Reading

The Atkins-Levins reading talks about the ways in which certain synonyms (shake, quake, quiver, shiver, shudder, tremble and vibrate) differ in the ways in which they are syntactically implemented in the English language despite their common general meaning.  Atkins-Levins specifically highlights how the contrast in internal versus external causation creates this difference in syntactic implementation despite these words’ shared semantic meaning.  Haspelmath further engages in the bridging of syntax and semantics by focusing his writing on certain word families derived from a common base morpheme.  He introduces concepts of syntax and semantics in his work by showing how certain base morphemes can defines word families (semantics) and other morphemes serve as a way of providing grammatical guidance for certain words (namely words that end in –ly, adverbs, and words that end in –ed).  Haspelmath later focuses on the idea of compounding and highlighting how words can also be grouped into hierarchical structures by lexemes and compounds akin to the way in which we deconstructed sentences in trees last week.  Finally, Slobin’s reading discusses the differences that exist between languages, primarily languages grouped as satellite framed languages (driven by the adverb) and V-languages (focus on the verb).  Slobin’s work really discusses the nuances of v-languages which focus on motion and s-languages that focus on manner and path.  I really enjoyed this week’s readings in the context of all of the readings we’ve done thus far.  Whereas last week we focused more on structure, this week’s readings seemed to serve as the bridging transition from syntax to semantics.  I especially enjoyed Haspelmath’s readings and the way in which he illustrated how morphemes can provide both semantic value and syntactic value to certain words.  It is interesting to be able to break down individual words into even smaller value buckets through syntactical importance and semantic importance and to be able to have the same morpheme provide value to each subcategory.