Lexical Functions and Language Learning

Abstract

The notion of lexical functions can be used by language teachers to help students learn proper lexical collocations and develop a richer vocabulary.' The notion is taken from the works of I. Mel',uk, A. Zolkovskij, Ju. Apresjan, and their colleagues.2 This article is in three parts: first we present the lexico-syntactic problem facing the student and try to show how the principle of lexical functions relates to it; then we give examples of various lexical functions; finally we present illustrative pedagogical materials. The language learner generally has at his disposal two standard printed sources of information about the target language, a grammar and a dictionary. If a student of Russian wants to say that something is 'under the table' in the target language, the dictionary gives him pod 'under' and stol 'table'; the dictionary and the grammar tell him that pod takes the instrumental case and the grammar provides the ending -om. If, however, the student wants to place an order for something, neither the grammar nor the dictionary will tell him what verb to use with zakaz 'order.' Neither under the entry 'order' nor under the entry 'place' in MiUller's widely used English-Russian dictionary can one find the collocation delat' zakaz. (The fact that he can look up the paraphrase 'to order,' find the verb zakazat', and make do with that, is beside the point here). To conduct this vain search, the dictionary user must examine twenty-four sub-entries under 'take,' not counting idioms. In other cases, the dictionary does provide this sort of information. If the student wants to know what to do to a vyvod 'conclusion,' i.e. how to say 'draw a conclusion,' the Muiller dictionary contains delat' vyvod under both 'conclusion' and 'draw.' But if the dictionary user elects to look up 'draw' first (a long entry), rather than 'conclusion' (a relatively short entry), he will have to examine eighteen of the twenty-eight sub-entries before hitting upon delat' vyvod. In still other cases the dictionary is misleading. If the user wants to know what to do to a razgovor 'conversation,' i.e. English 'have/carry on a conversation,' he will find the expression vesti pustoj razgovor under the entry razgovor for English 'make (idle) conversation.' The semantic element of superficiality is rendered in Russian by the adjective pustoj, and in English