The frame of restaurant

语言学 the frame of semantic situation

The frame of restaurant

The word restaurant may not be clearly understood when without access to all the essential knowledge that relates to it.

The situation: one person goes to the certain place which is the restaurant and with the help of others he get food for his or her starving stomach. In exchange he pays for what he has got--both the food and service.

Frame basic elements: customer ,waiter or waitress, ordering, bill and etc.

1.John (customer)was very angry and he was looking for restaurants all his way .

2.Susan(waitress) works as a waitress in that restaurant and serves everyone with smile.

3.I want a bacon sarney(ordering), please!

4.Have you paid the bill for your meal(bill)?

Generally ,the relationship among all these basic elements can be imaged as the following construction.: the customer orders what he wants from the waiter or waitress, and he pays the bill to the waiter or waitress.

Lexemes:

Nouns like menu, special request, complaint, pay, reserve, delivery, receipt and etc Verbs like order, complain, eat, drink, reserve and etc.

Adjectives like delicious, friendly, clean, fast, spicy and etc.

语言学 the frame of semantic situation

Linguistic expressions associated with the restaurant frame: 5.What kind of food do you like，Chinese or American？(ordering)

6.I will take the beefsteak.(ordering)

7.I would like my spaghetti easy on the salt.(special request)

8.Why is our order so late？(compliant)

9.Here you are，please pay the bill at the cashier's desk.(bill)

10.I'd like to reserve a table for eight.(reservation)

11.Do you accept credit cards?(paying method)

When we are in the restaurant, we are naturally doing or saying things as those mentioned above. If we only look at the word restaurant, we may not easily understand what it exactly is. But through this frame we know that restaurant is the place to get meals. Also in Chinese we have the word “餐馆”，and what we usually do in Chinese restaurant is the same as those in America or Japan.

If we analysis this frame ,we can found that this frame can be largely connected with other fames, and through these connection we can get a larger vocabulary and more contents. For example,the cuisine , which can involve in many kinds such as Spanish cuisine, Chinese cuisine and etc. In this method students can acquire much more knowledge in a relatively short time,thus they can have a more efficient language studying.

2012090213 梁玮