SEMANTICS

Theoretical Aspects

Contents

Semantics vs. Pragmatics The Ogden-Richards Triangle Reference, Meaning, Denotation & Connotation Language and The Meaning of Words: Constructions with Adjectives, Nouns, Verbs (tense, aspect, modality) Homonymy, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity Lexical Relations: Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy ... Figurative Language: Irony, Presupposition, Metonymy, Metaphor ... Sense & Signification

Semantics vs. Pragmatics

is concerned with the stable meaning resources of language-asa-system; falls under more categories:
grammatical semantics (meaning conveyed by grammatical means) lexical semantics (deals with the meanings of words) historical / diachronic semantics (deals with the ways in which meanings change over time) formal semantics (aims to explain and describe meanings using the tools of logic) componential semantics (tries to account for complex meanings as being built up out of a limited number of semantic building blocks) cognitive semantics (treats meanings as things in the mind, that is as concepts)

is concerned with the use of that system for communicating, on particular occasions and in particular contexts; It is of two types:

- 1. conversational implicature (refers to

meanings which a speaker intends to convey, but does not explicitly express) - 2. concerns expressions which designate different things, places, or times in the world, in different contexts: this table, over there, last night. The general term for identifying the things in the world that a bit of language is about is reference, and the mechanism whereby it is achieved, using the speaker as a reference point, is called deixis

The 'Ogden-Richards' Triangle

CONCEPT

association

reference

WORD

meaning

OBJECT

Ogden and Richards (1923) called the bond between word and concept an association, the bond between concept and object reference, and the bond between object and word meaning. When we hear or read a word, we often form a mental picture of what the word represents, and so we are apt to equate concept with a mental picture.

Reference, Meaning, Denotation & Connotation

Reference is the relation between language expressions such as this sea, both tigers, another house and however the expression relates directly to something, in a particular situation of language use, including what a speaker may imagine (= the mental image of something); Reference is the way speakers and hearers use an expression successfully; Semantically speaking, meaning is more than denotation (Denotation is the knowledge people have, knowledge that makes the use of words successful. Meaning not only describes things, events and characteristics, but also expresses people's favourable / unfavourable opinions); Meanings are expressed by units that may be smaller than words morphemes; Meanings are expressed in units, larger than words sentences (see the relational aspects the word meanings vary with context); Compare: The tiger killed a man. with The man killed a tiger. (the words are the same, but the meaning differs)

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Relations

As far as the meaning of a lexeme (meaning given by the way in which the lexeme is linked to the other / others) is concerned, two kinds of linkage are known: - syntagmatic relations; - paradigmatic relations. Syntagmatic Relations the mutual associations of two or more words in a sequence (not necessarily right next to one another) so that the meaning of each is affected by the others, and together their meaning contribute to the meaning of the larger unit / phrase or sentence; thus, in They sit on chairs, sit co-occurs with chair; in happy child, happy co-occurs with child; in the shore of the sea, shore co-occurs with sea; in She reads books and newspapers, read co-occurs with books and newspapers. Paradigmatic Relations relations of choice offer the possibility to choose from among a number of words that can fill the blank space; for example: Judge was cautious or careless. or Judge was cautious but arbitrary. Just one variant fits the context. In Linguistics, a paradigm represents the pattern of the declension of a noun, the conjugation of a verb (i.e. wash / washes / washing / washed), etc.

Reference, Meaning, Denotation & Connotation

In Semiotics, Denotation is the surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier (Rom. 'semnificant'), and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary. (see BBC Dictionary); In Semantics, Denotation represents the extension of a term. (The extension of a concept consists of the things to which it applies, as opposed to intension = any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase or other symbol; it is often implied by the definition of the word.) In Semiotics, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure contrasts three concepts: the signifier the "sound image" or string of letters on a page that one recognizes as a sign; the signified the concept or idea that a sign evokes; the referent the actual thing or set of things a sign refers to. ! The signified is analogous to intension, the referent to extension. Without intension of some sort, words can be meaningless.

Types of Reference
Definite Reference: when one or more specific individual entities (i.e. persons, things, places, times, etc.) are referred to. ! A definite referring expression must contain enough information to allow the hearer to exclude all potential referents except the correct one. See the examples below: I saw Pete here yesterday. My husband is in London now. Generic Reference:where reference is made to a whole class of referents, rather than to a specific / nonspecific individual or group of individuals. In the examples: Dodos are extinct. The dodo is extinct. A dodo is extinct. only the first two are normal with properties that hold only for the whole class.

Types of Reference

Indefinite Reference: when reference is made to some entity or entities, but the identity of the referent(s) is either not known or not relevant to the message being conveyed. Examples: There's a man at the door who wants to speak to you. He's something in the city. Come up and see me sometime.

Denotation, Connotation

According to Charles W. Kreidler (Introducing English Semantics), Denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning, which everybody generally agrees about. Connotation refers to the personal aspect of meaning, the emotional associations that the word arouses; Connotations vary according to the experience of individuals, but since people do have common experiences some words have shared connotations. For example, in the series: thin, slender, svelte, skinny, we choose to use one word rather than another; thin is considered the usual term, the neutral. While the extension of a word is sometimes called its reference, the intension of the word is sometimes called connotation. In everyday language, connotation means a little more than associations. Example: For many Americans, the term 'liberal' has negative connotations. In a more technical use, connotation involves expressive features such as derogatory nature of hovel and slum, or register allegiance, such as the difference in formality between pass away and kick the bucket.

Language and the Meaning of Words

Constructions with Adjectives

- Gradability: adjectives are gradable or non-gradable. With gradable adjectives, different levels or degrees of the quality they denote are expressed. For instance: 1. positive It's cold outside. Just how patient do you have to be ? 2. comparative He is thinner than his brother. Ann is said to be more beautiful than her friends. 3. superlative She is the rudest person I've ever met. In his work, Tom is the best. 4. cogent superlative (denoting extreme ends of scales; their tendency is towards non-gradability); example: freezing waters. Non-gradable adjectives: The presentation was very excellent.

Language and the Meaning of Words

Count Nouns, Mass Nouns & Ambiguous Nouns

- Count Nouns denote distinguishable whole entities, like: beans, people, shirts
(they can be counted). - Mass Nous are quantified with the word much. Examples: dough, water, lava (they denote undifferentiated substance). - Ambiguous Nouns paper, glass, cheese are ambiguous between a count sense and a mass sense. Verbs: - Transitive Verbs ask for a direct object; examples: The baby ate some mashed banana. - Intransitive Verbs, not requiring a direct object: The bank's interests dropped. The lawn died. - Unergative Verbs (requiring a subject that is consciously responsible for what happens). In the example: Tourists [carefully] walk through the eco park., walk is an unergative verb and the whole context becomes an unergative clause. - Unaccusative Verbs the subject is affected by the action but does not count as responsible for it. For instance:

Gardeners grow vines. Vines grow.

Language and the Meaning of Words

Verbs

- Tense (past [saw], present [see, sees], future [shall / will see]); - Aspect (simple usually for recurring instances [see, saw, will see], progressive showing ongoing activities [am / was / will be seeing], perfect both the completion of the action and the reference point are important [have / had / will have seen]); - Tense-Aspect Combinations (compare, for example: present progressive [He is seeing his friend tomorrow.] with present perfect progressive [He has been seeing this doctor for 20 years.] ! Mind the use of adverbials, such as: then, now, at present, next year, tomorrow, in forty-five minutes from now, last Bastille Day, this week, yesterday, nowadays ...). - Modality the additional meanings given to a main verb (probability, possibility, ability, permission, impossibility, obligation, volition, invitation, refusal ...) by other (auxiliary) verbs or verb phrases such as: can, may, must, shall, would, ought to, will, be able to, used to ...). See: He can swim. or You can't be hungry; you have just had your breakfast.

Deontic and Epistemic Modality

Deontic interpretations of modality relate to constraints grounded in society: duty, morality, laws, rules. Deontic modality lets language users express their attitudes (or relay the attitudes of others) as to whether a proposition relates to an obligatory situation or permissible one, or somewhere in between. Examples: You should have sent him an email. Tax forms must be submitted by the end of September. Epistemic interpretations have to do with knowledge and understanding. Markers of Epistemic modality are understood as qualifications proffered by users regarding the level of certainty of a proposition's truth. Examples: They may meet in the centre court final tomorrow. ! [To be compared to: They meet in the centre court final tomorrow., which is a modally unmarked sentence.]

Language and the Meaning of Words

Derivation (formal processes of derivation include: addition, mutation, conversion, subtraction). The categories of derived words are: 1 Verbs from nouns: transfer [paint, water]; effect [cripple]; means [lock]; vehicle [skate, jeep] 2 Verbs from adjectives: causative [beautify, purify]; causative & inchoative [deepen, redden] 3 Verbs from verbs: repetitive [rewrite, re-capture]; revertive [unfold, disappear]; privative [disappoint that has no relation to appoint] 4 Adjectives from verbs: active-subjective [envious]; passive-objective [enviable] 5 Adjectives from nouns: class-descriptive [childish, foolish]; affecting-descriptive [graceful, malicious]; affected-descriptive [muddy, foggy] 6 Adjectives from adjectives: tendency [yellowish] ; negative [illegal, dissatisfied, impatient, harmless] 7 Nouns from verbs: action; effect; agent/instrument; affected; place 8 Nouns from adjectives: abstract [boredom, pessimism, certainty, darkness, hesitancy, costliness, width]; characterized [absentee, youngster, shallows] 9 Nouns from nouns: place [fishery, orphanage]; person [mountaineer, islander, New Yorker]

Homonymy, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity

the same linguistic form, as with bank (side of river) and bank (financial institution): the two banks are said to be homonyms. Homonyms are of 3 types: 1. Homographs - if two meanings are associated with the same written form but different spoken forms (e.g. lead (the metal) and lead (to guide). 2. Homophones - if they are pronounced the same, but have different written forms (e.g. lead (metal) and led (past tense of lead). 3. Prototypical Homonyms are identical in both spoken and written forms.

Homonymy occurs when unrelated meanings are signalled by

Homonymy, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity

Polysemy - To be considered as belonging to the same word, multiple

senses must be felt by native speakers to be related in some way. Polysemous senses may be related by Hyponymy, as in the case of drink (imbibeliquidandimbibealcoholicbeverage)ortiger (feline animalandmalefelineanimal). Several polysemous relations involve a contrast between literal and figurative meanings of a word. The latter may be: - metaphorical, as in position (location in space, opinion on some controversial issue, and professional post within an organisation); - metonymic, as in wheels (revolving parts of a mechanism in contact with ground and car); - or it may involve hyperbole, as in fantastic (so extreme as to challenge belief and a generalised term of ). Dictionaries usually treat homonymy and polysemy differently: homonymous readings are given separate main headings, while polysemous readings are typically distinguished by means of numbers under a single main heading.

Homonymy, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity

Ambiguity - An expression (strictly, an expression form) is said to be ambiguous if it has more than one possible distinct meaning. The ambiguity of an utterance may be: - purely lexical in origin, as in Ill meet you at the bank, - or purely grammatical, as in The chimpanzee is cooking. - or it may be both lexical and grammatical, as in the classic telegram Ship sails today. Zeugma represents a type of semantic anomaly (it is also sometimes known as sortal crossing or, especially when deliberate, syllepsis). It occurs when a single occurrence of an expression has to be interpreted in two distinct ways simultaneously, as in: She was wearing a charming smile and a pair of slippers. He could well expire before his passport does. Most potentially ambiguous expressions in normal language use do not give rise to any problems of interpretation. This is because typically one of the possible interpretations fits the context better than the alternatives. The process of selection from ambiguous alternatives is known as disambiguation.

(Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy)

There are two main ways of approaching sense relations. - According to the viewpoint of Structural Semantics, the sense of a word is the sum total of its sense relations with other words in the language. - Outside of Structural Semantics, sense relations are usually regarded as relations between senses (or other units of meaning). Sense relations are of two main types, paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Paradigmatic Relations of meaning (including, according to Lexical Semantics: synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy) occur between items which can occupy the same position in a grammatical structure: I saw a bird / sparrow (hyponymy); I saw a crow / sparrow (incompatibility); a long / short journey (antonymy); She touched Petes arm / elbow (meronymy).

Lexical / Sense Relations

(Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy)

A word is said to be a synonym of another word in the same language if one or more of its senses bear(s) a sufficiently close similarity to one or more of the senses of the other word. Examples: The concert began / commenced with Beethovens Egmont Overture. What he told me was false / untrue. Near-synonyms / (Plesionymy) must share the same core meaning and must not have the primary function of contrasting with one another in their most typical contexts. Examples: murder / execute / assassinate; joyful / cheerful; Antonyms (also known as gradable contraries) are a variety of lexical opposite. Typical examples are: long: short, fast: slow, heavy: light, strong: weak, old: young, good: bad, clean: dirty, hot: cold.

Lexical / Sense Relations

-

Synonymy

(Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy)

Lexical / Sense Relations

Types of Antonyms:

Polar antonyms form a sub-type of antonym. Examples are: long: short, heavy: light, fast: slow, deep: shallow, thick: thin, large: small, strong: weak. They denote relative values along a single dimension, like length or weight, prototypically measured in conventional units. Equipollent Antonyms - each term operates on its own scale, but unlike the overlapping type the scales point outwards from a common zero value rather than overlap. For instance, there is a scale of hotness and a scale of coldness pointing in the opposite direction, the zero value of both scales corresponding to the absence of a temperature sensation. Typical examples are hot: cold; sweet: sour; happy: sad. Privative antonyms are a sub-type of overlapping antonyms. The evaluatively negative term indicates the presence of some undesirable property, while the evaluatively positive term indicates the absence of the undesirable property. Examples of this type are clean:dirty, safe: dangerous, sober: drunk, accurate: inaccurate, satisfactory: unsatisfactory.

(Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy ...)

Overlapping Antonyms typically exhibit an evaluative polarity (unlike Polar Antonyms, which are typically objective and evaluatively neutral), with one term expressing a positive attitude towards the referent and the other(s) a negative attitude: good: bad; polite: rude, impolite; kind: cruel, unkind; clever: stupid; gentle: rough. Another property that differentiates overlapping antonyms from polar antonyms is that the comparative of the positive term is impartial the comparative of the negative term is committed: for one thing to be better than something else it does not have to be good; but to be worse than something else; it has to be bad.

Lexical / Sense Relations

(Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy ...)

Lexical / Sense Relations

Hyponymy is the asymmetrical relation of sense between, for instance, tiger - animal and between daffodil - flower. This relation is usually explained in terms of inclusion, but there are two ways of looking at this. 1. Thinking of categories of things in the world (the extensional perspective), the category of animals includes the category of tigers, so that if something is a tiger it is necessarily an animal. 2. But thinking of meanings (the intensional perspective), the meaning of tiger includes the meaning of animal. The term in a relation of hyponymy associated with the more inclusive category (flower, animal) is called the hyperonym (also often called the superordinate) and the included category (daffodil, tiger) is the hyponym. Notice that a word may be a hyponym of one word and a hyperonym of another: dog is a hyponym of animal, but a hyperonym of colli. Hyponymy must be distinguished from the other main relation of inclusion, namely, meronymy. This is the part-whole relation, exemplified by finger: hand, nose: face, spoke: wheel, blade: knife, hard disk: computer, page: book, and so on.

(Synonymy, Antonymy, Hyponymy ...)

Lexical / Sense Relations

Taxonymy is a special variety of hyponymy that constitutes the vertical relation in a taxonomic hierarchy. It is the relation expressed by kind of or type of as in A stetson is a kind of hat, A pomelo is a type of citrus fruit. It is common for a hyperonym to have a set of incompatible hyponyms. This is the basis of a taxonomic hierarchy: Hyperonym animal fruit tree Hyponyms cat, tiger, cow, camel, lion, giraffe, apple, orange, banana, plum, oak, ash, yew, pine, willow,

Syntagmatic Sense Relations

Syntagmatic Sense Relations (according to Lexical Semantics) includ: - selectional restrictions; - structures in the lexicon such as taxonomic hierarchies; - change of word meaning over time; - and processes of meaning extension, such as metaphor and metonymy hold between items in the same grammatical structure. Relations between individual items are not usually given names on the lines of hyponymy, antonymy, and so forth, but certain effects of putting meanings together are recognised, such as: 1. Anomaly (e.g. a light green illness) - when interacting meanings in a grammatically well-formed expression intuitively do not go together normally, as in plastic anxiety or feeble hypotenuses. ! Somewhat odder are cases in which the anomaly can only be cured by substituting an element with a superordinate or a cohyponym from the same domain: ?I heard a crow croaking; I heard a crow/bird croaking.

Syntagmatic Sense Relations

2. Pleonasm (e.g. dental toothache): is a type of semantic anomaly in which some aspect of meaning is felt to be unnecessarily duplicated. For instance, in I kicked it with my foot., with my foot is felt to be redundant because it contributes no extra meaning: with the foot is an essential part of the meaning of kick. Likewise, in a female actress, female is redundant because female is adequately signalled by -ess. (Likewise a new innovation, an illegal murder, and so on.) Mere repetition does not necessarily lead to pleonasm. For instance, That was very, very good. is not pleonastic because the second very has a distinctive contribution to the meaning by heightening the degree of goodness expressed.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(IRONY; PRESUPPOSITION; METAPHOR, MYTONYMY ...)

Metaphor figurative expression in which a notion is described in

terms usually used for a different kind of notion. Examples: My car is a lemon. Dr. Jones is a butcher. Structural Metaphors are abstract metaphorical systems in which an entire (typically abstract) complex mental concept is structured in terms of some other (usually more concrete) concept. Examples: I finally won / lost the argument. She defended her claim that the moon is habitable. We demolished their argument. Metonymy way of denoting an entity by using some characteristic of that entity, e.g. blue eyes as a way of referring to a person with blue eyes.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
(IRONY; PRESUPPOSITION; METAPHOR, MYTONYMY ...)

Presupposition information that must be assumed in order to be

meaningful; Have you stopped climbing mountains? that the addressee has been climbing mountains, which presupposes that the addressee is an alpinist or a sportsman and that the addressee is an adult male. Irony - when you use words that are the opposite of what you really mean, often in order to be amusing. Example: Wagner calls his program 'the worst talk show in America,' without a hint of irony. 'Of course Michael won't be late; you know how punctual he always is,' she said with heavy irony. Understatement - a statement that is not strong enough to express how good, bad, impressive etc. something really is. Example: Willis is not exactly a genius. Euphemism - a polite word or expression that you use instead of a more direct one to avoid shocking or upsetting someone. For example: pass away instead of die.

SENSES & SIGNIFICATIONS

The term sense is often used with a meaning equivalent to intension. Signification the intended meaning of the word (according to Longman Advanced Dictionary). Examples: Discourses are not just constituted by what is and is not written; other signification systems are involved. In its usage of the real or referent as signifier, Surrealism eminently illustrated de-differentiated signification. Signification (according to BBC Thesaurus) - the message that is intended or expressed or signified; examples: What is the signification [= meaning] of this sentence to you ? the signification [= significance] of a red traffic light the signification [= symbol] of the white flowers worldwide The signification [= importance] of his announcement was ambiguous.

Bibliography:

Cruse, Alan, A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics, Edinburgh University Press, 2006 Cruse, Alan, Meaning in Language; An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000 Davis, Steven, Gillon, Brendan S., Semantics - A Reader, Oxford University Press, 2004 Griffiths, Patrick, An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics, Edinburgh University Press, 2006 Hurford, James R., Heasley, Brendan, Smith, Michael B., Semantics; A Coursebook, Cambridge University Press, 2007 Kreidler, Charles W., Introducing English Semantics, London, Routledge, 1998 Lappin, Shalom (ed)., The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, Blackwell Publishing, 1997 Lyons, John, Semantics, Cambridge University Press, 1977 Zoltan, Gendler Szabo (ed.), Semantics vs.Pragmatics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005