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

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

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CHAPTER 2. A FRAME SEMANTIC ANALYSIS 103<br />

Sense SCAN<br />

<strong>Frame</strong> see scan<br />

type event<br />

roles: Seer nonsentient<br />

val:<br />

82<br />

><<br />

6<br />

4<br />

>:<br />

role Seer<br />

syn subj<br />

39<br />

>=<br />

7<br />

5<br />

>;<br />

This is a metaphorical extension from the process that animate beings perform<br />

with their eyes to similar processes performed by machines, computer systems, etc. The<br />

seen may be either the immediate physical stimulus or the content, i.e. scan may imply<br />

some sort of \cognitive" processing as well. When the seen is a physical object, the con-<br />

struction for scan will be identical to that for eye; when the seen is a state of a airs,<br />

the construction would be like that for recognize, except that the semantics of the seer<br />

would not be restricted to sentient beings.<br />

The idea is that this can unify with other senses, mainly eye, recognize, deter-<br />

mine, <strong>and</strong> possibly ensure, <strong>and</strong> override their type \sentient" on the seer, which would<br />

have to be made a default, rather than absolute. The alternative istokeep the sentient<br />

type <strong>and</strong> de ne a metaphorical mapping (a.k.a. \type coercion" in this context) that treats<br />

non-sentient seers as though they were sentient.<br />

Sense SPECTATE<br />

The seen is an event, typically a concrete event, including performances for en-<br />

tertainment. This sense prototypically requires the spectator to be physically at the event,<br />

seeing the participants or performers. With the advent ofmovies <strong>and</strong> television, spectate<br />

no longer requires physical presence in the same place. spectate is distinguished from<br />

process in that it pro les the entire performance; I could say that I had seen Bill ironing<br />

even if I had only stayed long enough for him to nish the collar of one shirt, but to say that<br />

Isaw My Fair Lady, Ihave tohave beenwatching for almost all of the show. Rather than<br />

make a general speci cation that spectate is always telic, we might be able to have this<br />

follow from the Telic quale of artistic performances, that they are normally to be viewed in

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