Seeing clearly: Frame Semantic, Psycholinguistic, and Cross ...

CHAPTER 2. A FRAME SEMANTIC ANALYSIS 89
Frame see setting
type state
cat V
lexm see
Uses contain [cnt]
2
3
roles:
6Seer
=
4
Seenevent =
cnt.Container7
5
cnt.Contents
(49) a. BNC: He believed that Paris was seeing a forward surge in the arts.
b. The 1940s saw the beginning of the Cold War.
c. Brown: The years 1812 and 1813 saw him in Germany and France again, but
on this visit to Berlin he did not seek out the philosophers as he had on his
rst journey.
d. The Cambrian saw an explosion of speciation.
e. Brown: . . . the Italian painters, by universal consent, were the most brilliant
group of geniuses any art has seen.
The seer is a place or a period of time, and the seen is an event orcombination of
events. The seen occurs within the seer, so that the seer contains the seen or is
the \setting" for it. Note that Ex. (49-b) and Ex. (49-c) are not simply metonymic for
\people living during the 1940s" or \people living in Europe in 1812", as shown by the
acceptability of Ex. (49-d). Such a metonymy maywell have been the origin of this sense,
but it is not necessary synchronically. Ex. (49-e) seems to represent avariant, in which
the \container" is neither a place nor a time, but something that might becharacterized
as a professional community; it may thus be closer to a true metonymy, with the name
of the profession standing for all the members, in this case, all artists of all times. Note
also that it is desirable to postulate several other roles in the contain frame, as these are
needed for other metaphorical containers, as in There isn't room in this town for both of
us. (interior) and He's on the verge of a nervous breakdown (boundary), but only the
container and contents are used by see setting.