The theory has a great sweep about it :sx language is no conglomerate of single words , but a whole with meaningful division , a super-6Gestalt :sx conceptual fields shape the raw material of experience and divide it up without overlapping , like the pieces in a completed jig-saw puzzle .sx The individual field , in its turn , is a mosaic of related words or concepts , the individual word getting its meaning only through distinguishing itself from its neighbours , and the field again being divided up completely and without overlapping .sx The concepts in a field , in short , form a structure of interdependent elements .sx A word-form may change without there being any change in the structure of the field , in Sprachinhalte ; for instance , in the Romance languages , the continuants of Lat .sx coxa replaced those of Lat .sx femur , weakened by a homonymic clash , without there being any change in the structure of the semantic field .sx Any change in the limits of a concept , on the other hand , will involve a modification of the value of the other concepts in the same field , and of the words which express those concepts .sx Trier sought to illustrate the validity of his hypothesis from his analysis of the intellectual vocabulary of Old and Middle High German .sx The most-quoted example is that of a comparison of a particular field in about A.D. 1200 with the corresponding one in about A.D. 1300 .sx At the beginning of the 13th century , the structural ensemble of the Middle High German 'field' of knowledge was based , he maintains , on the co-existence of three key terms- kunst , list and wi@5sheit ( very roughly 'art' , 'artifice' and 'wisdom' ) ; at the beginning of the 14th century , the key-words were kunst , wizzen and wi@5sheit .sx There had not , however , been a simple substitution of wizzen for list which continued to be used in a somewhat different sense :sx what had occurred was a re-organization of the linguistic structure of the field , and above all of the Weltbild or 'world-picture' which the latter reflected .sx In 1200 , the term kunst was applied to courtly skills , and list to non-courtly ones , to techniques and skills other than those of the knightly class .sx Thus , courtly bearing towards adversaries was a kunst in a knight ; so was the art of writing poetry ; so were the liberal arts of rhetoric and music in so far as they contributed to the training of the ideal knight ; on the other hand , astronomy , botany , medicine and all the crafts of the artisan were liste .sx The difference between kunst and list was , however , not as clear-cut as that suggests ; whereas skill at arms was a kunst in a knight , it was only a list in a man at arms :sx i.e. , these branches of knowledge were not appraised objectively , but socially .sx This gulf between courtly and non-courtly at the level of material knowledge was transcended at the spiritual level :sx the term wi@5sheit embraced kunst and list , and much else besides , being applied to all kinds of knowledge , divine as well as human .sx There was therefore a close interlocking of concepts within a field of knowledge conceived synthetically ; kunst and list were co-determined in their senses by the links which united them within the wider sphere of personal and divine wisdom .sx The key-terms of the later field did not form a mystic trinity of this type :sx there was merely a duality between kunst and wizzen , wi@5sheit being on quite a different level from them .sx Kunst was used to describe certain branches of knowledge , in rather the same way as in modern German- in opposition to wizzen , which was applied to knowledge in general and to technical skills and abilities in particular , but without any social connotation .sx The disappearance of the earlier duality between kunst and list signified from the spiritual point of view the abandonment of an ethico-social attitude towards the scientific and technical :sx it had become possible to talk of what a man knew or could do , without a 'social' appraisal of him as well as of what he was doing .sx Wi@5sheit was no longer used as a semi-alternative for either of the other terms , nor as a synthetic term embracing them both .sx Material knowledge ( kunst and wizzen ) had been removed from the sphere of wi@5sheit , which , as spiritual and religious wisdom , had moved to a different plane .sx The use of the terms showed a drastic change in the conception of knowledge , which had been divided up in a more analytical and abstract way .sx Whereas in 1200 no truly objective appraisal of knowledge was possible ( it could not be divorced from its social and/or religious connotations ) , in 1300 , spiritual or theological knowledge was dissociated from worldly skills , and the contrast between courtly and non-courtly attainments had been eliminated .sx Trier saw this re-arrangement of the field as reflecting the disintegration of the earlier 'catholic' conception of knowledge .sx Trier's theories have been strongly criticized as well as praised , in particular by Dornseiff and Scheidweiler in the 1930's and early 1940's , and by W. Betz and Els Oksaar in the 1950's ; W. von Wartburg and S. Ullmann , as I have already mentioned , have criticized certain aspects of them , while remaining generally favourable .sx It is inevitable that I repeat some of the arguments used against Trier by other scholars , but I hope to make a few new points .sx Basically , Trier's field theory depends on the validity of several hypotheses about the nature of language and of thinking and the relationship between the two :sx firstly , that the whole vocabulary is organized , as he believes , within closely-articulated fields which fit into each other and delimit each other in the same way as the words within the individual fields , without any overlapping ; and secondly , that the single word gets its meaning only through distinguishing itself from its field neighbours .sx The latter follows to some extent , but not , I think , completely , from the first postulate .sx Both points are valid , if they are valid , for any language at any period .sx Let us take the second point first because it can be dealt with more briefly .sx Whatever the validity of the oppositional approach in determining linguistic units such as phonemes and morphemes , it seems doubtful whether word-meanings are based on oppositions between words in the same conceptual field .sx This idea of the element only deriving its meaning from the system as a whole has to be qualified so much that it really ceases to have much point :sx e.g. , I can know the Russian for 'to walk ( habitually)' without knowing the Russian verbs for 'run' , 'hop' , 'skip' , or 'jump' ( habitually or otherwise) .sx W. Pfleiderer makes the point that a child's first properly used word means something to it , but it does not know any fields .sx It certainly seems that when learning a language one fortunately does not have to learn the whole before knowing the parts .sx If it be then argued that one cannot know the system properly without knowing the whole , I should reply that it depends what one means by both properly and by whole .sx Is the whole of the English vocabulary that which is known to or used by that abstraction , 'the man in the street' , or that which is 'deposited' in the New English Dictionary , plus Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and a few other works of that type ?sx Nobody knows all the words in those works , i.e. , knows the whole of the system in that sense ; is it then the vocabulary used by the 'man in the street' , whoever he may be ( with his 2,500 words , or whatever it may be) ?sx The newspapers are full of complaints about the inability of school-leavers ( or students , or civil servants ) to 'use English properly' .sx At one level , this means that the members of these groups do not express themselves as accurately or as elegantly as their critics do , or think they do .sx At another level , as a statement about English-speakers , it is rather like saying , 'only 2 per cent of the population have normal teeth .sx ' Take any obscurish word- since I have mentioned teeth , let it be the term 'orthodontics' .sx As the name of a branch of dentistry , it comes ( I assume ) into the same field as 'teeth' , and if we assume the validity of the hypothesis , the two help reciprocally to delimit each other's meaning , they are part of the structure of the field- but only for those who know the word , or for everybody ?sx In either case , only a tiny proportion of the English-speaking population of the world is using the term 'teeth' with an appreciation of its full value- which is absurd .sx Similar arguments can be brought against the main postulate- that closely-integrated conceptual fields , expressed in linguistic ones , cover the whole field of experience ( and of the vocabulary ) without gaps and without overlapping .sx Is this generally true of the way the vocabulary is organized in the consciousness of the individual- let alone of a vast and heterogeneous group of individuals ?sx Basically , the theory is one about the way the mind works- and as such , would be better tackled by psychologists than by linguists .sx Things are not made any easier by the fact that Trier does not make an absolutely clear division between his conceptual and his lexical 'fields' :sx he does not always separate them at all , but when he does , he seems to indicate that conceptual divisions are expressed in linguistic ones , and not , as has been somewhat more plausibly maintained , that the structure of a language and the vocabulary 'transmitted' to a given individual to some extent determine his modes of thought .sx What evidence is there to support the view that the vocabulary is organized in the manner suggested by Trier ?sx There are Trier's own analyses which are open to a number of criticisms :sx as Scheidweiler points out , Trier himself makes statements about the use of words which seem to run counter to his own theories .sx For instance , on p. 150 of his 6magnum opus , he speaks of a completely unarticulated field of 'the positive assessment of value' ; he tells us that the famous terms kunst and list are applied interchangeably by the author of the Pilatus , and so on .sx There is no uniformity in the usage of different authors :sx it is true that Trier speaks of transition conditions under which the field becomes fluid ( 'das Feld " chst einmal in ein " ndiges Fliessen " t' ) , but in that case , Scheidweiler comments , the whole period investigated by Trier must have been one of transition .sx From his own examination of the texts used by Trier , Scheidweiler finds it impossible to support the former's conclusions about the values of the terms kunst and list , while with regard to wi@5sheit he points out that the term Weisheit is still used in Modern German with the sense of 'knowledge' in such phrases as 'ich bin mit meiner Weisheit zu Ende' , 'er besass keine umfangreiche Buchweisheit' , 'woher hast du deine Weisheit ?sx ' and so on .sx Trier would probably counter by saying that he was concerned with conceptual fields and that his view could not be disproved by the survival of lexical fossils .sx This would perhaps be a valid argument , but the extent of the disagreement between Trier's findings and Scheidweiler's goes far deeper , and seems to justify caution with regard to Trier's findings .sx Trier himself , judging by his various qualifications and his references to 'transition states' found the evidence less clear-cut than he might have desired .sx In Scheidweiler's opinion , usage in mediaeval German texts provided no support for any theory that words or concepts were organized in 'fields' without overlapping :sx even the same author used the same words with totally different meanings , and so forth , in a way that we should find intolerable ( Scheidweiler quotes examples) .sx One of his general conclusions is that these early texts are an unsuitable testing-ground for such a theory because of the lack of precision in the use of terms in mediaeval times .sx It seems to me that that judgement damns the theory for the wrong reason .sx Lack of precision in the use of terminology cannot indefinitely be explained as the product of 'transition' from one world-view to another , one system to another :sx the fact that lasting imprecision exists itself seems to disprove Trier's hypothesis .sx