Abstract

In semantics, there exists constraint in the collocation of a sentence’s components. Sense relation of the collocation is conventional and is decided by the selectional restriction. However, in many works of the modernist and post-modernist writers, the employment of the stream-of-consciousness technique has brought to light much evidence that language in literary works can violate the selectional restriction, and the lexical collocations in the descriptive sentences, too, can go against the semantic convention. This paper is aimed at analyzing the ways how modernists or post-modernists violate the semantic conventions in the adoption of the stream-of-consciousness technique, as well as the literary significance brought by such a semantic breakthrough.

Key Words: selectional restriction, semantic convention, collocation, the stream of consciousness

摘要

根据英语语言学的语义学分支理论，句子的成分搭配需要有理据的语义关系来支撑。这种语义关系上的约束是由选择限制这一理论决定的，但在后现代意识流文学作品中，很多描写都打破了语义搭配的常规，这种语义突破现象为语言学和文学两个领域搭建了交汇点。本文旨在对意识流作品中的语义异常现象作出分析，对其形成模式的原因，分类以及功能作出具体的阐述。本文首先对语义选择性限制，语义关系和意识流的概念进行阐述，然后在意识流作品中找出对子，分为词，句子，语篇层面的异常搭配，对其违反语义常规的具体方面进行分类并在最后对意识流通过打破语义常规达到的文学魅力作了分析和总结。

关键词：选择性限制，语义惯例，搭配，意识流

Introduction
It has long been noted that in linguistics, affected by the selectional restriction, semantic collocations are conventional in the sentence generation. At the superficial level, such collocations refer to the together-use of two or more than two words. When words are used together, they must be consistent, reasonable, understandable, and acceptable. For instance: “night” goes with “dark”, “girl” is often attached to by “pretty”, or “beautiful”, “father” is associated with “shave” while “mother” with “perfume”, “猪” is relevant to “dirty, silly”, and “白”is by convention has semantic features as “pure, noble, clean”, etc . Besides, at a higher level, the combination of neighbouring sentences in a context should conform to the selectional restriction and be both grammatically and semantically right, to be more specific, the information encoded in a context must comply with the convention of logic as well as people’s cognition.