Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 Verbs of Breaking in the Langalanga language – Solomon Islands Claire Damutalau Introduction Descriptive semantic analysis is one way of explaining and describing meaning in natural languages. More explicitly, its goals are “to explain what underlies the use of the word means and related terms (sense, nonsense, antonymy, synonymy etc) in English and other languages” (Leech, 1969:5). Aims The aims of this exercise are to: a) select words which are fairly closely related or of the same lexical field b) identify what relationships hold between the words c) provide a descriptive semantic analysis of the words. Focus of study In this paper, the focus will be on the semantic area of the verbs of breaking in the Langalanga language of Solomon Islands. These are restricted to: a) break as in the separation of a rigid body into pieces implying either partial or total destruction of a whole b) a temporary injury as to a bone; breaking a leg c) getting free from some restraint or enclosure. This does not include verbs of breaking using an instrument such as cut, chop and slice. 27 Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 Definitions The terms selected are listed below. akari the separation of a rigid body into pieces (break) causing either partial or total destruction fidi (chip) the breaking away of a tiny portion of a rigid body e.g.: an aluminum cup with a bit chipped off kwekwe the breaking away of a portion (bigger than fidi) of a rigid body magiri (crack) break partially but no with separation, e.g. glass manisi (shatter) to break into tiny pieces, scattering them all over the place, e.g. glass meme (crush) to break into pieces but not scattering all over the place, e.g. egg akasu (tear) breaking of a non-rigid body, e.g. paper gaga (tear) breaking of a non-rigid body, e.g. fabric kwakwa a breaking that is hole-like in nature whether of a rigid or non-rigid body, e.g. copper roof and fabric mou breaking of a cordlike structure, e.g. rope or string 28 Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 toba (split) break a rigid body in half, e.g. wood mooi (fell) breaking of a rigid body from a vertical position eg tree felling busu/foda (burst) breaking due to internal pressure, e.g. balloon As illustrated in the table, the verb kwakwa seems to be used for almost all the objects except for ‘rope’. In addition, the verb mou only refers to stringlike things. A basket can be said to be mou only when the handle is broken. Relationships Hyponymy As far as semantic relationship is concerned, all the words are related to each other through having one superordinate term akari. Thus, all the other terms are hyponyms of the superordinate term. akari mooi fidi kwekwe magiri manisi meme akasu gaga kwakwa mou toba busu/foda Hyponymy is a relationship that licenses one-way entailments between sentences in which everything remains constant except for substitutions in one slot of the sentence. Thus, the sentence from which the entailment proceeds is the one that contains the hyponym. The entailed sentence 29 Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 contains the superordinate term. Therefore, in this sense, the kind of relationship akari has with some of its hyponyms is called hyponymy. Examples: a) Peleti e manisi entails peleti e akari (The plate shattered) (The plate broke) However, Peleti e akari does not entail peleti e manisi (The plate broke) (The plate shattered) This is because there are other types of akari that can be used like fidi, kwekwe, magiri and kwakwa. b) Sote lia e gaga entails sote lia e akari (His shirt was torn) (His shirt ‘broke’) but Sote lia e akari does not entail sote lia e gaga (His shirt ‘broke’) (His shirt was torn) This is because there are other types of akari that can be used which are relevant to this context like kwekwe, akasu and kwakwa. Collocations The use of these verbs depends on the type of object that each verb is related to semantically and the type of situation in which the action occurs. (See Table 1.) The objects identified include the common ones. It can be seen that one object can collocate with different verbs, according to the situation or the intensity of the situation. For example, the common verbs used with egg are meme when it is crushed by a heavy object and manisi when it falls from the table to the floor. Other situations include: 30 Glass Chair (plastic) Plate (stone or clay) Fabric Paper Tree Rope Leg hand Balloon Egg Wood leg Objects Verbs 31 b bb b bb b b b b b bb b b b b bb kwa kwa bb mou bb toba bb bb mooi Note: Two ticks means a common use and one tick means that it can be used but only occasionally, depending on the situation or the intensity of the situation. bb b bb b b b b b b b b b bb b b bb bb b b b bb bb magiri manisi meme akasu gaga b bb b bb bb kwe kwe b b b b b bb fidi bb b akari Table 1 The relationship between verbs of breaking and the objects ‘broken’ bb b bb Busu/ foda Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 v An egg falls and the shell breaks in half. If somebody picks up one half; in the Langalanga language, he/she can refer to this as: Eke ba e kwekwe lo (the egg is broken – no specific word for it in English) v If an egg falls onto a soft surface causing only a bit of the shell to break off, in the Langalanga context, it would be: Eke ba e kwakwa lo (the egg broke - no specific English term for kwakwa). Incompatibility This is a relationship that licenses entailments from an affirmative sentence to a negative sentence that differs from the affirmative sentence only in the words being compared. (Griffiths, 1998: 29). Also it does not license entailment from a negative sentence to corresponding sentences with other co-hyponyms of the same superordinate. It is different within a background of similarity. Thus, hyponyms which have the same superordinate are incompatibles. Examples: a) Me akarina fo ala peleti e magiri (Literally:The breaking in that plate is cracked) entails Me akarina fo ala peleti iko ali manisi (Literally:The breaking in that plate is not shattered) b) Kwalo e mou (The rope breaks) entails Kwalo iko ali meme (The rope is not crushed) 32 Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 Synonymy Words are said to be synonymous if they contain identical semantic components and descriptions. They are the words that license two-way entailment between pair of sentences (paraphrases). The only difference is “the matter of which of the words in question they contain in a particular slot are synonyms” (Griffiths, 1998:28). With these selected verbs of breaking, only two sets are found to be synonymous. They are busu and foda, and akasu and gaga. Examples: a) Me lo ba I aaela e busu entails (The boil on his leg bursts) Me lo ba I aaela e foda entails (The boil on his leg bursts) Me lo ba I aaela e foda (The boil on his leg bursts) Me lo ba I aaela e busu (The boil on his leg bursts) b) Kolosu lia e gaga entails Kolosu lia e akasu (Her skirt is torn) (Her skirt is torn) Kolosu lia e akasu entails Kolosu lia e gaga (Her skin is torn) (Her skirt is torn) Ambiguity There is only one case of possible ambiguity. That is the word busu. As a verb, busu means a kind of breaking as discussed here. As a noun, it means mountain. Hence, to understand what a person is saying when using the word busu, one has to know the context of the utterance. Examples: a) Busu e afula i abafo (There are plenty of mountains on that side) 33 Directions: Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 Dec. 2000 b) Aaegu e busu lo (My leg bursts) This does not mean that someone’s legs are shaped like mountains but that there is a boil on the person’s leg and it bursts. Comparing English to the Langalanga terms One of the things I found was that some of the terms used in the Langalanga language have no English equivalent. For example, kwekwe, kwakwa, and mou have, as far as I know, no equivalent in English. However, there seems to be an equivalent term in Langalanga for all the English verbs of breaking. Also some verbs of the Langalanga language do not imply whether its past or present tense like that of English. Hence, formulating examples are hindered by this. Likewise, the common use of all the verbs in the langalanga context favours intrusive than transitive. This may not be the case for English because most sentences will make no sense. Conclusion The focus of this project is to analyse the‘verbs of breaking in the Langalanga language aiming to find semantic relations. The ones found in this study are hyponymy, incompatibility, and synonymy. These relationships are very important in semantics because they help in constructing the meanings of other words in the same lexical field. Bibliography Griffiths, P. (1998) LL 318 Lecture Notes Leech, G.N. (1969) Towards a semantic description of English. London. Longmans. Green & Co. 34