Structure at the Lexical Level and Its Implications for Transfer Grammar

IN the following discussion I shall present preliminary results from an investigation of structuring within the lexicon of a language. These results suggest that in certain areas of the lexicon lexical items must be characterized in terms of the presence or absence of specific recurring lexico-semantic components. Furthermore, there seems to be some promise that correspondence between lexical items of different languages may be reducible to mutual correspondence between their more discrete lexico-semantic components. Take, for example, the verbs in expressions of the following types: LEARN A WORD, KNOW A WORD, LOOK AT A PERSON, SEE A PERSON, LISTEN TO A SOUND, HEAR A SOUND, GET SOMETHING, HEAR SOMETHING, etc. Granted the pairing into LEARN: KNOW, LOOK AT: SEE etc., I shall show that far from their representing discrete pairs unrelated further in lexical structure, the first members of the pairs differ uniformly from the second members; i.e., LOOK AT is to SEE as LISTEN TO is to HEAR. Preliminary investigation of certain other languages shows that a comparable relationship holds among pairs like the French REGARDER: VOIR, ECOUTER: ENTENDRE etc. Recognition of such interlanguage correspondence provides the basis of a structural explanation for questions like the following: In what sense does "Je vois cela" correspond more closely to "I see that" than does "Je regarde cela"?