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

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 10
scale, whichwould correlate well with those of other such subjects! Armstrong et al. consider
that their results call into question the whole concept of de ning categories by features, and
admit that \the sum of the features is not the whole concept". In fact, they conclude \. . . we
ourselves are not optimistic that a general theory of categorization, one that will answer to
the serious problems . . . is just around the corner. To the contrary, the continuing failure of
the search for such units leads us to doubt whether there is a general psychological domain
encompassing `all concepts' . . . ." (See Lako 1987 for a criticism of their views and a
reinterpretation of their results).
The variety and reproducibility of the fundamental experiments in this area prove
that prototype e ects are, in some sense, a real fact about human categorization. However,
prototype e ects vary from subject to subject, from context to context, and even from time
to time for the same subject. As Barsalou (1987) concludes:
The graded structures within categories do not remain stable across situations.
Instead a category's graded structure can shift substantially with changes in
context. This suggests that graded category structures do not re ect invariant
properties of categories but instead are highly dependent on constraints inherent
in speci c situations. (p. 107, quoted in Schutze 1996)
Anumber of linguists have argued that linguistic categories (notably the basic
syntactic categories, or parts of speech, such as noun, verb, and adjective) display prototype
e ects; Lako (1987:289-92) and Taylor (1995:Ch. 10) argue that both syntactic categories
and syntactic constructions display such e ects. 4
Folk Models of Language and the Lexicon
In Chapter 4 we will be discussing the results of psycholinguistic experiments in
which subjects are asked to make decisions about the senses involved in various examples
of uses of see, and in Chapter 5, we will be discussing how dictionaries divide examples
into senses. It is therefore useful to consider what theories speakers typically have about
lexical semantics and how this might in uence their thinking about the semantics of see
and (indirectly) the way lexicographers write entries for non-specialist dictionaries.
The usual folk theory of language use is based on the communication is object
exchange metaphor (Sweetser 1987, also called the Conduit Metaphor (Lako & Johnson
4 Langacker (1987:189-208) argues that although these syntactic categories display prototype e ects they
are still crisp, because all members of each category \instantiate a single, abstract schema subject to reasonably
explicit characterization."(p.189).