Mingrong Li

Perspectives on Languages HT 2020

Semantics and Pragmatics unit
Meaning in Language
Question 1
Words Related senses Synonyms Antonyms
Coffee  N. java Java
 N. chocolate; deep brown; umber; burnt umber; etc. Deep brown / umber
 N. a lofty level or position or degree Tall Low
 Adj. greater than normal in degree Heights Preliminary
High  Adverb. In a rich manner; etc. Luxuriously/ Poorly
 N. the event of something being raised upward Elevator Drop
 N. Transportation of people or goods by air Airlift Put down
Lift  V. move upward Arise/move up
 V. take without referencing from someone else's writing or speech; of Plagiarize
intellectual property; etc.
To answer the question 1, three polysemous words have been selected and presented above along with individually various
related senses, which are drawn from a lexical database called WordNet. These three words are “coffee”, “high”, and “lift”
respectively. In addition, synonyms and antonyms of each word have been given on the right side. Here are some examples
of each word with their different senses.

(1) He ordered a cup of coffee. (a cup of java)

(2) I baked one coffee cake. (“coffee” here referring to a brown color)
Fasold (2013) points out that “words which have multiple related meanings are polysemous”. As illustrated in (1)-(2), “coffee”
could be viewed as a polysemous consisting of at least two different lexical meanings, of which each single meaning becomes
more specific in a particular context of use. In (1), the meaning of “coffee” refers to a drink that has a lightly bitter taste. The
fact that the predicator “ordered” indicates a past action could not be solely uttered and articulated a complete meaning unless
followed by the Noun Phrase “a cup of coffee” to fulfill the function of Predicate, within which the NP could be technically
replaced by “a cup of java” (which is rarely used in reality). In (2), the Restrictor “coffee cake” preceded by the Determiner
“one” is a NP within which the word “coffee” is presumably seen as an adjective similar to the color of “brown”.

(3) The camp was surrounded by a high fence. (a tall fence)

(4) He lives high. (in a luxuriously or richly manner)
The lexical meaning of “high” in example (3) means “greater than normal in degree”, which could be replaced by its one of
synonyms “tall” and makes sense. In sentence (4), it might confuse readers without context that whether “high” indicating
the degree of height or the qualify of one’s lifestyle, from which each meaning could be acceptable and proves the statement
pointed out by Fasold (2013) that many adjectives display the property of vagueness. If it refers to latter, its synonym would
be “luxuriously” or “richly” and differs from the word “poorly”.

(5) There is a lift to all floors. (same to “elevator”)

(6) You must not lift anything heavy. (same to “move up”)
The noun “lift” is able to be substituted by the synonym “elevator” under this context of use. The combination of modal
auxiliary verb “must” and the predicator “lift” in (6) could not present a completed action and should be added with NP
“anything heavy”, within which the word “lift” refers to the action of moving forward and is similar to the meaning of verb
phrase “move up”.

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Mingrong Li
Perspectives on Languages HT 2020
Semantics and Pragmatics unit
Question 2
Answering the second question need to be concerned with two concepts Proposition and Entailment. Proposed by Fasold
(2013), “a proposition is a complete thought, a statement which can be true or false”; while the concept of “Entailment” refers
to a sentence comprising another if the truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second. Here are some examples.

(1) Please use the same link for all our seminars in the modern part. (extracted from the E-mail sent by Christine, 2020)
Entails Please use the link for the seminar hosted on 10th of November.
Given the fact that the email sent by supervisor Christine is in a truth condition, as a result, the entailment of the second
sentence is true as well. More specifically, the content of sentence (1) states that the ZOOM link provided by Christine
should be applied to all the following seminars for all students who are working on the Modern course; therefore, one of
the seminars held by Christine on 10th of Nov. should also be included in “all our seminars”.
(2) “Excuse me, I’d like to have one Vegan Kalmar burger”. (taking place in the kitchen of Kalmar Nation)
Entails I’d like to have Vegan Garlic sauce.
The phenomenon of Entailment always takes place during spoken conversation in reality. As we know, it is quite common
in Sweden that people prefer to keep Vegan lifestyle. There are various ingredients for cooking a burger, if someone wants
to have Vegan Kalmar burger compulsorily then the Vegan garlic sauce should be added instead of Vegetarian garlic sauce
or Vegan BBQ sauce.
(3) Minorities have right to use and develop their own languages. (Extracted from Chinese Language Act)
Entails Korean minority has right to use and develop their own language.
Korean minority is one of the fifty-five minorities in China. Therefore, this language act is also applicable to Korean
minority.

Question 3
(a). Mao left one year ago. Have you met him then?
(b). Yes, I met him here this summer.
In this conversation, indexical refers to words such as I, here, him, one year ago, and this summer. As guided by the
conceptualizations given by Fasold (2013), the antecedent of word “him” in sentence (a) is the person “Mao”. Additionally,
the common ground during these two speakers’ conversation includes several different interpretations. First, Mao is a person
and both speakers know him; second, Mao did not participant this conversation; third, Mao left; fourth, speaker (a) asked a
question about Mao; fifth, the speaker (b) met Mao this summer (probably just once); sixth, the speaker (b) met Mao “here”
(maybe referring to the same city or the same place where the conversation took place).

References
Chinese Language Act. https://www.chinaeducenter.com/en/cedu/lscl.php
Fasold, Ralph & Connor-Linton, Jeffrey (2013). An introduction to language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
WordNet http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

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