Article 63: Semantic Analysis: Interactional Adjectives. By Prof. Marisa Olga López

How many of you have heard this from teachers as an answer to the question "What’s wrong with this sentence?" from a student?

This means your teachers have always given you accurate and clear explanations about the mistakes you may have made. They have been able to go to the root of the problem and clear up the confusion you may have had as a learner of a second or foreign language.

In doing so, they have proved to be very responsible and respectful. Responsible, for having been able to achieve what they committed themselves to, that is, teaching, and teaching well. And respectful, for they have satisfied your needs as a learner, a person that will not be content with a "Just because you don’t say this in English!".

Clear answers, that is what a learner needs. Explicit and precise explanations when it comes to correction of mistakes.

Inaccurate sentences are corrected by teachers according to the nature of the mistake: agreement in number, gender, tenses, etc. That is, we, as teachers, explain the nature of a mistake as the application of a rule that has been broken. We identify the problem, explain the rule to the student and in so doing, we clear up the reason for his/her being wrong.

What happens when Morphology and Syntax cannot account for the mistake the student has made? This is more difficult to explain.

For example: In the sentence "I stayed generous"* there is no doubt about the inaccuracy of the use of the verb STAY and the adjective GENEROUS. However, the verb STAY is an intransitive verb of incomplete predication, which could be confused with other intransitive verbs of incomplete predication such as FEEL, which can be followed by an adjective. So, here, syntactic explanations can be VERY confusing. But if we explain that what needs to complete the predication of the verb STAY is a LOCATIVE, then, we will be dealing with SEMANTIC features, which, since they are universal components of languages, will be easily understood by the learner.

Then, when sentences are not appropriate, and in our error analysis we have gone through Syntax and Morphology, the next step is the identification of the Semantic components of each part of speech and the verification that these components match.

The idea behind the analysis of semantic features taking a limited corpus, in this case adjectives, is to foster this kind of analysis when it comes to correcting mistakes.

We will now be dealing with a group of adjectives which share certain semantic features. We will call them: INTERACTIONAL ADJECTIVES.

Interactional Adjectives imply a communicative happening, i.e., interaction among people. The factors that come into play when an act of communication takes place are part of the essence of the adjectives in question.

For a communicative event to be such there must be SOMEBODY (the addresser) that wants to communicate SOMETHING (a message) to SOMEBODY ELSE (the addressee) (See Rost, 1990, Information Processing Theory p.2).

These are the constituent factors that come into play in an act of communication and they are the ones that we must be concerned with for the identification and analysis of Interactional Adjectives.

1 - These adjectives express ACTION, consequently most of them are DYNAMIC and VERB BASED.

2 - As we have said that they imply communication, and that an addresser and an addressee must be present for the emission and reception of the message, we then find that these adjectives cannot be normally used reflexively. For example:

I’m sorry for myself*
I’m grateful to myself*
I’m generous to myself*

There is no proper interaction here, although the elements of giving and receiving are present in the same individual

These collocations COULD be found in VERY particular contexts, especially if we want to point out some kind of contrast:

3 - They express VOLITIVE MODALITY, i.e., the emotion the speaker wants to convey . The verbs underlying the expression of Volitive Modality are LIKE and WANT. (See Halliday, Foundations of Language. Vol.6 # 3, 1970 and Lyons, Semantics, Vol.II, 1978)

Going back to the components of an act of communication, in these adjectives we will find that there is a message transmitted. This message is a feeling, not a factual description. There is a source or originator of the message or feeling, which would be equated to the Addresser – the one who emits it . Now, this message is received by somebody, this receiver would be equated to the Addressee in the theory of communication.

source/originator

(does not)

want (s)
cause (s)
make (s)
show (s) [= want (s) somebody to see]

Receiver

–>

To + Verb
To + Verb
Verb
Noun

As we can see from these patterns, there is an element of CAUSATIVITY present as another characteristic of these adjectives.

The verbs MAKE, WANT and SHOW are, as you can see, very much related in their semantic structure.

The following is a list of Interactional Adjectives. They were taken from the LEXICON OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, within the group "Feeling and Behaviour". We will see that the components mentioned so far are present in all of them.

AFFECTIONATE: showing love. Originator wants somebody to be happy / makes sbdy. feel happy / o.k. / good.

CUNNING: Originator shows cleverness in deceiving / makes people believe him. + cleverness + negative connotation.

CONSIDERATE: Originator wants sbdy to feel o.k. Originator takes people’s feelings into account.

ENVIOUS: Originator doesn’t want people to have what he /she doesn’t have.

HONEST: Originator shows certain qualities: - doesn’t cheat / lie / deceive ( These verbs are interactional by nature)

INSULTING: Originator causes sbdy. to be displeased / to take offence / to feel insulted.

SYMPATHETIC: Originator shows the capacity to share the feelings of another person.

SELFISH: Originator doesn’t want anybody to have what he / she has. (-sharing: SHARE: Interactional Verb by nature)

UNDERSTANDING: Originator shows friendly feelings / makes others feel at ease / comfortable / protected / not challenged or defied.

This analysis serves the purpose of accounting for mistakes that our students may make in the expression of adjectives under circumstances that are not appropriate. That is, as has already been mentioned, when the mistake is grammatical, we resort to syntactic analysis of the error, same thing when it is of a morphological nature. But sometimes, the mistake is the result of inappropriate use, and this can only be accounted for through semantic analysis of the features of the problematic part of speech in question.

Report: - human tolerant: + human (element of interaction is not present in the noun functioning as subject of the sentence)

Let’s remember these components when we see that a sentence "Does not sound English", and let’s try to find WHY. And let’s not forget THERE IS ALWAYS A REASON AND IT NEEDS TO BE EXPLAINED.

Givon, Talmy, "Notes on the Semantic Structure of English Adjectives". Language – Journal of the Linguistic Society of America. Vol. 6 #1, Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Halliday, M.A.K., "Functional Diversity in Language as seen from a Consideration of Modality and Mood in English". Foundations of language: International Journal of Language and Philosophy. Vol. 6 #3. D.Reidel Publishing Company, Dordretch, Holland, l970.

McArthur, Tom, LONGMAN LEXICON OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH. Longman Group Ltd., 1981.

Marisa Olga López (mlopez@fra.utn.edu.ar) is a certified teacher of English and Spanish as a Second Language in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has specialized in Adult Language Learning and is currently teaching ESL and ESP to professionals in international companies at CASOC (Clara Muñiz and Associates). She has taught English Grammar at college level (I.N.S.P. Lenguas Vivas “Juan Ramón Fernández – Universidad Argentina de la Empresa – Universidad Tecnológica Nacional) for several years and has pursued studies on Language Acquisition, Second Language Learning in Adults and Contrastive Analysis (English – Spanish – Portuguese). At present, she is completing her studies in Educational Technology at the Universidad Tecnológica Nacional in Buenos Aires.

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Semantic Analysis: Interactional Adjectives

By Prof. Marisa Olga López

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