1.

Introduction
Semantics is a more familiar term than phonology, morphology, or syntax. Semantics has

to do with meaning, and linguistic semantics is the study of the systematic ways in

which languages structure meaning, especially in words and sentences.

In defining linguistic semantics (which we’ll simply call “semantics”), we must

invoke the word meaning. In everyday interaction, we use the words meaning and to

mean in different contexts and for different purposes. For example:

The word perplexity means ‘the state of being puzzled.’

Rash has two meanings: ‘impetuous’ and ‘skin irritation.’

In Spanish, espejo means ‘mirror.’

I did not mean that he is incompetent, just inefficient.

The meaning of the cross as a symbol is complex.

I meant to bring you my paper but left it at home.

2. What Is Meaning?
Linguists also attach different interpretations to the word meaning. Because the goal of

linguistics is to explain precisely how languages are structured and used, among other

things to represent situations in the world, it is important to distinguish among the different ways of
interpreting the word meaning.

A few examples will illustrate why we need to develop a precise way of talking about

meaning. Consider these sentences:

1. I went to the store this morning.

2. All dogs are animals.

The truth of sentence 1 depends on whether or not the speaker is in fact telling the truth

about going to the store; nothing about the words of the sentence makes it inherently

true. By contrast, sentence 2 is true because the word dogs describes entities that are

also described by the word animals. The truth of 2 does not depend on whether or not
the speaker is telling the truth; it depends solely on the meaning of the words dogs and

animals.

Now compare the following pairs of sentences:

3. You are too young to drink.

You are not old enough to drink.

4. Matthew spent several years in northern Tibet.

Matthew was once in northern Tibet.

The sentences of 3 basically “say the same thing” in that the first describes exactly what

the second describes. We say they are synonymous sentences, or that they paraphrase

each other. In 4, the first sentence implies the second, but not vice versa. If Matthew

spent several years in northern Tibet, he must have set foot there at some point in his

life. On the other hand, if Matthew was once in northern Tibet, it is not necessarily the

case that he spent several years there.

Next, consider the following sentences:

5. The unmarried woman is married to a bachelor.

6. My toothbrush is pregnant.

Sentences 5 and 6 are well formed syntactically, but there is something amiss with their

semantics. The meanings of the words in 5 contradict each other: an unmarried woman

cannot be married, and certainly not to a bachelor. Sentence 5 thus presents a contradiction.
Sentence 6 is not contradictory but semantically anomalous: toothbrushes are not

capable of being pregnant. To diagnose precisely what is wrong with these sentences, we

need to distinguish between contradictory and anomalous sentences.

Finally, examine sentences 7 and 8:

7. I saw her duck.

8. She ate the pie.

Sentence 7 may be interpreted in two ways: duck may be a verb referring to the act of

bending over quickly (while walking through a low doorway, for example), or it may be
a noun referring to a type of waterfowl. These word meanings give the sentence two distinct
meanings. Because there are two possible readings of 7, it is said to be ambiguous.

On the other hand, 8 is not ambiguous but has an imprecise quality at least when considered out of
context. While we know that the subject of 8 is female, we cannot know who

it is that she refers to or which particular pie was eaten, although the phrase the pie indicates that
the speaker has a particular one in mind. Taken out of context, 8 is thus vague

in that certain details are left unspecified; but it is not ambiguous.

These observations illustrate that meaning is a multifaceted notion. A sentence may

be meaningful and true because it states a fact about the world or because the speaker is

telling the truth. Two sentences may be related to each other because they mean exactly

the same thing or because one implies the other. Finally, when we feel that there is

something wrong with the meaning of a sentence, it may be because the sentence is contradictory,
anomalous, ambiguous, or merely vague. One purpose of semantics is to distinguish among these
different ways in which language “means.”

3. Linguistic, Social and Affective Meaning

For our purposes we can initially distinguish three types of meaning. Linguistic meaning
encompasses both sense and reference. Social meaning is what we rely on when we

identify certain social characteristics of speakers and situations from the character of the

language used. Affective meaning is the emotional connotation that is attached to words

and utterances.

4. Linguistic Meaning
Meaning is a very complicated matter and there is no single theory about how languages

mean.

Referential Meaning One way of defining meaning is to say that the meaning of a word

or sentence is the actual person, object, abstract notion, event, or state to which the word

or sentence makes reference. The referential meaning of Alexis Rathburton, then, would be the
person who goes by that name. The phrase Scott’s dog refers to the particular
domesticated canine belonging to Scott. That particular animal can be said to be the referential
meaning of the linguistic expression Scott’s dog, and the canine picked out or

identified by the expression is its referent.

Words are not the only linguistic units to carry referential meaning. Sentences too

refer to actions, states, and events in the world. Rahul is sleeping on the sofa refers to the

fact that a person named Rahul is currently asleep on an elongated piece of furniture

generally meant to be sat upon. The referent of the sentence is thus Rahul’s state of

being on the piece of furniture in question.

Sense Referential meaning may be the easiest kind to recognize, but it is not sufficient

to explain how some expressions mean what they mean. For one thing, not all expressions have
referents. Neither a unicorn nor the present king of France has an actual referent in the real world,
but both expressions have meaning. Even leaving social and

affective meaning aside, if expressions had only referential meaning, then the sentences

in 9 below would mean exactly the same thing, as would those in 10, but they don’t.

9. George Washington was the first president of the United States.

George Washington was George Washington.

10. Jacqueline Bouvier married John F. Kennedy in 1953.

Jacqueline Bouvier married the thirty-fifth president of the United States in 1953.

The sentences of 10 do not mean the same thing, and the second sentence of the pair

seems odd, in part because it would have been impossible to marry the thirty-fifth president in 1953
since the United States did not have its thirty-fifth president until 1960.

Proper nouns such as George Washington, Jacqueline Bouvier, and John F. Kennedy

constitute a special category, and we might say that the meaning of proper nouns is the

person named, the person to whom the proper noun refers. By contrast, the meaning of

expressions such as the first president of the United States and the thirty-fifth president of

the United States cannot be reduced to their referents. Consider the sentences of 11:

11. Al Gore nearly became the forty-third president of the United States.

Al Gore nearly became George W. Bush.

Obviously, these sentences do not mean the same thing despite the fact that the

expressions George W. Bush and the forty-third president of the United States have the

same referent. This is why the sentences in 9 do not have identical meanings. In general,

we cannot equate the meaning of an expression with the referent of the expression. We

say that expressions have ‘senses,’ and any theory of how language means must take

sense meaning into account.

5. Social Meaning
Linguistic meaning is not the only type of meaning that language users communicate to

each other. Consider the following sentences:

1. So I says to him, “You can’t do nothin’ right.”

2. Is it a doctor in here?

3. Y’all gonna visit over the holiday?

4. Great chow!

In addition to representing actions, states, and mental processes, these sentences convey

information about the identity of the person who has uttered them or about the situation

in which they have been uttered. In 1, use of the verb says with the first-person singular

pronoun I indicates something about the speaker’s social status. In 2, the form it where

some other varieties use there indicates a speaker of an ethnically marked variety of

English (African American English). In 3, the pronoun y’all identifies a particular

regional dialect of American English (Southern). Finally, the choice of words in 4 indicates that the
comment was made in an informal context. Social status, ethnicity,

regional origin, and context are all social factors. In addition to linguistic meaning, therefore, every
utterance also conveys social meaning, not only in the sentence as a whole

but in word choice (y’all and chow) and pronunciation (gonna or nothin’).
 6. Affective Meaning
There is a third kind of meaning besides linguistic and social meaning. Compare the following
examples:

1. Tina, who always boasts about her two doctorates, lectured me all night on Warhol’s

art.

2. Tina, who’s got two doctorates, gave me a fascinating overview of Warhol’s art last

night.

Because these two sentences can be used to represent exactly the same event, we can say

they have similar referential meaning. At another level, though, the information they convey is
different. Sentence 1 gives the impression that the speaker considers Tina a pretentious bore.
Sentence 2, in contrast, indicates that the speaker finds her interesting. The

“stance” of the speaker in these utterances thus differs.

Word choice is not the only way to communicate feelings and attitudes toward utterances and
contexts. A striking contrast is provided by sentences that differ only in terms

of stress or intonation. This string of words can be interpreted in several ways depending

on the intonation:

Erin is really smart.

The sentence can be uttered in a matter-of-fact way, without emphasizing any word in

particular, in which case it will be interpreted literally as a remark acknowledging Erin’s

intelligence. But if the words really and smart are stressed in an exaggerated manner, the

sentence may be interpreted sarcastically to mean exactly the opposite. Intonation (often

accompanied by appropriate facial expressions) can be used as a device to communicate

attitudes and feelings, and it can override the literal meaning of a sentence.

Consider a final example. Suppose that Andy Grump, father of Sara, addresses her as

follows:

Sara Grump, how many times have I asked you not to channel surf?

There would be reason to look beyond the words for the “meaning” of this unusual form

of address. Mr. Grump may address his daughter as Sara Grump to show his exasperation, as in this
example. By addressing her as Sara Grump instead of the usual Sara, he
conveys frustration and annoyance. His choice of name thus signals that he is exasperated. Contrast
the tone of that sentence with a similar one in which he addresses her as dear.

The level of meaning that conveys the language user’s feelings, attitudes, and opinions about a
particular piece of information or about the ongoing context is called affective meaning. Affective
meaning is not an exclusive property of sentences: Words such as

Alas! and Hoorray! obviously have affective meaning, and so can words such as funny,

sweet, and obnoxious. Even the most common words—such as father, democracy, and

old—can evoke particular emotions and feelings in us. The difference between synonymous or near-
synonymous pairs of words such as vagrant and homeless is essentially a

difference at the affective level. In this particular pair, vagrant carries a negative affect,

while homeless is neutral. Little is known yet about how affective meaning works, but it

is of great importance in all verbal communication. From our discussion so far, you can

see that meaning is not a simple notion but a complex combination of three aspects:

• Linguistic meaning, including referential meaning (the real-world object or concept

picked out or described by an expression) and sense meaning.

• Social meaning: the information about the social nature of the language user or of the

context of utterance

• Affective meaning: what the language user feels about the content or about the ongoing

context

The linguistic meaning of an expression is frequently called its denotation, in contrast to

connotation, which includes both social and affective meaning.

This chapter focuses primarily on linguistic meaning, the traditional domain of

semantics, but we occasionally refer to the three-way distinction. Social meaning is

investigated in Chapters 10 and 11.