Semántic Structure y Language Teaching

8/12/2019 Semntic Structure y Language Teaching

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American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Language Teaching and Semantic StructureAuthor(s): William R. SchmalstiegReviewed work(s):Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1963), pp. 405-409Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/305438.

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8/12/2019 Semntic Structure y Language Teaching

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Language

Teaching

and

Semantic

Structure

By

William R.

Schmalstieg

University

of

Minnesota

Neither the traditionalists nor the structuralists among foreign

language

teachers would

deny

the value of

a

thorough

knowledge

of

the

grammar

of

a

foreign

language

on

the

part

of

the

student.

The

structuralist

might

(although

not

necessarily)

label

the

grammar

as

"morphological

and

syntactic

patterns,

"

but

in

the final

analysis

both the traditionalists and

the

structuralists

have the

same

thing

in

mind.

In

this

article

I intend to

polemicize against

both

groups;

in

my

opinion

neither

one

deals with the

major

problem

of the

student

of

the

foreign

language,

i.

e.,

the

mastery

of

the semantic

structure

of

the

lexical

items.

Traditionalists

are

inclined

to

say

that once

you know the grammar, you can use the dictionary to look up words;

structuralists

say

that once

you

know the

language

patterns

you

can

use

the

dictionary

for

lexical

items. I think

that both schools

of

thought

miss the

point

that the

vocabulary

of

the

language

is

a

kind

of

structure

just

as

surely

as the

grammar.

It is

evident to the

stu-

dent

of

language

that the

meaning

of

the word

is

not

only

some

type

of

abstraction,

but that this

meaning

varies

with

the

total context

of

the word.

This

is

strikingly

true for

idioms,

but

it is also

true for

other

types

of

utterances. In

a

sentence

with

the

theoretical

structure

ABCD,

the

meaning

of

A

is

influenced

by

BCD,

the

meaning

of

B

is

influenced

by A-CD,

the

meaning

of

C

is influenced

by

AB-D and so

forth.

Suppose

that the

student

knows

the

grammatical

relationships

between

ABCD,

but

does

not

know the lexical

relationships

and he

turns to

a

dictionary

for

help. (The

structuralist

hasn't

given

any

training

in

"meaning,"

because this

is

on

the

periphery

of

linguistic

science.

The

only

necessary

knowledge

is

the

knowledge

of

morpho-

logical

and

syntactic

patterns.

The

traditionalist has

taught

the

grammar

and

is

giving

the student

"rigorous"

training

in

the use of

the

dictionary.

Naturally

the

traditionalist

is

using

a

text

published

in the

countrywhere

the

foreign

language

in

question

is

spoken.

This

text

has no

vocabulary

in the

back,

no

notes,

nor does

it

give

any

inkling

about

the

author's

style,

use

of

idioms,

etc.

We

are

told

SEEJ,

Vol. VII

No.

4

(1963)

405

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The

Slavic

and

East

European

Journal

that the student is getting solid native material and is learning much

more because he

isn't

being

spoon-fed.

)

Let us

suppose

also

that

each item in

the sentence

ABCD

has three

meanings

and

only

three

meanings.

The

average

student

can

look

up

only

one

word at

a

time

and

usually

he

starts

at

the

beginning

of

the

sentence,

or

the first

word

the

meaning

of

which

he

doesn't

know.

When he finds word

A

he

has

only

three

possibilities

for its

meaning.

Whenhe

finds word

B

he

again

has three

possibilities,

but

since both

A and

Bhave

three

meanings

he

has nine

possibilities

for

the

meaning

of

AB. Now

he comes to

C

which

again

has three

mean-

ings

and

has

not

nine,

but

twenty-seven possibilities

for

the mean-

ing

of

the

groupABC.

Whenhe

gets

to

D

with three more

possibilities

he

has

eighty-one

possibilities

for the

group

ABCD.

Having

eighty-

one

possibilities

for

the sentence ABCD

he

goes

on the

sentence EFGH

which

again

furnishes him with

eighty-one

possibilities.

At

this

point

the

student

who

has learned

the

morphological

and

syntactic

patterns

(without

bothering

with

semantics)

or the

student

who

is

getting

"rigorous" training

(by

using

native

texts)

becomes

a

bit

discouraged

because he is

having

difficulty

ascertaining

which

of

the six thousand five hundred

and

sixty-one

possibilities

makes

most

sense.

The

example

which

I

have

just given

is

extreme,

but it

is

precisely

this

problem

which confronts the

average

student when

left

to

work

on his own.

Pretend

for

a

moment that N is

a

student of

elementary

Russian

and examine

what

happens

when

he

uses the

Mueller

dictionary.

I

have

quoted

below a

sentence

from

Konstantin Fedin's

Brat i

sestra:

"Nina

byla

tol'ko

na

god

starse

brataViti, no,

kak

devo6ka,

rjadom

s

nim, kazalos',

pererosla

svoi

desjat'

let.

"

Student

N has

not

bothered to

learn

any vocabulary

so he

first

looks

up

the

word

Nina,

not

realizing,

of

course,

that it

is

a

name,

because in initial

position

all

words are

capitalized.

Since

he

can-

not find

it,

he

pigeon-holes

it for future reference. Next he looks

up

byt'

where he is

confronted

by

two basic

definitions

"to

be" and

"toexist."

Quickly

scanning

the sentence he

notes that none of

the

18

words in the

sentence

seem

to

fit with

the

17

idioms

listed in the

dictionary,

so

he

can

dismiss

them. N

must now

hope

that

byt'

here

does not have

some

other

idiomatic

meaning

which

Mueller does

not

list.

He

now

goes

on

to

the third word

tol'ko

which the

dictionary

lists as

meaning

"only, merely,

but,

just"

and

scanning

the

sentence

again

he finds that

none of the seven

idiomatic

uses listed

seems

to

fit with the

remaining

sixteen

words in

his

sentence. The

fourth

word

presents N with an entire column in Mueller. Taking only the

basic

meanings

N finds

(1)

"at,

by, on,

upon" (na

vopros

"gde,

na

kom,

na

oem"),

(2)

"on,

over, to,

towards"(na

vopros

"kuda?"),

(3)

"at, by,

for, in, into,

on,

to

upon"

(na

vopros

"na

kogo,

na

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Language Teaching

and Semantic

Structure

though he makes a mental note that he may have to go back and read

them

all

again

when he

tries to

puzzle

out what

the

sentence means.

Next

he

goes

to

starse

and

here

he

may

be in real

luck,

because he

may

notice

the

analogy

between the listed

idiom on

starse

menja

na

god

"he is

a

year

older than

I

am"

and the sentence in his book.

But

if

he

is not on his

toes

he

may

well

miss

this

and write

down the

two

basic

meanings

"older"

and "elder.

" Next he

goes

to

brat

which

has

the basic

meaning

"brother"

and he

checks

the

eleven

idioms to make certain that

none

of these is

involved. Since

Viti

is

capitalized

he knows it is

a

proper

name.

For

no

he

finds

the

single listing "but." With kak he is again confronted with more than

a

column of

definitions. He

finds the basic

meanings

"how, as,

like"

and

skips

the

fifty

odd other entries.

For

devocka

Mueller

lists

"girl,

little

girl;

flapper,

"

for

rjadom

N finds

"abreast,

alongside

(of),

hard

by,

side

by

side,

cheek

by

jowl

(with)

"

and

six

other

expressions.

Mueller

does not list

rjadom

sas an

idiom,

however,

so

N looks

up

s for which

he

finds the

meaning

"with"

and

two ex-

amples

of its use with

the instrumental

case.

Since

he

knows his

grammar

he

doesn't bother with

the

first

meaning

which

requires

the

genitive

case

nor

the third

meaning

which

requires

the

accusative

case.

Naturally

he knows also

that

nim

is

the instrumentalof

on(or

ono).

kazalos'

offers no

difficulty

because we find

kazat'sja

mean-

ing

"to

seem,

appear"

and neither

does

pererasti

which is

listed

as

"to

overgrow,

to

outgrow."

Svoj

is listed as

"my,

his,

her, its,

our, your, their,

"

but

we can

assume that N

knows

this

because

it

has been

mastered

either in his

pattern

drills or

in his

traditional

grammar.

desjat'

has

only

the

meaning

"ten,

"

but

leto

has the first

meaning

"summer,

summer-time"

and

the second

meaning

"year"

with

thirteen

examples

of

usage.

Now

he

goes

back to

Nina

and

tries

to

decipher

his

cryptogram.

Having

done this

he comes

to class the

following

day

with the

perfectly

reasonable

(? )

translation:

"

Nina

was

only

a

yearolderthanherbrother

Vitja,

but,

like

a

flapper

cheek

by

jowl

with

him,

it

appeared,

outgrew

her

ten

summers.

"

When

I

started this article I

picked

this

sentence

at

random,

but

I

think

that

with

the

proper

manipulation

of the

dictionary

I

could create such

howlers without trouble.

In

fact

as

language

teachers

I

am

sure

that

we have

all

heard much worse

misunderstandings

than this.

They

are

a

daily

occurrence in

our

language

classes. And even if

the student

can arrive

at

the correct

translation

it

is

a

tremendous

waste of

time

to

go through

all

these

mental

contortions.

I

believe

that

in

the

preceding paragraphs

I

have

correctly

de-

scribed what really happens when a student begins to translate his

second-yearRussian

(or

French,

or

German,

or

Spanish)

assignment.

The

traditional

grammar

and

the structural

patterns

help

very

little

with

the lexical structure. What

can be done to

remedy

this

situa-

tion?

I

have in

mind

a

rather

unpopular

device which runs

contrary

to

our

general

educational

practices

in

this

country, namely

the

407

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The

Slavic and

East

European

Journal

memorization of vocabulary items. Looking up words time after time

again

does not

do

any

good

unless

the student memorizes

them.

And

unfortunately

most

of

our students

will

not memorize

anything

unless

they

are

told

to.

They

have

learned

throughout grade

school and

high

school that

memory

work is somehow beneath human

dignity,

that

it

is not

a

worthy

intellectual

pursuit

and that

above

all

they

shouldn,'t

be

required

to know

anything

but the

"general

principles"

or

the

"theory"

behind

any

intellectual

activity.

But

unfortunately

language

learning

is not

an

intellectual

activity

per

se.

In fact

I

suspect

that if one were to teach

very

little

grammar,

but require the memorization of vast quantities of lexical items the

student

would

be able to

read

(note

that I

say

read)

Russian as

well

as

the

student who

knew

grammar

perfectly,

but

very

little

vocabulary.

I

am

not

trying

to

deprecate

the

value of the

knowledge

of

grammar,

whether it

be

gained

by

traditional methods

or

by

pattern practice.

A

person

with

a

solid

knowledge

of

the

grammar

has

something

to

build

on,

whereas the

person

who knows

only

vocabulary

lacks

this

solid

base.

But

I

do

suggest

that

the student could use his time

to better

advantage

bymemorization

of

the semantic structure

of

the

language

(i.e., by memorizing

the

meaning

of words in each

context)

in

heavily

annotated texts

with vocabularies

than

by

deciphering

crypto-

grams

with the

aid

of

a

dictionary

in

the

manner

just

described.

Such use of

the

dictionary

without memorization

of

the

word

in

the

context

is

just

a

waste

of the student's time.

To

learn

a

language

one must

learn how

the

semantic elements fit

together just

as well

as the

morphological

and

phonemic

elements.

Structuralists

probably

would

carp

at translation as

a

teaching

technique,

but it

seems

unlikely

that

one

could

produce

enough

sit-

uations in the

class room to cover the

entire culture of the

foreign

language.

And in

any

case in

most

American

colleges

and

universi-

ties

it

is

the

practice

to

read

native Russian

materials in the

second

year.

In

one

year

it

is

probably

impossible

to introduce

enough

pat-

tern

drills to

allow

the student to reach

a

stage

in which

translation

could

be

avoided if

he

wants to read

any

real

quantity

of

material in

Rus sian.

The

problem

of

language learning

touches somewhat on

the

prob-

lem of

bilingualism.

Even if

we were able

to create

through

appropriate

drills

a

perfect

"co-ordinate"

bilingual,

it would

remain to

be

seen

what

value he

would

have for

the

community.

Presumably

such

a

person

would

be

a

kind

of

split

personality,

because

he

would

never

know what was happening in both languages. Hewouldbe

eternally

imprisoned

in

his two

languages

just

as

most

of

us

are

imprisoned

in one.

Uriel

Weinreich

quotes

the

case

of

a

woman who

could

speak

both

Hungarian

and

Rumanian,

but could

not translate from one

to the

other.

1

Apparently

she was

a

perfect

"co-ordinate"

bilingual

who

was unable

to

interpret

the

experience gained

in

one

culture in

the

408

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Language

Teaching

and

Semantic

Structure

light

of

the

second. It

is

the virtue

of

foreign

language

teaching,

however,

to make

a

bridge

between

two

cultures,

to

allow

people

to

interpret the

experiences

of one culture in the

light

of the other.

In

fact

it is doubtful that

perfect

"co-ordinate"

bilingualism

exists

except

in

a

limited

number

of

highly

educated

specialists

in

languages.

Studies of

bilingual

communities

seem to show that lan-

guages spoken

in close contact

develop

similarities in

phonological,

morphological,

syntactic

and lexical structure.2

Such

similarities

do not arise

by

accident,

but

by

virtue

of the fact that even "co-

ordinate"

bilingualism

leads

to identification

of

linguistic

elements

in

the

systems

of the two

languages.

The

language

teacher

may

aim

at

preserving

the

"purity"

of

the

language

which he is

teaching,

but it seems likely that the very nature of bilingualism is doomed to

circumscribe his

degree

of success.

My

point

is that since

the creation

of

perfect

co-ordinate

bi-

lingualism

is

such

a

difficult

and

time-consuming occupation

it is

silly

to

deprive

the

student

of less

time-consuming

methods

of

lan-

guage

learning,

namely

the

creation

of

a

cross-reference

file

of vo-

cabulary

items

in his

two

languages.

This

will,

of

course,

create

at

first "subordinate"

bilingualism,

but there

is no

proof

that the

student who

begins

with "subordinate"

bilingualism

cannot

develop

in

the direction

of

"co-ordinate"

bilingualism.

In

fact there

is no

proof that "co-ordinate" and " subordinate "bilingualism are mutually

exclusive.

Perhaps

they

are

merely

relative

capacities

on a

sliding

scale

rather than two

completely

different

things.

Notes

1.

Uriel

Weinrich,

Languages

in Contact

(New

York,

1953),

p.

74.

2.

Weinreich,

passim.

409