Vantages on scales: a study of Russian dimensional adjectives

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Language Sciences 32 (2010) 241–258 www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci

Vantages on scales: a study of Russian dimensional adjectives Elena Tribushinina University of Antwerp, Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Research Centre, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Abstract The central claim of this paper is that Vantage Theory is able to provide a much-needed explanatory account of the seemingly unrelated differences between lexical and morphological antonyms of dimensional adjectives in Slavic languages. In a case study, I compare two antonyms of the Russian adjective vysokij ‘high’, a morphologically unrelated term nizkij ‘low’ and a morphologically related adjective nevysokij ‘not.high’. I argue that the two terms co-exist because they provide different ways of looking at the lower subscale of vertical size. The distribution exhibited by the adjectives under study is symptomatic of the dominant-recessive pattern of coextension identified by MacLaury in the domain of colour. Two sets of data – a corpus and an elicitation test – provide converging evidence that nizkij ‘low’ names the dominant vantage on the lower subscale: it is more frequent and evenly distributed over referent categories. Nevysokij ‘not.high’ is a recessive term: it is characterised by lower frequency, a rather narrow range of application, and a distribution skewed towards human referents. The findings from this study are compared to the results of earlier research on colour terminology, which raises several methodological questions concerning the application of Vantage Theory to lexical domains other than colour. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Vantage Theory; Dominant-recessive pattern of coextension; Dimensional adjectives; Near-synonymy; Morphological negation

1. Introduction According to Lyons (1977, p. 275), in many languages the majority of adjectives have morphologically related opposites, such as formal:informal, correct:incorrect, and moral:immoral, whereas the most frequently used antonyms are morphologically unrelated words, such as good:bad, tall:short, and old:young. Some adjectives, however, have both types of opposites, thus forming triplets or quadruples rather than binary oppositions. This is primarily the case with evaluative adjectives, such as true:untrue/false, interesting:uninteresting/boring, and friendly:unfriendly/hostile. As suggested by Cruse (1986, p. 246), a prefixed opposite and its morphologically simple counterpart are usually very close in meaning, varying from ‘‘almost identical” alternatives (unmarried vs. single) to pairs displaying somewhat bigger semantic differences (unhappy vs. sad, unkind vs. cruel). Dimensional adjectives are usually claimed to be different from evaluative adjectives in that they always come in binary pairs and cannot have morphological opposites (e.g. Bierwisch, 1989). What is more, Bierwisch E-mail address: [email protected] 0388-0001/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2009.10.007

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(1989, p. 211) argues that the semantic form of long is a semantic realization of *unshort. Since long and *unshort would be semantically identical, so the argument goes, languages block the morphologically related opposite of short and preserve only the morphologically unrelated antonym, i.e. long. This view, however, runs aground when it comes to Slavic languages, where, unlike, for instance, in Germanic languages, dimensional adjectives may have both types of antonyms – a morphologically related and a morphologically unrelated one (Vinogradov, 1960; Gvozdev, 1961, p. 260; Vinogradov and Sˇvedova, 1964, p. 507ff.; Sˇvedova, 1970, p. 212; Apresjan, 1974, p. 306ff.; Ivanova, 1982, p. 121ff.; Sˇabes, 1989; Rakhilina, 2000; Sharoff, 2006; Tribushinina, 2008a). For instance, Russian affixal opposites are derived from supra terms (e.g. bol’sˇoj ‘large’, vysokij ‘high’, glubokij ‘deep’) by means of the negative prefix ne-, as in nebol’sˇoj ‘not.big’, nevysokij ‘not.high’, neglubokij ‘not.deep’. The use of the sub terms (e.g. malen’kij ‘small’, nizkij ‘low’, melkij ‘shallow’) with the negative prefix is either impossible (e.g. *nenizkij ‘not.low’, *nemelkij ‘not.shallow’, *neuzkij ‘not.narrow’) or only marginally possible.1 For instance, nemalen’kij ‘not.small’, though possible, has a very restricted combinability (for details see Rakhilina, 2000, p. 135). Thus, counter to Bierwisch (1989), Russian dimensional supras and their counterparts in other Slavic languages have two sub antonyms – a morphologically unrelated and a morphologically related one. The fact that the morphological negation is not blocked strongly suggests that dimensional near-synonyms construe the ‘smaller’ subscale in different ways. Indeed, several researchers in the past noticed some differences between lexical and morphological opposites of supra terms. For example, they were shown to profile different, though overlapping parts of the scale, take different types of comparative (syntactic vs. morphological), carry different evaluative loads and behave differently in metaphorical extensions. However, until now there has been no theory that could offer a unified account of these differences. In this paper, extension and elaboration of Tribushinina (2008b), I will suggest that Vantage Theory (henceforth also VT; MacLaury, 1995, 1997, 2002) can offer the needed explanatory account of the various seemingly unrelated differences reported in the literature. I will substantiate this claim by analysing the semantic differences between the Russian near-synonyms nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’. I will argue that nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ present two views on the lower subscale of vertical size, or, in terms of Vantage Theory, two vantages on the category LOWNESS. Another aim of this paper is to compare vantage configurations identified for colour terms with patterns of coextension specific to spatial adjectives. This will raise further methodological questions concerning the application of Vantage Theory to vague scalar adjectives, whose denotation, unlike that of colour terms, cannot be identified without reference to a particular type of entity. The paper is structured as follows: in Section 2, I give an overview of the relevant research on nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ and stress the fact that no unified account of these phenomena has been offered thus far. Section 3 summarises the postulates of Vantage Theory relevant to the present study. Section 4 aims to establish whether nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ display distribution characteristic of coextensive vantages. In Section 5, I pursue the question whether Vantage Theory may provide a plausible and comprehensive account of the relevant differences between lexical and morphological opposites in Russian. In Section 6, I discuss theoretical and methodological implications of the obtained results and suggest some refinements of Vantage Theory that could better accommodate its application to vague spatial adjectives. Conclusions are summarised in Section 7. 2. The problem One of the most well-studied differences between lexical and morphological antonyms of supra terms is the ability of the latter to denote attenuated properties rather than the absolute opposite of the corresponding supra (Vinogradov, 1960, p. 356; Gvozdev, 1961, p. 260; Sˇvedova, 1970, p. 212; Apresjan, 1974, pp. 309– 312; Ivanova, 1982, p. 129). For example, the realm of nevysokij ‘not.high’ on the subscale of lowness does not extend as far towards the absolute zero as that of nizkij ‘low’.

1

I borrowed the notions of sub and supra terms from Croft and Cruse (2004). The terms were first used in Keith Allan’s ‘Interpreting English comparatives’. Journal of Semantics 5, 1987: 1–50.

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Tribushinina (2008a) shows that the ability of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ to profile different, though overlapping, parts of the lower subscale is largely motivated by the reference-point status of EGO, i.e. dimensions and proportions of a human body. Objects that are lower than expected for their comparison class, but taller than humans are likely to be described by nevysokij ‘not.high’. In contrast, entities whose height falls below some expected standard for their comparison class and is smaller than the height of EGO are more likely to be dubbed nizkij ‘low’. This is not an absolute distinction, but a very strong tendency that was revealed both in the corpus and in a survey. Another important difference sometimes mentioned in the relevant literature is that nevysokij ‘not.high’ involves neither a positive nor a negative evaluation of the described object, whereas nizkij ‘low’ is often used to include a negative evaluation of the entity (Ruzin, 1994, p. 90; Apresjan, 2004, p. 635; Sharoff, 2006; Tribushinina, 2008b). Negative evaluation associated with nizkij ‘low’ has implications for extended uses of this adjective. As noticed by Rakhilina (2000, pp. 144–145), metaphorical uses of nizkij ‘low’ are usually negative (nizkij cˇelovek ‘mean person’, nizkij postupok ‘shabby act’, nizkoj proby ‘of the worst kind’). In this respect, nizkij ‘low’ is different from the more neutral terms vysokij ‘high’ and nevysokij ‘not.high’. It is important to note that the differences discussed above are subtle. It is not always the case that nizkij ‘low’ denotes objectively smaller values than nevysokij ‘not.high’. Some uses of nizkij ‘low’ can be quite neutral rather than negative. And, what is even more important, the two adjectives are often used with reference to the same types of entities. A lot of speakers of Russian would not be able to tell the difference between expressions such as nizkij dom ‘low house’ and nevysokij dom ‘not.high house’. At the same time, Russian speakers show considerable agreement as to which of the two adjectives fits best in particular contexts (Tribushinina, 2008b). At this point, it might be rewarding to go a step further and ask ourselves what motivates the differences discussed above. Why is it that Russian needs both a morphologically related and a morphologically unrelated antonym of vysokij ‘high’? Why does nizkij ‘low’ often sound more negative than nevysokij ‘not.high’? How can we account for their distribution vis-a`-vis human height? One of the most influential views explaining semantic and distributional peculiarities of gradable adjectives is the well-known markedness theory (Vendler, 1963; Greenberg, 1966; Givo´n, 1970; Clark, 1973; Daems, 1977; Lyons, 1977; Zwicky, 1978; Lehrer, 1985; Cruse, 1986; Murphy, 2003). For one, markedness theory is very good at explaining distributional asymmetries between antonym pairs, such as tall vs. short and friendly vs. unfriendly. However, neither version of the markedness theory is able to provide a comprehensive account of the differences between nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ established by the previous studies. Firstly, if markedness is understood as a semantic relation whereby ‘‘the marked member is semantically more specific than the unmarked member” (Haspelmath, 2006, p. 29), then both nizkij ‘low’ and nevysokij ‘not.high’ are marked as opposed to the unmarked supra vysokij ‘high’. Only vysokij ‘high’, but not nizkij ‘low’ and nevysokij ‘not.high’ can be used with reference to the whole dimension, as in nominalisations (vysota ‘height’) and neutralised questions. For example, (1) is functionally similar to the English question How tall is he? and can be used to ask whether the subject is tall or short, whereas both (2) and (3) ask for confirmation that the subject is indeed of small stature (cf. Croft and Cruse, 2004, p. 181). (1)

(2)

(3)

Tvoj muzˇ your husband ‘Is your husband tall or short?’ Tvoj muzˇ your husband ‘Is your husband short?’ Tvoj muzˇ your husband ‘Is your husband short?’

vysokogo high

rosta? stature

nizkogo low

rosta? stature

nevysokogo not.high

rosta? stature

Secondly, if markedness is understood in the formal sense as an overt coding, then we would have to admit that nevysokij ‘not.high’ is marked and nizkij ‘low’ is unmarked, because the former contains an explicit negation and is therefore morphologically more complex. This way of looking at the problem would explain lower token frequencies of nevysokij ‘not.high’ as compared to nizkij ‘low’ (see Section 4.1.1), since marked terms are

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usually less frequent than their unmarked counterparts (e.g. Lehrer, 1985). However, this solution is not unproblematic either, since unmarked terms are more likely to express positive evaluation and to denote more of a property than the corresponding unmarked term (Lehrer, 1985), which is, as explained above, the opposite of what has been actually observed in the case of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’. Furthermore, as demonstrated by Haspelmath (2006), we do not need the notion of markedness to account for frequency asymmetries as in nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’, since lower frequency can be directly related to structural complexity through the principle of economy. Thirdly, markedness theory cannot account for the distribution of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ visa`-vis human height (Tribushinina, 2008b), since this aspect is related to the perspective of the human conceptualizer rather than scale structure and directionality. Crucially, what is missing in the study of Russian dimensional near-synonyms is a theory that could provide a comprehensive account of the relevant differences attested in the previous research. This paper aims to explore whether Vantage Theory could provide the needed explanatory account of these phenomena. My hypothesis is that nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ name different vantages on the lower subscale of height, which prevents one of them from blocking the other. More precisely, I hypothesise that the differences mentioned above stem from the characteristics of the coextensive pattern, which nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ are parts of. In summary, the empirical study reported below seeks to answer the following two research questions: (a) Do nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ display the pattern of coextension described within the framework of VT? If yes, (b) is VT able to account for the seemingly unrelated semantic and distributional differences between nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ discovered by the previous research? Section 4 addresses the question in (a) and Section 5 pursues the question in (b). But before that it is necessary to summarise the basic principles of VT relevant to the present study. 3. Vantage Theory Vantage Theory is about the way ‘‘a person constructs a category, uses it, and revises it” (MacLaury, 2002, p. 507). The theory holds that people perform dynamic categorisations by coordinating fixed images with mobile coordinates (MacLaury, 1995, 1997). The combination of fixed and mobile coordinates constitutes a vantage. Fixed images function as primary reference points of a category. Attention to either similarity (S) or difference/distinctiveness (D) constitutes a mobile coordinate. If attention to similarity with the reference-point prevails over attention to distinctiveness, the category will expand to include more members (SS D). In contrast, predominant attention to difference sets category boundaries close to the reference point (DD S). It is also important to note that, on this view, a person can concentrate only at one figure-ground configuration at a time, which means that predominant emphasis on either S or D occur at different levels of concentration. For illustration, consider the category RED (see Fig. 1). At level 1, focal red serves as a fixed coordinate and attention to similarity with focal red makes the category expand to include a number of similar shades and hues. At level 2, similarity is already given, or fixed, and recedes into the background in favour of the new mobile coordinate – attention to difference. Once a new experience is judged different from the fixed reference point, category expansion stops and category boundaries are set. In his study of colour categorisation in Mesoamerican languages, MacLaury was confronted with a type of semantic relation that had not been attested before. More precisely, he noticed that two colour terms may have different foci, but largely coextensive ranges. Furthermore, it is usually the case that ‘‘one range of a pair is Levels 1 2

Fixed Coordinates R S

Mobile Coordinates S D

Entailments focus, range breadth, margin

Fig. 1. Vantage on the category RED (MacLaury, 2002, p. 496).

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characteristically broader and more centrally focused while the other is slightly restricted and skewed toward a more marginal focus” (MacLaury, 1995, p. 232). MacLaury termed the former type of range dominant vantage and the latter recessive vantage. The term whose focus is located in the dominant vantage is called dominant term; the term for the recessive range is called recessive term. The predictable relation between the two ranges is termed dominant-recessive pattern of coextension (MacLaury, 1995, p. 241). Investigations in the domain of colour have shown that a dominant term is usually more frequent and easily maps onto the whole category, whereas a recessive term is less frequent and applies only to a restricted range of the category. The dominant range is usually more evenly distributed, whereas the recessive range normally displays distribution skewed towards the margin. Another important difference is that recessive terms in the domain of colour are usually characterised by more connotations and metaphorical extensions than the corresponding dominant terms. The reason for that, according to MacLaury (2002, p. 501) is that attention to similarity ‘‘contracts distance between viewpoint and coordinates”, which renders the dominant vantage more subjective and at the same time more ordinary. In contrast, attention to distinctiveness fosters analysis and leads to the use of the recessive term in numerous poetic expressions and metaphorical extensions. Let me illustrate the workings of coextensive vantages using MacLaury’s example from Zulu. Zulu has two colour terms naming the category COOL – hlaza and kosazana. The former is a dominant term; the latter names a recessive vantage (see Fig. 2). Hlaza is more frequent and easily maps on to the whole category. Conversely, kosazana is less frequent and applies only to a very restricted range of the category. On repeated mapping tasks, subjects, however, agree to gradually extend the recessive range to other category members so that it eventually comes to cover a good deal of the dominant vantage. The two terms have different foci: the focus of hlaza is unique blue located near the centre of the category, whereas the focus of kosazana is a very light sort of green located towards the periphery. The dominant range is more or less evenly distributed, and the recessive range has a restricted distribution skewed towards the margin. The major difference between the two vantages is the relative salience of one mobile coordinate over the other. Hlaza is associated with emphasis on similarity, due to which it easily covers the whole category. Kosazana, on the contrary, is associated with emphasis on difference and therefore includes only a limited range of colours. People are very flexible in adopting one or another vantage point on the category. Sometimes they focus on similarity with the dominant focus, and on other occasions the same stimuli are estimated in terms of difference from the dominant reference point. This precludes the two terms from complementary distribution (MacLaury, 1995, 1997, 2002). With these considerations in mind, we can now proceed to the analysis of the data on nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’. In the next section, I will pursue the question whether the two Russian near-synonyms reveal a pattern of coextension similar to the one described for hlaza and kosazana in Zulu. 4. Analysis 4.1. Methods In this research, I used two methods – a corpus study and an elicitation test. These will be discussed in turn. 4.1.1. Corpus study I started this investigation by analysing the use of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ in the Russian National Corpus (RNC), a corpus of 130 million words comprising both written and spoken materials. hlaza Entailments blue focus broad, even cool range compact stable margin

Dominant vantage Fixed Mobile B S

L 1

Recessive vantage Fixed Mobile G D

S

G

2

D

B

G

D

3

B

S

kosazana Entailments green focus margin narrow, skewed cool range dispersed indeterminate

Fig. 2. Pattern of coextension in the Zulu COOL category (after MacLaury, 2002, p. 518).

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A corpus search provided 11,361 occurrences of nizkij ‘low’ and 1997 occurrences of nevysokij ‘not.high’.2 For the purposes of the present study, I initially focused only on the dimensional uses of the adjectives under analysis and excluded all extended (positional and metaphorical) uses from consideration. Further, only positive forms of the adjectives were used for analysis, because only nizkij ‘low’, but not nevysokij ‘not.high’ has inflectional comparatives and superlatives. Nevysokij ‘not.high’ has only periphrastic comparative and superlative forms (bolee A ‘more A’, samyj A ‘most A’), which, unlike inflectional comparatives, are usually marked in Russian (for details see Tribushinina, 2008c). Thus, when it comes to the expression of unmarked (uncommitted) comparative relations, nizkij ‘low’ takes the referents over from nevysokij ‘not.high’. This resulted in a subcorpus of 1045 dimensional uses of nizkij ‘low’ and 1490 relevant uses of nevysokij ‘not.high’. 4.1.2. Elicitation test In order to elicit the ‘‘best” head-nouns of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’, I conducted an elicitation test with 174 native speakers of Russian who were undergraduate students attending either Kuzbas Technical University (Kemerovo, Russia) or Kemerovo State Medical Academy (Kemerovo, Russia). There were 69 male and 105 female subjects in the age range of 17–35. The subjects were given the following task, translated here for convenience: Please, give three nouns that you think go particularly well with a given adjective. Note that you may use not only masculine, but also feminine and neuter nouns. Example: Give three nouns that go particularly well with the adjective zelenyj ‘green’. (a) grass; (b) fir-tree; (c) crocodile. This procedure was introduced by Weydt and Schlieben-Lange (1998) in their study of spatial adjectives in German. I modified the procedure in two ways. Firstly, I introduced nine distractors (dalekij ‘remote’, interesnyj ‘interesting’, sladkij ‘sweet’, krasivyj ‘beautiful’, cˇistyj ‘clean’, krasnyj ‘red’, dobryj ‘kind’, trudnyj ‘difficult’, and pustoj ‘empty’). Secondly, I made two versions of the test – one with nevysokij ‘not.high’ and one with nizkij ‘low’ – to avoid priming. In total, 87 subjects filled in Version 1, and 87 subjects Version 2 of the questionnaire. 4.2. Results 4.2.1. Type frequencies in the corpus The first thing that catches the eye in the corpus data is that nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ are not in complementary distribution. There is a considerable overlap between the two adjectives with respect to the types of head-nouns. Fig. 3 shows the ranges of the two adjectives in terms of type frequencies of their referents (or head-nouns) and the coextensive area where both adjectives apply. As is evident from Fig. 3, nizkij ‘low’ has a much wider range of referents than nevysokij ‘not.high’. And there is also a considerable area of overlap between the two ranges. This distribution could be taken as indication that nizkij ‘low’ is a dominant term and nevysokij ‘not.high’ is a recessive term. In order to test this hypothesis, I proceeded by categorising the referent categories of nizkij ‘low’ and nevysokij ‘not.high’ in the corpus. The referent categories of the two adjectives in the RNC are summarised in Tables 1 and 2. The figures in the table show that there are important differences in the distribution of nizkij ‘low’ and nevysokij ‘not.high’. Nizkij ‘low’ distributes quite evenly over different referent categories, which is illustrated by the smoothly declining line in Fig. 4. In contrast, nevysokij ‘not.high’ has one highly prominent referent cat2

RNC is a dynamically growing corpus, whose size now goes well beyond the 130 million words it had in 2007, when my search was performed, which may affect the proportion of the frequencies. My analysis here is concerned with the 2007 findings.

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Fig. 3. Type frequencies in the corpus.

Table 1 Referents of nizkij ‘low’ in the RNC. Referent categories

Examples

Tokens

%

Furniture and appliances Constructions Vegetation Enclosures Interior Body parts Human beings Openings Eminences Footwear and clothing Vehicles Containers Supports Animals Other

divan ‘sofa’, kreslo ‘armchair’, krovat’ ‘bed’, skamejka ‘bench’, stol ‘table’ dom ‘house’, fligel’ ‘outbuilding’, izba ‘peasant’s hut’, svod ‘vault’ derevo ‘tree’, kust ’bush’, kustarnik ‘shrubbery’, rastenie ‘plant’, trava ‘grass’ bordjur ‘kerb’, ograda ‘hedge’, sˇtaketnik ‘fencing’, zabor ‘fence’ komnata ‘room’, koridor ‘corridor’, pomesˇcˇenie ‘premises’, zal ‘sitting-room’ lico ‘face’, lob ‘forehead’, sˇeja ‘neck’, zatylok ‘back of the head’ cˇelovek ‘human’, rost ‘stature’, starusˇka ‘old woman’ dver’ ‘door’, okno ‘window’, projem ‘opening’, vxod ‘entrance’ gora ‘mountain’, mys ‘cape’, pereval ‘pass’, xolm ‘hill’ kabluk ‘heel’, sapogi ‘jackboots’, sˇljapa ‘hat’, tufli ‘shoes’ barzˇa ‘barge’, masˇina ‘car’, sudno ‘vessel’, tank ‘tank’, telega ‘cart’ cvetocˇnica ‘flower-pot’, jasˇcˇik ‘box’, kadka ‘tub’, tarelka ‘plate’ nozˇki ‘legs’, opora ‘support’, platforma ‘platform’ kliacˇa ‘nag’, lisica ‘fox’ bukva ‘letter’, krest ‘cross’, pruzˇina ‘spring’

262 198 110 93 85 64 56 55 32 27 22 17 13 2 9

25.1 18.9 10.5 8.9 8.1 6.1 5.4 5.3 3.1 2.6 2.1 1.6 1.2 0.2 0.9

Table 2 Referents of nevysokij ‘not.high’ in the RNC. Referent categories

Examples

Tokens

%

Human beings Eminences Constructions Vegetation Enclosures Supports Furniture and appliances Interior Footwear and clothing Body parts Monuments Containers Animals Opening Vehicles Other

devusˇka ‘girl’, krepysˇ ‘brawny fellow’, muzˇcˇina ‘man’, rebenok ‘child’ gora ‘mountain’, skala ‘rock’, sklon ‘slope’, xolm ‘hill’, xrebet ‘ridge’ banja ‘bath-house’, cerkov’ ‘church’, dom ‘house’, stena ‘wall’ derevo ‘tree’, kust ‘bush’, kustarnik ‘shrubbery’, trava ‘grass’ ograda ‘hedge’, pleten’ ‘hurdle’, sˇtaketnik ‘fencing’, zabor ‘fence’ cokol’ ‘socle’, nozˇki ‘legs’, stolb ‘post’ divan ‘sofa’, prilavok ‘counter’, stol ‘table’, taburet ‘stool’ komnata ‘room’, pomesˇcˇenie ‘premises’, zal ‘sitting-room’ botinki ‘boots’, sapogi ‘jackboots’ lico ‘face’, lob ‘forehead’ obelisk ‘obelisk’, pamjatnik ‘monument’, postament ‘pedestal’ bidon ‘can’, bocˇka ‘barrel’, kotelok ‘pot’, vanna ‘bath’ kon’ ‘horse’, kulik ‘stint’, losˇad’ ‘horse’ vxod ‘entrance’ macˇta ‘mast’ svecˇka ‘candle’, vors ‘nap’

814 176 140 119 99 33 28 19 18 12 11 9 7 1 1 3

54.6 11.8 9.4 8.0 6.6 2.2 1.9 1.3 1.2 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.1 0.1 0.2

egory – human beings (contra Apresjan, 2004, p. 636). The rest of the referents are far less frequent than humans. This effect is clear from the sharp slope representing the transition from humans to other referents of nevysokij ‘not.high’ in Fig. 4.

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The distribution of referent categories illustrated in Fig. 4 is highly characteristic of the dominant-recessive pattern. The data suggest that nizkij ‘low’ is a dominant term: it has a wider range of applications and distributes quite evenly over different types of referents, including human beings. In contrast, nevysokij ‘not.high’ can be said to be a recessive term, which has a more narrow range and displays distribution considerably skewed towards human referents. Another indication of the dominant-recessive pattern is that nizkij ‘low’ has a higher overall frequency than nevysokij ‘not.high’ (11,361 vs. 1997 occurrences, including positional and metaphorical extensions). The cognitive constitution of the two coextensive vantages is graphically represented in Fig. 5. It is important to emphasise that the two adjectives obviously differ in their fixed reference points. Nevysokij ‘not.high’ has a pronounced emphasis on human referents. Human verticality can therefore be said to constitute the salient reference point of the recessive range. Note also that category expansion from humans to other referents proceeds along the ways indicated by Dirven and Taylor (1988) and Taylor (2003) for tall. The best referent categories of nevysokij ‘not.high’ after human beings (eminences, constructions, and vegetation) share several crucial spatial features with the human body: they are canonically vertical entities, whose vertical dimension is the maximal one; they stand out from the background by virtue of their height and dynamically grow upwards either by a natural process (as in vegetation) or through human activity (as in constructions). Notice also that the majority of these referents are very high entities, much taller than human beings. Thus, nevysokij ‘not.high’, just like the English tall, can be said to focus on a specific kind of verticality, the one displayed by human beings. Nizkij ‘low’, in its turn, does not seem to profile any specific kind of verticality. It is used for both very high objects (e.g. buildings, trees, mountains) and fairly small entities (e.g. kerbs, foreheads, heels). Its fixed reference point seems to be vertical extent in the most general sense. Following MacLaury (2003, p. 285), I define vertical extent as a ‘‘lineal image of a relation between an upwardly positioned entity and the ground”. The observation that nizkij ‘low’ focuses on the vertical extent from the ground is consonant with Rakhilina’s (2000, p. 135) claim that nizkij ‘low’ profiles the position of the functional top of an object vis-a`-vis the ground level. This makes pieces of furniture having functional tops, such as tables and sofas, good candidates for modification by nizkij ‘low’ (see Table 1 and further Section 4.2.2). Before concluding this section, it should be observed that the definition of a reference point used in this paper is different from what has been traditionally called reference points in the semantics of gradable antonyms (e.g. Clark, 1973; Lyons, 1977; Cruse, 1986; Bierwisch, 1989; Sˇabes, 1989; Ruzin 1994; Levanova and Tribushinina, 1998; Weydt and Schlieben-Lange, 1998; Croft and Cruse 2004; Tribushinina, 2006; Ken-

900 nizkij 'low'

800

nevysokij 'not.high'

700

Frequency

600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Referents

Fig. 4. Frequencies of referent categories in the RNC.

E. Tribushinina / Language Sciences 32 (2010) 241–258 nizkij Entailments VE, range broad, even many extensions, margin

Dominant vantage Fixed Mobile VE S S HV HV D

L 1 2 3

Recessive vantage Fixed Mobile HV D D VE VE S

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nevysokij Entailments HV, margin narrow, skewed few extensions, range

Fig. 5. Vantages on the LOW subscale; VE – vertical extent, HV – human verticality.

nedy, 2007). One of the central assumptions in the semantics of antonymous adjectives (as opposite to nongradable or complementary adjectives) is that they evoke three-part scales comprising the realm of a supra term (e.g. tall), the area of a sub term (e.g. short), and the mid-zone where neither of the antonymous terms applies. This mid-zone or a point in this mid-zone (termed norm, relative standard, cognitive zero, or imaginary zero) has been traditionally considered to be the reference point against which the meaning of a gradable antonym is interpreted. For example, tall is used when the height of an entity exceeds some expected average for that comparison class, whereas short is employed when the object’s height is lower than the reference point in the middle of the scale. In this sense, tall will be interpreted vis-a`-vis two different reference points in the case of tall girl and tall tower, since the usual dimensions of girls and towers do not coincide. Recently, however, a new way of looking at reference-point phenomena in adjectival semantics has been proposed (Tribushinina, 2008a, cf. Rosch, 1975; Langacker, 1993). By this view, an average value in the mid-zone is but one type of reference-point relevant to antonymous adjectives. Other relevant reference-point phenomena include, for instance, endpoints of the scale (minimum and maximum), prototypes, human body, and the ground level. Thus, tall girl and tall tower may differ in such reference points as the norm and the maximum/minimum points, but share a few other reference points, such as a prototype or the ground level. The different reference points account for the fact that the dimensions denoted by tall girl and tall tower are markedly dissimilar. The shared reference points, on the other hand, explain why the same spatial adjective can be applied to such dissimilar entities as a girl and a tower. For one, as shown by Dirven and Taylor (1988), the category TALL is extended from the prototype (human verticality) to entities like trees and towers by virtue of visual similarity with the prototype (e.g. maximally salient vertical extent, dynamic growth, standing out from the background). In other words, towers can be dubbed tall because they display visual similarity with human bodies. In a similar vein, the type of reference points I am primarily dealing with in this paper is a kind of prototype, a visual image of either verticality in relation to the ground level (nizkij ‘low’) or verticality as it is instantiated in human bodies (nevysokij ‘not.high’). These visual images constitute the fixed coordinates of the coextensive ranges of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’. This, however, does not alter the fact that in different noun contexts both nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ will be interpreted vis-a`-vis various other reference points, the norm being perhaps the most salient of them. 4.2.2. Type frequencies in the elicitation test Fig. 6 shows the ranges of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ qua types of elicited head-nouns. The results are quite similar to the findings from the corpus study reported in the previous subsection. The range of nizkij ‘low’ is slightly broader than that of nevysokij ‘not.high’, although this difference is not as profound as in the corpus (this might be due to the relatively small absolute numbers). A very important finding is that, like in the corpus data, we see a large coextensive area where both nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ are applicable. In fact, there are more coextensive types of head-nouns than types specific to nevysokij ‘not.high’. The distribution of head-nouns over referent categories is summarised in Tables 3 and 4. Yet again, the data reveal that nizkij ‘low’ has a more even distribution across different referent categories, including very high objects like trees, bridges, and houses, as well as fairly small entities like chairs, stumps, and heels. In the elicitation test, like in the corpus, furniture and appliances constitute a very prominent referent category, which is in line with Rakhilina’s (2000) claim that nizkij ‘low’ focuses on the position of the functional top vis-a`-vis the ground level. It is noteworthy that this category is one of the most infrequent referent groups of nevysokij ‘not.high’ both in the elicited and non-elicited data (3% and 1.9%, respectively).

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Fig. 6. Type frequencies in the survey.

Table 3 Referents of nizkij ‘low’ in the elicitation test. Referent categories

Examples

Tokens

%

Vegetation Furniture and appliances Constructions Human beings Enclosures Supports Openings Eminences Footwear and clothing Animals Interior Vehicles

el’ ‘spruce’, derevo ‘tree’, kust ‘bush’, trava ‘grass’ krovat’ ‘bed’, skamejka ‘bench’, stol ‘table’, taburet ’stool’ dom ‘house’, krysˇa ‘roof’, lestnica ‘staircase’, most ‘bridge’ devusˇka ‘girl’, mal’cˇik ‘boy’, rost ‘stature’ zabor ‘fence’ penek ‘stump’, stolb ‘post’ dver ‘door’, proxod ‘passage’ ovrag ‘ravine’, xolm ‘hill’ kabluk ‘heel’ kosˇka ‘cat’ podval ‘cellar’ avtomobil’ ‘automobile’

30 27 22 16 8 3 3 2 1 1 1 1

26.1 23.5 19.1 13.9 6.9 2.6 2.6 1.7 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9

Table 4 Referents of nevysokij ‘not.high’ in the elicitation test. Referent categories

Examples

Tokens

%

Human beings Constructions Vegetation Eminences Enclosures Furniture and appliances Supports Animals Footwear and clothing Openings Body parts Monuments Other

cˇelovek ‘human’, devusˇka ‘girl’, muzˇcˇina ‘man’, paren’ ‘lad’ basˇnja ‘tower’, dom ‘house’, zdanie ‘building’ bereza ‘birch’, derevo ‘tree’, dub ‘oak-tree’, kust ‘bush’, trava ‘grass’ gora ‘mountain’, xolm ‘hill’ ograda ‘hedge’, pregrada ‘bar’, zabor ‘fence’ skamejka ‘bench’, stul ‘chair’, tumbocˇka ‘bedside table’ stolb ‘post’ kon’ ‘horse’, zˇiraf ‘giraffe’ kabluk ‘heel’ dver’ ‘door’ lob ’forehead’ skul’ptura ’sculpture’ ob’ekt ‘object’

67 52 42 12 9 6 3 2 2 2 1 1 1

33.5 26 21 6 4.5 3 1.5 1 1 1 0.5 0.5 0.5

The findings for nevysokij ‘not.high’ are also in line with the results from the corpus study. Both in the corpus and in the elicitation test, the most prominent referent category of nevysokij ‘not.high’ are human beings. Other prominent referent categories – constructions, vegetation, and eminences – are all very high entities (usually much higher than humans) that share relevant features of human verticality, such as salience of

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the vertical dimension, dynamic growth, and standing out from the background (Dirven and Taylor, 1988; Taylor, 2003). To summarise, both the non-elicited and the elicited data offer strong support to the main claim made in this paper that nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ co-exist in Russian because they provide two ways of looking at smaller-than-expected vertical size, or, in other words, two vantages on the lower subscale. Nizkij ‘low’ displays properties characteristic of dominant terms. It has a broader range of applications, which was particularly obvious in the corpus data. Due to emphasis on similarity typical of dominant vantages, it has a much higher overall frequency. The dominant term quite evenly distributes over various referents; its most prominent referent categories are fairly heterogeneous and include both very high and very small objects. The distribution of nevysokij ‘not.high’ is symptomatic of recessive vantages. It focuses on a very specific kind of verticality, the one exhibited by human bodies. Its range is smaller than that of the dominant term and it is fairly homogeneous in the sense that the most frequent referents of nevysokij ‘not.high’ are very high entities displaying human-like verticality. As predicted by Vantage Theory, the two ranges have different reference points. The reference point of nizkij ‘low’ is located towards the centre of the category: irrespective of an object type, height can be thought of as a vertical extent from the bottom to the top of an object. By virtue of this fixed image, nizkij ‘low’ can be used with reference to a wide variety of referents, including human beings. The focus of the recessive vantage – human verticality – is skewed towards the periphery. The range of nevysokij ‘not.high’ is largely constituted by human and (topologically) human-like referents. The fact that there may be different ways of looking at vertical size accounts for the large coextensive area. In the following subsection, I will take a closer look at the overlapping referents and analyse the use of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ with the same head-nouns. By looking at actual contexts of use, we may attempt to reconstruct the reasons why the speakers/writers chose one of the near-synonyms and not the other. 4.2.3. Ways of looking at verticality: some examples In this section, I will focus on specific uses of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ with some of the headnouns that were found in combination with both of these adjectives in the corpus and in the elicited data. One of such nouns is trava ‘grass’. Grass is described by means of nizkij ‘low’ in 10 cases in the RNC and was given as a noun that best of all combines with this adjective by 15 subjects. Nevysokij ‘not.high’ is used with reference to grass in 15 cases in the corpus and was combined with the noun trava ‘grass’ by 4 subjects in the elicitation test. Consider the following examples3: (4) Timofej podnjalsja naverx. Veter sˇursˇal v nizkix travax, posvistyval v golenastyx, vysokix stebljax suxogo sibir’ka, daleko vnizu sinela voda. (RNC) ‘Timothy climbed the mountain. The wind was rustling in the low grass and whistling in the high, longlegged stalks of southernwood. The water showed blue far below.’ (5) Doroga byla utomiltel’naja: xolmy, pokrytye negustoj nizkoj travoj s razbrosannymi tam i sjam cvetami, nebo sinee i zˇarkoe, a linejka podymala vokrug sebja i za soboj oblaka beloj pyli. (RNC) ‘Our journey was tiring. The hills were covered with scant low grass and flowers were scattered all over the place. The sky was blue and hot. And the cart was raising clouds of white dust both around and behind itself.’ (6) Opjat’ ona vsja, ot svetloj legkoj sˇljapy do koncˇikov botinok, rjadom stojavsˇix na nizkoj trave, byla vidna emu. (RNC) ‘He could again see her from head to foot, from the light hat to the tip of her boots standing on the low grass by her side.’ (7) Xoteli zˇecˇ’ trostnik ‘‘rysjami” (ognemetami. – Avt.), no on fakticˇeski ne gorel, tol’ko na nebol’sˇom pjatacˇke vygoraet – i vse. V konce koncov vysˇli na bolee lucˇsˇuu mestnost’, s nevysokoj travoj, stali na nocˇleg. (RNC)

3

Since we are not interested in the grammatical structures in this part of the article, I will not gloss the examples. I reckon that translations should suffice for our present purposes.

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‘We wanted to burn reeds using weed burners (flame throwers, Ed.), but it barely burnt. Only small patches burnt out and that was it. Finally we found a better location with low grass and decided to have overnight rest there.’ (8) Mesto bylo vybrano udacˇno. S minutu on lezˇal v nevysokoj mjagkoj trave, rossˇej u zabora, i prislusˇivalsja. Iz doma, tocˇnee, iz raskrytyx naraspasˇku okon slysˇalis’ lisˇ’ negromkie i nevnjatnye golosa. (RNC) ‘The place was well-chosen. For about a minute, he was lying in the low grass by the fence and trying to discern the sounds. He could hear quiet unclear voices coming from the house, or rather from the wideopen windows.’ We see from the above examples that grass is called nizkaja ‘low’ if it is described irrespective of its impact on people and its height is not compared to that of human beings, as in (4) (6). This construal of lowness is rather objective. It is also quite common to use nizkij ‘low’ when the ground with grass on it is in focus, as in (5) and (6). This observation provides further evidence for the finding reported in Section 4.2.1 that nizkij ‘low’ profiles closeness to the ground level. In contrast, nevysokij ‘not.high’ is likely to be used when grass is compared to humans in terms of height. This is, for example, the case in (7), where soldiers estimate the height of reeds and grass in terms of how easy it is to make their way through it and to make an overnight stop. Likewise in (8), the subject is lying in grass which is supposed to hide him from the people he was trying to overhear. Even though the vertical extent of the grass in this example is probably much lower than that of humans, the fact that the person is submerged in grass renders nevysokij ‘not.high’ preferable to nizkij ‘low’ in this context. It is also important to observe that nevysokij ‘not.high’ is usually preceded by the preposition v ‘in’, as in (8) and (9), and is less felicitous with na ‘on’ and po ‘upon’. In contrast, nizkij ‘low’ is equally felicitous with v ‘in’ as in (4), na ‘on’ as in (6), and po ‘upon’ as in (10) below. The observation that nevysokaja trava ‘not.high grass’ is more felicitous with v ‘in’ is consonant with the finding that nevysokij ‘not.high’ presents a humanfocused vantage. V ‘in’ construes the situation in which a person is surrounded by grass, submerged in it. The finding that nizkaja trava ‘low grass’ is felicitous with all three prepositions further strengthens the conclusion that nizkij ‘low’ presents a dominant vantage on the lower subscale and has a wider range of applications. Kogda kulicˇata podrastut i trudnee stanet prjatat’sja im v stepnoj, inogda nevysokoj trave, otec s mater’ju vyvodjat ix v dolocˇki i voobsˇcˇe v takie mesta, gde trava vysˇe i gusˇcˇe ili gde rastet melkij stepnoj kustarnik. (RNC) ‘When the offspring of sandpipers grow bigger and it becomes difficult for them to hide in the steppe grass, which is sometimes quite low, their father and mother would take them to a valley or other places with higher and thicker grass or with small steppe shrubs.’ (10) Esˇcˇe prijatno begat’ po gustoj i nizkoj trave, ona steletsja po zemle, kak pusˇistoe odejalo, i na prosekax stojat cˇernye pni, tam ploxo begat’, no zato mozˇno uvidet’ zelenyx jasˇcˇeric. (RNC) ‘I also like running upon thick low grass, which creeps over the ground as a downy blanket. It is difficult to run in parts where the trees have been cut out and black stumps stand all over the place. But there you can see green lizards.’ (9)

Much in the same vein, the relation of object height to human height is also relevant in combination of nevysokij ‘not.high’ with the noun zabor ‘fence’. It is much more usual to say za nevysokim zaborom ‘behind not.high fence’ than za nizkim zaborom ‘behind low fence’. Crucially, the preposition za ‘behind’ is usually employed not only to say that A is located at the back of B, but also to emphasise that a fence hides something from (human) vision. Given that human verticality is a salient reference point of the recessive vantage, it is quite obvious that nevysokij ‘not.high’ would be preferred to nizkij ‘low’ in such contexts; witness (11). In such cases the height of a fence is implicitly compared to the height of people. ‘Unhigh’ fences are lower than expected, but high enough to hide something from people, which is evidenced by the verb vidnet’sja ‘be barely visible’ in (11). Modification by nevysokij ‘not.high’ can in this sense be treated as a special case of subjectification (Langacker, 1999).

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(11) Slysˇalsja laj sobak, kudaxtan’e kur, v ogorodax za nevysokimi zaborami videnlas’ kartofel’naja botva, akkuratno sobrannaja v burty, koe-gde vysilis’ cˇut’ pozˇeltevsˇie, no esˇcˇe krepkie stebli srezannyx posolnuxov. (RNC) ‘You could hear the barking of dogs and the cackling of hens. In the gardens behind the low fences you could see neatly stacked potato tops. In some places somewhat yellowed, but still firm stalks of the cut sunflowers towered above the fences.’ In the rare cases when nizkij ‘low’ is used in this construction, the situation is construed in more objective terms. The focus is on the location of two entities with respect to each other, rather than on the comparison between human height and that of a fence. Thus, ‘low’ fences, unlike ‘unhigh’ ones, do not hide things from human vision. (12) Veter edva kolysˇet vetvi derevjev. To tut, to tam, mel’knet v temnom nebe esˇcˇe bole temnaja ten’ netopyrja. Skuljat sobaki za nizkim zaborom. (http://www.kulichki.com/bukva/2000/proza/faction/ knight.html) ‘The wind is slightly swaying the branches of the trees. An even darker shadow of a pipistrelle bat quickly flies past now here, now there. Dogs are whining behind a low fence.’ The last case to be considered in greater detail here is the use of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ with reference to human beings. Such cases are of special interest because, as has been shown above, one of these adjectives has human verticality as its fixed reference point. It is clear from the figures in Tables 1–4 that human beings constitute the most prominent referent category for nevysokij ‘not.high’ and one of the minor categories for nizkij ‘low’. Consider (13) and (14): (13) Vzor moj upal na krasivogo molodogo cˇeloveka v furazˇke i sˇirokoj kurtke; on derzˇal pod ruku devusˇku nevysokogo rosta, v solomennoj sˇljape, zakryvavsˇej vsju verxnjuju cˇast’ ee lica. (RNC) ‘My eye fell on a handsome young man wearing a peaked-cap and a wide jacket. He was walking arm in arm with a girl of small stature wearing a straw hat that concealed the upper part of her face.’ (14) Nevysokogo rosta, korenastyj, on, e˙to cˇuvstvuetsja dazˇe na pervyj vzgljad, cenu sebe znaet. (RNC) ‘He was short and stocky; and you could see at first sight that he knew his own value.’ The descriptions of human height by means of nevysokij ‘not.high’ in (13) and (14) can be characterised as neutral. This observation is consistent with the claim that the focus of nevysokij ‘not.high’ is human verticality. Thus, employing this adjective for human subjects is a very common way of speaking about shorter-than-average people. The use of nizkij ‘low’ for human subjects construes human height in a very objective, matter-of-fact way. In such cases, human beings are often treated as inanimate objects whose height is measured in the same way as the height of, say, tables or heels. For illustration, see (15) (17): (15) Nizkij rost siirtja podtverzˇdaet predpolozˇenie o rodsvte ix s saamami, tak kak saamy – samyj nizkoroslyj ˇ ernecovym, imeet rost 159 sm i golovnoj ukazatel’ narod Severa. Muzˇskoj skelet siirtja, obmerennyj C 82, sootvetstvujusˇcˇij saamskomu. (RNC) ‘The short stature of the Sihirta people confirms their presumed relation to the Sami, since the Sami are the shortest people of the North. The skeleton of a Sihirta male measured by Tchernetsov is 159 cm high and the head index is 82, which conforms to the Sami one.’ (16) Pri svoem nizkom roste vesil okolo sˇesti pudov, nastol’ko on byl sˇirok. (RNC) ‘He was so wide that though short [of low stature] he weighed about 100 kilos [six pud]’ (17) Sejcˇas e˙ta problema resˇaema. . . . Dostatocˇno udlinit’ nogi po metodike doktora Ilizarova. (Iloncˇik, 2004.01.18 01:05). A potom vstretit togo, kto ljubit devusˇek imenno nizkogo rosta. . . . Ne fig sebja iz-za muzˇikov urodovat’. (RNC) ‘Nowadays this problem can be easily solved. . . . It is enough to lengthen your legs using Dr. Ilizarov’s method. (Iloncˇik, 2004.01.18 01:05). And then she will meet a man who, on the contrary, likes short girls. . . . Why on earth should you disfigure yourself for the sake of men?’

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Notice that in (15) nizkij ‘low’ is used in a scientific description of a human skeleton. Likewise, the dimensions of a living person in (16) are reported in a very objective manner. In (17), women are described as inanimate objects (e.g. pieces of furniture) that can be made higher or lower (by surgery) depending on the preferences of their male partners. Before concluding this section, it is interesting to mention that similar results were reported in Taylor (2003) for the English near-synonyms high and tall. Taylor convincingly demonstrated that the two adjectives are coextensive in the sense of MacLaury (1995, 1997). High presents the dominant vantage with the vertical extent (in the most general sense) as a fixed reference point; tall names the recessive vantage ‘‘with pronounced emphasis on humans and preference for the animate” (MacLaury, 2003, p. 287). When attention to distinctiveness from human beings prevails over attention to similarity, humans can also be dubbed high, which reflects a very objective way of looking at people as inanimate or non-human entities. Critically, the same happens when nizkij ‘low’ is used to describe people. Perhaps, for this reason, the combination nizkij rost ‘low stature’ is more felicitous than nizkij cˇelovek ‘low person’ (used in the dimensional sense). The latter phrase is more likely to be used metaphorically to mean ‘indecent person’ (see Tribushinina, 2008b for details). 5. Vantage Theory: towards a unified account Until now I have focused on the first question pursued in this study, viz. whether nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ display the dominant-recessive pattern of coextension. The results reported in the preceding section clearly confirm this prediction. Now that we know that VT is applicable to the near-synonyms under study, we may proceed to the second research question that runs a follows: is VT able to provide a unified explanatory account of the semantic differences between nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’ discovered by the previous research? The following three differences have been repeatedly pointed out in the literature (see Section 2): (a) nevysokij ‘not.high’ may denote objectively higher values than nizkij ‘low’; (b) there is a strong tendency to apply nizkij ‘low’ to smaller-than-human referents, whereas nevysokij ‘not.high’ is likely to describe entities that are as tall as or taller than human beings; (c) nevysokij ‘not.high’ is neutral; nizkij ‘low’ often involves negative evaluation. I would like to suggest that the properties in (a) and (b) can be directly related to the finding that the adjectives under consideration have coextensive ranges, but different fixed reference points – ground level for nizkij ‘low’ and human verticality for nevysokij ‘not.high’. Closeness to the ground primarily expressed by nizkij ‘low’ is likely to be emphasised in the case of objects, which humans observe from above, viz. objects of smaller-than-human height. In contrast, properties of human verticality characteristic of the recessive vantage are, by and large, projected to entities that are, at least, as tall as humans. Put another way, in order to stand out from the background in the eyes of a human conceptualizer, an object must be as tall as or taller than humans themselves. This motivates the expansion of the recessive vantage from human beings to very high entities, such as mountains, buildings, and trees. Focus on human verticality in the recessive vantage also explains why nevysokij ‘not.high’ is only felicitous with prepositions that relate an entity to the visual field of a human conceptualizer (see Section 4.2.3). In contrast, the widely applicable reference point of the dominant vantage (vertical extent from the ground) accounts for the fact that nizkij ‘low’ is felicitous with a wide range of spatial prepositions. The property in (c) is more problematic, since it reveals a pattern opposite to the one reported for colour terms. In the domain of colour, it is the recessive term that is characterised by a plethora of connotations and extended uses, so that ‘‘dominant vs. recessive entailments are summarised, respectively, as literal vs. figurative” (MacLaury, 2002, p. 501). In contrast, the results of this study and Taylor (2003) show that the dominant term has a lot more extensions than the recessive term. This brings us to the point of comparing the results obtained for colour terms with the findings for dimensional adjectives reported in this paper and in Taylor (2003). I will take this issue up in the following section.

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6. Application of Vantage Theory to spatial adjectives 6.1. Spatial adjectives vs. colour terms In view of the fact that VT was brought into being by the studies of colour terminology, it might be rewarding to compare the main findings from earlier colour studies (e.g. MacLaury, 1995, 1997, 2002) with the results for spatial adjectives reported in this paper and in Taylor (2003). Some relevant dimensions of comparison are summarised in Table 5. Table 5 shows that the findings from colour research are largely uniform with the results for spatial adjectives obtained in the present study and reported in Taylor (2003). In the first place, dominant terms in both domains are more frequent than recessive terms. In the second place, the scope of the dominant range is much broader than that of the recessive range. Dominant colour terms were shown to be applicable to a wider variety of colour instantiations, whereas recessive colour terms easily map only onto a very restricted range of the category. In a similar fashion, the dominant spatial adjectives nizkij ‘low’ and high are used to describe a wide variety of entities, including human beings, whereas nevysokij ‘not.high’ and tall primarily apply to human referents and entities sharing crucial spatial properties with human beings. In the third place, the fixed reference point of the dominant range is usually located at the centre of the category, which sanctions the use of dominant terms with reference to a wide range of objects and motivates their even distribution over different referent categories. The reference point of the recessive range is usually located towards the periphery. In the case of nevysokij ‘not.high’ and tall, this property manifests itself in the distribution skewed towards human referents, since, in MacLaury’s words, ‘‘humans and certain other animates may generally tend to stand alone in the eyes of human viewers” (MacLaury, 2003, p. 287). There is, however, also a point of difference. As indicated in the preceding section, colour terms and dimensional adjectives differ markedly in the distribution of extended uses. In the domain of colour, recessive vantages were shown to possess a lot more evaluative uses and metaphorical extensions than the matter-of-fact (and, in a way, dull) dominant vantages. For spatial adjectives, the reverse is true. As noted by Taylor (2003, p. 281), tall has very few metaphorical extensions. What is more, the few non-spatial uses of tall (e.g. tall order, tall story, tall tale) do not seem to be specifically related to verticality. High, on the contrary, is characterised by a large number of positional and metaphorical extensions, which, according to Taylor (2003, p. 280), could be related to emphasis on similarity typical of dominant vantages. The same holds for the Russian near-synonyms nizkij ‘low’ and nevysokij ‘not.high’. The dominant term – nizkij ‘low’ – is characterised by a large number of extended uses. In fact, dimensional uses of nizkij ‘low’ constitute only 9% of the total number of occurrences in the RNC. Nevysokij ‘not.high’, in contrast, has much fewer non-dimensional uses (25% in the RNC). This result is in line with the observation often made in the relevant literature that nevysokij ‘not.high’ is a neutral term, whereas nizkij ‘low’ often involves negative evaluation of the subject (see Section 2). In response to Taylor (2003), MacLaury offers the following explanation of this pattern with respect to high and tall: emphasis on similarity ‘‘reinforces the commonality of reference” licensing high in its positional and metaphorical uses (MacLaury, 2003, p. 286). However, this explanation is problematic, since it cannot account for the reverse pattern found in colour terminology. If emphasis on similarity is crucial to licensing extensions, then dominant colour terms should have more extended uses than their recessive counterparts, which is not borne out by the data (e.g. MacLaury, 1995, p. 268, 2002; MacLaury et al., 1997, p. 501ff.; Paramei, 2005).

Table 5 Vantages on colour and space. Properties

Frequency Scope Fixed RP Extended uses

Colour terms

Spatial adjectives

Dominant term

Recessive term

Dominant term

Recessive term

High Wide Centre Few

Low Narrow Periphery Many

High Wide Centre Many

Low Narrow Periphery Few

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Now compare this explanation with the one provided by MacLaury with respect to colour terms. As reviewed above, MacLaury (2002, p. 501ff.) explains the literal vs. figurative asymmetry between, respectively, dominant and recessive vantages by appealing to the notion of cognitive distance. In his view, greater cognitive distance leads to more connotations and poetic uses, whereas smaller cognitive distance accommodates literal use. This seems to explain why dominant colour terms have few connotative uses: emphasis on similarity contracts cognitive distance between the conceptualizer and the coordinates and prevents further analysis. In contrast, emphasis on distinctiveness characteristic of the recessive vantages extends cognitive distance and reinforces analysis, which, it is argued, eventually leads to a myriad of connotations and metaphoric uses of the recessive colour term. Yet again, we are confronted with the same problem as in the previous explanation. If figurativeness vs. literalness is determined by cognitive distance, which, in its turn, is defined by the selective emphasis on similarity or difference, then the same principle should apply to the spatial domain. In other words, we should expect the shorter cognitive distance in the dominant vantages (high, nizkij) to lead to literalness and the protracted cognitive distance in the recessive vantages (tall, nevysokij) to motivate extensions. However, as demonstrated by this study and by Taylor (2003), this does not happen. This is an important finding that might have implications for further development of Vantage Theory and its application to domains other than colour. What is needed is a study of other groups of dimensional and non-dimensional scalar adjectives in terms of vantage configurations. Depending upon the future results, two possible refinements of VT might be necessary. Firstly, if the pattern of extended uses reported for the adjectives of vertical size will be replicated for other dimensional and/or non-dimensional scalars, then we will have to admit that the criteria of the dominant vs. recessive status must be adjusted. One way to deal with it is to acknowledge that the literalness criterion is not trustworthy for identifying the status of a coextensive term. Secondly, if the pattern of extended uses discovered for the pairs tall:high and nevysokij:nizkij is typical only of adjectives denoting vertical size and not, for example, of pairs like nebol’sˇoj ‘not.big’:malen’kij ‘small’ or neglubokij ‘not.deep’:melkij ‘shallow’, then the results of the present study and Taylor (2003) could be explained by the privileged status of the vertical dimension. The privileged status of the vertical axis in the mental world of a human being is conceptually motivated by the intrinsic vertical orientation of the human body (see further Clark, 1973). If this scenario proves to be the case, then it would mean that VT should look not only at the nature of the mobile coordinates (S or D), but also at the nature of the fixed coordinates. Critically, it is not the whole story that emphasis on similarity contracts cognitive distance and emphasis on difference protracts it, since cognitive distance between the observer and the primary reference point may also depend upon the very nature of that reference point. For example, the fact that human verticality functions as the primary reference point of the recessive vantage in the case of both tall and nevysokij ‘not.high’ may significantly reduce cognitive distance, for what can be closer to the human conceptualizer than human verticality? Thus, the problem we are confronted with here could stem from the fact that VT gives insufficient attention to the nature of fixed coordinates. At this stage, there is too little evidence to make any resolute conclusions. Thus, I tentatively conclude that either the status of fixed reference points or the criteria of the dominant-recessive status are subject to further refinement within VT. 6.2. Methodological implications: beyond colour Extension of Vantage Theory to domains beyond colour terminology necessarily brings with it adjustment of the methodology. One important and well-established difference between spatial adjectives and colour terms is that the former are a lot vaguer than the latter, which suggests that not all of the procedures applied to the study of vantages on colour categories can be employed in the analysis of scalar terms. In the first place, as indicated by Taylor (2003, p. 279), colour samples can be described along the objectively identifiable dimensions of hue, brightness, and saturation. Such objective parameters are clearly missing in the studies of vague spatial terms. Therefore, we can only make speculative judgments about, for instance, the position of the fixed reference point (centre or periphery). In the second place, colour terms are more ‘‘absolute” in the sense that realizations of colour can be studied without relation to entities displaying these colours. For example, a lot of colour research has been done using the Munsell colour chart. In the case of

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dimensional adjectives, however, the denotation is largely contingent on the type of entity being described. This motivates the need to study vague adjectives in close relation to their head-nouns. The two procedures used in this study – analysis of corpus examples and elicitation of ‘‘best” head-nouns – proved useful for the investigation of vantage configurations in scalar domains. The former procedure may be taken as a methodological counterpart of the mapping task used by MacLaury, the latter corresponds quite neatly to the author’s naming task (1997). The third method used by MacLaury in his studies of colour terminology – focus selection – can be adopted for the investigation of spatial terms in the following manner applied by Dirven and Taylor (1988, p. 396): ‘‘We can all think of objects that we would readily call ‘tall’. But some would be better examples of ‘tallness’ and others less good or even bad examples. How do you think ‘tall’ applies to the following examples?” Further, some of the methods developed by Weydt and Schlieben-Lange (1998), such as word selection task, drawing task, and opposite elicitation task, could also prove useful to the study of dimensional adjectives within the framework of VT. After all, most new approaches start by using methods developed in other areas of research. To summarise, although vantage research in the domain of vague dimensional adjectives definitely has its methodological restrictions as compared to studies of colour terminology, these restrictions are not at all insurmountable. Various modifications of methodology can be implemented so that the study of vantage configurations becomes feasible even with vague lexical items. 7. Concluding remarks I started this investigation by asking the question why morphological negation of dimensional adjectives is not blocked in Slavic languages. As a case in point, I have analysed the distribution of the near-synonymous Russian adjectives nevysokij ‘not.high’ and nizkij ‘low’. A review of the literature yielded some relevant differences between the two terms and, more importantly, the need to develop a unified account of these seemingly unrelated differences. I have argued that VT is able to provide such an account. First, it can plausibly explain why the two terms have largely overlapping types of referents: they name coextensive vantages on the same subscale. Second, VT can account for the finding that nizkij ‘low’ is evenly distributed over referent categories, whereas nevysokij ‘not.high’ displays a very skewed distribution: the two terms have distinct reference points: ground level for nizkij ‘low’ and human verticality for nevysokij ‘not.high’. Since virtually all objects can be measured from the ground to the top, but only a very specific topological type of entity displays features of human-like verticality, nizkij ‘low’ applies to a wider range of referents than nevysokij ‘not.high’ and is more evenly distributed over referent categories. Third, a vantage-based way of looking at the two terms may provide a plausible explanation of the finding that nevysokij ‘not.high’ usually denotes objectively higher values than nizkij ‘low’ and is therefore more often applicable to entities that are as tall as or taller than humans. Since the two important coordinates of the recessive vantage are human verticality (fixed) and attention to difference (mobile), nevysokij ‘not.high’ primarily applies to entities that are topologically similar to human beings. And, in the eyes of a human conceptualizer, objects with human-like verticality are usually at least as tall as humans themselves. This criterion sets the category boundary close to the focus of the recessive range and precludes speakers from using nevysokij ‘not.high’ for shorter-than-human referents. This study has also identified some of the potential problems of VT. One of the problems is that not enough attention is paid to the nature of fixed reference points. For one, as has been shown here, the subjective character of a fixed image can override the tendency to protract cognitive distance in D-based recessive vantages, which reverses the pattern normally predicted by VT. Furthermore, it might be necessary to revise the criteria of the dominant vs. recessive status, because not all of them seem to work in domains beyond colour. Future research will be crucial to resolving these issues. Acknowledgments This article benefited greatly from the constructive suggestions by two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this issue, to whom I am most grateful. I also would like to express my appreciation to Theo Janssen and Arie Verhagen for their guidance in the preparation and implementation of the study. Thanks to Anna Ladik,

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