Fillmore-Scenes and Frames Semantics

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Fundamental Studies in ComputerScience

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Structures Processing

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Dircctor of LingußticsDiyisiott, CNUCE- Institute of ltalian NatienatResearchCouncitrcNR)

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Scenes-and-frames semantics

CharlesJ. Fillmore

University of Berkeley, Califumia

0. I think that everyone.in linguistics and languageresearchseesa need for an integrated vipw oflanguage structure, languagebehavior, language" comprehensfun,languagechange,and language acq-uisition.I suspectthat what strikes me as the current Zeitgeist in languageresearchoffers material to meet this need, though some of it is still somewhathidden; and I keep getting the feeling that sooner or later it is going to be possiblefor workers in linguistic semantics,anthropotogical semantics,cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence - and may be even languagephilosphy - to talk to each other using more or lessthe samelanguage,and thinking about more or lessthe sameproblems. l. One of the live issuesmaking up part of this Zeitgeist is the question of whether the description of meaning strouldbe formulated as a checklist that is, as a list of conditionsthat must be satisfiedin order for a given tinguistic expressionto be appropriately and/or truthfully used - or whether the analysisof meaning requires,at least in some cases,an appeal to a prototype - the prototype being possibly somethingwhich is innately availableto the human mind, possibly somethingwhich instead öf being analyzed,needsto be presentedor demonstratedor manipulated. The color term studiesof Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1) suggesta prototype semantics,especiallywith the supporting evidencethat there are physlologically built-in predispositions in human beings for perceiving or recognizingor categorizingcertain hues. That is to say, in the prototype color semantics,to know red isto know somethingmore or lessdirectly, but to know pink is to know red and to know that pink differs from red

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along a certain dimension and to a certain degree. Much of the work on the part of the psychologistEleanor Rosch on natural categories(2) suggests a prototype semantics.For the point I am making,the'naturalness'of the categoriesis not so much the issue;but that helps. The prototype semanticnotion I have in mind is this: I can know a sqwre more or lessdirectly; a trapezoid I know, however, in the first instanceanyway,as a squarethat got distortedin a particularway. Relatedto thesequestionsis what someresearchers seeas the problem of determining linguistic category boundaries.This work is exemplified in some recent studiesof William Labov's (3). Knowing the categoryanp (as opposedto glassor bowl) is recognizingsuchpropertiesasthe ratio between the circumferenceof the opening and the height of the container, havingone handle,beingmade of opaquevitreousmaterial,beingusedfor consumptionof liquid food, beingaccompaniedwith a saucer,tapering, and being circularin cross-section. The conditionsfor proper cuphood, one could concludefrom this literature,requiresan object'sfalling within an acceptablerangeon eachofthese severaldimensions,or departingfrom the expectedrangewithin one dimensiononly if the departureis compensatedfor by meetingcertainother conditionsin the other dimensions. One way of looking at someof this category-boundary researchis to say that it provides us with the fairly complicated function that specifiesthe boundary conditionsfor a category.Another way of looking at it is something like this. Peopleknow from their kitchens and their dining rooms and from their experiences in restaurantssuchthingsas what a typical cup looks like, what kinds of settingsit is usuallyfound in, and what it is used for. From theseexperiences peoplehavelots of examplesof clearcasesof cups.They have,morecver,the samesort of knowledgeabout glasses and bowls and dishesand trays and saucers.When'confrontedwith monster cupsofthe kind Labov and his collaboratorspresentedor depictedin the experimentalsetting,they havehad to draw from a repertoryof categories that doesnot coverthis new case,but within which there rnight be one categorywhich fits this new casebetter than any of the others.They have either had to decideon one categoryfrom this repertorywhich fits this new experiencein somesufficiently satisfyingway - there beingnothing better - or thev haverefusedto decide.

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Perhapsit could be arguedthat we havehere two ways of sayingthe same thing; that may be so, but I think there is a difference. The difference that I seeis in the kinds of researchquestionsthat can be naturally formulated within the two views. Asking for the boundary conditions for a particular categoryis asking a very specialkind of question; askingabout the strategiesusedby people in projecting from a repertory ofprototypes onto novel situationsis askinga very generalkind ofquestion. Ifthere are systematicdifferencesbetween individuals or between communities in the managementof these strategies,or if it turns out that thesestrategiesalso figure in the description of historical changesin the meaningsof words, then 1 think the prototype view is the more helpful one to take. (In general,the prototype theory offers an alternative to a popular but decreasinglysatisfyingview, the view that people'sjudgments on how to talk in experimentally presentedbizarre contexts offer subtle kinds of evidencefor the existenceof dialect differencesthat would otherwise have ' gone undiscovered.Prototype semanticscan be thought of as a generahzationofthe view that a theory oflanguage needsto distinguish between having a rule and using a rule. It may turn out to be much more 'internalized' linguistic rules asbeing simple rules useful to speakof the which cover prototypic cases,and thgn to speakof much of the so-called 'dialect' differencesthat generativegrammariansare fond of positing as involving, not differencesin the characterof the internalized rules, but differencesin people'sstrategiesfor using these rules). Another side of the question we are examininghas to do with what I have learned from WallaceChafe to refer to as the distinction between formal knowledge and experiential knowledge. Formal knowledge is the kind of knowledgethat can be formulated propositionally ; experiential knowledge is the kind of knowledge that efi$ts as memoriesof experiences- the really clear casesof the latter being such things as knowing what somebody's face looks like. This distinction is relevant to the prototype theory of meaning,because one conceivableand not unreasonableversion of such a theory might be that the prototypes are essentiallyexperiential. On this view, the process of using a word in a novel situation involvescomparing current experiences with past experiencesand judging whether they are similar enough to ball for the samelinguistic encoding.

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Somethinglike the prototype idea can be found in the open texture conceptof the philosopherWaismann(4), in the enactiveand iconic memory representations of Bruner (5), in Lindsay'sdiscussionof the need for somethingakin to mental picturesin the designof languagetranslation and problem solving systemswithin artificial intelligence (6), in wittgenstein's discussionof the non-formalizablehuman ability to perceive an individual caseas being or not being an instance of a paradigm case(7), in experimentalpsychologists'discussions of strategiesby which people learn visual forms (as in the casewhere a child first learnsto identify a squirrel as a strange-lookingcat) (8), in traditional studiesof simile and metaphor, in which one treats of the ways in which any perceivedor believed-to-be-typicalproperty of the vehicle can contribute to the tenor. and in various recent works on vaguenessin linguistic categorizationsby suchdiverselymotivatedresearchers as hkoff (9) and Zadeh(10).

John bought the sandwichfrom Henry for three dollars. one of the two activities of the buyer is registered,those of the seller are not, mention of the sellerand the money is optional, and - in somesensethe event is viewed from the perspectiveof the buyer. In the sentence Henry sold John the sndwich for three dollars an activity ofthe selleris registered,those ofthe buyer are not, mention of the buyer and the money is optional, and the perspectiveis that of the seller,In John paid Henry three dollars for the sandwich one of the activities of the buyer is mentioned, the activity of the selleris not, and (in context) the mention of the goodsis optional. And in the sentence The vndwich cost John three dolhrs the perspectivehas changedagain;and this particular predicate providesno easyway to include mention of the seller. i

2. A secondaspectto the spirit of the times that I am trying to characterize is the notion of frame or schema.One early use of the term in a linguistic settingwas my own, in the expressioncaseframe;but it is alsousedby various writers in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, sometimeswith referenceto the notion of the caseframe as the source. The idea,under variousnames,goesback at leastas far asthe schemata ideaof Bartlett (1 l) and hasrecentelaborationsin the work of Minsky (12) and Winograd (l 3); I seeit also in the associativerelations idea of the psychologistBower (14).

What is important to realizeabout the caseframes is that they presuppose a fairty completeunderstandingofthe nature ofthe total transactionor activity, and that they determine a particular perspectivalanchoring among the entities involved in the aötivity. A complete description of the prototypical commercial event would have to mention goods,money, the money system,the two human-participant roles, the two transfersof ownerships,and so on. There happensnot to be any simple one-clauseway of representingall of the aspectsof an entire commercial event. We must 'levels' of conceptual distinguish,in other words, two different frameworks for events:the one giving a generalrepresentationof all of the essentialaspectsof eventsof a particular category; and the other giving the particular perspectiveon an ev€nt of the type dictated by a caseframe.

In proposingthe ideasof casegrarnmar(l 5), I thought of the caseframe associatedwith a particular predicating word as the imposition of structure on an event (or on the conceptualization of an event) in a fixed way and with a given perspective.Let me try to explain what I mean by that. We recognizein what we might call a commercial event such facts as that: two people are active, and each of the two performs two acts, the buyer that of taking the goods and that of surrenderingthe money, the seller that of taking the money and that of surrenderingthe goods. And yet the case frames require that any singlepredication describingaspectsof the commercial event is limited in the penpective on the event which can be taken and in the ways in which particular participants in the event can be givena grammaticalrole in the associated sentence.

A generalunderstandingof a particular event tupe - such as that of the commercial act - cante thought of as providing the setting within which specificnotions relatedto this act can be specifiedor defined.The ideais similar to what is found in the pirilosopher Hanson'sdiscussionof the problem ofdefining the word aorta (6). The procedure for getting somebodyto understand the word uorta - a word that cannot be defined in a purely formal or categorialway - is to presenthim with an instanceof, a replica of, the circulatory system of sometypical mammal, to point out to him a certain portion of this system,to explain how that portion is related to the rest,and to tell him that this is calledtheaorta.In the caseof a word like, say,merchanf, the procedure is to presentsomebody with a

For example,in a sentencelike

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description of, or a prototypical instanceof, a commercial act; and then to point to one of the individuals involved in this act and to say that he is the merchant. The samewould hold for explanationsof the verbsused for describingaspectsof a commercial act. For example, I can point to the goodsI can then draw your attention to the amount of money that got exchanged,and I can then say somethinglike This cost three dollurs as a way of getting you to understandthe meaning of the word cost The alternative that I would like to reject is that of building into the description of each vocabulary item that figures in the description of a commercial act, information about all aspectsof the act. In a sense,what I am proposing contains, in the long run, the sameinformation: but it allows a more gestalt-likeconception of the nature of the commercial event. In other words, if we know in one way or another what the commercial event is, then, given that knowledge, we can know exactly what the vocabulary pertaining to that semanticdomain means.In short, I can believe of myself that I know exactly what is meant by such words as buy, sell, Wy or cosf, without requiring of myself that I have a complete and correct checklist description of the commercial event itself. (In recent years I have not had much to say about my proposalson case grammaror about the many extensions,improvementsand correctionsof it that havebeenproposed.A famouscritic of hereticallinguistictheories once describedcasegrammar as a mere notational variant of a more familiar linguistic theory, differing from the latter in especiallythe one important respectthat the latter was correct. My own silenceon the subject may have been taken, I fear, as an embrassedwithdrawal. My feeling is that, independently of whether what I was proposing was notationally expressiblewithin some other system,the important points someof which I think had not been made before - were those that had to do with the frame analysesthat the system of casescould be used to define, and with certain claims about dependenciesand hierarchical relations that seemedto obtain among the terms in this system.Actually the reasonthat I have pulled back is the sameas the reasonI get dissatisfiedwith a filing systemfor my notes when I suddenly become awarethat the box labeled "MISCELLANEOUS" contains more than all the rest. There were just too many things I could not account for. I have not, in fact, given up on casegrammar; but I think I need to become clearerabout the difference between the perspectivalor orientational

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framesthat the systemof casesallows,and the frameworksof rolesand categoriesin terms of which it is possibleto describethe vastrangeof actionsand scenesand experiencesthat human beingsare familiar with).

3. Athird aspectof the Zeitgeistis the current interestin text analysis.Text lingusiticsis becomingincreasinglypopular,and increasinglyimportant, both in Europeand in the United States.It seemsto me that approaches to the analysisof discoursethat do more than assignto sampletexts a kind of architectonicstructure- expressibleasa subtleand detailedtable of contentsfor the text - can not tell us very much, and that in particular somemeansmust be devisedfor analyzingthe temporaldevelopmentof the comprehensionprocessof a discourse.Brute force waysthat simply provide a notation for indexing individuals or time points or observation points, or that indicatetopical continuity or topic change,or tllat provide labelsfor the semanticor rhetoricalconnectionsbetweensuccessive portions of the text, are useful and make text linguists sensitiveto many aspectsofthe comprehensionprocegs;but they do not do enough. text analysishas got to providean understandingof the Successful developmenton the part of the interpreter of an imageor scene or picture of the world that gets createdand filled out betweenthe beginningand the end of the text-interpretationexperience.One way of talking about the processis this: The first part ofthe text activatesan imageor sceneof somesituationin the mind of the interpreter;laterparts of the text fill in more and more information about that situation,giveit a history, giveit a motivation, embedit in other scensor situations,and so on. In other words what happenswhen one comprehendsa text is that one mentally createsa kind of world; the propertiesof this world may depend -a quite a bit on the individualinterpreter'sown private experiences reality which should accountfor part ofthe fact that different people constructdifferent interpretationsof the sametext. As one continueswith the text, the detailsofthis world get filled in, expectationsget set up which are later fulfilled or thwarted or left hanging, and there are such experiences as surprise,suspense, disappontment,and so on, experiences which canbe at leastpartly explainedby a descriptionof the temporal developmentof the interpretationexperience. 4. With all of the aboveasintroduction,let me try to formulate,in a regrettablyimpreciseway, the picture I haveformed of the

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communicationand comprehensionprocesses. It seemsto me that our knowledgeof any linguisticform is availableto us, in the first instance,in connectionwith somepersonallymeaningfulsettingor situation.Because of the fact that it is personallymeaningful its recurrence- or the occurrencelater on of somethingsimilarto it - will be recognized. The argumentcan be madethat a language-learning child first learnslabels for whole situations,and only later learnslabelsfor individualobjects.A child might flrst associatethe word pencil, for example,with the experienceof himself sitting in a particular room with his mother drawing circles;later on he becomesableto identify and label isolableparts of such an experience- the pencil, the paper,the act of drawing,etc.; still later he acquiresdifferent namesfor the parts of different but similarscenesdrawing, printing, writing, sketching, pencil, pen, crayon, chalk, paper, blackboard,schoolhousewalls, etc.; and in the end he finds himself with a mature repertoryof syntagmatic,paradigmaticand hierarchicalframesfor of both greaterdegreesof abstractness experiences änd greaterdegreesof precisionand boundedness than the originalexperiencein which he first encounteredthe word pencil. It appears,then, that in meaningacquisition,first one haslabelsfor whole then one haslabelsfor isolablepartsofthese, and scenesor experiences, one has both a repertory of labelsfor schematicor abstractscenes finally and a repertoryoflabels for entitiesperceivedindependentlyof the scenes in which they were first encountered. (Oncein a while one comesacrossa nice pieceof evidenceabout the middle stageof this development.Mary Erbaugh,a graduatestudentin the Berkeleylinguisticsdepartment,working in Oaklandin the summerof 1974 with somesmallchildren,brought a grapefruitin her lunch one day; she strowedthe grapefruit to the children, and got an acknowledgment from thern that the object was indeeda grapefruit;shethen peeledit and separatedit into its segmentsand startedeatingit. Shereportsthat the chjldrenaround sevenyearsold in this group were surprisedto learn that what at first had looked like a grapefruitturned out to be an orange. Guessingat their reasoning,it would seemthat a grapefruit,after all, is somethingyou cut in half with a knife and eat with a spoon.This thing was obviously an orange,not a grapefruit. The categorizingfunction of thesewords had not yet beenliberatedfrom the sceneof peoplein their experienceeatingthe fruit.)

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kaving explanationsandjustificationsfor anotheroccasion,I would like now to present,by demonstration,someof the ways in which I would like to usethe notions I havebeentrying to suggest.I witl try not to feel too embarassedby the reality that all of this may sound at first like naive arm-chairpsychology and that I cannot always think of ways in which one could decidewhat sortsofpsychologicalevidencecould be brought to bearin justifying this way of talking. I want to say that people,in learninga language,come to associatecertain sceneswith certainlinguisticframes.I intend to usethe word scene- a word I am not completelyhappy with - in a maximally generalsense,to include not only visualscenesbut familiar kinds of interpersonal transactions,standardscenarios,familiar layouts,institutional structures, body image;and, in general,any kind of coherent enactiveexperiences, gr segment,largeor small,of human beliefs,actions,experiences, imaginings.I intend to usethe word frame for referringto any systemof linguisticchoices(the easiestcasesbeing collectionsof words,but also includingchoicesof grammaticalrulesor grammaticalcategories- that can get associated with prototypical instancesof scenes.The distinction betweensceneand frame that I am trying to make appearsto be like the distinctionbetweenschemaand descriptionthat Bobrow and Norman make (17), and appearsto correspond,confusingly,to two hierarchical levelsof the notion frame in Minsky'swork (18). I would like to saythat scenesand frames,in the rnindsof peoplewho havelearnedthe associations betweenthem,activateeachother; and that, furthermore,framesare associated in memory with other framesby virtue of sharedlinguisticmaterial,and-thatscenesare associated with other scenesby virtuq"of sameness or similarity of the entitiesor relationsor substances in them or their contextsof occurrence. The scenesthat I havefn mind can be relativelysimpleor relatively complex: thus, writing is simpler üran letter witing , and letter writing is simpler than carrying on a correspondence. The framesthat are activated by thesescenes,and which activatethesescenes,are correspondingly simpleor complex. I would like to be ableto speakof a processof abstraction,which consists in developingschematicsceneswith someof the positions'left blank', so to speak.Thus,whateverthe experientialorigin, scenesassociated with

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contain,in the adult, lessspecificentitiesthan mothers writing-in-general pencils little and and boys. -L

I would like to be ablelo say that scenesand frame are mutually retrievable,meaningthat a scenecan activateits associated frame and a frame can activateits associated scene. 5.

kt me illustratesomeof thesenotions first in a discussionof the process of comprehendinga discourse,the processof interpretinglanguagein context. The simplestway to look at this processis to considerdiscourse coherencerelationsin a two-party conversation,We can examinesome elementary'two-stroke'conversations, of not very grealnaturalness, involving the notion of witing. The Japaneseverb kaku and the English verb write are frequently analysisof acceptabletranslationsof eachother, but the scene-and-frame the two words showsthem to be partly different. For the Japanese word, sceneis one of somebodyguidinga pointed traceJeaving the associated implementacrossa surface,aswith the Englishword;but in the caseof the Japanese word, the nature of the resultingtrace is left more or less unspecified.Thus, if somebodywere to ask, Nani o kakimasita ka? (meaning"What did you kaku? "), the answercan identify a word or sentenceor character,or, just aswell, a sketchor a circle or a dooble. The English verb write also has this samesceneassociatedwith it, for which we can assigna framework of conceptsidentifying such entities as the writer; the implement; the surfaceon which the tracesare left; and the product. SinceI know at leastthat much about writing,I know that if you tell me that you have been writing, I can, talking within the frame that you haveintroducedinto our conversation,askyou suchquestionsas llhat did you write? llhat did you write on? What did you wite with? (Notice that if, instead, I were to ask a question lke lilhat time is it? or make a commentlke I've got a bad toothache,I would not be talking within the frame you introduced;I would be changingthe subject). The English verb write , unlike the Japaneseverb kaku, has an additional

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sceneassociatedwith it, for which there is what we might call a language frame. It happensthat the product of an act of witing cannot be a picture or a smear,but hasto be somethinglinguistic.Becauseof the existenceof. this secondframe, articulatedwith the first, I can then ask,talking within one of the framesyour remarkhasintroducedinto our conversation,such questionsasthese: What languge were you writing in? Whatdoes what you wrote mean? The word write , tn other words, simultaneouslyactivatesboth an action sceneof a particularkind and a linguisticcommunicationscene;the parts of the text can be judged by appealingto fittingnessof successive either of thesetwo frames Supposenow that your sentenceabout writing givessomenameto the product of the wt'iting; you will then have introduced a still neq frame, with the new lexical materialyou have the one (or ones)associated introduced.For instance,if you tell me that you havebeenwriting a letter,youhave introducedinto our conversationwhat might be calleda correspondeqce frame. Now free to talk within that frame,I can ask you questionslike Wo are you writing to? Whenare you going to send it? Whendo you think she will get it? Do you think she will answerit? and so on. Or - going further still - if you tell me that you have written anotherletter, then we havea historicalframe going,and it is now appropriate for me - assumingthat I do not already know the historical setting for you remark - to ask you such questionsas How many earlier letters did you write? Iilho did you send those letters to? and so on. / Textual coherencecannotbe determinedon the basisof singlesentences and the scenesactivated by the frames triggeredby their lexical and grammaticalcontent. The examplesgiven so far treated these reports (about you having written something)as first contributions to a two-party conversationwhose participants do not know very much about each other. If, however,I alreadyhave'activated'certain scenesabout you - if, for example,I know that you are in the finishing stagesof preparing a paper on Latvian palatalizedconsonants- and if, in that context, you say to me

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merely that you have been writing, I can then quite appropriately ask you a questionlike. Haveyou dectded what journal you're going to send it to? In this case,I was ableto fit what you saidto me into somescenesthat were alreadypreviouslyactivated;and I can thereforeappropriatelytalk within any of the frarnesassociatedwith parts of that larger complex scene. Two'line conversations are, of course,extremelysimplekinds of 'texts'. In general,single-authortexts or more extensiveconversations,will have analogouskinds of coherenceproperties.In eachcase,a text is coherentto the extent that its successive parts contribute to the constructionof a single(possibly quite complex) scene. The processof communication involves the activation, within speakersand acrossspeakers,of linguisticframesand cognitivescenes.communicators operateon thesescenesand framesby meansof variouskinds of procedures,cognitiveactssuchas filling in the blanksin schematicscenes, comparingpresentedreal-worldsceneswith prototypical scenes,and so on. The conceptsneededfor discussionofthese operationsinclude real-world scenes,prototypic scenes,linguisticframesfor scenesor parts of scenes, perspectives or orientationswithin scenesprovidedby the kinds of frames known as caseframes,and a set ofproceduresor cognitiveoperationssuch ascomparing,matching,filling in, and so on. 6. It is reasonableto wonder why it is necessaryto havetwo categories,i.e., both sceneand frame,where one might be consideredsufficient.The reasonI distinguish the two is that very often there are perfectly well understoodaspectsof scenes,evenquite familiar scenes,for which the speaker,or a givenspeaker,has no linguistic encodingoptions within the frame that is most directly activated by that scene.wallace chafe has given the example of the trafjic cone or trafflc pilon,the orangecone-shaped object that is usedby highway patrol peopleand highway workmen for stopping or rerouting traffic. Everybody knows what they are, what their function is, and what they look like, but only a fairly smallproportion of the population knows what to call them. Whena personlearnsthe nameof this object, the scenedoesnot change,only the associateclframe.

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An example from my own experienceis the sceneof an intersection with a stoplight. Sometimesyou get a greenlight allowing you to turn left under the condition that the oncoming traffic is required to stop. I have been familiar with this situation for many years,but I only recentlylearned.a way of talking about it. It happenedwhen I heard someonesay Oh good. they'vegot a protectedleft turn'herenow.The scene,again,hasnot frame which that sceneactivates. changedfor me;only the associated 7. Now it happensthat all of this could be talked about in other terms than those I have been offering, in ways that are more formal and respectable. This is especiallytrue if we have a rich collection of semanticmarkers and semanticdistinguishersand presuppositionaldevices,and if we can have an unlimited number of distinct predicates,one for eachaspectof eachsc-ene that we might have somethingto say about as speakersof a language.Yet I view of'meaningis earlier,that the scenes-and-frames think, as I suggested superiorto checklisttheoriesofmeaning in the kinds ofresearchthat seem with which issuesin the theory of important and in the sensibleness meaningcan be formulated. As an example of this last point, let me take the in some circleshighly valuedsearchfor a core meaningor Grundbedeutungof a linguisticform, a of searchI seeasbasedon the commitmentto reduceall appearances ambiguityto a minimum. Katz and Fodor havemadeus all aware(19) of the various meaningsof the English noun bachelor: one being unmarried adult male human being;anolher being a knight beaing the banner of another knight; a third beinga young malefur seal without o rltete duing the matingseasor.Roman Jakobsonhasreportedelyarguedthat this is an unnecessaryd,isplayof ambiguity, and that the three meaningscan all be subsumedunder a singleformulation, namely: unfulfilled in a typical rnale role. Men who choosenot to marry, or who are at the agewhen they might marry but have so far been unlucky or too busy, have a specialstatus that distinguishesthem from many other men their age.This is a specialenough status to deservea name: and the name is bachelor. The male fur seal wants to haveasmany sexualpartnersashe can manage,and if he is big and strongand has a loud voice,he will be ableto keep the youngerand weaker malesaway from his breedingterritory. The sealswho have this specialrejectedstatusdeserve,for the observingethologist,a specialname:

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and once again,the nameis bachelor.It happensthat the sameword is usedin both of thesesettings;but I think it is misleadingto separatea word from its context just for the sakeof capturing in one fomulation the common featuresof thesetwo kinds of scenes.It is misleading,that is, if we are trying to capture by the semanticdescription of a word what it is that a speakerof the languageneedsto know in order to usethe word appropriately. I would prefer to say that what Jakobsonhas expressed is the similarity on the basisof which somezoologistcreateda namefor the lonely young seals(viewed as part of the act of creating a linguistic frame for the scene of fur sealsociety):he borrowed the word bachelorfrom a different frame on the basisof analogy. It is simply not the case,as the Jakobsonian analysiswould suggest,that the meaningof the word bachelor was extendedor mademore general;the attempt to support sucha claim, after all, would require the semanticistto find a realTygeneralboundary condition that could cover exactly the things that are calledbachelors. There are genuine casesof lexical-meaninggeneralization,and we certainly need a kind of analysisthat will enableus to distinguish those from the spuriouscasessuchas thosewe seein the polysemyof bachelor. 8. Another issuein semantictheory that I think the scene-and-frame analysis can shed somelight on is the question of determining the boundary conditionsof semanticcategories,a questiondiscussed earlierin connectionwith Labov'sstudy. Typically this sort ofresearchis a part of the work of scholarswho regardthe meaning of a linguistic form asbest expressedin terms of an exhaustivechecklist of the conditions that must be satisfiedin order for one to be ableto say that the word has been appropriatelyused.Boundaryresearchon our word bachelorin its most familiar senseraisessuchquestionsasthese: How old doesa male human have to be before he can reasonsblybe called a buchelor? Is somebody who is professionally committed to the single W considered u bachelor? Is it right to say, for example, that Pope John XXIII died u bachelor? When we wy of a widower or a divorced man that he is now a bachelor, are we speaking literally or metaphorically? I,lhat testssre there

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for knowing which it is? Is bqchelorhooda state one can enter? If a piest left the piesthood in middle life, could we correctly descibe his situation by saying thot he becamea bachelor at age47? If people give different answersto thesequestions,do they speak different diqlects? Are thesedialects stable? How do they get learned? and so on. Theseare all reasonablequestions,given the checklist theory of meaning. A prototype theory of meaningmight phrasethings quite differently. The conceptbacheloris well-definedin a kind of prototype world which is simpler in manylrespectsthan the real, familiar world. In this pSototype world, people typically marry around a certain age,and if they marry they stay married. If they do not marry, there is somethingaberrant about them: either they are unlucky, or th.9Vdon't like women, or they avoid the constraintsmarriagewould impose on their personalfreedom. Their Iifeways differ markedly from those of their married agepeers,justifying their categorization.The thing to notice about this prototype is that it simply doesnot coverall cases. When a linguist is asking an informant to explore the boundary conditions of a word, he is actually askingthe informant to make judgments that are not providedfor by his understandingofthe word asthat is basedon the prototypic scene.The informant, instead,is beingaskedto associated make judgments about whether lre is willing to extend a frame that he associateswith,a familiar and well-defined sceneto a situation for which he doesnot havea frame; or he is being askedto decidewhetherhe is willing to create a new frame for the new sceneusing a given word from a different frame; or he-is being askedwhether he has already confronted this problem and made a decision.This researchis particularly tricky, since the linguist may be confronting the informant with a situation that is not personallymeaningful for him, with a situation, that is, which doesnot call on the informant's actual communicating, expressive,or classifying needs. Another example of the samepoint is provided by the word widow. Boundaryresearchon this word would considersuchquestionsas these:

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Would you call a woman a widow who murde:red her husband? l|ould you call a woman a widow whose divorce becamefinal on the doy her husbanddied? Wouldyou call a woman a widow who had lost two of her three husbqndsbut who hud one living one left? Given the checKist theory of meaning,theseare all reasonablequestions. Within a prototype theory of meaning,however,we might say that the conceptwidow is a conceptthat finds its placewithin a simple prototypical scenein which peoplemarry asadults.they marry one person forlife, they marry at most one person,and theirlives are seriously affectedby their partner'sdeath.This prototypic scenesimply doesnot coverall possiblecasesof a woman marrying a man and then at somelater time being predeceased by him. 9. This process,which I have suggestedis a common part of practically all usesof language,of applyinga frame that is associated in advancewith one sceneto a novel scene,is importantly involvedin the kind of communicaliveact known asmetaphor.Becauseof this fact, there are thosewho might be inclined to say that everyinstanceof speakingis an instanceof metaphor.I would rather say that metaphorconsistsin using, in connectionwith one scene,a word - or perhapsa whole frame - that is known by both speakerand hearerto be more fundamentallyassociated with a different frame. The requirement for a true metaphor is that the interpreter is simultaneouslyawareof both the new sceneand the original scene. If the new scenealreadyhas a frame of its own, then we havean instance of what we might call a wasteful metaphor, as found in the device of callinga camela ship of the desert.If the new scenelacks sucha frame, then we have what we might call efficient metaphor; instancesof efficient might be seenin the decisionto metaphorin the history of our languages use the terminology of spatial relationshipsin talking about time or in talking about the organizationand functioning of the huam mind. (ObviouslyI havenot madeall the distinctionsthat needto be made.I havesimplifiedmatters,for example,by sayingthat the speakerand the

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hearermust both be awareof the two rangesof applicationof the expression.If metaphoringis viewedas a cognitiveact, we must distinguish metaphorfor the coiner from metaphorfor the userform metaphorfor the interpreter.) 10. Another common semanticissuerelatedto the questionof the fit between a frame and a sceneis the ncition of selectionrestrictions.Careful of word meaningshaveconsidered,all the way back, the discussions differencebetweenwhat might be calledthe meaningproper of a word and its range.of application.Expressedin our terms,the selectionrestriction information about the use.ofa word canbe statedas a specificationof the nature of the appropriatescene.The conceptof selectionrestrictionasit is usuallyviewedin linguisticsdefinesit as a relationshipamongthe elements scene. of a frame,not asa relationshipbetweena frame and its associated When we are talking in English about vertical measuresof an erect object, and when that erect object is a human being,the scalarwords we use are tsll andshort . When we are talking about the vertical distanceof some object from a bottom baseline - suchan object as a bird in flight or a branch in a tree - the scalarterms we use are high and/ow. Given the settingin which we are concernedwith the verticalextent of buildings,the words we use are tall andlow. Now to someextent, of course,it would be possibleto associatethese distributionalfacts with the propertiesof other words in the associated frames(asBierwischand othershavedone (20) ), but to me that seems like disguisingwhat is really going on. Insteadof recordingseparately,with eachnoun like cloud, tree, branch, uwn, building, etc., the dimensional and orientationalfeatureson the basisof which the correct measurement words canbe selected,it seemsmore appropriateto describethe different kinds of situationsandto presentthe gradingwords that are usedin each of these. (A relatedquestion,one that is sometimesconsideredwithin and sometimeswithout the proper domain of linguisticsemantics,has to do with the proper irrterpretationof word associationdata.The generally acceptedview amonglinguists,I believe,is that word-association data have more to do with experiences in people'slife historiesthan with the structureoflanguage,and that thereforethey do not belongin discussions

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of linguisticsemantics.What I am suggesting here,however,is that linguisticsemanticscannot be properly separatedfrom an examinationof people'sexperienceswith languagein context; and so maybe the two areas of interestare not all that disparate.If, thus, the lexical items we usein our languageare essentiallyitems with classifyingand describingfunctions within familiar settings,then there is no critical differencebetweenthe two interests.WhenI hear a word - if the frame and scenetheory is correct - I activatein my memory one of the sceneswithin which I know how to usethe word, aswell as the rest of the frame which containsthe word for that scene.If schematicframesare actualized,asis likely in an adult, then other words which can 'fill the blanks' - i.e. elementsof a paradigmatic frame - come to mind. I havenot suggested a way of researching word associationdata;but it doesseemto me that notions of meaningand languagecomprehensionshouldsomehowbe discussable within the same frameworkasword associations). il. I havebeensayin$that we needfor semantictheory somenotion of scenes;thatscenescan be partly describedin terms of the linguisticframes with which they are associated; and that scenesand frames,in addition to being cognitively linked with eachother, are likewise linked with other scenesand other frames,in sucha way that, in their totality, they characterizethe perceivedand imaginedworld and the whole framework of linguisticcategoriesfor talking about imaginableworlds. The word scenethat Ihave beenusing,as I havealreadystressed, is by no meansto be associated solelywith the prototypic meaningof that word. Someof the thingsI would like to call scenesarelike that, however,such asthe scenesof the flora and fauna of one'sgarden,the artifactsin one's kitchen, the observableparts of the human body, and so on. Othersare closerto a cinematicsenseof scene,with its dynamic aspect- suchthings asa personeating,a child drawinga picture, peopleengagedin actsof commerce,and so on. Other scenes,in my sense,might contain thingsthat would not be visiblein a'visual'scene:in this casewe havesomething correspondingto the stage-direction senseof scene,wherebyit could be imaginedthat a closedbox has candy in it, or that somebodyis hiding behind a curtain. Other examplesof three-dimensional scenesthat cannot be perceivedall at once are the location and distribution of the internal organsof the human body, or the shapeof a pretzel.

Other scenesare farther away still from the prototype. In somecasesto understanda word we haveto understanda history;and here by history I meanmerely someunderstandingof a particularpath of developmentin time, pastor future or general.Examplesof words whoseinterpretations requirethe understandingofhistorical scenesarescar(21), which is not just the nameof a featureof the surfaceof somebody'sskin, but is the healingstateof a wound; widow, which refersto a woman who was once ordinary marriedbut whosehusbandhas died;mufti,wlich designates clothes,but ordinary clothesworn by somebodywho professionallywears a military uniform;and so on. Othersmight be slightly more complicated. An apple core is not a particularwell-definedportion of an apple,such that naturehas providedthe seambetweenthe apple-coreand the rest of the apple.An apple-coreis that part of the applethat somebodywho eats applesthe way most of us do hasleft uneaten.In order to understandthe word, you haveto know how peoplein our culture eat apples.There would simply be nb needfor sucha word in a community in whjch people typically ate the entire apple,either swallowingor spitting out the seeds.A placebo,to give anotherexample,is not somethingthat hascharacteristics of its own, but is an innocent substancegivento the control group in an öf somenew medicine,or is a experimenttestingthe effectiveness substancegivendeceptivelyasmedicineto a group of subjectsto find out how they are affectedby believingthat they are taking medicine.Thereis no way of understandingthe meaningof the word without havinga notion of the whole experimentalsetting; Other scenesinvolve a understandingof conditions.Thereis no identifiable characteristicof poison apart from the reality that when living beings- or maybe only certainliving beings- ingestthem, they die or are otherwiseseriouslyharmed.A wound is not just any non-typical interruption inJhe integument-ofsomeliving being,but is in particular or well-being. somethingwhich hindersthe being'seffectiveness Other sceneshaveto.do with body image- suchthingsasknowing zp, down, left, ight, front and back. Theseare all conceptsthat we could not haveformed if we did not havebodies;theseare conceptsthat could not havedevelopedin a purely spiritualuniversethat containedpurely spiritualbeings. Relatedto the body imagesceneare scenesof what bodiescan do - these scenesdiffering, ofcourse, dependingon what kinds ofbodies we are

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talking about. Dependenton suchscenesare our understandingofverbs like walk, stand,gallop, crawl, frown, smile, vomit, as well as nouns like lap, fist, and so on. Other body-dependentsceneshaveto do with experiences that the physical body is capableof: such things ashunger, nausea,fever, wakefulness,andhesrtbum. Still other scenesrelateto psychic experiences:on thesedependsuchnotions asanger,fear, andwakefulness. More complex than theseare psychicexperiencethat havehistories:things like: impatience, suspense,surprise,disappontment, etc. Knowing these words is not just knowing the characterof the associated emotionsper se, but is knowing what sortsof eventscould createthe emotional experiences. Impatience,for example,is the way somebodyfeelswho believessomethingis goingto happen,who wantsit to happensoon,but is powerlessto rnakeit happen.Disappointmentis the way somebodyfeels who had wantedsomethingto happen,who had reasonto believethat it wasgoingto happen,but who hasfound out that it wasn't going to happen.In order for us to havean understandingof thesewords,we have to haveexperiencedsuchfeelingsaswanting,expecting,etc., and we also haveto understandthe characteristichistoricalfeaturesof the associated sceies. Still other scenesinvolvenot just visualor experientialmemoriesof image, but requirean understandingof the kinds of actionsand eventswhose purposesand charactersare determinedby institutions,conventions, agreements, contracts,etc. Here I havein mind suchnotions asbuy, sell, promise, borrow, gßrqntee, strike, negotiate, eLc. A still different kind of scene,one which frequently interlinks with the other by meansof lexical items or grammaticalchoices,is sornethingwe might refer to as an interactionalscene.Such scenesinvolveperceptionsof the socialrealitiesof the settingin which talking is being carriedout: such thingsas the age,sex,socialstatus,or institutional rolesofthe participants;the friendlinessor aloofnessofthe interaction;the speechact force of the individualcontributionsto the interaction:and so on. 12. Giventhesenew understandings, let me retum once againto questionsof communicationand comprehension.The linguistic choicesmadeexplicit by the speakeractivalecertain scenesin the interpreter'srepertory of

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scenes,and asthe linguisticdata continue to be producedand processed, theseoriginalscenesget linked into largerscenes,their'blanks' get filled within them are assumed.The all-importantrole of the in, and perspectives notion of prototypic scenesin this processconsistsin the fact that much of this linking and filling-in activity depends,not on information that gets explicitly codedin the linguisticsignal,but on what the interpreterknows about the largerscenesthat this materialactivatesor creates.Such and memoriesthat the interpreter knowledgedependson experiences with the scenesthat the text hasintroducedinto his associates consciousness. In a text like the followingone, I haci trouble with the car yesterday. The carburetor was dirty. We haveno difficulty in dealingwith the definite noun phrasein the secondsentence(that is, we haveno trouble figuring out which of the world's carburetorsis here being describedas dirty) becausethe bcene createdby linking lhe car andcarburetorscenestogetherwas one which easilyprovidedan anchoringframe for the carburetor.The interactional scenefor this text needsto be one which indicatessomethingof what is goingon in the production of the text. In this casethe secondsentence can be understoodas an explanation,or further specification,ofthe givenwith the first sentence.On the other hand, in a text like this message one I had trouble with the car yesterday. The ash-tray wasdirty. we can easilyfigure out a connectionbetweenthe mentionedcar and the rhentionedash-tray;butthis time our scenesabout havingtrouble with a car do not really provideany way ofinterpreting the secondsentence.The lack of coherencefor this secondtext seemsto be determinedby our inability to figure out any singlecoherentevent scenethat includesboth of thesesituationslinked purposefullyto eachother. 13. Let us look againat sometraditional semanticproblems.Considerthis time the two sentences, A dog was barking. A hound was baying. It is clearthat certaincollocationalexpectationsare satisfiedwith these sentences that would not be satisfiedwith havingthe nounsand verbs re-matched;andyet the collocationalpreferenceis not so strongthat one could say that thesenew sentences were semanticallyanomalous,The

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differencecannot,in other words,be spokenof assomethingaccountable in terms of selectionrestrictions.

Thoseme live lobsters. Those lobsters are ulive.

A scene-and-frame analysiswould have it that in a particular kind of hunting-dog sceneassociatedwith the activity of hunting the animal in the sceneis labeledhound and the specialkind ofbarking that this kind of animalperformsis calledbaying.It would be altogethermisleading,it seemsto me, to expressthesedirectly ascollocationalfacts about words or as selectionrestrictionfacts about the semanticpropertiesof words.

We can seeas an event in the history of our languagethat the living vs. deadframe hasbeenextended,metaphorically,to manners,personality, speech,etc.; but in this new scene,the formalive is usedin both syntactic contexts, at least in American English. That is, we say: Her mnnner is very alive. She has a very alive manner.

14. Let me go back againto the problem of looking for a maximally general description of the meaningof a word. I mentioned earlier that tall and short were used for humans that high and low were usedfor talking about distanceupward from a baseline, and that tall andlow were used for vertical measuresof buildings. Looking at these facts and deriving from them a generaldescriptionoflow anda generaldescriptionof tall thal coveredjust the right caseswould be misleading.It would be misleading becauseit would haveto be formulatedindependentlyof the distinct scenesin which thesewords exist as membersof contrast sels. In the same way, I think it would be misleadingto define short with a singlestatement that coveredboth its useasthe polar oppositeof tall and its useas the polar oppositeof long.

The sameframe has also been extended to the situation in which what is beingcontrastedis the differencebetweena performer'sbeing or not being physically present for a performance,i.e., whether the performer in an entertainment is on stagehimself or is being presentedon film or by audio recording. As a member of this contrast set, the adjectivehas the lorm live in both syntacticcontexts.Thus: His performance wus live. He gave o live performance. (In this third use the word appearsto be undergoingsome further change. SinceI believeduntil recently that in its third use the adjectivewas applied to performancesrather than to performers, I was upset when I read a San FranciscoChronicle advertisement.ofa theater that offers to that city a stagefull of live naked girls. The point was, I guess,that their customers will seeactualthree-dimensional bodiesrather than imageson a screen;but the only contrast set that I had for prenominal live as apphedto persons suggestedmore horrible possibilities).

15. Argumentsthat in generalwords shouldbe thought of in connectionwith the contexts in which they function can be found, I think, in the facts that words sometimesundergoseparatehistoricalchangesor becomesubjectto asmembersof different frames.The different morphologicalprocesses best-known example of this is the double plural of brother, namely brothers and brethren. Conceivablya unitary definition of brother could be given which coversits biological-family and its religious-community senses together;but then the referenceto the separatecontextswould haveto be brought in for describingthe pluralizationphenomena.

16. Another frequently discussedissuein semantictheory is the existenceor noncxistence of synonymy, in particular of complete synonymy. Some linguists take t}te non-existenceof synonymy as axiomatic, and build parts of their semantictheories on that principle. Others take it as a convenient working hypothesis, so that one focus of researchis simply that of trying to find out what meaning differencescan be discoveredbetween two apparently synonymous expressions.Others feel that the existenceof synonymy should be left open. In their view, if there are reliable ways of giving semanticdescriptionsto lexical items independently, then it will turn out that if there iue any synonyms, there will be pairs of items having identical semanticdescriptions.

An exampleof this samesort of phenomenonthat I haverecentlybecome awareof is with the adjectivelive.In the original scenewe havethe living with this vs. deador the living vs. non-livingcontrast.Whenassociated basic scene,the adjectivehas the formlive prenominally but the form alive in predicateposition. That is, we say:

,$i'

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If we seethe notion of lexical meaning as inextricably tied up with the notion of the fit betweenlefcal framesand their associated scenes,then claims about synonymy take on slightly different interpretations. In claims about the non-existenceof synonymy we might meal, for example,that there are indistinguishablescenesfor which the associatedframe offers lexical options. The famous caseof furze andgorse (Quine's examples,I believe) might fit this description. Or we might mean that the sameobject (necessarilythe sameobject, I mean) is labeled in one way for one scene and in another way for another scene,as, for example,is probably true with pork and the flesh of dead pigs. Or we might mean that the same cognitive sceneis associatedwith two different linguistic frames,but the interactional scenesare different: as might be the casewithweewee and uinate , or GermanLeu andLöwe . It is my impressionthat the prototypic conceptofsynonymy doesnot coverthesecases,and that thereforeany semanticistis free to usethe term synonymy in any of these cases,or to withhold it from the secondand third cases. Linguistics obviously doesnot need a priori decisionsabout synonymy. The non-existenceclaimsmight actually expressan intuition about a natural tendency that speakershave to avoid synonymy. For example,in the borderline or overlap areaof the Northern and Southern U.S. pronunciations of greasy,speakershave alternativeways ofsaying the samething. My understandingof what happensin theseareasis that the two pronunciations sort themselvesout into separateframes,one having to do with the literal useof the word, one with its metaphoricuse.Thus: That's a greqgypoL He's a greagt old man. The no-synonymy insight, then, is one about the tendency for distinguishableframes to be paired with distinguishablescenes.The insight about there not being synonyms is seenas an insight about the nature of mapping. the frame-to-scene l7 I am convinced that somethinglike the model I have been talking about can allow an integrated view of many subfieldsin the study of meaning and comprehension.In the sameconceptual framework we can discuss word meanings,the speech-actfunction of making particular linguistic choices,the acquisition of meaningin the child, changesof word meanings in the history of the language,the processof communicating in general,

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the processof comprehendinga text, the teachingof meaningin second-language education,and so on. It is not easyto seehow these notions can be formalizedor how a.scenes-and-frames semanticscan be linked up with a generativegrammar.Thesepagesamount to no more than a tentativefirst stepin seekinga solution to certainproblemsin semantic theory within the frameworkof conceptsthat seemsto be emergingin a numberof disciplinestouching on human thought and behavior.

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References 1.

2,

3.

15.

BERLIN, B. and KAY, P.,Basic Color Terms, Their Untversatity and Evolution, University of California Press,1969.

FILLMORE, C. J., "The casefor case",in E. BACH an