CONTENTS Preface . a Acknowledgements ed, " PaRTA 15 Chapter J, Semantics and the subject matter of agi semantics 1, What does Semantics do? : ue 729 car ws 2. The meanings of “meaning”, ue Nt ke ae y ler F736 indy 3. Theories of meariing J : 4, Semantic properties r 1p ie fs & wt 5. Components of word-1 i-meaning ‘Yen 46 Gar 7 6. Lexical meaning and sae “2 e meaning > 7. Sentence anid utteranne ae 8. Discourse 0G ngfeo Cee e vb’ ) 58 hedarter 2. Word meaning (te) “ 1, Words as meaningful units Ae de owl a. rwog gh 2. Forms and ee eds twoti a ot . (hom 4) “fb on- 3, Lexical and grammatical meaning 67 revisited to “Hagens whe and oe A os : : 68 5. Synonymy W aig eos 2 6. Lexical variants iol paronyms oe bia W Nidie_g0 * 7. Antonymy Hq rol Ag a1 ten ony ge my ae Chapter : 3. Dimon nt of word meaning “s 92 1 Introduction 92 2 et (Mo 93 eo? Gah and Te! en eo 8 tet? 93 4. Sense and reference 29h 95 = hopes nahh S$rConnotation and dénotatio a 98 6. The change and development of meaning | 100 ae & de ransfereace of: meanipe, cu chp ae om ) 105 ‘Chapter 4. Sense Fae and F wha - 120 1. ste ign 120 ‘ubstitmtional and ghia i sense » “W24 > felations : 3. Other types of sense relations eB, 122 4, Componential analysis pds te Qa, ox low? 132 i 45. Entailment and the truth of sentences , 135 4 thy si Ah KOC dn ows ByPART 2: SENTENCE MEANING 143 Chapter 5. The meaning of the fet M0 p 143 aE ‘ety tion siplbo al * 143 A i et acceptability and od sain iY ) meaningfilness shed esos i & 2 lite. (tl $i Bs. 3. The principle of compositionality py 148 Variables in the, ‘cen of. ae ah # meaning Cte buy Tee’, A, chub sist Fie re, 5. The Yepresentational meaning noha SA at cs 86. The interpersonal ia et 169 Chapter 6. Modality (hd? iP pa em “1. Some views on modality, 174 2. Type of modality: epistemic and deni 176, 3. Mood as episteinic and deontic modality : : “179° 4 Personal modality ° i 180 5. Modal lexical verbs ‘ 183 6, Modality in subordinate clauses 184. Chapter 7. Sentence meaning and ‘ey, 188 rae eee Introduction’ 188 1. Proposition iu ar ‘ ; : 189wala tal © ap insebol ay 2. “Thematic meaning 14 a ob di ~ 296 3. Simple'and composite se spntences ee a 6 a a Bg 4, Truth functionality oS ct poe TL 209 : a Sentenpe type. and th caning, $23 PART 3: oye NCE MEANING “223 ie PS e Chapier 8, ‘The meaning of the utterance} y ") . 223 L.Introduction |, 223 1 2. Context ree ay ord " a4 a5 Utterances 226 go 4. Locutiont act Pai net tie a. 229 “ri wm 5. “noes e and perlocution: x. : 230 6. omens, questions and directives aed 235 Pb etyrion and ee reer 237 8. Implicatures 242 9. Reference nn 243 10. Modality - 247 References 269Preface | . : Three years after the fu'st edition saw the light of the day, it is tig to sit down and take a close look at the book. As I said in the Jirst edition, Iam wholly responsible for any errors which occurred in the book. And errors there were, and they have been ftved in this edition, It now appears with a different title "Understanding English semantics" because it has turned out to be different in many ways, It is much longer; it deals with several topics in greater depth; and it is based on facts from the English language. Since the publication of the book in’ 2001, I have had more time to look into cognitive semantics and it has dawned upon me that cognitive semantics may be a way of the future. Therefore, I have given some space in the book to cognitive semantics, in the hope that it may arouse students! interest in this field. ‘ This edition of the book in fact sees the first chapter almost completely rewritten, even though the headings remain essentially the same, Parts of the chapter had been written in So concise a manner that it became tough-going for both teachers and students. So what I did was .to substantially modify it, and add more substance to it. Most of the chapters have been revised, altered and augmented with more matertals-and, hopeyilly, may become more readable. In preparing this edition, it is my sincere hope that the hook has wianaged to acquire some sort of coherence’ and 7 ye oe te” i EDconsistency. The realization that mottality oan provide an exciting dimension to the issue of sentence and utterance meaning led to the —addition-of-¢-new chapter "Modality" to the layout of the book. As you will notice, the exercise section is the hardest to prepare, ‘and I have made some additions and modifications to, hopefully, make this * section more user-friendly. | This book is based upon a series of lectures delivered to senior students at the College of Foreign Laiguages (CFL), Vietnam National University (VNU), Hanoi. My sole purpose in © writing this book has been, hopefitlly, to equip the students ‘with an ‘ overview of a. field so fluid.and abstract and so felated with other areas, in particular, pragmatics and discourse analysis. Thus, I appeal to insights from these inter-disciplinary areas, where necessary.’ : : Cliff Goddard (1998) remarks that’ semantics, the study of meaning, is at the center of the linguistic quest to understand the nature of language and human language ‘abilities for two reasons. ’ First, expressing meanings is what language is all about - everything from words to grammatical constructions and structures. Second, semantics can shed light on the relationship between language and culture. We know that'we can find a lot of cultural information in word meanings, anit event in grammar. There are at least five fundamental question about meaning, as difficult as they are basic. (1). What is meaning? (2). What is it for an expression to have meaning? (3). What is it to know the meaning of an expression?(4). What is the relationship between the meaning ‘of an expression and what the expression refers to? . (5). What is the relationship between. the meaning of a complex expression and the meanings of its constituents? Answers to the first. question are forever wanted, Is it a psychological, social or abstract construct? Cognitive semantics will ° say that meaning is conceptualization of the world ‘out there, And there is no one-to-one correspondence between the world out there and the conceptualized world. Answer to quesiion 2 appears to depend on answers to question 1 and. question 3. Perhaps, to now the meaning of an expression is to know what it reflects, and also it can't be di Jtom what the speaker wants to convey (pragmatics), Question 4 probably finds the answer in the fact that the meaning of an expression determines its reference. And finally, the answer to the last question Hes in what linguists call compositionality, and I might label it. ‘Finctionaity" * ‘Central to the study of communication, semantics has been the _mmeating place of various cross-currents of thinking, and various disciplines such as philosophy, psychology and logic. But Leech (1991) remarks that their interests tend to dij lifer because of their different starting points: psychology the understanding of the mind and how meaning is processed by it; philosophy: the understanding of how we know what we know, of the rules of right thinking, and the evaluation of truth and falsehood: logic the study of thinking. Following many scholars, I take the view that the kind of Semantics to be offered to students must-first of ‘all be semantics of ‘natural language. Having said this, 1 should, however, add that efforts from such fields as logic can help the work of the 9semanticist in unfolding meaning. Semantics is a systematic study of meaning. But what is meaning. clearly requires 2 great deal of qualification. Meaning as treated in this book would subsume that discussed in both semantics and pragmatics, including both the meaning of the sentence and utterance (often involving implicatures, presupposition and illocutionary Sorce), apart from the traditional treatment of word meaning. In a very broad sense, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics means the distinction between meaning and use, i.e. the distinction between language in the abstract - language competence, and the use made of that competence by speakers and hearers - performance. I believe that in reality it would be extremely difficult to draw a line between meaning (supposed to be, confined to, semantics) and use (supposed to be. confined to pragmatics), thus, the best approach, in my opinion will be a combination of both pragmatics and semantics, A-very promising area of research that has arrived on the scene Is discourse analysis, which also claims a profound interest in language in use, There is no doubt that, as such, discourse analysis is related to semantics. Nevertheless, I should say that discourse analysis does not share the same scope as semantics. ‘For example, its purpose is’ also to consider types of discourse, discourse strategies or structuring and so on. Therefore, discourse analysis deserves a special place, and should not to be lumped with semantics. Langitage is the medium by which we think and by which we communicate, and although all animals have some form of language to commuhicate, only humans have a system which is not only sophisticated but also creative. We can always create new utterances which did not occur before, and.we can understand utterances which haven't been produced or heard before. This 10creativity of language jnakes it possible for us to use languages in ways that suit our purposes. Our communication is not ‘Sixed to.a set of topics; we constanily produce and comprehend new messages in response to new situational and new experiences. This is possible partly because language is a system of’ language units which can combine either Paradigmatically or syntagmatically... And partly it is because language is a system of signs, which, as Saussure says, are arbitrary. “According to F. de. Saussure ‘and many of his followers, there is no natural relation between "TREE" as the signifier and what it designates - the signified. Since ancient times, linguists and Philosophers have been arguing about the nature ofthe relation between-the signifier and the signified: F must admit that the issue of arbitrariness has generated some controversy in regent literature on the issue, (see Nguyen’ Duo Ton’, 2003). But at the sentence and discourse levels, the situation may be differeni, We should remember that our use off language is rule-govarned. So what happens is that we cén say an ayjil lot about what we want, but there seems to be a Jinite number of rules, and probably a not infinite number or words at our service. The question is what kinds of rules or inowledge are there for us to use language, First we need to know how the sound sysiem operates and combines as we produce speech, how these phonemes contrast with each other. to make clear the meaning we intend to. convey. This is phonology as we know it, Then we need knowledge .to organize the words, and in some languages change their forms as ts required: This is grammar, and the part of grammar which deals ee * Nguyen Due Ton (2003) argues that it is 2 fallacy to hold that there in no natural volation between the signifier and the signified. The fuet that we cannot determine the relation does not mean that itis not there. N. Hoa (2003) also belleves that as a communicative unit, language is motivated, 1with wordforms is called morphology. The other part is syntax which takes care of how words are combined into’ phraes and sentences, Finally, we need to Inow how linguistic meaning reflects our conceptualization of the world, qnd the relation between. the speaker and his intended meaning as he uses language. This is a.continuum of semautics and pragmatics. This book presents three semantic perspectives: the lexical approach, the cognitive approach ‘and the logicaliformal approach. More specifically, it will cover three basic meaningfidl units, from these perspectives: word meaning, which has been a Tong standing issue ‘with what I may gall lexical semantics; séntence meaning, an area so (fluid and elusive that it ig not always dealt with in a systematic fashion; and utterance meaning, which embraces the area of pragmatics. Some of the exercises were designed by me and some adapted from Hurford and Heasley (1983). This book is intended for students of English, VNUCFL. and those interested in semantics in general. In preparing it, I have assumed a fairly basic knowledge of linguistics on the part of’ students. [feel it Important to state that what I have wanted to do is to offer a presentation of new developments in semantic research. In fact, I drew an awful Let on many works, especially J. Lyons (1977 & 1996) and G. Leech (1991) and M. Halliday (1994). My other goal has been to provide the students with as much coverage as possible of this fascinating, field. - ‘ I would like to welcome any further comments ‘and criticisms - that can'go towards improving this book. Nguyen HoaAcknowledgements This book represents the enormous amount of efforts I have made since 1998 to introduce semantics - a much needéd course into the curriculuin at VNUCEL, and in some way I would like to thank everyone who has taughit me, inspired me, challenged me, or supported me throughout this process. First and foremost, a big thank you to Prof: Nguyen Thien Giap for his lectures on lexico- semantics way back in the late 1970s and his endless encouragement in publishing the book. Ihgve also benefited enormously from discussions and the invaluable and constructive comments and suggestions from my colleagues at CFL, Assoc. Prof. Tran Huu Manh (PhD), Ms, Ha Cam Tam (MA), Dr. Vo Dai Quang, Ms, Daa Thi Nhuong (MA), who trialled its first draft with students of the CFL, VNU, Hanoi. To name just a few. I owe them an enormous intellectual debt, Thank you also to iy students of the Department of English, YNUCFL, who have helped me by raising questions on certain points presented in the book and pointing out some errors therein. I understand that they havé both enjoyed and suffered from the first edition of the book, Many thanks, indeed. 13.Some exercises such as number 15, Chapter 2 were downloaded from the internet. But while every effort was made to teace their authorship, I must admit finding out the origin still remains impossible. J apologize for this failure, EF would like to thavik VNU CFL for a-small grant to support any effort to make this book, dice Nguyen Hoa 14PART 4 Chapter I Semantics and the subject matter of semantics Brief overview of the state of the art Semantics has quite a long history going back thousands of years. It is indeed true to say that it is as old as the history.of linguistics. However, the word "semantics" made its earliest entry into the Old English Dictionary only ih the 1890s, interpreted as the study of meaning. We shall start by raising the question of what kinds of semantics underline this book, fully ‘aware that there is no simple answer to this question. Perhaps the answer given will remain as controversial as ever. But it. is my conviction that semantics has to be "linguistic", And what is "linguistic" should be. clarified. For some, " inguistic" is related to the discipline of linguistics. For others, it is just about natural language. And we just 15want to use this term in the’ latter sense, J, Lyons (1995) and Frawley (1992) use the same term “linguistic semantics" stating in different terms about its coverage. And the term does not necessarily cover the same ground. This is what Lyons (1995: xii) says about linguistic semantics: “\... and linguistic semantics is the study of meaning in so far as it'is systematically encoded in the - vocabulary and grammar of natural languages". Meaning for Lyons would include that which is traditionally dealt with in semantics (literal meaning) and that which is within pragmatics (nonliteral meaning). Thus, the author may be said to take a rather broad view of theaning. Frawley on the other hand detines in obvious terms linguistic semantics as the .study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning. More specifically, it 7 about how languages dissect and express universal semantic space! in granunatical form. Frawley's view of linguistic semantics would exclude what we call. lexical, mearling ‘from _ investigation. It is quite in place to clarify the term "grammatical. meaning" as employed by Frawley. This term does not mean the same as that used in grammar. Grammatical meaning is the kind of meaning encoded by opposition of forms; for example the meaning of tense, or mood, or voice in English grammar. In point ‘of fact, grammatical meaning for Frawley is the information that bears on the "structural design of the language as a formal system. Jackendoff (1983) holds a simifar view when he believes that this kind of meaning is central to concepjual semantics. One of the central questions we try to answer is what is meaning after all and why is it that meaning has captured the attention of so many? Among the so many interested in semantics, ' "space" or "domain" is a very important nation in cognitive semantics, 16we have to acknowledge the contribution of many philosophers such as Locke, Frege, Austin, Grice, Russell, Wittgenstein, Camap, to name just a few. Probably the answer lies in the fact that meaning is the convergence of three points: language, mind and world. It is possible to present these three points and their relations in the following triangle, ‘ LANGUAGE : . MIND : oe “WORLD The lines connecting /anguage, mind and world represent relations which in one way or another constitute « the ameaningfulness of language. The mind-world relation studies such things as perception, action, the mind's bodily constitution and’ intentionality (what the mind thinks about what isin the world. The mind-language connection .basically says that using and understanding language is a. mental activity, and this activity is what meaningful Janguage exists for. Put another way, mind invests meaning in language, Locke, Frege, for example, have -identified understanding with associating the correct ideas or concepts with words. Others like a equated understandingwith knowing the requirements for accurate use of words and sentences, Grice finds the key to understanding in determining the communicative goals of the speaker/hearer. The idea that meaningfulness of language derives com mental content or mental models has helped make coguitive semantics a thriving field of study. The language-world relation maintains that language is the medium by which we describe and, explain reality. This, according to this picture, the key to meaning is the notion of truth-condition, According to this theory, the core of what an expression means is its truth conditions. Truth, conditions semantics has dominated the semantics scene for quite a while..A n alternative to this view of meaning maintains that the key to meaning is correct use. These two alternatives simply complement each other. As we say in our preface, language has to be not only meaningful but also well- formed. ‘We can present the entire scope of semantic studies as a _ continuum ranging from formal” semantics to cognitive semantics. There are basically three main approaches in semantics study: (i), Lexical semantics (ii). Cognitive semantics, and (iii). Formal/logical semantics, However, we just want to stress that in practice it is almost impossible to sepatate them. They are intertwined and linguists . would resort to all of them in their work. This book is really an Carnap (1937) defines "FORMAL" as follows: A theory, a rule, « definition, ar the Tike is to be called “formal” when no reference is made in it either to the meaning of the symbols (for example, the words) or to the sense of the expressions (e.g. the sententes), but simply and solely to the kinds and order of the symbols from which the expressions are constructed. So “formal semantics” will appear contradittory. In point of fact, "forme!" hag dome to meag,"tigorous and explicit”. canta = 18attempt to present an interaction-and interface between them, and should be viewed as such. We mow, for example, that word meanings (lexical semantics). are combined to create the meanings of sentences (the principle of compositionality - very important notion in formal semantics), Lexical semantics is a field which deals mainly with word meaning and relations between them. It, covers various theories of the structure of words, the differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure between different languages, and the relationship of word meaning to sentence meaning and syntax. A part of this book falls squarely within the domain of lexical smeantics, dealing with the notion of word meaning, the relation between word meanings including synonymy, homonymy, hyponymy, semantic transference, etc. Formal semantics is called formal since it attempts.to adapt analytical techniques from formal logic to the study of meaning (Frege, Russell, and Tarski, among others). It is concerned with relations between expressions, especially sentences which expresse propositions. The basic tenet of formal semantics is that it consider proposition as the meaning of the sentence, which is identified with a set of possible worlds. And it is concemed with its truth conditions. Formal semantics is now very popular in. Europe and the United States. An influential figure is Glottlob Frege (1884 - 1925), whose main doctrines are: (a). The meaning of a sentence (declarative) is its truth conditions, and (b). The meanings of its parts lie in their contribution to the truth conditions (compositionality). The first of these (a) is pretty clear: it equates meaning with truth conditions;. However, the’ second - the principle of 19compositionality says that the meaning of an expression is the function of the meanings of its parts and their manner of combination (structural). For this matter, the term "functionality" might be a better expression than “compositionality". Other important names include Alfred Tarski - the author of model theory (the: standard semantics for mathematical logic), - Richard Montague, who is said to be an advocate of the formal approach to natural language semantics. His fundamental different theoretical, underpinning from Frege and Tarski's is that he believes that it is possible to study the semantics of natural languages with the same techniques used-in mathematical logic. However, we should rememiber that most of Montague's papers deal with "fragments of English" and his aim was not to construct a grammar for the whole language, but rather to give a completely explicit syntax and ‘semantics for an ipfinite subpart of language which contained some constructions which pose challenges for the semanticist. The main focus of formal semantics is on truth conditions, entailment, reference, denotation, tautology, cohtradiction, modol, inference, quantification, etc. All these formal analyses described here, share somie common assumptions about the goals of semantics. The analyses of the semantic interpretations must be given in rigorous and explicit terms to avoid misinterpretation and ambiguity. As a° result, what we see is more likely to be a semantic representation, and it fails to explain what the meaning of language does or is. ‘Another common assumption best’ expressed in Lewis's (972 statement is: "Semantics without truth conditions is not semantics". One of the arguments for this assumption is that if we know what a sentence means we will know what the world would have to be like for the sentence to be true - truth conditions. But to know what the truth conditions ave, we need to know what a senténce means. ‘This 20reasoning is circular, at best. As most linguists agree there is more to meaning than truth conditions. Cognitive semantics, said to be rooted in cognitive linguistics (starting in the 1970s), is now gaining ground and has become a major area of interest with many adherents. Frawley (1992) in his work “Linguistic semantics" recognizes thiat: "Linguistics itself is a” cognitive science, and my‘ cognitivism is more of a requirement than a choice", Barbar Abbott (1999) states "(However) In linguistic semantics these days the cognitive aspects are the centre of focus". The core idea of this approach is that meanings of expressions are mental. Jn other words, as A. Paternoster (1999) claims: "Ja fact, language is typically used to describe reality, to convey information about. ‘the worl Id; a semantic theory that failed .o aecount for this fact would be disregarding an essential part of language usé". Thus a semantics is seen as a mapping from linguistic expréssions to cognitive structures, and “language i is seen as part of the cognitive structure. Emphasizing the importance and relevance of cognitive semantics, Talmy also asserts that semantics is intrinsically cognitive, Basically, the main tenets of cognitive semantics can be summarised as follows. (a). Meaning is conceptualisation in a cognitive model. More precisely, it involves the mapping from the expressions of the language to some mental entities, and does not concern itself with such important concepts of formal semantics as reference and truth. As Paternoster observes fiom the very beginning, cognitive semantics has been inclined to give up reference and truth since reference and truth are inevitably committed to.some disputable fornt of metaphysical realism. The truth of expressions is considered secondary as truth concerns the relation between the mental structure and the world. Meaning comes before tnith, 21(b).Cognitive models are mainly perceptually determined. As it happens cognitive structures are connectéd to our perceptual mechanisms either directly or indirectly, Thus, meanings are more .or ‘less perceptyally grounded”, According to this’ account, meanings relate thie perceiving individual and the entity perceived. This is in contrast to the traditional realistic versions of semantics - which claim that meaning has nothing to do With perception because it is a mapping between ‘language and the outside world. (c). Semantic elements are based on spatial or topological objects. Mental structures applied i cognitive semantics are the meanings of the linguistic expressions. In addition, it is essential to know that the conceptual schemes that are used to represent meanings are often based on geomettic or spatial contractions. Gordenfors’ (1988) proposes the notion of concéptual space as a framework for geometric structure used in describing cognitive semantics. A conceptual space consists of a number of quality dimensions. Examples of quality dimensions are: colour, pitch, temperature, weight, and the three ‘ordinary spatial dimensions. However, we should stress that “dimension’ should-be understood literally, being endowed with certain topological. or metric structures, (a). Coghitive models are primarily image-schematic. Image- schemas are transformed by metaphoric and metonymic operations. Lakoff (1987) and Johnson (1987) believe that the most important Within cogstitive.semuntics it fs asserted that one central cognitive abitity Is that of "grounding", ie. relating language and other events to the perspective of “the concepitualizer" who chooses to contruc the situation and portray it for expressive purposes (Lungacker, 1991). : Gordenfors’s conceptual spuce is similar to Langucker's “cognitive domains" (1987) or luckendofi's “cognitive structures" (1983). 22semantic structure in cognitive semantics ‘is that of an image schema which is believed to possess an inherent spatial structure. (e). Semantics is primary to syntax and partly determines it (f). Concepts show prototype effects. + Cognitive semantics is concemed with such important, notions as perspective, imagery, construal, figure - ground organization (or grounding): abstraction, prototype (all from Langacker); conceptual meétdjshar, experiential gestalt, idealized model (Lakoff). We would like to present some of these notions-here for illustration. Lakoff's conceptual metaphor claims that metaphor is not just a figure of speech; it is a way of imposing our understanding of one sort of thing into another. Consider in English a hidden enemy is described through the metaphor of “a' snake in the grass". Obviously, this is a reflection of the way English people perceive this experience. Meanwhile, Vietnamese uses "Ke thit gid mdr" (an enemy with a hidden face (literal translation)). A comparison can reveal this point clearly. Another example is how English and Vietnamese perceive "time". English people see time as "money" but Vietnamese see it as "gold or silver" . In Vietnamese we say: "Thai gicn 1a vang ba ", Grounding is another © notion defined by Langacker (1991: 315) as the ability to relate language events to the pers] ective of the conceptualizer who chooses to construe the situation’ and portray it for expressive purposes. A simple example fiom English would suffice, Just imagine we saw a film a couple of weeks ago. The event or situation is the same, but a hearer will say "! have seen the. filin" to an invitation to go to the cinema to see the film, implying a connection between seeing the film two weeks ago and the invitation now. Nate the use of the present perfect tense. The same 23speaker would say "J saw the film two weeks ago" as he or she was just describing what they did. Thus, from this discussion, it appears apparent that the kind of cognitive semantics that deals with meaning this way should rést on two basic assumptions as follows. (a). Meaning is human conceptualization of the world. * (b). There is difference between the real. world and the conceptualized world, or in other words there is no one-to-one correspondence between these two worlds, : Some reservation should be made about point (a). Most cognitive linguists identify meaning with conceptualization. This view comes close to accepting the thought that meaning is the concept, which is questionable. Apart‘ from. the conceptualization constituent, meaning cai encode other features such as the emotive or emotional, Let us contpare the two words “Jungs vs. airbags". The conceptualization component is the same for the two words, but what is obvious is that these items differ from each other in terms of their emotive charge. Thus for this reason, we shall simply” say-meaning reflecis human conceptualization rather than it is the conceptualization. One last point to be discussed in connection with formal and cognitive semantics is: so what is the fundamental difference © between the two. Our answer to the question is that witile both claim to bea study of meaning, formal semantics is more concerned with how the meaning of an. expression can be represented than what it denotes or how it is encoded, For example, Katz and Postal's work (1964) primarily deals with semantic representation in terms of semantic features called "markers". The fact of the matter is that to simply represent meaning is not to give an analysis of it. By contrast, cognitive semantics remains solidly” on the side of what the meaning of language can denote and how it is encoded. : 24Semantics vs. Pragmatics ‘The distinction between pragmatics and semantics: has remained controversial and will remain so for some time. Tt is probably easier to apply than to explain it. Basically, the distinction can be formulated as meanings encoded in the structure of | Tanguage against’those derived or deduced from how language is used on-a particular occasion, ii a particular context. We can see a very lengthy discussion and’ review in Levinson's Pragmatics (1983). Clearly, a line is drawn between pragmatics and semantics, Fon instance, one line of reasoning is summarized by Levinson as saying: "Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in a semantic theory". Or Gazdar is quoted (Levinson, 1983: 12) as saying: Pragmatics has as its Scope those aspects of meaning of utterances which caniedt be accounted for by straightforward reference to the truth conditions of the Sentences uttered. Put crudely; PRAGMATICS = MEANING - TRUTH CONDITIONS. Basically, Levinson agrees with the above opinions. He observes (1983: 32): "The most promising are the definitions (of’ Pragmatics) that equate pragmatics with “meaning minus semantics", : Perhaps, the main reason for making the distinction between semantics and pragmatics js to provide a framework for explaining situations where the Speaker's meaning can fail to be fully determined by ‘the conventional meaning of utterances, including indexicality, ambiguity, vagueness, implicature, non-literalness, illocutionary force. Another reason is to account for other 25distinctions such as type vs. token, sentence vs. utterance, linguistic _vs, spealcet's meaning, saying VS. implying, eto. , These distinctions are actually rooted in philosophical grounds. Strawson (1950) somehow irnplies that Russell conflises meaning and reference. Reference, as most linguists assume (e.g. Brown and Yule, 1983) is what speakers do, not words or expressions. Later, Grice (1967) comes up with a distinction between what is said linguistic meaning):and what is implied (speaker's meaning’ or implicature). Although not stating the issue explicitly, Austin contrasts Jocutionary and jllocutlonary acts, thereby acknowledging the distinction ‘between semantics and pragmatics. : In linguistics, attempts are also made for the semantics- pragmatics distinction; however, it is basically limited to linguistic facts such as ambiguity vs. polysemy. The claim is thet in context, the issue of ambiguity would disappear. Or the issue of focus of negation is also actually related to this distinction. Semantics for many deal..s with the meaning of a sentence based on its lexical constituents and the way they are combined; pragmatics, on the other hand supplies further information about the meaning of the sentence by taking into account context, or the speaker's ackground \mowledge. Put simply, semantics deals with sentence meaning while pragmatics is concemed with utterance meaning: L believe that it does not make'sense to separate semantics from pragmatics just on these grounds, understanding that an utterance is ‘a sentence in context, More serious ‘challenges can be mounted. against separating semantics from pragmatics, First of all, acknowledging this distinction. is tantamount to the distinction between meaning and use. This distinction is quite misleading since it may neglect expressions whose literal meaning is related to use. Saying that ‘meaning is separate from use is like saying that 26meaning has no value. The réality is that use is a manifestation of meaning. Further, it is‘no secret that what is pragmatics is actually dependent on semantics. The implicature of such utterance as “What a mess!" is based on the conventional meaning of the sentence. The other argument in favour of the distinction has to do with what Grice calls the cooperative principle. But in practice, this - principle is dften flouted than observed, as it were. Even assuming that semantics and pragmatics’ are conceptually distinct areas, it is obvious that they must be very closely integrated if we are to create an appropriate theory of communication. Moreover, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics has become less certain and is in fact lost in several different current approaches. Therefore, our view in writing this book is to see semantics and pragmatics as constituting a continuum where one field fades into the ofher. Pragmatics is just‘a further stretch of s emantics, This continuum can pe presented as follows. SEMANTICS PRAGMATICS Syntax-semantics intetface One of the most interesting and central questions in linguistics is understanding how syntax and, semantics interact (i.e, interface), Basically, syntax studies the structure of well-formed phrases and sentences; part of the business of semantics deals with the way syntactic structures are interpreted, ‘Traditionally, pioblems lilee word order, agreement, case marking and the like are within the domain of syntax whereas things like the meaningfulness of a 27well ‘formed structures are seen as part of semantics. Let us + considerthe following example: © We go Hanoi today’. (own data) ‘There is no question that the utterance is not well-formed, but is it meaningful? I think the answer js definitely yes. It is meaningful since the hearer can identify the two arguments (we and Hanoi) and one, predicate (go) there, Pethaps, whiat we can say is that one aspect is syntax, and ‘the other is sefnantics. So the question is how can we reconcile these two aspects? We also maintain that the way the parts of a sentences are artanged may contribute to the overall meaning of the sentenée, (see Chapter 5). Consider the distinction between "7 love John" and "John loves -me". The different order not only signals the: different roles. assigned to the arguments (see more details on semantic roles in Chapter 7), but also the difference in reading the sentence. So, fhe key issue at the interface of syntax and semantics concerns the" nature of the mapping between the two, Some scholars assume that for each syntactic rule determining how two or more constituents ave put together, there is a corresponding semantic mle determining “how the respective meanings are to be composed. Thus, - the interface is to work out which syntactic rules are mapped onto which semantic corposition modes. Much remains to be solved. For example, one of the key questions is what are the rules of semantic composition, also known as the principle of, compositionality? Perhaps, the best answer we can provide is that the meaning of a ne S This is an uttergnce made by a native to a person with a shaky knowledge of “English in 1998 in waltuation twas part of. When 1 asked him why he said thot way eald, His reply was " {wus in Afvica for 17 years", meaning it is OK to produce incorreet utterances to people whose command of English is poor. 28complex expression is a finetion of the meanings of its syntactic parts and the way they are combined, It says, for example, that the meaning of the sentence: © The President of the club owns a Mercedes. oan be derived from the meaning of the NP "The Preyident of the | elub" and the VP "owns a Mercedes", In turn, the meaning of the NP is derivable ftom the meaning of “the, president, club"-and the - way they form a NP. The same principle applies to the VP. The syntax-semantics interfacé shows how the two. are related. But there is empirical evidence that sentence structure can be predictable from word meanings. For example, if wetmow the verb "get" well enqugh, there is'a very strong chance that we can use it Correctly, in good constructions. There are, however, exceptions to compositionality, Idioms are syntactically, complex but have some sort of meaning, not to be seen this way. Their meaning is global, RED HERRING is an exekiple in point. ' 1. ' - What does semantics do? : Jn this chapter we shall discuss the business of semantics, by presenting a number of theories concerning meaning, The approach adopted in this book is linguistic semantic which investigates what knowledge speakers of language have which makes it possible for them to communicate, ‘This entails a brief look at what types of language units have meanings, and finally, we demonstrate how language organize and express meaning, T will begin with this fundamental question of what semantics is or does, Since this discipline is the meeting place of 29many cross currents of thinking which may havo a lot to do with linguistics; for example, those who tend to treat pragmatics as a separate discipline maintain that pragmatics exerts a strong influence on semantics since it also claims an intevest in meaning. Two views are pronounced inthis regard. According to the first theory, pragmatics is to be distinguished from semantics as its ‘business is to study speaker and hearers meaning or meaning as encoded and decoded by participants in a speech event. I subscribe to the second point of view hat semantics and pragmatics constitute just a continuum. In other words, semantics may be seen as competence and pragmatics is the realization of that competence, ‘Therefore, it may be said that the ‘boundary between semantics and. pragmatics is rather vague. Delahunty and Garvey (1994:.32) more or less capture this fine point in the following diagram. MEANING SEMANTICS PRAGMATICS {UTERAL, OUTSIDE CONTEXT) (NONLITERAL, \WTHIN CONTEXT) WORDS SENTENCES LINGUISTIC SITUATIONAL CONTEXT CONTEXT 30. Similarly, philosophy, psychology claim a deep interest in the subject. Philosophers of languages are concemed with how we Imow any particular fact or phenomenon can be accepted as true.or false on the basis of its relationship to other possible facts - what must be antecedent to that fact and what is a likely consequence, or entailment ‘of it. Also, they are interested in determining what . statements are mutually contradictory or similar semantically. On the other hand, psychologists investigate how human learn, how they retain, recall, or lose information; how they classify, make judgments and solve problems. Linguists have long set themselves the task of getting to know what type of language units are meaningfnl, how language works as a means ‘of communication, what sort of knowledge is required so that people can understand each other. Linguistics also deals with meanings commonly referred to as modal or interpersonal. At this stage, Frawley's distinction between -literal and implicational meaning may be televant and intellectually interesting. Literal meaning Tepresents a state of affairs or situation in the possible world. By contrast, implicational meaning suggests about the speaker's intentions or hearer's response to what has been said. Consider: ° The Pope kissed the ground, ‘Froni the standpoint of. literal meaning, .this utterance represents a state of affairs or proposition with'two participants: the Pope and the ground, and the event (process) of kissing. Remember we are not discussing the truth or falsehood of the utterance as this proposition may be representationally true or false. But as Frawley remarks, it does not affect its literal meaning, only the fidelity of the representation. However, the interesting point to note is there’ exists a probability of implicational meaning, Perhaps, the speakers 31wants to suggest that the Pope is very sincere. Literal meaning by nature is determinable outside context. In other words, it is decontextualized. But the same does not apply to implicational meaning: itcan just be decidable fromi c ontext in relation to the speaker's intention and in relation to circumstances. Implicational meaning is thus said to be conceptualized, What will happen if jmplicational meaning becomes.acceptable and fixed as. facts of language? Our thinking is that this is the prinmary force behind semantic development of language. Thus, it is no easy task to define’semantics in satisfactory terms. Therefore, 1 propose accepting, a, working definition. Semantics for tie is. the sysicmatic study ‘of meaning. Put another way, it is the study of how latiguage organizes and expresses meaning. In this book, one of the questions we try to answer is what language units may be said to have meaning. From the bottom up, we can see different levels of unit starting with the morpli¢ine - word - phrase - clause - sentence/utterance - discourse. ‘What is obvious is that these units dé"have meaning to’a certain extent. However, the approach taken in this book is that the phrase, the morpheme are just intermediate levels. They are not real ‘language units. For example, the morpheme does not occur independently and what happens is that.it is always attached to the word. In addition, the morpheme does not express 8 concept as thie word does. Compositionally, we see that the phrase is simply a. combination of words. It is our view that there are three basic types of unit: the word ~ the sentence/the utterance - the discourse with the reason being that language js seen as a medium of thinking. "Language is connected to thinking through the word which is conpected to a cbncept - the means by which thinking, proceeds. Meanwhile, the sentence is associated with human thinking 32because it expresses a judgement or Proposition. A combination of related judgments will constitute discourse - the real unit of human conimunication. The singling out af the utterance is significant in “the sense that it is, in ‘the ‘final analysis, a realization “of the Sentence, and as such it incorporates the contextual information, or nonliteral meanings that arise in contexts. Discourse will constitute - the goal of discourse analysis = a popular discipline, and therefore, will not be discussed in this book, We will be giving an account of word meaning, sentence meaning and utterance meaning, 2. The meanings of “mi ning” As I éaid before, seniantics is the study of meaning. Then the following question will naturally come'up. What is meaning? There are many different uses of the word "mean", How do we determine what a word means? Obviously, the meaning of a word cannot be determined by the observable features of the word such as its length, its phonetic content, or stress content, For example, you cannot look at the word: “house" and say what its meaning is, based on its letters or its enunciation, Also, the meaning of a word cannot be.determined by its place in a sentence, For example in the sentence: In conclusion, most people should privately insure thelr health It is not cléar how we'determine the meaning of the word “health" just by Knowing that it occurs in this Sentence, and as the object of the verb "insure", : The word “meaning” and its corresponding verb “mean” was ‘once the focus of a great deal of discussion among linguists interested in semantics. C, K. Ogden and I. A, Richards (1923) in a 33paper entitled “The Meaning of Meaning” were probably the first to raise the issue of defining the concept as covered by the word "meaning". According to these scholars, a number of meanings can be associated with this term: (i), An intrinsic property i Gi). The other words annexed to a word jn'a-dictionary ~ ii), The cotmotation of a word (iv), The place of anything in a system. (9). "That to which the user of a syeibo} actually refers, (vi). That to which the user of eymbol ought to he referring (vii). That to which the user of a symbol ‘pelieves himself to be referring . : (viii, That to which the inte ‘preter of a symbol 1 refers a (0). believes himself to be referring - () believes the user to be referring For example, take the case of the vetb “mean”: if ‘somebody says (1). Smith means well. she or he implies that Smith is well-intentioned, shat he intends no harm: i“ eaaaaee (2). That skull- and ~crass- bones means danger. Jn sayjng this, one would not normally be jmaplying fhat the -shull- and -cross- bones, jad plans to endanger anyone; one would 34be pointing out that it is being used (in accordance with ‘social convention) to indicate that there is danger in the surrounding environment, such as the use of explosives in a nearby quarry or deep lakes. Similar to the siull- and -cross- bones use of the verb “mean”, in one respect, at least is its use in Q). Smoke means fire. In both (2) and (3), what is obvious is that one thing is employed as the sign of another: from the presence of the sigh, a red flag or a smoke, anyone. with the requisite lnowledge-can infer that the existence of what it signifies, danger or fire as the case may be. - But there is an important. difference between (2) and (3), Whereas smoke is a natural sign, causally connected with what, it signifies, the skull-and-cross-bones is a conventional sign of danger (socially accepted): it is a culturally established symbol. The verb “mean” is beitig used in various senses. Let us consider (4). Mary means business. This example can be ambiguous: it can be talcen like’ (1) Smith means well or like (3) Smoke means fire, This brings us to the issue of context or co-text, upon which languages utterances depend for their interpretation. It should be remembered that part of the context involves the ‘ontological beliefs of the participants: many of these will be culturally determined and, though normally taken for granted (they are always there whether speakers are conscious of them or not), can be challenged or rejected. Let us now look at yet another sense of the this verb, If one says 35(9). She didn’t really mean what she said. one is assigning intentionality to the Briglish word, It might be argued, however, that there js an essential, though indirect, connection between what people mean, or intend, and what the words that they use are conventionally ‘held to mean. 3. ‘Theories of meaning ‘There are several distinguishable, and more or less well- : known philosophical, theories of meanings. Among them, we may mention the following. : . 3.1. The referential (or denotational theory), which basically says that the meaning of an expression is what it refers to, of denotes, or stands for. “table” refers to either the general class of tables or the essential property whiol they all share. ‘The referential theory may be regarded as one of the simplest and most. dominant theories for quite & while. This tlieory focuses primarily on nouns as the object of its investigation as it offers east and simplicity of demonstration. However, it should be kept in mind that there are many other word classes which do not lend themselves casily to . this theory. Most linguists hold that there are two variations of this referential approach. According to the first, the meaning of the word is what it refers to. We can.ee the flaw inherent. One and the same object or yeferent can be referred to by a variety of expressions. Let us - consider the following example: "My father" is sometimes referred. to‘asthe old man" or "a doctor" or ‘the "the director of a hospital". “No one would say the meanings of these expression ig the same. They all refer to one dbject but convey a different meaning. ‘Therefore, this first variation has some problems. 36The second variation identifies the meaning of a word with the relation between the word and its referent. Again the problem is that the relation’ between ‘a word-and its referent is basically the same, at the word level. Thus adherence to this theory’ is fantamount to agreeing that words have one meaning, which is unacceptable. However, a more serious problem with both « variations ig many words do not connect to something we call “referent”. Undoubtedly, words such as “because, on,-and, the" are Tecognized as: having a certain inedning of their own, but it is difficult to determine what they refer to. In addition, this theory has trouble with words which are-not nouns . For example, we cannot look at the verb "Go" in arly of its forms and say it refers to either the activity of runnitig or a particular act of running. Another difficulty with this theory is that this theory states that for anything to have meaning, it has to refers to something. We know that that whole sentences, paragraphs have meaning but do not have a referent, Moreover, as Brown and Yule (1983) state reference is an act performed by the user of language and in this light it is not what a word or expression does. When reflecting ow this theory, it seems obvious that no linguistic element has any meaning except by virtue of what users do with it, In short, the problems with the referential theory are a). For some words there are simply no referents (e.g, all fimetional words, like e.g. a and the), b). Some’ expressions point to non-existent or fictional referents: elves, gnomes, the President (in a country which is a monarchy); and ¢), The idea, held by some, that things out therein the world do not have” an inherent structure and that any structure we perceive is just thal, ise. perceived, 3.2, The ideational, or mentalist, theory, one version of which says that the meaning of an expression is the idea, or : : 37concept, associated with it in the mind of anyone who knows and understands the expression. This theory goes back all the way to John Locke, the 17th century British philosopher, who once said: “The use, then, of words is to be sensible marks of ideas and the ideas they stand for are whe proper and immediate signification". ‘This theory is supposedly ‘based on two asduraptions.” First of all, language is an instrument for the communication of thought, and thought is a succession of ideas in consciousness only accessible to the possessor. Sucpessful communication involves the arousal of the same ideas in the mind of the heater. Therefore, this theory-is open to objection on the grounds that thought can exist without speech, but this is only true: for interpersonal communication. Moreover, a greater problem Yies in the fact that the ideational theory is only true if for every distinguishable sense of every ward. or expression, there is an idea associated with that word or expression : Basically, this theory can be summarized as follows: The speaker's meaning of a word is the idea in the speaker's mind associated with the word. : e The speaker's meaning of a whole sentence is a stream of ideas. Communication is successful when a.similar stream of jdeas is produced in the hearer's mind. : eThat success depends on the recognition that speakers generally associate a certain idea with a certain word, , which provides the link to word and sentence meaning. Since its birth, a number of objections have been raised” against this theory. Among them, we will list the following. Fitst, 38