5. Analysis
5.2. The senses of appear
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a higher degree of personal judgement as the basis for its modal meaning, and the sense of similarity is encoded in the semantic meaning of the word.
5.1.6. Translation hierarchy and prototypical translations of seem
By ranking the different lexemes within each sense group based on the number of subsets in the restricted t-image they occur in, it is possible to provide a hierarchy of the translations of seem: The words and expressions that occur in the most subsets represent the most 'general 'or 'prototypical' meaning (Dyvik, 1998, p. 73).
Synes, which occurs in six subsets, is the most general translation of seem in the first sense partition (Group 1S). Next is se ut som, ha inntrykk av/gi intrykk av and virke/virke som, which occur in four subsets. The expression tyde på is present in three subsets, and the others, such as late til, minne om and føle, occur in two subsets. For the second sense partition (Group 2S), both være som and kjennes som occur in only on subset. Arte seg som (Group 3S) also occurs only in the one subset. It is at best a marginal sense partition: It occurs only once as a correspondence for seem in the ENPC and is only part of the second t-image because it is transferred from the first image, in line with Dyvik's method to ensure rare translations are not overlooked. However, it can be argued whether this is really a distinct sense partition. The expression is semantically very close to the sense partition of Group 2S: that something gives the impression of being something or having a quality. On the other hand, the expression arte seg does indicate agency of some sort, e.g. that someone is actively putting on a show of some appearance or is pretending to be something.
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5.2.2. Inverse t-image appear
The inverse t-image of appear looks like this (lexemes in bold are translated into a second t-image in the next step):
{appear, be, be born, be evident, be possible, be visible, be able to, be capable, be familiar with, bear signs of, believe, can, could, consider, convey impression/give impression/produce impression, emerge, fancy, find, form, look, may, might, pretend, know, tend to, see, seem, stipulate, strike as, show, think, will, would.
5.2.3. Second t-image of appear
The second t-image of appear consists of the union of the sets of translations of the lexemes in the inverse t-image plus any lexemes from the first t-image that does not occur in the final translation:
{{kjennes som, ligne, være lik, sammenligne, være som, være som om}
{bli født/være født/fødes, komme fra, komme av}
{være åpenbart, være klart}
{hende, kan, kan tenkes, kanskje, kunne, la seg gjøre, sannsynligvis, være mulig}
{komme til syne, se, skjelne, tre frem, vise, være synlig}
{ } {anse, begripe, få inn i hodet, håpe, mene, se, tenke seg, tro, tro på , ha tiltro til, virke, være sikker, stole på, ta for, overbevise}
{greie, få, la seg, kan, klare, kunne, være mulig}
{greie, ha vanskelig, kan, klare, kunne, vil, ville, være mulig}
{anse, betrakte, drøfte, forstå som, føle seg, grunne over, lure på, mene, oppfatte, regne som, se på, synes, tenke, tro, reflektere over, ta hensyn til}
{gi inntrykk av, gjøre inntrykk, minne om, virke}
{avtegne, bevege seg, dukke opp, dukke frem, forme seg, gå ut fra, komme frem, komme til
overflaten, komme ut, komme for en dag, komme inn, oppstå, opptre, spre seg, stige frem, stå frem, tre frem, utvikle seg, vise seg}
{drømme om, forestille seg, like, vil, ville}
{betrakte, finne, få, få høre, få tak i, få vite, gi, gripe seg i, oppfatte, oppleve, se, sjekke, synes, tro, undersøke, virke, være, være av den mening}
{bli, bli til, danne, forme, lage, stille, skape, stå som, vokse frem, være, utgjøre utvikle}
{gi inntrykk av, gjøre inntrykk, minne om, virke}
{behøve, få, kan, kan hende, kan tenkes, kan være, kanskje, muligens, må, måtte, skal, sikkert, tør, være mulig}
{faktisk, kan, kan hende, kanskje, kunne, kunne godt, minne om, muligens, måtte, se ut som, skal, skulle, ville, være mulig}
{drømme, gi inntrykk av, innbille seg, late som, leke at, prøve, utgi seg for}
{tendens til, ha tilbøyelighet til, ofte, pleie, synes, som oftest, som regel, stort sett, vanligvis}
{betrakte, besøke, forstå, finne grunn til, forestille seg, få glimt av, få øye på, kjenne til, konstatere, legge merke til, mene, oppleve, oppdage, ordne, registrere, se, synes, være sikker på, være vitne til, øyne}
{arte seg som, fortone seg som, føles som, gi inntrykk av, gi uttrykk for, kjennes som (om), kunne, late til (å/at), minne om, se ut til (å/at), se ut som (om), synes (å), være som om, virke (som/som om), være nesten som om, være tydelig at, være en illustrasjon på}
{anse, falle inn, slå en, synes}
{blottlegge, dukke opp, forestille, få, gi utslag, gå frem, forestille, fremheve, ha, holde frem, komme
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til syne, oppvise, påvise, røpe, se ut som, skinne igjennom, skilte med, stå, synes på noe(n), være, være fremtredende, være synlig}
{betrakte, gruble, huske, lure på, mene, synes, tenke, tro, visst}
{begynne, bli, kan, komme til, skal, vil, ville}
{akte å, bli, pleie, kan, kunne, skulle, vil, ville}
{fremstå som}
{fremgå}}
Note that the singleton sets fremstå som and fremgå from the first t-image are included in the second t-image. Singleton sets from the first t-image that has not reoccurred as translations of the inverse t-image in the second t-image are included to ensure that special cases, e.g. technical terminology, are not lost in in the process of translating and back-translating the correspondences (Dyvik, 1998, 59).
5.2.4. Restricted t-image of appear
After eliminating words in the second t-image that are not members of the first t-image, the restricted second t-image of appear consists of the following sets of translations:
{{kunne}
{synes}
{gi inntrykk av}
{synes, virke/virke som}
{virke/virke som}
{kunne, se ut som}
{se ut som}
{se ut som, synes}
{gi inntrykk av, kunne, late til, se ut som, synes, virke/virke som}
{fremstå som}
{femgå}}
5.2.5. Sense partitions of appear
Except for fremgå and fremstå, both of which are special cases, all the subsets in the restricted t-image are part of the largest subset {gi inntrykk av, kunne, late til, se ut som, synes, virke/virke som}.
We can therefore conclude that appear has three sense groups:
Group 1A
{gi inntrykk av, kunne, late til, se ut som, synes, virke/virke som}
Group 2A {fremstå som}
Group 3A {fremgå}
The first and largest sense group of appear (Group 1A) has overlapping semantic meaning with the second sense group of seem (Group 2S), i.e. that something superficially looks like something else and gives the same impression. The second sense partition – fremstå som in Group 2A – is similarly
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concerned with how something looks or is perceived. Fremstå som communicates that even though the speaker may commit to how things are presented or present themselves, the speaker will not fully commit to saying that that is how things are. Thus, the correspondence fremstå som arguably has much the same meaning as the expressions in Group 1A, but is an even stronger hedge. In
Bokmålsordboka, fremstå is used in two examples, both of which are associated with visual evidence:
'to look and behave as a new person' (fremstå i ny skikkelse) or 'to look like the winner' (fremstå som seiersherre). The latter example could possibly be glossed as 'emerge as victorious', which would entail not only visual evidence, but some other evidence, perhaps a body count in medieval times, but I will argue that the expression in Norwegian is strongly associated with how someone carries themselves, i.e. how they look or are perceived.
The last sense partition of appear, fremgå in Group 3A, differs significantly from the other two.
Fremgå signals that an inference has been made on the basis of some observable evidence. In Bokmålsordboka fremgå is explained with the verb vise seg ('turn out to be' or 'show') or by splitting the compound fremgå into two separate verbs; gå frem. The examples in Bokmålsordboka
emphasizes the imbued inferential meaning: Det fremgår ikke klart av teksten ('It does not come clearly across from this text') and Det fremgår av denne statistikken at… ('It can be deduced from these statistics that…'). Fremgå has both evidential and epistemic in meaning.
In terms of epistemic modality and evidentiality, all three sense partitions of appear are strongly connected to evidence. The first two sense groups are concerned with how things look or present themselves and have evidential meaning. The last sense group also has evidential meaning encoded into its semantic meaning. Appear thus has very little epistemic modality encoded in any of its sense groups. With a small data set like the one extracted for appear from the ENPC, it may be bold to draw that conclusion. However, as I have discussed above (4.4. and 4.7.1.), even though the corpus is small and the data set restricted, expanding the data set yields no new information, and I have argued that the data set is sufficient for my analysis. Therefore, the conclusion holds.
5.2.6. Translation hierarchy and prototypical translations of appear
The analysis of overlaps between the sense groups, i.e. in how many subsets in the restricted t-image an expression occurs, shows that se ut som and synes are the most prototypical meanings of appear.
They occur in four subsets. Next is virke (som) which occurs in three subsets and gi inntrykk av and kunne which occur in two subsets each. In other words, the most prototypical translations of appear are strongly associated with visible evidence.
5.2.7. Overlapping sense partitions of seem and appear
There are two additional noticeable findings from the Semantic Mirrors-analysis. One is that the largest sense partition for appear (Group 1A) is a subset of the largest sense partition of seem (Group 2S), as shown in Figure 6. The other is that the sense partitions of seem and appear can be placed on a scale, ranging from senses relating to visual evidence, and thus displaying a high degree of
evidentiality, to senses that convey epistemic assessment and thus have a high degree of epistemic modal meaning (Figure 7.). The relationship between the sense partitions and the type of evidence will be analysed further in 5.4.
53 Figure 7. Sense groups of seem and appear.
Note that there are several additional subsets and overlap relations between subsets within the large sense group for seem that are not shown in this illustration.