Chapter 6
Semantics:
The Meaning of Language
0. Overview
- Learning a language includes learning the "agreed-upon" meanings of certain strings of sounds and learning how to combine these meaninful units into larger units that also convey meaning.
- The study of the linguistic meaning of words, phrases, and sentences is semantics.
1. Word Meanings
1.1. Semantic Properties
- The meaning of words can be specified by semantic properties.
ex) The assasin was stopped before he got to Mr. Thwacklehurst.
If the word assassin is in your mental dictionary, you know that it was some person who was prevented from murdering some important person named Thwacklehurst.
Your knowledge of the meaning of assassin includes knowing that the individual to whom that word refers is human, is a murderer, and is a killer of important people. These pieces of information are some of the semantic properties of the word.
- The same semantic property may be part of the meaning of many different words.
FEMALE: tigress, hen, actress, maiden
HUMAN: doctor, parent, baby, child
HUMAN & YOUNG: baby, child
- The same semantic property may occur in words of different categories.
FEMALE: mother; breast-feed, pregnant
- No two words have exactly the same meaning. Additional semantic properties make for finer and finer distinctions in meaning.
- Semantic Features: Semantic relationships can be expressed.
- Words may be in intersecting semantic classes.
ex) woman ------ child
girl
Intersecting classes share the same features, such as "female" and "young".
- There are semantic relations between words, and certain semantic categories may imply others.
ex) "Human" implies "animate".
Such additional facts can be stated using redundancy rule on semantic features.
ex) [+human] --> [+animate]
Some semantic redundancy rules reveal "negative" properties.
ex) If something is "human", it is not "abstract".
[+human] --> [-abstract]
- Meaning Postulates
- The lexical knowledge can be revealed through meaning postulate, which are formal rules, similar to semantic redundancy rules.
ex) If something is metal, it is a concrete object.
MP: (x) metal --> concrete
The MP states that if anything is metal, it must be a concrete object. (Thus *metalidea is semantically odd.)
- MPs reveal even more complex knowledge. If you own something, then that something belongs to you, and vice versa.
MP: (x) owns (y) --> (y) belongs to (x)
- Meaning postulates and redundancy rules are a part of the lexicon.
- Speech errors, which result in the substitution of word for an intended word, reveal semantic classes.
Intentened Utterance Actual Utterance (Error)
bridge of the nose bridge of the neck
he came too late he came too early
Incorrectly substitued words are not random substitutions but share some semantic property with the intended words.
1.2. Ambiguity
Same sounds can sometimes mean different things. Homonyms or homophones are different words that are pronounced the same. They may have the same or different spelling.
- To, too,and twoare homophones.
- Homonyms may create ambiguity. Sometimes additional context can help to disambiguate the sentence.
ex) She cannot bear children if they are noisy.
She cannot bear children because she is sterile.
- Homonyms are good candidates for humor as well as for confusion.
- Some lexical ambiguities
The Rabbi married my sister.
Do you smoke after sex?
1.3. Paraphrases
- There are words that sound different but have the same or nearly the same meaning. Such words are called synonyms.
- Sofaand couchrefer to the same type of object and share most, if not all, of their semantic properties.
- There are words that have many semantic properties in common but that are not synonyms or near synonyms.
ex) man vs. boy
- Words with several meanings are called polysymy. Polysemous words sahre one of its meanings with another word.
ex) mature vs. ripe; deep vs. profound
When synonyms occur in otherwise identical sentences, the sentences will be paraphrases. Sentences are paraphrases if they have the same meaning.
- A pair of sentences may be paraphrases in terms of the logical relations, but differ in the matter of focus or in terms of the topic/comment structure.
ex) John kissed Mary.
Mary was kissed by John.
1.4. Antonyms
Words that are opposite in meaning are called antonyms. Ironically, the basic property of two words that are antonyms is that they share all but one semantic property.
A. complementary pairs
alive/dead present/absent awake/asleep
They are complementary in that notalive= deadand notdead= alive.
B. gradable pairs
- relational opposites
give/receive buy/sell teacher/pupil
They display symmetry in their meaning. If X gives Y to Z, then Z recieves Y from X.
a. Pairs of words ending in -erand -eeare usually relational opposites.
b. Comparative forms of gradable pairs of adjectives often form relational pairs.
ex) If Sally is taller than Alfred, then Alfred is shorter than Sally.
Redundancy rules on semantic features can reveal our knowledge about antonyms.
ex) [+married] → [-single]
2. Phrase and Sentence Meaning
- The meaning of a phrase or sentence depends on both the meaning of its words and how these words are structurally combined.
- Words vs. Sentences
- Words are synonyms; sentences are paraphrases.
- Words may be homonyms; sentences may be ambiguous.
- Words have opposites; sentences can be negated.
- Words are used for naming purposes; sentences can be used that way too.
- Both words and sentences can be used to refer to objects.
- Both may have some further meaning beyond this referring capability.
2.1. Sense and Reference
The German philosopher Gottlob Frege proposed that the meaning of an expression be called sense and if the expression refers to something, it has reference.
- Noun Phrases normally have sense and can be used to refer.
ex) The man who is my father. The man who married my mother.
Both expressions may have the same referent, but have different sense.
- Words and phrases may have sense but no reference.
ex) dragon, unicorn, The present king of France is bald.
2.2. Combining Words into Sentences
- We comprehend sentences because we know the meaning of individual words, and we know rules for combining their meanings.
ex) red + balloon, the house with the white picket fence
- The syntactic structure of a phrase is important to its meaning.
ex) the dog on the bed vs. the bed on the dog
2.3. Thematic Relations
- A verb is related in various ways to the constituents in a sentence. The relations depend on the meaning of the particular verb. The semantic relationships are called thematic relations or theta-roles.
agent: doer of the action
theme: one that undergoes the action
location; source; instrument; goal
ex) Theboycarried theredbrickfrom thewallto thewagon.
AGENT THEME SOURCE GOAL
- The same NP can function in a different thematic role depending on the sentence.
ex) The boy broke a window with the red brick.
INSTRUMENT
- Thematic relations are the same in sentences that are paraphrases.
ex) The dog bit the man.
The man was bitten by the dog.
- Thematic relations may remain the same in sentences that are not paraphrases.
ex) The boy opened the door with the key.
The key opened the door. The door opened.
- In many languages thematic roles are reflected in the case assumed by the noun.
2.4. The "Truth" of Sentences
- Some philosophers and linguists would say that the meaning of a sentence is the set of conditions that determine the truth of the sentence.
ex) It's raining. John loves Mary.
The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.
- You can understand well-formed sentences of your language without knowing their truth value. Knowing the truth conditions is not the same as knowing the actual facts.
ex) The Mecklenburg Charter was signed in 1770.
- In opaque context, it does not matter that a subpart of the sentence is false.
ex) Rufus believes that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1976.
- Knowing a language includes knowing the semantic rules for combining meanings and the conditions under which sentences are true or false.
3. Discourse Meaning
3.1. Maxims of Conversation
3.2. The Articles the and a
- The article the is used to indicate that the referent of a noun phrase is agreed upon by speaker and listener.
- Often a discourse will begin with the use of indefinite articles, and once everyone agrees on the referents, definite articles start to appear.
- The use of pronoun is often discourse-dependent.
3.3. Anaphora
When two expressions refer to the same thing, they are said to be coreferential. Discourse are filled with pronouns that are coreferential with other expressions, their antecedents. Rules of discourse determine when a pronoun can or should be used instead of a longer expression. The process of replacing a longer expression by a pronoun or another kind of pro-form is called anaphora.
ex) I love Disz and Jock loves her too.
Emily hugged Cassidy and Zachary did too.
4. Pragmatics
The general study of how context influences the way sentences convey information is called pragmatics.
4.1. Speech Acts
- The study of how we do things with sentences is the study of speech acts. In studying speech acts, we are acutely awar of the importance of the context of the utterence.
- Verbs like bet, promise, warn are performative verbs. Using them in a sentence does something extra over and above the statement.
ex) I promised to improve.
4.2. Presuppositions
- Speakers often make implicit assumptions about the real world, and the sense of an utterance may depend on those assumptions, which some linguists term presupposions.
ex) Have you stopped hugging your sheepdog?
Would you like another beer?
- Presuppositions can be used to communicate information indirectly.
ex) My brother is rich.
4.3. Deixis
In all languages there are many words and expressions whose references rely entirely on the circumstances of the utterance and can only be understood in light of these circum- stances. This aspect of pragmatics is called deixis.
A. person deixis
B. time deixis
C. place deixis
ex) here, there, this place
D. directional terms
ex) before/behind, left/right, come/go
5. When Rules Are Broken
The rules of language are not laws of nature, and are broken every day by everydoby. There are three kinds of rule violation.
A. anomaly: a violation of semantic rules to create nonsense.
B. metaphor: nonliteral meaning
C. idioms: the meaning of an expression is unrelated to the meaning of its parts.
5.1. Anomaly: No Sense and Nonsense
5.2. Metaphor
Sometimes the breaking of semantic rules can be used to convey a partcular idea. Stretching imagination is based on semantic properties that are inferred or that provide some kind of resemblance. Such nonliteral interpretation of sentences are called metaphor.
A. anomalous
ex)
Walls have ears. (You can be overheard even when you think nobody is listening.)
My new car is a lemon. (A newly purchased automobile breaks down and requires constant repairs.)
B. Metaphors are not necessarily anomalous when taken literally.
C. To interpret metaphors we need to understand both the literal meaning and facts about the world.
5.3. Idioms
Knowing a language means knowing fixed phrases, consisting of more than one word, with meanings that cannot be inferred from the meanings of the individual words. The usual semantic rules for conbining meanings do no apply. Such expressions are called idioms.
- Idioms are similar in structure to ordinary phrases except that they tend to be frozen in form and do not readily enter into other combinations or allow the word order to change.
ex) She put her foot in her mouth. The mouth in which she put her foot was hers.
- The words of some idioms can be moved without affecting the idiomatic sense.
ex) The FBI kept tabs on radicals. Tabs were kept on radicals by the FBI.
- Idioms can break the rules on combining semantic properties.
ex) He ate his hat.
6. Summary