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Albu, Semantics Part Two: Phrase and Sentence Semantics

Lecture 4: PHRASE AND SENTENCE MEANING

"Then you should say what you mean," the March hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily replied, "at least--I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know."
"ot the same thing a bit! said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same
thing as 'I eat what I see'!"
"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get
what I like'!"
"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse... "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I
sleep when I breathe'!"
"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Words and morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in language. For the most part, however, we
communicate in phrases and sentences, which also have meaning. The meaning of a phrase or
sentence depends on both the meaning of its words and how these words are structurally
combined. (Idioms are exceptional and will be discussed later.) Some of the semantic knowledge we
have about words can be applied to sentences. Thus we say that:
-Words are synonyms; sentences are paraphrases.
-Words may be homonyms; sentences may be ambiguous.
-Words have opposites; sentences can be negated.
-Both words and sentences can be used to refer to, or point out, objects; and both may have some
further meaning beyond this referring capability, as we shall see in a later section.

Combining Words into Sentences

...I placed all my words with their interpretations in alphabetical order. And thus in a few days,
by the help of a very faithful memory, I got some insight into their language.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

The Principle of Compositionality: We comprehend sentences because we know the meaning of

individual words and we know the rules for combining their meanings.

red balloon vs. large balloon

red brick vs. brick red

a good friend vs. a false friend

The carpet is under the cat. vs. The cat is under the carpet.

Thematic Roles

Subcategorization of verbs for zero, one or two Noun Phrase "objects", which stand in a certain
meaning relation to the verb, e.g., sleep, find and put, respectively.

Verb as a nucleus. Valency

Valency 0: It is raining Valency 1: My brother snores

Valency 2: Mary is washing the dishes. Valency 3: John put the book on the desk.

Thematic roles
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R.Albu, Phrase and Sentence Meaning

The boy found a red brick

The boy - agent or "doer" of the action of finding.
a red brick - the theme, the patient, or the "recipient" of the action. (The boldfaced terms are technical
terms in semantic theory.) Part of the meaning of find is that its subject is an agent and its direct object
is a theme/patient. (The fact is reflected in the entry for find in the lexicon.)

The boy put the red brick on the wall.

on the wall - the location

Other thematic roles:

The boy carried the red brick from the wall to the wagon.
The boy broke the window with a red brick.
goal, where the action is directed,
source, where the action originated, and
instrument, an object used to accomplish the action. Consider the following example:

The lexical entries for find and put would now look something like this (the thematic roles are
contained in parentheses):

find, V,______ NP, (Agent, Theme)

put, V,______ NP, PP, (Agent, Theme, Location)

Our knowledge of verbs includes their syntactic category, how they are subcategorized, and the
thematic roles that their NP subject and object(s) have, and this knowledge is explicitly represented in
the (mental) lexicon.

Notes
(1) Thematic roles are the same in sentences that are paraphrases.

(2) Thematic roles may remain the same in sentences that are not paraphrases

(3) Special kinds of subjects

The hotel forbids dogs.

It seems that Samson has lost his strength.

(4) Contrast English with other languages, e.g., with German: In diesem Hotel sind Hunde verboten.
(In German, case distinctions appear on articles, as well as on nouns and adjectives)

(5) A universal principle has been proposed called the theta-criterion, which states in part that a
particular thematic role may occur only once in a sentence. Thus sentences like *The boy opened
the door with a key with a lock-pick are semantically anomalous because two noun phrases bear the
thematic role of instrument.

Home assignment: Your syntax teacher told you about thematic roles. What was the list of roles she
discussed? Present this list (or some other list) in class. Attach your favourite version of the list to your
portfolio.
R.Albu, Phrase and Sentence Meaning

Further Remarks on Semantics and Syntax

The same meaning can be expressed syntactically in more than one way. To discuss:
the semantic property of possession:
semantic concepts such as "ability", "permission", or "obligation" and the ways they are expressed...
Active-passive pairs constitute another common type of paraphrase:
The child found the puppy.
The puppy was found by the child.

Some active sentences do not have a well-formed passive counterpart. (Why?)

John resembles Bill.
The book cost ten dollars.

Note that the following two sentences have different meanings:

The Greeks who were philosophers liked to talk.

The Greeks, who were philosophers, liked to talk.
(To discuss)

Another example of how syntax and semantics interact has to do with reflexive pronouns, such as
herself or themselves.
Sentence structure also plays a role in determining when a pronoun and a noun phrase in different
classes can be coreferential, that is, refer to the same object. Discuss:

John believes that he is a genius.

He believes that John is a genius.

(But: The fact that he is considered a genius bothers John.)

We have knowledge of syntactic rules, semantic rules, and of how these rules interact. The fact that we
have this knowledge is demonstrated by our ability to
make judgements of grammaticality,
recognize ambiguities and paraphrases, and
know what the antecedents of pronouns are.

The "Truth" of Sentences (to discuss)

“Truth conditions” (Knowing the meaning of sentences means knowing their truth conditions)
The Declaration of independence was signed in 1776
The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1976.
The moon is made of green cheese.
John believes that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1976.

Sometimes knowing the truth of one sentence entails the truth of another sentence. Much of what we
know about the world comes about from knowing the entailments of true sentences.
(To correlate with analytic and contradictory sentences.)