"Apparently, English-speaking narrators are often not satisfied with their already rich lexicon of manner verbs, and add more richness by other means."
This Slobin quote made me laugh out loud after reading Atkins and Levin's analysis of near-synonyms. Even with a small example of quake, quiver, shiver, shudder, tremble, and shake, Atkins and Levin articulated similarities in their uses but also possibilities for distinctions between them. I agreed with descriptions and breakdowns of whether one of those verbs was internally or externally caused, but I was still blown away. But then I wondered how I came to know and agree with those distinctions myself. Is it just from how I have seen them used when reading and listening? This shocks me because how often do we use a word, particularly a verb, that's a near-synonym rather than a more accurate? Especially when we're speaking, even if a word isn't quite right in terms of causation, how often do we correct ourselves or a friend? I don't feel that I do...it's close enough for me to understand what happened. The last time I agonized over finding perfectly and honest descriptive verbs was my Stanford application...yet, we still have a vast lexicon of verbs to access, and moreover feel the need to modify with adjectives and adverbs as Slobin claims.
Why is it that we are not satisfied with our language? This, and certain aspects of the Haspelmath reading, made me think of the "language center" of our brain that we discussed last week. Is it partially responsible for this need for description, as if it has a fast metabolism? This idea intrigues me because it seems to make me think of the brain more as a creative and abstract idea, something that is ambitious and has cravings, rather than a scientific computational machine. However, that creative and expansionist language center also has to follow frameworks set be certain languages, like if a language is considered verb or satellite framed. How can the language center of the brain be the same anatomically yet vary in the category of rules it operates?
Honestly, after these weeks readings, I felt I would be a very discouraged to search for understanding in language, because every theory seems to be extremely complicated and debunked in one way or another.
So interesting that you talked about how we crave more expressiveness! I wonder if the need to break syntactic rules (like with the "shake" synonyms) comes from he existent of rules themselves. Maybe once people learn the norms of a language, breaking those rules becomes a way to create more expressiveness?
ReplyDeleteI agree in that our quest for clear expression seems never ending but I think that we have all the tools we need to be successful. I believe it is the fact that we are unconscious of the lexical variations and their usage that makes us feel like we don't know when to use a certain word where. But when we are conscious of creating specific meaning and try to conjure it up at the perfect moment, the perfect words will always only just be at the tip of our tongue. It is rather frustrating.
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