University of Zadar
English Department
Semantics
Sanja Škifić, Assistant Professor
Fani Žanetić
Scenes-and-Frames Semantics
Seminar paper
Zadar, January 2015
Table of Contents
1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................1
2 Classical vs. Cognitive Approach...........................................................................................1
3 Scenes-and-Frames Semantics.................................................................................................3
3.1. Encyclopaedic Knowledge……………………………………..................................3
3.2. The Bachelor Problem……………….........................................................................4
3.3. Prototypical Frames………………….........................................................................6
3.4. Relationship between Scenes and Frames.....................................................................8
3.5. Metaphors and Selection Restrictions.……...................................................................9
4 Conclusion................................................................................................................... .....11
5 Works Cited........................................................................................................................12
Žanetić 1
Fani Žanetić
Sanja Škifić, Assistant Professor
Semantics
English Department
University of Zadar
19 January 2015
Scenes-and-Frames Semantics
1. INTRODUCTION
The main goal of this paper is to present the principal points of the scenes-and-frames
theory of meaning, as proposed by the semanticist Charles J. Fillmore. Since this particular
method of analysis emerged as a response to some earlier attempts to describe and categorise
language meaning, the first part of the paper will be focusing on a brief overview of the
relevant history that paved the way for the scenes-and-frames theory. Afterwards, the
necessary terminology needed for the proper understanding of the same will be explained,
starting with the linguistic and encyclopaedic knowledge, followed by the infamous issue
concerning meaning of polysemic words and the solution Fillmore provides for these cases.
Subsequently, the novelties introduced by this theory will be presented, namely the notions of
prototypical scenes and frames, as well as the association and the relationship between the
two. Furthermore, some practical uses of the theory will be proposed, in connection to the
notions of metaphor and selection restrictions. Finally, the conclusive paragraph will provide
a summary of the most important points previously brought up and elaborated.
2. CLASSICAL VS. COGNITIVE APPROACH
In its very essence, the field of semantics is said to be concerned with the scientific
study of meaning in language. Naturally, the question of what meaning exactly is and how it
Žanetić 2
should be examined has caused much debate throughout history, and the problem itself long
predates the establishment of semantics as a distinct branch of study. One of the first
systematic attempts at describing and categorising the meaning of lexical items was made by
Aristotle and is today usually referred to as “the classical approach to categorisation” (Cruse
130). Here a category, which would refer to the meaning contained in a specific lexical item,
is represented by a “set of necessary and sufficient criteria for membership” (Cruse 130). In
other words, certain well-defined conditions must be met for a word to be considered a part of
a particular semantic category. Perhaps the most basic example would be the category of
MAN, whose membership criteria would include “X is human”, “X is male”, and “X is adult”.
This method, along with a similar structuralist one commonly known as componential
analysis, began to face much criticism with the emergence of cognitive semantics in the
second half of the 20th century. For clarification, in classical and structuralist analysis there is
considered to be a clear and direct link between linguistic forms and objects they denote in the
real world. In contrast, cognitive semantics claims the link is rather between linguistic forms
and the so-called concepts, i.e. “organized bundles of stored knowledge” (Cruse 127) in the
human mind. What inevitably follows from the first line of thought is that all categories have
rather strict boundaries, and that all of the members of the same category have equal status
(Cruse 131-2). While this worked rather well for simple examples such as MAN, WOMAN,
BOY, etc., many cognitive semanticists pointed out that borders of most other categories are
more ambiguous, as well as more difficult to define, and in reality there are always certain
members of a category that are normally considered to represent that category better than the
others (Cruse 131-2). In addition, since most concepts may contain a vast number of features,
some of which may be relevant in one context but not necessarily in others, it is not always
entirely clear where to draw the line when listing the criteria.
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In short, what cognitive semanticists suggest is that the classical approach seems to be
sufficient only for a limited number of items, due to its failure to examine the connection
between meaning and human cognition, as well as how the same operates in a particular
natural context, such as that of communication. One of the theories of cognitive semantics
which emerged in the 1970s and proposed a possible solution to these shortfalls is the scenesand-frames theory, taking after some earlier findings and attempts to provide an alternative to
the already firmly-established classical approach.
3. SCENES-AND-FRAMES SEMANTICS
3.1. Encyclopaedic Knowledge
Before fully delving into Fillmore’s theory, it is necessary to understand the problem
of the distinction between dictionary and encyclopaedic meaning, or in other words the
linguistic and the encyclopaedic knowledge of a person. In most traditional approaches to
semantics, the two are considered to be entirely separate categories that do not influence each
other. Thus, while a dictionary “describes the senses of predicates” (Hurford, Heasley, Smith
201), an encyclopaedia “contains factual information of a variety of types, but generally no
information specifically on the meaning of words” (Hurford et al. 201). Traditional theories
are descriptive in nature, something that has much to do with truth-conditions, i.e.
determining whether a sentence containing certain meaning is analytic, or so to say
semantically true (e.g. Cat is an animal) or a contradiction (e.g. Cat is not an animal)
(Hurford et al. 202). Looking at the problem from this angle, it is understandable why
descriptive semanticists would want to rely on more concise and clear dictionary definitions
and therefore separate them from encyclopaedic ones.
But despite the fact that a typical encyclopaedia normally covers a vaster field of
information than a dictionary, most of which may, at first sight at least, seem irrelevant to
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semantics, many scholars have been warning that it would be irresponsible to establish such
strict boundaries between these two types of knowledge. To expand on the above-mentioned
example of Cat is an animal, some philosophers such as Quine, Kripke and Putnam would
claim that even our seemingly simple conviction that cat is indeed an animals is still a product
of a particular human experience when it comes to the scientifically and culturally established
norm of classifying specific types of living beings as “animals” (Taylor 85-6). Furthermore,
there seems to be no solid proof that the categories of cat or animal could never change to
mean something entirely different, or even become replaced by some other type of
classification in the future. Thus, the mental concepts we hold of both “cat” and “animal” are
linked directly to our experience with the same, which ultimately represents a part of
encyclopaedic knowledge (Taylor 86).
3.2. The Bachelor Problem
The implication that most if not all of our knowledge is encyclopaedic in nature paved
the way for numerous cognitive theories which claimed concepts were dependent on the
context. Not the purely syntactic one, such as is the case in most structuralist theories, but that
broader of human experience of the world. Thus, in 1977, semanticist Charles J. Fillmore
introduced his own view on the topic, dubbed scenes-and-frames semantics, or often simply
frame semantics. In his paper Scenes-and-frames semantics, he, like most other cognitive
semanticists, criticizes the generative grammarians’ preoccupation with determining clear and
fixed boundaries between semantic categories via what he calls a “checklist description”, or a
“checklist theory” of meaning (Fillmore 60). This refers to what is commonly called
componential analysis, whereby a word must contain a set of certain features to be considered
a part of a category, much like in the earlier Aristotelian method.
Žanetić 5
As an example of this he takes the analysis of the word “bachelor”, as proposed by
Katz and Fodor, which consisted of listing all the various meanings contained within this
category, some of them being “unmarried adult male human being”, “a knight bearing the
banner of another knight”, and “a young male fur seal without a mate during the mating
season” (Fillmore 67). What Fillmore claims, though, is that none of those descriptions is
indicative of what English speakers know about these particular concepts that allows them to
properly use each of the terms within this polysemy (Fillmore 68). It would indeed seem that
a purely linguistic, i.e. dictionary definition of “bachelor” cannot be used to explain the
application of the same in most natural settings. A simple observation could prove this; for
instance, while the concept of a Catholic priest would seem to perfectly fit the “unmarried
adult male human being” condition, the truth is that most people would never consider him to
fall under the same category as, taking the most simple example, George Clooney, who was
during his unmarried days normally without hesitation referred to as a bachelor. Furthermore,
it would seem problematic to claim that the meaning of all of the instances of “bachelor”
stems from the generalisation of the concept of a male who does not seem to fit into a certain
typical male role, as Roman Jacobson did when criticizing himself Katz and Fodor’s method
for including too much information about the word in a purely semantic analysis (Fillmore
68). In fact, this line of thought seems to directly contradict the structuralist claim for the need
for clear categorical boundaries while attempting to support it, since the implied tendency for
generalisation would make it nearly impossible to determine any boundaries whatsoever.
In short, what Fillmore asserts multiple times is that this checklist theory simply does
not correspond to the reality of how mental concepts operate, i.e. outside of the confines of a
purely linguistic knowledge, therefore rendering it rather limited in its possibilities of
explaining much of the cognitive phenomena surrounding this context-dependent nature of
meaning.
Žanetić 6
3.3. Prototypical Frames
As a solution to the previously discussed problem of “bachelor”, and numerous similar
ones, Fillmore suggests a method closely connected to a concept of prototypes, as proposed
by a cognitive semanticist Eleanor Rosch. This theory, supported by much empirical
evidence, suggests that there are certain members of a category that are considered, by people,
to be better instances of that category than others. All other members are determined by their
degree of resemblance to these so-called “prototypical members” or simply “prototypes”
(Cruse 134). In cognitive semantics, these are considered to be much more useful for
determining category membership since they correspond better to the real application of
words in context, and thus are able to account for cultural and historical variations in
meaning; for instance, while an English person may consider CHARD to be a rather poor
example of the category of VEGETABLE, most people raised in the Mediterranean regions
would see it as a very good one, i.e. a prototype of VEGETABLE. This is something that the
componential analysis and the classical approach largely fail to cover when calling for clear
categorical boundaries (Fillmore 57).
Fillmore expands upon this theory by introducing the notion of a prototypical frame1,
i.e. the “imposition of structure on an event (or on the conceptualisation of an event) in a fixed
way and with a given perspective” (Fillmore 58). The definition itself is fairly complex, but it
is quite easy to grasp if we consider an example provided in his paper. When we look at the
verbs buy and sell, as well as the corresponding nouns buyer and seller, we may notice that
there exists a certain interconnection in meaning between the two. The way structuralists
would examine the problem would be by claiming that the two belong to separate categories,
determined by the fact that one seems to fulfil a certain criteria that the other one does not.
This does not, however, account for the fact that English speakers are aware of some deeper
1
Fillmore oscillates between scene and frame when it comes to terminology, the difference being between what
is conceptual and what is linguistic, which will be elaborated in the following sections of the paper.
Žanetić 7
correlation between those words. In fact, Fillmore claims this is due to the fact that both of
these concepts can be considered as being elements of a prototypical frame called a
commercial event, a linguistic notion drawn directly from a contextual scene encountered
sometime before in our experience, involving not only the actions of buy and sell, but other
concepts such as money, goods, and monetary system as well (Fillmore 58-9). In other words,
none of these concepts could be understood if it were not for their immediate connection to
the above-mentioned prototypical frame in our minds. Indeed, if we were to imagine a
situation where someone would demand an explanation for any of the previously mentioned
ideas, it would seem nearly impossible to give one without appealing to the most basic,
prototypical mental image of the situation in which they are normally used in context.
Fillmore uses the example of a sentence “This cost three dollars” as a possible way of
explaining to another person the meaning of the verb cost, drawing attention to “this”, a
particular good, and “three dollars”, the money exchanged in the process (Fillmore 60).
This method may be able to alleviate much of the ambiguity and confusion not
accounted for in the checklist theory. Considering once again the problem of why a catholic
priest is not considered a bachelor while George Clooney is, even though they both fit
perfectly in the necessary criteria established by descriptive semanticists, it would seem
particularly useful to appeal to Fillmore’s semantic frames. Within this theory, the
explanation would be rather simple, and that is that the concept of the priest falls outside of
the prototypical frame establishing the “usual expectation for a man in Western society”
(Coulson 18-9). Rather, he may be considered a part of a different frame, that of the
conventions given within the institution of the Catholic Church, which is consequently the
one evoked in our minds when talking about him.
There is an additional problem that appears here, which is that of understanding how
we determine what a prototypical frame is. Fillmore attempts to explain this by comparing the
Žanetić 8
situation to how we analyse a text while reading. When we first begin reading, we establish a
certain mental scene of the situation and all its circumstances. Later though, as we gain more
knowledge by advancing further in the text, we simply search for ways to incorporate that
new information into the previously established image (Fillmore 61). It is possible to liken
this example to how we acquire meaning in language. According to Fillmore, in childhood,
we firstly establish mental projections, i.e. scenes of certain situations we encounter in real
life. These then serve as frames of reference within which we learn to understand and
categorise ideas and information we encounter while growing up. For instance, a young child
may learn of the concept of pencil by seeing her mother using the object to draw on a paper.
This experience thus becomes the framework for understanding pencil, writing, paper, and all
other related concepts which may be learned throughout life (Fillmore 62). It is necessary to
mention that although this may be how the meaning of the concept pencil is first acquired, an
adult may not necessarily remember this particular situation in their life. This is due to the fact
that, as we obtain more and more relevant experience connected to a specific concept, the
original frame becomes largely abstract, which results in most of the aspects of the same
being “left blank” (Fillmore 63). It is understandable that, while a young child may draw a
direct association between the word pencil and a prototypical scene of, for example, drawing
or writing in a notebook, an older person will have already brought the same word to such a
high level of abstraction (via a long history of experience with pencil) that this clear mental
connection is no longer necessary in order to understand this notion.
3.4. Relationship between Scenes and Frames
In the topic previously discussed, some confusion might have been left as to what
exactly constitutes the difference is between prototypical scenes and prototypical frames. To
elaborate, the distinction between the two is mostly practical in nature, in that scenes would
Žanetić 9
refer to our experiential, mental reality, while frames would be a part of a linguistic context.
In Fillmore’s own words, a semantic frame is “any system of linguistic choices (the easiest
choices being collections of words, but also including choices of grammatical rules or
grammatical categories) that can get associated with prototypical instances of scenes”
(Fillmore, 63). Or, to put it simply, however we chose to interpret a certain scene
linguistically would fall under the definition of a semantic frame. Although it may seem
redundant to make such divisions, it must be noted that while the experience-dependant
scenes are always present in our cognition, many of them are not able to evoke specific
linguistic frames (Fillmore 66). To illustrate, although there is a word in English designating
the metal tip of a typical umbrella, which is ferrule, this frame is normally not activated when
an English speaker thinks of that concept. Therefore, whether the speaker ever learns of the
existence of such a word or not, the original scene does not change or disappear as a result.
Once the association between a prototypical scene and a prototypical frame is
established, the two are able to activate, i.e. evoke one another, as well as other scenes and
frames with which they happen to share certain experiential or linguistic information
(Fillmore 63). During the practical act of communication respectively, what happens is that,
in speakers’ minds as well as in the channel of communication, certain scenes and frames are
constantly being activated and the blanks in knowledge are thus filled via connection
established between the present scenes and frames and the prototypical ones (Fillmore 66). In
short, it is because of the scenes and frames which are able to activate each other that we can
establish coherent communication; otherwise, this would prove impossible.
3.5. Metaphors and Selection Restrictions
According to Fillmore, one common semantic problem that can easily be solved by the
application of the scenes-and-frames theory is that of the nature of metaphors. Since
Žanetić 10
metaphors have no clear link between their sense and the object, i.e. the referent they are
supposed to denote in the extra-linguistic world, they have not been a great point of focus in
structuralism and other earlier theories. However, with the notion of concept slowly replacing
that of de Saussure’s linguistic sign, due to the emergence of cognitive semantics, this
problem is continually being given more and more attention within the field. In context of the
scenes-and-frames theory, metaphor consists of “using, in connection with one scene, a word,
or perhaps a whole frame, that is known by both speaker and hearer to be more fundamentally
associated with a different frame” (Fillmore 70). Fillmore thus distinguishes between the
“wasteful metaphor” and “efficient metaphor” (Fillmore 70), the former occurring when the
scene in question already has its own frame – as in, for instance, using the phrase “to kick the
bucket” as an alternative to the concept’s already existing frame “to die” – while the latter
would refer to the situation where a frame is assigned to a novel scene which does not already
have one on its own. He points to the convention of using terms of spatial orientation to refer
to time as a good example (Fillmore 70).
A separate issue where this theory may also come as a satisfactory solution would be
that of selection restriction, referring to the restriction of certain predicates (e.g. tall and short)
only to things which meet the conditions established by some separate predicate (e.g. human,
in connection to the “tall and short” example) (Hurford et al., 208). This would suggest that,
instead of a relationship between a scene and its frame, this phenomenon is a correlation
between different elements contained within a single frame. Fillmore disagrees with such an
implication, stating rather that it would be more useful, especially in the context of cognitive
semantics, to describe particular situations within which these connections between certain
concepts and a specific set of gradient adjectives are made (Fillmore 71). This is something he
considers to be an indication of a broader problem in the shift between classical and cognitive
approach, which would be the question of how to properly interpret those and
Žanetić 11
similar kinds of mental associations between certain words. Since the issue concerns largely
the human knowledge and experience about the world, the classical approach tends to dismiss
it as a question of little relevance to semantics, a scientific study. However, as pointed out in
some previous examples, Fillmore implies the human knowledge is not only a necessary but
also a crucial factor to consider when it comes to the examination of linguistic meaning, even
if it may seem, at first sight, unscientific to do so (Fillmore 72).
4. CONCLUSION
With the discovery of many shortcomings and inadequacies within the classical
approach to linguistic meaning, Aristotelian and structuralist theories on semantics and
categorization have largely been losing the enormous impact they once had. While the
question of the most efficient way of examining these issues is still far from settled, we could
say that, since the appearance and establishment of cognitive semantics, a great number of
useful methods has been proposed in order to deal with these problems in a way that is a)
more systematic, and b) more up-to-date with the recent empirical and scientific findings in
the relevant fields, as well as the new intellectual currents. Although both scenes-and-frames
semantics and other variations of the prototype theory may be replaced, in the future, by other
more sufficient means of analysis, it would seem that these are in fact more than capable of
uncovering and fixing most of the “plot-holes”, so to speak, found in the long tradition of
applying structuralism and componential analysis to semantics.
All in all, it could be concluded that, although there are many more problems to be
answered when it comes to meaning within semantics, the scenes-and-frames theory
undeniably provides one of more satisfactory and exhaustive answers when it comes to the
need
to
compensate
for
certain
weak
points
left
by
de
Saussure’s
legacy.
Žanetić 12
Works Cited
Coulson, Seana. Semantic Leaps: Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning
Construction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.
Cruse, Alan. Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. New
York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2000. Print.
Fillmore, Charles J. “Scenes-and-frames semantics.” Linguistic Structures Processing. Ed.
Antonio Zampolli. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1977. 55-79. Print.
Hurford, James R., Brendan Heasley, and Michael B. Smith. Semantics: A Coursebook. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
Taylor, John R. Linguistic Categorization. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2003.
Print.