8.9 Vocabulary for relational concepts
One possible way of encoding semantic relations among words and phrases is to invent words that express them. At
the one-word stage, relational words are pointless. But once multiple-symbol utterances are possible, many classes of
“utility”vocabulary items offer themselves as design possibilities. In modern language, some are words, some are
morphological affixes, and some are realized as variants of word order (“constructions”in the sense of Chapter 6).
Here are a few types.
- Spatial relation terms. To give someone directions to some spatial location, we don't do a dance like the
honeybees. We say“Go up thestrea mtoa treenext toa big rock. Behind thetreeand a littletotheside you'll
see a bush that has great fruit on it.”Such descriptionis impossiblewithout all the words that indicate spatial
relations:up, to, next to, behind, to the side, andon.^128 - Time terms. These include explicittime terms such asnow, yesterday, andTuesday;temporal relational terms such
asbefore, after, anduntil;and (once inflection develops) tense and aspect inflection. - Marks of illocutionary force and modality. These differentiate declaratives fro mquestions, co m mands, and
exclamations. They appear in modern language sometimes as variations in word order, sometimes as verbal
inflection, sometimes as differences in intonation, and sometimes as a particular word that marks the
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(^128) Some of these, for exampleup, are already present in children's vocabulary at the one-word stage. At this point the child probably usesupto denote upwardly directed
motion, so it is verb-like rather than relational in its semantics.