American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Language Teaching and Semantic Structure

Author(s): William R. Schmalstieg
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1963), pp. 405-409
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
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Language Teaching
and Semantic Structure
By
William R.
Schmalstieg
University
of Minnesota
Neither the traditionalists nor the structuralists
among foreign
language
teachers would
deny
the value of a
thorough knowledge
of
the
grammar
of a
foreign language
on the
part
of the student. The
structuralist
might (although
not
necessarily)
label the
grammar
as
"morphological
and
syntactic patterns,
" but in the final
analysis
both the traditionalists and the structuralists have the same
thing
in
mind. In this article I intend to
polemicize against
both
groups;
in
my opinion
neither one deals with the
major problem
of the student
of the
foreign language,
i.
e.,
the
mastery
of the semantic structure
of the lexical items. Traditionalists are inclined to
say
that once
you
know the
grammar, you
can use the
dictionary
to look
up words;
structuralists
say
that once
you
know the
language patterns you
can
use the
dictionary
for lexical items. I think that both schools of
thought
miss the
point
that the
vocabulary
of the
language
is a kind
of structure
just
as
surely
as the
grammar.
It is evident to the stu-
dent of
language
that the
meaning
of the word is not
only
some
type
of
abstraction,
but that this
meaning
varies with the total context of
the word. This is
strikingly
true for
idioms,
but it is also true for
other
types
of utterances. In a sentence with the theoretical structure
ABCD,
the
meaning
of A is influenced
by BCD,
the
meaning
of B is
influenced
by A-CD,
the
meaning
of C is influenced
by
AB-D and so
forth.
Suppose
that the student knows the
grammatical relationships
between
ABCD,
but does not know the lexical
relationships
and he
turns to a
dictionary
for
help. (The
structuralist hasn't
given any
training
in
"meaning,"
because this is on the
periphery
of
linguistic
science. The
only necessary knowledge
is the
knowledge
of
morpho-
logical
and
syntactic patterns.
The traditionalist has
taught
the
grammar
and is
giving
the student
"rigorous" training
in the use of
the
dictionary. Naturally
the traditionalist is
using
a text
published
in the
countrywhere
the
foreign language
in
question
is
spoken.
This
text has no
vocabulary
in the
back,
no
notes,
nor does it
give any
inkling
about the author's
style,
use of
idioms,
etc. We are told
SEEJ,
Vol. VII No. 4
(1963)
405
The Slavic and East
European
Journal
that the student is
getting
solid native material and is
learning
much
more because he isn't
being spoon-fed. )
Let us
suppose
also that each item in the sentence ABCD has three
meanings
and
only
three
meanings.
The
average
student can
look
up only
one word at a time and
usually
he starts at the
beginning
of the
sentence,
or the first word the
meaning
of which he doesn't
know. When he finds word A he has
only
three
possibilities
for its
meaning.
Whenhe finds word B he
again
has three
possibilities,
but
since both A and Bhave three
meanings
he has nine
possibilities
for
the
meaning
of AB. Now he comes to C which
again
has three mean-
ings
and has not
nine,
but
twenty-seven possibilities
for the mean-
ing
of the
groupABC.
Whenhe
gets
to D with three more
possibilities
he has
eighty-one possibilities
for the
group
ABCD.
Having eighty-
one
possibilities
for the sentence ABCD he
goes
on the sentence EFGH
which
again
furnishes him with
eighty-one possibilities.
At this
point
the student who has learned the
morphological
and
syntactic
patterns (without bothering
with
semantics)
or the student who is
getting "rigorous" training (by using
native
texts)
becomes a bit
discouraged
because he is
having difficulty ascertaining
which of
the six thousand five hundred and
sixty-one possibilities
makes most
sense. The
example
which I have
just given
is
extreme,
but it is
precisely
this
problem
which confronts the
average
student when left
to work on his own.
Pretend for a moment that N is a student of
elementary
Russian
and examine what
happens
when he uses the Mueller
dictionary.
I
have
quoted
below a sentence from Konstantin Fedin's Brat i sestra:
"Nina
byla
tol'ko na
god
starse
brataViti, no,
kak
devo6ka, rjadom
s
nim, kazalos', pererosla
svoi
desjat'
let.
"
Student N has not bothered to learn
any vocabulary
so he first
looks
up
the word
Nina,
not
realizing,
of
course,
that it is a
name,
because in initial
position
all words are
capitalized.
Since he can-
not find
it,
he
pigeon-holes
it for future reference. Next he looks
up
byt'
where he is confronted
by
two basic definitions "to be" and
"toexist."
Quickly scanning
the sentence he notes that none of the
18 words in the sentence seem to fit with the 17 idioms listed in the
dictionary,
so he can dismiss them. N must now
hope
that
byt'
here
does not have some other idiomatic
meaning
which Mueller does not
list. He now
goes
on to the third word tol'ko which the
dictionary
lists as
meaning "only, merely, but, just"
and
scanning
the sentence
again
he finds that none of the seven idiomatic uses listed seems to
fit with the
remaining
sixteen words in his sentence. The fourth word
presents
N with an entire column in Mueller.
Taking only
the
basic
meanings
N finds
(1) "at, by, on, upon" (na vopros "gde,
na
kom,
na
oem"), (2) "on, over, to, towards"(na vopros "kuda?"),
(3) "at, by, for, in, into, on,
to
upon" (na vopros
"na
kogo,
na
<to,
s
kakoj cel'ju,
na
skol'ko").
With such an
array
of
meanings
for na Nfeels that he must be able to
dispense
with the
idioms,
al-
406
Language Teaching
and Semantic Structure
though
he makes a mental note that he
may
have to
go
back and read
them all
again
when he tries to
puzzle
out what the sentence means.
Next he
goes
to starse and here he
may
be in real
luck,
because he
may
notice the
analogy
between the listed idiom on starse
menja
na
god
"he is a
year
older than I am" and the sentence in his book.
But if he is not on his toes he
may
well miss this and write down the
two basic
meanings
"older" and "elder. " Next he
goes
to brat
which has the basic
meaning
"brother" and he checks the eleven
idioms to make certain that none of these is involved. Since Viti
is
capitalized
he knows it is a
proper
name. For no he finds the
single listing
"but." With kak he is
again
confronted with more than
a column of definitions. He finds the basic
meanings "how, as,
like"
and
skips
the
fifty
odd other entries. For devocka Mueller lists
"girl,
little
girl; flapper,
" for
rjadom
N finds
"abreast, alongside
(of),
hard
by,
side
by side,
cheek
by jowl (with)
"
and six other
expressions.
Mueller does not list
rjadom
sas an
idiom, however,
so N looks
up
s for which he finds the
meaning
"with" and two ex-
amples
of its use with the instrumental case. Since he knows his
grammar
he doesn't bother with the first
meaning
which
requires
the
genitive
case nor the third
meaning
which
requires
the accusative
case.
Naturally
he knows also that nim is the instrumentalof
on(or
ono).
kazalos' offers no
difficulty
because we find
kazat'sja
mean-
ing
"to
seem, appear"
and neither does
pererasti
which is listed
as "to
overgrow,
to
outgrow." Svoj
is listed as
"my, his, her, its,
our, your, their,
"
but we can assume that N knows this because it
has been mastered either in his
pattern
drills or in his traditional
grammar. desjat'
has
only
the
meaning "ten,
" but leto has the first
meaning "summer,
summer-time" and the second
meaning "year"
with thirteen
examples
of
usage.
Now he
goes
back to Nina and tries
to
decipher
his
cryptogram. Having
done this he comes to class the
following day
with the
perfectly
reasonable
(?!)
translation:
" Nina
was
only
a
yearolderthanherbrother Vitja, but,
like a
flapper
cheek
by jowl
with
him,
it
appeared, outgrew
her ten summers. " When I
started this article I
picked
this sentence at
random,
but I think that
with the
proper manipulation
of the
dictionary
I could create such
howlers without trouble. In fact as
language
teachers I am sure that
we have all heard much worse
misunderstandings
than this.
They
are
a
daily
occurrence in our
language
classes. And even if the student
can arrive at the correct translation it is a tremendous waste of time
to
go through
all these mental contortions.
I believe that in the
preceding paragraphs
I have
correctly
de-
scribed what
really happens
when a student
begins
to translate his
second-yearRussian (or French,
or
German,
or
Spanish) assignment.
The traditional
grammar
and the structural
patterns help very
little
with the lexical structure. What can be done to
remedy
this situa-
tion? I have in mind a rather
unpopular
device which runs
contrary
to our
general
educational
practices
in this
country, namely
the
407
The Slavic and East
European Journal
memorization of
vocabulary
items.
Looking up
words time after time
again
does not do
any good
unless the student memorizes them. And
unfortunately
most of our students will not memorize
anything
unless
they
are told to.
They
have learned
throughout grade
school and
high
school that
memory
work is somehow beneath human
dignity,
that it
is not a
worthy
intellectual
pursuit
and that above all
they
shouldn,'t
be
required
to know
anything
but the
"general principles"
or the
"theory"
behind
any
intellectual
activity.
But
unfortunately language
learning
is not an intellectual
activity per
se.
In fact I
suspect
that if one were to teach
very
little
grammar,
but
require
the memorization of vast
quantities
of lexical items the
student would be able to read
(note
that I
say read)
Russian as well
as the student who knew
grammar perfectly,
but
very
little
vocabulary.
I am not
trying
to
deprecate
the value of the
knowledge
of
grammar,
whether it be
gained by
traditional methods or
by pattern practice.
A
person
with a solid
knowledge
of the
grammar
has
something
to
build
on,
whereas the
person
who knows
only vocabulary
lacks this
solid base.
But I do
suggest
that the student could use his time to better
advantage bymemorization
of the semantic structure of the
language
(i.e., by memorizing
the
meaning
of words in each
context)
in
heavily
annotated texts with vocabularies than
by deciphering crypto-
grams
with the aid of a
dictionary
in the manner
just
described.
Such use of the
dictionary
without memorization of the word in the
context is
just
a waste of the student's time. To learn a
language
one must learn how the semantic elements fit
together just
as well
as the
morphological
and
phonemic
elements.
Structuralists
probably
would
carp
at translation as a
teaching
technique,
but it seems
unlikely
that one could
produce enough
sit-
uations in the class room to cover the entire culture of the
foreign
language.
And in
any
case in most American
colleges
and universi-
ties it is the
practice
to read native Russian materials in the second
year.
In one
year
it is
probably impossible
to introduce
enough pat-
tern drills to allow the student to reach a
stage
in which translation
could be avoided if he wants to read
any
real
quantity
of material in
Rus sian.
The
problem
of
language learning
touches somewhat on the
prob-
lem of
bilingualism.
Even if we were able to create
through appropriate
drills a
perfect
"co-ordinate"
bilingual,
it would remain to be seen
what value he would have for the
community. Presumably
such a
person
would be a kind of
split personality,
because he would never
know what was
happening
in both
languages.
Hewouldbe
eternally
imprisoned
in his two
languages just
as most of us are
imprisoned
in one. Uriel Weinreich
quotes
the case of a woman who could
speak
both
Hungarian
and
Rumanian,
but could not translate from one to the
other. 1
Apparently
she was a
perfect
"co-ordinate"
bilingual
who
was unable to
interpret
the
experience gained
in one culture in the
408
Language Teaching
and Semantic Structure
light
of the second. It is the virtue of
foreign language teaching,
however,
to make a
bridge
between two
cultures,
to allow
people
to
interpret the
experiences
of one culture in the
light
of the other.
In fact it is doubtful that
perfect
"co-ordinate"
bilingualism
exists
except
in a limited number of
highly
educated
specialists
in
languages.
Studies of
bilingual
communities seem to show that lan-
guages spoken
in close contact
develop
similarities in
phonological,
morphological, syntactic
and lexical structure.2 Such similarities
do not arise
by accident,
but
by
virtue of the fact that even "co-
ordinate"
bilingualism
leads to identification of
linguistic
elements
in the
systems
of the two
languages.
The
language
teacher
may
aim
at
preserving
the
"purity"
of the
language
which he is
teaching,
but it seems
likely
that the
very
nature of
bilingualism
is doomed to
circumscribe his
degree
of success.
My point
is that since the creation of
perfect
co-ordinate bi-
lingualism
is such a difficult and
time-consuming occupation
it is
silly
to
deprive
the student of less
time-consuming
methods of lan-
guage learning, namely
the creation of a cross-reference file of vo-
cabulary
items in his two
languages.
This
will,
of
course,
create
at first "subordinate"
bilingualism,
but there is no
proof
that the
student who
begins
with "subordinate"
bilingualism
cannot
develop
in the direction of "co-ordinate"
bilingualism.
In fact there is no
proof
that "co-ordinate" and
"
subordinate
"
bilingualism
are
mutually
exclusive.
Perhaps they
are
merely
relative
capacities
on a
sliding
scale rather than two
completely
different
things.
Notes
1. Uriel
Weinrich, Languages
in Contact
(New York, 1953), p.
74.
2.
Weinreich, passim.
409