Semantics-Pragmatics

UTS
What Semantics is and the nature of language...
Semantics: the scientific study of meaning

The human language:

- stimulus-free: we are able to talk about vast number of things

- creative: we are always producing new utterances and comprehend new
sentences
- arbitrary: no natural relation between a word and what it designates

Grammar:

the implicit knowledge that a speaker has made explicit by the linguists
Aspects of Semantic knowledge (10) (Reference A, pp. 9-12)
Speakers can generally acknowledge:
1. Meaningful / not? > anomaly
2. Sentence A = Sentence B > paraphrases
3. Word A = Word B > synonymy
4. Sentence A >< Sentence B > contradictory
5. Word A >< Word B > antonymy
6. Common elements of meaning > semantic features
7. Sentences = double meaning > ambiguity
8. How language is used when people interact > adjacency pair
9. Two statements may be related in such a way that if one is true, the other
must also be true (logic). > Entailment
10. The message conveyed in one sentence may presuppose other pieces of
knowledge(assumption). > presupposition
Meaning and Semantics: The Level of Meaning
Principle of Compositionality
The meaning, of a complex expression, is determined by the lexical meanings of its
components, their grammatical meanings and the syntactic structure of the whole.
It yields a convenient division of semantics into the following subdiciplines:
1. Lexical semantics: the investigation of expression meanings stored in the mental
lexicon (mouse, sock);
2. Compositional word semantics: the investigation of the meanings of words that are
formed by the rules of word formation (mousify, mouse food);
3. Semantics of grammatical forms: the investigation of the meaning contribution of
grammatical forms that can be freely chosen, often understood as including the
semantic analysis of function words such as articles, prepositions and conjunctions;
4. Sentence semantics: the investigation of the rules that determine how the meanings of
the components of a complex expression interact and combine.
5. Utterance semantics: the investigation of the mechanisms (e.g. meaning shifts) that
determine, on the basis of the compositionally derived expression meaning, the range of
possible utterance meanings.
The Dimensions of Meaning: Mentalistic Theory
The Dimensions of Meaning
Reference: relations between a language expression (this dog, the dog) and whatever the
expression pertains to in a particular situation of language use.

Denotation: the potential of a word like door or dog to enter into such language expressions (the
central aspect of word meaning, which everybody generally agrees about)

Connotation: the personal aspect of meaning, the emotional associations that the word arouses

Sense relations: the meaning of any expression varies with context, what other expressions it
occurs with and what expressions it contrasts with.

Two kinds of linkage: syntagmatic and paradigmatic

The Dimensions of Meaning
The Dimension of Meaning
Grammatical meaning: expressed by the arrangement of words, grammatical
affixes, and function words.

Lexical meaning (lexeme): minimal unit that can take part in referring or
predicating. (dog, cat, put up with, kick the bucket)

Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit

- Free morphemes: happy, lemon

- Bound morphemes: un-, -ade
Polysemy: several related meanings > head (literal head, head of a company, head of a table)

Lexical ambiguity: When a lexeme which has more than one unrelated meaning can occur in
the same position in utterances
Semantic Roles
Sentences and Proposition

- A proposition can be expressed in different sentences.

2a Helen put on a sweater.

2b Helen put a sweater on.

- These are different English sentences, but they convey the same
message—they express the same proposition.
Semantic Roles
● Valency zero: zero argument (the subject does not correspond to anything)
○ It is raining, It sleeted, It is windy

● Valency one: one argument (have subject, no object)

○ The dog is sleeping, Larry laughed, The cake fell

● Valency two: two argument (subject, object)

○ The cat killed a rat, I broke the window, Bert hit Harry
Lexical Relations
- Hyponymy: The term collie is a hyponym of dog.
- Superordinate/hyperonym: The term dog is a superordinate of collie
- Tautology: redundancy (Rover is a collie and a dog)
- Contradiction: Rover is a collie but not a dog
- Synonymy: Seaman and sailor
Lexical Relations
- Types of antonyms:

1. Binary / Complementary pairs > antonyms that express a binary relationship (male/female)
2. Non-Binary / Gradable pairs > antonyms that are part of a larger set of related words and
express the concept that one of them is more, whereas the other is less.
3. Relational opposites / converse > antonyms that express a symmetrical relationship between
two words (parent/child) > kinship, social roles, directional
are these contradiction, entailment, or paraphrase?
1. My brother married a doctor. My male sibling joined in wedlock with a
physician.
2. Vera has only one dog. Vera’s dogs are called Bert and Oscar.
3. My husband keeps forgetting things. Thank God I’m a widow.
4. Jane ate a piece of chicken. Jane ate a piece of poultry.
5. Vera is an only child. Olga is Vera’s sister.
6. I saw Mary at the anniversary party. It was Mary that I saw at the anniversary
party.
7. Othello killed Desdemona. Desdemona died.