Fixing French

What are words? This is the question tackled by all three of the articles presented this week. Haspelmath discusses how words relate together in word families and lexemes, describing the overall morphological relationship between words. The articles discusses how words are altered within their categories to create new meaning or add a layer of information to their meaning such as with the use of suffixes, affixes and allomorphs, in addition to describing the different types of compounds and their structures.  Atikins-Levin analyzes the meaning of words in contexts, and uncovers why we use words with nearly identical meaning in different contexts. While Slobins combines all the features of words to explain how create systems of languages (Verb vs. Satellite Langauges).

I found the Slobins piece very interesting as I study French because I finally understand why it takes so many words just to translate one sentence from English. I know see it is because of the different systems that govern the combination of these words. The French lexicon is not connected in the same way as the English lexicon and in turn more information can be relayed with less English words than with French words. It makes sense to me now why the French have very specific words for very specific contexts. The example in the texts is as follows: “sort un hibou” (an owl leaves) versus in English “an owl popped out” which highlights the limits of French verbs. The verb “sortir” cannot be used in all contexts where the subject is exiting, and still there is not one verb in French that encompasses the connotation as the word “popped” in the English version. The French version would have had to add a lot more adjectives and description like “comme un balle” ( like a bullet).

For this reason, I disagree with the idea that there are too many lexical variations and options as proposed by Atkins and Haspelmath. I appreciate the variety in English that makes our verbs so rich and descriptive. In other languages, the verbs have no personality, no context, no feeling. The verbs come across as route and automatic and fail to incorporate the real life sentiments with which they are executed. Dictionaries organize words by their lexemes by default because it is easy to search for the words from a neutral standpoint and then browse for that word in a specific context. I love that our verbs can do so much rather just explain action! I wish French were like that sometimes- it would make their paragraphs a lot more concise.