' '

FundamentalStudies T
Llngulstlc
/r

in ComputerScience Structures
Processing

Advisoty Roard: edited by

J. F€ldman,R Karp, L. Nolin, M.o. Rabin,J.c. Shepher&on,
A. vsnd€rsluisaIIdP.wesner ANTONIO ZAMPOLLI
Dircctor of LingußticsDiyisiott,
CNUCE- Institute of ltalian NatienatResearchCouncitrcNR)

VOLUME5

.ilX5lc
ffi ffi 1977

NORTH.HOLLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY NORTH.HOLLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY

AMSTERDAM . NEW YORK. OXFORD AMSTERDAM . NEW YORK . OXFORD
 55

Scenes-and-frames
semantics

CharlesJ. Fillmore

University of Berkeley, Califumia

0.
I think that everyone.in linguistics and languageresearchseesa need for an
integrated vipw oflanguage structure, languagebehavior, language"
comprehensfun,languagechange,and language acq-uisition.I suspectthat
what strikes me as the current Zeitgeist in languageresearchoffers material
to meet this need, though some of it is still somewhathidden; and I keep
getting the feeling that sooner or later it is going to be possiblefor workers
in linguistic semantics,anthropotogical semantics,cognitive psychology,
and artificial intelligence - and may be even languagephilosphy - to talk to
each other using more or lessthe samelanguage,and thinking about more
or lessthe sameproblems.

l.
One of the live issuesmaking up part of this Zeitgeist is the question of
whether the description of meaning strouldbe formulated as a checklist -
that is, as a list of conditionsthat must be satisfiedin order for a given
tinguistic expressionto be appropriately and/or truthfully used - or
whether the analysisof meaning requires,at least in some cases,an appeal
to a prototype - the prototype being possibly somethingwhich is innately
availableto the human mind, possibly somethingwhich instead öf being
analyzed,needsto be presentedor demonstratedor manipulated.

The color term studiesof Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1) suggesta
prototype semantics,especiallywith the supporting evidencethat there are
physlologically built-in predispositions in human beings for perceiving or
recognizingor categorizingcertain hues. That is to say, in the prototype
color semantics,to know red isto know somethingmore or lessdirectly,
but to know pink is to know red and to know that pink differs from red
56
U 57
along a certain dimension and to a certain degree.
Much of the work on the part of the psychologistEleanor Rosch on
natural categories(2) suggests
a prototype semantics.For the point I am
making,the'naturalness'of the categoriesis not so much the issue;but
that helps. The prototype semanticnotion I have in mind is this: I can
know a sqwre more or lessdirectly; a trapezoid I know, however, in the
first instanceanyway,as a squarethat got distortedin a particularway.
Relatedto thesequestionsis what someresearchers seeas the problem of
determining linguistic category boundaries.This work is exemplified in
some recent studiesof William Labov's (3). Knowing the categoryanp (as
opposedto glassor bowl) is recognizingsuchpropertiesasthe ratio
between the circumferenceof the opening and the height of the container,
havingone handle,beingmade of opaquevitreousmaterial,beingusedfor
consumptionof liquid food, beingaccompaniedwith a saucer,tapering,
and being circularin cross-section.The conditionsfor proper cuphood,
one could concludefrom this literature,requiresan object'sfalling within
an acceptablerangeon eachofthese severaldimensions,or departingfrom
the expectedrangewithin one dimensiononly if the departureis
compensatedfor by meetingcertainother conditionsin the other
dimensions.
One way of looking at someof this category-boundary researchis to say
that it provides us with the fairly complicated function that specifiesthe
boundary conditionsfor a category.Another way of looking at it is some-
thing like this. Peopleknow from their kitchens and their dining rooms
and from their experiences in restaurantssuchthingsas what a typical cup
looks like, what kinds of settingsit is usuallyfound in, and what it is used
for. From theseexperiences peoplehavelots of examplesof clearcasesof
cups.They have,morecver,the samesort of knowledgeabout glasses and
bowls and dishesand trays and saucers.When'confrontedwith monster
cupsofthe kind Labov and his collaboratorspresentedor depictedin the
experimentalsetting,they havehad to draw from a repertoryof categories
that doesnot coverthis new case,but within which there rnight be one
categorywhich fits this new casebetter than any of the others.They have
either had to decideon one categoryfrom this repertorywhich fits this
new experiencein somesufficiently satisfyingway - there beingnothing
better - or thev haverefusedto decide.
Perhapsit could be arguedthat we havehere two ways of sayingthe same
thing; that may be so, but I think there is a difference. The difference that
I seeis in the kinds of researchquestionsthat can be naturally formulated
within the two views. Asking for the boundary conditions for a particular
categoryis asking a very specialkind of question; askingabout the
strategiesusedby people in projecting from a repertory ofprototypes
onto novel situationsis askinga very generalkind ofquestion. Ifthere are
systematicdifferencesbetween individuals or between communities in the
managementof these strategies,or if it turns out that thesestrategiesalso
figure in the description of historical changesin the meaningsof words,
then 1 think the prototype view is the more helpful one to take.
(In general,the prototype theory offers an alternative to a popular but
decreasinglysatisfyingview, the view that people'sjudgments on how to
talk in experimentally presentedbizarre contexts offer subtle kinds of
evidencefor the existenceof dialect differencesthat would otherwise have
'
gone undiscovered.Prototype semanticscan be thought of as a
generahzationofthe view that a theory oflanguage needsto distinguish
between having a rule and using a rule. It may turn out to be much more
'internalized' linguistic rules asbeing simple rules
useful to speakof the
which cover prototypic cases,and thgn to speakof much of the so-called
'dialect' differencesthat generativegrammariansare fond of positing as
involving, not differencesin the characterof the internalized rules, but
differencesin people'sstrategiesfor using these rules).
Another side of the question we are examininghas to do with what I have
learned from WallaceChafe to refer to as the distinction between formal
knowledge and experiential knowledge. Formal knowledge is the kind of
knowledgethat can be formulated propositionally ; experiential knowledge
is the kind of knowledge that efi$ts as memoriesof experiences- the really
clear casesof the latter being such things as knowing what somebody's
face looks like.
This distinction is relevant to the prototype theory of meaning,because
one conceivableand not unreasonableversion of such a theory might be
that the prototypes are essentiallyexperiential. On this view, the process
of using a word in a novel situation involvescomparing current experiences
with past experiencesand judging whether they are similar enough to ball
for the samelinguistic encoding.
 58
Somethinglike the prototype idea can be found in the open texture
conceptof the philosopherWaismann(4), in the enactiveand iconic
memory representations of Bruner (5), in Lindsay'sdiscussionof the need
for somethingakin to mental picturesin the designof languagetranslation
and problem solving systemswithin artificial intelligence (6), in
wittgenstein's discussionof the non-formalizablehuman ability to perceive
an individual caseas being or not being an instance of a paradigm case(7),
in experimentalpsychologists'discussions of strategiesby which people
learn visual forms (as in the casewhere a child first learnsto identify a
squirrel as a strange-lookingcat) (8), in traditional studiesof simile and
metaphor, in which one treats of the ways in which any perceivedor
believed-to-be-typicalproperty of the vehicle can contribute to the tenor.
and in various recent works on vaguenessin linguistic categorizationsby
suchdiverselymotivatedresearchers as hkoff (9) and Zadeh(10).
2.
A secondaspectto the spirit of the times that I am trying to characterize
is the notion of frame or schema.One early use of the term in a linguistic
settingwas my own, in the expressioncaseframe;but it is alsousedby
various writers in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology,
sometimeswith referenceto the notion of the caseframe as the source.
The idea,under variousnames,goesback at leastas far asthe schemata
ideaof Bartlett (1 l) and hasrecentelaborationsin the work of Minsky
(12) and Winograd (l 3); I seeit also in the associativerelations idea of the
psychologistBower (14).
In proposingthe ideasof casegrarnmar(l 5), I thought of the caseframe
associatedwith a particular predicating word as the imposition of structure
on an event (or on the conceptualization of an event) in a fixed way and
with a given perspective.Let me try to explain what I mean by that. We
recognizein what we might call a commercial event such facts as that: two
people are active, and each of the two performs two acts, the buyer that of
taking the goods and that of surrenderingthe money, the seller that of
taking the money and that of surrenderingthe goods. And yet the case
frames require that any singlepredication describingaspectsof the
commercial event is limited in the penpective on the event which can be
taken and in the ways in which particular participants in the event can be
givena grammaticalrole in the associated sentence.
For example,in a sentencelike
ri:f
tltl
59
John bought the sandwichfrom Henry for three dollars.
one of the two activities of the buyer is registered,those of the seller are
not, mention of the sellerand the money is optional, and - in somesense-
the event is viewed from the perspectiveof the buyer. In the sentence
Henry sold John the sndwich for three dollars
an activity ofthe selleris registered,those ofthe buyer are not, mention
of the buyer and the money is optional, and the perspectiveis that of the
seller,In
John paid Henry three dollars for the sandwich
one of the activities of the buyer is mentioned, the activity of the selleris
not, and (in context) the mention of the goodsis optional. And in the
sentence
The vndwich cost John three dolhrs
the perspectivehas changedagain;and this particular predicate providesno
easyway to include mention of the seller. i
What is important to realizeabout the caseframes is that they presuppose
a fairty completeunderstandingofthe nature ofthe total transactionor
activity, and that they determine a particular perspectivalanchoring
among the entities involved in the aötivity. A complete description of the
prototypical commercial event would have to mention goods,money, the
money system,the two human-participant roles, the two transfersof
ownerships,and so on. There happensnot to be any simple one-clauseway
of representingall of the aspectsof an entire commercial event. We must
'levels' of conceptual
distinguish,in other words, two different
frameworks for events:the one giving a generalrepresentationof all of the
essentialaspectsof eventsof a particular category; and the other giving the
particular perspectiveon an ev€nt of the type dictated by a caseframe.
A generalunderstandingof a particular event tupe - such as that of the
commercial act - cante thought of as providing the setting within which
specificnotions relatedto this act can be specifiedor defined.The ideais
similar to what is found in the pirilosopher Hanson'sdiscussionof the
problem ofdefining the word aorta (6). The procedure for getting
somebodyto understand the word uorta - a word that cannot be defined in
a purely formal or categorialway - is to presenthim with an instanceof, a
replica of, the circulatory system of sometypical mammal, to point out to
him a certain portion of this system,to explain how that portion is related
to the rest,and to tell him that this is calledtheaorta.In the caseof a
word like, say,merchanf, the procedure is to presentsomebody with a
 60
description of, or a prototypical instanceof, a commercial act; and then to
point to one of the individuals involved in this act and to say that he is the
merchant. The samewould hold for explanationsof the verbsused for
describingaspectsof a commercial act. For example, I can point to the
goodsI can then draw your attention to the amount of money that got
exchanged,and I can then say somethinglike
This cost three dollurs
as a way of getting you to understandthe meaning of the word cost
The alternative that I would like to reject is that of building into the
description of each vocabulary item that figures in the description of a
commercial act, information about all aspectsof the act. In a sense,what I
am proposing contains, in the long run, the sameinformation: but it
allows a more gestalt-likeconception of the nature of the commercial
event. In other words, if we know in one way or another what the
commercial event is, then, given that knowledge, we can know exactly
what the vocabulary pertaining to that semanticdomain means.In short, I
can believe of myself that I know exactly what is meant by such words as
buy, sell, Wy or cosf, without requiring of myself that I have a complete
and correct checklist description of the commercial event itself.
(In recent years I have not had much to say about my proposalson case
grammaror about the many extensions,improvementsand correctionsof
it that havebeenproposed.A famouscritic of hereticallinguistictheories
once describedcasegrammar as a mere notational variant of a more
familiar linguistic theory, differing from the latter in especiallythe one
important respectthat the latter was correct. My own silenceon the
subject may have been taken, I fear, as an embrassedwithdrawal. My
feeling is that, independently of whether what I was proposing was
notationally expressiblewithin some other system,the important points -
someof which I think had not been made before - were those that had to
do with the frame analysesthat the system of casescould be used to
define, and with certain claims about dependenciesand hierarchical
relations that seemedto obtain among the terms in this system.Actually
the reasonthat I have pulled back is the sameas the reasonI get
dissatisfiedwith a filing systemfor my notes when I suddenly become
awarethat the box labeled "MISCELLANEOUS" contains more than all
the rest. There were just too many things I could not account for. I have
not, in fact, given up on casegrammar; but I think I need to become
clearerabout the difference between the perspectivalor orientational
6l
framesthat the systemof casesallows,and the frameworksof rolesand
categoriesin terms of which it is possibleto describethe vastrangeof
actionsand scenesand experiencesthat human beingsare familiar with).
3.
Athird aspectof the Zeitgeistis the current interestin text analysis.Text
lingusiticsis becomingincreasinglypopular,and increasinglyimportant,
both in Europeand in the United States.It seemsto me that approaches
to the analysisof discoursethat do more than assignto sampletexts a kind
of architectonicstructure- expressibleasa subtleand detailedtable of
contentsfor the text - can not tell us very much, and that in particular
somemeansmust be devisedfor analyzingthe temporaldevelopmentof
the comprehensionprocessof a discourse.Brute force waysthat simply
provide a notation for indexing individuals or time points or observation
points, or that indicatetopical continuity or topic change,or tllat provide
labelsfor the semanticor rhetoricalconnectionsbetweensuccessive
portions of the text, are useful and make text linguists sensitiveto many
aspectsofthe comprehensionprocegs;but they do not do enough.
Successful text analysishas got to providean understandingof the
developmenton the part of the interpreter of an imageor scene
or picture of the world that gets createdand filled out betweenthe
beginningand the end of the text-interpretationexperience.One way of
talking about the processis this: The first part ofthe text activatesan
imageor sceneof somesituationin the mind of the interpreter;laterparts
of the text fill in more and more information about that situation,giveit a
history, giveit a motivation, embedit in other scensor situations,and so
on. In other words what happenswhen one comprehendsa text is that one
mentally createsa kind of world; the propertiesof this world may depend
quite a bit on the individualinterpreter'sown private experiences -a
reality which should accountfor part ofthe fact that different people
constructdifferent interpretationsof the sametext. As one continueswith
the text, the detailsofthis world get filled in, expectationsget set up
which are later fulfilled or thwarted or left hanging, and there are such
experiences as surprise,suspense, disappontment,and so on, experiences
which canbe at leastpartly explainedby a descriptionof the temporal
developmentof the interpretationexperience.
4.
With all of the aboveasintroduction,let me try to formulate,in a
regrettablyimpreciseway, the picture I haveformed of the
62
communicationand comprehensionprocesses. It seemsto me that our
knowledgeof any linguisticform is availableto us, in the first instance,in
connectionwith somepersonallymeaningfulsettingor situation.Because
of the fact that it is personallymeaningful its recurrence- or the
occurrencelater on of somethingsimilarto it - will be recognized.
The argumentcan be madethat a language-learning child first learnslabels
for whole situations,and only later learnslabelsfor individualobjects.A
child might flrst associatethe word pencil, for example,with the
experienceof himself sitting in a particular room with his mother drawing
circles;later on he becomesableto identify and label isolableparts of such
an experience- the pencil, the paper,the act of drawing,etc.; still later he
acquiresdifferent namesfor the parts of different but similarscenes-
drawing, printing, writing, sketching, pencil, pen, crayon, chalk, paper,
blackboard,schoolhousewalls, etc.; and in the end he finds himself with a
mature repertoryof syntagmatic,paradigmaticand hierarchicalframesfor
experiences of both greaterdegreesof abstractness änd greaterdegreesof
precisionand boundedness than the originalexperiencein which he first
encounteredthe word pencil.
It appears,then, that in meaningacquisition,first one haslabelsfor whole
scenesor experiences, then one haslabelsfor isolablepartsofthese, and
finally one has both a repertory of labelsfor schematicor abstractscenes
and a repertoryoflabels for entitiesperceivedindependentlyof the scenes
in which they were first encountered.
(Oncein a while one comesacrossa nice pieceof evidenceabout the
middle stageof this development.Mary Erbaugh,a graduatestudentin the
Berkeleylinguisticsdepartment,working in Oaklandin the summerof
1974 with somesmallchildren,brought a grapefruitin her lunch one day;
she strowedthe grapefruit to the children, and got an acknowledgment
from thern that the object was indeeda grapefruit;shethen peeledit and
separatedit into its segmentsand startedeatingit. Shereportsthat the
chjldrenaround sevenyearsold in this group were surprisedto learn that
what at first had looked like a grapefruitturned out to be an orange.
Guessingat their reasoning,it would seemthat a grapefruit,after all, is
somethingyou cut in half with a knife and eat with a spoon.This thing
was obviously an orange,not a grapefruit. The categorizingfunction of
thesewords had not yet beenliberatedfrom the sceneof peoplein their
experienceeatingthe fruit.)
63
kaving explanationsandjustificationsfor anotheroccasion,I would like
now to present,by demonstration,someof the ways in which I would like
to usethe notions I havebeentrying to suggest.I witl try not to feel too
embarassedby the reality that all of this may sound at first like naive
arm-chairpsychology and that I cannot always think of ways in which one
could decidewhat sortsofpsychologicalevidencecould be brought to
bearin justifying this way of talking.
I want to say that people,in learninga language,come to associatecertain
sceneswith certainlinguisticframes.I intend to usethe word scene- a
word I am not completelyhappy with - in a maximally generalsense,to
include not only visualscenesbut familiar kinds of interpersonal
transactions,standardscenarios,familiar layouts,institutional structures,
enactiveexperiences, body image;and, in general,any kind of coherent
segment,largeor small,of human beliefs,actions,experiences, gr
imaginings.I intend to usethe word frame for referringto any systemof
linguisticchoices(the easiestcasesbeing collectionsof words,but also
includingchoicesof grammaticalrulesor grammaticalcategories- that can
get associated with prototypical instancesof scenes.The distinction
betweensceneand frame that I am trying to make appearsto be like the
distinctionbetweenschemaand descriptionthat Bobrow and Norman
make (17), and appearsto correspond,confusingly,to two hierarchical
levelsof the notion frame in Minsky'swork (18).
I would like to saythat scenesand frames,in the rnindsof peoplewho
havelearnedthe associations betweenthem,activateeachother; and that,
furthermore,framesare associated in memory with other framesby virtue
of sharedlinguisticmaterial,and-thatscenesare associated with other
scenesby virtuq"of sameness or similarity of the entitiesor relationsor
substances in them or their contextsof occurrence.
The scenesthat I havefn mind can be relativelysimpleor relatively
complex: thus, writing is simpler üran letter witing , and letter writing is
simpler than carrying on a correspondence. The framesthat are activated
by thesescenes,and which activatethesescenes,are correspondingly
simpleor complex.
I would like to be ableto speakof a processof abstraction,which consists
in developingschematicsceneswith someof the positions'left blank', so
to speak.Thus,whateverthe experientialorigin, scenesassociated with
64
writing-in-general contain,in the adult, lessspecificentitiesthan mothers
and pencils and little boys.
-L
I would like to be ablelo say that scenesand frame are mutually
retrievable,meaningthat a scenecan activateits associatedframe and a
frame can activateits associatedscene.
5.
kt me illustratesomeof thesenotions first in a discussionof the process
of comprehendinga discourse,the processof interpretinglanguagein
context. The simplestway to look at this processis to considerdiscourse
coherencerelationsin a two-party conversation,We can examinesome
elementary'two-stroke'conversations, of not very grealnaturalness,
involving the notion of witing.
The Japaneseverb kaku and the English verb write are frequently
acceptabletranslationsof eachother, but the scene-and-frame analysisof
the two words showsthem to be partly different. For the Japanese word,
sceneis one of somebodyguidinga pointed traceJeaving
the associated
implementacrossa surface,aswith the Englishword;but in the caseof
the Japaneseword, the nature of the resultingtrace is left more or less
unspecified.Thus, if somebodywere to ask,
Nani o kakimasita ka?
(meaning"What did you kaku? "), the answercan identify a word or
sentenceor character,or, just aswell, a sketchor a circle or a dooble.
The English verb write also has this samesceneassociatedwith it, for
which we can assigna framework of conceptsidentifying such entities as
the writer; the implement; the surfaceon which the tracesare left; and the
product. SinceI know at leastthat much about writing,I know that if you
tell me that you have been writing, I can, talking within the frame that
you haveintroducedinto our conversation,askyou suchquestionsas
llhat did you write?
llhat did you write on?
What did you wite with?
(Notice that if, instead, I were to ask a question lke lilhat time is it? or
make a commentlke I've got a bad toothache,I would not be talking
within the frame you introduced;I would be changingthe subject).
The English verb write , unlike the Japaneseverb kaku, has an additional
65
sceneassociatedwith it, for which there is what we might call a language
frame. It happensthat the product of an act of witing cannot be a picture
or a smear,but hasto be somethinglinguistic.Becauseof the existenceof.
this secondframe, articulatedwith the first, I can then ask,talking within
one of the framesyour remarkhasintroducedinto our conversation,such
questionsasthese:
What languge were you writing in?
Whatdoes what you wrote mean?
The word write , tn other words, simultaneouslyactivatesboth an action
sceneof a particularkind and a linguisticcommunicationscene;the
fittingnessof successiveparts of the text can be judged by appealingto
either of thesetwo frames
Supposenow that your sentenceabout writing givessomenameto the
product of the wt'iting; you will then have introduced a still neq frame,
the one (or ones)associated with the new lexical materialyou have
introduced.For instance,if you tell me that you havebeenwriting a
letter,youhave introducedinto our conversationwhat might be calleda
correspondeqce frame. Now free to talk within that frame,I can ask you
questionslike
Wo are you writing to?
Whenare you going to send it?
Whendo you think she will get it?
Do you think she will answerit?
and so on. Or - going further still - if you tell me that you have written
anotherletter, then we havea historicalframe going,and it is now
appropriate for me - assumingthat I do not already know the historical
setting for you remark - to ask you such questionsas
How many earlier letters did you write?
Iilho did you send those letters to?
and so on.
/
Textual coherencecannotbe determinedon the basisof singlesentences
and the scenesactivated by the frames triggeredby their lexical and
grammaticalcontent. The examplesgiven so far treated these reports
(about you having written something)as first contributions to a two-party
conversationwhose participants do not know very much about each other.
If, however,I alreadyhave'activated'certain scenesabout you - if, for
example,I know that you are in the finishing stagesof preparing a paper
on Latvian palatalizedconsonants- and if, in that context, you say to me
 66
merely that you have been writing, I can then quite appropriately ask you
a questionlike.
Haveyou dectded what journal you're
going to send it to?
In this case,I was ableto fit what you saidto me into somescenesthat
were alreadypreviouslyactivated;and I can thereforeappropriatelytalk
within any of the frarnesassociatedwith parts of that larger complex
scene.
Two'line conversations are, of course,extremelysimplekinds of 'texts'. In
general,single-authortexts or more extensiveconversations,will have
analogouskinds of coherenceproperties.In eachcase,a text is coherentto
the extent that its successiveparts contribute to the constructionof a
single(possibly quite complex) scene.
The processof communication involves the activation, within speakersand
acrossspeakers,of linguisticframesand cognitivescenes.communicators
operateon thesescenesand framesby meansof variouskinds of
procedures,cognitiveactssuchas filling in the blanksin schematicscenes,
comparingpresentedreal-worldsceneswith prototypical scenes,and so on.
The conceptsneededfor discussionofthese operationsinclude real-world
scenes,prototypic scenes,linguisticframesfor scenesor parts of scenes,
perspectivesor orientationswithin scenesprovidedby the kinds of frames
known as caseframes,and a set ofproceduresor cognitiveoperationssuch
ascomparing,matching,filling in, and so on.
6.
It is reasonableto wonder why it is necessaryto havetwo categories,i.e.,
both sceneand frame,where one might be consideredsufficient.The
reasonI distinguish the two is that very often there are perfectly well
understoodaspectsof scenes,evenquite familiar scenes,for which the
speaker,or a givenspeaker,has no linguistic encodingoptions within the
frame that is most directly activated by that scene.wallace chafe has given
the example of the trafjic cone or trafflc pilon,the orangecone-shaped
object that is usedby highway patrol peopleand highway workmen for
stopping or rerouting traffic. Everybody knows what they are, what their
function is, and what they look like, but only a fairly smallproportion of
the population knows what to call them. Whena personlearnsthe nameof
this object, the scenedoesnot change,only the associateclframe.
61
An example from my own experienceis the sceneof an intersection with a
stoplight. Sometimesyou get a greenlight allowing you to turn left under
the condition that the oncoming traffic is required to stop. I have been
familiar with this situation for many years,but I only recentlylearned.a
way of talking about it. It happenedwhen I heard someonesay Oh good.
they'vegot a protectedleft turn'herenow.The scene,again,hasnot
frame which that sceneactivates.
changedfor me;only the associated
7.
Now it happensthat all of this could be talked about in other terms than
those I have been offering, in ways that are more formal and respectable.
This is especiallytrue if we have a rich collection of semanticmarkers and
semanticdistinguishersand presuppositionaldevices,and if we can have an
unlimited number of distinct predicates,one for eachaspectof eachsc-ene
that we might have somethingto say about as speakersof a language.Yet I
think, as I suggestedearlier,that the scenes-and-frames view of'meaningis
superiorto checklisttheoriesofmeaning in the kinds ofresearchthat seem
important and in the sensibleness with which issuesin the theory of
meaningcan be formulated.
As an example of this last point, let me take the in some circleshighly
valuedsearchfor a core meaningor Grundbedeutungof a linguisticform, a
searchI seeasbasedon the commitmentto reduceall appearances of
ambiguityto a minimum. Katz and Fodor havemadeus all aware(19) of
the various meaningsof the English noun bachelor: one being unmarried
adult male human being;anolher being a knight beaing the banner of
another knight; a third beinga young malefur seal without o rltete duing
the matingseasor.Roman Jakobsonhasreportedelyarguedthat this is an
unnecessaryd,isplayof ambiguity, and that the three meaningscan all be
subsumedunder a singleformulation, namely: unfulfilled in a typical rnale
role.
Men who choosenot to marry, or who are at the agewhen they might
marry but have so far been unlucky or too busy, have a specialstatus that
distinguishesthem from many other men their age.This is a specialenough
status to deservea name: and the name is bachelor. The male fur seal
wants to haveasmany sexualpartnersashe can manage,and if he is big
and strongand has a loud voice,he will be ableto keep the youngerand
weaker malesaway from his breedingterritory. The sealswho have this
specialrejectedstatusdeserve,for the observingethologist,a specialname:
 68
and once again,the nameis bachelor.It happensthat the sameword is
usedin both of thesesettings;but I think it is misleadingto separatea
word from its context just for the sakeof capturing in one fomulation the
common featuresof thesetwo kinds of scenes.It is misleading,that is, if
we are trying to capture by the semanticdescription of a word what it is
that a speakerof the languageneedsto know in order to usethe word
appropriately.
I would prefer to say that what Jakobsonhas expressed is the similarity on
the basisof which somezoologistcreateda namefor the lonely young
seals(viewed as part of the act of creating a linguistic frame for the scene
of fur sealsociety):he borrowed the word bachelorfrom a different frame
on the basisof analogy. It is simply not the case,as the Jakobsonian
analysiswould suggest,that the meaningof the word bachelor was
extendedor mademore general;the attempt to support sucha claim, after
all, would require the semanticistto find a realTygeneralboundary
condition that could cover exactly the things that are calledbachelors.
There are genuine casesof lexical-meaninggeneralization,and we certainly
need a kind of analysisthat will enableus to distinguish those from the
spuriouscasessuchas thosewe seein the polysemyof bachelor.
8.
Another issuein semantictheory that I think the scene-and-frame analysis
can shed somelight on is the question of determining the boundary
conditionsof semanticcategories,a questiondiscussed earlierin
connectionwith Labov'sstudy. Typically this sort ofresearchis a part of
the work of scholarswho regardthe meaning of a linguistic form asbest
expressedin terms of an exhaustivechecklist of the conditions that must
be satisfiedin order for one to be ableto say that the word has been
appropriatelyused.Boundaryresearchon our word bachelorin its most
familiar senseraisessuchquestionsasthese:
How old doesa male human have to be before
he can reasonsblybe called a buchelor?
Is somebody who is professionally committed to the single W considered
u bachelor? Is
it right to say, for example, that Pope John XXIII
died u bachelor?
When we wy of a widower or a divorced man that
he is now a bachelor, are we speaking literally
or metaphorically? I,lhat testssre there
69
for knowing which it is?
Is bqchelorhooda state one can enter? If
a piest left the piesthood in middle life,
could we correctly descibe his situation by
saying thot he becamea bachelor at age47?
If people give different answersto thesequestions,do they speak
different diqlects?
Are thesedialects stable? How do they get
learned?
and so on.
Theseare all reasonablequestions,given the checklist theory of meaning.
A prototype theory of meaningmight phrasethings quite differently. The
conceptbacheloris well-definedin a kind of prototype world which is
simpler in manylrespectsthan the real, familiar world. In this pSototype
world, people typically marry around a certain age,and if they marry they
stay married. If they do not marry, there is somethingaberrant about
them: either they are unlucky, or th.9Vdon't like women, or they avoid
the constraintsmarriagewould impose on their personalfreedom. Their
Iifeways differ markedly from those of their married agepeers,justifying
their categorization.The thing to notice about this prototype is that it
simply doesnot coverall cases.
When a linguist is asking an informant to explore the boundary conditions
of a word, he is actually askingthe informant to make judgments that are
not providedfor by his understandingofthe word asthat is basedon the
associated prototypic scene.The informant, instead,is beingaskedto
make judgments about whether lre is willing to extend a frame that he
associateswith,a familiar and well-defined sceneto a situation for which
he doesnot havea frame; or he is being askedto decidewhetherhe is
willing to create a new frame for the new sceneusing a given word from a
different frame; or he-is being askedwhether he has already confronted
this problem and made a decision.This researchis particularly tricky, since
the linguist may be confronting the informant with a situation that is not
personallymeaningful for him, with a situation, that is, which doesnot
call on the informant's actual communicating, expressive,or classifying
needs.
Another example of the samepoint is provided by the word widow.
Boundaryresearchon this word would considersuchquestionsas these:
'70
Would you call a woman a widow who murde:red
her husband?
l|ould you call a woman a widow whose divorce
becamefinal on the doy her husbanddied?
Wouldyou call a woman a widow who had lost
two of her three husbqndsbut who hud one
living one left?
Given the checKist theory of meaning,theseare all reasonablequestions.
Within a prototype theory of meaning,however,we might say that the
conceptwidow is a conceptthat finds its placewithin a simple
prototypical scenein which peoplemarry asadults.they marry one person
forlife, they marry at most one person,and theirlives are seriously
affectedby their partner'sdeath.This prototypic scenesimply doesnot
coverall possiblecasesof a woman marrying a man and then at somelater
time being predeceased by him.
9.
This process,which I have suggestedis a common part of practically all
usesof language,of applyinga frame that is associated in advancewith one
sceneto a novel scene,is importantly involvedin the kind of
communicaliveact known asmetaphor.Becauseof this fact, there are
thosewho might be inclined to say that everyinstanceof speakingis an
instanceof metaphor.I would rather say that metaphorconsistsin using,
in connectionwith one scene,a word - or perhapsa whole frame - that is
known by both speakerand hearerto be more fundamentallyassociated
with a different frame. The requirement for a true metaphor is that the
interpreter is simultaneouslyawareof both the new sceneand the original
scene.
If the new scenealreadyhas a frame of its own, then we havean instance
of what we might call a wasteful metaphor, as found in the device of
callinga camela ship of the desert.If the new scenelacks sucha frame,
then we have what we might call efficient metaphor; instancesof efficient
metaphorin the history of our languages might be seenin the decisionto
use the terminology of spatial relationshipsin talking about time or in
talking about the organizationand functioning of the huam mind.
(ObviouslyI havenot madeall the distinctionsthat needto be made.I
havesimplifiedmatters,for example,by sayingthat the speakerand the
1l
hearermust both be awareof the two rangesof applicationof the
expression.If metaphoringis viewedas a cognitiveact, we must distinguish
metaphorfor the coiner from metaphorfor the userform metaphorfor
the interpreter.)
10.
Another common semanticissuerelatedto the questionof the fit between
a frame and a sceneis the ncition of selectionrestrictions.Careful
discussions of word meaningshaveconsidered,all the way back, the
differencebetweenwhat might be calledthe meaningproper of a word and
its range.of application.Expressedin our terms,the selectionrestriction
information about the use.ofa word canbe statedas a specificationof the
nature of the appropriatescene.The conceptof selectionrestrictionasit is
usuallyviewedin linguisticsdefinesit as a relationshipamongthe elements
of a frame,not asa relationshipbetweena frame and its associated scene.
When we are talking in English about vertical measuresof an erect object,
and when that erect object is a human being,the scalarwords we use are
tsll andshort . When we are talking about the vertical distanceof some
object from a bottom baseline - suchan object as a bird in flight or a
branch in a tree - the scalarterms we use are high and/ow. Given the
settingin which we are concernedwith the verticalextent of buildings,the
words we use are tall andlow.
Now to someextent, of course,it would be possibleto associatethese
distributionalfacts with the propertiesof other words in the associated
frames(asBierwischand othershavedone (20) ), but to me that seems
like disguisingwhat is really going on. Insteadof recordingseparately,with
eachnoun like cloud, tree, branch, uwn, building, etc., the dimensional
and orientationalfeatureson the basisof which the correct measurement
words canbe selected,it seemsmore appropriateto describethe different
kinds of situationsandto presentthe gradingwords that are usedin each
of these.
(A relatedquestion,one that is sometimesconsideredwithin and
sometimeswithout the proper domain of linguisticsemantics,has to do
with the proper irrterpretationof word associationdata.The generally
acceptedview amonglinguists,I believe,is that word-association data have
more to do with experiences in people'slife historiesthan with the
structureoflanguage,and that thereforethey do not belongin discussions

of linguisticsemantics.What I am suggesting here,however,is that
linguisticsemanticscannot be properly separatedfrom an examinationof
people'sexperienceswith languagein context; and so maybe the two areas
of interestare not all that disparate.If, thus, the lexical items we usein
our languageare essentiallyitems with classifyingand describingfunctions
within familiar settings,then there is no critical differencebetweenthe
two interests.WhenI hear a word - if the frame and scenetheory is correct
- I activatein my memory one of the sceneswithin which I know how to
usethe word, aswell as the rest of the frame which containsthe word for
that scene.If schematicframesare actualized,asis likely in an adult, then
other words which can 'fill the blanks' - i.e. elementsof a paradigmatic
frame - come to mind. I havenot suggested a way of researching word
associationdata;but it doesseemto me that notions of meaningand
languagecomprehensionshouldsomehowbe discussable within the same
frameworkasword associations).
il.
I havebeensayin$that we needfor semantictheory somenotion of
scenes;thatscenescan be partly describedin terms of the linguisticframes
with which they are associated; and that scenesand frames,in addition to
being cognitively linked with eachother, are likewise linked with other
scenesand other frames,in sucha way that, in their totality, they
characterizethe perceivedand imaginedworld and the whole framework
of linguisticcategoriesfor talking about imaginableworlds.
The word scenethat Ihave beenusing,as I havealreadystressed, is by no
meansto be associated solelywith the prototypic meaningof that word.
Someof the thingsI would like to call scenesarelike that, however,such
asthe scenesof the flora and fauna of one'sgarden,the artifactsin one's
kitchen, the observableparts of the human body, and so on. Othersare
closerto a cinematicsenseof scene,with its dynamic aspect- suchthings
asa personeating,a child drawinga picture, peopleengagedin actsof
commerce,and so on. Other scenes,in my sense,might contain thingsthat
would not be visiblein a'visual'scene:in this casewe havesomething
correspondingto the stage-direction senseof scene,wherebyit could be
imaginedthat a closedbox has candy in it, or that somebodyis hiding
behind a curtain. Other examplesof three-dimensional scenesthat cannot
be perceivedall at once are the location and distribution of the internal
organsof the human body, or the shapeof a pretzel.
t)
Other scenesare farther away still from the prototype. In somecasesto
understanda word we haveto understanda history;and here by history I
meanmerely someunderstandingof a particularpath of developmentin
time, pastor future or general.Examplesof words whoseinterpretations
requirethe understandingofhistorical scenesarescar(21), which is not
just the nameof a featureof the surfaceof somebody'sskin, but is the
healingstateof a wound; widow, which refersto a woman who was once
marriedbut whosehusbandhas died;mufti,wlich designates ordinary
clothes,but ordinary clothesworn by somebodywho professionallywears
a military uniform;and so on. Othersmight be slightly more complicated.
An apple core is not a particularwell-definedportion of an apple,such
that naturehas providedthe seambetweenthe apple-coreand the rest of
the apple.An apple-coreis that part of the applethat somebodywho eats
applesthe way most of us do hasleft uneaten.In order to understandthe
word, you haveto know how peoplein our culture eat apples.There
would simply be nb needfor sucha word in a community in whjch people
typically ate the entire apple,either swallowingor spitting out the seeds.A
placebo,to give anotherexample,is not somethingthat hascharacteristics
of its own, but is an innocent substancegivento the control group in an
experimenttestingthe effectiveness öf somenew medicine,or is a
substancegivendeceptivelyasmedicineto a group of subjectsto find out
how they are affectedby believingthat they are taking medicine.Thereis
no way of understandingthe meaningof the word without havinga notion
of the whole experimentalsetting;
Other scenesinvolve a understandingof conditions.Thereis no
identifiable characteristicof poison apart from the reality that when living
beings- or maybe only certainliving beings- ingestthem, they die or are
otherwiseseriouslyharmed.A wound is not just any non-typical
interruption inJhe integument-ofsomeliving being,but is in particular
somethingwhich hindersthe being'seffectiveness or well-being.
Other sceneshaveto.do with body image- suchthingsasknowing zp,
down, left, ight, front and back. Theseare all conceptsthat we could not
haveformed if we did not havebodies;theseare conceptsthat could not
havedevelopedin a purely spiritualuniversethat containedpurely
spiritualbeings.
Relatedto the body imagesceneare scenesof what bodiescan do - these
scenesdiffering, ofcourse, dependingon what kinds ofbodies we are
74
talking about. Dependenton suchscenesare our understandingofverbs
like walk, stand,gallop, crawl, frown, smile, vomit, as well as nouns like
lap, fist, and so on.
Other body-dependentsceneshaveto do with experiences that the
physical body is capableof: such things ashunger, nausea,fever,
wakefulness,andhesrtbum. Still other scenesrelateto psychic
experiences:on thesedependsuchnotions asanger,fear, andwakefulness.
More complex than theseare psychicexperiencethat havehistories:things
like: impatience, suspense,surprise,disappontment, etc. Knowing these
words is not just knowing the characterof the associatedemotionsper se,
but is knowing what sortsof eventscould createthe emotional
experiences. Impatience,for example,is the way somebodyfeelswho
believessomethingis goingto happen,who wantsit to happensoon,but is
powerlessto rnakeit happen.Disappointmentis the way somebodyfeels
who had wantedsomethingto happen,who had reasonto believethat it
wasgoingto happen,but who hasfound out that it wasn't going to
happen.In order for us to havean understandingof thesewords,we have
to haveexperiencedsuchfeelingsaswanting,expecting,etc., and we also
haveto understandthe characteristichistoricalfeaturesof the associated
sceies.
Still other scenesinvolvenot just visualor experientialmemoriesof image,
but requirean understandingof the kinds of actionsand eventswhose
purposesand charactersare determinedby institutions,conventions,
agreements, contracts,etc. Here I havein mind suchnotions asbuy, sell,
promise, borrow, gßrqntee, strike, negotiate, eLc.
A still different kind of scene,one which frequently interlinks with the
other by meansof lexical items or grammaticalchoices,is sornethingwe
might refer to as an interactionalscene.Such scenesinvolveperceptionsof
the socialrealitiesof the settingin which talking is being carriedout: such
thingsas the age,sex,socialstatus,or institutional rolesofthe
participants;the friendlinessor aloofnessofthe interaction;the speechact
force of the individualcontributionsto the interaction:and so on.
12.
Giventhesenew understandings, let me retum once againto questionsof
communicationand comprehension.The linguistic choicesmadeexplicit
by the speakeractivalecertain scenesin the interpreter'srepertory of
t)
scenes,and asthe linguisticdata continue to be producedand processed,
theseoriginalscenesget linked into largerscenes,their'blanks' get filled
in, and perspectives within them are assumed.The all-importantrole of the
notion of prototypic scenesin this processconsistsin the fact that much
of this linking and filling-in activity depends,not on information that gets
explicitly codedin the linguisticsignal,but on what the interpreterknows
about the largerscenesthat this materialactivatesor creates.Such
knowledgedependson experiences and memoriesthat the interpreter
associates with the scenesthat the text hasintroducedinto his
consciousness.
In a text like the followingone,
I haci trouble with the car yesterday. The carburetor was dirty.
We haveno difficulty in dealingwith the definite noun phrasein the
secondsentence(that is, we haveno trouble figuring out which of the
world's carburetorsis here being describedas dirty) becausethe bcene
createdby linking lhe car andcarburetorscenestogetherwas one which
easilyprovidedan anchoringframe for the carburetor.The interactional
scenefor this text needsto be one which indicatessomethingof what is
goingon in the production of the text. In this casethe secondsentence
can be understoodas an explanation,or further specification,ofthe
message givenwith the first sentence.On the other hand, in a text like this
one
I had trouble with the car yesterday. The ash-tray wasdirty.
we can easilyfigure out a connectionbetweenthe mentionedcar and the
rhentionedash-tray;butthis time our scenesabout havingtrouble with a
car do not really provideany way ofinterpreting the secondsentence.The
lack of coherencefor this secondtext seemsto be determinedby our
inability to figure out any singlecoherentevent scenethat includesboth
of thesesituationslinked purposefullyto eachother.
13.
Let us look againat sometraditional semanticproblems.Considerthis
time the two sentences,
A dog was barking.
A hound was baying.
It is clearthat certaincollocationalexpectationsare satisfiedwith these
sentences that would not be satisfiedwith havingthe nounsand verbs
re-matched;andyet the collocationalpreferenceis not so strongthat one
could say that thesenew sentences were semanticallyanomalous,The
76
differencecannot,in other words,be spokenof assomethingaccountable
in terms of selectionrestrictions.
A scene-and-frame analysiswould have it that in a particular kind of
hunting-dog sceneassociatedwith the activity of hunting the animal in the
sceneis labeledhound and the specialkind ofbarking that this kind of
animalperformsis calledbaying.It would be altogethermisleading,it
seemsto me, to expressthesedirectly ascollocationalfacts about words or
as selectionrestrictionfacts about the semanticpropertiesof words.
14.
Let me go back againto the problem of looking for a maximally general
description of the meaningof a word. I mentioned earlier that tall and
short were used for humans that high and low were usedfor talking about
distanceupward from a baseline, and that tall andlow were used for
vertical measuresof buildings. Looking at these facts and deriving from
them a generaldescriptionoflow anda generaldescriptionof tall thal
coveredjust the right caseswould be misleading.It would be misleading
becauseit would haveto be formulatedindependentlyof the distinct
scenesin which thesewords exist as membersof contrast sels. In the same
way, I think it would be misleadingto define short with a singlestatement
that coveredboth its useasthe polar oppositeof tall and its useas the
polar oppositeof long.
15.
Argumentsthat in generalwords shouldbe thought of in connectionwith
the contexts in which they function can be found, I think, in the facts that
words sometimesundergoseparatehistoricalchangesor becomesubjectto
different morphologicalprocesses asmembersof different frames.The
best-known example of this is the double plural of brother, namely
brothers and brethren. Conceivablya unitary definition of brother could
be given which coversits biological-family and its religious-community
senses together;but then the referenceto the separatecontextswould
haveto be brought in for describingthe pluralizationphenomena.
An exampleof this samesort of phenomenonthat I haverecentlybecome
awareof is with the adjectivelive.In the original scenewe havethe living
vs. deador the living vs. non-livingcontrast.Whenassociated with this
basic scene,the adjectivehas the formlive prenominally but the form alive
in predicateposition. That is, we say:
,$i'
77
Thoseme live lobsters.
Those lobsters are ulive.
We can seeas an event in the history of our languagethat the living vs.
deadframe hasbeenextended,metaphorically,to manners,personality,
speech,etc.; but in this new scene,the formalive is usedin both syntactic
contexts, at least in American English. That is, we say:
Her mnnner is very alive.
She has a very alive manner.
The sameframe has also been extended to the situation in which what is
beingcontrastedis the differencebetweena performer'sbeing or not being
physically present for a performance,i.e., whether the performer in an
entertainment is on stagehimself or is being presentedon film or by audio
recording. As a member of this contrast set, the adjectivehas the lorm live
in both syntacticcontexts.Thus:
His performance wus live.
He gave o live performance.
(In this third use the word appearsto be undergoingsome further change.
SinceI believeduntil recently that in its third use the adjectivewas applied
to performancesrather than to performers, I was upset when I read a San
FranciscoChronicle advertisement.ofa theater that offers to that city a
stagefull of live naked girls. The point was, I guess,that their customers
will seeactualthree-dimensional bodiesrather than imageson a screen;but
the only contrast set that I had for prenominal live as apphedto persons
suggestedmore horrible possibilities).
16.
Another frequently discussedissuein semantictheory is the existenceor
noncxistence of synonymy, in particular of complete synonymy. Some
linguists take t}te non-existenceof synonymy as axiomatic, and build parts
of their semantictheories on that principle. Others take it as a convenient
working hypothesis, so that one focus of researchis simply that of trying
to find out what meaning differencescan be discoveredbetween two
apparently synonymous expressions.Others feel that the existenceof
synonymy should be left open. In their view, if there are reliable ways of
giving semanticdescriptionsto lexical items independently, then it will
turn out that if there iue any synonyms, there will be pairs of items having
identical semanticdescriptions.
 .T

'78
79

If we seethe notion of lexical meaning as inextricably tied up with the the processof comprehendinga text, the teachingof meaningin
notion of the fit betweenlefcal framesand their associated scenes,then second-language education,and so on. It is not easyto seehow these
claims about synonymy take on slightly different interpretations. In claims notions can be formalizedor how a.scenes-and-frames semanticscan be
about the non-existenceof synonymy we might meal, for example,that linked up with a generativegrammar.Thesepagesamount to no more than
there are indistinguishablescenesfor which the associatedframe offers a tentativefirst stepin seekinga solution to certainproblemsin semantic
lexical options. The famous caseof furze andgorse (Quine's examples,I theory within the frameworkof conceptsthat seemsto be emergingin a
believe) might fit this description. Or we might mean that the sameobject numberof disciplinestouching on human thought and behavior.
(necessarilythe sameobject, I mean) is labeled in one way for one scene
and in another way for another scene,as, for example,is probably true
with pork and the flesh of dead pigs. Or we might mean that the same
cognitive sceneis associatedwith two different linguistic frames,but the
interactional scenesare different: as might be the casewithweewee and
uinate , or GermanLeu andLöwe . It is my impressionthat the prototypic
conceptofsynonymy doesnot coverthesecases,and that thereforeany
semanticistis free to usethe term synonymy in any of these cases,or to
withhold it from the secondand third cases.

Linguistics obviously doesnot need a priori decisionsabout synonymy.

The non-existenceclaimsmight actually expressan intuition about a
natural tendency that speakershave to avoid synonymy. For example,in
the borderline or overlap areaof the Northern and Southern U.S.
pronunciations of greasy,speakershave alternativeways ofsaying the
samething. My understandingof what happensin theseareasis that the
two pronunciations sort themselvesout into separateframes,one having to
do with the literal useof the word, one with its metaphoricuse.Thus:
That's a greqgypoL
He's a greagt old man.
The no-synonymy insight, then, is one about the tendency for
distinguishableframes to be paired with distinguishablescenes.The insight
about there not being synonyms is seenas an insight about the nature of
the frame-to-scene mapping.

l7
I am convinced that somethinglike the model I have been talking about
can allow an integrated view of many subfieldsin the study of meaning
and comprehension.In the sameconceptual framework we can discuss
word meanings,the speech-actfunction of making particular linguistic
choices,the acquisition of meaningin the child, changesof word meanings
in the history of the language,the processof communicating in general,
80 8l

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