AnInvestigationofDistanceIconicityinEnglishWordsinPairs

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Abstract：With the characteristics of semantic unity and structural fixedness, English words in pairs are usually regarded as the result of conventions. English words in pairs have a high degree of distance iconicity.

Distance iconicity maintains that the linguistic distance between expressions corresponds to the conceptual distance between them. Although the reflection of distance iconicity in English words in pairs is not very strikingly remarkable, it is of universal significance that the close linguistic distance corresponds to the close conceptual distance between the two words which are either synonymous, or opposite, or just combined with associated ideas. They are more or less related in sense and their combination exhibits the closeness between the concepts they represent. The symmetry of form corresponds to the symmetry of concept and the formal asymmetry is consistent with the conceptual asymmetry.

Key words: iconicity; English words in pairs; cognition; distance.

1.The Theoretical Basis of the Study

The relevance of the semiotic theory of iconicity to linguistics was first discovered by Roman Jakobson, who extends the scope of study to the three Peircean categories of imagic, diagrammatic and metaphoric iconicity. Iconicity, as a semiotic notion, refers to a natural resemblance or analogy between the form of a sign (the signifier, be it a letter or sound, a word, a structure of words, or even the absence of a sign) and the object or concept (the signified) it refers to in the world or rather in our perception of the world. The similarity between sign and object may be due to common features inherent in both: by direct inspection of the iconic sign we may glean true information about its object. In this case we speak of imagic iconicity (as in a portrait or in onomatopoeia, e.g. cuckoo) and the sign is called an iconic image. When we have a plurality of signs, the analogy may be more abstract, we then have to do with diagrammatic iconicity which is based on a relationship between signs that mirrors a similar relation between objects or actions, e.g. a temporal sequence of actions is reflected in the sequence of the three verbs in Caesar’s dictum : veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered). In this instance, the sign (here the syntactic structure of three verbs) is an iconic diagram.

2.English Words in Pairs and Distance Iconicity

Wang Rongpei (1988) defines word in pairs as one of habitual collocates with and as conjunction combining two words together to form a complete concept. It is worth mentioning that the two words always share some semantic properties (e.g. the same part of speech, or even similar meaning) (exceptions are rare). We couldn’t help asking whether it happens to be coincidental or not, and if not, how to explain it or in other words, why are they formally placed together? Can we find any evidence from the structure itself that they are closely related?

With the questions in mind, we start with the principle of distance iconicity.

2.1 The Principle of Distance Iconicity

Distance iconicity involves both formal and conceptual relationships between linguistic elements.

John Haiman (1983) describes the principle as follows: “The linguistic distance between expressions corresponds to the conceptual distance between them”. This idea is compatible with the principle articulated by Otto Behaghel: “What belongs together mentally is put close together syntactically” (Haiman, 1985: 228). According to Haiman, two ideas are conceptua1ly close to the extent that first, they share semantic properties (e.g. two verbs are closer if they share a common tense, mood, aspect, subject, object or topic); second, one is thought to affect the other (e.g. the conceptual closeness between a verb and its object varies with the transitivity of the verb); finally they are perceived as inseparable (Haiman, 1983:783).

Haiman provides the following scale to show the linguistic distance between X and Y (X, A, B and Y represent morphemes; # represents word boundary, and + stands for morpheme boundary):

Diminishing linguistic distance between X and Y

a. X # A # B# Y

b. X # A # Y

c. X + A # Y

d. X # Y

e. X + Y

f. Z (Where there is neither word boundary nor morpheme boundary between X and Y, they combine into a single morpheme Z) (Haiman, 1985: 105).

The scale indicates that the greater the formal distance between X and Y, the greater the conceptual distance between the concepts they represent.

2.2 English Words in Pairs and Distance Iconicity

Distance iconicity is also reflected in English words in pairs. As the two words are always put together only with and as conjunction, the linguistic distance between them is not great. At the same time, there is every reason to believe that the distance between the concepts they represent is not great, either. They are either synonymous, or opposite, or just combined with associated ideas. In a word, they are more or less related in sense and their combination exhibits the closeness between the concepts they represent. Considering the following words in pairs: cup and saucer (带茶托的茶杯), needle and thread(穿上线的针), lock and key (配有钥匙的锁), knife and fork(刀叉), coat and tie(系有领结的上衣), watch and chain(系有链条的表), rod and line (钓竿), bow and arrow(弓箭), bread and butter(抹了黄油的面包), we will find that the two words in the pairs are actually combined into a whole entity and the concepts they represent are inseparable. To be more convincing, we go to some not as typical as those above mentioned such as up and down, right and left, fair and foul, good and evil, true and false, right and wrong, rich and poor, profit and loss. As far as the concepts they represent are concerned, the two words in each pair represent the two extremes of one concept, up versus down, right versus wrong, etc, and their combination in fact constitutes a continuum. While conceptually distant, they are associated with each other and people never speak of one without speaking of the other.

Distance iconicity is largely reflected in syntax, that is, in coordination, interclausal relation, to- or from-marked construction, transitivity, head-last NP or relative clause, contraction, quotation or title, independence, and symmetry. Inconvenient to illustrate all the aspects in every detail, here we have only dwelt on one aspect in relation to English words in pairs: symmetry.

References

Haiman,J.Iconic and economic motivation.Language 1983(59).

Haiman,J.Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam:John Benjamins Publishing Company,1985.

汪榕培,顾雅云.英语成对词[M].上海:上海外语教育出版社,1988.