Metaphor and Metonymy, Jeannette Littlemore

Metaphor in everyday communication - Jeannette Littlemore

Why do metaphors work?

In the case of both metaphor and metonymy, we talk one thing in terms of another. However there is a difference between the two. Metaphor is an exchange of properties, while metonymy is an exchange of entities. Consider the following two sentences: (1) Kevin is bit of a monster (=scary, aggressive), (2) The White House (=government) announced new tax reforms. The first one is an example for metaphor, whereas the second one is an example for metonymy. 

Littlemore studies metaphor and metonymy in the following contexts:

1. cross-cultural communication; how metaphor and metonymy are used differently in different languages and cultures (emotions=heart/liver (Malaysia)); language learners (L2 speakers)
2. discourse communities
1. nursery - loose nappy(=for upset stomach0
2. sports - put him under Reese(=Reese’s coaching)
3. hospitals - room 121(=patient in the room 121)
4. military - 12 o’clock for direction, 
5. business - hedge funds, ring fencing, angel investor, unicorn, …
6. math and music education - high notes, low notes, thick notes, thin notes, ...
3. how people talk about their traumatic experience, difficult moments of life (sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental abuse, miscarriage, rape, accident, violence, loss of dear ones, depression, isolation, )
4. sexual health  - The objective was to use metaphor and wordplay to raise awareness on sexual health in indirect and humorous ways. e.g. going to touch wood; visit her spaghetti garden, exploring their botanical gardens, ...
5. advertising and branding -  Jaguar Cars (as sleek and fast as jaguars), Rolls Royce Phantom (as strong and powerful as the superman character Phantom), The Beast (as scary as a beast), 
6. gestures - they are useful in establishing cohesion in conversation by L1 speakers; to find the right words (esp. by L2 speakers); some are metaphorical and some are metonymic (roof gesture for house) and some are pragmatic; sign language; 
7. non-verbal communication -  metaphor and metonymy are common in verbal as well as non-verbal communication
1. the pair of glasses on the table for the teacher: metonymy because the teacher wears the glasses
2. handbag for Thatcher: metonymy because Thatcher used to have a handbag at public appearances
3. sickle for the working class: metonymy because farmers use sickle in harvesting crops; no transfer of properties
4. suit for the executive class: metonymy because corporate wear suits to meetings; no transfer of properties
5. thumbs up for good luck, V for victory: metonymy because it’s a convention
8. human-computer interaction - @MetaphorMagnet publishes metaphorical expressions generated by bots; how good are the metaphors (novelty, alliteration, Keats heursitic…)
9. embodied metaphor - metaphors that trigger physical, mental and emotional responses; interaction between metaphorical and the physical (e.g. importance ~ weight, similar ~ close); metaphoric associations such as LOVE is JOURNEY; e.g. I have had a rough day; I am trying to climb Mount Everest in flipflops.

Languages of the World

 Languages can be differentiated based on various aspects:

• Families - The languages having a common ancestor are grouped into language families.
  
  • Indo-Aryan (Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Haryanvi...)
  • Dravidian (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Konkani, Tulu…)
  • Germanic (German, Dutch, English, Scots, Dutch…)
  • Slavic (Russian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Polish...)
  • Celtic (Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic…)
  • Romance (Italian, French, Spanish…)
  • Sino-Tibetan (Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Cantonese, Tibetan, Burmese…)

•  Scripts - Different languages follow different scripts.

• Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati…)
• Latin (English, Spanish, German...)
• Arabic (Arabic, Persian, Urdu…)
• Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian…)

•  Inflection

• Analytic - few inflections e.g. English
• Isolation -  close to no inflections e.g. Mandarin
• Synthetic - many inflections
• Agglutinative - a single inflection conveys only a single grammatical category e.g. Finnish; English (goes → third person, am → first person), Malayalam
• Polysynthetic
• Fusional - a single inflection conveys multiple grammatical categories e.g. Italian future tense

Some Linguistics

Linguistics is the science of language. Language is the method of human communication, either spoken or written. Most of the languages around the world have more similarities among each other than dissimilarities. This leads to the concept of a universal grammar, which is the basis of all languages.

• Linguistics - study of language e.g. universal grammar, syntax, semantics
• Computational Linguistics (or NLP or Corpus Linguistics) - study of language through computational means with the help of machine-readable corpora; natural language processing e.g. automatic question-answering, text summary generator
• Cognitive Linguistics (CL, in short) - study of relation between language and cognitive processes e.g. child language acquisition
• Diachronic (or Historical) Linguistics - study of changes in language over time e.g. semantic drift
• Philology - study of language in historical texts
• Etymology - the study of origin of words
• Onomasiology - the branch of linguistics concerned with  the question “how to express the idea X as a word?”
• Semasiology - the branch of linguistics concerned with the question “what does the word X mean?”
• Sociolinguistics - study of language in respect to various social factors such as gender bias, social status, patterns of migration, influence of colonialism

 

Sociolinguistics - How do social factors affect language?

• Multilingual society
  
  • Code switching - switching from one language to another e.g Malayalam with wife, Marathi with shopkeeper, English with boss, Hindi with friends
• Code mixing - mix multiple languages e.g. Manglish, Hinglish
• Language shift - shift from language to another over a long period of time e.g. the common language shifted from Hindi to English in India

•  Based on variety of language:
• Accent - variation in pronunciation e.g. Malayalam accents (Trivandrum accent, Palakkad accent, Kochi accent, Thrissur accent, Kasargod accent)
• Dialect - variation in pronunciation and vocabulary e.g. Hindi dialects (Bundeli, Awadhi, Kannauji), English dialects (British, Australian, African-American, American, Indian)

• Based on use of language in a multilingual society: I think a language can have many dialects but only some of them are considered the standard and other become vernacular.
  
  • Standard - codified version of a language e.g. Standard English
  • Vernacular - languages that are not official, non-standard version of a language e.g. African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)
  • Lingua franca - e.g. English due to globalization, French by nobility, Latin by Catholic Church

• Based on official requirements:
  
  • National language - e.g India (Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Punjabi, Oriya, Bengali)
  • Official language - e.g. India (Hindi, English)

slang (informal), jargon (domain), pidgin (multilingual group), creole (second generation speakers), taboo (private)

മലയാളഭാഷാ വ്യാകരണം || Malayalam Grammar Basics

Malayalam is a Dravidian language, spoken predominantly by about 38M inhabitants of Kerala in India, and the Malayalee diaspora around the world. The word order is subject-object-verb. Malayalam has  heavily been influenced by other languages such as Sanskrit (ref. Manipravalam) and Tamil. Malayalam is classified as an agglutinative (synthetic) language due to the predominant use of inflections to indicate grammatical relationships. Malayalam has its own script and the modern alphabet consists of more than 50 characters. The script evolved from Vattezhuthu (an ancient Tamil script) and Grantha script (used to write Sanskrit). Malayalam and Tigalari (of Tulu) are sister scripts.

The major linguistic elements in Malayalam are the following:

സന്ധി - സന്ധി defines the joining of letters . There are many ways to perform സന്ധി in Malayalam: (1) അദേശസന്ധി (മരം+കൾ=മരങ്ങൾ), (2) ലോപസന്ധി  (വനം+മേഖല =വനമേഖല), (3)ആഗമസന്ധി (ദയ+ഉള്ള=ദയ+യ്+ഉള്ള), (4) ദ്വിത്വസന്ധി (അര+പട്ട=അരപ്പട്ട), ... 

സമാസം - സമാസം deals with the joining of words. ഉദാ: തീ തുപ്പുന്ന വണ്ടി = തീവണ്ടി, അച്ഛൻ + അമ്മ = അച്ഛനമ്മമാർ. An example for word composition in English is: attendant during flight = flight attendant 

അലങ്കാരം - അലങ്കാരം deals with figures of speech ഉദാ: ഉപമ, ശ്ലേഷം. It is of two types: (1) ശബ്ദാലങ്കാരം, (2) അർത്ഥാലങ്കാരം 

വൃത്തം - വൃത്തം  deals with prosody. 

Nouns - Nouns are inflected for case and number. Nouns are not inflected for gender in Malayalam. The cases in  Malayalam are as follows:

1. Nominative (രാമൻ) - Nominative case always denote the subject of the sentence.
2. Accusative (രാമനെ)  - Accusative noun denotes the object of the sentence. In sentences where there is a nominative, accusative and dative noun, the nominative will be the subject, the accusative the direct object and the dative, the indirect object.
3. Sociative (രാമനോട്) - Sociative case is grammatically similar to accusative case, but semantically different. The  sociative nouns do not function in the role of experiencer but only as recipients.
4. Dative (രാമന്, മേരിക്ക്) - In sentences where there is no nominative noun, the dative functions as the subject. In sentences involving both nominative and dative nouns, the latter functions as the indirect object.
5. Instrumental (രാമനാൽ, വടികൊണ്ട്, വടിയിട്ട്)
6. Genitive (മേരിയുടെ, രാമന്റെ)
7. Locative (മുറിയിലേക്ക്, മുറിയിൽ, തണലത്തു, വെള്ളത്തിലൂടെ) - Locative case provides temporal and spatial meanings.
8. Vocative (രാമാ, രാധേ)

	Subject	Object
Nominative (e.g. രാമൻ_NOM)	+	-
Dative (സീതയെ_DAT)	+	+
Accusative (e.g. പുസ്തകം_ACC)	-	+
Sociative (e.g. രാമനോട്)	-	+

Examples: (1) Alice loves Bob. രാമൻ_NOM സീതയെ_DAT ഇഷ്ടപ്പെടുന്നു. (2) Alice gave the book to Bob. രാജു_NOM രാധയ്ക്ക്_DAT ആ പുസ്തകം_ACC കൊടുത്തു. 

Verbs - Morphology of verbs in Malayalam is complex due to the rich agglutination. Verbs are inflected for tense, aspect, mood and voice. There is no inflection for gender, person or number.

Past	ചെയ്തു (simple) ചെയ്തുകൊണ്ടിരുന്നു (continuous) ചെയ്യാറുണ്ടായിരുന്നു, ചെയ്തിരുന്നു (habitual) ചെയ്തിരുന്നു, ചെയ്തുകഴിഞ്ഞിരുന്നു (pluperfect)
resent	ചെയുന്നു (simple) ചെയ്തുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്നു (continuous) ചെയ്യാറുണ്ട് (habitual) ചെയ്തിരിക്കുന്നു, ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ട്  (perfect)
Future	ചെയ്യും (simple) ചെയ്തുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കും (continuous) ചെയ്തിരിക്കും, ചെയ്തുകാണും (perfect)
Mood (1) Indicative - ചെയുന്നു, ചെയ്തു, ... (2) Imperative - ചെയ്യണം, ചെയ്യ്, ...   (3) Interrogative - ചെയ്തോ, ചെയ്യാമോ, ചെയ്യുമോ, ... (4) Subjunctive - ചെയ്യുമായിരുന്നു, ചെയ്തേനെ, ചെയ്തിരുന്നെങ്കിൽ, … (5) Promissive - ചെയ്യും, ചെയ്തിരിക്കും (6) Possibility - ചെയ്യുമായിരിക്കും   (7) Ability - ചെയ്യാം (8) Obligation - ചെയ്യണം
Voice (1) Active - ചെയ്തു (2) Passive - ചെയ്യപ്പെട്ടു
(1) കേവലരൂപം - ചെയ്യുന്നു (2) പ്രയോജകരൂപം - ചെയ്യിക്കുന്നു

മലയാളം അക്ഷരമാല
സ്വരം, അനുസ്വാരം, വിസർഗം
വ്യഞ്ജനം, മധ്യമം
ചില്ല്
അനുനാസിക (ങ്ങ, ഞ, ന, ണ, മ) 

 

Further Reading

1. Malayalam-English Dictionary, Hermann Gundert, 1872
2. മലയാളഭാഷാവ്യാകരണം, Hermann Gundert, 1851
3. കേരളപാണിനീയം, AR Raja Raja Varma, 1896
4. The Essentials of Malayalam Grammar, L Garthwaite, 1903
5. ശബ്ദശോധിനി, AR Raja Raja Varma, 1918 (2nd ed. of കേരളപാണിനീയം)
6. Asher, R.E and Kumari, T.C. (1997) Malayalam, Routledge, London and New York.
7. A Grammar of Malayalam, PhD Thesis, RSS Nair, 2012
8. Malayalam Proverbs, Pilo Paul, 1902

Mentalese, The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker

This post is a summary of the chapter "Mentalese" from the book "The Language Instinct" written by the eminent linguist Steven Pinker. This chapter deals with the question - Do we think in language? What is the language of thought?

According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language shapes our model of the world. For example, forms of addressing the listener are different in many languages depending on age or relation. The demands made by the language might influence the speakers to regard the listener with respect. In languages such as Hindi or Tamil, formalness is frequently employed in day-to-day communication. This is in contrast to other languages such as Malayalam, in which formalness is not commonly employed, in spite of the presence of formal and informal forms of address.

Pinker challenges this hypothesis in various ways. First, it is difficult to test this hypothesis because of the circular nature of the existing experiments. A subject can only be evaluated based on what he/she speaks. Second, the 'fact' that the Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow is nothing but an urban legend. According to one survey, the actual number is less than ten. So the Eskimos regard snow similar to the way others do, contrary to what the hypothesis can be taken to mean. Third, there are many beings that cannot speak but possess the faculty of thought: deaf people, babies, animals (, plants?). Fourth, many a time, even though we have a thought in our mind, we struggle to express it clearly. This can be due to two reasons: (1) lack of command over languages, or (2) lack of devices in language to convey our thoughts. Writers exploit the available linguistic machines such as figures of speech, idioms, proverbs and rhythm to express complex ideas through words in the form of prose and verse. In addition, when a sentence is translated from one language to another, it is highly likely for the subtlety of the original meaning to be lost in translation due to the lack of exact matching words. Fifth, it is possible for us to transform (e.g. rotate or zoom in) an image in our minds without speaking about the process loudly. All of the above suggest that English or any other spoken language is not the language of thought.

Pinker claims the language of thought (a.k.a. Mentalese) to be on a level that is different from spoken languages. All thinking creatures use this language to think. Since only human beings possess the ability to talk, there is a program, similar to a compiler for programming languages, in the human brains that converts the high-level Mentalese to the low-level English. This language is built over fundamental concepts of human thought such as time, space, causality and human intention (ref. Immanual Kant).

Chatterboxes, The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker

This post is a summary of the chapter "Chatterboxes" from the book "The Language Instinct" written by the eminent linguist Steven Pinker. This chapter deals with the statement in the title of the book - Is language an instinct for humans?

Language has never been a cultural phenomenon. Language exists and has existed in every culture on earth. No society can claim the title "the cradle of language." This is one of the arguments for claiming that language is innate in human beings. However, for the skeptics, the universality of language may not single-handedly prove the innate nature of language. For instance, Coca-Cola or Facebook are available almost everywhere on earth. Does this mean Coca-Cola and Facebook are innate too? (According to me, the desire to have a drink and to stay connected are innate in human beings. So the universality of language is a conclusive proof.)

Let's look at another argument for the innate nature of language. There are evidences to show that children reinvent language, not because they are asked to do so, but because they have to. Before going into the argument, it is important here to burst two myths about child language acquisition: 

    (1) The first myth is that children learn to speak from their parents (e.g. Motherese - dogggie, pappie, ...). This is not true because parents do not explicitly teach children the rules of the grammar. Chomsky reasoned that this argument of poverty of input is the primary justification for the saying that language is innate.

   (2) The second myth is that children learn to speak by imitating their parents. If this is true, then children should not be making any mistakes when their learn to talk. However children do make mistakes when they learn language (e.g. കാവളവണ്ടി, വെക്കള് )

Now it is time to look at two real-world cases where children reinvented language. One of them is the development of creole from pidgin languages such as pidgin English. Second one is the development of sign languages. In both these cases, phrases and crude sentences of a pseudo-language were converted to a bona fide language by the second generation of users i.e. the children of plantation workers and deaf children respectively.

Finally, another argument for the innate nature of language is that language is different from intelligence (or cognition). Those who suffer from Broca's aphasia are language-retarded. However they have sound cognitive skills. Those who suffer from chatterbox syndrome are language-savvy. However they have negligible cognitive skills. These two cases show that the ability to speak and the ability to, say, cook food are managed by different parts of the brain and hence different faculties.

Talking Heads, The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker

This post is a summary of the chapter "Talking Heads" from the book "The Language Instinct" written by the eminent linguist Steven Pinker. The previous chapter in the book was a discussion on syntax. This chapter focuses more on semantics and pragmatics.

Parse trees are different from parsing.  Parse trees define the syntax or structure of sentences in a language. The process of parsing defines the processing of a sentences and thus is related to cognition and semantics of a language. Chomsky demonstrated this feature of language processing using the classic example "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". This sentence is syntactically right. However it is rife with absurdity and does not make sense at all. In other words, the sentence is semantically not right.

The chapter then discusses the differences between a human being and a machine and how they interpret a natural language sentence. There are various types of sentences: (1) onion (or Russian doll) sentences, (2) garden-path sentences, and (3) ambiguous sentences.

The first two types are hard for human beings because humans are not good at memory as compared to machines. By memory, we mean short-term memory, something similar to a stack for a machine. On the other hand, the last type is easy for human beings because humans are good at decision-making.  The decision making employs different kinds of knowledge such as background knowledge, commonsense knowledge and world knowledge. A classic example that demonstrates commonsense reasoning is given below:

             Woman: I'm leaving you.             Man: Who is he?

The converse is true for machines. Machines can process onion sentences and garden-path sentences because of the availability of memory. However they perform very badly when it comes to ambiguous sentences. In addition to this, machines are too meticulous in parsing a sentences and identifies interpretations that a human being will never detect (e.g. pigs in a pen). 

In real-life, the task of text processing is worsened by the fact that dialogues are filled with short utterances, lots of pronouns, and fillers such as 'uh' and 'hmm'.

The chapter concludes with a discussion on pragmatics. Parsing a sentence involves more than simply understanding the sentence syntactically. A conversation between two parties can either be co-operational or adversarial. In co-operational conversation, the assumptions made by the speaker are also made by the listener. This phenomenon is absent in adversarial conversation. Legal documents demonstrate a form on adversarial conversation by clearly specifying each and every nuances of a contract. The following anecdote demonstrates the difference between the co-operational and adversarial conversation. Two psychoanalysts meet in the morning. The first psychoanalyst greets the other "Good Morning." The other wonders what he really meant by that statement.