Semantics in Linguistics

Part 1 Chapter 1 (pp. 3 – 17)

 Introduction
• Semantics: the study of meaning communicated through language

• Assumption: a person’s linguistic abilities are based on knowledge

that they have
• That knowledge is the focus of our interest

• Different types of knowledge

• How to pronounce words → phonology
• How to construct sentences → syntax
• The meaning of individual words and sentences → semantics
 Introduction
• Semantic knowledge is what allows us to understand sentences and
to pinpoint if they are contradictions, entailments or ambiguous.

• Semantics is the broadest field within linguistics

• It needs to take into consideration other fields of study that also deal
with the creation and transmission of meaning
• Psychology or philosophy
 Semantics and Semiotics
• Humans have a great ability to convey meaning through signs
• Linguistic meaning
• Signification : process of creating and interpreting symbols
• Ex. Red sign = danger or prohibition, vultures = death

• Semiotics studies the relationship between the sign (signifier) and the
object (signified)
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1974), the study of linguistic meanings as a part of
semiotics
 C. S. Peirce
Icon Index Symbol

• Similarity between • The sign and the • The sign and the
the sign and what it signified are closely signified are only
represents associated linked through
• Ex. Portrait, map or • Ex. Smoke and fire convention
diagram • Ex. Red and
prohibition, black
and mourning
• Words as verbal
symbols
 Three challenges in doing semantics
• Definitions theory: to give meaning to
linguistic expressions we should
establish definitions of the meanings
of words
• 3 main problems with this idea
• Semanticists have proposed other
options
1. Circularity
• We would have to describe all words
• Can we step outside language to define
it?
2. Linguistic knowledge vs general
knowledge
• The problem of exact definitions
• Is there a difference between linguistic
knowledge and other types of
knowledge?
• Different idiolects
3. The contribution of context to
meaning
• How do we include this in the definition?
 Meeting the challenges
Metalanguage
• Against circularity
• A semantic language to describe • Against linguistic vs general
the semantic units and rules of all knowledge
languages
• Speakers can use words because
• Should be neutral and not biased they know what they mean
towards a certain language
• What amount of knowledge is
• Detractors necessary for speakers to use a
• Unattainable word?
• Since words are symbols, they
have to relate to something
 Meeting the challenges
Against the problem of context

• Conventional or literal meaning • Analyse the role of contextual

• It is the meaning of a word information in communication
context-free
• Theories on how amalgamate
linguistic knowledge and context

Both speaker and hearer make use of contextual information. In the

case of the listener, they use it to infer extra information from the
message that is being received → Pragmatics
 Semantics in a model of grammar
• Semantics as a component of grammar parallel to others, such as
phonology or syntax

• Linguistic knowledge is formed by modules, what kind of module is

semantics?
• Meaning is a product of all linguistic levels, so it cannot be its own level and
autonomous from other levels
• Cognitive Grammar says that syntax, morphology and lexicon can’t be
separated
 Word meaning and sentence meaning
• Lexicon: the compendium of the thousands of words that a speaker
knows in his/her native language
• It is not static, we learn and forget new information constantly
• Productivity
• Creation of new words – infrequent ( finite number of words)
• Creation of sentences – constant and infinite number
• Recursive: to be able to continue creating new sentences, the rules
must allow repetitive embedding of syntactic categories
• We create new sentences that we have never heard before, but we know the
listener will understand the message
 Word meaning and sentence meaning
• Sentence meaning as compositional
• Since we can create new sentences constantly, their meaning cannot be listed
like that of words
• The meaning of the expression is given by the meaning of its components and how theyr
combined
• Sentences are created by the rules of combination
• If meaning comes from two different places, then semantic rules have
to be compositional
• Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, and Head-Driven Phrase
Structure Grammar
• Chomsky’s Generative Grammar: syntactic and semantic rules are
independent, but they come together at the level of Logical Form
 Some important assumptions
• Reference and sense
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1974) said that the meaning of linguistic expressions
derives from two sources:
• The semantic links between the elements of the language → sense or meaning
• Its connection to the world → reference

• Each word is linked to and defined to the other words in its language
• What it refers to as opposed to other similar words (ex. chair – stool, sheep – mutton)
• can’t be used to compare different languages (ex. sheep/mutton vs mouton)
• The same can happen with grammatical systems
• Plural (two or more) vs Dual (three or more) (ex. Arabic)
 Some important assumptions
• Utterances, sentences, and propositions
• They denote different levels of language
• Utterances: created by speaking or writing a piece of language
• Sentences: abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances, from
language use (filter phonetical info)
• We eliminate the individual variations that give information from the speaker
• Propositions: abstractions for special purposes (filter grammatical info)
• Logicians discovered that certain grammatical information is irrelevant, because it
doesn’t affect the meaning (ex. Passive – active voice)
• Logicians use certain formulae to denote this:
• All capitals: CAESAR INVADED GAUL
• function + arguments: invade (Caesar, gaul)
 Some important assumptions
• Literal and non-literal meaning
• Factually accurate way of speaking vs Untrue or impossible way of speaking
• It’s difficult drawing the line between both
• Metaphorical extension: depicting a new idea through familiar terms (ex. go viral)
• Some linguists say that there is no such distinction
• Non-literal meaning = figurative
• Metaphor, irony, hyperbole…
• Ex. I’m hungry vs I’m starving
• Fossilized metaphors have lost the metaphoric meaning and become everyday language
• Literal language theory
• Metaphors and such need a different processing strategy that literal meaning
• Non-literal meaning processed as odd → make inferences
 Some important assumptions
• Semantics and pragmatics
• Both deal with the transmission of meaning through language, and drawing
the line that separates them is difficult
• Morris (early use of pragmatics)
• Syntax: the formal relation of signs to each other
• Semantics: the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable
• Pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters → Carnap: the speaker’s/hearer’s
interpretation of language
• Carnap
• Pragmatics = meaning described in relation to speakers and hearers
• Semantics = meaning abstracted away from users
•
 Some important assumptions
• Semantics and pragmatics
• Sentence meaning vs speaker meaning
• Suggests that words and sentences have a meaning independently of any particular use
• The meaning is there and the speaker introduces it into what s/he wants to say
• Pragmatics = speaker meaning, Semantics = sentence meaning
• Pragmatics deals with
• Interaction between linguistic knowledge and general knowledge
• How hearers fill out the semantic structure with contextual information
• The making of inferences
• Problem: how to distinguish what is semantics from what is pragmatics?
• There is no agreement regarding this, and some even disagree with the notion of making a
distinction