Words do not exist by themselves, however, but are always in relationship to other words. The meaning of ‘hot’ relates to ‘cold’; the meaning of ‘run’ to ‘walk’, of ‘high’ to ‘low’, of ‘pain’ to ‘pleasure’, and so on. When we speak, we choose one word out of all those we have available, rejecting all the words we could have said: ‘I love you’ potentially contrasts with ‘I hate you’. Words function within systems of meaning. A metaphor for meaning that is often used is traffic lights. When a traffic light has two colours, red and green, red means ‘stop’, contrasting with green ‘go’. Hence ‘red’ does not just mean ‘stop’, it also means ‘not green’, that is, ‘don’t go’, a system with two options. Add another colour, called ‘amber’ in England, and the whole system changes, with amber acting as a warning that something is going to change, having two possibilities: amber alone, officially ‘stop’ (unofficially, ‘prepare to stop’), and amber and red together, officially ‘stop’ (unofficially ‘prepare to go’). If a simple three-colour system can lead to such complexity of meanings (and indeed traffic acci- dents), think what happens with the thousands of words in any human language.
In his book Lexical Semantics Cruse (1986) brought out many relationships between words. Words can be synonyms if they have the same meaning – ‘truthful’
and ‘honest’; hyponyms if they belong to the same group with a single superordi- nate name – ‘dogs’, ‘cats’ and ‘horses’ are kinds of animals. Each category may have many variations. For example, antonyms are pairs with the opposite meaning – ‘good’ versus ‘bad’. But there are several ways in which words can be opposites: ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ form a scale with extremes (called antipodals); ‘concave’ and ‘convex’ have reverse directions (counterparts); ‘rise’ and ‘fall’ are movements in opposite directions (reversives); ‘above’ and ‘below’ are the relationship of one direction to another (converses). And doubtless many more.
Prototypes
Some aspects of meaning cannot be split up into components but are taken in as wholes. According to Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory (Rosch, 1977), an English person who is asked to give an example of a typical bird is more likely to say ‘spar- row’ than ‘penguin’ or ‘ostrich’; sparrows are closer to the prototype for ‘birds’ in the mind than penguins and ostriches. Rosch’s theory suggests that there is an ideal of meaning in our minds – ‘birdiness’ in this case – from which other things depart. Speakers have a central form of a concept and the things they see and talk about correspond better or worse with this prototype.
Prototype theory claims that children first learn words that are ‘basic’ because they reflect aspects of the world that stand out automatically from the rest of what they see – prototypes. ‘Sparrow’ is a ‘basic-level’ term compared to a ‘superordi- nate-level’ term like ‘bird’, or a ‘subordinate-level’ term like ‘house sparrow’. The basic level of vocabulary is easier to use and to learn. On this foundation, children build higher and lower levels of vocabulary. Some examples of the three levels of vocabulary are seen in Table 3.2.
Types of meaning 55
Superordinate terms furniture bird fruit
Basic-level terms table, chair sparrow, robin apple, strawberry
Subordinate terms coffee table, field sparrow Golden Delicious, wild armchair strawberry
Table 3.2 Three levels of vocabulary
L1 children learn basic-level terms like ‘apple’ before they learn the superordi- nate term ‘fruit’ or the subordinate term ‘Golden Delicious’. They start with the most basic level as it is easiest for the mind to perceive. Only after this has been learnt do they go on to words that are more general or more specific. Some of my own research (Cook, 1982) showed that L2 learners first of all acquire basic terms such as ‘table’, second, more general terms like ‘furniture’, and finally, more spe- cific terms like ‘coffee table’. Rosch’s levels are therefore important to L2 learning as well as to first language acquisition.
This sequence of levels, however, is different from the usual order of presentation in language teaching in which the teacher introduces a whole group of words simul- taneously. For example, in Unit 4 of New English File (Oxenden et al., 2004: 48), the heading ‘clothes’ is followed by the instructions ‘Match the words and pictures’, with drawings of a jacket, jeans, and so on. According to prototype theory, this is misguided; the superordinate term ‘clothes’ should come after the students have the basic-level terms such as ‘jacket’ and ‘jeans’, not before.
The most important early words are basic-level terms. The human mind auto- matically starts from this concrete level rather than from a more abstract level or a more specific one. Starting with vocabulary items that can be shown easily in pictures fits in with the Rosch theory; grouping them prematurely into superordi- nate categories does not. A drawing can be readily recognized as a chair but is less easy to see as an armchair or as furniture. Hence prototype theory ties in with the audio-visual method of language teaching that introduces new vocabulary with a picture of what it represents, in an appropriate cultural setting. This theory has particular implications for teaching of vocabulary at the beginning stages.