Pragmatic patterns and the lexical

systemA reassessment of evaluation in language

Helle Dam-Jensen
*
, Karen Korning Zethsen
*
Department of Language and Business Communication, A

rhus School of Business,

Fuglesangs Alle 4, 8210 A

rhus V, Denmark
Received 10 February 2005; received in revised form 10 November 2006; accepted 30 November 2006
Abstract
During recent years, corpus-based phraseology has brought newinsights to the study of language use and
in particular to the role of evaluation in language. New quantitative studies (e.g. Stubbs, 2001b) reveal that
rather than choosing individual words and their meanings, the average writer/speaker often chooses larger
building blocks, so to speak, as the meanings of words are much more intrinsically connected than is
traditionally assumed. A given word is statistically likely to trigger other words and frequently also a set of
connotations, as evidenced by the concept of semantic prosody (Louw, 1993). From the point of view of
meaning, it makes more sense to talk about extended units of meaning (Sinclair, 1996) than about the
syntagmatically more limited concept of lexical meaning. This article discusses the implications of these
new insights on the semantics/pragmatics boundary, in particular the claim that the traditionally primarily
pragmatic concept of evaluation is part of the language system to a much larger degree than hitherto
presumed. It offers Danish language analyses which corroborate English and Italian ndings within the area
of semantic prosody; these analyses are furthermore used to argue for the existence of inherent evaluative
meaning and pragmatic evaluative meaning.
# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Lexical semantics; Corpus linguistics; Pragmatic patterns; Evaluation; Extended lexical units; Semantic
prosody
1. Introduction
In this article, we would like to draw attention to new insights into lexical semantics and
pragmatics coming fromthe eld of corpus linguistics, in particular from the concept of semantic
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623
* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: hed@asb.dk (H. Dam-Jensen), kkz@asb.dk (K.K. Zethsen).
0378-2166/$ see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2006.11.009
prosody. Modern corpus-based phraseology points to the fact that the traditionally primarily
pragmatic concept of evaluation is part of the language system to a much larger degree than
hitherto presumed and is also much more central to the concept of meaning. We should like to test
this claim with analyses based on a Danish text corpus with a view to supporting primarily
English and Italian ndings and thus helping show the pervasive nature of the phenomenon.
It has never been possible to draw a clear-cut line between the eld of semantics and the eld
of pragmatics. Some areas are of course prototypical for each eld, but at the same time there are
a large number of fuzzy edges. Within lexical semantics, a traditional borderline area is that
between denotation and connotation; the latter (having to do with evaluation and expressivity)
has always been problematic in the sense that it is very difcult to pin down. It may be possible to
account for the denotative meaning of a lexeme, but when we move into the area of connotative
meaning, the semes become much more slippery. Denotation has often appeared to be the more
important of the two, perhaps because it lends itself to more nite description. With the advent of
corpus linguistics, it has become possible to discover semantic patterns which exceed the
boundary of the lexeme, but which are nevertheless systematic to such a degree that they should
be considered part of the language system. It is of course difcult to indicate a specic rate of
frequency needed for a pattern to be considered systematic enough to form part of the language
system. While ideally, co-occurrence should approach one hundred percent, still a total lack of
counter-examples cannot be expected if we allow for metaphorical usage of language and for the
fact that language is a dynamic phenomenon, not a static one.
The lexical building blocks are often much larger than the traditional lexeme and are often
carriers of evaluation. In our opinion, modern phraseology has revolutionized both our
perception of the semantic unit of analysis and of evaluation as a more intrinsic part of the
constructions chosen by language users:
A major nding of corpus semantics is that words and phrases convey evaluations more
frequently than is recorded in many dictionaries (Stubbs, 2001b:6).
In the rst part of the article, we shall provide an outline of the traditional areas of lexical
semantics and pragmatics. We shall discuss the methodological pros and cons of corpus
linguistics as opposed to traditional introspection and then move into the area of evaluation and
semantic prosody to provide the central arguments of this article. We shall then carry out corpus-
based analyses to support our claim (and that of others) and conclude the article with a discussion
of the semantics/pragmatics distinction in relation to our ndings.
2. Lexical semantics
Semantics is traditionally taken to have the semantic system as its focus point. Lexical
meaning is typically accounted for within the realm of structuralism either by way of
decomposition or in terms of sense relations. These two approaches to lexical meaning are, for
example, reected in compositional analysis and in eld theory. Both approaches are
characterized by the common presupposition that the meaning of linguistic expressions is xed
and well dened, rather than dependent on the context in which they occur. According to the
structuralist tradition, all language items be they sounds, words or meanings are essentially
interlinked, a language thus being a structure of interlinked language items. Consequently,
lexical terms are to be dened relatively to each other, not absolutely (Saussure, 1916:125126).
The units derive both their essence and their existence from their relationship with other units
we simultaneously identify both the units and their interrelations. In this way, the meaning of a
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1609
lexical unit can be said to derive from both its syntagmatic and its paradigmatic relationships by
means of combination and selection (Lyons, 1977).
This approach leaves a variety of phenomena unaccounted for, such as, for example,
fuzziness, creative uses of words, and permeability of word senses (Pustejovsky, 1995:39) as well
as, central to this work, cases in which the meaning of a word is the result of the context of which
it forms part. More recent approaches, including corpus linguistics (Firth, 1957; Sinclair, 1987,
1996; Stubbs, 2001b) and the whole area of cognitive linguistics (Langacker, 1987, 1991;
Fauconnier, 1994) have attempted to take such phenomena into account. Within the realm of
formal approaches to lexical meaning, one can also mention Pustejovskys (1995) theory of the
Generative Lexicon. A common focus of these, otherwise disparate approaches, is the
recognition of a need to include context as a parameter in the account of lexical meaning.
The approach to semantics on which this article is based takes as a starting point the fact that
meaning is established in an interpretive process performed by language users. The input to this
process is linguistic expressions. The information provided by these expressions is then
combined with information from the context in which they occur, triggering different
interpretations. Some words nearly always appear in the same context. The meaning of the
context therefore comes to contribute to the meaning of the word; that is, certain words
presuppose a certain context to such an extent that this context can be said to form part of the
lexical meaning of the word. This approach to meaning of course challenges the strict semantics/
pragmatics boundary, as context is typically seen as belonging to the interface between semantics
and pragmatics.
3. Pragmatics
If asked to give a quick denition of pragmatics as distinguished from semantics, most
linguists would say language use as opposed to language system. While this distinction
sounds tantalizingly simple and straightforward, its use and truthfulness (other than for
supercial explanatory purposes) are highly questionable. If we look up pragmatics in the
Linguistics Encyclopedia (Malmkjr, 1991), we nd the following denition: the study of the
rules and principles which govern language in use, with speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle,
1969) and Grices theory of conversational implicature Grice (1975, 1978) cited as examples.
These denitions have their origin in Morris (1938) classic distinction between syntax,
semantics and pragmaticssemantics being dened as the study of the relations of signs to the
objects to which the signs are applicable and pragmatics as the study of the relation of signs to
interpreters (Morris, 1938:6; quoted in Levinson, 1983:1). Morris denition is very broad, and
the term pragmatics has subsequently been used to denote many different areas of linguistics.
Levinson (1983), who discusses pragmatics exclusively within Anglo-American linguistics and
philosophy (which is a complicated enough matter in itself), offers a more detailed picture than
do the above denitionsa picture which involves the distinction between semantics and
pragmatics. This is in fact what Levinson (1983:9) describes as the heart of the denitional
problem:
the term pragmatics covers both context-dependent aspects of language structure and
principles of language usage and understanding that have nothing or little to do with
linguistic structure. It is difcult to forge a denition that will happily cover both aspects.
So when it comes to the areas of focal interest in this article, it is difcult to say whether they
belong to a semantics which includes context or to a pragmatics which includes language
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1610
structure. It seems that for our purposes it is most useful to apply Levinsons intriguing denition
Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in a semantic theory
(Levinson, 1983:12). Avery simple denition, it seems, but one that of course entirely depends
on how we dene semantics.
A semantic theory which takes into account recent corpus-based phraseological ndings
would denitely include areas traditionally left to pragmatics. We shall not go further into the
discussion at this point, but just note that in our view it will never be possible to draw a clear-cut
line between semantics and pragmatics. For our present purpose, it is simply important to point
out that there is indeed plenty of interaction between pragmatic patterns and the lexical system,
and that recent research within corpus linguistics points in this direction, as we shall discuss in
section 4. Here, we go along with Stubbs (2001b:216): The view of corpus semantics
represented in this book [Words and Phrases], and the neo-Firthian tradition from which it has
developed, has always been sceptical of separating the levels of lexis, syntax, semantics and
pragmatics.
On the basis of the above, we shall argue that language exhibits phraseological patterns which
are systematically structured to such a degree that they should be considered part of the lexical
system. The evidence needed to support this claim comes from recent research within corpus
linguistics.
4. Corpus linguistics: aims and methods
Corpus linguistics denes itself as a discipline the aim of which is to describe what is usual
and typical (Stubbs, 2001b:221). This task is performed on the basis of corpora of real texts
which, per se, constitute the object of linguistic study. Stubbs denition has implications for at
least two areas relevant in this context: (1) the aimof linguistic analysis and (2) corpus analysis as
a method. We shall deal with these two points separately.
4.1. The aim of linguistic analysis
By way of introduction, let us comment on a quote from Teubert (1999).
Language is fundamentally a social phenomenon which can be observed and described
rst and foremost in the empirical data readily available, in communication acts.
Therefore, we do not know or strive to know how the speakers or hearers understand the
words, sentences or texts they say or hear.
Basically, this means that corpus linguistics occupies itself with recorded data. The product of a
corpus search is: a record of performance (Stubbs, 2001b:239). Consequently, corpus
linguistics is diachronic in nature; conclusions are made on the basis of previous experiences in
the sense that the meaning of linguistic expressions is specied on the basis of their appearance in
texts over time. Adifferent corollary of the quotation is that language is not seen as an individual,
biological faculty, but rather as a social one. The study of language therefore is inherently social;
this again means that when we describe language, we do so in terms of the social sciences, such as
sociology. A consequence of this is that by transferring linguistic problems to a different
theoretical eld, we are prevented from describing language as an independent object of study.
In this connection, it is furthermore important to note that a purely quanticational analysis of
language may be problematic. Bosque (2001) notes that quanticational analyses of language
may provide information about the use of certain linguistic expressions, but they do not in
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1611
themselves provide new insights about language. As an example, Bosque (2001:12) gives, the
combination of much + N, as in (hace) mucho calor (it is) very hot (said about the weather),
which is a frequent word combination in Spanish, but which, because the adverb does not impose
a lexical restriction on the noun, does not provide any insight into the semantics of word
combinations. Contrary to this, it is possible, by means of introspection, to establish a class of
verbs which allow modication by the adverb progresivamente (more and more; Bosque,
2001:19). We shall take the position that language may in fact be studied in its own right, and
that the use of quantitative analytical methods should generate new knowledge about the lexico-
syntactic properties of language.
Some corpus linguists subscribe to what could be called a monist position, to a degree that
they reject the dualism inherent in the classic distinction between competence and performance.
This applies to linguists such as Sinclair, Firth, and Halliday (Stubbs, 2001b:229). Others,
for example Stubbs, subscribe to a more moderate position by not entirely rejecting introspective
data (Stubbs, 2001b:71). We shall support this position by arguing that if we want to
provide insights into language other than purely quanticational facts, studies of language cannot
be performed without appeal to both introspection and intuition. Here, we agree with Fillmore
(1991:35):
(. . .) I dont think that there can be any corpora, however large, that contain information
about all of the areas of English lexicon and grammar that I want to explore (..). Every
corpus that Ive had a chance to examine, however small, has taught me facts that I couldnt
imagine nding out about in any other way. My conclusion is that the two kinds of linguists
need each other.
Corpus analysis is therefore not to be considered as the embodiment of linguistic analysis.
Rather, it should be seen as an important tool for the linguist. And this is how we intend to use it.
(A consequence of this view is that corpus linguistics should be dened as a method and not as a
theoretical framework.)
By providing large bodies of texts, corpus linguistics offers the possibility of unveiling, for
example, word combinations within a specic range of words. As modern corpora are electronic,
they can produce concordance lines and allow calculations of word frequencies. Therefore,
corpora make it possible to discover unnoticed meaning relations in discourse. Furthermore, as
pointed out by Stubbs, they may reveal mistakes in speakers intuition (Stubbs, 2001b:72).
These points bring us to the next aspect of corpus linguistics: how can we use corpus
linguistics in a meaningful and productive way?
4.2. Corpus analysis as a method
While the aim of linguistic analysis is to study the typical case, rather than the exception,
corpus analysis, according to the perception of language within the eld of corpus linguistics
sketched above, is appropriate for disclosing the general case. In very broad terms, a corpus may
be characterized as a body of texts, nowadays an electronic collection of texts. Ideally, in order
for any collection of texts to form the basis of analysis, it must be completely representative.
Understandably, this issue frequently provokes criticism: the un-biased, perfect corpus is, and
will always be, a thing of the imagination. Language is dynamic and ever-changing, so the best
we can hope for is a usable corpus (where all due care is taken to ensure maximum
representativity). A corpus can be biased in time, in genres, in medium, etc. (for a more detailed
discussion see, e.g. Stubbs, 2001b:223224), but it is interesting to note that for many of the
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1612
more frequent features of language, relatively modest corpora provide adequate evidence
(Stubbs, 2001b:224). Corpus analysis as a method can be criticized in many ways, e.g. for
providing too little context, for producing only positive data, or for studying only performance
and not competence (see Stubbs, 2001b:221226; Partington, 1998:144148). We shall abstain
from going into this criticism in detail and merely emphasize the conclusions drawn above;
moreover, corpus analysis should never stand alonethe data must be interpreted. We consider
corpus analysis a tool to be used in conjunction with more traditional linguistic analysis.
If corpora comply with the requirements of sufcient volume and representativity, they
facilitate the investigation of language patterns which cannot be explored by way of
introspection. Among other things, recent corpus analyses lend support to the claim that values
are structured and built into the language system to a much larger degree than hitherto presumed.
Before proceeding to the analyses, we shall discuss the notion of evaluation, as it is structured
linguistically.
5. Semantic functions of language: evaluation
The literature offers a number of terms having to do with language as value laden. Among
other notions, Hunston and Thompson (2000:2) mention that of connotation.
In general terms, connotation (as opposed to denotation) applies to linguistic expressions
having associative meanings. According to Lyons (1977:176), connotation may be used to refer
to emotive or effective components additional to the central meaning of words. This
characteristic may seem rather slippery since it is not at all clear what it means for a word to have
emotive meaning. Indeed, the term connotation is used for different ways of conceptualizing
associative meaning. According to Partington (1998:6566), connotation has at least three
distinct uses. Firstly, it may refer to the register used according to social class. He gives
absolutely awful as an example of an expression which connotes upper-middle class.
Secondly, connotation may apply to associations made on the basis of cultural belonging.
Partington quotes Leechs (1974) example of connotations of woman as fragile, irrational, etc.
Thirdly, and more relevant to our conception of the notion, connotation applies to favorable or
unfavorable evaluations made by speakers by employing specic words.
Another term encountered in the literature on semantic functions of language is expressivity.
Expressivity, or expression, originates from Buhlers tripartite division of language functions, as
manifested in his Organon model (Buhler, 1965). In terms of this model, the notion of expression
refers to the inner state of the sender. It is as such a term for the speaker expressing emotions by
means of language.
A further term, this one applying to the associative meaning of language, is evaluation. This
notion is employed by Hunston and Thompson (2000) to refer to the speakers act of expressing
his/her opinion in language. Evaluation covers both cases in which speakers judge a state-of-
affairs as either certain or uncertain (modality) and cases in which speakers evaluate a state-of-
affairs as good or bad.
1
Hunston and Thompson (2000:5) note that the term evaluation has a
practical use, due to its syntactic and morphological exibility. Among other things, they
argue that it allows us to talk about the values ascribed to the entities and propositions which are
evaluated. Moreover, they claim that the term expresses the point of view of the speaker: it is
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1613
1
Some linguists distinguish between the two cases (e.g. Halliday, 1994), while others conate them (e.g. Conrad and
Biber, 2000) (Hunston and Thompson, 2000:45).
the speaker who evaluates; that is, evaluation is a tool that speakers may use to achieve specic
purposes (Hunston and Thompson, 2000:56).
With regard to the function of evaluation as expressing the speakers/writers opinion, such
evaluation, according to Hunston and Thompson, contributes to the construction of a
communal value system, forming part of the ideology of the society in which the text is
produced. This latter point deserves some discussion, since the implication that the term
evaluation expresses the point of view of the speaker is based on traditional, rather than
linguistic, arguments. It may be more fruitful to conceive of the term from the point of view of
the hearer. In this view, language provides information for the interpretive work of the hearer
who, given the appropriate information, may create evaluative meaning. More generally, in
our view, an investigation into communal value systems belongs to a pragmatic study of the
relations between language and society; in order to generalize about the semantics of a
language, one needs to focus on linguistic relations. In this article, we shall make use of the
term evaluation only in the restricted sense of the word, specically as the (positive or
negative) interpretations made in the mind of readers on the basis of information from
linguistic expressions and the context in which they are uttered.
We shall take as our starting point the notion that the creation of evaluative meaning may be
described based on both syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Paradigmatic relations are
formed by lexemes which are interchangeable at the phrasal level; even though these lexemes
may be grammatically interchangeable, they may affect the evaluative meaning of a sentence in
different ways as the case of the Danish verbs stinke and dufte (smell bad versus smell good)
shows. The heads of the verb phrases of (1) and (2) below are grammatically interchangeable,
but where stinke implies a negative evaluative meaning, dufte implies a positive evaluative
meaning.
(1) Vand uden ilt stinker [Water without oxygen stinks]
(2) Vand uden ilt dufter [Water without oxygen smells good]
Both lexemes are inherently evaluative; thus it would be contradictory to say, It stinks, but it
smells good.
Syntagmatic relations differ from paradigmatic relations in that they exist between different
linguistic expressions, for example between a noun and an adjective. Applied to a description of
relations of evaluative meaning, it appears that some lexemes select linguistic expressions limited
to either a positive or a negative evaluative meaning. According to Cruse (1986), the relationship
between linguistic expressions which enter into syntagmatic relations is that of a selector and a
selectee, in which the selector presupposes certain semantic features in the selectee. Sinclair
(1991) makes the more radical point that the co-textual features surrounding a word determine its
meaning and that co-occurrence (or rather, co-selection, as he calls it) is a fundamental feature of
language supporting his claim that meaning (including evaluative meaning) is not isolated in the
lexeme, but emerges from extended units of meaning (see below). According to Tognini-Bonelli
(2001:101), [t]he tendency of the words to co-occur is so strong that they cannot retain
independent meaning. With regard to evaluation, we shall argue that many linguistic
expressions are selectors in the sense that they select a context with either a negative or a positive
evaluative meaning, some to such a degree that the evaluation should be considered part of their
meaning what we shall call inherent evaluative meaning whereas others have clear evaluative
tendencies, but not to such an extent that the evaluation forms part of their semantic meaning
what we shall call pragmatic evaluative meaning.
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1614
We agree with Cruse that a selector selects a context, but in many respects it is also the other
way round: meaning (and perhaps evaluative meaning in particular) can be said to be created by
constant contextual inuence. Meaning created on the basis of prototypical constellations of
words which create evaluative meaning is called semantic prosody, and this is the subject of the
next section.
6. From essential meaning relations to semantic prosody
Within the structuralist tradition, the search for sense relations was for many years a central
research area; some important relations such as contrast, hyponymy, and synonymy were found
to exist at the paradigmatic level. In relation to this article, however, it is at the syntagmatic level
that a very interesting observation was rst made by Porzig back in 1934, namely the existence of
essential meaning relations such as lick/tongue, blond/hair, and bark/dog (Lyons,
1977:261).
Since, however, within traditional semantics meaning was considered to be a product of the
language system, these essential meaning relations were considered a phenomenon to be accounted
for as selectional restrictions, rather than as fundamental aspects of the lexical meaning.
6.1. CollocationFirth
Essential meaning relations were originally called collocations by Firth in 1957 (. . . I
propose to bring forward as a technical term, meaning by collocation, Firth, 1957:194). Firth
is interested in the social function of language, and therefore his contextual theory of meaning
embraces many levels (or modes) of meaning (see Firth, 1957:190215), such as the grammatical
and the phonetic levels (meaning in a Firthian sense is not limited to what we would normally call
semantics). Among these levels, or modes, of meaning we nd the collocational level of analysis.
As has been often pointed out (e.g. by Lyons, 1977:612), Firth does not dene collocability as
precisely as one might wish, but one thing is clear: Firth rejects the Saussurean dualistic notion of
signication:
Meaning by collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly
concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words. One of the
meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and of dark, of course, collocation with
night (Firth, 1957:196). (For discussion of the example, see Sinclair, 1970 in
Krishnamurthy, 2004.)
So, exactly what kind of importance does Firth attach to the notion of collocation? This is a
difcult question to answer, but for the purposes of this article we can say that there is no doubt
that the tendency of lexemes to co-occur in texts is considered an important part of their meaning.
Furthermore, Firth points out that patterns of collocations can, for instance, be found by studying
a single author, a discourse community, or a language and that, in this way, clearly dened
contributions can be made to descriptive linguistics. According to Tognini-Bonelli (2001:162),
Firth saw the usefulness of collocation lying mainly in the description of restricted languages
and in the stylistic analysis of selected texts, but he did not fully recognise it as a mechanism
for creating textual meaning, one reason perhaps being that Firth died before the advent of
computers and corpus linguistics and that therefore the pervasive nature of collocation in
language in general was not observable to himas we shall see later on, the extent of collocation
even dees native-speaker introspection.
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1615
6.2. Extended units of meaningSinclair
John Sinclair, whowas a student of Firths, has for decades been a central gure within corpus
linguistics. Like Firth, Sinclair has a contextual/functional approach to meaning, and corpora
are used as evidence for new and revolutionary semantic insights (Stubbs, 2001b:22). One of
Sinclairs main areas of interest is the description of vocabulary patterns, and as early as 1966 he
noted that the word and the lexical item do not always coincide. In 1987, Sinclair found
computationally derived evidence for the existence of basically good/positive or bad/
negative semantic proles, indicating whether a word form is likely to be followed by
something basically positive or negative.
2
For the expression set in, for example, Sinclair
found that in the majority of cases the subject of the expression was something negative, such as
rot, decay, despair, bitterness, etc. and set in is thus described as having a bad semantic
prole (Sinclair, 1987:155156). Since the most frequent collocates of set in over time
3
have
come to color the expression itself, we come to expect, taught by experience, as a kind of default
value, something negative when set in is uttered. For this reason, set in cannot be seen in
isolationit cannot be semantically accounted for without including the inuence of its most
frequent co-texts. As we shall see below, this phenomenon was later named semantic prosody
(Louw, 1993).
4
In a 1996 article, The search for units of meaning, Sinclair develops these results further
and uses the phenomenon of semantic prosody as a very convincing argument for the existence
(or rather salience) of extended units of meaning (or compound lexical items as he also calls
them). Sinclairs model consists of four types of co-occurrence relations in extended lexico-
semantic units (Stubbs, 2001b:64), these four relations being collocation, colligation, semantic
preference and semantic prosody (for further elaboration see Sinclair, 1996; Stubbs, 2001b:87ff
provides an extension of the model).
Sinclair (1996:94) concludes:
So strong are the co-occurrence tendencies of words [collocation], word classes
[colligation], meanings [semantic preference] and attitudes [semantic prosody] that we
must widen our horizons and expect the units of meaning to be much more extensive and
varied than is seen in a single word.
Relevant for the focus of this article are the following insights:
1. Meaning, and in particular evaluative meaning, cannot be limited to the lexeme. Rather,
meaning is a phrasal phenomenon; it makes more sense to work on the basis of extended units
of meaning.
2. Evaluative meaning is to a much larger extent than hitherto presumed a structured part of the
language system.
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1616
2
Another author, Louw (1993), uses the expressions semantic prole and prosodic prole interchangeably; for him,
both expressions stand for the results of a corpus search, viz., whether a lexeme or a text sequence has a good or a bad
prole.
3
In Louws words, Prosodies are undoubtedly the product of a long period of renement through historical change . . .
(Louw, 1993:164). Consequently, there must be strong and less strong prosodies as well as prosodies under development.
4
According to Louw, the term semantic prosody was rst suggested by Sinclair in 1988 (personal communication
between Louw and Sinclair); however, Tognini-Bonelli (2001) attributes the term to Louw himself. In any case, Louw
(1993) was the rst to use this in print.
3. Within a model of extended units of meaning, it is at the level of semantic prosody that we nd
evaluation, and thus this concept becomes of central importance.
6.3. Semantic prosodyLouw et al.
Basing himself on Sinclairs 1987 work, Louw (1993) used the term semantic prosody
(inspired by Firths concept of phonological prosody) to refer to a words attitudinal semantic
prole and dened it as:[a] consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its
collocates Louw (1993:157). Louw carried out several corpus searches to corroborate Sinclairs
evidence of the existence of semantic prosody. Awell-known example is his analysis of utterly,
which he nds to have an overwhelmingly bad prosody; compare a typical sentence such as
[t]he farmers were utterly against the union Louw (1993:160). According to Louw
(1993:157), this phenomenon is largely inaccessible to human intuition, and it cannot be
retrieved reliably through introspection.
Many scholars have their own denitions of semantic prosodywhich often amount to
exactly the same as Louws original one. However, Partington (1998:68) provides a denition
which also focuses on the fact that we are dealing with extended units of meaning:
Semantic prosody refers to the spreading of connotational colouring beyond single word
boundaries.
and this is the denition we shall adopt for the purposes of the present article.
The important discovery of the existence of semantic prosodies means that we cannot reveal
connotative meaning in a text by simply looking at individual words. We need to take into
consideration the wider semantic/collocational patterns in which these words take part, in order
to identify the evaluations which are likely to be triggered in a readers mind. And to nd and
document these patterns, we must use computer-based corpus searches.
7. Analyses
The aim of our analyses is to provide corpus evidence for the existence of the two kinds of
meaning we have suggested here (inherent evaluative meaning and pragmatic evaluative
meaning). Furthermore, we would like to corroborate the analyses made by colleagues (Sinclair,
1987; Louw, 1993; Partington, 1998; Tognini-Bonelli, 2001; Stubbs, 1995, 2001b, etc.) in
support of the phenomenon of semantic prosody. Most of the analyses done so far have been
based on English (and to a lesser extent on Italian); the present article will contribute with
analyses based on Danish.
Below, we will analyze two Danish verbs belonging to the same semantic eld, that of
causing something. The verbs are forarsage (cause) and medfre (lead to). Intuitively, most
Danes would classify both verbs as neutral, i.e. as not associated with any particular evaluative
meaning. If we look up the two verbs in a standard Danish dictionary (Grue, 1999), we nd the
following neutral denitions, one referring to the other:
forarsage [cause]: medfre, vre arsag til
medfre [cause, lead to, imply]: fre til, bevirke, betyde
If we look up words like stinke (smell bad) and snyde (cheat), which intuition tells us are
negative, we nd the following denitions:
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1617
stinke [stink]: lugte ilde [smell badly]
snyde [cheat]: handle uhderligt for at opna en fordel [act
dishonestly in order to obtain an advantage]
In this case, both denitions include negative evaluative meaning.
From the literature on semantic prosody (Stubbs, 1995), we know that the English equivalent
of forarsage namely cause, has an overwhelmingly negative prosody. Nothing in the Danish
dictionary denition, however, indicates any such negative evaluative meaning in connection
with forarsage or its synonym medfre. Based on Stubbs (1995) analysis of cause, our
hypothesis is that forarsage is inherently negative. As regards medfre we are more uncertain, but
our armchair hypothesis is that it is more neutral, perhaps sometimes negative.
For our analyses we shall make use of a fairly new Danish corpus, Korpus 2000, containing
about 28 million words. The aim of the corpus is to document the use of the Danish language
around the year 2000 (actually the use of written Danish, as no speech data is included). The texts
on which the corpus is based were written between 1998 and 2002 and come from all conceivable
areas. Korpus 2000 was made accessible in 2002 and is the result of work carried out by the
Danish Language and Literature Society, DSL, under the auspices of the Danish Ministry of
Culture. The concordance lines were retrieved in December 2004.
7.1. Analysis of forarsage
We restricted our analysis to the innitive form of forarsage, and our search produced 147
results. In each of the rst 50 concordance lines, we looked carefully at the co-text of forarsage in
order to nd counter-examples to our hypothesis. This turned out not to be possible: all 50,
without exception, had a clear negative prosody:
forarsage leukmi
[cause leukemia]
forarsage en omfattende miljkatastrofe
[cause a comprehensive environmental disaster]
forarsage 2000 uskyldige menneskers dd
[cause the death of 2000 innocent people]
forarsage dd og handicap
[cause death and disability]
forarsage lignende tragedier
[cause similar tragedies]
The most frequent collocates to the right of forarsage were the following:
delggelser [destructions]
infektion [infection]
risici [risks]
krft [cancer]
alvorlige [serious]
skade [damage]
sygdom [illness]
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1618
7.2. Analysis of medfre
Again, we restricted our analysis to the innitive form; our search produced 878 results. The
rst 50 concordance lines were analyzed and in this case we tried to nd proof of any evaluative
tendency in each of the lines, and to be aware of any emerging patterns. Contrary to the case of
forarsage, there was no unied semantic prosody. The analysis shows negative evaluation for
most instances, but the negative consequences implied in medfre are not as serious as are those
in the case of forarsage. Whereas forarsage often implies serious, life-threatening illnesses, and
natural disasters, medfre is used in connection with more trivial diseases and problems, or
disadvantages relating to nancial matters or the political system:
medfre en lettere halsbetndelse
[lead to a minor case of tonsilitis]
medfre en mave-tarm-infektion
[lead to a gastro-intestinal infection]
medfre betydelige [konomiske] tab
[lead to signicant [nancial] losses]
medfre lnforhjelser af usund strrelse
[lead to wage increases of an unhealthy size]
The most frequent collocates to the right of medfre:
sammenbrud [breakdown]
get [increased]
risiko [risk]
ndringer [changes]
tab [losses]
frre [fewer]
sociale [social]
strre [larger]
problemer [problems]
yderligere [additional]
Furthermore, it seems that the occurrence of these negative effects is less likely than in the case of
forarsage. In other words, the concordance lines show more hedging (to the left of the node, or
key, word) in connection with medfre. Although the modal verb kunne [can]
5
is used quite
frequently to the left of both lexemes, in the case of medfre, additional uncertainty is often
expressed:
En eventuel forsinkelse af kontraktindgaelsen ville ikke blot medfre tab af trovrdighed. . . .
[a possible delay in entering into a contract would not only lead to loss of credibility. . .]
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1619
5
The Danish verb kunne (can) appears not only in the innitive, but also in the present tense (kan [can]) and in the
past tense (kunne [could]).
som sagen om Fisker-Kaj fra Nordjylland forventer at medfre. Kaj Nielsen tabte retten til. . .
[which the case of Fisherman-Kaj fromthe North of Jutland is expected to lead to. Kaj Nielsen lost
his right to. . .]
og en forbedring af brnefamiliers vilkar vil sikkert medfre. . .
[and an improvement in the conditions of families with children will probably lead to. . .]
og sker det ikke, vil det medfre politiske spndinger. . .
[and if that does not happen, it will lead to political tension. . .]
It seems that language users have a tendency to choose medfre instead of its synonym forarsage
in cases where the implied negative consequences are either more uncertain or less serious
(or both). Our hypothesis did anticipate that forarsage would be more frequently negative than
medfre, but we did not foresee these varying degrees of negativity, an interesting nding which
shows that analyzing concordance lines may yield ner distinctions than merely the negative/
positive one.
Finally, the weaker negative semantic prosody of medfre is also evidenced by the fact that
medfre is occasionally used in a rather neutral or even positive way; our analysis of 50
concordance lines even shows one (perfectly idiomatic) instance of clearly positive evaluation:
overbevist om, at de nye regler vil medfre betydelig strre abenhed. . .
[convinced that the new rules will lead to considerably increased openness. . .]
The occurrence of one or more counter-examples may of course detract from the strength of a
prosody presumed to come close to one hundred per cent. However, what we are basically looking
for, within the framework of corpus semantics, are patterns of meaning which are sufciently
signicant to merit attention. In other words, a small pattern of deviation does not falsify a
hypothesis of a more general pattern, but helps provide a fuller picture of a unit of meaning.
7.3. Conclusion of analyses
Even though the Danish dictionary we consulted in no way indicates any negative associations
in connection with the verb forarsage (cause), our analysis convincingly shows an extremely
negative semantic prole, which ts in well with Stubbs (1995) analysis of the English verb
cause. When a prosody is as clear as in this case, such information should be included in the
dictionary.
6
In the case of forarsage (cause + something very negative), we have an extended
unit of meaning which is inherently evaluative in the same way that the meaning of Danish stinke
(smell bad) is, and the mere fact that we are not dealing with an isolated lexeme should not
prevent such important information on semantic evaluative meaning from appearing in
dictionaries. Our analysis of medfre [cause, lead to, imply], on the other hand, provides an
example of what we have called pragmatic evaluative meaning. There are clear negative
evaluation tendencies, but they are not so overwhelming that they prevent the verb from being
used neutrally or even positively, and in most cases the negative implications of medfre are not
as devastating as are those of forarsage. Semantically, medfre could be described as cause +
something moderately negative, but occasionally neutral or positive.
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1620
6
As in English corpus-based dictionaries such as COBUILD, OALD and LDOCE.
8. Conclusionthe semantic/pragmatic boundary
As we saw in section 3, above, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics is not a clear
one. Large parts of the introduction to Levinson (1983) were dedicated to this denitional
problem; as is recent research within corpus linguistics, Levinson questioned the soundness of
the dichotomy. Stubbs (2001a:438) sums up the main aspects of the problem:
Amongst the many dualisms which plague linguistics is the question of how much
meaning is expressed in the text as opposed to how much is in the mind of the hearer or
reader. How much do we get out of a text and how much do we read into it? How much is
explicit and how much remains implicit? How much depends on linguistic knowledge and
how much on encyclopedic knowledge? Traditionally, semantics has often been seen as a
theory of those aspects of meaning which are expressed by sentences independent of
context, whereas pragmatics is a theory of those aspects of meaning which are intended by
speakers in context.
In relation to our present concern, evaluation, Sinclair (1996:87) states the following:
A semantic prosody is attitudinal and on the pragmatic side of the semantics/
pragmatics continuum. It expresses something close to the function of the itemit
shows how the rest of the item is to be interpreted functionally. Without it, the string of
words just meansit is not put to use in a viable communication. Having arrived at
the semantic prosody, we have probably come close to the boundary of the lexical item.
The initial choice of semantic prosody is the functional choice which links meaning to
purpose.
In many respects, evaluation can indeed be said to be on the pragmatic side of the semantics/
pragmatic continuum, but as we have seen above, evaluation appears to be more closely
linked to semantics than indicated by Sinclair. In the present article, we have discussed the
standpoint of many corpus-based linguists that there is much more interaction between
lexical meaning and context than traditionally assumed. Our analyses have shown that
making a distinction between inherent evaluative meaning and pragmatic evaluative meaning
may be useful. The distinction has its origin in the question of whether evaluation is encoded
in a lexeme, as opposed to being solely dependent on context. To answer this question, we
need corpus analysis. Put in different terms, we employ corpus analysis for the purpose of
revealing systematically structured phraseological patterns in the language system, not
particular linguistic phenomena relating to language usage independently of the language
system. Maintaining this division makes it possible to make precise statements and
predictions about linguistic meaning and language structure in general. However, because of
the very nature of the phenomenon, this distinction cannot be a clear-cut one either, and our
empirical contribution is of course far from being conclusive. Although our distinction may
be of only theoretical interest, it supports the very important hypothesis put forth by Stubbs
(2001a:438):
. . . pragmatic meanings are often conventionally encoded (in the text) rather than inferred
(in the mind of the hearer/reader).
In our efforts to better dene the semantic/pragmatic boundary, by drawing on the phenomenon
of semantic prosody, we came upon another insight arising from the ndings of this article. This
insight is embodied in the increasing amount of evidence provided by corpus studies that
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1621
evaluation permeates language to a much larger extent than traditionally assumed. In fact,
working with this insight has come to seem much more important to us than trying to forcefully
implement a (perhaps rather articial and basically impossible) clear distinction between the
areas of semantics and pragmatics.
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Further reading
Sinclair, John, 1966. Beginning the study of lexis. In: Bazell, C.E., Catford, J.C., Halliday, M.A.K., Robins, R.H.
(Eds.), In Memory of J.R. Firth. Longman, London, pp. 410430.
Helle Dam-Jensen received her PhDfromthe A

rhus School of Business in 2002 and is currently associate professor at the

Faculty of Language and Business Communication at the A

rhus School of Business. Her research interests include syntax,

semantics and cognitive linguistics.
Karen Korning Zethsen received her PhDfromthe A

rhus School of Business in 1998 and is currently associate professor

at the Faculty of Language and Business Communication at the A

rhus School of Business. Her research interests include

lexical semantics, corpus linguistics and translation theory.
H. Dam-Jensen, K.K. Zethsen / Journal of Pragmatics 39 (2007) 16081623 1623