Where is meaning? Not just the dictionary.

Like how putting two and two together (literally!) equals four, language, funnily enough, can be treated like a kind of word math. We can communicate and understand strings of words because words are like the numbers of language. Even if you have hypothetically never considered the number 7132 before, you can still arrive at and make sense of that number because you know the numbers 7000, 100, and 32, and how to add them all together. In the same way, we can even create entirely new, never-before-heard word sequences, and still expect to be understood, because we know the individual words in the sequence: try “pepperoni pizza party schedule release date” (the date when the schedule for the party with pepperoni pizza will be released).

 

This fact of language is called the principle of compositionality: we can calculate the meaning of a bigger expression based on the meanings of its smaller parts, plus the rules used to combine them. In our mathematical analogy, this difference between parts and rules would be like the difference between numbers and the various mathematical operations (plus, minus, times, divide)! Naturally, then, we need to ponder about these parts and their meanings. What are these parts, if not the words themselves? Therefore, as long as we know the meanings of the words in a word sequence, we can sum up all their individual meanings to calculate the meaning of the overall string. Compositionality is necessary because it allows us to make infinite use of finite means: we get to use our limited vocabulary of words to express (almost) any meaning that we language users could ever possibly wish to express. Importantly, however, for compositionality to work, we need to know the nature of the individual parts of the whole. After all, we can’t find

x in x = y + z unless we also know y and z. And if our y’s and z’s are individual words, it makes very good sense to start with the best place we know for looking up word meanings: the dictionary. Let’s trace out how this process of composition works for a simple sentence, like:

 

- The deliveryman gave Freya the parcel.

 

With a dictionary, we can easily find the meaning of gave, the past tense of give: the giver transfers the possession of something to someone else. We can check the definitions of deliveryman and parcel to know who gave what and what was given, and with context, we can figure out who the deliveryman and what the parcel are referring to, not to mention who Freya is! Here, compositionality runs along happily as it should, and the sentence computes. But if we poke our system a bit more, does it still hold up to scrutiny? As another example, let us consider another very similar-looking example, using another fairly mundane action word (or verb), bake:

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- Elijah baked his friends some cake.

 

As before, the dictionary can supply us the meanings of many elements in this sentence, namely friends, some, and cake, and context helps us identify Elijah and who his refers to. That much is uneventful, and the system whirs along unimpeded. But baked throws a spanner in the works, upsetting the cogs of our fragile meaning calculator. Oxford Languages defines bake as to “cook (food) by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame, typically in an oven.” Crucially, however, unlike give, there is no sense that this definition of bake includes the meaning of transfer, even though from our sentence, we obviously know what was transferred (cake), who transferred it (Elijah), and to whom it was transferred (his friends). This is a problem. How did we compose this meaning if it is not in the words? This is like being told that two plus two equals five — where did the extra one come from? This meaning is quite literal, not something implied. Does this mean we have to modify our definition of bake, or to create new definitions altogether? Is to bake now also to “cook food… in an oven such that it is given to someone else”? This seems implausible — if we add definitions in this way, we run the risk of doubling the thickness of our already hefty dictionary! To see why this would happen, consider these other ways in which we can use this word bake.

 

1. Riti baked her way to the top of MasterChef.  

2. The heat baked the crowd out of the room.

3. Eujun baked the cake ashen, having left it in the oven too long. 

4. "I told you never to return," he baked, his anger steaming off him. 

 

Sentence 1 illustrates what we call the way-construction: it converts baked, which normally does not describe movement, into a manner of movement. This movement occurs along a metaphorical path through a repetitive action, showing how the subject overcomes some kind of obstacle. By baking over and over through the rounds of MasterChef (≈ the path), Riti was able to advance through the competition. Similarly, Sentence 4 converts baked into a motion verb. It is also not literal: the crowd is not literally being baked in an oven! But this structure of using baked with the directional phrase out of the room allows us to see how the heat exerted a “force” on the crowd, causing them to change their position. Sentence 5 interestingly converts bake from a creative process (bringing a new entity, a baked good, into existence!) to a transformative one: a pre-existing entity is changed. In this case, the cake was baked for so long that it crumbled to ashes! Lastly, Sentence 6 might seem right out of a novel, but this direct speech construction allows us to use bake in a fairly unusual way, since it is not normally a “speaking” verb, but here it gives us some idea of the manner in which something was said. If we include all these senses of bake to the dictionary, we will soon find that we have to do the same for many, many other verbs that we can fit in the same structures, as the other examples in this table show:

 

Different constructions

 

 Way- construction

Meaning Added

Adds a “path”, navigated through repeated action, finally overcoming some obstacle

Other Examples

1. She shovelled her way through the snow.

2. Lying your way to the top is dishonourable!

3. Leo campaigned his way to the presidency.

Caused motion construction

Meaning Added

Adds how the subject’s action exerts force on an object, resulting in a change of position

Other Examples

1. Otto sneezed the foam off his cappuccino!

2. The crowd laughed the speaker off the stage.

3. She walked him to the door.

Resultative construction

Meaning Added

Creates or focuses on a transformation, linking an activity to its outcome

Other Examples

1. The blacksmith hammered the iron flat.

2. Jonathan sunned the clothes dry.

3. I cried my eyes red and puffy. 

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Direct speech construction

Meaning Added

Highlights the manner in which something was said.

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Curiously, many verbs used here cannot be used for indirect speech!

He exploded, “you’re not taking my car!”

"It's so nice to see you," Sarah smiled.

“This tastes awful,” Tom spat.

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(ungrammatical: *He exploded that you were not taking his car.)

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We have thus illustrated (or “baked”!) our way to a clearer understanding of where the missing meanings in our composition process are hiding. The extra one in our equation two plus two equals five doesn’t come from the words themselves, but rather from the overall structures they are used in. People often think that structures are part of the “rules” of a language, like the mathematical operations we compared them with earlier. But as we have seen, these rules, or constructions, are templates of both form and meaning. These structures for using words themselves are actually meaningful, even if our dictionaries rarely capture them! They show us that meanings are not always localised to words, but can also be attached to grammatical patterns. It turns out that with language, two plus two doesn’t always equal four, because sometimes, the way we add them up creates a five.