the theory has a great sweep about it : language is no conglomerate of single words , but a whole with meaningful division , a super-Gestalt : conceptual fields shape the raw material of experience and divide it up without overlapping , like the pieces in a completed jig-saw puzzle . 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 . the concepts in a field , in short , form a structure of interdependent elements . 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 coxa replaced those of Lat femur , weakened by a homonymic clash , without there being any change in the structure of the semantic field . 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 . Trier sought to illustrate the validity of his hypothesis from his analysis of the intellectual vocabulary of old and middle high German . 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 . 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 w&amp;icirc;sheit ( very roughly art , artifice and wisdom ) ; at the beginning of the 14th century , the key-words were kunst , wizzen and w&amp;icirc;sheit . there had not , however , been a simple substitution of wizzen for list which continued to be used in a somewhat different sense : 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 : i.e , these branches of knowledge were not appraised objectively , but socially . this gulf between courtly and non-courtly at the level of material knowledge was transcended at the spiritual level : the term w&amp;icirc;sheit embraced kunst and list , and much else besides , being applied to all kinds of knowledge , divine as well as human . 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 . the key-terms of the later field did not form a mystic trinity of this type : there was merely a duality between kunst and wizzen , w&amp;icirc;sheit being on quite a different level from them . 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 . 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 : 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 . w&amp;icirc;sheit was no longer used as a semi-alternative for either of the other terms , nor as a synthetic term embracing them both . material knowledge ( kunst and wizzen ) had been removed from the sphere of w&amp;icirc;sheit , which , as spiritual and religious wisdom , had moved to a different plane . 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 . 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 . Trier saw this re-arrangement of the field as reflecting the disintegration of the earlier catholic conception of knowledge . Trier &apos;s theories have been strongly criticized as well as praised , in particular by Dornseiff and Scheidweiler in the 1930&apos;s and early 1940&apos;s , and by W Betz and Els Oksaar in the 1950&apos;s ; W von Wartburg and S Ullmann , as I have already mentioned , have criticized certain aspects of them , while remaining generally favourable . 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 . basically , Trier &apos;s field theory depends on the validity of several hypotheses about the nature of language and of thinking and the relationship between the two : 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 . the latter follows to some extent , but not , I think , completely , from the first postulate . both points are valid , if they are valid , for any language at any period . let us take the second point first because it can be dealt with more briefly . 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 . 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 : 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 ) . W Pfleiderer makes the point that a child &apos;s first properly used word means something to it , but it does not know any fields . it certainly seems that when learning a language one fortunately does not have to learn the whole before knowing the parts . if it be then argued that one can not know the system properly without knowing the whole , I should reply that it depends what one means by both properly and by whole . 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 &apos;s dictionary of slang and a few other works of that type ? 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 ) ? the newspapers are full of complaints about the inability of school-leavers ( or students , or civil servants ) to use English properly . 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 . at another level , as a statement about English-speakers , it is rather like saying , only 2 per cent of the population have normal teeth . take any obscurish word - since I have mentioned teeth , let it be the term orthodontics . 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&apos;s meaning , they are part of the structure of the field - but only for those who know the word , or for everybody ? 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 . 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 . 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 ? basically , the theory is one about the way the mind works - and as such , would be better tackled by psychologists than by linguists . 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 : 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 . what evidence is there to support the view that the vocabulary is organized in the manner suggested by Trier ? there are Trier &apos;s own analyses which are open to a number of criticisms : as Scheidweiler points out , Trier himself makes statements about the use of words which seem to run counter to his own theories . for instance , on p 150 of his magnum 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 . there is no uniformity in the usage of different authors : it is true that Trier speaks of transition conditions under which the field becomes fluid ( das Feld zuna&quot;chst einmal in ein sta&quot;ndiges Fliessen gera&quot;t ) , but in that case , Scheidweiler comments , the whole period investigated by Trier must have been one of transition . from his own examination of the texts used by Trier , Scheidweiler finds it impossible to support the former &apos;s conclusions about the values of the terms kunst and list , while with regard to w&amp;icirc;sheit 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 ? and so on . 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 . this would perhaps be a valid argument , but the extent of the disagreement between Trier &apos;s findings and Scheidweiler &apos;s goes far deeper , and seems to justify caution with regard to Trier &apos;s findings . Trier himself , judging by his various qualifications and his references to transition states found the evidence less clear-cut than he might have desired . in Scheidweiler &apos;s opinion , usage in mediaeval German texts provided no support for any theory that words or concepts were organized in fields without overlapping : 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 ) . 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 . it seems to me that that judgement damns the theory for the wrong reason . lack of precision in the use of terminology can not indefinitely be explained as the product of transition from one world-view to another , one system to another : the fact that lasting imprecision exists itself seems to disprove Trier &apos;s hypothesis . 