Semantics: The Meaning
of morphemes, words, phrases, and
of Language
An Introduction to Language (2014)
by Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman
and Nina Hyams
The Meaning of Language
When you know a language, you
know:
 When a word is meaningful
(flick) or meaningless (blick),
when a word has two
meanings (bear), when two
words have the same meaning
(sofa and couch), and what
words refer to (in the real
world or imagination) (chair;
unicorn).
 When a sentence is meaningful
(Jack swims) or meaningless
(Swims metaphorical every),
when a sentence has two
meanings (Jack saw a man
with a telescope), when two
sentences have the same
meaning (Jack put off the
meeting; Jack put the meaning
off), and whether a sentence is
true or false (the truth
conditions of the sentence)
– All kings are male (true)
– All bachelors are married
(false)
The Meaning of Language
 Others require more
nonlinguistic knowledge
(Molydbenum conducts
electricity).
 If you know a sentence is true
(Nina bathed her dogs), you
know that another sentence is
true (Nina’s dogs got wet).
- Entailment
Semantics is the study of the meaning
sentences
 Lexical semantics: the
meaning of words and the
relationships among words
 Phrasal or sentential
semantics: the meaning of
syntactic units larger than one
word
 Knowing a sentence means
knowing if it’s true or false.
 Copper conducts electricity
- has meaning and is understood
because we know how to
determine whether it’s true or
false…by using a volt meter…
copper wire is used in
electricity wires
 Crumple-horned snoracks
incarnadine nargles
- Meaningless- because you
would not have an idea how to
know if it’s true or false.
Truth
 Compositional semantics:
formulating semantic rules that
build the meaning of a
sentence based on the meaning
of the words and how they
combine
- Also known as truth-
conditional semantics
because the speaker’s
knowledge of truth conditions
is central
 If you know the meaning of a
sentence, you can determine
under what conditions it is true
or false
- You don’t need to know
whether or not a sentence is
true or false to understand it,
so knowing the meaning of a
sentence means knowing
 under what circumstances it Entailment
would be true or false  One sentence entails another if
- Question of meaning is a whenever the first sentence is
question of truth conditions. true, the second one is also
- This is not to say that they are true.
always true or always false:  Entailment only goes in one
Jack swims. direction. It cannot be
Most sentences are true or false reversed.
depending on the situation.  Entailment proves that
meanings are related:
 Tautologies Synonyms and Paraphrases.
- A restricted number of  When one is true, the other
sentences are always true must also be true.
regardless of the  Two sentences are
circumstances. synonymous if they entail each
- Circles are round. other. If Sentence A entails
- A person who is single is not Sentence B and vice versa,
married. then whenever B is true, A is
- The truth is guaranteed by the also true.
meaning of their parts.
 Two sentences are
 Contradictions contradictory if one entails the
- Some sentences are always negation of the other.
false.
- Circles are square.
Ambiguity
 Our semantic knowledge also
Entailment and Related
tells us when words or phrases
Notions have more than one meaning,
 Entailment: one sentence or are ambiguous
entails another if whenever the  The meaning of a sentence is
first sentence is true the computed based on its
second one must be true also hierarchical organization.
 Syntactic ambiguity arises from
multiple syntactic structures
corresponding to the same string
of words
The boy saw the man with the
 When two sentences entail
telescope
each other, they are
 Lexical ambiguity arises from
synonymous, or paraphrases
multiple meanings corresponding
to the same word or phrase
- When one word combines
 When one sentence entails the
with other elements of a
negation of another sentence,
sentence
the two sentences are
This will make you smart.
contradictions
(smart: (i) clever or (ii) burning
sensation)
Compositional Semantics
 Compositional semantics: to
account for speakers’
knowledge of truth,
entailment, and ambiguity, we
must assume that grammar
contains semantic rules for
how to combine the meanings
of words into meaningful
phrases and sentences

 The principle of
compositionality asserts
that the meaning of an
expression is composed of
the meaning of its parts
and how the parts are
combined structurally.
 Grammar contains syntactic
rules and semantic rules that
combine the meanings of
words into meaningful
sentences.
 Semantic Rules
Jack swims
Noun—referent—meaning is taken
from the actual Jack
Verb—characterized by referring to a
set of individuals doing that action
Semantic Rules
 The meaning of the VP as a
certain set of individuals—
those who kissed Laura.
 Rule 1- if Jack is a member of
that set of individuals, the
sentence is true.
 Presidential Legal Counsel
Secretary Salvador Panelo on
Monday said Robredo used a
government plane when she
visited typhoon-hit
Catanduanes province.
 "Sumabay ka doon sa mga
relief goods. O, 'di parang
ikaw ang may dala noon," he
alleged in his talk show aired
on state-owned People’s
Television network.
(You went with the relief goods, and
made it appear they were yours.)
 Robredo did not use a C-130
plane when she brought aid to
Bicol, her home region, said
her spokesman Atty. Barry
Gutierrez.

When Compositionality Goes

Awry*
 Sometimes compositionality
breaks down because
- A word in the sentence
does not have a meaning
- If the words cannot be
combined as required by
the syntactic structure and
semantic rules  Breaking the rules creates the
 These situations are known desired imagery.
as anomaly.
Metaphor
 Metaphors require creativity and
 Metaphors are sentences that
imagination to derive a meaning
seem to be anomalous but are
 Idioms are expressions that have a
understood in terms of a
fixed meaning that is not
meaningful concept
compositional
 To understand a metaphor we
* Goes awry – something does not go
must understand the individual
the way it is supposed to go.
words, the literal meaning of the
expression, and facts about the
world (Combinatorial properties)
Anomaly
 An anomalous sentence: - To understand Time is
Colorless green ideas sleep money you need to know
furiously that in our society people
are often paid according to
 This sentence is syntactically the amount of time worked
fine, but contains semantic
violations such as describing Idioms
ideas as both colorless and  Because the words of a
green language are arbitrary, they
must be listed in a mental
 Other sentences are lexicon.
uninterpretable because they  Fixed meaning, frozen in
include nonsense words: form, do not undergo rules that
a week ago vs a table ago change word order or
substitution
 Idioms must be entered into
the lexicon as single items
with their meanings specified,
and speakers must learn the
special restrictions on their use
in sentences.
 To say something by accident
that embarrasses or upsets
someone
 Idiomatic phrases are phrases
with meanings that cannot be
predicted based on the
meanings of the individual
words
- The usual semantic rules
for combining meanings
do not apply
let my hair down (let
me relax)
 All languages have idioms, but
idioms are rarely directly
translatable
Theories of Word Meaning
 Reference- the association of
the word to the object it
refers to in the real world
(object is the referent)
 Sense-some words have no
reference but have sense
(fictional characters).
 Lexical relations- relationship
of words
- Synonyms
- Antonyms
- Complementary pairs
 alive/ dead
- Gradable pairs
 big/small; hot/cold
 unmarked-used in questions of
degree (high/low)
 relational opposites-
give/receive; buy/sell—they
display symmetry in their
meanings…ee-er
Lexical Semantics
 The meaning of a word is a
function of its component
morphemes, similar to how the
meaning of a sentence is a
function of the component
words
- But word meanings are
conventional and sentence
meanings must be derived
using rules
 The socially agreed-upon meaning
of a word may change over time,
but no individual can change the
meanings at will or else we
wouldn’t be able to understand
each other
 Dictionaries attempt to describe
meanings by paraphrasing each
word using other words
Lexical Relations: Synonyms
 Synonyms: words or
expressions that have the same
meaning in some or all
contexts
- apathetic, indifferent, sofa,
couch
 Some assert that there are no
two words with exactly the
same meanings
 After the Norman invasion of
England in 1066, many French
words of Latin origin entered
 the language, giving rise to
synonymous pairs:
English: heal Latin:
recuperate
English: send Latin:
transmit
Lexical Relations: Antonyms
 Antonyms are words that are
opposite in meaning
- Complementary antonyms:
 alive/dead, present/absent,
awake/asleep
 alive = not dead, dead = not
alive
- Gradable pairs: no absolute
scale
 big/small, hot/cold, fast/slow,
happy/sad
 Some pairs of gradable
antonyms contain a marked
and an unmarked term, with
the unmarked term being the
one used in questions of
degree:
 How high is the mountain? not
How low is the mountain?
- Relational antonyms: display
symmetry in their meaning
 give/receive,buy/sell,
employer/employee
- “Autoantonyms” or
“contranyms” are words that
are their own antonym
 dust = to remove small
particles (to remove)
 dust = to scatter small particles
(to spread)
 Homonyms (or
homophones): words that
have different meanings but
are pronounced the same:
flower and flour
 Heteronyms are words that
are spelled the same but
pronounced differently: lead
 e.g Lead, pronounced ‘LEED’,
means to guide. However,
lead, pronounced ‘LED’,
means a metallic element.
 Polysemous words are words
with multiple, conceptually or
historically related meanings
 diamond: the geometric shape;
a baseball field
 Hyponyms involve the
relationship between a general
term and specific instances of that
term
 rose, daisy, and poppy are all a
kind of flower, so rose, daisy,
and poppy are all hyponyms
of the word flower
Semantic features
 Properties that are part of word
meanings and that reflect our
knowledge about what words
mean
 Decomposing the meanings of
words into semantic features
can clarify how certain words
relate to other words
- Antonyms: they share all but
one semantic feature
 big/red;buy/sell- change in
possession