Do people still study Frame Semantics?
As an elective, many year ago, I took one course in a topic called Semantics. I remember my professor saying that dictionaries are problematic since they try to tell you one particular meaning of a word is better than another. So she does not like this at all: Webester's Dictionary, Roget's Thesauraus -- forget it!
Instead she suggested we look at word relationships and frames.
- WordNet is a website where one can look up words and find various senses and related words. A house can be
- a place where someone lives
- an aristocratic family line
- a casino (e.g. "the house always wins")
- etc.
- FrameNet I understood frames less, but it's sort of like each word comes with a "frame" describing how it is used:
- Milton TOOK the can of beer out of the refrigerator.
- An Agent removes a Theme from a Source so that the it is in the Agent's possession. Milton TOOK the can of beer out of the refrigerator.
- I GOT two whistles from John.
- A Recipient starts off without the Theme in their possession, and then comes to possess it.
It's not hard to find resources on Google (e.g. here) but I am not a linguist and I can't tell one way or the other. Does this theory still exist? Does it get applied outside of very specialized settings?
