Theories of Meaning

Meaning as Propositional Calculus

Peter opened the door
The door was opened by Peter
It was Peter who opened the door proposition / core meaning
Simple sentences are built of propositions connected by logical constants like not and or,
and and and if - then. More complex sentences arise when there exist, some, supposing, all
are employed. But the meaning is brought out by the logic of the connectives and the truth
values of the propositions
Intension and Extension. Intension is the meaning achieved by the words in the sentence.
Extension is what the sentence refers to.
Intension assumes the word has an intrinsic meaning
Extension is the set of objects in the world to which the word corresponds. There is a special
kind of definition called "ostensive" which defines a word by pointing to those objects.
 Theories of Meaning
Meaning as Truth Conditions

The meaning of a simple example: The moon

is round are the conditions that the sentence is
true, namely that the moon is indeed round

?? Constatives vs Performatives
 Theories of Meaning
Social Construction of Meaning
Societies through languages construct reality

Are languages (and hence meanings) culture-dependent /

yes and no
Culture-specific words
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Culture-specific grmmar
Culture-specific concepts
Schemas / scripts etc
The concept of DOWRY
 Theories of Meaning / scripts
A Prisoner Plans his Escape
Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning
his escape. He hesitated a moment and
thought. Things were not going well. What
bothered him most was being held, especially
since the charge against him had been weak.
He considered his present situation. The lock
that held was strong, but he thought he could
break it.
 Theories of Meaning / scripts
A Wrestler in a Tight Corner
Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning
his escape. He hesitated a moment and
thought. Things were not going well. What
bothered him most was being held, especially
since the charge against him had been weak.
He considered his present situation. The lock
that held was strong, but he thought he could
break it.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Culture refers to the values, norms, and beliefs of a society. Our culture can be
thought of as a lens through which we experience the world and develop shared
meaning. It follows that the language that we use is created in response to cultural
needs. In other words, there is an obvious relationship between the way in which
we talk and how we perceive the world. One important question that many
intellectuals have asked is how the language that our society uses influences its
culture.
Anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf were
interested in answering this question. Together, they created the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis, which states that how we look at the world is largely determined by our
thought processes, and our language limits our thought processes. It follows that
our language shapes our reality. In other words, the language that we use shapes the
way we think and how we see the world. Since the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
theorizes that our language use shapes our perspective of the world, it follows that
people who speak different languages have different world views.

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Patric Griffith (2006)
 Principle of compositionality
Peter loves Susan
He kicked the bucket
 Lexicon and semantics

• ·      Vocabulary of a lg – lexical systems with semantic structure

describable in terms of paradigmatic and syntagmatic sense relations
holding between lexical items
• ·      Sense of a lexical item – set of relations which hold between that
and other items in the same lexical system or the place of a word in a
system of relationships which it contracts with other words in the
vocabulary (no presupposition about the existence of objects and
properties outside the vocabulary of the lg) (structural definitions)
• ·      Reference – relationship which holds between words and the
things, events, actions and qualities they ‘stand for’ (referents)
 Lexicon and semantics

·      Paradigmatic relations of sense – all members of the

related sets of terms can occur in the same context (e.g.
colour terms)
• Syntagmatic relations of sense – relations of co-occurence
(blond + hair)
 
·      Connotation (associative meaning)
·      Denotation (reference)
 Componential analysis

     Componential analysis (semantic features):

• The hamburger ate the man
• My cat studied linguistics
• A table was listening to some music
Table: - animate, - human, – male, - adult
 
The ________ ate the man
N + animate
 Polysemy

·      Polysemy – words with two or more related senses The

difference between the meanings can be obvious or subtle.
(big town, big difference; big head),
-     man-woman, man-boy, man-animal (definition by
antonymy),
-     cat (general vs specific),
-     brothers-brethren,
-     operation (military, surgical and mathematical context)
source: language economy
 Polysemy

Clear cases:
Unclear cases:

a. I ownnewspaper
The a big heavy
gothammer.
wet in the rain.
b. Ib.hammered
The newspaper
the tent
fired
pole
some
intoof
theitsground
editingusing
staff.a small rock

c. John was a good man. He donated a lot of money to charity.

d.
c. b. Bill was
Laura was aa very
goodbright
painter.
student
His drawings
and always
always
got good
were grades.
exciting to look at
d. The lights in this room are very bright.
 Homonymy

·      Homonyms – two or more ‘unrelated’ words

identical in form but different in meaning:
-        real homonyms (bank, pupil),
-        homophones (course-coarse, threw-through),
-        homographs (wind: [wind][waind]),
-        interlanguage homonyms (false friends)
source: matter of chance, etymological origin
 Homonymy

Clear cases:
Unclear cases:

a. I own aclimbed
Sarah big heavydown
hammer.
the ladder.
b.
b. Ib.hammered the tent
Sarah bought pole into
a down the ground using a small rock
blanket.

c. My dog would always bark at mailmen.

c. Laura was a very bright student and always got good grades.
d. b. The tree’s bark was a rusty brown.
d. The lights in this room are very bright.
The only real way we have of telling the two apart is by
applying our judgement. There are no tests that can tell them
apart in a foolproof manner. Still, for many cases this is
enough.
There are, however, many other cases for which this decision
is not clear. This doesn’t mean that they are both or halfway
between each;that makes no sense, because a word can’t be
both one word and two words. Rather, it means that one of
the following options holds:
1. Different speakers treat the word differently. It might be
one word for me but two for you.
2. We are dealing with two homonyms, but there is enough
overlap between them.
3. We are dealing with one word whose different uses are
relatively far enough apart
 Synonyms
·      Synonyms - words or phrases with the same or nearly
the same meaning (various shades of meaning);
-        absolute synonyms (kind – sort) - interchangeable in all
contexts;
-        complete synonymy (identity in cognitive and emotive
sense);
-        close synonyms (jump-leap);
-        synonyms differing in intensity (break-smash);
synonyms in phraseology (cast – fling a stone) ·     
Tautonyms – synonyms across lg varieties (wrench US-
spanner UK, girl-bird (sl), valley-dale (North England)
 Antonymy – oppositeness;
-        not always binary (sweet vs sour or bitter; wealth
vs poverty, want, destitution);
-        complementary antonyms (single-married, male-female; denial of
one implies assertion of the other);
-        contradictory antonyms (above-below, find-lose; blue vs red,
yellow, green etc, sitting room vs dining room, bedroom etc),
-        converse antonyms (buy-sell, husband-wife)
-        contrary antonyms (gradable, modifiable, and contextually flexible
– big vs small, hot vs cold, smarter vs more silly)
 Factors which affect the "goodness" of a pair of opposites:
1. The purity of the semantic opposition: In some pairs of near-opposites (e.g. whisper/shout) the
semantic opposition does not exhaust the meaning of the words. The implication is that in
prototypical pairs of opposites, the semantic contrast does in some sense exhaust the meanings
of the words.
2. The ease with which a semantic dimension can be imagined: With near-opposite pairs such as
town/country, it is hard to determine what the relevant semantic dimension could be. The
implication is that for prototypical opposites, the semantic dimension can be easily identified.
3. Correspondence of nonpropositional meaning: Some near-opposites (e.g., tubby/emaciated)
have very different connotations. The implication is that prototypical opposites are very similar
in terms of non-propositional meaning.
4. Distance from the midpoint of a semantic dimension: In some cases, one member of a pair of
near-opposites (e.g., terrible) seems to name a more extreme value than the other member
(good). The implication is that prototypical opposites lie at equally distant points from a
midpoint.
5. Similarity in distribution: For example, both big and its antonym little can refer to relative age
rather than physical size in constructions such as big sister and little brother, but the near-
opposite of little, that is, large, can only refer to physical size with the nouns sister and brother.
The implication is that prototypical opposites are similar in distribution.
6. Whether the semantic contrast involves a single dimension or multiple dimensions: Some
near-opposites seem to be located along different dimensions, although the dimensions seem to
be related to the same general concept. The implication is that prototypical opposites share a
single dimension, even if that dimension is related to a concept associated with multiple
dimensions.
  Hyperonyms – superordinate terms, could be
examples of underspecification (stone for
diamond)
Hyponyms (=a kind of) – words included in the
meaning of others, with narrower or more specific
meaning, subordinate terms (daffodil vs flower;
solid, liquid, gas vs matter); co-hyponyms (dog
and horse are co-hyponyms of animal)
 Levels of meaning

General categories: plant animal vehicle

Basic level categories: tree dog motor car
Specific categories: oak Alsatian truck
 
Salience effect (the most common meaning, usually
basic level – what is it that barks at you?
I like fruit.
 Lexical fields
·      Lexical (semantic) fields – subsystems or lexical
domains – groups, or networks of words whose members
are related by meaning (Peter Roget’s Thesaurus 1852 –
1000 semantic categories), e.g. colour words, kinship
terms, container terms (glass, jar, jug, pitcher etc), parts of
the body, domestic animals, verbs of motion, terms of
quantity (bushel, pound), spatial orientation (long, tall, up,
down, high, low etc)
·      Idioms – combination of words that cannot be derived
from individual components (to run out of sth, be well off)
Part-whole relations – handle-door, foot-leg, kitchen-house,
tree-forest, grain-sand (synecdoche – part for whole or
whole for part e.g. there wasn’t a soul around)
 Metaphor

·     
Metaphor – traditionally: transfer of
exterior features e.g. personification
(animal-human ass, human-thing eye of a
needle, thing – human honey)
Cognitive theory: perception of similarity
between source domain and target domain:
conceptual metaphor (one domain mapped
on another)
 Metaphor
ARGUMENT IS WAR: win, lose argument,
hold ground, withdraw, surrender
 
ARGUMENT IS WAR
Your claims are indefensible
He attacked every weak point in my argument
His criticisms were right on the target
I demolished his argument
I’ve never won an argument with him
You disagree? Ok, shoot!
If you use that strategy m he’ll wipe you out
 
CONTAINER metaphor: thought at the back of mind

Role of metaphor in cognition (only literary texts vs pervasive feature of lg)

 Metonymy
conceptual metonymy as a contingent, i.e. non-necessary,
relation within one conceptual domain between a source
meaning and a target meaning, in which the source
meaning provides mental access to the target meaning.
I am not in the phonebook,
Currently we read Joyce
My village votes Green
 Types of meaning (Lyons 1977)
Conceptual meaning is sometimes called denotative meaning or
cognitive meaning, it is widely assumed to be the central factor in
linguistic communication. The denotation of word is its agreed-upon
sense-what it refers to, stands for, or designates, a part from the feeling
it may call up, and this again is able for a good deal on the context the
words that appears in.
Connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has by
virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content.
Connotative meaning is indeterminate and open in the same way as our
knowledge and belief about the universe are opened-ended

“The brink of the cliff” or” the brink of disaster”

 Types of meaning (Lyons 1977)
Stylistic meaning is that which a piece of language
conveys about the circumstances of its use.
They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did a
bunk with the loot.
After casting a stone at the police, they absconded
with the money.

Affective meaning is a sort of meaning which

corresponds to the personal feeling of speakers,
including his/her attitude to the listener, or his/her
attitude to something he/she talking about
 Types of meaning (Lyons 1977)
Reflected meaning involves an interconnection on the lexical
level of language, it is the meaning, which arises in case of
multiple conceptual meaning, when one senses of word forms
part of our response to another sense.
"Perhaps a more everyday example [of reflected meaning] is
'intercourse,' which by reason of its frequent collocation with
'sexual' tends now to be avoided in other contexts."
From Translation, Linguistics, Culture: A French-English
Handbook by Nigel Armstrong
My dear old car
 Types of meaning (Lyons 1977)
Collocative meaning consists of the
associations a word acquire s on account of
the meanings of the words, which tends to
occur in its environment. For instance the
words pretty and handsome share common
ground in the meaning of good looking. But
may be distinguished by the range of noun in
which they are like to occur or collocate;
Pretty woman and handsome man
 Types of meaning (Lyons 1977)
thematic meaning is the meaning that is
communicated by the way in which the speaker or
writer organizes the message, in terms of ordering,
focus, and emphasis. It is often felt an active
sentence such as (1) below has a different meaning
from its passive equivalent (2) although in
conceptual content they seem to be the same (Leech.
1974: 19)
1. Mrs. Bessie Smith donated the first prize.
2. The first prize was donated by Mrs. Bessie
Smith