Concepts and Grammar: Thoughts about an Integrated System

Abstract

At a time when even linguistic dictionaries declare that the separation of grammar and meaning has been proven to be untenable and where semantics are claimed to be the focal domain for grammarians, next to syntax and phonology², one would have to assume that the artificial walls that have been built between the various linguistic disciplines are being torn down wherever we look. Yet, this is not so. Although even Saussure had to admit that within the grammatical functions lexical and syntactic elements may flow together,³ the old walls are still holding. We are far from becoming witnesses to a general assault on these bastions. At fault is the slowness in restructuring our ways of thinking, not necessarily to radically new ideas, but rather to forming new habits. One of the oldest stereotypes is the notion that there are formal aspects in each discipline separate from the so-called content. It is the age old bucket theory, whereby form provides the bucket, which could be filled with the milk of content or meaning. Accordingly, language has been separated into grammatical structures and the semantic content they could be filled with at will. That led to another misconception, namely that lexicography, the central domain for semantics, has virtually nothing to do with grammar, except for a very limited overlapping area that identifies words not only as carriers of specific semantic concepts but also as certain parts of speech. Moreover, for the past two hundred years lexicography has held itself in the epistemological stranglehold of the alphabetical or semasiological approach to its domain. Roget’s challenge in 1852⁴ has not been answered by the majority of scholars who consider the study of language their central prerogative. Calls for the development of concept-oriented or onomantic approaches usually come from other disciplines that face the issues under pressure for better knowledge organization, especially for the purpose of computer applications⁵.