Teacher Discussion Forums

'Crawl' is, apparently, an instance of the "Self-Movement" semantic frame. Here are some of the frame elements that Fillmore and Atkins have identified (the table is a close-as-possible reproduction of the one appearing in Ravin and Leacock's (eds) Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches. Oxford, 2002).

...............................TABLE 5.4 Elements in the self-movement frame
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Frame.............As exemplified in a corpus sentence
element
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mover.............David Attenborough was crawling up behind two copulating lions.
Area................Literally on hands and knees, his men crawled over every inch of the area
Path.................A cat can crawl through any hole it can get its head through
Source.............The two hedgehogs crawled from the nest at sunset
Goal.................They would never find her if she crawled into a cupboard and hid away
Distance...........From there they crawled the last ten yards to the edge of a rise
Manner............A small baby crawled out on its hands and knees, its face covered in grime
Speed...............I crawled smartly after him
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Generally I have no problem with the semantic analysis here, but I was just wondering, how would you classify 'behind two copulating lions' and 'after him'? These seem to be also suited to the label "Goal", as 'in the cupboard' is, but "Goal" is still a quite vague label generally for what is, after all, the functional reason(s?!) for crawling 'up behind', 'into' and 'after' something; that is, these labels tell us nothing about e.g. "hunting" (shooting/capturing wildlife on film), escaping 'them', and escaping or perhaps chasing or just plain "keeping up with" 'him' (not that these meanings couldn't be made clearer with extra verbs/context, beyond the linking prepositions). I guess any linguistic analysis, no matter how "fine-grained", can never capture all the meanings we somehow so easily understand.

Anyway, I think the FrameNet approach is interesting in how it is trying to expand upon grammatico-semantic roles and relations, and be consistent with semantic labels by an examination of the complexities of real data. I've mentioned frames several times now on Dave's, and just thought you'd all be interested in the approach (if you hadn't checked it out already).
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~framenet/

To access the frames, click on 'FN DATA'; you can then browse using the 'Index by Lexical Unit' (c - crawl) or the 'Index by Frame' (if you know the frame you are looking for).

fluffyhamster wrote:I guess any linguistic analysis, no matter how "fine-grained", can never capture all the meanings we so easily understand (adduce, assign, whatever)!

It simply says on FrameNet (at the Self-motion frame):

Some particles imply the existence of a Goal which is understood in the context of utterance.
The principal WALKED over and sat down.

A dog RAN up and licked our hands.

I just thought I'd have a bit of fun asking "Why crawl here, in this context?", to see if we can uncover any extra meaning in the word. Spank me gently if you think I'm being silly!

David Attenborough was crawling up behind two copulating lions - He obviously doesn't want them to see him (he's "HIDING" his movements), not only because he wants to get them on film and talk to the camera with them banging away in the background - just think of how much he can whisper and giggle! - but probably also 'cos he doesn't want to get eaten by an angry male lion disturbed in the midst of getting its end away. We could say 'creeping', 'sneaking' etc, seem to be reasonably close synonyms, so I think this is definitely of interest and relevance.

Literally on hands and knees, his men crawled over every inch of the area - hmm I guess they're SEARCHING for something, but they are also looking, hunting etc so the potential substitutes are not synonymous enough to make this of interest (that's not to say 'crawl' isn't polysemous, I'm just intimating that I don't think is the logically "core" meaning).

A cat can crawl through any hole it can get its head through - it could also squeeze or get or make it etc through that hole, let's forget about this one too then. See also the "baby" sentence below.

The two hedgehogs crawled from the nest at sunset - I don't know if hedgehogs crawl rather than walk, I think they only look like they're crawling because they have short legs. Perhaps see also the "baby" sentence below.

They would never find her if she crawled into a cupboard and hid away - she doesn't want to be seen, this time, moving away from danger (unlike that crazy, reckless Attenborough fellah). HIDING is again the working umbrella term.

From there they crawled the last ten yards to the edge of a rise - maybe they like crawling in preference to more usual means of locomotion, but I guess there's a reason for getting your clothes all dirty. Army manouvers, HIDING again?

A small baby crawled out on its hands and knees, its face covered in grime - I suppose the baby had its reasons for emerging, maybe it heard us and was "investigating" in its mindless way. Anyway, I suppose this is your bog-standard dictionary definition, first entry meaning of the verb, that we would demonstrate to make the "Attenborough", "Army manouvers" etc contexts clearer. Get down in that chalkdust and show your students, all you TPR teachers!

I crawled smartly after him - I guess again I am on my hands and knees for a reason that should be obvious by now, but I suppose I could be "brown-nosing" too (hopefully not literally!).

Yup, I guess you could say that is my approach to semantics there. Sure, there are meaning extensions (of traffic: move slowly; of place: be swarming with), but these are obviously relatable to the basic manner and speed of the "verb of motion" (I'm not quite sure how the "grovel, fawn" meaning relates, however, maybe I should treat this as a separate meaning?).

What is more central and interesting to me is the more "human", physical action, and generally that involves a desire to not be seen moving, to "remain" hidden whilst moving, and this should perhaps be reflected in a note attached to the 'Lexical Units' listed below the frame outline (e.g. crawl - in order to remain hidden or avoid danger whilst ...ing). "Contextual summaries". You listening to me, Chuck?!

It's just, this type of information is not usually made explicit in dictionary definitions (although obviously it can often be deduced from examples), and it could be very useful to fill the ...ing "gap" there.

fluffyhamster wrote:'Crawl' is, apparently, an instance of the "Self-Movement" semantic frame. Here are some of the frame elements that Fillmore and Atkins have identified (the table is a close-as-possible reproduction of the one appearing in Ravin and Leacock's (eds) Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches. Oxford, 2002).

...............................TABLE 5.4 Elements in the self-movement frame
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frame.............As exemplified in a corpus sentence
element
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mover.............David Attenborough was crawling up behind two copulating lions.
Area................Literally on hands and knees, his men crawled over every inch of the area
Path.................A cat can crawl through any hole it can get its head through
Source.............The two hedgehogs crawled from the nest at sunset
Goal.................They would never find her if she crawled into a cupboard and hid away
Distance...........From there they crawled the last ten yards to the edge of a rise
Manner............A small baby crawled out on its hands and knees, its face covered in grime
Speed...............I crawled smartly after him
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Generally I have no problem with the semantic analysis here, but I was just wondering, how would you classify 'behind two copulating lions' and 'after him'? These seem to be also suited to the label "Goal", as 'in the cupboard' is, but "Goal" is still a quite vague label generally for what is, after all, the functional reason(s?!) for crawling 'up behind', 'into' and 'after' something; that is, these labels tell us nothing about e.g. "hunting" (shooting/capturing wildlife on film), escaping 'them', and escaping or perhaps chasing or just plain "keeping up with" 'him' (not that these meanings couldn't be made clearer with extra verbs/context, beyond the linking prepositions). I guess any linguistic analysis, no matter how "fine-grained", can never capture all the meanings we somehow so easily understand.

Anyway, I think the FrameNet approach is interesting in how it is trying to expand upon grammatico-semantic roles and relations, and be consistent with semantic labels by an examination of the complexities of real data. I've mentioned frames several times now on Dave's, and just thought you'd all be interested in the approach (if you hadn't checked it out already).
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~framenet/

To access the frames, click on 'FN DATA'; you can then browse using the 'Index by Lexical Unit' (c - crawl) or the 'Index by Frame' (if you know the frame you are looking for).

I think David was wise not to crawl up in front of the lions. The "... behind" has the semantic meaning of "out of sight/safe position" there, IMO.

metal56 wrote:The "... behind" has the semantic meaning of "out of sight/safe position" there, IMO.

Wow, semantics upon semantics! A complex area, what!

If he wasn't downwind of them, or stepped on a dry twig, or got a bit too excited himself (and they heard him), it wouldn't make much difference whether he was behind them or not, but admittedly, that is the best place to be in approaching lions, mating or not!

Hmm, with that 'behind', you've made me think, metal, that the girl crawling into the cupboard may be doing so not to stay out of sight of anyone right now, but because the cupboard is low, she feels "down" and can't summon the joie de vivre to walk to it etc. Interestingly, however, her purpose is "still" to be(come) hidden (even though it might not now be to "remain" hidden) through the process of crawling. Anyway, what I said before seems to still hold for the other examples (but I appreciate those are sparse contexts!).

<I just thought I'd have a bit of fun asking "Why crawl here, in this context?", to see if we can uncover any extra meaning in the word. Spank me gently if you think I'm being silly!>

Can I spank you even if you're not?

As students often omit prepositions, it's good that the example wasn't written by one of them

David Attenborough crawled up a pair of copulating lions.

Steady on there David!

fluffyhamster wrote:

metal56 wrote:The "... behind" has the semantic meaning of "out of sight/safe position" there, IMO.

Wow, semantics upon semantics! A complex area, what!

If he wasn't downwind of them, or stepped on a dry twig, or got a bit too excited himself (and they heard him), it wouldn't make much difference whether he was behind them or not, but admittedly, that is the best place to be in approaching lions, mating or not!

I always approach my lions from that a direction.