Occasional Collocations As A Carrier Of Implicit Information

Implicit information in a fiction text

There is a number of linguistic and speech facts due to which we use to talk about duplicity, subtext or hidden meaning (Ermakova, 2009). Each text contains similar formations, and they sometimes make it difficult to understand the text or its part, since they have implicit content.

Phenomenon of implicitness is studied from various points: linguistic, psycholinguistic, ethnolinguistic, cultural and methodical aspects, at different levels of linguistic system: lexico-semantic, grammatical, word-formational, syntactical and others (Bondarko, 2006). In the field of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics the phenomenon of implicitness was elaborated by Russian linguists (I.A. Zimnyaya, V.Z. Demiankov, L.V. Lisotchenko and others) as well as by foreign researchers (B.D. Homer, J.T Ramsy, A. Begg and others). Issues, related to definition of implicit information and its interpretation are considered in studies of methods of teaching Russian as foreign language (Gorovaya & Akasheva, 2018).

Implicitness is a feature of linguistic units to keep information expressed in a special way which the addressee due to his knowledge and experience should define in the text taking in account assigned context.

It is common practice to define the following types of implicit information: extralinguistic, textual, discursive; communicative; general cultural and ethnospecific (Belyakova, 2011). Implicit information occurs by means of universal mechanism of reduction of verbal content of the text, this compression leads to optimization of linguistic system means, and at the speech level it corresponds to compression of verbal content of statement (Shaludko, 2016).

At the lexico-semantic level implicitness is manifested as a result of combination of meanings of polysemantic words, different connotations of these meanings, “categorical shifts” (metaphoric expressions, metonymy), euphemisms, periphrastic replacement, phraseological units (Barysheva, 2015). Implicit meaning of a word is revealed only in the plan of syntagmatics, within collocation. Sub-textual implicitness is created due to the mechanism of intratextual semantic actualization, i.e. potential of a fiction text to establish intratextual (paradigmatic) interconnections between elements within its structure.

Traditionally there are the following types of verbal context: resolving context, supporting context, extinction context, compensating context, intensifying context. To express implicit information in the text extinction and intensifying contexts are most commonly used. Extinction context creates occasional meaning, which does not exist in language system. Intensifying context ensures increment of sense in process of text perceiving. These two context types facilitate creation of semantic occasionalisms including occasional collocations.

Besides verbal context formation of semantic content of fiction text is influenced by extralinguistic context, which includes knowledge and mental representations of the author and text addressee, cultural traditions, life situations, individual and collective experience, intellectual abilities and so on.

Identification of built-in the text information (especially fiction text) may be implemented through various approaches: from the author to text (studying and understanding the author, his biography, psychological peculiarities, etc.), and from text to the author (identification of specifics of structural-semantic properties of the text, “sense increment”, defining intratextual relations of linguistic units at different levels, etc.). These two approaches actually complement one another and allow perceiving and interpretation of information embedded in the text (Aketina, 2017).

In this regard it is possible to distinguish the following means of creating hidden meanings in a fiction text aimed to activate mental processes essential for a reader to understand a text: archetypal representations; tropes and stylistic figures of speech; contextual environment of a particular speech element; extralinguistic context; intertextual references and literary allusions; verbal visualization of the image, etc. (Bitokova, 2014). Markers of implicit information may refer to any language level. In one respect, context serves for coding the author’s idea, and at the same time it is used as essential condition for distinguishing hidden meaning from the text, i.e. decoding (Bitokova, 2014).

Because the meaning of the text represents the result of author’s reflection and associative reader’s activity, there are various options and models for interpretation of implicit information due to intellectual background of the author and readers, and their mental representations.

The specifics of the interpretation of implicit information in occasional collocations

Since the end of the last century linguistics is characterized by increasing interest to various types of innovations. Among their definitions the most frequent are “neologism”, “potential word”, “occasionalism”:

…under neologisms we admit some stable innovative elements which entered communication of some groups of people; potential words are words that are created (but not yet fixed by the tradition of word usage) or can be modelled via productive rules and the meaning of which is derived entirely from the sum of the meanings of their constituents; while occasionalisms are understood as words or meanings of words, invented to meet the needs of a particular occasion in order to catch the reader’s attention, shock or provoke, create hidden meanings (semantic condensation) and express the author’s evaluation. (Nykytchenko, 2015, р. 186)

The authors of the article «The study of occasional words: theoretical aspect», speaking about semantic occasionalisms admit, that words of this type are related to tropes and represent a result of occurring of new senses modifying semantics of original lexical item within context (Smirnova, Sadykova, & Davletbaeva, 2014, р. 534). Occasional collocations are defined as follows: “The occasional (unusual) combination of words presents a confluence of lexemes and compatibility of these lexemes is impossible in customary usage since it contradicts the law of semantic agreement in consequence of the absence of common semes in their lexical meanings” (Smirnova, Sadykova, & Davletbaeva, 2014, р. 534).

Thereby, the most vivid example of writer’s reflection is occasionalism. Some of them act as idioglosses (variation of key word). In other words, these occasionalisms are frequently used in works of different genres of one and the same author; they serve as producing base for new words, which form word-forming units, and also establish new valence links within occasional combinations of words. For instance, obshchechelovek / common human being of F.M. Dostoevskiy (as cited in Korobova, 2017), kislota / acid of A.P. Chekhov (as cited in Gorovaya, 2004) and others.

Unique character of occasional words is immanent and referrers to the specifics of their nature: they represent natural composition of language tradition and individual author’s speech, something stereotypical and creative, precedent and unexpected features; their understanding requires certain linguistic and extralinguistic background knowledge; they may cause both predictable and spontaneous associations. (Nesterova, Nagalnykh, & Pozdeeva, 2016, p. 46)

The issue of the status of occasional word combinations was considered in the works of G. Shperber, V.B. Shklovskiy, V.V. Vinogradov, V.K. Telia, I.R. Galperin, E.G. Kovalevskaya and others. Scientists have common understanding regarding compatibility context, which is considered as a sphere where transformations of the semantics of the word are made and discovered. Occasional combinations of words mean uncodified, uncommon combinations of lexical items, comprising two or more words and characterized by a number of differential features, among them, together with main features of occasional word, there is also capability to serve as microcontext for semantic modification of the word.

Problem of compatibility is studied in the article of Vlavatskaya (2014) «Combinatory Linguistics: An area of theoretical and applied language study», it presents definition of combinatorial linguistics, describes the history of the formation of this field of knowledge in foreign linguistics (syntagmatics, valence theory, meaning and context theory, etc.) as well as in the Russian tradition (valency theory, compatibility theory, contextual theory, etc.), also the terminological base is substantiated, aspects of studying the compatibility of linguistic units are indicated, etc. According to Vlavatskaya (2014) compatibility being a linguistic phenomenon performs a number of important functions: renewal of lexical meaning of the word, distinction of polysemantic words and homonyms meanings, creation of occasional combinations of words, and others. Creation of occasional (author’s) collocations (occasional metaphoric expressions), according to the researcher, correlates with author’s individual view of the world, from micro- yomacrocontext.

It is only correct to analyze occasionalism in its contextual position, because the author’s word appears in context and is formed by context, very often being a text formation unit (Dal & Namer, 2016).

In the theory of occasionality it is common to distinguish the following context types: zero context (explication of semantics through inner form); mini context (combination of words, sentence or paragraph); macro context (all the text of the work or its major part); creative context (in order to study the evolution of neologisms used by the author); historical and cultural one, vertical context (consideration of social and cultural conditions of occasionalism creation); word formation context (authors comment to the new word, containing direct information on mechanism of creation or word semantics) (Zinc, 2015).

Occasional combinations of words are important in individual style of many writers   (M.E. Saltykov-Schedrin, F.M. Dostoevskiy, A.I. Kuprin, A.P. Chekhov, Yu. Nagibin, L. Leonov, V. Kataev, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, and others). In case of uncommon semantic conditions notional word structure gets enriched, implicitly built-in options for semantic and stylistic use gain traction, which affects expression of a context in the whole.

Analysis of occasional combinations in stylistic system of one writer draws some light on certain common patterns, peculiar for literary speech in the whole. Usually, in order to understand the sense of statement the reader is required to implement the most simple mental activities, to know meaning of the words, used by author in definite context, have some understanding regarding word formation rules and constructing the syntactical structures in a given language. But situation is different with text which contains occasional elements, where information about object of speech is presented implicitly. In this case the reader takes part in process of creation, acts as co-author, because to understand the text he has to pass the way, as author has done in the process of creation of this code, textual gaps, which require from the reader certain interpretation talent. Thus, the sense of text is a result of author’s reflection and associative activity of reader. Possibility for the word to reach out the limits of its meaning lies in the fact that the word begins to mean a notion, connected by dimensional, time and causal connections with its usual meaning, moreover, the new meaning either coexists with the old, or completely supplants it.

To illustrate the foresaid we suggest the following examples:

Solzhenitsyn (1993) in his novel “The Red Wheel” creates a lot of occasional collocations which require intellectual efforts to be understood: wildish hair of beard-to-be; pinky-grey panther; whitely-glowing bill for balls and cards, moustache-and-beard face underside, incense-gray spirit and others.

For instance, in one chapter we come across a word combination mustache-and-beard face underside which describes General Samsonov. This collocation is clear without context (“face with beard and moustache”). But involving extended context enables us to reveal implicit information supported by actualisators and to make more precise definition of the word combination mustache-and-beard face underside : “one-third of face covered with beard and moustache, like Nicolay the II’s one”.

Interesting is the transformation of the occasional combination of words an incense-grayspirit which is a combination of features that characterize the word being defined from different angles: attribution to the object and its colour. The unusual combination of a complex adjective with a noun spirit (the adjective gray is a definition of the adjective incense that defines the noun spirit ), and also the fact that each of the components can be combined with different meanings of the noun spirit allows us to conclude about the semantic duality of the occasional combination. The dictionaries provide the following definition of the semantics of the noun spirit with the mark “archaic and colloquial”: ‘air’, ‘smell, aroma’ . In the analyzed context, the noun spirit , in our opinion, is used in the first sense (‘air saturated with the smell of incense’ ). Thus, the incense-gray spirit is ‘ the air, saturated with the smell of incense, gray-bluish as a result of the burning of an aromatic substance during worship’ . However, in the broad context, there are actualizers of implicit semantics: the definition of conciliating , i.e. "promoting tolerance towards someone ", as well as the archaic noun condescension , which is absent in the dictionaries of the modern Russian language, but included in the dictionary entry to the word condescending (i.e., ‘ go down from above /about God or the Holy Spirit/ ’) in the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language" (Dahl, 2006). In this case, the relation to the divine principle comes to the fore.

Taking into consideration the dictionary definitions and the meanings of actualizers, the two-sided semantics of the phrase “ incense-gray spirit ” can be defined as ‘the air, saturated with incense smell, gray-bluish as a result of smoking during worship, envelops a person’ ; ‘ something having a pacifying effect on a person, associated with belief in a supernatural, divine principle’ .

Thus, the process of creating occasional combinations of words for Solzhenitsyn (1993) is a conscious creative process that generates the reader’s identification of associative links embedded in the text both explicitly and implicitly. The purpose of understanding is not only to interpret the meaning of the text, but also to activate the reader's thinking processes. The process of understanding implicit meanings can be defined as a dialogue between the author and the reader through interaction with the context.