Page 404 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes tuition, instructions, etc.) are linked to the noun teaching by synonymy. The words in the third
and fourth ‘legs’ are linked by more than the suffix ‘-ing’, which they all share. The words of the
fourth leg are a miscellaneous, accidental grouping, comprising nouns, adjectives, etc. The words
of the fifth ‘leg’ show opposite relationships.
The field theory visualizes the vocabulary as a mosaic on a gigantic scale, which is built up of
fields and higher units in the same way as fields are built up by words. The associative field of a
word is formed by an intricate network of associations, some based on similarity, others on
continuity, some arising between senses, others between names, others again between both. The
field is by definition open, and some of the associations are bound to be subjective though the
more central ones will be largely the same for most speakers. Attempts have been made to identify
some of these central associations by psychological experiments, but they can also be established
by purely linguistic methods. The identification of these associations by linguistic methods is done
by collecting the most obvious synonyms and antonyms of a word, as well as terms similar in
sound or in sense, and those which enter into the same habitual associations. Many of these
associations are embodied in figurative language : metaphors, similes, proverbs, idioms, and the
link. The number of associations centred in one word will of course be extremely variable and for
some very common terms it may be very high.
As one of Saussure’s pupils expressed it, ‘the associative field is a halo which surrounds the sign
and whose exterior fringes become merged.’ This field is formed by an intricate newtork of
associations : similarity, contiguity, sensation, name. The associative field is by any definition
open, that is, no finite limits can be assigned to any given field. Hence the aptness of the concept
‘field’, which serves an analogous purpose in physics.
According to this approach, words begin to be conceived of as concentrations within a linguistic
field, with direction and momentum but with no isolated identity other than that capable of
dictionary definition. Words belong in never ending chain-sequences of phrases, sentences, contexts,
and to the fabric of the entire language. The analogy is a limited one, but ‘they are crudely similar
to what is known about the individual atoms of a complex molecule, displacement of a single one
of which will affect the nature of the entire complex to a greater or lesser degree’.
In recent years, a lot of work has been done in relation to semantic field. Scholars have investigated
lexical systems in the vocabularies of different languages, with particular reference to such fields
(or domains) as kinship, colour, flora and fauna, weights and measures, military ranks, moral and
aesthetic evaluation, and various kinds of knowledge, skill and understanding. They have amply
demonstrated the value of structural approach to semantics, and have confirmed the
pronouncements of such earlier scholars as Von Humboldt, de Saussure and Sapir that the
vocabularies of different languages (in certain fields at least) are ‘non-isomorphic’, that there are
semantic distinctions made in one language which are not made in another, and that particular
fields may be categorized in a totally different way by different languages. As an illustration of
this notion we may take the field of colour or of kinship terms and see how it is determined, or
‘informed’, in English. The field of colour has been illustrated by a number of scholars.
The etymologist, the lexicographer, and the student of semantic change stand to benefit most from
this approach to meaning. This theory has been described as ‘Neo-Humboldtian’. Some of its ideas
are surely from Humboldt according to whom “each separate language......should be looked upon
as organic whole, different from all the rest and expressing the individuality of the people speaking
it; it is characteristic of one nation’s psyche, and indicates the pecuilar way in which that nation
attempts to realize the ideal of speech”
The term ‘semantic field’ was introduced by G. Ipsen in 1924. According to Duchacek, the term
had been used before Ipsen by A. Stohr in 1910. Trier also did some useful work on semantic
fields. The progress of the field theory was delayed by the war and its aftermath. In the 1960s,
however, there was a considerable revival of interest in it, and in the 1960s it was one of the most
active branches of semantics.
Meillet was among the first to argue that one cannot know the exact shade of meaning of a word
of even a century ago in one’s own language without a close study of the period concerned. An

398 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY