Semantic fields and lexical structure (review)

REVIEWS469 Houston on children's Black English, and Lambert 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...