sentence before and after the instance in order to decide which of the polysemous meanings the VP has) so as to analyze the aspectual semantic meanings for the [VP Pup/down] patterns.
3.3.3 Categorizations of the Second Pattern of [Pin NP]
After reviewing the previous studies investigating the sequence of a preposition with a noun or noun phrase (Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 1999; Quirk,
Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartik, 1985; Yasutake, 2003), all the categories and definitions in the literature for [P NP] were included in this study (left column in
Table 3.7).
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Semantic Meaning Categories and Definitions of [P NP] in Literature
Semantic Meaning Categories Definitions
Space It describes a range of different relations between entities in the physical space.
Time It is relevant to time.
Cause/ Purpose spectrum (i.e., Cause, Reason, Motive, Purpose, Destination, and Target)
It relates to the cause, motives or purposes, and usually associates with particular preposition
“for”, and wh-words, “why” and “how”.
Means/ Agentive spectrum (i.e., Manner, Means, Instrument, Agentive, and Stimulus)
It refers to the method or instrument, and usually associates with particular preposition “with”, and wh-words, “how”.
Degree It refers to the unit, amount or level of measuring things.
Others It includes the idiomatic usages.
All the six semantic meaning categories were found in the previous studies and used
to analyze the targeted [Pin NP] pattern; however, many of the instances could not fit into any of these categories such as the instances in (3.11a) and (3.11b).
(3.11) a.I jumped up in fright and anger.
b.It has often struck me that remedial classes everywhere in the school system are heavily populated with boys needing help with their language
development, yet when able girls slide down in mathematics, that is
generally considered as something [natural] about which no active steps
need be taken.
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The [Pin NP] pattern in (3.11a) is related to human feeling while that in (3.11b) describes refers to the specific field of science about numbers or quantities. The meanings of these [Pin NP] patterns do not fall into any of the six semantic meaning categories of [P NP] listed in Table 3.6. These categories found in the literature may not be sufficient to analyze the [P NP] pattern when the preposition is in (i.e., [Pin NP]), probably due to the focus on different constructions between the literature and this study. Therefore, we consulted the well-known dictionaries – Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary, Longman Online English Dictionary, and Oxford Dictionaries –
for the senses of in. It was found that in has other detailed senses which are unrelated to the semantic meaning categories of [P NP] previous researchers proposed. For instance, the preposition in can be used to ‘indicate a job or area of activity’ (e.g., She has a job in marketing). Based upon the dictionary senses of in, we created a set of
semantic meaning categories for the [Pin NP] pattern. However, the categories are not exhaustive yet. Because there are still some instances which have semantic meanings other than those proposed in literature or listed in the dictionary such as the [Pin NP]
pattern describing the emotional feelings in I jumped up in fright and anger.
Therefore, another set of semantic meaning categories directly identified from the
data were established by the researcher. In sum, the semantic meaning categories used
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to analyze the [Pin NP] pattern comes from three sources: (a) previous studies, (b) dictionary, and (c) corpus data. The summarized semantic categories, sources, definitions, and examples are presented in Table 3.8.
Table 3.8
Semantic Meaning Categories and Definition of [Pin NP] in This Thesis Semantic Meaning Categories Sources of
the Category
Definitions
Space literature It describes a range of different
relations between entities in the physical space.
Time literature It is relevant to time.
State state dictionary It indicates the state in which something exists or happens, or in which someone lives or works, etc.
area of activity dictionary It indicates a job or an area of activity.
descriptions of imaginary events
dictionary It indicates the existence of something or someone within a story, movie, etc.
feeling data It indicates an emotional state or reaction.
group data It indicates a group that
someone or something belongs to, or a group of related people including people who lived in the past.
system formed by a group of people
data It indicates system formed by a large group of people who are responsible for making the
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laws or those who are involved in running a government.
written or printed work data It indicates the written or printed message or official document.
manner manner literature It indicates the way that something is done or happens.
degree literature It indicates the way that something is done or happens when referring to the exact unit, amount or level of measuring things.
measurement data It indicates way that something is done or happens when referring to the degree without an exact number of units.
person person dictionary It indicates the person who is being described.
mental product of things
dictionary It indicates the object of a thought or feeling from a person.
part data It indicates the body part.
Event data It indicates a specific event that
someone participates in or something is involved in at a particular time and in a particular place.
Idiomatic literature It refers to a group of words which may or may not be predictable from the individual meanings of its separate words.
There are mainly five semantic meaning categories for [Pin NP] – ‘Space’, ‘Time’,
‘State’, ‘Event’, and ‘Idiomatic’ (see the very left column in Table 3.8). Since there
are many more detailed meanings of ‘State’, we further categorized ‘State’ into
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having 11 sub-categories such as ‘area of activity’ and ‘feelings’ (see from the fourth row from the top of Table 3.8 to the third row from the bottom of the table). The examples of each sub-category under ‘State’ are listed in Appendix. In sum, there are a total of 21 semantic meaning categories used to analyze [Pin NP] pattern in the thesis.
3.4 Summary of the Chapter
This chapter begins with the introduction of the steps in extracting the data of the {[VP Pup/down] [Pin NP]} construction, from the British National Corpus. There were a total of 1,863 corpus instances included and analyzed in terms of their semantic meanings. There are two semantic meaning categories for Pup/down and Pin (i.e., literal and metaphorical); four for the [VP Pup/down] pattern (i.e., ‘Continuative’,
‘Completive’, ‘Inceptive’, and ‘Iterative’); five general categories for the [Pin NP]
pattern (i.e., ‘Space’, ‘Time’, ‘State’, ‘Event’, and ‘Idiomatic’). These semantic meanings were applied to the analysis process. In Chapter 4, the results of the semantic meaning analysis for the elements in the {[VP Pup/down] [Pin NP]}
construction will be presented, which answer our first and second research questions, along with the results of the relationship between the elements in the construction,
which is related to our third research question.
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
After the data analysis in terms of the semantic meaning categories, the next step was to calculate and count the number of instances and percentages for each semantic meaning. This leads to the results which answer our first and second research
questions probing into the corpus distribution of each meaning of the elements in the targeted construction, {[VP Pup/down] [Pin NP]}. Based upon the semantic meaning distributions, the results of the association between the semantic meanings of the elements are also provided, which answers our third research question querying about the relationships between elements in the construction.
In the following sections, we will present the results of the semantic meanings of the elements in the construction along with the results of the relationships between the elements. In other words, the findings of the relationships between the elements will be presented subsequent to the results of the semantic meanings of the elements. The answers to our 3rd research question will be presented along with that to our 1st and 2nd research questions.
4.1 Results of the Semantic Meaning Analysis
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The frequency counts and percentages of all the semantic meaning categories for (a) Pup/down, (b) Pin, (c) [VP Pup/down], and (d) [Pin NP] are illustrated in this section with the exemplification of example instances.
It is to be noted that, several types of instances were removed from this study because they do not conform to the purpose of analyzing the elements in the targeted construction. Firstly, the tagged construction {VP Pup/down Pin NP} conveys a meaning as a whole, which cannot be broken into elements such as [VP Pup/down] and [Pin NP].
One of the examples is presented as below.
(4.1) They are the result of a survey in the wake of statistics which revealed that a quarter of a billion pounds goes up in smoke each year as part of Belfast's
annual energy bill.
The second type of instances removed from the analysis is that the meaning of the tagged [Pin NP] pattern cannot be complete until the preposition following the pattern is considered (see the examples (4.2a) and (4.2b)).
(4.2) a. They drew up in front of a pair of steel gates topped with spikes.
b. The option of a room at the five-star Grand Hotel was turned down in favour
of bed and breakfast in St George's Terrace.
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Lastly, the final type of instances removed from the discussion in this thesis is: the corpus wrongly tagged one of the lexicons in the target construction. Two of the examples containing the wrongly tagged VP are presented (the examples (4.3a) and (4.3b)).
(4.3) a. Could have had the whole place up in flames.
b.The right politician must be put in charge of the Treasury to bring the economy back to even keel, reduce the trade deficit and force both inflation
and interest rates down in time for the next election.
These three types of instances were removed from the discussion in this thesis; a total of 194 instances concerning {[VP Pup] [Pin NP]} and 133 instances of {[VP Pup] [Pin NP]} removed from this study. The total number of instances undergoing the analysis is presented in Table 4.1.
Table 4.1
The Number of Instances Analyzed in This Study Semantic Meaning
Analysis Treatment
{[VP Pup] [Pin NP]} {[VP Pdown] [Pin NP]}
Applicable 988 531
There are a total of 988 instances analyzed for {[VP Pup] [Pin NP]}, and a total of 531
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instances for {[VP Pdown] [Pin NP]}. The overview of the analysis is illustrated in Figure 4.1. In Figure 4.1, four parts of the pie chart represent four elements in the construction of {[VP Pup/down] [Pin NP]} which underwent the semantic meaning analysis. There are 4 semantic meaning categories of [VP Pup/down], 2 of Pup/down, 2 of Pin, and 5 for [Pin NP] (listed in squares). And the relationship between the elements is presented in the thick arrows.
Figure 4.1. The Analysis of the Data in This Study
The results of the semantic meaning analysis are presented in the following sections:
(a) results in Section 4.1.1 answers our first research question about the corpus distribution of literal/metaphorical Pup/down and Pin and (b) results in Section 4.4.2
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presents the semantic meaning distribution of [VP Pup/down] while Section 4.4.3 shows the distribution of [Pin NP], which answer our second research questions. All the three sections in this chapter also discuss the answer to our third research question, which concerns the semantic meaning relationships between the related elements in the targeted construction.
4.1.1 The Literal Versus Metaphorical Meaning
For all the 960 instances of {[VP Pup] [Pin NP]} and 464 instances of {[VP Pdown] [Pin NP]}, the semantic meaning distribution of the preposition Pup and Pdown are presented in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2
Literal Versus Metaphorical Meaning Distribution of Pup and Pdown
Semantic
Metaphorical 870 (88.06%) 433 (81.54%)
Total 988 (100.00%) 531 (100.00%)
Nearly 90% of the Pup and around 82% of Pdown in the target construction portray a
Nearly 90% of the Pup and around 82% of Pdown in the target construction portray a