Semantic fields and lexical structure (review)

REVIEWS469 Houston on children's Black English, and Lambert & Tucker on listener's reactions) are rather easily obtainable elsewhere. But these are hardly enough to offset the book's many defects. Dillard does, indeed, give a picture of Black English ' which appears distorted unless viewed from a particular point'—namely, the viewpoint of one who turns a blind eye to three-quarters of the relevant literature, and is quite indifferent to levels of scholarship, so long as content is compatible with the party line. Schools and colleges seeking to give their students a general background in Black English would be well advised to select almost any alternative to this meandering and self-indulgent potpourri of largely outdated, often irrelevant, and sometimes actively misleading information. [Received 2 July 1976.] Semantic fields and lexical structure. By Adrienne Lehrer. Amsterdam: NorthHolland , 1974. Pp. 225. $11.55. Reviewed by Paul Kay, University of California, Berkeley This study attempts to cover a great deal ofthe theoretical literature in semantics by orienting discussion of a variety of topics and controversies around the notion of semantic field. The book's thesis is that such an orientation can provide an interesting approach to semantic problems that are not ordinarily thought of in these terms. It seems to be Lehrer's intention to make her point by example, rather than didactically. There are many passages of interest, but the attempt is not quite successful in the long run—in part because the reader feels the lack of any strong point of view or theoretical orientation, and in part because of a number of weaknesses in argument and organization. The book contains eleven chapters, whose contents I will not attempt to discuss comprehensively. In the first, L introduces the notion of semantic field, defined as 'a group of words closely related in meaning, often subsumed under a general term', and offers as paradigm example 'the words in the field of color in English, [which] fall under the general term color and include red, blue, green, white, aqua, scarlet, and dozens of others' (p. 1). Given this definition, it is not surprising that L later uses the expression 'lexical set' interchangeably with 'semantic field'. This relaxed attitude about terminology turns out to be characteristic. Other lexical sets discussed in the book are words for animals; bakery products; body parts; commercial transactions (buy, sell, trade etc.); certain containers (cup, glass, barrel); methods of cooking {cook, bake, broil); kinsmen; propositional attitudes {know, assume, believe); manners of speaking {whisper, shout, groan); killing {kill, slaughter, massacré); noises, noise properties, and ways of making noise {crash, loud, burp); spatial and orientational properties (long, tall); and temperature {hot, cold). Clearly, some of these sets conform to the definition better than others. The definition and much of the text suggest that the cover term (if it exists) names a common feature ofmeaning; but it is not clear that the affinity of a lexical set such as buy, sell, trade, exchange, ¡ease, swap, receive, lend, borrow, inherit, hire, rent etc. is best captured by positing a common feature of meaning. Despite considerable discussion of semantic features or components throughout the book, the 470LANGUAGE, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2 (1977) reader remains uncertain exactly what role the notion of semantic feature plays in L's concept of semantic field or lexical set. Chapter 2, 'Semantic fields', begins with a summary of Trier's discussion of 'the field ofintellect at various stages ofmedieval German' (15), then moves on to a discussion offolk taxonomies. The latter is marred by L's failure to specify what she means by 'taxonomy'. Her statement that ' Ethnographers generally ask informants to classify terms in a domain to determine the hierarchies in lexical structure' (19, emphasis supplied) makes it clear that some notion of hierarchy is involved, but its precise nature is not stated. Someone unfamiliar with the anthropological linguistic literature could not tell from L's treatment whether or not a given description of a lexical set qualified as a taxonomy for her. As examples of taxonomies , she discusses sets of terms organized by the relation of inclusion of sets, the relation of part to whole, and the relation that holds between, say, broil and cook; but...