A discussion of what you have personally learned, -your weaknesses and your strengths. Also, discuss your plans for improving your learning experience “of some aspects in the chapters”".

EXTENSIONS OF MEANING

Chapter 12

The reading of a word with the earliest recorded use.

The most frequently occurring reading of a word.

The default reading of a word.

The reading from which the most plausible path of change begins.

The reading most closely related to basic human experience.

ESSENCE OF LITERALNESS

Word is entrenched and familiar part of a language

Speakers no longer feel that a figure of speech is involved at all

NATURALIZED EXTENSIONS

Readings which are well established

Presumably have entries in the mental lexicon

Are felt to be figures of speech

ESTABLISHED EXTENSIONS

Readings are ones for which there are no entries in the mental lexicon

They cannot be `looked up‘

Have to be generated and interpreted using strategies of meaning extension such as metaphor and metonymy

NOVEL EXTENSIONS

Dictionary definition: "The use of a word or phrase to mean something different from the literal meaning" (Oxford Advance Learner's Dictionary)

Lakoff:

metaphor is all-pervasive in language

For most part effortlessly interpreted

Deserves constructive consideration

METAPHOR

Solidly grounded in language

Meaning of a word constituted a semantic field

consisted of all the possible contexts of the word organized in terms of normality

the most normal contexts forming the core region of the field

least normal forming the periphery

Semantic field of every word encompassed the whole vocabulary

Each word imposed a different `core-periphery' organization on it.

HAAS: INTERACTION OF SEMANTIC FIELDS

A new semantic field was created

Core was formed by the contexts with the highest joint degree of normality for both words.

New semantic field defined a new meaning

the metaphoric meaning

TWO WORDS BROUGHT INTO INTERACTION

Rejected both the substitution view of metaphor and the comparison view

Mechanism of metaphor involved the projection of a set of associative implications derived from one entity onto another entity.

The implications are not necessarily identical for the two subjects

The implicative complex of the secondary subject is an analogue model of the implicative complex intended to be inferred for the primary subject.

MAX BLACK

Distinction is made between representative and interpretive uses of language

parallel to the literal/figurative distinction

This account of metaphor incorporates two significant claims:

metaphor is nothing special or deviant

simply an extreme case of `loose talk‘

the interpretation of an utterance used interpretively is very much a function of context

interpreters look to maximize contextual relevance with the least expenditure of effort

RELEVANCE THEORY

Metaphors are:

an essential component of human cognition

conceptual in nature

a means whereby ever more abstract and intangible areas of experience can be conceptualized in terms of the familiar and concrete

LAKOFF

Metaphors involve

a source domain, usually concrete and familiar

a target domain, usually abstract or at least less well structured

a set of mapping relations, or correspondences

LAKOFF

The correspondences involved in metaphor are of two kinds:

Ontological-involving entities in the two domains

Epistemic- involving relations of knowledge about the entities

LAKOFF

Conceptual elements, schemas, involving space, motion and force

Lakoff:

Basic semantic notions such as time, quantity, state, change, cause, and category membership are also metaphorically understood as extensions of image-schemas

IMAGE-SCHEMAS

Lack of context sensitivity

Alleged lack of structure in target domains

Fusion not accounted for

Emergent meaning

CRITICISMS OF LAKOFF

Neither of the components requires an extended construal

Comparison process is overtly signaled

No need for anomaly as a trigger

Different conceptions remain distinct

Fusion is not characteristic of simile

SIMILIES

X (be) like Y

John is like a lion.

X (V) like Y

Tree branches cracked like guns going off.

X (be) Adj. like Y

His skin was dry like parchment.

S ‘as if‘ S2

He acts as if he thinks he's the boss.

SIMILIE FORMS

Strategy for extending word-meanings

Responsible for a great proportion of the cases of so-called regular polysemy

Relies on a literal association between two components within a single domain

No restructuring involved

METONYMY

Historical processes of semantic change linked to synchronic processes of meaning extension.

Synchronic meaning extension forms an essential part of diachronic change

Meaning of a word may change along any of a range of semantic dimensions

SEMANTIC CHANGE