Introduction
It cannot be denied that not all scientific writings are
written perfectly without any weaknesses. Since the writing is still written by
human beings, it should have strengths and weaknesses, because anybody knows
that human beings are not perfect either in their existence or their creation.
The theory about evolution stated by Charles Darwin, Darwin cannot explain the missing link in this theory. Inability
of Darwin to explain about the missing link is the example of the weaknesses of
this theory. Besides this example, actually there are still many cases which
showing the imperfection of human beings in creating something.
During something creation is still imperfect; it needs to be
criticized to make it better in next time creation. Based on the statement
before, I am interested to make critical summary to a semantic writing which is
written by Reinhard Blutner (Berlin). The title of his writing is “lexical semantic and pragmatic”. From
this critical review, I want to find and discuss some strengths and weaknesses
of this paper, whether from aspect of form, content, organisation of writing, language
and the other related aspects.
In this writing, I would like to divided summary into five
parts, part one is introduction, it tells about the background of conducting
this writing; the second part is the short review of the paper is criticized,
it conducts some outline, simple summary about each part the paper criticized;
the third part about the strengths, this part conducts some strengths found in
that paper together with the reasons; the fourth part is about the weaknesses
found in that that paper; and the last part is conclusion, conducting the
summary of the whole writing.
Short review of the Paper
Before coming to the critical about the strength and
weaknesses of this paper, I would like to lead us to see briefly what actually
this paper talking about. Based on the abstract, it can be seen that Blutner
wrote this paper in order to discuss about the differences between lexical semantic
(word based meaning) and Pragmatic (context based meaning) investigated by a contrastive
analysis of lexemes within the Katz-Fodor tradition of semantic. Blutner
divided this paper into five main parts, those are: introduction; Three
features of the standard view of (lexical) semantic; Beyond the the standard
view: some inexplicable phenomena; Some extensions of standard view; and
Semantic Underspecification and pragmatic strengthening.
In the introduction, Blutner tried to explain the pragmatic
aspect in sentences stated by Katz and Fodor (1963), in which to understand the
meaning of a sentence well, people not only see the word and structure used in
that sentence but also they have to consider it to the context or situation or
the setting of the sentence. Bultner also stated again what has been stated by
Katz and Fodor about setting. Here he stated that setting can refers to
previous discourse, socio-physical factors and any other use of
“non-linguistic” knowledge. In his introduction, Blutner also gave very good
examples related to how important the context is in analysing a sentence can be
seen following:
The tones sounded impure because the hem
was torn.
He explained that this sentence is
really understandable until we know that this sentence is about bagpipe.
Besides that, another good example also provided by him:
a. Should we take the lion back to the zoo?
b. Should we take
the bus back to the zoo?
An obvious difference between these
sentences is that the lion is the object taken back to
the zoo in, but the bus is the instrument that takes
us back to the zoo in.
In part two of this paper Blutner talked about the three
features of the standard view of (lexical) semantics. The first one is systematicity and compositionality. Systematicity here stressed into the systematicity
of linguistic competence. This feature refers to the fact that the
ability to understand and produce some expressions is intrinsically connected
to the speaker's ability to produce and understand other expressions that are
semantically related. To account for the systematicity of
linguistic competence crucially makes use of the principle
of compositionality. The second one is about The
monotonicity of the lexical system. Monotonicity restriction refers to the
fact that we can incrementally extend the lexical system (by adding some
definitions for new lexical material) without influencing the content of
elements already defined. The third one is about the
persistence of anomaly. Semantic anomaly of an expression is defined
as logical incompatibility of (some part of) the formal translation of the
expression taken in union with a given system ' of definitions and/or meaning postulates
(e.g.McCawley 1971). Explicating incompatibility in terms of inconsistency and
inconsistency in terms of contradictory entailments makes it possible to derive
a second order property which is called by Blutner the persistence
of anomaly. It was explained by him that the
persistence of anomaly comes in two variants: (i) if we add some new axioms to ',then any former anomaly persists; and (ii)
if a (propositional) formula is anomalous, then every other formula that
implies it is anomalous as well.4 Both
varieties seem to be satisfied empirically.
In part three of this paper, Blutner talked about beyond
the standard view: some inexplicable phenomena, in which he will
present several phenomena which may raise some doubts about the validity
of the three principles just sketched. He added that the phenomena suggest that
we take a broader perspective on meaning and include various
aspects of utterance interpretation. He divided this part into three important
points. The first one is challenging the principle of
compositionality. In this section, Blutner tried to explain more
about compositionality as has been discussed in the previous part. He tried to
more complex explained about it by giving example which contains adjectives
which need more ability to analyse it because if it not be analysed deeply, the
meaning of the sentence will be different or might be meaningless. He support
his idea with the example given by Quine (1960) which notes the contrast
between red apple (red
on the outside) and pink grapefruit (pink
on the inside), and between the different colors denoted by
red in red apple and
red hair. The second section of this part talked
about Blocking and the non-monotonicity
of the lexical system. In his explanation, Blutner explain about
partial lexical blocking, in which some word cannot be used in certain context.
For example, the adjective pale can
be combined with a great many colour words: pale
green, pale blue, pale yellow. However, the combination pale
red is limited in a way that the other combinations are not. Besides
that, another standard example is the phenomenon of blocking in the context of
derivational and inflectional morphological processes. The third section of
this part is about the non-persistence of (pragmatic)
anomaly. In this section, Blutner talked about the well-known
phenomenon of "conceptual grinding", whereby ordinary count nouns
acquire a mass noun reading denoting the stuff the individual objects are made
of, as in Fish is on the table or
Dog is all over the street.
In part four, Blutner explain about some
extensions of the standard view,
in which he would consider some approaches that go
beyond the aspects of meaning typically investigated by a contrastive
analysis of lexemes within the standard view. These approaches deal with
the meaning of words within concrete conceptual and contextual settings,
and they can be seen as different ways of closing the gap between lexical
semantics and pragmatics. He divided this part into three sections. The first
one is Context-dependent semantics.
In this section, he tried to analyse the semantic by looking at the context.
The second section is about Two-level semantics.
This conception is developed by Bierwisch (1983, 1989). This approach can
be discussed under two perspectives.
First, there is a broader perspective that directs our attention to the
leitmotif of the
conception. Second, there is a narrower and more tangible perspective that
directs our attention to the proposed mechanisms and details of knowledge
representation (insofar as they are essential to the whole approach). The third section is about Generative
lexicon. this
theory was developed by Pustejovsky(1989, 1991, 1993, 1995), which
may be seen as a particular variant of the selective generation view. According
to Pustejovsky, sense enumeration lexicons simply miss the fact that the
different senses of a polysemous expression are semantically related. Moreover,
the process of sense selection on the basis of various contextual factors
becomes computationally undesirable, particularly when it has to account for
longer phrases involving different sources of polysemy. One of Pustejovsky's
typical examples concerns the ambiguity and context dependence of adjectives
such as fast and
slow, where the interpretation of the adjective
varies depending on the noun being modified (cf. Pustejovsky & Bogurajev
1993).
In the last part of this paper, Blutner talked about Semantic
underspecification and pragmatic strengthening. He will consider in
this section is a variant of the selective generation view which
may be called the radical underspecification
view. This view sharply contrasts with the
coercion view. It is more radically founded on underspecified representations,
and makes use of a pragmatic mechanism of contextual enrichment.
Strengths
After viewing the whole paper, I can find some strength in
this writing. The first one is opening this paper, Blutner use very good
examples with clear explanation, so the readers can imagine what he want to
talk about. Let’s see again the example together with the explanation provided
by Blutner to open his writing:
“The tones sounded impure because the hem was torn.”
“I
guess we do not really understand what this sentence means until we know that
this sentence is about a bagpipe. It is evident that this difficulty is not due
to our insufficient knowledge of English. The syntax involved is quite simple
and there are no unknown words in
the sentence. Instead, the difficulty is related to troubles in accessing the
relevant conceptual setting. The idea of bagpiping
is simply too unexpected to be derived in a
quasineutralutterance context.
a. Should we take the lion back to the zoo?
b. Should we take the bus back to the zoo?
An
obvious difference between these sentences is that the lion is that the lion is
the object taken
back to the 2 zoo in (a), but the bus is the instrument
that takes us back to the zoo
in (b). The problem for the pragmatic component of utterance interpretation is
to explain the difference in terms of different conceptual settings
("world knowledge"), starting from a lexicon that doesn't
discriminate the two occurrences of take back semantically and from a syntax that is
completely parallel for the two sentences.
(page number 1-2)
The two examples show the ability of
Blutner to take the readers’ attention to read the next step of his paper. I
think everyone who read the introduction given by him will be interested to
read more.
From the aspect of content, I think this writing is very
good because it not only talking about semantic, but also it also explained and
differentiate lexical semantic which give meaning to something based on the
word use from pragmatic which give meaning to something based on the context.
So even though the same word is used, but in the different context the meaning
will be different. As can be seen in example number 14 provided by Blutner:
(14)
a. c0ST(I(ham sandwich)) = I(ham sandwich)
b.
c1ST(I(ham sandwich)) = I(orderer of the ham sandwich)
c.
c2ST(I(ham sandwich)) = I(customer of the ham sandwich)
d.
c3ST(I(ham sandwich)) = I(son of the cook of the ham sandwich)
(page
nmber 12)
These four examples above consist of
the same word and word order, but because of the different situation so their
meaning is different. It is very important to be learnt to avoid ambiguity or
misunderstanding of a sentence.
The organisation of writing of this paper is also good, in
which he divided it into several parts based on the specification to be
discussed, so the readers can focus when reading each part of his writing.
Besides that, the language used by Blutner is formal language with good
structure and appropriate diction, match to scientific writing like this. His
language shows his professionalism in writing any kind of scientific writing.
His language also mostly can be understood well by the readers including me
myself.
One more strength I can find in
this paper is about Blutner’s way to give number to all his examples in this
paper. It is a very good way to make the readers quickly find the examples when
in his explanation he guided his readers to look back to the example he gave.
One example can be seen below:
Whereas lexical causatives (e.g. (7a)) tend
to
be restricted in their distribution to the
stereotypic causative situation (direct, unmediated
causation through physical action),
productive (periphrastic) causatives tend to pick up more
marked situations of mediated, indirect
causation. For example, (7b) could be used
appropriately when Black Bart caused the
sheriff's gun to backfire by stuffing it with cotton.
(7) a.
Black Bart killed the sheriff
b.
Black Bart caused the sheriff to die
(Page number 9)
Because
he has given number to his example, so in his example he just wrote (7a) and
(7b), and the readers will easy to find it because there is only one (7a) and (7b)
in this paper.
Weaknesses
As I have stated in my introduction that human creations
should have weaknesses. So even though this paper in generally good, but as
human creation it also cannot apart from weaknesses. After viewing this paper I
can find some weaknesses of this writing mostly from the form which might be
done by the writer or the publisher.
The first one is the alignment of the title and the writer’s
name. In this paper, alignment is in left position. I think it is better to use
centred alignment, so it looks more scientific and well organised. Besides
that, one more still related to the alignment is the body text alignment. In
this paper the writer use left position so his writing looks not so elegant. I
think if he uses justified alignment, this paper will be looked daintier.
The next weakness is related to the indentation given by the
writer in starting new paragraphs. It can be seen that the writer give
indentation to some paragraph, such as second paragraph the introduction, but
indentation to first paragraph. This case also happened in the whole paper, in
which no indentation given to the paragraphs which occur after a numbering.
While the other paragraphs which occur not after numbering are given
indentation. I think it is better if the indentation is given or not given to
the whole paragraph to keep its uniformity.
The next one is related to the organisation of writing, in
which the using of end notes to explain some words that have been signed by
small number. One example is ......rational perfect number1.(page
number 4). I think the writer had better use footnotes in each page where
the word need to be explained, not using so it can make the readers see the
explanation easily without seeing the end notes at the end of the writing.
The last one I can find as a weakness in this paper is about
the content especially in part four. In this part, Blutner used many symbols in
giving examples that can make the readers confuse about what he actually wants
to talk about. The examples of symbols I mean can be seen below:
(13) a. ƒP„
<c> = I(P), where I(P) designates the
intension of P
b. ƒP„ <c> = cST(I(P))
(page
number 12)
(18) a.
8P8x [INSTITUTION(x) v P(x)]
b. 8P8x [BUILDING(x) v P(x)]
c. 8P8x [PROCESS(x) v P(x)]
(Page
number 14)
The examples above represent the
others symbols can be seen completely in the original paper attached at the end
of this writing.
Conclusion
Finally I can conclude that this is a very good paper to be
read criticize. The aspect of this writing, such as language, organisation of
writing, the content, and form are commonly good. But as human creation this
paper also has weaknesses especially in the form which related to the
alignment, indentation; the organisation of writing in which there is no
footnotes to explain new or confusing word; and the use of many symbols in part
four that can make the readers confuse.
I guess that this critical summary is still far from a
perfect work. So I apologised for all mistaken I do in this writing. Critics
and suggestions are really needed in order to make better critical summary
next.
(Penulis: Risad Kollo)
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