SEMANTICS, Fall 2021/2022 Dr.

Najib Ismail Jarad

FUNDAMENTAL SEMANTIC CONCEPTS

Semantics vs. Pragmatics

Pragmatics and semantics can be viewed as different parts, or different aspects, of the same general
study. Both are concerned with people's ability to use language meaningfully. Pragmatics may be
roughly defined as the study of language use in context – as compared with semantics, which is
the study of literal meaning independent of context. If I’m having a hard day, I may tell you that
my day has been a nightmare – but of course I don’t intend you to take that literally; that is, the
day hasn’t in fact been something I’ve had a bad dream about. In this case the semantic meaning
of “nightmare” (a bad dream) differs from its pragmatic meaning – that is, the meaning I intended
in the context of my utterance.

Sentences and utterances

A useful general principle to bear in mind when thinking about the distinction between semantics
and pragmatics is that semantics is concerned with sentences and pragmatics with utterances.
Sentences are linguistic entities that are put together by linguistic rules. An utterance is an instance
of the production of a sentence or a fragment of a sentence. An utterance is produced in an actual
context by an actual speaker. This is best illustrated with an example:

I will see you here tomorrow

Pragmatics deals with the type of meaning that isn’t found in dictionaries and which may vary
from context to context. The same utterance will mean different things in different contexts, and
will even mean different things to different people.

I’m cold. =

a. Close the window. b. Bring me a blanket.

c. Turn off the air conditioner. d. Snuggle up closer.

e. The heater is broken again. f. Let’s go home. [uttered, say, at the beach]

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Key Terms in Semantics

Ambiguity, ambiguous
If an expression has more than one SENSE, then it is ambiguous. There are several sources for
ambiguity in language.

Lexical ambiguities involve a word form having more than one possible meaning, due to
POLYSEMY or HOMONYMY. For instance, fire could mean ‘’discharge a bullet from’, or
‘terminate the employment of’. Thus, sentences that contain the verb fire are usually ambiguous.

For example, She could not fire the gun. While the ‘discharge a bullet’ meaning may seem like
the most likely one in this sentence, the others are perfectly possible, particularly in certain
contexts:
She could not fire the gun because the trigger was stuck.
She could fire the employee who had shot her, but she could not fire the gun.
Structural ambiguities arise because there is more than one possible constituent structure for a
complex expression. One type of structural ambiguity is an attachment ambiguity, in which there
are (at least) two possible ways of linking a constituent to the rest of the sentence. For example,
the headline COMPLAINTS ABOUT NBA REFEREES GROWING UGLY can be interpreted as a
noun phrase that refers to people complaining that the referees are getting uglier, or an abbreviated
sentence about a situation in which the complaints about referees are growing ugly.

Anaphor, anaphora, anaphoric

In anaphora, a linguistic expression (called an anaphor or anaphoric pronoun) is understood to
have the same REFERENCE as another linguistic expression (its antecedent), which typically
precedes it in the same sentence or in the earlier discourse. Thus in the sentence below, we would
most likely understand he and Neil to be CO-REFERENTIAL because the anaphoric pronoun
he refers back to Neil, its antecedent.

Neil couldn’t remember the name of the girl he met last night.

It is also possible to get an anaphoric interpretation without an overt anaphor. For instance, in Abby
closed the door and locked it, we understand Abby to be the subject of lock, even though no overt
anaphoric pronoun occurs in the subject position. Such cases involve zero anaphora. In some
uses, anaphora is taken to include cataphora, but when a distinction is made, anaphora is
specifically defined as involving ‘backward’ reference to an antecedent that precedes the anaphor,
while in cataphora the reference is ‘forward’, to a co-referent that occurs later in the discourse. In
the following example of cataphora, they refers forward to the children:
As they walked through the garden, the children were careful not to tread on any flowers.

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Anaphoric uses of pronouns are distinct from exophoric uses, where the pronoun refers to
something in the extralinguistic CONTEXT, rather than the surrounding linguistic context. Thus,
in the first sentence below, she is anaphoric, but in the second sentence it is exophoric:
Natalie promised she would do the washing up.
She (speaker points to Natalie) promised to do the washing up.

Anomalous, anomaly
A semantically anomalous linguistic expression is one that has an abnormal meaning or fails to
make sense, despite being grammatically well-formed. This is due to a semantic incompatibility
between some of the constituent parts of the linguistic expression, as in the examples below:
 #My brother is pregnant (clash between the property of maleness and the possibility of
becoming pregnant).
 #The rain fell upwards (clash between directions of vertical movement in the verb and
adverb).
The hash (#) symbol is used to mark semantically anomalous but grammatically well-formed
expressions. Semantic anomalies are sometimes accounted for as violations of SELECTIONAL
RESTRICTIONS that words place on other words that they occur with. Thus, The telephone ate
my gingerbread is anomalous because the verb eat is restricted to only occur with subjects that
refer to animate beings – unless the expression is to be interpreted FIGURATIVELY.

Antonym, antonymous, antonymy

Antonymy is the PARADIGMATIC LEXICAL RELATION between two LEXEMES that are
opposite in meaning, such as big/little, female/male and down/up. It is sometimes called a relation
of minimal difference in each member of the antonym pair shares most of its semantic properties
with the other member of the pair, except for one that causes the two words to be semantically
INCOMPATIBLE. So, for example, down and up are similar in that they both describe vertical
directions, but they are different in terms of the particular direction they indicate. Left also
describes a direction, but it is not the opposite of down because it is more than minimally different
from down: not only does left describe a different direction from down, but it also describes a
different orientation (horizontal).

Connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or
phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation
is frequently described as either positive or negative, with regard to its pleasing or displeasing
emotional connection.

Contradiction.
A sentence is a contradiction if it cannot be true. I like cats contradicts I hate all animals, which is
a contradiction.

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Denotation
A word’s denotative meaning is its ‘literal’ meaning, the kind of meaning that is most directly
represented in dictionary DEFINITIONS of a word. The process of denotation is thus the use of
an expression to single out some thing or concept and refer to it. Denotative meaning contrasts
with CONNOTATION.

Entailment.
A sentence entails another if the truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second. I like all
animals entails I like dogs.

Figurative language is nonliteral language; language that shifts meaning from the primary
meaning of the word.

Homonymy.
Homonyms are words with the same sound and spelling but different, unrelated meanings
(saw/saw)

Homophones
Homophones are words that do not share the same spellings or meanings but sound the same
(sole/soul)

Homographs
Homographs are words that have the same spelling, different meanings, and different
pronunciations (bow/bow)

Hyponymy.
A word is a hyponym of another if its semantic meaning is more specific than the other’s. Dog is
a hyponym of animal.

Hypernymy.
A word is a hypernym of another if its semantic meaning is more general than the other’s. Animal
is a hypernym of dog.

Idiom, idiomatic
An idiom is a complex, multiword expression whose meaning is non-COMPOSITIONAL, that
is, not predictable from the meanings of the constituent parts. For example, one cannot work out
that spill the beans means ‘reveal the information’ or cut the mustard means ‘meet an expected
standard’ just on the basis of knowing the meanings of each of the individual words

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in the expressions and the rules of English grammar. Instead, one has to learn the expressions as
whole units and store them in the lexicon as LEXEMES. Because idioms are fixed expressions,
the idiomatic meaning is typically not preserved if any of the component words are replaced with
a (near) SYNONYM, as in spill the pulses. The grammatical form of an idiom is also usually
restricted. For example, Peter kicked the bucket cannot be put into passive VOICE while still
retaining the idiomatic meaning: The bucket was kicked by Peter does not mean ‘Peter died’. Some
idioms are METAPHORICALLY motivated – for example, let off steam ‘release pent-up
emotions’ can be seen as involving a metaphorical conceptualization of a person as a pressurized
steam cooker.

Lexical relation
A lexical relation is a SEMANTIC RELATION in which two or more words have some aspect
of meaning in common. The term is most often used to refer to PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS
such as ANTONYMY, HYPONYMY or SYNONYMY.

Meronymy.
A meronym denotes a constituent part of, or a member of something. For example, finger is a
meronym of hand because a finger is part of a hand. Similarly, wheels is a meronym
of automobile.

Metaphor
Metaphor is a form of FIGURATIVE language that involves describing something in terms of
another thing, generally on the basis of a perceived resemblance or analogy between those two
things. For example, The internet is a goldmine is metaphorical in that the internet is not an actual
goldmine – it is instead being described as a resource where you can find countless pieces of
valuable information, rather like you can find nuggets of gold in a goldmine.

Metonymy
Metonymy is description of something in terms of something with which it is closely associated:
The pen is mightier than the sword (pen = the written word/ diplomacy, sword = violence/force)

Paraphrase
Paraphrase is the process of producing alternative versions of a sentence or text without changing
the meaning. When this is the case, the sentences are said to have the same set of entailment, i.e.
they entail each other, and to share the same proposition. For example, the sentences “The teacher
put the test off” and “The teacher put off the test” can be claimed to paraphrase each other, in
addition to sharing the same proposition and entailing each other.

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Polysemy
Polysemy refers to words with two or more related meanings. For example, lip is polysemous
because we can use it not only to refer to a part of one’s mouth but also in phrases such as lip of

the cliff or the lip of a cup, and we also have the expression don’t give me any lip (i.e., do not talk
back). Foot is polysemous as well: in addition to meaning ‘the lowest part of the body’ (with the
top being the head), we have foot of the bed, as well as foot of the stairs and foot of the mountain.

Presupposition
Presupposition is a relation between an utterance and one or more implicit assumptions triggered by
the utterance. Presuppositions are based on the linguistic structure of the utterance and may be
viewed as being the background assumptions with which the speaker works when he/she engages in
interaction. By way of illustration, the utterance “Mary’s brother stopped beating his wife” gives rise
to two presuppositions: firstly that “Mary has a brother” even though that fact is not explicitly
expressed, and secondly that “Mary’s brother had been beating his wife.” Similarly, the utterance
“John wants another cup of tea” presupposes that “John had one cup of tea already”.

Synonymy.
Two words, phrases, or sentences are synonyms if they have the same semantic meaning. e.g.,
gearbox – transmission, choice – selection, complex – complicated.

Tautology.
Tautology is a phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words,
generally considered to be a fault of style (e.g. they arrived one after the other in succession).
“Repeat that again” and “reiterate again”.