3.

Semantic Prosody

Firth (1957) expressed an important fact in his aphoristic observation “You shall know the
word by the company it keeps.” That means that a word’s meaning can be guessed on the basis
of its most frequent collocates: “specific cues (about a word's precise meaning) can be gleaned
from a word's collocations and semantic preferences, (...) this is the single most important
source of information that learners use to learn relational words from linguistic context.”
(Dąbrowska 2009: 206)
It has been observed that the most frequent collocations of a word tend to contribute to its
connotations. This phenomenon is known as semantic prosody.

Semantic prosody is a “consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates”
(Louw 1993: 157)

it has been claimed that the adverb ‘utterly’ is characterised by an unfavourable semantic prosody on
account of its habitual co-occurrence with words denoting unfavourable states of affairs such as
‘ridiculous’, ‘disgraceful’ and ‘miserable’. (Stewart 2009: 45)

The most striking feature of this phrasal verb (set in) is the nature of its subjects. In general, they refer
to unpleasant states of affairs [ . . . ] The main vocabulary is rot, decay, malaise, despair, ill-will, decadence,
impoverishment, infection, prejudice, vicious (circle), rigor mortis, numbness, bitterness, mannerism, anticlimax,
anarchy, disillusion, disillusionment, slump. Not one of these is conventionally desirable or attractive.
(Sinclair 1991: 74-75)

Exercise 1
Based on the following concordance, what can be said about the semantic prosody of somewhat?

1. a somewhat nasty pretty reasonable

2. a somewhat lengthy hearing her charges
3. a somewhat analogous footing to the
4. being somewhat dirty and slightly
5. being somewhat different on the teaching
6. a somewhat indiscreet observation referred to
7. home somewhat occasionally and very occasionally
8. I somewhat took Stalker’s part
9. is somewhat predictable well now if
10. is somewhat of a madman in
11. wet somewhat bleak not very warm
12. have somewhat less the probability of
13. was somewhat of a strange character
14. were somewhat tired after our long walk
Formulaic Language

near-synonyms tend to have distinct collocation patterns. Systematic comparison of these patterns
allows lexicographers to bring out the differences in meaning and thus write better definitions;
likewise, I suggest, language learners can use the information inherent in typical collocation patterns
and semantic preferences to construct lexical representations in their mental lexicons. (Dąbrowska
2009: 206)

Exercise 2
The adjectives persistent and enduring are near-synonyms; they differ in their semantic prosody. The
nouns in the following list (from the News on the Web Corpus) are the most frequent collocates of the
two adjectives. In one column, the collocates are positive and in the other they are negative. Can you
guess which collocates go with which adjectives?

legacy 3656 cough 2335

appeal 2424 problem 2196
peace 2195 inflation 2017
popularity 1991 threat 1913
power 1722 symptoms 1637
freedom 1441 pain 1164
commitment 1172 cookies 1072
friendship 1016 poverty 922
impact 1001 rumours 870
relationship 976 failure 844
value 855 attacks 793
partnership 830 drought 679
success 828 fever 583

Exercise 3
Based on these uses of the phrasal verb sit through, what is its semantic prosody?

We sit through mindless droning of so called NFL experts.

If I could barely sit through most of this movie, it must be intolerable for a 10 year old.
I'd rather sit through hours of religious indoctrination than be sexually abused.
…less willing we are to sit through an hour-long worship service.
he was required to sit through a classroom reading of King and King
Boxing fans just had to sit through nine rounds of non-action…
…we were forced to sit through an hour of a guy screaming about digestive problems.

Exercise 4
Do a Google search of the following items. What is their semantic prosody?
aspire to; brook (v); condone; lavish (v); provide; bordering on;

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 Exercise 5
How consistent is the semantic prosody of the frame leave NP feeling ADJ?

but the tonal balance leaves you feeling cold

is unreliable and... and leaves you feeling disappointed
Looking at the photos alone leaves you feeling depressed.
gives you goosebumps and leaves you feeling uncomfortable.
burglary is a violation that leaves you feeling victimized
and yet the dependence leaves you feeling trapped.
undisturbed sleep not only leaves you feeling energized
not to corner you into a box that leaves you feeling guilty
one that stresses you out or leaves you feeling unfulfilled
It is a tragedy that somehow leaves you feeling good at the end.
That combination is what leaves you feeling sick and exhausted.
A high-sugar breakfast leaves you feeling mentally fatigued about an hour later.
And one more thing: It leaves you feeling pretty damn bored.
you sweat more, which leaves you feeling dehydrated
is morally very grey and leaves you feeling a little conflicted.

The subliminal aspects of language use

A lot about our language use is subconscious in the sense that we don’t consciously control it.
A good illustration of this point is the notorious case of Susan Smith.

Mrs. Smith pulled her car to the edge of a deep lake, stepped out, put the gearshift in drive, and let it roll
down the boat ramp into the black water. Her two little boys, buckled snugly in their safety seats, died
in the lake. https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/11/07/pained-town-asks-why/

To throw the police off her trail, Smith claimed that her boys had been abducted at gunpoint.
A nationwide search for the alleged kidnapper was launched. What gave her away was that she
talked about her children in past tense: “I can't do enough. My children wanted me. They
needed me. And now I can't help them.” This was an indication that Smith knew the children
were dead. She herself was not aware of the fact that she was letting slip that crucial detail
through grammar. The choice of the tense is for the most part not a conscious decision.
Similarly, semantic prosody is beyond conscious control. Louw (1993:169–171) claims that
semantic prosody can reveal hidden attitudes even when the speaker tries to conceal his or her
motives or true feelings. Channell (1999:38) suggests that semantic prosody “can be exploited
by speakers to express evaluative meaning covertly”
 Formulaic Language

The subliminal nature of the semantic prosody of set in

Of course, when we say that semantic prosody tends to be unconscious, that does not mean it’s
‘hidden forever’. A word’s semantic prosody can be observed by studying its usage patterns.

(Knowledge of co-occurrence) is not necessarily either conscious or explicitly recollectable but remains
part of our communicative competence. Competent speakers’ knowledge of the item set in, then,
includes the fact that it is not normally found in a favourable environment. (Partington 2004:132)

Question
Read the following paragraph on the transparency of the semantic prosody of the verb set in. What
point does the author make about the combination ‘their marriage set in’? Why is the unpleasantness
of threaten more transparent than that of set in?

the unpleasantness of this verb’s habitual company is one its primary characteristics, and this is why
‘their marriage set in’ sounds unusual. (…) even if the unpleasantness of this verb is for some reason not
as transparent as the unpleasantness of threaten, its recurrent use in unpleasant environments, or
better its co-occurrence with overwhelmingly bad company, is transparent to the extent that any
deviation from its generally unpleasant subjects is salient. (Stewart 2010: 143)

Main points

• Semantic prosody is a consistent aura of meaning that a word absorbs from its collocates;
• Speakers are normally unaware of a word’s semantic prosody;
• But they are sensitive to its effects, especially if a word is used in an unusual way that is
inconsistent with its semantic prosody.

References
Dabrowska, Ewa. 2009. Words as constructions. In Vyvyan Evans and Stéphanie Pourcel (Eds.), New Directions in
Cognitive Linguistics, 201-223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Channell, Joanna. 1999. Corpus-based analysis of evaluative lexis. In Susan Hunston and Geoffrey Thompson
(Eds.), Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, (pp. 38–55). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Firth John Rupert. 1957. Studies in linguistic analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Louw, Bill. 1993. ‘Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies’,
in M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (Eds.), Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, (pp. 157–
175). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Partington, Alan. 2004. Corpora and discourse, a most congruous beast. In A. Partington, J. Morley & L.
Haarman (Eds.), Corpora and Discourse, (pp. 11–20). Bern: Peter Lang.
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stewart, Dominic. 2010. Semantic Prosody. A Critical Evaluation. New York: Routledge.

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