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

CHAPTER 2. A FRAME SEMANTIC ANALYSIS 104
their entirety. This is a special case of the more general fact that to see a bounded event
implies to see (sense process) itentirely, unless there is some evidence to the contrary,
either linguistically marked or derivable from the context.
classify might be considered to overlap with spectate in a special \theatrical"
sense (I only regret that I never saw Olivier as Prospero.) However, it is better to regard this
as a construction based on the word as alone, since this theatrical sense can also occur with
the other major sense modality hear (I heard Olga Borodina as Carmen) or without either
(Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh is unforgettable). Thus, the theatrical as construction
would have valence elements for a performer and a role, and its outer semantics would be
\performance", a subtype of \process" with perfective aspect.
Sense TOUR
Uses which involve visiting for the purpose of seeing the sights may be considered
to constitute a separate sense which we will call tour, but it is di cult to decide whether
this is really lexicalized in English, or merely the result of the regular semantic composition
of eye with direct objects which are the sorts of places that people tend to take tours of.
(I will discuss this sense further when we look at bilingual dictionaries in Section 5.3).
2.6 Collocations
In this section, we will discuss collocations of other lexical items with see which
are lexicalized to varying degrees. More than one hundred such collocations are listed in
dictionaries of English idioms (e.g. the entries headed by see in Urdang & Abate 1983);
we will deal here only with a representative sample. All of these are \encoding idioms"
(Makkai 1966), in that, given a knowledge of the rest of the language, it is not predictable
that the particular meaning would be expressed in this particular way.
From a \decoding" point of view, many of the idioms with see are relatively easy
to understand on rst hearing, as the sense of see involved is clearly one of those already
discussed, and the meaning of the constituents produces the meaning of the collocation by
normal rules of composition; examples are:
(57) a. can't see one's hand in front of one's face
b. see the sights