Seminar 1.

The Subject Matter of Contrastive Semantics

Discussion topics

1. Semantics as a study of meaning. How do words acquire meaning?

Linguistic semantics looks at the way an individual language structures the world for
its speakers, and analyses the sense relations that can be set up between different
words or groups of words (2007, R. Hartmann). Semantics studies the meaning, i.e.
assignment of linguistic symbols to extra-language objects in a broad sense.

Semantics is the study of meaning in language, including

1. The meaning of individual words (lexical semantics)

2. The meaning of larger units like sentences

• Semantics has long attracted the interest of philosophers and logicians, going back (at
least) to Plato and Aristotle

• Today, semantics is studied by linguists, psychologists, philosophers, and others,

under many different theories, e.g.

The earliest recorded linguistic discussion is Plato’s Cratylus, c. 400 BC, which recounts
a debate between Cratylus and Hermogenes about how words acquire meaning

• Hermogenes advocates the conventionalist position that language originated as a

product of convention, so that the relationship of words and concepts is arbitrary
‘Nothing has its name by nature; only by usage and custom’

• Cratylus advocates the naturalist position that there is a natural, intrinsic relationship
between words and concepts ‘There is a correctness of name existing by nature for
everything: a name is not simply that which a number of people jointly agree to call a
thing’

2. Arbitrariness and conventionality of linguistic signs. Ferdinand de Saussure.

Charles Sanders Peirce.
Ferdinand De Saussure, who is considered to be the father of the modern linguistics,
was the first who explained the notion of the arbitrariness systematically. According to
the Saussurean's legacy, the arbitrariness that Saussure claims is the
arbitrariness of the relationship between signifiers and signifieds.So, the relation
between the signifier and the signified is “arbitrary”, i.e. there is no direct connection
between the shape and the concept

A linguistic sign, as Saussure define it, is the mechanism by which meaning is created
and conveyed. Other scholars state that linguistic signs are the keys that unlocks the
meanings of all things great and small. That's to say, without the help of signs people
would not be able to make a clear-cut, distinction between two things. A sign is a
combination of a “concept” and a “sound pattern”, a union that cannot be
separated in people's associative mind. It is a “form made up of something physical,
sounds, letters, gestures, etc.”, which Saussure called the signifier or “sound-image”; to
stand for an object, image, event, etc., which he termed the signified or “concept”

The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce has a similar point of view. He
declares
that signs take different forms: words, images, sounds, acts or objects, and they
become signs only
when we use them to create meaning. He also emphasizes that "[n]othing is a sign
unless it is
interpreted as a sign" (cited in Chandler 2007:16). In other words, anything can be a
sign as long as
it is signifying, referring to or standing for something other than itself" (ibid).

3. Semantics in a linguistic model. Semantics and Pragmatics.

4. Subfields of semantics.
5. The units of analysis in lexical semantics. The definition of the word. Lexicon as s system.
6. Theories and methodological history of lexical semantics:
a. historical-philological semantics
b. structuralist semantics
c. generativist semantics
d. neostructuralist semantics
e. cognitive semantics
7. Comparative vs contrastive linguistics. Tertium comparationis in contrastive studies.
8. Contrastive studies of semantic systems of two languages. AnnaWierzbicka’s semantic
primitives.
9. Typological study of lexicon. Linguistic universals.

Exercises
1. Identify the following nonlinguistic signs as iconic, indexical, or symbolic, or as a
combination of any two.
a. a wave of the hand (for goodbye) (symbolic)
b. a picture of a cigarette with a red circle around it and a diagonal slash through it (iconic and
symbolic)
c. a road map (iconic and symbolic)
d. a stop sign (symbolic)
e. the footprints of an animal in the mud (indexical+iconic)
f. a jack-o'-lantern (symbolic+indexical)
g. thunder (indexical)
h. the human figure depicted on the washroom door (iconic)
i. skull and crossbones (as a sign for poison) (iconic)
j. the smell of a skunk (indexical)

2. All of the following linguistic signs (underlined), as well as being arbitrary, are in part
either iconic or indexical. Say which they are.
a. The balloon rose higher and higher into the sky. (iconic)
b. Here is your coat. (indexical)
c. Do you want a fizzy drink? (iconic)
d. This pan is big, but I need the biggest pan that you have. (iconic)
e. The building was h-u-u-ge. (iconic)
f. He sneered and snickered. (iconic)
g. To the left is a picture by Michelangelo. (indexical)
i. We were awakened by the cock-a-doodle-doo of the rooster. (iconic)

3. Choose the sign-icons (mark a variety), sign-indices and sign-symbols among the following
words.
1) click ‘клацати’

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
2) here

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
3) mumble ‘бурмотіти’

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
4) bark

symbol 

index 
 icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
5) jump

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
6) that

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
7) rustle

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
8) sofa

symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram
9) splendiferous
 symbol 

index 

icon-image 

symbol+icon-diagram

References

1) Andreichuk N.I., Babeliuk O.A. Contrastive lexicology of English and Ukrainian

languages: theory and practice : textbook / N.I. Andreichuk, O.A. Babeliuk. –
Kherson: Publishing House “Helvetica”, 2019. – 236 с.
2) Geeraerts, D. Theories of Lexical Semantics. – Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009. – 341p.
3) Lipka L. An outline of English lexicology: lexical structure, word semantics, and
word-formation - Niemeyer, 1992.
4) Андрейчук Н.І. Контрастивна лінгвістика: навч. посібник / Н. Андрейчук. –
Львів: ЛНУ імені Івана Франка. 2015. – 343 с.
5) Корунець І.В. Contrastive Typology of the English Language /Ількo Вакулович
Корунець. –Вінниця : Нова Книга, 2004.–460с.