Frame semantics. Lecture 7

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LECTURE7
FRAME SEMANTICS
1 What is a semantic frame? Word meanings denote
parts of frames.
2 Knowledge of frames allows people to understand
words. Frames and their elements.
3 Frames impose a perspective on an event. Frames
reflect cultural practices.
4 Basic syntactic patterns reflect basic semantic
frames.
5 Frames are culturally contested.

2.

What is a semantic frame?
According to Fillmore a frame is a schematisation of
experience (a knowledge structure), which is represented at
the conceptual level and held in long-term memory. The
frame relates the elements and entities associated with a
particular culturally embedded scene from human
experience.
Charles Fillmore (1975, 1977, 1982, 1985a).

3.

What is a semantic frame?
Frames are cognitive schemas that you use to interpret
events and situations in the world.
Frames are your mental representation of situations that
you experience very often in the world.
The frame that you use gives you a certain worldview.
The same event in the world may be interpreted in very
different ways.

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Key features of frame semantics include:
Semantic Frames
Word Meaning
Context-Dependent Meaning
Cultural and Contextual Variation
Pragmatic Inferences
Applications

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Define discount

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How do words get their meanings?

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What do words do in terms of frame semantics?

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Words evoke frames
E.g. Julia will open her presents after she has blown out the
candles.

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Frames and their elements
– going to a restaurant
customer
waiter
food and drink
check
exchange of money
tip
– commercial transaction
seller
buyer
Goods
exchange of money

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REFERENCES
1. Evans V., Green M. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics.
An Introduction. EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY
PRESS.
2. Fillmore, Charles J. (1982). "Frame Semantics."
Linguistic Society of Korea (Ed.), Linguistics in
the Morning Calm (pp. 111-137).
3. Lakoff, George (1987). "Women, Fire, and
Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal
About the Mind." University of Chicago Press.
4. Barsalou, Lawrence W. (2008). "Grounded
Cognition." Annual Review of Psychology, 59,
617-645.
5. Johnson, Mark (1987). "The Body in the Mind:
The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and
Reason." University of Chicago Press.
6. Goffman, Erving (1974). "Frame Analysis: An
Essay on the Organization of Experience."
Harper & Row.
7. Kövecses, Zoltán (2000). "Metaphor and
Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human
Feeling." Cambridge University Press.
8. Goldberg, Adele E. (1995). "Constructions: A
Construction Grammar Approach to Argument
Structure." University of Chicago Press.
9. Talmy, Leonard (1985). "Lexicalization patterns:
Semantic structure in lexical forms." Language
Typology and Syntactic Description, 57-149.
10. Fillmore, Charles J.(2006). "Frame semantics."
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
11. Lakoff, George, & Johnson, Mark (1980).
"Metaphors We Live By." University of Chicago
Press.