SEMANTICS
SEMANTICS
1. What is Semantics?
Semanticists try to answer this question by studying what signs are, as well as how
signs possess significance –that is, how they are intended by speakers, how they
designate (make reference to things and ideas), and how they are interpreted by
hearers.
Definition
The meanings of the word can be interpreted in various ways depending on the
situations.
2. Types of Meanings
3. Approaches to Semantics
The question of what meaning is, is important to any discipline concerned, directly or
indirectly, with cognition, that is, with how humans process information.
WordsàThings
Meanings is a transparent / direct relation between the signifier and the signified.
The Signifier is the word, the sound form. The signified is the object, the thing
designated, the referent.
Wordsà ConceptsàThings
In indirect view of meaning, meaning itself is an indirect association between the
linguistic sign and the information evoked by the sign.
1-Utterance:
A Definition
2-Sentence:
- A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is,
conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the
grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought of as the
IDEAL string of words behind various realizations in utterances and
inscriptions (words).
Propositions are commonly treated as the meanings or, to use the more standard
terminology, the semantic contents of sentences ( nội dung ngữ nghĩa của câu), and so
are commonly taken to be central to semantics and the philosophy of language.
Example:
In saying, ‘John can go’, a speaker asserts the proposition that John can go.
Example:
In saying, ‘John can go’, a speaker asserts the proposition that John can go. In saying,
‘Can John go?’ he mentions the same proposition but merely questions its truth. We
say that corresponding declaratives and interrogatives (and imperatives) have the same
propositional content (nội dung cấu trúc mệnh đề / Nội dung ngữ nghĩa của câu).
Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two
sentences are perfect translations of each other.
A Structural Definition
1-Reference:
Definition
So we have two things: the English expressions (part of the language) and the
things (part of the world). We call the relationship between them reference.
The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things.
When a common noun is used to refer to many things of the same type in the world,
we have the case of variable reference. e.g. man, this man, book, that book.
When a proper noun is used to refer only to one thing, we have the case of constant
reference, e.g. Vietnam, Hue, the moon, the sun.
We can use different expressions used to refer to the same person, same thing or same
notion, e.g. Morning star and Evening star; Margarite Thatcher and the Iron Lady;
President Ho Chi Minh, Uncle Ho; the General Secretary of Communist Party of
Vietnam in 2015 & 2020, the President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, người
đốt lò vĩ đại.
2-Sense
Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.
In everyday conversation the words meaning, means, mean, meant, etc. are sometimes
used to indicate reference and sometimes to indicate sense.
The referent of an expression is often a thing or a person in the world; whereas the
sense of an expression is not a thing at all.
WEEK 4: PREDICATES
1-Predicator
Definition:
Intuitively speaking, the predicator describes the state or process in which the
referring expressions are involved.
Example:
asleep is the predicator in Mummy is asleep and describes the state Mummy is
in.
love is the predicator in The white man loved the Indian maiden and describes
the process in which the two referring expressions the white man and the Indian
maiden are involved.
wait for is the predicator in Jimmy was waiting for the downtown bus and
describes the process involving Jimmy and the downtown bus.
The predicators in sentences can be of various parts of speech: adjectives (red, asleep,
hungry, whimsical), verbs (write, stink, place), prepositions (in, between, behind), and
nouns (crook, genius). Despite the obvious syntactic differences between these
different types of words, semantically they all share the property of being able to
function as the predicators of sentences. Words of other parts of speech, such as
conjunctions (and, but, or) and articles (the, a), cannot serve as predicators in
sentences.
The basic semantic ingredients of a common type of the simple sentence, as we have
analysed it, are (1) a predicate playing the role of a predicator, and (2) a number of
referring expressions playing the role of arguments. The referring expressions
correspond to actual things, persons, etc. in the world more or less directly, via the
device of reference. The function of the predicate is to describe the specific
relationship between the things, persons, etc. referred to, i.e. to describe how the
things and/or people participate in the particular situation described.
2-Predicate
Definition
Examples: hungry, in, crook, asleep, hit, show, bottle are all predicates; and, or, but,
not are not predicates.
Notice that predicate and predicator are terms of quite different sorts. The term
predicate identifies elements in the language system, independently of particular
example sentences. Thus, it would make sense to envisage a list of the predicates of
English, as included, say, in a dictionary. The term predicator identifies the semantic
role played by a particular word (or group of words) in a particular sentence.
Example
This sentence has just one predicator, enter, but the sentence also contains the
words tall, handsome, stranger, and saloon, all of which are predicates, and can
function as predicators in other sentences, e.g. John is tall, He is handsome, He
is a stranger, and That ramshackle building is a saloon.
3-Degree of a predicate
Definition:
Example
Comment:
Sometimes two predicates can have nearly, if not exactly, the same sense, but
be of different grammatical parts of speech. Typically in these cases the
corresponding predicates have the same degree, as in the following examples.
Example
Example
1-Generic sentence
Definition
Example
Note that generic sentences can be introduced by either a or the (or neither).
Examples:
A whale is a mammal.
Definition
Example
When an astronomy lecturer, in a serious lecture, states that the Earth revolves
around the Sun, the universe of discourse is, we all assume, the real world (or
universe).
When I tell my children a bedtime story and say ‘The dragon set fire to the
woods with his hot breath’, the universe of discourse is not the real world but
a fictitious world.
1-Deictic Word
Definition
A DEICTIC word is one which takes some element of its meaning from the
context or situation (i.e. the speaker, the addressee, the time and the place) of
the utterance in which it is used.
The first person singular pronoun I is deictic. When Ben Heasley says ‘I’ve lost
the contract’, the word I here refers to Ben Heasley. When Penny Carter says
‘I’ll send you another one’, the I here refers to Penny Carter.
The linguistic forms used in deixis are called deictic expressions /deictic words
Deictic expressions can be:
1-Person deixis: operating on three part-division: first person – second person – third
person, e.g. I, you, he, she, it..
2-Spatial deixis: here, there, come, go, bring, this, that, these, those….
3-Temporal deixis: yesterday, tomorrow, today, tonight, next week, this week, verb
tenses.
2-Context of Utterance
Definition
If I meet a stranger on a bus and we begin to talk about the weather (and not about
anything else), then facts about the weather (e.g. that it is raining, that it is warmer
than yesterday, etc.), facts about the bus (e.g. that it is crowded), and also obvious
facts about the two speakers (e.g. their sex) are part of the context of utterances in this
conversation.
Practice
(3) Draw a diagram with three circles and label the circles ‘universe of
discourse’, ‘context of utterance’, and ‘immediate situation of utterance’ in such
a way as to indicate what is included in what.
Answers
According to the definition of context,
(3) Draw a diagram with three circles and label the circles ‘universe of
discourse’, ‘context of utterance’, and ‘immediate situation of utterance’ in such
a way as to indicate what is included in what.
3-Definiteness
Definiteness:
The three main types of definite noun phrase in English are: 1-proper names, e.g.
John, Queen Victoria, 2-personal pronouns, e.g. he, she, it, and 3-phrases introduced
by a definite determiner, e.g. the, that, this……
By contrast, expressions like a man, someone, and one are all indefinite.
It follows from the definition of definiteness that all definite noun phrases are
referring expression.
However, The whale in The whale is a mammal is not a definite noun phrase. The
whale here is used in the generic sense. It refers to all the whales.
That book is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker
assumes the hearer can tell which book is being referred to. The personal
pronoun she is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker assumes
the hearer can tell which person is being referred to. The Earth is definite. It is the
only thing in a normal universe of discourse known by this name.
Definition
Example :
The notions of reference and extension are clearly related, and are jointly
opposed to the notion of sense.
2-Prototype
Definition
Example
A man of medium height and average build, between 30 and 50 years old,
with brownish hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics or defects,
could be a prototype of the predicate man in certain areas of the world.
In a language community as wide as that of English, there are problems with
this idea of prototype, due to cultural differences between various English-
speaking communities.
Definitions:
The REFERENT of a referring expression is the thing picked out by the use
of that expression on a particular occasion of utterance.
The EXTENSION of a predicate is the complete set of all things which could
potentially (i.e. in any possible utterance) be the referent of a referring
expression whose head constituent is that predicate.
Denotation etymologically derives from the postclassical Latin compound verb de-
noto which conveys the idea of singling out an entity by way of distinctive features.
Denotative meaning is that part of the meaning of a word or phrase that relates it to
phenomena in the real world or in a fictional or possible world. In the meaning
system, denotative meaning may be regarded as “central” or “core” meaning of the
lexical item.
Denotative meaning is set of semantic properties which serve to identify the particular
concept associated with the word in question.
These semantic features help form the “central” or “core” or “conceptual” meaning of
the word.
Man: <+adult><+human><+male>
Woman:<+adult><+human><-male>
Boy:<-adult><+human><-+male>
Girl:<-adult><+human><-male>
Baby<+human><+young>
1-Sense
Definition (partial):
Definition
The truth of the sentence follows from the senses of elephant and animal.
A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but may be either true
or false, depending on the way the world is.
Analytic sentences are always true (necessarily so, by virtue of the senses of the words
in them), whereas synthetic sentences can be sometimes true, sometimes false,
depending on the circumstances. We now come to contradiction.
Definition
Example
Example
That man is human has the sense property of analyticity (or of being analytic). That
man is tall has the sense property of syntheticity (or of being synthetic). That
man is a woman has the sense property of being a contradiction.
Definition
A NECESSARY CONDITION on the sense of a predicate is a condition (or
criterion) which a thing MUST meet in order to qualify as being correctly
described by that predicate.
Example
3-Stereotype
Definition
A stereotype is related to a prototype (see previous unit) but is not the same
thing. A prototype of elephant is some actual elephant, whereas the stereotype
of elephant is a list of characteristics which describes the prototype. The
stereotype of a predicate may often specify a range of possibilities (e.g. the
range of colours of typical cats), but an individual prototype of this predicate
will necessarily take some particular place within this range (e.g. black).
Definition
SYNONYMY is the relationship between two predicates that have the same
sense.
A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word
or phrase in the same language. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous,
and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy.
2-Paraphrse
Definition
Example:
Bachelors prefer redhaired girls is a paraphrase of Girls with red hair are
preferred by unmarried men
3.Hyponymy
Hyponymy shows the relationship between the more general terms (hypernyms) and
the more specific instances of it (hyponyms). A hyponym is a word or phrase whose
semantic field is more specific than its hypernym. The semantic field of a hypernym,
also known as a superordinate, is broader than that of a hyponym. An approach to the
relationship between hyponyms and hypernyms is to view a hypernym as consisting of
hyponyms.
Definition
Red is the superordinate term; scarlet is a hyponym of red (scarlet is a kind of red).
“HYPONYMY involves us in the notion INCLUSION in the sense that tulip and
rose are included in flower, and lion and elephant in mammal (or perhaps animal).
Similarly, scarlet is included in red. Inclusion is thus a matter of class
membership. The ‘super’ term is the SUPERORDINATE and the ‘lower’ term is the
HYPONYM.” [Palmer, 1981: 85]
4-Entailment
E.g.
Rule: