framesemantics
FRAME SEMANTICS
Introduction
The term frame semantics refers to a wide variety of approaches to the systematic description of natural language meanings. The one common feature of all these approaches – which, however, does not sufficiently distinguish frame semantics from other frameworks of semantic description – is the following slogan due to
Charles Fillmore (1977a):
Meanings are relativized to scenes.
According to this slogan meanings have internal structure which is determined relative to a background frame or a scene. The easiest way to understand this thesis is by way of example. The following one is from Fillmore (1977c):
Suppose that two identical twins Mark and Mike are both in a hospital sitting on the edge of their beds in exactly the same position. When a nurse walks by Mark’s room, she says: I see that Mark is able to sit up now, and when she walks by Mike’s room she remarks: I see that Mike is able to sit down now. Drawing on what we know about hospitals – our hospital background scenes or frames – we will interpret the two remarks of the nurse rather differently, thereby relativizing the meanings of her remarks to the relevant scenes. Another often cited example of Fillmore (1977c) clearly demonstrating the above thesis is the difference in meaning between the following two sentences:
(1) I spent three hours on land this afternoon.
(2) I spent three hours on the ground this afternoon.
The background scene for the first sentence is a sea voyage while the second sentence refers to an interruption of an air travel. This illustrates Fillmore’s use of the term frame as an idealization of a coherent individuatable perception, memory, experience, action, or object Fillmore (1977c).
In order to understand frame semantics, it is helpful to begin with a brief history. From here we will turn to an overview of the most important theoretical concepts. After this the relationship of frame semantics to one specific version of
Introduction
The term frame semantics refers to a wide variety of approaches to the systematic description of natural language meanings. The one common feature of all these approaches – which, however, does not sufficiently distinguish frame semantics from other frameworks of semantic description – is the following slogan due to
Charles Fillmore (1977a):
Meanings are relativized to scenes.
According to this slogan meanings have internal structure which is determined relative to a background frame or a scene. The easiest way to understand this thesis is by way of example. The following one is from Fillmore (1977c):
Suppose that two identical twins Mark and Mike are both in a hospital sitting on the edge of their beds in exactly the same position. When a nurse walks by Mark’s room, she says: I see that Mark is able to sit up now, and when she walks by Mike’s room she remarks: I see that Mike is able to sit down now. Drawing on what we know about hospitals – our hospital background scenes or frames – we will interpret the two remarks of the nurse rather differently, thereby relativizing the meanings of her remarks to the relevant scenes. Another often cited example of Fillmore (1977c) clearly demonstrating the above thesis is the difference in meaning between the following two sentences:
(1) I spent three hours on land this afternoon.
(2) I spent three hours on the ground this afternoon.
The background scene for the first sentence is a sea voyage while the second sentence refers to an interruption of an air travel. This illustrates Fillmore’s use of the term frame as an idealization of a coherent individuatable perception, memory, experience, action, or object Fillmore (1977c).
In order to understand frame semantics, it is helpful to begin with a brief history. From here we will turn to an overview of the most important theoretical concepts. After this the relationship of frame semantics to one specific version of
Bibliography: drawn up by Jean Mark Gawron. 6