A Course Book in

Semantics & Pragmatics

Selected & compiled by

Dr Ahmed Hassan Ahmed

2023-2024
4TH YEAR PRIMARY
Table of contents
Section I: Semantics
1. Introduction 3
2. Chapter One: Meaning 5
3. Chapter Two: The Scope of Semantics 40
4. Chapter Three: The Basic Unit of Meaning 67
5. Chapter four: Truth and inference 80
6. Chapter 5: Lexical sense relations 96
Section II: Pragmatics
7. Chapter 6: Pragmatics 110
8. Chapter 7: Speech Acts 128
9. Chapter 8: Implicatures 138
10.Chapter 9: Indirect speech acts 144

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Section I

2
Semantics & Pragmatics
Introduction
Semantics is the study of meaning in Language. It concentrates on meaning
that comes from purely linguistic knowledge. It is a theoretical study of what
meaning is and how it operates. Pragmatics is the study of how language is
used in communication. It concentrates on those aspects of meaning that
cannot be predicted by linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account
knowledge about the physical and social world. This division can be roughly
illustrated with the example: I forgot the paper Semantics provides the literal
meaning of the elements I, forget, past tense, the and paper, and the meaning
drawn from the order of the words giving very approximately ‘the person
who is speaking at some time before the time of speaking forgot a particular
item which is a paper’. Pragmatics fleshes this out to a more complete
communication depending on the shared context of situation. It could be the
Sunday newspaper which the speaker intends to go back and buy OR it could
be a research paper that the student was supposed to bring to his study group.

The relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics

Semantics is the study of what meaning is and how it operates and
pragmatics is a study of how during a social interaction people experience,
make sense of, and react to the way meaning is communicated. They are two
distinct disciplines with a considerable area of overlap. One of the very
important assumptions in semantics is that meaning is essentially a matter of
usage. The meaning of a word becomes operative only when that word is
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used in a certain context. Attributes like height, width, length, weight have
no separate and independent existence. They can only be understood as
attributes of objects at a certain time and place.

Semantics and Meaning

The term semantics is a recent addition to the English language. It was
introduced in a paper read to the American Philological Association in 1894
entitled “Reflected meanings: a point in semantics”. The French term
sémantique had been coined from the Greek in the previous year by M.
Bréal. In both cases the term was not used to refer to meaning, but to its
development-with what is called now “historical semantics” In 1900 there
appeared Bréal’s book Semantics: studies in the science of meaning. It
treated semantics as the “science” of meaning

The term ‘meaning’

The term meaning is much more familiar to us all. But the
dictionary will suggest a number of different meanings of meaning, or, more
correctly, of the verb mean. Some of the common uses of the term mean: In
the sense of “intend”, e.g. I mean to be there tomorrow. Used of signs, both
natural and conventional, e.g. That cloud means thunder or A red light means
“Stop”, where “clouds” do not communicate while “traffic lights” do.
Another sense of the verb mean is to provide definitions by suggesting words
or phrases that have the “same” meaning, which is characteristic of
dictionaries, e.g. what does “calligraphy” mean? “Calligraphy” means
“beautiful handwriting”. In stating meaning, we produce a term that is more
familiar than the one whose meaning is being questioned.

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The use of “mean” found in such sentence as “It wasn’t what he said, but
what he meant.” Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This is
the case when words fail to mean what they mean, that is, there is some other
meaning beside the “literal” meaning of the words, which can be achieved in
a number of ways, e.g. intonation and presupposition. Semantics and
Linguistics Semantics is a component or level of linguistics of the same kind
as phonetics or grammar. Nearly all linguists have accepted a linguistic
model in which semantics is at one “end” and phonetics at the other, with
grammar somewhere in the middle. To explain this further, if language is
regarded as an information system, or as a communication system, it will
associate a message (the meaning) with a set of signs (the sounds of the
language or the symbols of the written text). The Swiss linguist, Ferdinand
de Saussure (1916:99) referred to these as the SIGNIFIER (signs) and the
SIGNIFIED (meaning).

Does language always communicate a message?

1) Language doesn’t always have a message in any real sense, certainly not
in the sense of a piece of information. Part of its function is concerned with
social relationships.
2) Meanings do not seem to be stable but to depend upon speakers, hearers
and context. Yet if linguistics is scientific, it must be concerned not with
specific instances, but with generalizations. For this reason, it is generally
assumed that a distinction can be made between the linguistic system and the
use made of that system by speakers and hearers. This point was made by de
Saussure (1961:30-2) in his distinction between LANGUAGE (langue) and
SPEAKING (parole). This distinction reappeared in Chomsky (1965:4) as
COMPETENCE and PERFORMANCE. Both are concerned with excluding
what is purely individual and accidental (speaking or performance), and to
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insist that the proper study of linguistics is language or competence, which is
some kind of idealized system. It goes without saying that we cannot be
concerned with purely individual, idiosyncratic, acts. “When I use a word”,
Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to
mean-neither more nor less” Lewis Caroll (Through the Looking-Glass). An
individual’s meaning is not part of the general study of semantics. Of course,
it is interesting or important for some purposes to see how and why an
individual diverges from the normal pattern, e.g. in literature, but it is
important to realize that the literary studies would not be possible without the
generalized ‘normal’ patterns to make comparisons with.

‘Meaning’ versus ‘Use’

We need to make a distinction, then, between what would seem to be the
usual meaning of a word or a sentence and the meaning it has in certain
specific circumstances. This may be a matter of ‘meaning’ versus ‘use’, or as
some philosophers and linguists have suggested, between SEMANTICS and
PRAGMATICS. The most useful distinction, perhaps, is made by Lyons
(1977:643) in terms of SENTENCE MEANING, which is directly related to
the grammatical and lexical features of a sentence, and UTTERANCE
MEANING, which includes all ‘secondary’ aspects of meanings, especially
those related to context. It is this distinction that allows us to ‘SAY’ one
thing and ‘MEAN’ another.

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Chapter 1
Meaning

The meaning of meaning

We are all necessarily interested in meaning. We wonder about the meaning
of a new word. Sometimes we are not sure about the message we should get
from something we read or hear, and we are concerned about getting our
own messages across to others. We find pleasure in jokes, which often
depend for their humor on double meanings of words or ambiguities in
sentences. Commercial organizations spend a lot of effort and money on
naming products, devising slogans, and creating messages that will be
meaningful to the buying public. Legal scholars argue about the
interpretation—that is, the meaning—of a law or a judicial decision. Literary
scholars quarrel similarly over the meaning of some poem or story.
Three disciplines are concerned with the systematic study of
‘meaning’ in itself: psychology, philosophy and linguistics. Their particular
interests and approaches are different, yet each borrows from and contributes
to the others.
Psychologists are interested in how individual humans learn, how they
retain, recall, or lose information; how they classify, make judgements and
solve problems—in other words, how the human mind seeks meanings and
works with them.
Philosophers of language are concerned with how we know, how any
particular fact that we know or accept as true is related to other possible
facts—what must be antecedent (a presupposition) to that fact and what is a
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likely consequence, or entailment of it; what statements are mutually
contradictory, which sentences express the same meaning in different words,
and which are unrelated. (There is more about presupposition and entailment
later in this chapter.)

Linguists want to understand how language works. Just what common

knowledge do two people possess when they share a language— English,
Swahili, Korean or whatever—that makes it possible for them to give and get
information, to express their feelings and their intentions to one another, and
to be understood with a fair degree of success? Linguistics is concerned with
identifying the meaningful elements of specific languages, for example,
English words like paint and happy and affixes like the -er of painter and the
un- of unhappy. It is concerned with describing how such elements go
together to express more complex meanings—in phrases like the unhappy
painter and sentences like The painter is unhappy—and telling how these are
related to each other. Linguistics also deals with the meanings expressed by
modulations of a speaker’s voice and the processes by which hearers and
readers relate new information to the information they already have.
Semantics is the systematic study of meaning, and linguistic
semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings.
Linguistic semantics is the topic of this book, but we need to limit ourselves
to the expression of meanings in a single language, English. Here and there
throughout the book we make comparisons with other languages, but these
are meant to be illustrative of language differences, not full accounts of what
differences exist.

Semantics and pragmatics

The American author Mark Twain is said to have described a certain
person as “a good man in the worst sense of the word.” The humor of this
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remark lies partly in the unexpected use of the word good, with something
close to the opposite of its normal meaning: Twain seems to be implying that
this man is puritanical, self-righteous, judgmental, or perhaps hypocritical.
Nevertheless, despite using the word in this unfamiliar way, Twain still
manages to communicate at least the general nature of his intended message.
Twain’s witticism is a slightly extreme example of something that
speakers do on a regular basis: using old words with new meanings. It is
interesting to compare this example with the following famous conversation
from Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll:

(1) [Humpty Dumpty speaking] “There’s glory for you!” “I don’t know
what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled
contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a
nice knock-down argument for you!’ ” “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice
knock-down argument’,” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty
Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to
mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether
you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s
all.”

Superficially, Humpty Dumpty’s comment seems similar to Mark

Twain’s: both speakers use a particular word in a previously unknown way.
The results, however, are strikingly different: Mark Twain successfully
communicates (at least part of) his intended meaning, whereas Humpty
Dumpty fails to communicate; throughout the ensuing conversation, Alice
has to ask repeatedly what he means.

Humpty Dumpty’s claim to be the “master” of his words – to be able to

use words with whatever meaning he chooses to assign them – is funny
9
because it is absurd. If people really talked that way, communication would
be impossible. Perhaps the most important fact about word meanings is that
they must be shared by the speech community: speakers of a given language
must agree, at least most of the time, about what each word means.

Yet, while it is true that words must have agreed-upon meanings, Twain’s
remark illustrates how word meanings can be stretched or extended in
various novel ways, without loss of comprehension on the part of the hearer.
The contrast between Mark Twain’s successful communication and Humpty
Dumpty’s failure to communicate suggests that the conventions for
extending meanings must also be shared by the speech community. In other
words, there seem to be rules even for bending the rules. In this book we will
be interested both in the rules for “normal” communication, and in the rules
for bending the rules.

The term semantics is often defined as the study of meaning. It might be

more accurate to define it as the study of the relationship between linguistic
form and meaning. This relationship is clearly rule-governed, just as other
aspects of linguistic structure are. For example, no one believes that speakers
memorize every possible sentence of a language; this cannot be the case,
because new and unique sentences are produced every day, and are
understood by people hearing them for the first time. Rather, language
learners acquire a vocabulary (lexicon), together with a set of rules for
combining vocabulary items into well-formed sentences (syntax). The same
logic forces us to recognize that language learners must acquire not only the
meanings of vocabulary items, but also a set of rules for interpreting the
expressions that are formed when vocabulary items are combined. All of these
components must be shared by the speech community in order for linguistic
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communication to be possible. When we study semantics, we are trying to
understand this shared system of rules that allows hearers to correctly
interpret what speakers intend to communicate.

The study of meaning in human language is often partitioned into two ma-
jor divisions, and in this context the term semantics is used to refer to one of
these divisions. In this narrower sense, semantics is concerned with the
inherent meaning of words and sentences as linguistic expressions, in and of
themselves, while pragmatics is concerned with those aspects of meaning
that depend on or derive from the way in which the words and sentences are
used. In the above-mentioned quote attributed to Mark Twain, the basic or
“default” meaning of good (the sense most likely to be listed in a dictionary)
would be its semantic content. The negative meaning which Twain manages
to convey is the result of pragmatic inferences triggered by the peculiar way
in which he uses the word.
The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is useful and important,
but as we will see in Chapter 9, the exact dividing line between the two is not
easy to draw and continues to be a matter of considerable discussion and
controversy. Because semantics and pragmatics interact in so many complex
ways, there are good reasons to study them together, and both will be of
interest to us in this book.

Three “levels” of meaning

In this book we will be interested in the meanings of three different types of

linguistic units:

1. word meaning
2. sentence meaning

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 3. utterance meaning (also referred to as “speaker meaning”)

The first two units (words and sentences) are hopefully already familiar to
the reader. In order to understand the third level, “utterance meaning”, we
need to distinguish between sentences vs. utterances. A sentence is a
linguistic expression, a well-formed string of words, while an utterance is a
speech event by a particular speaker in a specific context. When a speaker uses
a sentence in a specific context, he produces an utterance. As hinted in the
preceding section, the term sentence meaning refers to the semantic content
of the sentence: the meaning which derives from the words themselves,
regardless of context.1 The term utterance meaning refers to the semantic
content plus any pragmatic meaning created by the specific way in which the
sentence gets used. Cruse (2000: 27) defines utterance meaning as “the
totality of what the speaker intends to convey by making an utterance.”

Kroeger (2005: 1) cites the following example of a simple question in

Teochew (a Southern Min dialect of Chinese), whose
interpretation depends heavily on context.

(2) Lɯ chyaʔ pa bɔy? you eat full not. yet ‘Have

you already eaten?’ (Tones not indicated)

The literal meaning (i.e., sentence meaning) of the question is, “Have you
already eaten or not?”, which sounds like a request for information. But its
most common use is as a greeting. The normal way for one friend to greet
another is to ask this question. (The expected reply is: “I have eaten,” even if
this is not in fact true.) In this context, the utterance meaning is roughly
equivalent to that of the English expressions hello or How do you do? In other
contexts, however, the question could be used as a real request for

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information. For example, if a doctor wants to administer a certain medicine
which cannot be taken on an empty stomach, he might well ask the patient
“Have you eaten yet?” In this situation, the sentence meaning and the
utterance meaning would be essentially the same.

Relation between form and meaning

For most words, the relation between the form (i.e., phonetic shape) of
the word and its meaning is arbitrary. This is not always the case.
Onomatopoetic words are words whose forms are intended to be imitations
of the sounds which they refer to, e.g. ding-dong for the sound of a bell, or
buzz for the sound of a housefly. But even in these cases, the phonetic shape
of the word (if it is truly a part of the vocabulary of the language) is partly
conventional. The sound a dog makes is represented by the English word
bow-wow, the Balinese word kong-kong, the Armenian word haf-haf, and the
Korean words mung-mung or wang-wang.2 This cross-linguistic variation is
presumably not motivated by differences in the way dogs actually bark in
different parts of the world. On the other hand, as these examples indicate,
there is a strong tendency for the corresponding words in most languages to
use labial, velar, or labio-velar consonants and low back vowels.3 Clearly this
is no accident, and refects the non-arbitrary nature of the form-meaning
relation in such words. The situation with “normal” words is quite different,
e.g. the word for ‘dog’: Armenian shun, Balinese cicing, Korean gae, Taga-log
aso, etc. No common phonological pattern is to be found here.

The relation between the form of a sentence (or other multi-word

expression) and its meaning is generally not arbitrary, but compositional.
This term means that the meaning of the expression is predictable from the

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meanings of the words it contains and the way they are combined. To give a
very simple example, suppose we know that the word yellow can be used to
describe a certain class of objects (those that are yellow in color) and that the
word submarine can be used to refer to objects of another sort (those that
belong to the class of submarines). This knowledge, together with a
knowledge of English syntax, allows us to infer that when the Beatles sang
about living in a yellow submarine they were referring to an object that
belonged to both classes, i.e., something that was both yellow and a
submarine.

This principle of compositionality is of fundamental importance to almost

every topic in semantics, and we will return to it often. But once again, there
are exceptions to the general rule. The most common class of exceptions are
idioms, such as kick the bucket for ‘die’ or X’s goose is cooked for ‘X is in
serious trouble’. Idiomatic phrases are by definition non-compositional: the
meaning of the phrase is not predictable from the meanings of the individual
words. The meaning of the whole phrase must be learned as a unit.

The relation between utterance meaning and the form of the utterance is
neither arbitrary nor, strictly speaking, compositional. Utterance meaning is
derivable (or “calculable”) from the sentence meaning and the context of the
utterance by various pragmatic principles that we will discuss in later
chapters. However, it is not always fully predictable; sometimes more than
one interpretation may be possible for a given utterance in a particular
situation.

What does mean mean?

When someone defines semantics as “the study of meaning”, or pragmatics

14
as “the study of meanings derived from usage”, they are defining one English
word in terms of other English words. This practice has been used for
thousands of years, and works fairly well in daily life. But if our goal as
linguists is to provide a rigorous or scientific account of the relationship
between form and meaning, there are obvious dangers in using this strategy.
To begin with, there is the danger of circularity: a definition can only be
successful if the words used in the definition are themselves well-defined. In
the cases under discussion, we would need to ask: What is the meaning of
meaning? What does mean mean?

One way to escape from this circularity is to translate expressions in the

object language into a well-defined metalanguage. If we use English to
describe the linguistic structure of Swahili, Swahili is the object language and
English is the metalanguage. However, both Swahili and English are natural
human languages which need to be analyzed, and both exhibit vagueness,
ambiguities, and other features which make them less than ideal as a
semantic metalanguage.

Many linguists adopt some variety of formal logic as a semantic

metalanguage, and later chapters in this book provide a brief introduction to
such an approach. Much of the time, however, we will be discussing the
meaning of English expressions using English as the metalanguage. For this
reason it becomes crucial to distinguish (object language) expressions we are
trying to analyze from the (metalanguage) words we are using to describe
our analysis. When we write “What is the meaning of meaning?” or “What
does mean mean?”, we use italics to identify object language expressions.
These italicized words are said to be mentioned, i.e., referred to as objects of
study, in contrast to the metalanguage words which are used in their normal
sense, and are written in plain font.Let us return to the question raised above,

15
“What do we mean by meaning?” This is a difficult problem in philosophy,
which has been debated for centuries, and which we cannot hope to resolve
here; but a few basic observations will be helpful. We can start by noting that
our interests in this book, and the primary concerns of linguistic semantics,
are for the most part limited to the kinds of meaning that people intend to
communicate via language. We will not attempt to investigate the meanings
of “body language”, manner of dress, facial expressions, gestures, etc.,
although these can often convey a great deal of information. (In sign
languages, of course, facial expressions and gestures do have linguistic
meaning.) And we will not address the kinds of information that a hearer
may acquire by listening to a speaker, which the speaker does not intend to
communicate.

For example, if I know how your voice normally sounds, I may be able to
deduce from hearing you speak that you have laryngitis, or that you are
drunk. These are examples of what the philosopher Paul Grice called
“natural meaning”, rather than linguistic meaning. Just as smoke “means”
fire, and a rainbow “means” rain, a rasping whisper “means” laryngitis.
Levinson (1983: 15) uses the example of a detective questioning a suspect to
illustrate another type of unintended communication. The suspect may say
something which is inconsistent with the physical evidence, and this may
allow the detective to deduce that the suspect is guilty, but his guilt is not
part of what the suspect intends to communicate. Inferences of this type will
not be a central focus of interest in this book.

An approach which has proven useful for the linguistic analysis of

meaning is to focus on how speakers use language to talk about the world.
This approach was hinted at in our discussion of the phrase yellow
submarine. Knowing the meaning of words like yellow or submarine allows

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us to identify the class of objects in a particular situation, or universe of
discourse, which those words can be used to refer to. Similarly, knowing the
meaning of a sentence will allow us to determine whether that sentence is
true in a particular situation or universe of discourse.

Technically, sentences like It is raining are neither true nor false. Only an
utterance of a certain kind (namely, a statement) can have a truth value.
When a speaker utters this sentence at a particular time and place, we can
look out the window and determine whether or not the speaker is telling the
truth. The statement is true if its meaning corresponds to the situation being
described: is it raining at that time and place? This approach is sometimes
referred to as the correspondence theory of truth.

We might say that the meaning of a (declarative) sentence is the knowledge

or information which allows speakers and hearers to determine whether it is
true in a particular context. If we know the meaning of a sentence, the
principle of compositionality places an important constraint on the meanings
of the words which the sentence contains: the meaning of individual words
(and phrases) must be suitable to compositionally determine the correct
meaning for the sentence as a whole. Certain types of words (e.g., if, and, or
but) do not “refer” to things in the world; the meanings of such words can
only be defined in terms of their contribution to sentence meanings.

Saying, meaning, and doing

The Teochew question in (2) illustrates how a single sentence can be used to
express two or more different utterance meanings, depending on the context.
In one context the sentence is used to greet someone, while in another
context the same sentence is used to request information. So this example
demonstrates that a single sentence can be used to perform two or more
17
different speech acts, i.e., things that people do by speaking.

In order to fully understand a given utterance, the addressee (= hearer)

must try to answer three fundamental questions:

1. What did the speaker say? i.e., what is the semantic content of the sen-
tence? (The philosopher Paul Grice used the term “What is said” as a way of
referring to semantic content or sentence meaning.)

2. What did the speaker intend to communicate? (Grice used the term im-
plicature for intended but unspoken meaning, i.e., aspects of utterance
meaning which are not part of the sentence meaning.)

3. What is the speaker trying to do? i.e., what speech act is being performed?

In this book we attempt to lay a foundation for investigating these three ques-
tions about meaning. We will return to the analysis of speech acts in Chapter
10; but for a brief example of why this is an important facet of the study of
meaning, consider the word please in examples (3a–b).

(3) a. Please pass me the salt.

b. Can you please pass me the salt?

What does please mean? It does not seem to have any real semantic
content, i.e., does not contribute to the sentence meaning; but it makes an
important contribution to the utterance meaning, in fact, two important
contributions. First, it identifies the speech act which is performed by the
utterances in which it occurs, indicating that they are requests. The word
please does not occur naturally in other kinds of speech acts. Second, this
word is a marker of politeness; so it indicates something about the manner in
which the speech act is performed, including the kind of social relationship
which the speaker wishes to maintain with the hearer. So we see that we
18
cannot understand the meaning of please without referring to the speech act
being performed.

The claim that the word please does not contribute to sentence meaning is
supported by the observation that misusing the word does not affect the truth
of a sentence. We said that it normally occurs only in requests. If we insert
the word into other kinds of speech acts, e.g. It seems to be raining, please, the
result is odd; but if the basic statement is true, adding please does not make it
false. Rather, the use of please in this context is simply inappropriate (unless
there is some contextual factor which makes it possible to interpret the
sentence as a request).

The examples in (3) also illustrate an important aspect of how form and
meaning are related with respect to speech acts. We will refer to the utterance
in (3a) as a direct request, because the grammatical form (imperative)
matches the intended speech act (request); so the utterance meaning is
essentially the same as the sentence meaning. We will refer to the utterance
in (3b) as an indirect request, because the grammatical form (interrogative)
does not match the intended speech act (request); the utterance meaning must
be understood by pragmatic inference.

Denotation and Connotation

The word dog has a certain denotation, the possibility of entering into
numerous referring expressions such as the underlined expressions in the
following.

1 This dog is a Dalmatian.

2 My children have just acquired a dog.
3 Several dogs were fighting over a bone.
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But how do you feel about dogs? How does a particular society value dogs?
Hjelmslev (1971:109–10) pointed out that among the Eskimos a dog is an
animal that is used for pulling a sled, the Parsees regard dogs as nearly
sacred, Hindus consider them a great pest and in Western Europe and
America some members of the species still perform the original chores of
hunting and guarding while others are merely ‘pets.’ Hjelmslev might have
added that in certain societies the flesh of dogs is part of the human diet and
in other societies it is not. The meaning of dog includes the attitudes of a
society and of individuals, the pragmatic aspect. It would be wrong to think
that a purely biological definition of the lexeme dog is a sufficient account of
its meaning. Part of its meaning is its connotation, the affective or emotional
associations it elicits, which clearly need not be the same for all people who
know and use the word.

A denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning,

which everybody generally agrees about. Connotation refers to the
personal aspect of meaning, the emotional associations that the word
arouses. Connotations vary according to the experience of
individuals but, because people do have common experiences, some
words have shared connotations.

Languages provide means of expressing different attitudes. The

referring expressions that violin and that fiddle can have the same
referent—can refer to the same object on a particular occasion— but
they do not have the same meaning. They differ in connotation.
Violin is the usual term, the neutral one; fiddle-is used for humor or
to express affection or lack of esteem. Somewhat similar relations
are seen with automobile and car, building and edifice, fire and
conflagration and other sets, the members of which have, or can
20
have, the same denotation but differ in the situations in which they
are used and therefore have differences in the degree of formality,
the style or ‘flavor’—the connotation. (We also need to note here
that car, building, and fire have larger denotations than automobile,
edifice and conflagration respectively.) The expression of attitudes
can be quite subtle. We choose to use one word rather than another.
We might, for example, say that Linda is thin, or slender, or svelte,
or skinny.

Sense relations
Meaning is more than denotation and connotation. What a word means
depends in part on its associations with other words, the relational aspect.
Lexemes do not merely ‘have’ meanings; they contribute meanings to the
utterances in which they occur, and what meanings they contribute depends
on what other lexemes they are associated with in these utterances. The
meaning that a lexeme has because of these relationships is the sense of that
lexeme. Part of this relationship is seen in the way words do, or do not, go
together meaningfully. It makes sense to say John walked and it makes sense
to say An hour elapsed. It doesn’t make sense to say John elapsed or An hour
walked. Part of the meaning of elapse is that it goes with hour, second,
minute, day but not with John, and part of the meaning of hour, second and
so forth is that these words can co-occur with elapse.
Part of the relationship is seen in the way word meanings vary with context.
A library is a collection of books (Professor Jones has a rather large library)
and is also a building that houses a collection of books (The library is at the
corner of Wilson and Adams Streets). A number of English verbs can be

21
used in two different ways —different grammatical association—and then
have slightly different meanings. We can say:
A window broke.
Tom broke a window.

Here what happened to the window is the same, but in the first sentence
broke is equivalent to ‘became broken’ and in the second it is equivalent to
‘caused to be broken.’ Adjectives, too, can have different senses. If you
come across some object which you have never seen before, and you wonder
about its origin and its purpose, we can say that you are curious about it. But
we can also call the object a curious kind of thing. The same term is used for
your subjective feelings and for the supposedly objective properties of this
item—a curious person, a curious object. A judge makes decisions; if he is
guided by personal whim or choice, the judge is arbitrary (dictionary
definition: ‘inclined to make decisions based on personal whim’) but we also
say that the decision is arbitrary (dictionary definition: ‘based on personal
choice rather than reason’). A lexeme does not merely ‘have’ meaning; it
contributes to the meaning of a larger unit, a phrase or sentence. Take these
phrases with the adjective happy.

a happy child, a happy family

a happy accident, a happy experience
a happy story, a happy report

When happy combines with a word that has the feature [human], like child
and family in the first line, it is roughly equivalent to ‘who enjoy(s)
happiness’—a happy child is a child who has or enjoys happiness. In
combination with words that have the feature [event] such as accident and
22
experience, its contribution is roughly ‘that produces happiness.’ In
combination with words that have the feature [discourse]—story, report—its
meaning is roughly ‘containing a happy event or events.’ Each of these
words has a range of meanings; each meaning is determined by its linguistic
context, just as the meaning of door on any specific occasion is determined
by the physical context in which it occurs.

The meaning of a lexeme is, in part, its relation to other lexemes of the
language. Each lexeme is linked in some way to numerous other lexemes of
the language. We can notice two kinds of linkage, especially. First, there is
the relation of the lexeme with other lexemes with which it occurs in the
same phrases or sentences, in the way that arbitrary can co-occur with judge,
happy with child or with accident, sit with chair, read with book or
newspaper. These are syntagmatic relations, the mutual association of two or
more words in a sequence (not necessarily right next to one another) so that
the meaning of each is affected by the other(s) and together their meanings
contribute to the meaning of the larger unit, the phrase or sentence.

Another kind of relation is contrastive. Instead of saying The judge was

arbitrary, for instance, we can say The judge was cautious or careless, or
busy or irritable, and so on with numerous other possible descriptors. This is
a paradigmatic relation, a relation of choice. We choose from among a
number of possible words that can fill the same blank: the words may be
similar in meaning or have little in common but each is different from the
others.
Since we are used to a writing system that goes from left to right, we may
think of syntagmatic relations as horizontal and paradigmatic relations as
vertical. A compound expression, such as book and newspaper, cautious but

23
arbitrary, read or write puts two lexemes that are paradigmatically related
into a syntagmatic relationship.
As children, we learn vocabulary first through specific associations with
specific things, actions, and characteristics (reference) and as we learn to
recognize different instances of the ‘same’ thing, the ‘same’ event, and so
on, we generalize (denotation). Slowly we learn from other members of our
speech community and from our personal experiences what associations are
favorable and which are not (connotation). And we acquire an implicit
knowledge of how lexemes are associated with other lexemes (sense
relations). Our implicit knowledge of syntagmatic relations facilitates our
perception and identification of what we hear and read, enabling us to correct
automatically what we hear and see, or what we think we hear and see, when
correction is needed: we must have heard five o’clock because *fine o’clock
is not a familiar collocation. (An asterisk inserted before a phrase or sentence
in the text indicates that that this is not an acceptable English construction.)

Types of meaning
You all know now that semantics is concerned with meaning and that
morphemes, words, phrases and sentences have meaning. So semantics can
be defined as the study of the meaning of morphemes, words, phrases and
sentences. While listening to a spoken text or reading a written text you may
feel that there the utterance conveys many types of information or meaning.
So you need to make certain distinctions in the meaning understood by you.
That means you may feel that there are different types of meaning. Now, you
may ask what the types of meanings are. Geoffrey Leech (1981) has an
answer for you question. Leech in his book, 'Semantic- A Study of Meaning'
(1981) breaks down meaning into seven types. They are: conceptual or
denotative meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective or

24
emotive meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning and thematic
meaning. He gives primacy to conceptual meaning; let us examine them one
by one.

There are three basic types of meaning and these are thematic,
conceptual and associative. Associative meaning can further be divided into
connotative, collocative, affective, reflected and stylistic meanings. We shall
for this section concentrate on thematic and conceptual meaning.

Thematic Meaning

You may organize or order words or phrases in an utterances to give them

focus or emphasis. You may say raajan teervil tooRRu viTTaan or teervil
raajan tooRRuviTTaan both meaning 'Raj an failed in the examination'; in
the first case you give importance to raajan 'Raj an' and in the second case
you give importance to teervu 'examination'. In such cases you have thematic
meaning. Thematic meaning refers to what is communicated by the way in
which a speaker or a writer organizes the message in terms of ordering focus
or emphasis (Leech 1981). Thematic meaning helps us to understand the
message and its implications properly. The different parts of the sentence
also can be used as subject, object or complement to show prominence. It is
done through focus, theme (topic) or emotive emphasis. Thus a sentence in
active voice is different from the sentence in passive voice though its
conceptual meaning is the same. For example, the following statements in
active and passive voice have same conceptual meaning but different
communicative values.

Mrs. Smith donated the first prize.

The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith.

25
In the first sentence "who gave away the prize "is more important, but in the
second sentence "what did Mrs. Smith gave is important". Thus the change
of focus changes the meaning also. The first suggests that we already know
Mrs. Smith (perhaps through earlier mention) its known/given information
while it's new information. Alternative grammatical construction also gives
thematic meaning. For example,

I like apples most. Apples I like most. It is the apples I like most.

Like the grammatical structures, stress and intonation also make the message
prominent. For example, the contrastive stress on the word cotton in the
following sentence give prominence to the information.

Kannan likes mango fruit.

The kind of fruit that Kanna likes is mango.

Thus sentences or pairs of sentences with similar conceptual meaning differ

their communicative value. This is due to different grammatical
constructions or lexical items or stress and intonations. Therefore they are
used in different contents. In the line "Ten thousand saw I at a glance",
Wordsworth inverts the structure to focus on 'ten thousand", Sometimes
thematic contrast i.e. contrasts between given and new information can be
conveyed by lexical means.

Kannan owns the biggest shop

in Chennai. The biggest shop in
Chennai belongs to Kannan.

The ways we order our message also convey what is important and what not.
This is basically thematic meaning. Thematic meaning derives from the
26
organisation of the message presented in a language. It is the arrangement of
the components of communication that determine the point of emphasis. This
arrangement may take the form of passivisation, topicalisation or focus. In
the sentences that follow, different items have been made more prominent by
merely re-ordering them.

a. Jane bought the house - normal SVO order

b.It was Jane that bought the house - topicalised
c. The house was bought by Jane - passivised.
d.The house, Jane painted - focused

In sentence (a) the sentence is in the normal subject-verb-object order

without any special meaning. Sentences (b) and (d) tend to lay emphasis on
Jane, the doer of the action being referred to. In sentence (c), the emphasis is
on the house which was bought.

Indeed, focused and topicalised elements in a structure are given prominence

within an information structure. A component of the bit of information can
also be made more prominent by stressing it. Consider further the following:

She BOUGHT my newspaper (She

did not STEAL it) She bought my
NEWSPAPER (not my textbook)
SHE bought my newspaper (not any
other person)

Conceptual Meaning

Conceptual meaning (Leech 1981:9) is synonymous with the primary,

27
central, logical, cognitive or denotative meaning of a word. It is the first
ordinary meaning listed in dictionaries which is not affected by the context
or emotional overtones associated with the act of communication. There is
an assumed shared conceptual meaning of every word of a language. There
is a universal implication of the conceptual meaning. It is widely assumed to
be the central factor in linguistic communication. Conceptual meanings are
the essential or core meaning while other six types are the peripheral. They
are peripheral in as sense that they are non-essential. Conceptual meaning is
also called as primary meaning . It is the meaning suggested by the word
when it used alone. It is the first meaning or usage which a word will suggest
to most people when the word is said in isolation. It is the meaning learned
early in life and likely to have reference to a physical situation. The
conceptual meaning of word is its agreed-upon sense - what it refers to,
stands for, or designates. The aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an
appropriate semantic representation to a sentence or statement. A sentence is
made of abstract symbols. Conceptual meaning helps us to distinguish one
meaning from the meaning of other sentences. Thus, conceptual meaning is
an essential part of language. A language essentially depends on conceptual
meaning for communication. The conceptual meaning is the base for all the
other types of meaning.

You know that conceptual meaning is given primacy over other meanings.
Conceptual meaning deals with the core meaning of expression. It is the
denotative or literal meaning. It is essential for the functioning of language.
For example, a part of the conceptual meaning of the word needle may be
"thin", "sharp" or "instrument". The organization of conceptual meaning is
based on two principles: principle of contrastiveness and the principle of
structure. The conceptual meanings can be studied typically in terms of

28
contrastive features. That is, it is possible to express the conceptual meaning
of a word using contrastive semantic features. Such features indicate the
attributes present and those that are absent. If a feature is present, it is
specified as [ + ]; if absent, it is [ - ]. These contrastive features specifying
the attributes of the words provide the necessary criteria for the correct use
of words. You know already that /b/ is described in phonetics as +bilabial, +
voice, + bilabial + stop/plosive and /p/ is described in phonetics as +bilabial,
-voice, + bilabial + stop/plosive. It is the contrasting feature +/- VOICE
which differentiates /b/ from /p/. Similarly the word woman can be
represented as + HUMAN, -MALE, + ADULT". On the contrary, the word
boy can be realized as + HUMAN, + MALE, - ADULT. The contrastive
features which distinguish woman from boy are +/-MALE and +/- ADULT.

This way of representing meaning based on contrastive features is known as

the principle of contractiveness. You know that not only the units of
language are contrastive but also they are arranged sequentially. You can
build larger units by combining smaller units and again combining the
outcome of the first combination into still larger units and so on. Look at the
example given below. You combine that and man into that man and a and
teacher into a teacher; you interpret the first phrase that man as subject and a
teacher as complement. You again combine is and a teacher into a larger
unit is a teacher, you interpret this as predicate. By combining subject and
predicate you construct a sentence. Now you understand that by the principle
of structure, larger units of language are built up out of smaller units or you
are able to analyze a sentence syntactically into its constituent parts
hierarchically till you arrive at the ultimate constituents or smallest syntactic
elements. You can represent this information by means of a tree-diagram as
given below:

29
 that man is a teacher

Now you understand that the aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an

appropriate semantic representation to a sentence or statement. A sentence is
made of abstract symbols. Conceptual meaning helps you to distinguish one
meaning from the meaning of other sentences. Thus, conceptual meaning is
an essential part of language. A language essentially depends on conceptual
meaning for communication. The conceptual meaning is the base for all the
other types of meaning.

The conceptual meaning of a word constitutes a major part of the shared

system of a language for all speakers. It is a criteria element of human
communication since it is a major factor in language. The use of this process,
has been described as componential analysis. It is a major process in
structural semantics.

Associative Meaning

The meaning of a word is affected by the context, background, time and the
cultural realities of the users of language. This type of meaning is not static.
It is variable and open ended. Certain words, structures and styles are usually
employed to arouse some emotional reactions in the hearer. Certain attitudes
and forms of behaviour are elicited by the associative meaning of the words
used in communication. The different reactions are derived from the
associations which the words create in the minds of language users.
30
As a result of the great variation in associative meaning, it is not always easy
to express that form of meaning in terms of contrastive semantic features.
Indeed, associative meaning reflects individual differences. There are
individualised intentions and interpretations. There is, therefore, the need for
all participants in communication to share common reference points,
symbols, and backgrounds for there to be any meaningful interaction.

Most of the problems of communication arise when associative meaning is

assumed to be shared by all concerned. There must be a way of ensuring
actual sharing of background. For second language learners, this problem is
profound. This explains the enormous difficulty second language learners
encounter with decoding the meaning of idioms and figurative expressions.
They also find it difficult to apply appropriate idioms to diverse situations.
Associative meaning can be any of the following:

• Connotative Meaning
• Collocative Meaning
• Reflected Meaning
• Stylistic or Social Meaning

Connotative Meaning

When you explore conceptual or denotative meaning, it will land you into
connotative meaning. You may feel that the given expression gives you more
information than what is encoded in it. That is you may feel that there is
connotation apart from denotation. So you have connotative meaning apart
from denotative meaning or conceptual meaning. Connotative meaning
(Leech 1981:12-13) is the communicative value of an expression over and

31
above its purely conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere
referent of a word and hints at its attributes in the real world. It is something
more than the dictionary meaning. Thus purely conceptual content of woman
is +HUMAN + FEMALE+ ADULT. But the physical characteristics of
woman such as "biped', 'having a womb', etc , psychological and social
attributes of woman such as be 'gregarious', 'having maternal instinct' or
typical (rather than invariable) attributes of womanhood such as 'capable of
speaking continuously", 'experts in cooking', 'wearing skirt or sari', etc are
connotations or connotative meaning. Still further connotative meaning can
embrace putative properties of a referent due to viewpoint adopted by
individual, group, and society as a whole. So in the past woman was
supposed to have attributes like frail, prone to tears, emotional, irrigational,
inconstant, cowardly etc. as well as more positive qualities such gentle,
sensitive, compassionate, hardworking etc. Connotations vary age to age and
society to society.

The boundary between conceptual and connotative seems to be analogous.

Connotative meaning is regarded as incidental, comparatively unstable, in
determinant, open ended, variable according to age, culture and individual,
whereas conceptual meaning is not like that. It can be codified in terms of
limited symbols.

Connotative meaning contains elements of the conceptual meaning of a word

and the individual's personal interpretation of what is communicated. That
interpretation is based on the personal experience of the hearer. This means
that connotative meaning varies with the experience of people in
communication. It may also vary from society to society.

There are additional semantic features that are associated with connotative
32
meaning. Thus, a great deal of the meaning of idioms and figurative
expressions derive from connotation. There are symbols in literature which
have different connotations in different cultures. For instance, among the
Tamils, the fox or jackal is associated with the cunningness, cawing of crow
is associated with the arrival of guest and cat crossing your way is associated
with bad omen.

Collocative Meaning

You might have come across words which occur together mostly in
utterances. Such co-occurrence is referred to as collation and the outcome of
the collocation gives rise to collocative meaning. Collocative meaning is the
meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain other words.
Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only. For example, big
business is acceptable and not large business or great business. Collocative
meaning refers to associations of a word because of its usual or habitual co-
occurrence with certain types of words, pretty and handsome indicate 'good
looking'. However, they slightly differ from each other because of
collocation or co-occurrence. The word pretty collocates with girls, woman,
village, gardens, flowers, etc. On the other hand, the word handsome
collocates with boys, men, etc. So we have pretty woman and handsome
man. Though handsome woman and pretty man are acceptable, they suggest
different kinds of attractiveness because of the collocative associations of the
two adjectives. Hence handsome woman may mean attractive woman but in
a mannish way. The verbs wander and stroll are quasi-synonymous; they
may have almost the same meaning; but while cows may wander, but may
not stroll as stroll collocates with human subject only. Similarly one
'trembles with fear' but 'quivers with excitement'. Collocative meanings need

33
to be invoked only when other categories of meaning don't apply.
Generalizations can be made in case of other meanings while collocative
meaning is simply an idiosyncratic property of individual words. Collocative
meaning has its importance and it is a marginal kind of category.

Affective Meaning

You use language to express your personal feelings, including your attitude
to the listener, or your attitude to something you are talking about. Meaning
of this type is called as affective or emotive meaning (Leech 1981:14). It is
often conveyed through the conceptual or connotative content of the words
used. For example, home for a sailor/soldier or expatriate and mother for a
motherless child and a married woman (especially in Indian context) will
have special effective, emotive quality. In affective meaning, language is
used to express personal feelings or attitude to the listener or to the subject
matter of his discourse. For Leech affective meaning refers to what is
conveyed about the feeling and attitude of the speak through use of language
(attitude to listener as well as attitude to what he is saying). Affective
meaning is often conveyed through conceptual, connotative content of the
words used. For example, "you are a vicious tyrant and a villainous
reprobation and I hate you" Or "I hate you, you idiot". We are left with a
little doubt about the speaker's feelings towards the listener. Here speaker
seems to have a very negative attitude towards his listener. This is called
affective meaning. But very often we are more discreet (cautious) and
convey our attitude indirectly. For example, "I am terribly sorry but if you
would be so kind as to lower your voice a little" conveys our irritation in a
scaled-down manner for the sake of politeness. Intonation and voice quality
are also important here. Thus, the sentence above can be uttered in biting
34
sarcasm and the impression of politeness maybe reversed while for example,
"Will you belt up?" can be turned into a playful remark between intimates if
said with the intonation of a request. Words like darling, sweetheart or
hooligan, and vandal have inherent emotive qualities and they can be used
neutrally. LA. Richards argued that emotive meaning distinguishes literature
or poetic language from the factual meaning of science. Finally, it must be
noted that affective meaning is largely a parasitic category. It overlaps
heavily with style, connotation and conceptual content.

Affective meaning is related to the feelings and attitudes of the speaker

towards the subject or the audience. This meaning is achieved by the choice
of words. Certain words suggest positive feelings -love, attraction,
happiness, exciting etc. Some others stir up negative reactions - disgusting,
nauseating, disappointing, etc. Interjections like ah!, oh!, uhl, mmn! often
suggest the emotional state of the mind. Other words like darling, daddy,
mummy etc. give an impression of endearment.

Reflected meaning

You know that a word can have more than one conceptual meamng or
multiple conceptual meaning. If you interpret one meaning for the other, it is
known by the term reflected meaning. In such cases while responding to one
sense of the word you partly respond to another sense of the word too. For
example in church service The Comforter and The Holy Ghost refer to the
35
Third Person of Trinity (Leech 1981:16). Comforter and Ghost are religious
words. They have both religious and general meaning. But unconsciously
even in religious context you may interpret these terms by their non-religious
meaning. You may feel The Comforter sounds warm and comforting while
The Holy Ghost sounds 'awesome' or even 'dreadful'. One sense of the word
seems to rub off on another especially through relative frequency and
familiarity (e.g. a ghost is more frequent and familiar in no religious sense.).
In poetry too you have reflected meaning as in the following lines from
'Futility':

Are limbs so dear-

achieved, are sides, Full-
nerved still - warm - too
hard to stir?

The poet Wilfred Owen uses the word dear in the sense 'expensive'. But you
may feel in the context of the poem the sense *beloved' is also alluded. In
such cases of multiple meaning, one meaning of the word pushes the other
meaning to the background. Then the dominant suggestive power of that
word prevails. This may happen because of the relative frequency or
familiarity of the dominant meaning. This dominant meaning which pushes
the other meaning at the background is called the reflected
meaning.Reflected meaning relates to expressions with multiple meanings.
Words with several meanings (i.e. polysemous words), have reflected
meaning. There is, however, a dominant meaning among these several
meanings. As a particular sense of a word begins to assume prominence, all
other senses begin to be de-emphasised and with time, these other senses
disappear. Meat used to refer to all forms of food and flesh for nourishment.

36
The later meaning seems to have caught on.

Stylistic (or Social) Meaning

You know language is spoken in a society. So it is quite natural the language

gives clue to about the society in which it is being spoken or the social
context in which it is spoken. When you hear the utterance

naan neettu aattukkup pokarcca aaRumaNi aayiTucci

IT was 6 o' clock when I reached home yesterday',

you understood that the person who uttered the utterance belongs to Brahmin
community. Similarly when you listen to the utterance naan neettaikki cakka
caappiTTeen 'yesterday I age jackfruit'. you understand that the person who
uttered it belongs to Kanyakumari district of Tamilnadu. The meaning
conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use is called
the social meaning (Leech 1981:14). The decoding of a text is dependent on
our knowledge of stylistics and other variations of language. We recognize
some words or pronunciation as being dialectical i.e. as telling us something
about the regional or social origin of the speaker. Social meaning is related to
the social situation in which an utterance is used. It is concerned with the
social circumstances of the use of a linguistic expression. For example, some
dialectic words inform us about the regional and social background of the
speaker. In the same way, some stylistic usages let us know something of the
social relationship between the speaker and the hearer. The following socio-
stylistic variations are listed by Leech (Leech 1981:14):

Dialect (the language of a geographical region or social class)

37
 Time (the language of eighteenth century, etc)
Province (language of law, of science, of advertising, etc.)
Status (Polite, colloquial, slang, etc., language)
Modality (language of memoranda, lectures, jokes, etc.)
Singularity (the style of Dickens, of Hemingway, etc.)

For example, the utterance / ain 't done nothing tells you about the speaker
and that is the speaker is probably a black American, underprivileged and
uneducated. Stylistic variation represents the social variation. This is because
styles show the geographical region social class of the speaker. Style helps us
to know about the period, field and status of the discourse. Some words are
similar to others as far as their conceptual meaning is concerned. But they
have different stylistic meaning. For example, steed , horse and nag are
synonymous. You know they all mean a kind of animal i.e. horse. But they
differ in style and so have different social meaning, steed is used in poetry;
horse is used in general, while nag is slang. The word HOME can have
many use also like domicile (official), residence (formal), abode (poetic),
and home (ordinary use). Stylistic variation is also found in sentence as a
whole. For example consider the following two sentences (Leech 1981:15).

They chucked the stones at the cops and then did a

bunk with the look. After casting the stones at the
police, they abandoned with money."

The first could be said by two criminals after the event and second could be
used by the chief Inspector in making his official report. Thus through the
style and form of the utterances you come to know about the social facts,
social situation, class, region, and the speaker-listener relation.

38
You may utter a sentence in a social situation as a request, an apology, a
warning or a threat. Such social situations are known by the term
illocutionary force. The illocutionary force of an utterance also can have
social meaning. For example, the sentence, / haven't got a knife has the
common meaning in isolation. But the sentence uttered to a waiter mean a
request for a knife. Thus we can understand that the social meaning plays a
very vital role in the field of semantics and in understanding the utterances
and sentences in different contexts.

When a particular pattern of speech, language variety or speech form is

associated with a specific social context, stylistic or social meaning is
achieved. It is common knowledge that a speaker's choice of words and
structures reveals his or her social, regional, geographical or even economic
background. The choices can also reveal the level of familiarity between the
speaker and the hearer.

Emphasis is usually on the different stylistic variations open to language

users. Based on the level of familiarity, users have the following possibilities
in making requests:

I wonder if I could see you later today (indirect question) used for
extreme politeness) May I see you later today (very formal)
Can I see you later today (causal and less formal)

39
 Chapter 2
The Scope of Semantics

AIM
The aim of the subject of study is to give a brief introduction to semantics
and pragmatics. Semantics is the study of meaning. More precisely it is the
study of the relation between linguistic expressions and their meanings.
Pragmatics is the study of context. More precisely it is the study of the way
context can influence our understanding of linguistic utterances.

OVERVIEW
The term semantics simply means the study of meanings. The study explores
how meaning in language is produced or created. Semantics not only
concentrates on how words express meaning but also on how words, phrases
and sentences come together to make meaning in language. To start with,
you will be motivated to focus on the nature and scope of semantics. Hence,
here in this unit, you will be introduced to the concept and definition
semantics, brief history of semantics, semantics and other disciplines, major
concern of semantics, and the different approaches to the study of semantics.

The symbols employed in language must be patterned in a systematic way.

You have been already informed that language is organized at four principal
levels – sounds (i.e. Phonetics/phonology), words (i.e. Morphology),
sentences (i.e. syntax) and meaning (i.e. semantics). Phonology and syntax
are concerned with the expressive power of language while semantics studies
the meaning of what has been expressed. Knowledge of grammar is an
aspect of the innate cognitive ability of human beings. The power of

40
interpretation complements that innate ability. Interpretation is an aspect of
semantics. Therefore, language acquisition or learning includes not only the
knowledge of the organization of sounds and structures but also how to
associate meaning to the structures. Semantics can, therefore, be
characterized as the scientific study of meaning in language.
Semantics has been the subject of discourse for many years for philosophers
and other scholars but later was introduced formally in literature in the late
1800’s. Hence, we have philosophical semantics and linguistic semantics
among other varieties of semantics. Earlier scholars in philosophical
semantics were interested in pointing out the relationship between linguistic
expressions and identified phenomena in the external world. In the
contemporary world, especially in the United States philosophical semantics
has led to the development of semiotics. In some other parts of the world,
and especially, France, the term semiology has been favoured. The reliance
on logical calculations in issues of meaning has led to the development of
logical semantics. However, for your purpose in this course, the emphasis is
on linguistic semantics, with our interest on the properties of natural
languages. You shall see how this study relates to other disciplines. We shall
also examine the real issues in linguistic semantics.

Semantics has been identified as a component of linguistics. In its widest

sense, linguistics is the scientific study of language. As a field of study,
semantics is related to other disciplines. In semantics, we study the meaning
of words and also how the meanings of words in a sentence are put together
to form sentential meaning. Linguistic semantics studies meaning in a
systematic and objective way. Since meaning as a concept is not static, a
great deal of the idea of meaning still depends on the context and participants
in the act of communication (discourse). There is a strong connection

41
between meaning and pragmatics. The exchange or relay of information,
message, attitude, feelings or values from one person to another contributes
to the interpretation of meaning. This is done mainly by the use of language.
It is often expressed that language is a system which uses a set of symbols
agreed upon by a group to communicate their ideas or message or
information. These symbols can be spoken or written, expressed as gestures
or drawings.
Depending upon the focus of study, semantics can be compartmentalized as
lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, logical semantics and semantics in
relation to pragmatics.

The concept and definition of semantics

The Concept of Semantics
When you communicate using language, you convert or decode your thought
(meaningful expression) into a series of sounds or alphabets and the listener
decodes the sounds or alphabets into meaningful expression. It is the
grammar which helps you to encode your thought into speech or written
signals or decode the encoded speech or written signals into meaningful
expression. If you don't know the grammar, the given speech or written text
will be simply a series of sounds or alphabets for you. You might have
learned from the introduction to linguistics that the grammar has at least four
levels of analysis: (1) phonology which decodes sounds or phones into
functional sound units or phonemes of the given language, (2) morphology
which decodes the series of phonemes into morphemes (the minimal
meaningful units of a language) and morphemes into words (3) syntax which
decodes the words into phrases, phrases into clauses and clauses into
sentences and (3) semantics which decodes syntactic output into meaningful

42
representation.
The word ‘semantics’ is still a puzzle and has been interpreted and defined in
many ways depending on the interest of the scholars who defined it. For
example, the logicians, philosophers and linguists have different definitions
for the word semantics. Ogden and Richard (1923) and Bloomfield (1933)
looked at the science for the clarification of semantic concepts. The problem
of Ogden's and Richard's and Bloomfield’s approaches to meaning arises
mainly from their determination to explain semantics in terms of other
scientific disciplines. It is mistaken to try to define meaning by reducing it to
the terms of science rather than the science of language. Meaning has to be
studied as a linguistic phenomenon in its own right, not as something 'outside
language'. As a linguist you are interested in recognizing relations of
meaning between sentences, and in recognizing which sentences are
meaningful and which are not. You wish to distinguish the 'knowledge of the
language' from the 'knowledge of the world' (Leech 1981:21). Here you are
concerned with linguistics semantics and so semantics is the way to interpret
units of language such as morpheme, word, phrase and sentence. It is the
meaning that distinguishes one linguistic unit from another unit.

Study of meaning is one of the major areas of linguistic study. Linguists have
approached it in a variety of ways. Members of the school of interpretive
semantics study the structures of language independent of their conditions of
use. In contrast, the advocates of generative semantics insist that the meaning
of sentences is a function of their use. Still another group maintains that
semantics will not advance until theorists take into account the psychological
questions of how people form concepts and how these relate to word
meanings.

43
The Definition of Semantics
Semantics as a term was first formally used by Breal in 1897. Hence, we can
deduce that Breal was the first to bring to the fore in a formally acceptable
way, the nature of meaning in language. Though the quest for the
understanding of meaning has always been of interest to scholars, semantics
was not mentioned as a term and did not come up in literature until 1897
when it was first used by Breal. This first attempt to study meanings by
philosophers brought about the area of semantics called philosophical
semantics which examines the relationship between linguistic expressions
and the phenomena they refer to in the external world. Philosophical
semantics focuses on examining the conditions under which such linguistic
expressions and the phenomena they refer to are true or false. This can be
traced to as far back as Plato’s and Aristotle’s works.

However, contemporary philosophical semantics can be traced to the works

of the following authors: Rudolf Carnap [1891 - 1970], Alfred Tarski [Born
1902] and Charles Peirce [1839 - 1914]. According to Peirce, philosophical
semantics developed as Semiotics in America while with the influence of
Saussure in France, the term Semiology was used. However, the idea of
truth-based semantics was Tarski’s major contribution. Linguistic semantics
emphasizes the properties of natural languages while pure or logical
semantics is the study of the meaning of expressions using logical systems or
calculi. Examining semantics in this dimension makes it more
mathematically related than linguistic in nature. It is important to note that
the discussion of semantics as a branch of linguistics began recently and this
shall be our next focus.

You have noted that semantics has its origin in philosophy. Earlier scholars

44
in philosophical semantics were interested in pointing out the relationship
between linguistic expressions and identified phenomena in the external
world. In the contemporary world, especially in the United States
philosophical semantics has led to the development of semiotics. In some
other parts of the world, and especially, France, the term semiology has been
favoured. The reliance on logical calculations in issues of meaning has led to
the development of logical semantics. However, for our purpose in this
course, emphasis is on linguistic semantics, with our interest on the
properties of natural languages. You shall see how this study relates to other
disciplines. We shall also examine the real issues in linguistic semantics.

ACTIVITY
(1) Define semantics.
(2) Describe the levels of grammar which link sounds with meaning.

Brief History of Semantics

It has often been pointed out, and for obvious reasons, that semantics is the
youngest branch of linguistics. Yet, interest in what we call today "problems
of semantics" was quite alive already in ancient times. In ancient Greece,
philosophers spent much time debating the problem of the way in which
words acquired their meaning. The question why is a thing called by a given
name, was answered in two different ways.
Some of them believed that the names of things were arrived at naturally,
physei, that they were somehow conditioned by the natural properties of
things themselves. They took great pains to explain for instance that a letter
like "rho" seems apt to express motion since the tongue moves rapidly in its
production. Hence its occurrence in such words as rhoein ("to flow"), while

45
other sounds such as /s, f, ks/, which require greater breath effort in
production, are apt for such names as psychron ("shivering") or kseon
("shaking"), etc. The obvious inadvertencies of such correlations did not
discourage philosophers from believing that it is the physical nature of the
sounds of a name that can tell us something about its meaning.

Other philosophers held the opposite view, namely that names are given to
things arbitrarily through convention, thesei. The physei-thesei controversy
or physis-nomos controversy is amply discussed in Plato's dialogue Cratylus.
In the dialogue, Cratylus appears to be a part of the physei theory of name
acquisition, while Hermogenes defends the opposite, nomos or their point of
view. The two positions are then debated by Socrates in his usual manner. In
an attempt to mediate between the two discussants, he points out first of all
that there are two types of names. Some are compound names which are
divisible into smaller constituent element and accordingly, analyzable into
the meaning of these constituent elements: Poseidon derives his name from
posi ("for the feet") and desmos ("fetter") since it was believed that it was
difficult for the sea god to walk in the water. Socrates points out that the
words in themselves, give us no clue as to their "natural" meaning, except for
the nature of their sounds. Certain qualities are attributed to certain types of
sounds and then the meaning of words is analyzed in terms of the qualities of
the sounds they are made of. When faced with abundant examples which run
counter the apriori hypothesis: finding a "l" sound ("lambda") "characteristic
of liquid movements" in the word sklerotes ("hardness") for instance, he
concludes, in true Socratic fashion, that "we must admit that both convention
and usage contribute to the manifestation of what we have in mind when we
speak".
In two other dialogues, Theatetus and Sophists, Plato dealt with other
46
problems such as the relation between thought language, and the outside
world. In fact, Plato opened the way for the analysis of the sentence in terms
which are partly linguistic and partly pertaining to logic. He was dealing
therefore with matters pertaining to syntactic semantics, the meaning of
utterances, rather than the meaning of individual words.

Aristotle's works (Organon as well as Rhetoric and Poetics) represent the

next major contribution of antiquity to language study in general and
semantics in particular. His general approach to language was that of a
logician, in the sense that he was interested in what there is to know how
men know it, and how they express it in language and it is through this
perspective that his contribution to linguistics should be assessed. In the field
of semantics proper, he identified a level of language analysis - the lexical
one - the main purpose of which was to study the meaning of words either in
isolation or in syntactic constructions. He deepened the discussion of the
polysemy, antonymy, synonymy and homonymy and developed a full-
fledged theory of metaphor.

The contribution of stoic philosophy to semantics is related to their

discussion of the nature of linguistic sign. In fact, as it was pointed out
centuries ahead of Ferdinand de Saussure, the theory of the Janus-like nature
of the linguistic sign - semeion - is an entity resulting from the relationship
obtaining between the signifier - semainon - (i.e. the sound or graphic aspect
of the word), the signified - semainomenon (i.e. the notion) and the object
thus named - tynkhanon -, a very clear distinction, therefore, between
reference and meaning as postulated much later by Ogden and Richards in
the famous "triangle" that goes by their name.

47
Etymology was also much debated in antiquity; but the explanations given to
changes in the meaning and form of words were marred on the one hand by
their belief that semantic evolution was always unidirectional, from a
supposedly "correct" initial meaning, to their corruption, and, on the other
hand, by their disregard of phonetic laws.

During the Middle Ages, it is worth mentioning in the field of linguistics and
semantics the activity of the "Modistae" the group of philosophers so named
because of their writings On the Modes of Signification. These writings were
highly speculative grammars in which semantic considerations held an
important position. The "Modistae" adopted the "thesei" point of view in the
"physei-thesei" controversy and their efforts were directed towards pointing
out the "modi intelligendi", the ways in which we can know things, and the
"modi significandi", the various ways of signifying them.

It may be concluded that throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, and
actually until the 19th century almost everything that came to be known
about meaning in languages was the result of philosophic speculation and
logical reasoning. Philosophy and logic were the two important sciences
which left their strong impact on the study of linguistic meaning.
It was only during the 19th century that semantics came into being as an
independent branch of linguistics as a science in its own right. The first
words which confined themselves to the study of semantic problems as we
understand them today, date as far back as the beginning of the last century.

In his lectures as Halle University, the German linguist Ch. C. Reisig was the
first to formulate the object of study of the new science of meaning which he
called semasiology. He conceived the new linguistic branch of study as a
48
historical science studying the principles governing the evolution of
meaning.

Towards the end of the century (1897), M. Bréal published an important

book Essay de sémantique which was soon translated into English and found
an immediate echo in France as well as in other countries of Europe. In many
ways it marks the birthday of semantics as a modern linguistic discipline.
Bréal did not only provide the name for the new science, which became
general in use, but also circumscribed more clearly its subject-matter.

The theoretical sources of semantic linguistics outlined by Bréal are, again,

classical logic and rethorics, to which the insights of an upcoming science,
namely, psychology are added. In following the various changes in the
meaning of words, interest is focused on identifying certain general laws
governing these changes. Some of these laws are arrived at by the recourse to
the categories of logic: extension of meaning, narrowing of meaning, transfer
of meaning, while others are due to a psychological approach, degradation of
meaning and the reverse process of elevation of meaning.

Alongside these theoretical endeavours to "modernize" semantics as the

youngest branch of linguistics, the study of meaning was considerably
enhanced by the writing of dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual.
Lexicographic practice found extensive evidence for the categories and
principles used in the study of meaning from antiquity to the more modern
approaches of this science: polysemy, synonymy, homonymy, antonymy, as
well as for the laws of semantic change mentioned above.

The study of language meaning has a long tradition in Romania. Stati

49
mentioned (1971: 184) Dimitrie Cantemir's contribution to the discussion of
the difference between categorematic and syncategorematic words so dear to
the medieval scholastics.

Lexicography attained remarkably high standards due mainly to B. P.

Hasdeu. His Magnum Etymologicum Romaniae ranks with the other great
lexicographic works of the time.

In 1887, ten years ahead of M. Bréal, Lazar Saineanu published a remarkable

book entitled Incercare asupra semasiologiei limbei romane. Studii istorice
despre tranzitiunea sensurilor. This constitutes one of the first works on
semantics to have appeared anywhere. Saineanu makes ample use of the
contributions of psychology in his attempts at identifying the semantic
associations established among words and the "logical laws and affinities"
governing the evolution of words in particular and of language in general.

Although it doesn't contain an explicit theory of semantics, the posthumous

publication of Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale 1916,
owing to the revolutionary character of the ideas on the study of language it
contained, determined an interest for structure in the field of semantics as
well.

Within this process of development of the young linguistic discipline, the

1921-1931 decade has a particular significance. It is marked by the
publication of three important books: Jost Trier, Der Deutsche Wortschatz
im Sinnbezink des Verstandes (1931), G. Stern, Meaning and Change of
Meaning (1931) and C. K. Ogden and J. A. Richards: The Meaning of
Meaning (1923).
50
Jost Trier's book as well as his other studies which are visibly influenced by
W. von Humbold's ideas on language, represents an attempt to approach
some of the Saussurean principles to semantics. Analyzing the meaning of a
set of lexical elements related to one another by their content, and thus
belonging to a semantic "field", Trier reached the conclusion that they were
structurally organized within this field, in such a manner that the
significative value of each element was determined by the position which it
occupied within the respective field. For the first time, therefore, words were
no longer approached in isolation, but analyzed in terms of their position
within a larger ensemble - the semantic field - which in turn, is integrated,
together with other fields, into an ever larger one. The process of subsequent
integrations continues until the entire lexicon is covered. The lexicon
therefore is envisaged as a huge mosaic with no piece missing.

Gustav Stern's work is an ambitious attempt at examining the component

factors of meaning and of determining, on this ground, the causes and
directions of changes of meaning. Using scientific advances psychology
(particularly Wundt's psychology) Stern postulates several classifications and
principles which no linguist could possibly neglect.

As regards Ogden and Richard's book, its very title The Meaning of Meaning
is suggestive of its content. The book deals for the most part with the
different accepted definitions of the word "meaning", not only in linguistics,
but in other disciplines as well. It identifies no less than twenty-four such
definitions. The overt endeavour of the authors is to confine semantic
preoccupations to linguistic problems exclusively. The two authors have the
merit of having postulated the triadic relational theory of meaning -
51
graphically represented by the triangle that bears their names.

A short supplement appended to the book: The Problem of Meaning in

Primitive Languages due to an anthropologist, B. Malinowski, was highly
instrumental in the development of a new "contextual" theory of meaning
advocated by the British school of linguistics headed by J. R. Firth (1935).

The following decades, more specifically the period 1930-1950 is known as

a period of crisis in semantics. Meaning was all but completely ignored in
linguistics particularly as an effect of the position adopted by L. Bloomfield,
who considered that the study of meaning was outside the scope of
linguistics proper. Its study falls rather within the boundaries of other
sciences such as chemistry, physics, etc., and more especially psychology,
sociology or anthropology. The somewhat more conciliatory positions
which, without denying the role of meaning in language nevertheless allotted
it but a marginal place within the study of language (Hockett, 1958), was not
able to put an end to this period of crisis.

Reference to semantics was only made in extremis, when the various

linguistic theories were not able to integrate the complexity of linguistic
events within a unitary system. Hence the widespread idea of viewing
semantics as a "refuge", as a vast container in which all language facts that
were difficult to formalize could be disposed of. The picture of the
development of semantics throughout this period would be incomplete, were
it not to comprise the valuable accumulation of data regarding meaning, all
due to the pursuing of tradition methods and primarily to lexicographic
practice.

52
If we view the situation from a broader perspective, it becomes evident that
the so-called "crisis" of semantics, actually referred to the crisis of this
linguistic discipline only from a structuralist standpoint, more specifically
from the point of view of American descriptivism. On the other hand,
however, it is also salient that the renovating tendencies, as inaugurated by
different linguistic schools, did not incorporate the semantic domain until
very late. It was only in the last years of the sixties that the organized attacks
of the modern linguistic schools of different orientations were launched upon
the vast domain of linguistic meaning.

At present meaning has ceased to be an "anathema" for linguistics.

Moreover, the various linguistic theories are unanimous in admitting that no
language description can be regarded as being complete without including
facts of meaning in its analysis.

A specific feature of modern research in linguistics is the ever growing

interest in problems of meaning. Judging by the great number of published
works, by the extensive number of semantic theories which have been
postulated, of which some are complementary, while some other are directly
opposed, we are witnessing a period of feverish research, of effervescence,
which cannot but lead to progress in semantics.

An important development in the direction of a psycholinguistic approach to

meaning is Lakoff's investigation of the metaphorical basis of meaning
(Lakoff and Johnson 1980). This approach draw on Elinor Rosch's notion of
prototype, and adopt the view opposed to that of Chomsky, that meaning
cannot be easily separated from the more general cognitive functions of the
mind.

53
G. Leech considers that the developments which will bring most rewards in
the future will be those which bring into a harmonious synthesis the insights
provided by the three disciplines which claim the most direct and general
interest in meaning: those of linguistics, philosophy and psychology.

ACTIVITY
(1) Trace the development of linguistic semantics.
(2) What are the contributions of philosophers to the development of
semantics?

Semantics and Other Related Disciplines

Meaning may be studied as a part of various academic disciplines. There is
of course a significant degree of overlap between the disciplines, but
characteristically all have something idiosyncratic and unique in their
approach.

Semantics is a very broad field, since it involves the elements of the structure
and function of language, which is closely related to psychology, philosophy
and anthropology, and sociology. Anthropological interest in the field of
semantics arises as the analysis of meaning in language can present language
user in a practical culture. Philosophy is closely linked to semantics because
the meaning of certain issues that can be explained philosophically (the
meaning of phrases and proverbs). Psychology closely related to the
semantics for psychology utilizing human psychiatric symptoms displayed
verbally and nonverbally. Sociology has an interest in semantics, because a
certain phrase or expression can be adequate social group or a particular

54
social identity. Hopefully is this discussion beneficial to us all and add to
treasury of knowledge.

Linguistic meaning has been a topic of philosophical interest since ancient

times. In the first decades of the 20th century, it became one of the central
concerns of philosophy in the English-speaking world. This development can
be attributed to an interaction of several trends in various disciplines. From
the middle of the 19th century onward, logic, the formal study of reasoning,
underwent a period of growth unparalleled since the time of Aristotle (384–
322 BCE). Although the main motivation for the renewed interest in logic
was a search for the epistemological foundations of mathematics, the chief
protagonists of this effort—notably the German mathematician Gottlob
Frege and the British philosopher Bertrand Russell—extended their inquiry
into the domain of the natural languages, which are the original media of
human reasoning. The influence of mathematical thinking, and of
mathematical logic in particular, however, left a permanent mark on the
subsequent study of semantics.

We recall that philosophy has been linked to the earliest postulation about
meaning. There are still other disciplines that are relevant to semantics. A
very strong ally of semantics is logic, itself, a branch of philosophy. Logical
systems are known to exhibit coherent and consistent models for evaluating
thought. Thus, logical postulations are the ideal but may not always reflect
the real world in matters of language.

Semantics is also related to sociology and anthropology because of the

connection between language and culture. The whole essence of cultural
relevance in language justified the reliance on context for the meaning of
expressions. Of particular interest to semantics is the intricate system of
kinship terms and colour expressions.
55
By relying on the distinction between deep and surface meaning and the
power of the human brain to generate many paraphrases of a single structure,
semantics is related to psychology. Indeed, the mentalistic approach to
meaning and language use, in the tradition of generative grammar, is a
psychological issue. Furthermore, the approaches adopted by behavioural
semantics in the stimulus – response connection in meaning are a purely
psychological affair.

Semantics is also related to communication theory. Information is carried

and processed in the communication system passing through the channel and
the medium. The mineralization of noise and the processing of feedback are
aspects of the communication system. These are achieved by ensuring
logical thinking.

ACTIVITY
Briefly discuss how semantics is related to other disciplines.

Major Concerns of Semantics

Semantics is associated with different issues related to meaning including
naming, concept, sense and reference. Naming as a semantic process derives
from the understanding that words are names or labels for things. The major
problem with this naming view of semantics is that it is only nouns and
nominal expressions that can be analysed semantically. In addition, abstract
nuns like love, hatred, truth will be difficult to explain since they are not
living things.

There is a red bull in the park.

56
This will have meaning, only if there is a red bull in a particular park. Thus,
sentences that are lies may not be interpreted. Concepts mediate between the
mind constructs and objects in the real world. Saussure’s sign theory and
Ogden and Richards, semantic triangle derives from the conceptual approach
to semantics. The approach emphasizes the power of the mind to make
images and to associate these images to objects and ideas. The approach is
highly mentalistic, relying on the ability to associate one thing with another.
This ability of association may not yield universal understanding. That
explains why language experts develop dictionaries to aggregate meaning on
a universal basis. Interestingly, the production of dictionaries relies heavily
on denotations and connotations, two major angles to the study of meaning.

Reference relates to things, people and events in the world. It is the object or
entity to which a linguistic expression relates. Thus, the referent of the word
boy is a human being called boy. If meaning were restricted to reference,
many words without obvious referents will be left out. It will be difficult to
explain the meaning of prepositions, conjunctions and another grammatical
unit.

Again, several linguistic expressions may relate to single referents. To avoid

these limitations, semanticists use the words denotation and connotation to
distinguish between meaning based on extensiveness (i.e. pointing) or
reference and extension.

Another interesting area of concern for semantics is sense. Sense explains the
system of linguistic relationships which a lexical item contracts with others.
If that relationship is paradigmatic, we have synonymy, antonymy, etc. But if
the relationship is syntagmatic, we have collocation. The scope of semantics
covers a wide range of issues related to meaning. These issues are discussed
57
in the different segments of this material.

ACTIVITY
Briefly discuss the major concern of semantics.

Approaches to the Study of Semantics

You have learnt that the study of meaning in language has been of interest to
both the linguist and the philosopher. It has also interested the general
communicator. The study of semantics has developed from the earliest times
to the modern period, giving it a historical view. That way, we can focus on
four major approaches – traditional, behavioural, structural and generative
perspectives.

Traditional Semantics
Traditional semantics is associated with the works of such great philosophers
as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as well as many others who came after them.
Their main focus was on the nature of human language itself. Based on their
views of the nature of human language, these early philosophers were
divided into two – the naturalists and the nurturists.
To the naturalists, language was God-given such that there was hardly
anything anybody could do to understand language. Man was not expected to
make alterations, but should concern himself with merely observing and
describing the rules of language. The Greek language was perceived to be
the chosen language upon which all other languages should be based. Later,
Latin became the focus of philosophical analysis.

58
The nurturists, on the other hand, viewed language as a social property
common to a speech community. Language was therefore perceived to be
man’s creation for the convenience of communication. Thus, in spite of
difference in languages, the uniting point is that they are all for
communication. Traditional semantics was also concerned with the
relationship between form and meaning. The meaning of a word was
considered as what it refers to. This view has also been shared by Ogden and
Richards (1923). There have also been later scholars who believed that the
image of a word takes shape in the speaker’s or hearer’s mind. Another
major view of traditional semantics is that the meaning of a word can be
decoded from its shape or sound. Words in this category are onomatopoeic.
The major ideas in traditional semantics are reference, concepts, truth
conditions etc.

Behavioural Semantics
The external environment is perceived to be the major stimulus to all human
utterances. The stimulus-response scenario is synonymous with the cause
and effect connection in most natural situations.

Those who favour the behavioural approach to semantics have argued that by
reducing meaning to observable entities, language, as an aspect of human
favour can lend itself to examination. They also argue that meaning is
influenced by reinforcement. The theory stresses nurture rather than nature.
Thus, the physical environment is perceived to contribute to meaning rather
than the internal thought processes. Though behaviourism tends to lend

59
meaning to experimental explanation, it has been criticized for its rejection
of introspection, concepts and ideas. It is not everything in language that can
be observed physically. The over-reliance on reinforcement tends to present
animal and human behaviour as identical.

Structural Semantics
The father of structuralism is Ferdinand de Saussure. Structuralism as a
linguistic theory considers the structures and systems in language. Emphasis
is on the process of segmenting and classifying the features of utterances.

Under structuralism, emphasis is on the analysis of sense relations that

connect words and meaning. Sense is an expression of the system of
semantic relationships a given word keeps with other expressions in a given
language. This relationship is usually paradigmatic in terms of similarity and
dissimilarity. The relationship of similarity occurs as synonymy, while the
relationship of dissimilarity is referred to as antonymy. Structural processes
are useful in lexical relations in the study of words.

Generative Semantics
Noam Chomsky is the father of generative grammar. According to the theory
of transformational generative grammar, knowledge of language is generated
in the mind. A language user has a finite set of rules from which he can
generate an infinite number of sentences. This power of generations is
facilitated by the power of transformational rules which convert deep
structure sentence types into other various forms via transformations. At the
beginning of Chomsky’s generative grammar, there was the assertion that
syntax was autonomous and independent of semantics. It was only later in
Aspects of the theory of Syntax (1965) that Chomsky pointed out that the
60
semantic component specifies the rules necessary for the interpretation of
deep structures. This observation enhanced the semantic representation of
sentences. Deep structures specify the original meaning of sentences before
the application of transformations.

There was the immediate problem of explaining the meaning of multiple

paraphrases from a single deep structure. Thus, generative semantics would
be concerned with sentence meaning and interpretation. This will require the
interpretation of functional roles in sentences. This interpretation has been
explained by the Case theory as propounded by Charles Fillmore, and further
elaborated in Chomsky’s Case theory and Thematic theory.

The semantic component has been presented as being partially dependent on

syntax and at the same time distinct. This produces a composite relationship
between grammar and meaning. The deep structure is deemed to determine
how sentence parts combine to make meaning for the whole. The syntactic
component is the generative source of grammar. Thus, the output of syntax
forms the input to the semantic component. The semantic component is
perceived to operate on the structural description of sentences to provide a
representation of the meaning of sentences. Grammar as used here is the
totality of the mechanism and rules of language organization including
meaning. As a result of the complexity of this theory, we shall have a more
elaborate discussion of its implication in another unit. Perhaps the
philosophical postulations of Aristotle provided impetus to critical thinking
in semantics. Based on the major areas of concern, there have been
traditional semantics, behavioural semantics, structural semantics and
generative semantics.

61
ACTIVITY
(1) Discuss the contributions of the traditionalists to the development of
semantics
(2) Explore how Generative Grammar has featured in the study of
semantics.

Branches of semantics
Cruse (2000:15) lists the following as the main broadly distinguishable areas
of interest in the study of meaning: lexical semantics, grammatical
semantics, logical semantics, and linguistic pragmatics. They are not
watertight compartments, and they may overlap with one another.
Lexical semantics
Lexical semantics studies the meanings of words; the focus is on 'content'
words like lion, jasmine, selfish and persuade, rather than form/grammatical
words like the, of, than, and so on. A non-specialist mostly links the notion
of meaning with words rather than any other linguistic units which are lesser
than words (such as affixes) or wider than words (such as phrases,
sentences). We consider dictionary as the one which deals about words. The
branch of semantics which systematically study the meaning words is lexical
semantics.

Grammatical semantics
Grammatical semantics studies aspects of meaning which have direct
relevance to syntax. This has many manifestations. which can only be briefly
dealt here. Syntactic categories are one the problems in the interface of
syntax and semantics. For instance, consider the problem of assigning
category to the word yellow. It can be given the category such as adjective,
62
noun and verb as illustrated below:
She wears a yellow skirt. (adjective)
He painted the room with a glowing yellow. (noun)
The leaves yellows rapidly in the winter.
Another aspect of grammatical semantics is the meaning of grammatical
morphemes like the -ed of called, the -er of stronger, the re- of reshuffle and
al of central.
You can clearly visualize that this overlaps with lexical semantics due to the
fact that some grammatical elements (such as the and of) are words and also
due another fact that some amount of grammatical behavior is determined by
the lexical items themselves. The following examples will illustrate this:

I am studying the book - grammatical

I am knowing the book - ungrammatical

Logical semantics
Logical semantics studies the relation between natural language and formal
logical systems such as the propositional and predicate calculi. Such studies
usually aim at modeling natural language as closely as possible using a
tightly controlled, maximally strict logical formalism (Cruse, 2000: 15).
Sometimes such studies shed more light on the formalism used than on the
language being modeled. But valuable insights have cropped up from this
approach. Most of such studies till date are concerned with the propositional
or sentence level meaning and they rarely stoop down the level of words.

There is always a sense of logic in any language system. This places logic as
a component of the meaning processes of natural language. It is this

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connection that makes logic a point of interest in semantics. It should be
noted, however that the emphasis of logic in semantics is on the relations
involved in complex sentences, rather than with the abstract mathematical
formulations. We shall explore in this unit the structure of the sentence and
how this structure contributes to meaning.

Linguistics pragmatics
Semantics is the study of meaning, or more precisely, the study of the
relation between linguistic expressions and their meanings. Whenever we
have a verbal disagreement, we disagree about the semantics of some
expression we employed in stating our views. Pragmatics is the study of
context, or more precisely, a study of the way context can influence our
understanding of linguistic utterances. Whenever we have a contextual
disagreement, we take ourselves to be in different contexts and the difference
effects what we take ourselves to have done through our respective acts of
stating our views. Settling on a shared meaning for the expressions we used
may be hard, but settling on a shared take on the context is often harder.

For the present purpose, pragmatics can be taken to be concerned with

aspects of information (in the widest sense) conveyed through language
which are not encoded by generally accepted convention in the linguistic
forms used, but which none the less arise naturally out of and depend on the
meanings conventionally encoded in the linguistic forms used, taken in
conjunction with the context in which the forms are used. It is by linguistic
pragmatics we identify the individual referred by John in the sentence I saw
Raja yesterday. The co-referential information between room and it inferred
from the example, Raja entered the room, It was empty is a matter of
linguistic pragmatics.
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Pragmatics is usually contrasted with semantics, which deals with
conventionalized meaning. The three divisions discussed above belongs to
semantics.

ACTIVITY
Briefly discuss the branches of study of meaning in language.

SUMMARY
Semantics has been found to be related to a wide range of disciplines
because of the general interest in meaning. In specific terms, semantics has
been formed to be relevant to naming, reference and sense. It is also
concerned with the interpretation of sentences.
You have observed the progression in the development of semantic thought.
You have noted the positive relationship between semantics and other
components of the language system. You can safely conclude that while
syntax, for instance provides the basis for the structure of the sentence, it is
semantics that holds the key to meaning. This means that semantics is critical
to communication.
You have learnt the approaches of the traditionalists, the behaviourists, the
structuralists and the generativists to the study of semantics. You have read
that the traditionalists were related to the early philosophers, while the
behaviourists were more concerned with psychology, with the object of
study being what is observed. Structrualists emphasised the sense relations
between words while the generativists depended on the deep structures of
sentences for meaning. It would be possible to identify the essential
ingredients of these approaches to the study of semantics.

65
You have leant about the four important branches of semantics: lexical
semantics, grammatical semantics, logical semantics, and linguistic
pragmatics.

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 Chapter 3
The Basic Unit of Meaning

In this chapter we try to establish the basic unit of semantic analysis.

1. The word
2. The sentence
3. The utterance
4. The proposition.

The word Dictionaries appears to be concerned with stating the meanings of

words and it is, therefore, reasonable to assume that the word is one of the
basic units of semantics.

Difficulties
1. Not all words have the same kind of meaning as others, e.g. ‘full’
words and ‘form’ words. Full words, e.g. tree, sing, blue, gently have
the kind of meaning we find in a dictionary form words it, the, of, and,
belong rather to the grammar and have only ‘grammatical’ meaning.
Such meaning cannot be stated in isolation, but only in relation to
other words and even sometimes to the whole sentence.

2. The word is not a clearly defined linguistic unit. It is to some degree

purely conventional, defined in terms of the spaces of the written text. Of
course, this spacing is not wholly arbitrary, e.g. stress (one word seems to
allow only one main stress), thus bláckbird is one word, but bláck bírd are
two words. However, there are the Whíte House, shóe-horn and shóe polish,
all with a single stress. Bloomfield (1933) offered two solutions: He
67
suggested that we should look for an element smaller than the word, a unit of
meaning-the MORPHEME: examples are -berry in blackberry or –y in
Johnny. Similarly, loved ( love- and –d).

3. Problems soon arose with words such as took. The best way to handle this
was by redefining the term word . We have been using this term in the sense
that love and loved are different words. But we could say that they are forms
of the same word. A technical term for the word in this second sense is
LEXEME. It is lexemes that usually provide dictionary headings. There are
not two entries for love and loved, but one only (and this may even include
the noun love as well as the verb).

4. Stating the meaning of the elements, e.g. the grammatical elements and
elements such as cran- in cranberry, which seem to have no independent
meaning and does not occur in any other words. Similarly, straw- and
goosein strawberry and gooseberry have nothing to do with straw or geese,
unlike black- in blackberry, blackboard, blackbird, in which the meaning of
black is related.

5. There are many words in English that are called PHONAESTHETIC, in

which one part, often the initial cluster of consonants, gives an indication of
meaning of a rather special kind, e.g. many words beginning with sl- are
‘slippery’ in some way –slide, slip, sludge, etc., while the –sk words refer to
surfaces or superficiality –skate, skimp, skim, skid, etc. However, not every
word with these phonological characteristics will have the meaning
suggested. Further, we cannot separate this part and state the meaning of the
remainder.

68
6. The previous point is related to the distinction between TRANSPARENT
and OPAQUE words. Transparent words are those whose meaning can be
determined from the meaning of their parts, opaque words those for which
this is not possible. Blackboard, blackberry, blackmail, cheesecake.

7. We must notice that some whole groups of words must be taken together
to establish meaning. These are idioms-sequences of words whose meaning
cannot be predicted from the meanings of the words themselves, e.g. kick the
bucket, spill the beans. Semantically, idioms are single units, but they are not
single grammatical units like words, for there is no past tense *kick the
bucketed.

8. Sometimes semantic division seems to override word division, e.g. heavy

smoker and good singer. Semantically these are not heavy + smoker (a
smoker who is heavy) and good + singer (a singer who is good). The
meaning is rather one who smokes heavily or sings well. We can divide, but
the first division would be between heavy smoke- and -er, good sing-and -er.
The Sentence •

Apart from all the problems concerning the word itself, there is the question
whether the basic unit of meaning is not the word after all, but the sentence.
For it is with sentences that we communicate, and this is reflected in the
traditional definition of the sentence as ‘the expression of a complete
thought’. It is s grammatical unit.

DIFFICULTIES
1. The sentence is essentially a grammatical unit that consists minimally of a
subject noun phrase and a verb phrase as its predicate or complement. Each
69
of these may be a single word as in Birds fly. However, we do not always
produce complete sentences, Horses, Coming? Coming!

2. The meaning of the sentence can be predicted from the meaning of the
words it contains, or more strictly, from these words and the grammatical
features with which they are associated. However, there might occur
different meanings for sentences.

A. The actual SURFACE STRUCTURE or some abstract DEEP

STRUCTURE. So each sentence will have a meaning (a ‘literal’ meaning),
OR, if it is ambiguous like The old books and magazines are mine, the
chicken are ready to eat, two or more meanings.

B. A great deal of meaning in the language is carried by the PROSODIC and

PARALINGUISTIC features of language intonation, stress, rhythm,
loudness, etc., as well as such features as facial expressions and gestures
(which are often called ‘paralinguistic’ in a wide sense of the term).

C. There is a variety of what are today called ‘speech acts’. We warn,

threaten, promise, though often without giving any overt indication that we
are doing so. D. Meaning is also presupposed such as in the sentence, the
king of France is bald.  In conclusion, Lyons (1977) drew the distinction
between sentence meaning and utterance meaning. Sentence meaning is
directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the
sentence. Utterance meaning includes all the various types of meaning that
we have just been discussing.

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TYPES OF SENTENCES
1. Analytic sentence: A sentence the propositional content of which is
necessarily true because of the meanings of the words used in that sentence,
e.g., dogs are animals.
2. Synthetic sentence: A sentence the propositional content of which may be
either true or false because of the way things in the world, e.g., John is a very
good teacher.
3. Contradiction: A sentence the propositional content of which is
necessarily false because of the meanings of the words used in that sentence,
thus it is the opposite of analytic, e.g., bachelors are married men, that man is
my brother’s wife PARAPHRASE A sentence which expresses the same
proposition as another sentence is known as the paraphrase of that sentence,
e.g., A: John sold that car to Mary. B: Mary bought that car from John.

UTTERANCE
An utterance is any stretch of language spoken by a person at a certain time
and place and on a certain occasion. Like a sentence, it is by definition a
meaningful stretch of language.
• It does not need to be in the form of a complete sentence.
• It can be in the form of a number of sentences.
• If a stretch of language is uttered twice, it will be two utterances. • It can be
slow or fast, faint or loud. PROPOSITION
• For some scholars it is not the sentence but the PROPOSITION that is the
basic unit of semantics.
• A proposition is the semantic content of a simple declarative sentence. • It
is essentially a semantic concept.
• If the word order of a sentence changes with no change in meaning, it will

71
be a different sentence with the same proposition.

ENTAILMENT
• Entailment is a property of propositions. • If the truth of proposition B
follows necessarily from the truth of proposition A, we say that proposition
A entails proposition B, e.g.,
A: yesterday I met a great scholar. B: yesterday I met a person. • Entailment
can be: unilateral, i.e., A entails B, but B does not entail A, e.g., A: He is
from India. B: He is from Asia. Bilateral, i.e., A entails B and B entails A,
e.g., A: Mona looks like Barbra. B: Barbra looks like Mona. Read the
following out loud:
• Virtue is its own reward
Now read it out loud again.
The same sentence was involved in the two readings, but you
made two different utterances, i.e. two unique physical
events took place.

• An UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one person, before

and after which there is silence on the part of that person.
• An utterance is the USE by a particular speaker, on a
particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as a
sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single
word.
Are these Utterances?
• (1) ‘Hello’
• (2) ‘Not much’
• (3) ‘Utterances may consist of a single word, a single phrase or a single
sentence. They may also consist of a sequence of sentences. It is not unusual
72
to find utterances that consist of one or more grammatically incomplete
sentence fragments. In short, there is no simple relation of correspondence
between utterances and sentences.

Utterances vs Sentences
• A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is
conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the grammatical rules
of a language. A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words
behind various realizations in utterances and inscriptions.

• (1) Do all (authentic) performances of Macbeth begin by using the same

sentence?
• (2) Do all (authentic) performances of Macbeth begin with the same
utterance? Yes / No
• (3) Does it make sense to talk of the time and place of a sentence?
• (4) Does it make sense to talk of the time and place of an utterance?
• (5) Can one talk of a loud sentence?
• (6) Can one talk of a slow utterance?

• We have defined a sentence as a string of words. A given sentence always

consists of the same words, and in the same order. Any change in the words,
or in their order, makes a different sentence, for our purposes.
• Helen rolled up the carpet different sentences
• Helen rolled the carpet up
• Sincerity may frighten the boy the same sentence

73
• Sincerity may frighten the boy
• It would make sense to say that an utterance (but not a sentence) was made
in a particular accent or voice (way of pronouncing words)
• (1) Does it make sense to ask what language (e.g. English, French,
Chinese) a sentence belongs to?
• (2) What languages do the following sentences belong to?
• Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
• Ich moschte etwas essen .
• Das ist ein hubsch madschen .
Utterances vs sentences

• A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a

complete thought.
• This definition is intended to exclude any string of words that does not have
a verb in it, as well as other strings.
• Example
• I would like a cup of coffee is a sentence.
• Coffee, please is not a sentence.
• In the kitchen is not a sentence.
• Please put it in the kitchen is a sentence.

• Utterances of non-sentences, e.g. short phrases, or single words, are used

by people in communication all the time. People do not converse wholly in
(tokens of) well-formed sentences. But the abstract idea of a sentence is the
basis for understanding even those expressions which are not sentences. In
the overwhelming majority of cases, the meanings of non-sentences can best
be analysed by considering them to be abbreviations, or incomplete versions,
of whole sentences.
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Propositions
• Semantics is concerned with the meanings of non-sentences, such as
phrases and incomplete sentences, just as much as with whole sentences.
• We begin our analysis with the case of whole sentences. The meanings of
whole sentences involve propositions; the notion of a proposition is central
to semantics.

• A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a

declarative sentence that describes some state of affairs.
• The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by
expressions in the sentence and the situation or action they are involved in.
In uttering a declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts a proposition.
• If there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is
true, while the other is false, we can be sure that they express different
propositions. Same or different propositions
• Consider the following pairs of sentences. In each case, say whether there
are any circumstances of which one member of the pair could be true and the
other false (assuming in each case that the same name, e.g. Harry, refers to
the same person).
• (1) Harry took out the garbage
• Harry took the garbage out
• (2) John gave Mary a book
• Mary was given a book by John
• (3) Isobel loves Tony
• Tony loves Isobel
• (4) George danced with Ethel
• George didn’t dance with Ethel
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• (5) Dr Findlay killed Janet
• Dr Findlay caused Janet to die True propositions = facts In the present-day
world,
• (1) Is it a fact that there are lions in Africa?
• (2) Is the proposition that there are lions in Africa a true proposition?
• (3) Is it a fact that the state of Arkansas is uninhabited by human beings?
• (4) Is the proposition that the state of Arkansas is uninhabited by human
beings true?
One can entertain propositions in the mind regardless of whether they are
true or false, e.g. by thinking them or believing them. But only true
propositions can be known.

Proposition
• In our definition of ‘proposition’ we explicitly mentioned declarative
sentences, but propositions are clearly involved in the meanings of other
types of sentences, such as interrogatives, which are used to ask questions,
and imperatives, which are used to convey orders. Normally, when a speaker
utters a simple declarative sentence, he commits himself to the truth of the
corresponding proposition: i.e. he asserts the proposition. By uttering a
simple interrogative or imperative, a speaker can mention a particular
proposition, without asserting its truth.
• Example : In saying, ‘John can go’ a speaker asserts the proposition that
John can go. In saying, ‘Can John go?’, he mentions the same proposition
but merely questions its truth. We say that corresponding declaratives and
interrogatives (and imperatives) have the same propositional content.
(1) In the following utterances, is any proposition asserted by the speaker?
• (a) ‘Have you seen my toothbrush?’
• (b) ‘Get out of here this minute!’
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• (c) ‘I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you to leave’

(2) Would you say that the members of the following sentence pairs have the
same propositional content?
• (a) Go away, will you?
• You will go away
• (b) Pigs might fly
• I’m a Dutchman
• (c) I am an idiot
• Am I an idiot?

Propositions and language

• Propositions, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular
language. Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same
proposition, if the two sentences are perfect translations of each other.

• English I am cold, French J’ai froid, German Mir ist kalt, and Arabic ‫بردان‬
to the extent to which they are perfect translations of each other, be said to
correspond to the same proposition. • It is sensible to talk of a sentence being
in a particular language, and also sensible to talk of an utterance being in a
particular language, although one cannot talk of a proposition being in a
particular language.

Propositions
• (1) Fill in the chart below with ‘+’ or ‘-’ as appropriate. Thus, for example,
if it makes sense to think of a proposition being in a particular regional
accent, put a ‘+’ in the appropriate box; if not, put a ‘-’.
• (2) Can the same proposition be expressed by different sentences?
77
• (3) Can the same sentence be realized by different utterances (i.e. have
different utterances as tokens)?
• A single proposition could be expressed by using several different
sentences (say, Prince William will inherit the throne, or The throne will be
inherited by PrinceWilliam) and each of these sentences could be uttered an
infinite number of times.

• A proposition is an abstraction that can be grasped by the mind of an

individual person. In this sense, a proposition is an object of thought.

• Propositions are public in the sense that the same proposition is

accessible to different persons.

• The relationship between mental processes (e.g. thoughts), abstract

semantic entities (e.g. propositions), linguistic entities (e.g. sentences), and
actions (e.g. utterances) is problematic and complicated.
Summary
1. Remember these concepts:
Sentence - utterance - proposition
declarative sentence - interrogative sentence - imperative
sentence
2. Is semantics concerned only with complete sentences? Explain.
3 Indicate the conventions used in the text to distinguish a sentence
from an utterance. Give an illustration of each.
4. Indicate whether each of the following sentence pairs expresses the
same or different propositions.
a Mary read the book / The book was read by Mary
b Fred took back the book / Fred took the book back
78
c The cat chased the rat / The cat was chased by the rat
d The chef cooked the meal / The chef had the meal cooked
e Hondas are easy to fix / It’s easy to fix Hondas

5. In each of the following, indicate whether a proposition is asserted or not.

a John left yesterday
b Did John leave yesterday?
c Can John leave this afternoon?
d John, get out of here
e John!

6. Decide whether each pair of sentences below has the same or different
propositional content. If they have the same propositional content,
identify the proposition that they both share.
a Can John have some cake? / John has some cake
b Take out the garbage / You will take out the garbage
c Can you pass the salt? / The salt shaker is nearly empty

7. Utterances can be loud or quiet, in a particular regional accent, and in a

particular language. Can you think of other characteristics of utterances?

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Chapter 4
Truth and inference

Truth as a guide to sentence meaning

Any speaker of English will “understand” the simple sentence in (1), i.e.,
will know what it “means”. But what kind of knowledge does this involve?
Can our hypothetical speaker tell us, for example, whether the sentence is
true?

(1) King Henry VIII snores.

It turns out that a sentence by itself is neither true nor false: its truth value
can only be determined relative to a specific situation (or state of affairs, or
universe of discourse). In the real world at the time that I am writing this
chapter (early in the 21st century), the sentence is clearly false, because Henry
VIII died in 1547 AD. The sentence may well have been true in, say, 1525
AD; but most speakers of English probably do not know whether or not it
was in fact true, because we do not have total knowledge of the state of the
world at that time.

So knowing the meaning of a sentence does not necessarily mean that we

know whether or not it is true in a particular situation; but it does mean that
we know the kinds of situations in which the sentence would be true.
Sentence (1) will be true in any universe of discourse in which the individual
named King Henry VIII has the property of snoring. We will adopt the

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common view of sentence meanings expressed in (2):

(2) “To know the meaning of a [declarative] sentence is to know what the
world would have to be like for the sentence to be true.”
(Dowty et al. 1981: 4)

The meaning of a simple declarative sentence is called a proposition. A

proposition is a claim about the world which may (in general) be true in some
situations and false in others. Some scholars hold that a sentence, as a
grammatical entity, cannot have a truth value. Speakers speak truly when they
use a sentence to perform a certain type of speech act, namely a statement
(making a claim about the world), provided that the meaning (i.e., the sense)
of the sentence corresponds to the situation about which the claim is being
made. Under this view, when we speak of sentences as being true or false, we
are using a common but imprecise manner of speaking. It is the proposition
expressed by the sentence, rather than the sentence itself, which can be true
or false.

In the following section we will look at various types of propositions: some

which must always be true, some which can never be true, and some (the
“normal” case) which may be either true or false depending on the situation.
Later we will examine some important truth relations that can exist between
pairs of propositions, of which perhaps the most important is the entailment
relation. Entailment is a type of inference. We say that proposition p “entails”
proposition q if p being true makes it certain that q is true as well. Finally, we
will introduce another type of inference known as a presupposition.
Presupposition is a complex and controversial topic, but one which will be
important in later chapters.

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Analytic sentences, synthetic sentences, and
contradictions

We have said that knowing the meaning of a sentence allows us to determine

the kinds of situations in which the proposition which it expresses would be
true. In other words, the meaning of a sentence determines its truth
conditions. Some propositions have the interesting property of being true
under all circumstances; there are no situations in which such a proposition
would be false. We refer to sentences which express such propositions as
analytic sentences, or tautologies. Some examples are given in (3):

(3) a. Today is the frst day of the rest of your life.1

b. Que será será. ‘What will be, will be.’
c. Is this bill all that I want? Far from it. Is it all that it can be?
Far from it. But when history calls, history calls.2

Because analytic sentences are always true, they are not very informative.
The speaker who commits himself to the truth of such a sentence is making no
claim at all about the state of the world, because the truth of the sentence
depends only on the meaning of the words. But in that case, why would
anyone bother to say such a thing? It is important to note that the use of
tautologies is not restricted to politicians and pop psychology gurus, who
may have professional motivations to make risk-free statements which
sound profound. In fact, all of us probably say such things more frequently
than we realize. We say them because they do in fact have communicative
value; but this value cannot come from the semantic (or truth conditional)
content of the utterance. The communicative value of these utterances comes
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entirely from the pragmatic inferences which they trigger. The opposite
situation is also possible, i.e., propositions which are false in every
imaginable situation. An example is given in (4). Propositions of this type are
said to be contradictions. Once again, a speaker who utters a sentence of this
type is not making a truth conditional claim about the state of the world,
since there are no conditions under which the sentence can be true. The
communicative value of the utterance must be derived by pragmatic
inference.

(4) And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of
children.” And he said: “Your children are not your children. They are the
sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…”3

Propositions which are neither contradictions nor analytic are said to be

synthetic. These propositions may be true in some situations and false in
others, so determining their truth value requires not only understanding their
meaning but also knowing something about the current state of the world or
the situation under discussion. Most of the (declarative) sentences that
speakers produce in everyday speech are of this type.
We would expect an adequate analysis of sentence meanings to provide an
explanation for why certain sentences are analytic, and why certain others
are contradictions. So one criterion for evaluating the relative merits of a
possible semantic analysis is to ask how successful it is in this regard.

Meaning relations between propositions

Consider the pair of sentences in (5). The meanings of these two sentences
are related in an important way. Specifically, in any situation for which (5a)
is true, (5b) must be true as well; and in any situation for which (5b) is false,

83
(5a) must also be false. Moreover, this relationship follows directly from the
meanings of the two sentences, and does not depend on the situation or
context in which they are used.

(5) a. Edward VIII has abdicated the throne in order to marry Wallis
Simpson. b. Edward VIII is no
longer the King.

This kind of relationship is known as entailment; sentence (5a) entails

sentence (5b), or more precisely, the proposition expressed by (5a) entails the
proposition expressed by (5b). The defining properties of entailment are
those mentioned in the previous paragraph. We can say that proposition p
entails proposition q just in case the following three things are true:

(a) whenever p is true, it is logically necessary that q must also be true;

(b) whenever q is false, it is logically necessary that p must also be false;

(c) these relations follow directly from the meanings of p and q, and do not
depend on the context of the utterance.

This definition gives us some ways to test for entailments. Intuitively it

seems clear that the proposition expressed by (6a) entails the proposition
expressed by (6b). We can confirm this intuition by observing that asserting
(6a) while denying (6b) leads to a contradiction (6c). Similarly, it would be
highly unnatural to assert (6a) while expressing doubt about (6b), as
illustrated in (6d). It would be unnaturally redundant to assert (6a) and then
state (6b) as a separate assertion; this is illustrated in (6e).

(6) a. I broke your Ming dynasty jar.

b. Your Ming dynasty jar broke.
c. #I broke your Ming dynasty jar, but the jar didn’t break.

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 d. #I broke your Ming dynasty jar, but I’m not sure whether the jar
broke.
e. #I broke your Ming dynasty jar, and the jar broke.

Now consider the pair of sentences in (7). Intuitively it seems that (7a)
entails (7b); whenever (7a) is true, (7b) must also be true, and whenever (7b)
is false, (7a) must also be false. But notice that (7b) also entails (7a). The
propositions expressed by these two sentences mutually entail each other, as
demonstrated in (7c–d). Two sentences which mutually entail each other are
said to be synonymous, or paraphrases of each other. This means that the
propositions expressed by the two sentences have the same truth conditions,
and therefore must have the same truth value (either both true or both false)
in any imaginable situation.

(7) a. Hong Kong is warmer than Beijing (in December).

b. Beijing is cooler than Hong Kong (in December).
c. #Hong Kong is warmer than Beijing, but Beijing is not cooler than
Hong Kong.
d. #Beijing is cooler than Hong Kong, but Hong Kong is not warmer
than Beijing.

A pair of propositions which cannot both be true are said to be inconsistent

or incompatible. Two distinct types of incompatibility have traditionally
been recognized. Propositions which must have opposite truth values in every
circumstance are said to be contradictory. For example, any proposition p
must have the opposite truth value from its negation (not p) in all
circumstances. Thus the pair of sentences in (8) are contradictory; whenever
the frst is true, the second must be false, and vice versa.

(8) a. Ringo Starr is my grandfather.

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 b. Ringo Starr is not my grandfather.

On the other hand, it is possible for two propositions to be inconsistent

without being contradictory. This would mean that they cannot both be true,
but they could both be false in a particular context. We refer to such pairs as
contrary propositions. An example is provided in (9a–b). These two sentences
cannot both be true, so (9c) is a contradiction. However, they could both be
false in a given situation, so (9d) is not a contradiction.

(9) a. Al is taller than Bill.

b. Bill is taller than Al.
c. #Al is taller than Bill and Bill is taller than Al.
d. Al is no taller than Bill and Bill is no taller than Al.

Finally, two sentences are said to be independent when they are neither in-
compatible nor synonymous, and when neither of them entails the other. If
two sentences are independent, there is no truth value dependency between
the two propositions; knowing the truth value of one will not provide enough
information to know the truth value of the other. These meaning relations
(incompatibility, synonymy, and entailment) provide additional benchmarks
for evaluating a possible semantic analysis: how successful is it in predicting
or explaining which pairs of sentences will be synonymous, which pairs will
be incompatible, etc.?

Presupposition

In the previous section we discussed how the meaning of one sentence can
entail the meaning of another sentence. Entailment is a very strong kind of
inference. If we are sure that p is true, and we know that p entails q, then we
can be equally sure that q is true. In this section we examine another kind of

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inference, that is, another type of meaning relation in which the utterance of
one sentence seems to imply the truth of some other sentence. This type of
inference, which is known as presupposition, is extremely common in daily
speech; it has been intensively studied but remains controversial and
somewhat mysterious.

As a first approximation, let us define presupposition as information which

is linguistically encoded as being part of the common ground at the time of
utterance. The term common ground refers to everything that both the
speaker and hearer know or believe, and know that they have in common. This
would include knowledge about the world, such as the fact that (in our world)
there is only one sun and one moon; knowledge that is observable in the
speech situation, such as what the speaker is wearing or carrying; or facts
that have been mentioned earlier in that same conversation (or discourse).

Speakers can choose to indicate, by the use of certain words or

grammatical constructions, that a certain piece of information is part of the
common ground. Consider the following example:

(10) “Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t
take more.”5

By using the word more (in the sense which seems most likely in this con-
text, i.e., as a synonym for additional) the March Hare implies that Alice has
already had some tea, and that this knowledge is part of their common
ground at that point in the conversation. The word or grammatical

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construction which indicates the presence of a presupposition is called a
trigger; so in this case we can say that more “triggers” the presupposition
that she has already had some tea. However, in this example the
“presupposed” material is not in fact part of the common ground, because
Alice has not yet had any tea. This is a case of presupposition failure, which
we might define as an inappropriate use of a presupposition trigger to signal a
presupposition which is not in fact part of the common ground at the time of
utterance. Notice that Alice is offended – not only by the impoliteness of her
hosts in not offering her tea in the first place, but also by the inappropriate
use of the word more.

• We look at presupposition, another kind of inference which is very

closely linked to the ‘working’ of the utterance. • In the USA, an accused
mugger rather foolishly chose to defend himself at the trial. The following is
one of the questions he put to his victim:

Did you get a good look at my face when I took your purse? Truth-value

• This goes some way to explaining why he was sentenced to 10 years in

prison, but it also highlights a type of inference that we make when
interpreting utterances.

• For some sentences, like My mother is a woman, we could assign a

TRUTH-VALUE based on what was happening in the language.

• For others, like My mother is a doctor, we could still assign a truth-value,

but it had to be based on what was happening in the world.

EXERCISE

• Decide if it is possible to assign either ‘true’ or false’ to each of the

following sentences. (Remember, ‘true’ and ‘false’ are not quite the same as
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‘yes’ and ‘no’.) Are there any sentences where this was not quite possible
regardless of how much knowledge you had about the people, places and
events involved or the meaning of English words?

(a) Abraham Lincoln is the current president of the USA.

(b) The Eiffel Tower is in Paris.

(c) A car is an automobile.

(d) Have a cookie.

(e) Be careful of the crumbs.

(f) Where was Abraham Lincoln born?

(g) How much did the car cost?

• Comment: You could answer ‘false’ to (a) and ‘true’ to (b) based on your
knowledge about the world. You could automatically answer ‘true’ to (c)
based on your knowledge of what car and automobile mean. These three
sentences have a particular kind of grammatical structure. They are
DECLARATIVE SENTENCES. Declarative sentences typically function as
‘statements’.

• Problems in assigning ‘true’ or ‘false’ occur in sentences (d) to (g) These

sentences do not have a declarative structure. Sentences (d) and (e) are
IMPERATIVE SENTENCES. In imperative sentences, which typically
function as ‘commands’, there is no subject present although it is
‘understood’ as you. Sentences (f) and (g) are INTERROGATIVE
SENTENCES. Interrogative sentences typically function as ‘questions’.
Some interrogatives begin with words like who, what, when ,where, why,
how, etc. Since the majority of these words begin with wh-, they are all
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usually called WH-WORDS. • Only declarative sentences can be ‘true’ or
‘false’. Does this mean that we cannot draw some very strong inferences
from utterances based on imperative and interrogative sentences?

EXERCISE

• For each of the following utterances decide whether the (A) sentence
being uttered is declarative, imperative or interrogative and whether the
accompanying inference (B) seems valid. (A) (B)

1. Where has Faye looked for the keys? ‘Faye has looked for the keys.’

2. Did you buy this awful wine? ‘This wine is awful.’

3. Don’t sit on Annie’s sofa. ‘Annie has a sofa.’

4. Stop being lazy. ‘You are being lazy.’

5. Lucy knows that George is a crook. ‘George is a crook’.

• Comment: Presuppositions: These inferences all seem quite obvious ones

to make. Yet only the sentence uttered in (e) is declarative. Sentences (a) and
(b) are interrogatives, and sentences (c) and (d) are imperatives. These sorts
of inferences are sometimes called

PRESUPPOSITIONS.

• Since not all utterances consist of full declarative sentences,

presupposition can be a useful concept when analysing speaker's meaning.
However, it has proved very difficult for authors in the area to agree on a
definition for it. This definition problem is partly a reflection of the fuzzy
boundary between pragmatics and semantics.

• Some definitions of presupposition are very broad and speaker oriented:

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anything the speaker assumes to be true before making the utterance. Others
are much more narrow and sentence oriented: a necessary precondition for
the sentence to be true. In these units we will be treating presuppositions as
inferences about what is assumed to be true in the utterance rather than
directly asserted to be true:

• Faye has looked for the keys directly asserts ‘Faye has looked for the
keys’

• Where has Faye looked for the keys? presupposes ‘Faye has looked for
the keys’

• Annie has a sofa directly asserts ‘Annie has a sofa’

• Don’t sit on Annie’s sofa presupposes ‘Annie has a sofa

Presuppositions are inferences that are very closely linked to the words
and grammatical structures actually used in the utterance, but they come
from our knowledge about the way language users conventionally interpret
these words and structures. Because of this, presuppositions can be quite
‘sneaky’ as the next exercise will demonstrate.

• In Exercise 4.2 change has to hasn’t in (a); did to didn’t in (b); do to

don’t in (c); stop to don’t stop in (d); and knows to doesn’t know in (e). Do
the inferences still hold?

• Comment: (Negation) You will have found that each of these inferences,
or presuppositions, remains constant under NEGATION of the main
sentence.(Unfortunately for our mugger at the beginning of the unit, the
inference that he took the purse would still hold whether or not his victim
said she got a good look at his face.) This is sometimes used as a ‘test’ for a
presupposition, and it highlights how a presupposition can take on the
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appearance of ‘established truth’. In the next three exercises, we will look in
a bit more detail at some of the kinds of words and structures that seem to
‘trigger’ presuppositions.

EXERCISE

• Each of the following utterances mentions chocolate cake. Decide which

ones contain the presupposition that at the time the utterance was made
‘There was a chocolate cake’. What do those utterances have in common?

1(a) Mike might find the chocolate cake in the kitchen.

1(b) Mike might find a chocolate cake in the kitchen.

2(a) Is Mike giving Annie that chocolate cake?

2(b) Is Mike giving Annie a chocolate cake?

3(a) Did Mike hide a chocolate cake?

3(b) Did Mike hide Annie’s chocolate cake?

Comment (Possessives Definite noun phrase/Existential presupposition)

The (a) utterance in each pair leads us to presuppose that the chocolate cake
being mentioned actually existed. What we notice is that in each of those
utterances the noun cake is part of a larger noun phrase. The words the, that,
this, these, those, and POSSESSIVES like Annie’s, my, your, etc. make it a
DEFINITE NOUN PHRASE and trigger this very basic kind of
presupposition. Notice that possessives lead to a particularly strong
presupposition about the existence of the chocolate cake, and in addition lead
to the presupposition that ‘Annie has a chocolate cake’. This basic type of
presupposition is sometimes called an EXISTENTIAL PRESUPPOSITION.
Look at how existential presupposition could work if I wanted to sell you
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some hair lotion:

You’ll want Dome Be Gone, my revolutionary cure for baldness.

Here, I am directly asserting that ‘You will want it’ but inside the definite
noun phrase my revolutionary cure for baldness lurk several quite dubious
propositions which are simply assumed to be true:

‘There is a cure for baldness.’

‘The cure is revolutionary.’

‘I have this cure.’

• You can probably see that presupposition has a great deal of importance
in persuasive language, particularly in the courtroom and in advertising.
Advertisers are not allowed to directly assert claims about their products or
their competitors’ for which they have no evidence. However, they can
generally get away with making indirect assertions via presupposition. In the
courtroom, where the stakes are much higher than in advertising, lawyers
examining witnesses are often not allowed to make an indirect assertion via
presupposition, unless it has been established by previous evidence. For each
of the following utterances, decide which ones contain the presupposition
that ‘Mike smashed the television’. In other words, which ones indicate that
the speaker has assumed that this proposition is true but has not directly
asserted it . What do those utterances have in common?

(a) Did Mike smash the television?

(b) When did Mike smash the television?

(c) I was eating popcorn when Mike smashed the television.

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 (d) Why did Mike smash the television?

(e) I don’t understand why Mike smashed the television.

(f) I wonder if Mike smashed the television.

(g) I wonder how Mike smashed the television.

Comment (Subordinate clause) Here (b), (c), (d), (e), and (g) seem to
presuppose that Mike smashed the television, while (a) and (f) leave it as
an‘open question’. Wh words like when, why, how, etc. can trigger
suppositions both when they are used to ask a question as in (b) and (d) and
when they introduce a SUBORDINATE CLAUSE as in (c), (e), and (g):
when/why/ how Mike smashed the television. In this exercise we look at
some other kinds of words and constructions that can lead to presuppositions.
In each case write out a presupposition contained in the utterance and decide
what has triggered it.

(a) Steve regrets buying a dog.

(b) Meridyth pretends she’s a rock star.

(c) Ed should stop eating raw oysters.

Mine were: (a) ‘Steve bought a dog’, (b) ‘Meredith is not a rock star’, (c)
‘Ed eats raw oysters’. Interestingly, when hearers query presuppositions,
they often explicitly query the wording that leads to them as well:

Steve could hardly regret it since he didn’t buy the dog after all.

Pretend? I thought Meredith WAS a rock star.

What do you mean ‘stop’? Ed’s never eaten a raw oyster in his life!

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 Important analysis:

• The use of regret in (a) triggers the presupposition that what follows is
‘fact’. Other verbs that can behave like this are know, realize, discover and
find out as well as constructions like I’m aware that… and It’s strange that…

• The use of pretend in (b) triggers the presupposition that what follows is
‘fiction’. Other verbs that can behave like this are imagine and dream and
constructions like If I were…as in If I were the Prime Minister, I’d ban
presuppositions.

• The use of stop in (c) triggers the presupposition that the action was
going on before. Other verbs that can behave like this are continue and keep.
On the other hand, start and begin can presuppose that the action was not
going on before.

In this unit we have been looking at utterances in isolation, as if we had

just passed by an open door and overheard a stranger talking.
Presuppositions seem to be inferences that can be made with very little
knowledge of the context.

SUMMARY

We have described presuppositions as inferences about what is assumed

in an utterance rather than directly asserted. Presuppositions are closely
linked to the words and grammatical structures that are actually used in the
utterance and our knowledge about the way language users conventionally
interpret them. Presuppositions can be drawn even when there is little or no
surrounding context.

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Chapter 5
Lexical sense relations

Meaning relations between words

A traditional way of investigating the meaning of a word is to study the relationships

between its meaning and the meanings of other words: which words have the same
meaning, opposite meanings, etc. Strictly speaking these relations hold between
specifc senses, rather than between words; that is why we refer to them as sense
relations. For example, one sense of mad is a synonym of angry, while another
sense is a synonym of crazy.

In the following section we discuss the most familiar classes of sense relations:
synonymy, several types of antonymy, hyponymy, and meronymy. We will try to
define each of these relations in terms of relations between sentence meanings
since it is easier for speakers to make reliable judgments about sentences than
about words in isolation. Where possible we will mention some types of linguistic
evidence that can be used as diagnostics to help identify each relation. In §6.3 we
mention some of the standard ways of defining words in terms of their sense
relations. This is the approach most commonly used in traditional dictionaries.

Identifying sense relations

Let’s begin by thinking about what kinds of meaning relations are likely to be
worth studying. If we are interested in the meaning of the word big, it seems
natural to look at its meaning relations with words like large, small, enormous, etc.
But comparing big with words like multilingual or extradite seems unlikely to be
very enlightening. The range of useful comparisons seems to be limited by some
concept of semantic similarity or comparability.
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Syntactic relationships are also relevant. The kinds of meaning relations mentioned
above (same meaning, opposite meaning, etc.) hold between words which are
mutually substitutable, i.e., which can occur in the same syntactic environments, as
illustrated in (1a). These relations are referred to as paradigmatic sense relations.
We might also want to investigate relations which hold between words which can
occur in construction with each other, as illustrated in (1b). (In this example we see
that big can modify some head nouns but not others.) These relations are referred to
as syntagmatic relations.

(1) a. Look at that big/large/small/enormous/?#discontinuous/*snore

mosquito!
b. Look at that big
mosquito/elephant/?#surname/#color/*discontinuous/*snore!

We will consider some syntagmatic relations in Chapter 7, when we discuss se-

lectional restrictions. In this chapter we will be primarily concerned with paradigmatic
relations.

Synonyms
We often speak of synonyms as being words that “mean the same thing”. As a
more rigorous definition, we will say that two words are synonymous (for a
specific sense of each word) if substituting one word for the other does not change
the meaning of a sentence. For example, we can change sentence (2a) into
sentence (2b) by replacing frightened with scared. The two sentences are
semantically equivalent (each entails the other). This shows that frightened is a
synonym of scared.

(2) a. John frightened the children.

b. John scared the children.

“Perfect” synonymy is extremely rare, and some linguists would say that it
never occurs. Even for senses that are truly equivalent in meaning, there are ofen
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collocational differences as illustrated in (3–4). Replacing bucket with pail in (3a)
does not change meaning; but in (3b), the idiomatic meaning that is possible with
bucket is not available with pail. Replacing big with large does not change meaning
in most contexts, as illustrated in (4a); but when used as a modifier for certain
kinship terms, the two words are no longer equivalent (big becomes a synonym of
elder), as illustrated in (4b).

(3) a. John filled the bucket/pail. b. John kicked the bucket/??pail.

(4) a. Susan lives in a big/large house. b. Susan lives with her big/large
sister.

Antonyms
Antonyms are commonly defined as words with “opposite” meaning; but what do
we mean by “opposite”? We clearly do not mean ‘as different as possible’. As
noted above, the meaning of big is totally different from the meanings of
multilingual or extradite, but neither of these words is an antonym of big. When we
say that big is the opposite of small, or that dead is the opposite of alive, we mean
first that the two terms can have similar collocations. It is odd to call an inanimate
object dead, in the primary, literal sense of the word, because it is not the kind of
thing that could ever be alive. Second, we mean that the two terms express a value
of the same property or attribute. Big and small both express degrees of size, while
dead and alive both express degrees of vitality. So two words which are antonyms
actually share most of their components of meaning, and differ only with respect to
the value of one particular feature.
The term antonym actually covers several different sense relations. Some pairs
of antonyms express opposite ends of a particular scale, like big and small. We refer
to such pairs as scalar or gradable antonyms. Other pairs, like dead and alive,
express discrete values rather than points on a scale, and name the only possible
values for the relevant attribute. We refer to such pairs as simple or complementary
antonyms. Several other types of antonyms are commonly recognized as well. We
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begin with simple antonyms.

Complementary pairs (simple antonyms)

“All men are created equal. Some, it appears, are created a little more equal
than others.”
– Ambrose Bierce, in The San Francisco Wasp magazine, September 16, 1882

Complementary pairs such as open/shut, alive/dead, male/female, on/of, etc.

exhaust the range of possibilities, for things that they can collocate with. There is
(normally) no middle ground; a person is either alive or dead, a switch is either on
or of, etc. The defning property of simple antonyms is that replacing one member
of the pair with the other, as in (5), produces sentences which are contradictory. As
discussed in Chapter 3, this means that the two sentences must have opposite truth
values in every circumstance; one of them must be true and the other false in all
possible situations where these words can be used appropriately.

(5) a. The switch is on.

b. The switch is of.
c. ??The switch is neither on nor of.

If two sentences are contradictory, then one or the other must always be true. This
means that simple antonyms allow for no middle ground, as indicated in (5c). The
negation of one entails the truth of the other, as illustrated in (6).

(6) a. ?? The post office is not open today, but it is not closed either.
b. ?? Your headlights are not of, but they are not on either.

A significant challenge in identifying simple antonyms is the fact that they are
easily coerced into acting like gradable antonyms.2 For example, equal and unequal
are simple antonyms; the humor in the quote by Ambrose Bierce at the beginning of
this section arises from the way he uses equal as if it were gradable. In a similar

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vein, zombies are ofen described as being undead, implying that they are not dead
but not really alive either. However, the gradable use of simple antonyms is typically
possible only in certain figurative or semi-idiomatic expressions. The gradable uses
in (7) seem natural, but those in (8) are not. The sentences in (9) illustrate further
contrasts. For true gradable antonyms, like those discussed in the following section,
all of these patterns would generally be fully acceptable, not odd or humorous.

(7) a. half-dead, half-closed, half-open

b. more dead than alive
c. deader than a door nail
(8) a. half-alive
b. #a little too dead
c. #not dead enough
d. #How dead is that mosquito?
e. #This mosquito is deader than that one.
(9) a. I feel fully/very/??slightly alive.
b. This town/#mosquito seems very/slightly dead.

Gradable (scalar) antonyms

A defining property of gradable (or scalar) antonyms is that replacing one member
of such a pair with the other produces sentences which are contrary, as illustrated
in (10a–b). As discussed in Chapter 3, contrary sentences are sentences which
cannot both be true, though they may both be false(10c).
(10) a. My youngest son-in-law is extremely diligent.

b. My youngest son-in-law is extremely lazy.

c. My youngest son-in-law is neither extremely diligent nor extremely
lazy.

Note, however, that not all pairs of words which satisfy this criterion would
normally be called “antonyms”. The two sentences in (11) cannot both be true

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(when referring to the same thing), which shows that turnip and platypus are in-
compatibles; but they are not antonyms. So our definition of gradable antonyms
needs to include the fact that, as mentioned above, they name opposite ends of a
single scale and therefore belong to the same semantic domain.

(11) a. This thing is a turnip.

b. This thing is a platypus.

The following diagnostic properties can help us to identify scalar antonyms, and
in particular to distinguish them from simple antonyms:3

a. Scalar antonyms typically have corresponding intermediate terms, e.g.

warm, tepid, cool which name points somewhere between hot and cold on
the temperature scale.

b. Scalar antonyms name values which are relative rather than absolute.
For example, a small elephant will probably be much bigger than a big
mosquito, and the temperature range we would call hot for a bath or a cup
of coffee would be very cold for a blast furnace.

c. As discussed previously, scalar antonyms are often vague.

d. Comparative forms of scalar antonyms are completely natural (hotter,

colder, etc.), whereas they are normally much less natural with
complementary antonyms, as illustrated in (8e) above.

e. The comparative forms of scalar antonyms form a converse pair (see be-
low).4 For example, A is longer than B ↔ B is shorter than A.

f. One member of a pair of scalar antonyms often has privileged status, or is

felt to be more basic, as illustrated in (12).

(12) a. How old/??young are you?

b. How tall/??short are you?

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 c. How deep/??shallow is the water?

Converse pairs
Converse pairs involve words that name an asymmetric relation between two
entities, e.g. parent-child, above-below, employer-employee.5 The relation must be
asymmetric or there would be no pair; symmetric relations like equal or resemble are
(in a sense) their own converses. The two members of a converse pair express the
same basic relation, with the positions of the two arguments reversed. If we replace
one member of a converse pair with the other, and also reverse the order of the
arguments, as in (13–14), we produce sentences which are semantically equivalent
(paraphrases).

(13) a. Michael is my advisor.

b. I am Michael’s advisee.

(14) OWN(,) ↔ BELONG_TO(,)

ABOVE(,) ↔ BELOW(,)
PARENT_OF (,) ↔ CHILD_OF(,)

Reverse pairs
Two words (normally verbs) are called reverses if they “denote motion or change in
opposite directions… [I]n addition… they should difer only in respect of di-
rectionality” (Cruse 1986: 226). Examples include push/pull, come/go, fll/empty,
heat/cool, strengthen/weaken, etc. Cruse notes that some pairs of this type (but not
all) allow an interesting use of again, as illustrated in (15). In these sentences,
again does not mean that the action named by the second verb is repeated (repetitive
reading), but rather that the situation is restored to its original state (restitutive
reading).

(15) a. The nurse heated the instruments to sterilize them, and then cooled
them again.

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 b. George filled the tank with water, and then emptied it again.

Hyponymy and taxonomy

When two words stand in a generic-specific relationship, we refer to the more
specific term (e.g. moose) as the hyponym and to the more generic term (e.g. mammal)
as the superordinate or hyperonym. A generic-specific relationship can be defend
by saying that a simple positive non-quantified statement involving the hyponym
will entail the same statement involving the superordinate, as illustrated in (16). (In
each example, the hyponym and superordinate term are set in boldface.) We need to
specify that the statement is positive, because negation reverses the direction of the
entailments (17).

16. a. Seabiscuit was a stallion entails: Seabiscuit was a horse.

b. Fred stole my bicycle entails: Fred took my bicycle.
c. John assassinated the Mayor entails: John killed the Mayor.
d. Arthur looks like a squirrel entails: Arthur looks like a rodent.
e. This pot is made of copper entails: This pot is made of metal.

(17) a. Seabiscuit was not a horse entails: Seabiscuit was not a stallion.
b. John did not kill the Mayor entails: John did not assassinate the
Mayor.
c. This pot is not made of metal entails: This pot is not made of copper.

Taxonomy is a special type of hyponymy, a classifying relation. Cruse (1986:

137) suggests the following diagnostic: X is a taxonomy of Y if it is natural to say An
X is a kind/type of Y. Examples of taxonomy are presented in (18a–b), while the
examples in (18c–d) show that other hyponyms are not fully natural in this pattern.
(The word taxonomy is also used to refer to a generic-specific hierarchy, or system
of classification.)

(18) a. A beagle is a kind of dog.

b. Gold is a type of metal.
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 c. A stallion is a kind of horse.
d. Sunday is a kind of day of the week.

Taxonomic sisters are taxonyms which share the same superordinate term, such
as squirrel and mouse which are both hyponyms of rodent.6 Taxonomic sisters must
be incompatible, in the sense defined above; for example, a single animal cannot
be both a squirrel and a mouse. But that property alone does not distinguish
taxonomy from other types of hyponymy. Taxonomic sisters occur naturally in
sentences like the following:

(19) a. A beagle is a kind of dog, and so is a Great Dane.

b. Gold is a type of metal, and copper is another type of metal.

Cruse notes that taxonomy often involves terms that name natural kinds (e.g.,
names of species, substances, etc.). Natural kind terms cannot easily be
paraphrased by a superordinate term plus modifier, as many other words can (see
§6.3 below):

(20) a. “Stallion” means a male horse.

b. “Sunday” means the first day of the week.
c. ??“Beagle” means a dog.
d. ??“Gold” means a metal.
e. ??“Dog” means a animal.

We must remember that semantic analysis is concerned with properties of the

object language, rather than scientific knowledge. The taxonomies revealed by
linguistic evidence may not always match standard scientific classifications. For
example, the authoritative Kamus Dewan (a Malay dictionary published by the
national language bureau in Kuala Lumpur) gives the following definition for
labah-labah ‘spider’:

(21) labah-labah: sejenis serangga yang berkaki lapan

‘spider: a kind of insect that has eight legs’

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 This definition provides evidence that in Malay, labah-labah ‘spider’ is a
taxonym of serangga ‘insect’, even though standard zoological classifications do not
classify spiders as insects. (Thought question: does this mean that serangga is not an
accurate translation equivalent for the English word insect?) Similar examples can
be found in many different languages. For example, in Tuvaluan (a Polynesian
language), the words for ‘turtle’ and ‘dolphin/whale’ are taxonyms of ika ‘fish’.7
The fact that turtles, dolphins and whales are not zoologically classified as fish is
irrelevant to our analysis of the lexical structure of Tuvaluan.

Meronymy
A meronymy is a pair of words expressing a part-whole relationship. The word
naming the part is called the meronym. For example, hand, brain and eye are all
meronyms of body; door, roof and kitchen are all meronyms of house; etc.

Once again, it is important to remember that when we study patterns of

meronymy, we are studying the structure of the lexicon, i.e., relations between
words and not between the things named by the words. One linguistic test for
identifying meronymy is the naturalness of sentences like the following: The parts
of an X include the Y, the Z, ... (Cruse 1986: 161).

A meronym is a name for a part, and not merely a piece, of a larger whole.
Human languages have many words that name parts of things, but few words that
name pieces. Cruse (1986: 158–159) lists three differences between parts and pieces.
First, a part has autonomous identity: many shops sell automobile parts which have
never been structurally integrated into an actual car. A piece of a car, on the other
hand, must have come from a complete car. (Few shops sell pieces of automobile.)
Second, the boundaries of a part are motivated by some kind of natural boundary or
discontinuity – potential for separation or motion relative to neighboring parts,
joints (e.g. in the body), difference in material, narrowing of connection to the
whole, etc. The boundaries of a piece are arbitrary. Third, a part typically has a

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definite function relative to the whole, whereas this is not true for pieces.

Defining words in terms of sense relations

Traditional ways of defining words depend heavily on the use of sense relations;
hyponymy has played an especially important role. The classical form of a definition,
going back at least to Aristotle (384–322 BC), is a kind of phrasal synonym; that is, a
phrase which is mutually substitutable with the word being defend (same syntactic
distribution) and equivalent or nearly equivalent in meaning.

The standard way of creating a definition is to start with the nearest

superordinate term for the word being defend (traditionally called the genus
proximum), and then add one or more modifiers (traditionally called the diferentia
specifca) which will unambiguously distinguish this word from its hyponymic
sisters. So, for example, we might define ewe as ‘an adult female sheep’; sheep is the
superordinate term, while adult and female are modifiers which distinguish ewes
from other kinds of sheep.
This structure can be further illustrated with the following well-known definition
by Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), himself a famous lexicographer. It actually consists
of two parallel definitions; the superordinate term in the first is writer, and in the
second drudge. The remainder of each definition provides the modifiers which
distinguish lexicographers from other kinds of writers or drudges.

(22) Lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies

himself in tracing the [origin], and detailing the signification of words.

Some additional examples are presented in (23). In each definition the super-
ordinate term is bolded while the distinguishing modifiers are placed in square
brackets.

(23) a. fr (N): a kind of tree [with evergreen needles].

b. rectangle (N): a [right-angled] quadrilateral.

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 c. clean (Adj): free [from dirt].

However, as a number of authors have pointed out, many words cannot easily be
defined in this way. In such cases, one common alternative is to define a word by
using synonyms (24a–b) or antonyms (24c–d).

a. grumpy: moodily cross; surly.

b. sad: affected with or expressive of grief or unhappiness.
c. free: not controlled by obligation or the will of another; not bound,
fastened, or attached.13
d. pure: not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material.

Another common type of definition is the extensional definition. This definition

spells out the denotation of the word rather than its sense as in a normal definition.
This type is illustrated in (25).

(25) Definitions from Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary:

a. New England: the NE United States comprising the states of Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, & Connecticut
b. cat: any of a family (Felidae) of carnivorous, usually solitary and
nocturnal, mammals (as the domestic cat, lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar,
cougar, wildcat, lynx, and cheetah)

Some newer dictionaries, notably the COBUILD dictionary, make use of full
sentence definitions rather than phrasal synonyms, as illustrated in (26).

(26) Confidential: Information that is confidential is meant to be kept secret or

private.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have mentioned only the most commonly used sense relations
(some authors have found it helpful to refer to dozens of others). We have

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illustrated various diagnostic tests for identifying sense relations, many of them
involving entailment or other meaning relations between sentences. Studying these
sense relations provides a useful tool for probing the meaning of a word, and for
constructing dictionary definitions of words.

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Section II

109
 Chapter Six

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is concerned with the range of choices and constraints available

to users, and based on the context. In pragmatics, emphasis is on the pairing
of sentences and their appropriate contexts. The choices made in language
have been found to affect the listeners and their responses. It is possible to
observe norms of politeness, appropriateness, formality and respect in the
way language is used. It is believed that pragmatics determines the
appropriate interpretation of sentences since there could be differences
between literal and implied meanings. Differences in meaning are at the
instance of the situation, the shared background and the linguistic context of
the expression.

Pragmatics, according to Kempson (1986) is the study of the general

principles necessary for retrieving information from a specific utterance
based on the context. Emphasis is not necessarily on the grammatical or
structural properties of the sentence. Indeed, a great deal of what we do in
human communication is determined from the context. This means that the
meaning of any stretch of communication is based on the interpretation of
the listener. We also lay emphasis on the message, the participants, the
deductions to be made from the utterance, the implications of what is said or
assumed and the impact of the non-verbal aspects of the interaction on the
meaning.

In terms of objectives, pragmatics deals with the totality of the processes

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through which utterances convey meaning hearing in mind the context and
how participants respond to the meanings intended. It will therefore be easy
to see that the common tie between pragmatics and semantics is language.
However, while semantics is concerned with language meaning, pragmatics
is concerned with language use.

This will necessarily mean that the contextual approach to meaning will be
very relevant to pragmatics. Since the full manifestation of language from
the point of use deals with the implied processes, we shall explore the nature
of implicature.

Reference, Anaphora, and Deixis

A lack of accurate understanding of the terminologies can cause

terminological confusion among language teachers. In order to avoid the
confusion, we presents and comprehensively discusses some central
semantic notions such as reference, referent, referring expression, anaphora,
and deixis. An accurate understanding of these notions can help language
teachers, particularly semantics teachers, to enrich their insights into
semantic terminologies.

Reference, Referring Expression, and Referent

Reference is commonly construed as an act in which a speaker, or writer,

uses linguistic forms to enable a listener, or reader, to identify something. In
other words, reference is concerned with designating entities in the world by
linguistic means. Matthews (1997:312) states that "reference is the relation
between a part of an utterance and an individual or set of individuals that it

111
identified." It is important to note that reference is often contrasted with the
notion sense. While reference deals with the

relationship between the linguistic elements (language) and the non-

linguistic elements (the world), the sense is exclusively concerned with the
intra-linguistic relations, particularly words (Palmer, 1981). Thus, the sense
of tulip, for instance, relates to sense of other words such, flower (known as
hyponym), and the sense of profound relates to the sense of deep (known as
synonym). The relation among words is also known as sense relation.

The linguistic forms or the linguistic means used to identify or designate

entities are called referring expressions, which can be proper nouns (Edison,
Bandung), noun phrases that are definite (the woman, the singer), or
indefinite (a man, an island), and pronouns (he, her, it, them). Noun phrases,
proper nouns are called primary referring expressions, while pronouns are
termed secondary referring expressions (Kreidle,1998). In addition, Kreidler
(1998:130) states that referring expression is "a piece of language that is
used in an utterance and is linked to something outside language, some living
or dead or imaginary entity or concept or group of entities or concepts."

When the sentence Einstein is a famous scientist is uttered to make a

statement, we will say that the speaker refers to a certain individual (Einstein)
by means of a referring expression. The thing or things (or the individual
named Einstein in this case) in the world referred to by a particular
expression is called its referent(s). Thus the notion referent is an expression
for the thing picked out by uttering the expression in a particular context
(Saeed, 1997:27). Sentences may also contain two or more referring
expressions. For example, if the sentence Bill kissed Mary is uttered, with its
characteristic force of making a statement, both Bill and Mary would be
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referring expressions, their referents being the individuals identifiable by
names as Bill and Mary.

Kreidler (1998) further argues that the difference between referent and
referring expression lies in the fact that there is no natural connection
between referring expression and referent. There is no privileged one-to-one
relationship between the expression Bill Clinton and the Bill Clinton, who
was the president of the USA. Furthermore, the existence of a referring
expression does not guarantee the existence of a referent in the physical-
social world that we inhabit. We can create expressions with referents such
as the dragon in my house, or the emperor of Indonesia without necessarily
proving the existence of their physical referent.

Types of Referents

Kreidler (1998) provides a comprehensive account of different types of

referents used by a language to identify entities in the world. According to
him, there are essentially three kinds of differences in referents. Each of these
will be discussed below.

Unique and Non-Unique Referents

A referent has a unique entity or unique sets of entities if its referring

expression has a fixed reference. Thus entities like the Rocky Mountains, the
Louvre, the Pacific Ocean, and Germany designate unique entities that can
be found only in certain places, and knowledge of it is part of one's general
knowledge. On the other hand, a referent may have a non-unique entity if its
referring expression has a variable reference.

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Entities such as that woman, my brother, a mountain, are not unique since
they are different every time they are used, and knowledge of it is a matter of
specific knowledge. It is the physical and linguistic contexts that help the
speakers to identify those entities.

Concrete and Abstract Referents

Concrete referents are denoted by concrete or tangible objects such as book

jamp, tree, brick, whereas the abstract ones are designated by abstract or
intangible entities such as beauty, democracy, knowledge, philosophy. It is
interesting to note that lexemes with different kinds of denotation generally
occur in different kinds of utterances and may have different effects on other
lexemes. Thus, the lexeme key has a concrete referent in the phrase the key to
the front door, bearing literal meaning, and an abstract one in the key to
success, bearing figurative meaning.

Countable and Non-Countable Referents

It is the property of noun phrases that merits the notion of countable and
noncountable, both of which can be concrete and abstract. Concrete
countable expressions are those that are separate from one another and those
that can ordinarily be counted one by one. This includes such entities as
pencil, bags, chairs, and watches. Abstract countable nouns include such
entities as problem, experience, and suggestion. Concrete non-countable
phrases have three kinds of reference: those that refer to continuous
substances {ketchup, sauce, milk, ink), those that name substances consisting
of particles not worth counting {rice, sand, sugar), and those that refer to
collections {furniture, jewellery, luggage). The feature that distinguishes
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countable noun phrases from non-countable ones is that the former
recognizes the division between singular and plural forms while the latter
does not. Thus we can say an apple, a hat, an umbrella, the overt specifier
being present preceding the singular nouns, and some apples, some hats,
some umbrella, some apple sauce, some mud, some ink, with a zero specifier
preceding both plural countable and non-countable.

In a language such as English, the names of the animals that are countable by
nature become uncountable when referring to food. An instance of this is the
lexemes (a)lamb, (a) chicken, and (a) turkey. Finally, some noun phrases
may have dual class membership in that it can be countable and noun-
countable, depending upon the items it designates. Such entities as (a) paper,
(a) iron, (a) glass, (a) coffee, etc. can be countable and non-countable.

Types of Reference

The discussion of reference has become a central concern in semantics, and

the classification of different types of the ways of referring is relatively
uncontroversial and remains undisputed among semanticists. Lyons (1977),
Hofmann (1993), Kreidler (1998), and Cruse (2000) agree on the following
classification of reference types:

Generic and Non-Generic Reference

The meaning of the notion generic (not really synonymous with general) can
be understood by observing the following:

(1)The cat is a nice pet.

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 (2)A cat is a nice pet.
(3)Cats are nice pets.

Each of these sentences may be used to assert a generic proposition, that is a

proposition which says something, not about this or that group of cat or
about any particular individual cat, but about the class of cats as such. In
other words, the entity catia in the above sentence is a reference to a class of
referents (Cruse, 2000:311). The fact that the cat in the sentences above has
a generic meaning can be demonstrated by proposing the question "Which
cat (s)?". Obviously, none of the above sentences are the answer to such as
question because the question is not germane. Sentences (1), (2), and (3) are
in contrast with sentences (4) and (5) below.

(4) A cat is lying on the mattress

(5) Cats are lying on the mattress

In that, the latter do not have generic references. They do not necessarily
refer to the whole class of cats. Although they are not the answers to the
question "Which cat (s)?" either, such a question is germane in this context.
Lyons (1977) and Cruse (2000) identify two sorts of propositions involving
generic reference as an argument: either something is predicated of the whole
class referred to, or something is predicated on each member of the class.
The former has collective reference and the latter has distributive reference.
Sentence (1) has collective reference, and sentence (2) exemplifies
distributive reference.

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Definite and Indefinite reference

Kreidler (1998:143) argues that referring expression is definite if the referent

from the physical-social context is identifiable for both the speaker and
hearer. The directive put the book on the table contains definite referring
expressions the book and the table.

Moreover, if the speaker assumes that the addressee can make the necessary
implicature to relate a new reference to a previous one, this is also the case
of referring expression. The utterance I bought a new house in a quite
neighborhood.

The kitchen is very big has a definite expression the kitchen. We can also
say that a referent is definite is the referring expression is fixed and therefore
presumably part of the addressee's general knowledge, like Mount Everest.
Finally, referring expression is definite if the referent has a unique or nearly
unique position in the more limited world of the speaker and addressee. For
example, the definite referring expression of this type can be seen in the
interrogative have you received the reports from the doctor?

The central idea of the indefinite referring expression is that the identity of
referent is not germane to the message, and that the hearer has to make a
choice from the extension of the noun (Krediler, 1998; Cruse, 2000). It must
be emphasized here that indefiniteness is not restricted to the indefinite
article only. The following sentences also contain indefinite expressions
(Cruse, 2000:308):

(6) Come up and see me sometime.

(7) I expect he's hiding somewhere.
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 (8) You'll manage somehow.
(9) Are you looking for something?
2
Specific and Non-Specific Reference

In order to identify whether a referent has a specific or non-specific

reference, it is of importance to understand the discourse rather than the
expression of the referent per sei. It is the discourse that determines the
specificity or non-specificity of a reference. Consider now the following
sentence:

(10)Every evening at six o'clock a heron flies over the chalet.

The indefinite noun phrase a heron in this sentence can, under one
interpretation, be understood to refer to a specific referent. It refers to a
particular heron that the speaker has in mind. We can further support the
specificity of the reference by providing the same context as follows:
(11) It nests in the ground of the chateau.
The pronoun It in (11) is co-referential with a heron in (10). Again let us
observe the sentence below:
(12) I trust we can find answers to all your questions.

The referent answer in (12) can be understood to refer to a non-specific

reference since both speaker and hearer are not really sure about the referent
being spoken. It should be admitted, however, that very often we cannot
exactly tell whether an indefinite noun phrase is being used with specific
reference or not as it is dependent very much upon how the speaker/hearer
interprets it. Hence, due to the alleged ambiguity of the indefinite noun
phrase in the sentence below, it can be construed as being used specifically

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or non-specifically:

(13) I want to marry a girl with blue eyes.

Under one interpretation, the indefinite noun phrase is used specifically if it

implies the existence of some individual who satisfies the description of
having blue eyes, and thus can be equated to having the same sense as the
definite noun phrase the girl with the blue eyes in the same context. On the
other hand, it is used non-specifically provided that no presupposition or
implication exists.

Anaphora

Halliday and Hassan (1976), in a lengthy discussion of textual cohesion in

English, classify reference into two types: exophora and endophora. When
we utter his shirt or your uncle, we refer to some entity in the real world:
real-world reference is called exophoric reference. But we can also refer to
the referents in the text items using linguistic means: reference in the text is
called endophoric reference. Consider the following sentence:

(14) Danny doesn't like hamburger. He avoids eating it whenever possible

Danny and hamburger are two nouns with exophoric reference, while he and
it have endophoric reference: they refer to Danny and hamburger in the
context, and not directly to real-world entity. Traditionally they are called
pronouns. Endophoric reference can be classified into anaphora and
cataphora depending on the position of the antecedent. Observe the short
passage below:

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 (15) In the film, a man and a woman were trying to wash a cat. The
man was holding the cat

while the woman poured water on it. He said something to her and they
started laughing. The pronouns (it, he, her, and they) in the passage are
subsequent reference to already mentioned referents, which are known as
anaphoric reference or anaphora. Technically speaking, the subsequent
reference is called anaphor and the initial or already introduced reference is
known as antecedents. Quirk et. al. (1985) states that anaphoric reference is
used where the uniqueness of reference of some phrase the X is supplied by
information given earlier in the discourse. They further distinguish two kinds
of anaphora: direct and indirect. In direct anaphora, the referents have
already occurred in the text, and thus can be identified directly, whereas in
indirect anaphora the hearer identifies the referents indirectly from his
knowledge by inferring what has been mentioned. Consider the following
sentences:

(16)John bought a TV and tape recorder, but he returned the tape

recorder.

(17)John bought a car, but when he drove it one of the wheels came
off.

Sentence (16) exemplifies the use of direct anaphora where the referent the
tape recorder can be identified directly, while sentence (17) contains the
indirect anaphora where the noun car has been substituted by anaphor it.
Similarly, Matthews (1997:18) defines anaphora as "the relation between a
pronoun and another element, in the same or in an earlier sentence, that
supplies its referents". Finally, Kreidler (1998) adds another type of

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anaphora, which he calls lexical anaphora. This anaphora is the restatement
of a certain referring expression by means of repetition, synonym and
superordinate as in (19):

Cataphora

The notion cataphora is less common in use than that of anaphora. Cataphora
is the relation between an anaphoric expression and an antecedent that comes
later (Matthews 1997:48). Thus, cataphora refers to entity that is mentioned
latter in the discourse. Consider this sentence:

(20) I turned to the corner and almost stepped on it. There was a
large snake in the middle of the path.

The pronoun it (the cataphor) in the sentence can be interpreted as referring

forward to a noun phrase a large snake, (the antecedent) and is said to have
cataphoric reference. Cataphora is also known as anticipatory anaphora or
backward anaphora.

Deixis and its types

The notion deixis has become one of the important topics that merits our
attention. Deixis is a semantics notion, which is originally derived from a

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Greek word meaning pointing or indicating via language. Any linguistic
form used to accomplish this pointing is called a deictic expression. The
adjective deictic (deikticos) has the sense of demonstrative. When we notice
a strange object and ask, "What's that?" we are using a deictic expression
(that) to indicate something in the immediate context. Deictic expressions are
also sometimes called indexical. The notion of what deixis is relatively
uncontroversial among the linguists. Lyons (1977:637) offers the following
definition of deixis: "the location and identification of persons, objects,
events, processes and activities being talked about, or referred to, in relation
to the spatiotemporal context created and sustained by the act of utterance
and the participation in it, typically of a single speaker and at least one
addressee." Similarly, Yule (1996:9) argues that deixis is a form of referring
that is tied to the speaker's context, with the most basic distinction between
deictic expressions being "near speaker" versus "away from the speaker." If
the referents being referred to are near the speaker, the proximal terms such
as this, here, now are used. By contrast, the distal terms such as that, there,
then are employed provided that the referents are away from the speaker.
Matthews (1997:89) states that deixis is "they way in which the reference of
certain elements in a sentence is determined in relation to a specific speaker
and addressee and a specific time and place of utterance." From the three
definitions given above, it can be inferred that the notion deixis involves the
pointing of certain referents that belong primarily to the category of persons
(objects), speaker-addressee relationship, space, and time, context of
utterance. Respectively, this category is termed person deixis, social deixis,
spatial deixis, temporal deixis, and discourse deixis (Cruse 2000: 319). We
shall examine each of these in detail.

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Person Deixis

Person deixis basically operates on a three-part division, exemplified by the

pronouns for first person or the speaker (I), second person or the addressee
(you) and third persons or other participants (he, she, it). What is important
to note here is that the third person singular forms encode gender, which is
not deictic by nature because it is not sensitive to aspects of the speech
situation (Cruse, 2000). Another point worth making with regard to the
person deixis is the use of plural pronouns, which can be in the
representative or true use (Cruse, 2000:320). If the pronoun we is spoken or
written by a single speaker or writer to represent the group he or she refers
to, it is the case of representative use. On the other, if it used to refer to the
speaker and the group, the pronoun we is employed in its true sense. The
representative and true use of the pronoun we are also called inclusive and
exclusive we, respectively. The inclusive-exclusive distinction is explicable
in the utterance Let's go (to some friends) and Let us go (to someone who
has captured the speaker and friends). The action of going is inclusive in the
first, but exclusive in the second. The pronoun systems in English can be
seen in the following (Cruse 2000: 319-320):

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Social Deixis

In many languages, the deictic categories of speaker, addressee, and other(s)

are elaborated with markers or relative social status (addressee with higher
status versus addressee with lower status). Expressions that indicate higher
status are described as honorifics. A widely quoted example to describe the
social deixis is the so-called TV distinction, from the French tu (referring to
familiar addressee), and vous (referring to non-familiar addressee). Other
languages that make a distinction between the social status are German with
the distinguishing pronoun du and Sie, and Spanish with tu and Usted. In the
social context the higher, older, and more powerful speaker will tend to use
the tu version to a lower, younger, and less powerful addressee, and be
addressed by the vous form in return.

Spatial Deixis

The concept of distance is relevant to spatial deixis, where the relative

location of people and things is being indicated. As Cruse (2000:320) puts it
"spatial deixis manifests itself principally in the form of locative adverbs
(here and there) and demonstratives or determiners (this and that)." In English
the spatial deictic system is indicated by two terms labeled proximal and
distal. Such terms as here and this indicate that the location is relatively close
to the speaker, and hence proximal. Conversely, the terms there and that
indicate the relative distant of the location from the speaker, and hence distal.
In considering spatial deixis, Yule (1996) warns that the location from the
speaker's perspective can be fixed mentally and physically. Speakers
temporarily away from their home location will often continue to use here to
mean the (physically distant) home location, as if they were still in that
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location. Speakers also seem to be able to project themselves into other
locations prior to being in those locations, as when they say "I'll come later"
(movement to addressee's location). This is sometimes described as deictic
projection.

Temporal Deixis

Cruse (2000: 321) asserts that temporal deictic s function to locate points or
intervals on the time axis, using the moment of utterance as a reference
point. The time axis can be divided into three major divisions: before the
moment of utterance, at the time of utterance, and after the time of utterance.
The time adverbial that forms a basic concept in temporal deixis in English
includes now and then. Now displays the same capacity for indefinite
extension, which can refer to a precise instant, such as Press the button-
now!; or it can accommodate a wide swathe of time like The solar system is
now in a relatively stable phase (Cruse, 2000:320). However, very often now
indicates the time coinciding with the speaker's utterance; for example, I am
reading a novel now (the action done at the moment of the speaker's
utterance).

Then, on the other hand, designate the time period which is distal from the
speaker's utterance. Then is normally interpreted from the context, as the
following sentences indicate:

(20) Watching movies at 8.30 tonight? Okay, I'll see you then.

(21) December 23rd, 2002? I was in Solo then.

Apart from the time adverbial, there are essentially other types of temporal
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deixis worth mentioning here. One type is related to calendric notions that
include both clock time as in [1] and calendar time as in [2]. Other temporal
deictic related to calendric system includes such expressions as today,
yesterday, tomorrow, this week, last week, next week, this month, last
month, next month, this year, last year, and next year. The last type of
temporal deixis in English is related to the verb tense, as illustrated in the
following sentences.

(22) We live here now.

(23) We lived there then.

The verb tense in (3) is in simple present and is normally treated as close to
(proximal) the speaker's current situation, whereas in (4) the verb tense is
simple past, and is thought as distant (distal) by the speaker.

Discourse Deixis

Discourse deixis is actually a linguistic device used to designate an entity in

the discourse. The linguistic devices can be the deictic expressions this and
that, the expression hereby in the explicit performative sentence, and
sentence adverbs such as therefore and furthermore. The following sentences
exemplify each of these devices (Cruse 2000: 323).

(24) Listen to this, it will kill you!

(25) That has at least two implications.
(26) Notice is hereby served that if payment is further delayed,
appropriate legal action will be taken.
(27) That rationale is controversial; furthermore ……….
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The deictic expression this in (5) and that in (6) respectively refer to future
discourse element and past discourse element. Similarly, the hereby in (7)
points to current discourse. Finally, the sentence adverb marker in (8) refers
to what follows in the future discourse. Discourse deixis is not, however, to
be confused with anaphora, the difference being that the latter might extract a
referent from an extralinguistic entity. Thus the anphor she in sentence (9)
below does not strictly refer to the word Susan itself.
(28)Susan is indeed sexually attractive. She has been admired by
many men.

ACTIVITY
(1) Describe the different types of referents with examples.
(2) Describe the different types of reference with examples.
(3) Differentiate between anaphora and cataphora.
(4) Discuss the different types of deixis.

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 Chapter 7

Speech Acts

A speech act in linguistics and the philosophy of language is an utterance

that has performative function in language and communication. According to
Kent Bach, "almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts
at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's intention: there is
the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or
promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience." The
contemporary use of the term goes back to J. L. Austin's development of
performative utterances and his theory of locutionary, illocutionary, and
perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as
promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating.

Austin's speech act theory

A theory of language based on J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words

(second edition, 1975), the major premise of which is that language is as
much, if not more, a mode of action as it is a means of conveying
information. As John Searle puts it, "All linguistic communication involves
linguistic acts. The unit of linguistic communication is not, as has generally
been supposed, the symbol, word, or sentence, or even the token of the
symbol, word, or sentence, but rather the production or issuance of the
symbol or word or sentence in the performance of a speech act." Meaning,
then, should be regarded as a species within the genus intending-to-
communicate, since language itself is highly complex, rule-governed
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intentional behavior. A theory of language is part of a theory of action. The
basic emphasis of speech act theory is on what an utterer (U) means by his
utterance (x) rather than what x means in a language (L). As H.P. Grice notes,
"meaning is a kind of intending," and the hearer's or reader's recognition that
the speaker or writer means something by x is part of the meaning of x. In
contrast to the assumptions of structuralism (a theory that privileges
language, the system, over parole, the speech act), speech act theory holds
that the investigation of structure always presupposes something about
meanings, language use, and extralinguistic functions.

In How to Do Things with Words, Austin commences by enunciating a

reasonably clear-cut distinction between constative and performative
utterances. According to him, an utterance is constative if it describes or
reports some state of affairs such that one could say its correspondence with
the facts is either true or false. Performatives, on the other hand, "do not
'describe' or 'report' or 'constate' anything at all, are not 'true' or 'false.'. . . The
uttering of the sentence is, or is part of the doing of an action, which again
would not normally be described as saying something." Marrying, betting,
bequeathing, umpiring, passing sentence, christening, knighting, blessing,
firing, baptizing, bidding, and so forth involve performatives. The attitude of
the person performing the linguistic act - his thoughts, feelings, or intentions
- is of paramount importance. Whereas the constative utterance is true or
false, the performative utterance is felicitous or infelicitous, sincere or
insincere, authentic or inauthentic, well invoked or misinvoked. An "I do" at
a marriage ceremony is insincere and misinvoked if the utterer is already
married and has no intention of abiding by the conditions of the contract.

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Austin divides the linguistic act into three components. First, there is the
locutionary act, "the act of 'saying' something." Second, there is the
illocutionary act, "the performance of an act in saying something as opposed
to the performance of an act of saying something." Third, there is the
perlocutionary act, for "saying something will often, or even normally,
produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions
of the audience, of the speaker, or of other persons." In other words, a
locutionary act has meaning; it produces an understandable utterance. An
illocutionary act has force; it is informed with a certain tone, attitude, feeling,
motive, or intention. A perlocutionary act has consequence; it has an effect
upon the addressee. By describing an imminently dangerous situation
(locutionary component) in a tone that is designed to have the force of a
warning (illocutionary component), the addresser may actually frighten the
addressee into moving (perlocutionary component). These three components,
then, are not altogether separable, for as Austin points out, "we must
consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued — the total
speech act — if we are to see the parallel between statements and
performative utterances, and how each can go wrong. Perhaps indeed there is
no great distinction between statements and performative utterances." In
contradistinction to structuralism, then, speech act theory privileges parole
over langue, arguing that external context — the context of situation — is
more important in the order of explanation than internal context — the
interrelationships among terms within the system of signs. (See also
Linguistics and literary theory.)

The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a speech act.

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Although there are numerous opinions regarding how to define 'illocutionary
acts', there are some kinds of acts which are widely accepted as
illocutionary, as for example promising, ordering someone, and bequeathing.

Following the usage of, for example, John R. Searle, "speech act" is often
meant to refer just to the same thing as the term illocutionary act, which John
L. Austin had originally introduced in How to Do Things with Words
(published posthumously in 1962). Searle's work on speech acts is also
commonly understood to refine Austin's conception. However, some
philosophers have pointed out a significant difference between the two
conceptions: whereas Austin emphasized the conventional interpretation of
speech acts, Searle emphasized a psychological interpretation (based on
beliefs, intentions, etc.).

According to Austin's preliminary informal description, the idea of an

"illocutionary act" can be captured by emphasizing that "by saying
something, we do something", as when someone issues an order to someone
to go by saying "Go!", or when a minister joins two people in marriage
saying, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." (Austin would eventually
define the "illocutionary act" in a more exact manner.)

An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the

utterance of what Austin calls performatives, typical instances of which are
"I nominate John to be President", "I sentence you to ten years'
imprisonment", or "I promise to pay you back." In these typical, rather
explicit cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence
describes (nominating, sentencing, promising) is performed by the utterance
of the sentence itself.

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Austin (1962) describes the Speech Acts theory as an approach that explains
the roles of utterances in shaping the attitudes of participants in interpersonal
communication. Speech acts reveal the intentions of speakers and the effects
the speaker's utterances and expressions have on the hearers. The implication
of speech acts is that every utterance has a purpose which derives from the
specific context. It has been observed that language use depends on such
contextual factors as social and physical conditions, attitudes, abilities,
beliefs and the relationship existing between the speaker and the listener.

Levels of Speech Acts

There may be some confusion regarding types and levels of speech acts. We
have already discussed types of speech acts - representative, declarative,
directive, expressive and commissive. For levels of speech acts, emphasis is
on the different stages of interaction between the speaker and the listener
through the use of speech acts. Three distinct levels are usually observed -
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.

Locutionary Acts - These are observed as the processes of producing

grammatical and meaningful utterances which can be recognised by the
hearer.
Illocutionary Acts - Illocutionary acts are the force behind the utterances.
Indeed, the speaker performs these acts to achieve the purpose of
communication as a statement, a question, a command, an invitation, a
threat, a request, an apology etc. It is possible, for instance, to use a sentence
that has the structure of a statement for the purpose of a warning. For
example:

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(i) You will lose all your deposits - (from a financial adviser to a client) This
sentence may be a warning or a piece of advice. Therefore, it is possible to
use identical utterance types for different tokens based on the intentions of
the speaker and the context.

Perculationary Acts - These are the effects of the speaker's utterance on the
behaviour of the hearer. They are the acts performed by the hearer as a result
of the effect of the speaker's utterances. It is assumed, for instance, that the
hearer will respond to a question of the speaker in a specific way, or behave
in accordance with the demands of the context. It should be noted that the
illocutionary force is the intended effect of an utterance on the hearer from
the point of view of the speaker. The perlocutionary effect is the actual effect
of the speaker's utterance on the action, behaviour, attitude or belief of the
hearer.

Maximum communication is achieved when there is illocutionary uptake.

This situation arises when the listener understands the intended effect of the
speaker. This demand is at the core of semantics since meaning must be
shared.

Austin himself admits that these three components of utterances are not
altogether separable."We must consider the total situation in which the
utterance is issued- the total speech act - if we are to see the parallel between
statements and performative utterance, and how each can go wrong. Perhaps
indeed there is no great distinction between statements and performative
utterances." (Austin 1962).

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Different types of speech acts
There are different types of speech acts, the most common being the
following:
(a) Representative Acts;
(b) Declarative Acts
(c) Directive Acts
(d)Expressive Acts; and
(e)Commissive Acts.

Representative Acts:

These acts describe events, processes and states. Usually, the speaker is
committed to the truth of the assertion, claim, report, suggestion, prediction,
description, hypothesis or conclusion. Declarative Acts: These are acts that
immediately change the state of affairs to which they apply. These acts are
used in arresting, christening, marriage, sentencing, acquittal etc. Consider
the following:

(29) I discharge and acquit the accused

(30) I hereby name this baby Amanda

Directive Acts: In directive acts, the addressee is instructed to carry out

some instruction by responding verbally to an utterance or by performing
some physical actions. The acts can be questions, commands, requests, pleas
or invitation. e.g.

(31) Kindly lend me some money!

(32) Please, be my guest!

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 (33) What is your name!

Expressive Acts:

Expressive acts show the psychological states - feelings and attitudes

towards some events and affairs. These usually occur in greetings, scolding,
condoling, appreciating, thanking, congratulating, apologising, etc. e.g.

(34) We congratulate you on your success.

(35) I apologise for my mistakes.

Commissive Acts:

In Commissive Acts, the speaker is committed to some future action

as in challenging, betting, promising, offering, threatening, vowing,
warning, etc. e.g.
(36) I pledge a hundred thousand Naira.
(37) We promise to build them a house.

It should be noted that commissive acts carry specific performative

verbs -promise, swear, name, pledge, warn, advise, declare, bet.

Searle's Classification of illocutionary speech acts

Performative verbs fall fairly naturally under a small number of headings. It

is useful to group them in this way, as it enables us to gain a picture of the
range of functions that these verbs perform. Searle (1975) has set up the
following classification of illocutionary speech acts:

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Assertives: Assertives commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed
proposition:
state, suggest, boast, complain, claim, report, want (that)

Directives: Directives have the intention of eliciting some sort of action

on the part of the hearer: order, command, request, beg, beseech, advise (to),
warn (to), recommend, ask, ask (to)

Commissives: Commissive commit the speaker to some future action:

promise, vow, offer, undertake, contract, threaten.

Expressives: Expressives make known the speaker's psychological

attitude to a presupposed state of
affairs: thank, congratulate, condole, praise, blame, forgive, pardon.

Declaratives: Declaratives are said to bring about a change in reality:

that is to say, the world is in some way no longer the same after they have
been said. In an obvious sense, this is true of all the performative verbs: after
someone has congratulated someone, for instance, a new world comes into
being in which that congratulation has taken place. The specialty about
declaratives is that they cause a change in the world over and above the fact
that they have been carried out. If someone says, I resign, then thereafter
they no longer hold the post they originally held, with all that that entails.
resign, dismiss, divorce (in Islam), christen, name, open (e.g. an exhibition),
excommunicate, sentence (in court), consecrate, bid (at auction), declare (at
cricket)
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There is a finite number of explicit performative verbs in English (several
hundred), but there is no reason to believe that there is a theoretically finite
set of possible speech acts.

ACTIVITY

(1) Define speech act.

(2) Differentiate the following form one another: locutionary,
perlocutionary and illocutionary acts.
(3) Describe the types of speech acts.
(3) Describe the Searle's classification of performative verbs.

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 Chapter 8

Implicatures

Implicature is a technical term in the pragmatics sub-field of linguistics,

coined by H. P. Grice, which refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even
though neither expressed nor strictly implied (that is, entailed) by the
utterance. As an example, the sentence "Mary had a baby and got married"
strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the
sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got
married. Further, if we append the qualification "not necessarily in that
order" to the original sentence, then the implicature is now cancelled even
though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered."Implicature" is an
alternative to "implication," which has additional meanings in logic and
informal language.

Grice's conversational maxims

Implicature, a term coined by H.P. Grice refers to what is suggested in an

utterance and which may not have been expressed. The speaker deliberately
breaks the rules of a conversational maxim to convey additional meaning.
For instance, the following could be a possible question and response
respectively:

(38) Do you really believe

Betty? (39) She was
speaking grammar.

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The answer implies, among other things that Betty was not telling the whole
story. It is expected of people in communication to obey certain co-operative
principles. These principles have been presented as maxims of quantity,
quality, relation and manner.

Maxim of quality
Maxim Quality is concerned with truth-telling, and two parts:
(i) Do not say what you believe is not rue;
(ii) Do not say that for which you lack evidence.

One could argue that the second sub-maxim entails the first: there will
obviously not be adequate evidence for a false statement. We can paraphrase
this maxim as Do not make unsupported statements (Cruse, 2000: 355).

Maxim of Quantity

Maxim of quantity is concerned with the amount of information (taken in its

broader sense) an utterance conveys.

(i) Make your contribution information enough;

(ii) Do not make your contribution more informal than necessary.

Maxim of relation

The maxim is very simple: Be relevant. The point of this maxim is not
sufficient for a statement to be true for it to contribute an acceptable
conversational contribution. For example
A: Have you seen Mary today?
B: ?I am breathing. Notice that this maxim is implicated in the Maxim
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of quantity, which could easily be reformulated as: [Make] the strongest
statement that can be relevantly made.

Maxim of manner
Maxim of manner has four components:
(i) Avoid obscurity of expression.
(ii) Avoid ambiguity.
(iii) Avoid unnecessary prolixity.
(iv) Be orderly.

It is generally regarded as being less important that the others. There are also
conventional implicatures used for communicating non-truth-conditional
meaning for specific linguistic expressions. It is largely self-explanatory.

Conversational implicature

Paul Grice identified three types of general conversational implicatures:

1. The speaker deliberately flouts a conversational maxim to convey an

additional meaning not expressed literally. For instance, a speaker responds
to the question "How did you like the guest lecturer?" with the following
utterance:
Well, I'm sure he was speaking English. If the speaker is assumed to
be following the cooperative principle, in spite of flouting the Maxim of
Relevance, then the utterance must have an additional nonliteral meaning,
such as: "The content of the lecturer's speech was confusing."
2. The speaker's desire to fulfil two conflicting maxims results in his or
her flouting one maxim to invoke the other. For instance, a speaker
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 responds to the question "Where is John?" with the following
utterance:

He's either in the cafeteria or in his office. In this case, the Maxim of
Quantity and the Maxim of Quality are in conflict. A cooperative speaker
does not want to be ambiguous but also does not want to give false
information by giving a specific answer in spite of his uncertainty. By
flouting the Maxim of Quantity, the speaker invokes the Maxim of Quality,
leading to the implicature that the speaker does not have the evidence to give
a specific location where he believes John is.
3. The speaker invokes a maxim as a basis for interpreting the utterance. In
the following exchange:
Do you know where I can get some gas?
There's a gas station around the corner.

The second speaker invokes the Maxim of Relevance, resulting in the

implicature that "the gas station is open and one can probably get gas there".

Scalar implicature

According to Grice (1975), another form of conversational implicature is

also known as a scalar implicature. This concerns the conventional uses of
words like "all" or "some" in conversation.
I ate some of the pie. This sentence implies "I did not eat all of the
pie." While the statement "I ate some pie" is still true if the entire pie was
eaten, the conventional meaning of the word "some" and the implicature
generated by the statement is "not all".

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Conventional implicature

Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its

four maxims. A statement always carries its conventional implicature.
Donovan is poor but happy. This sentence implies poverty and
happiness are not compatible but in spite of this Donovan is still happy. The
conventional interpretation of the word "but" will always create the
implicature of a sense of contrast. So Donovan is poor but happy will always
necessarily imply "Surprisingly Donovan is happy in spite of being poor".

Implicature vs entailment

This can be contrasted with cases of entailment. The statement "the

President was assassinated", for example, not only suggests that "the
President is dead" is true, but requires this to be so. The first sentence could
not be true if the second were not true; if the President were not dead, then
whatever it is that happened to him would not have counted as a (successful)
assassination. Similarly, unlike implicatures, entailments cannot be
cancelled; there is no qualification that one could add to "the president was
assassinated" which would cause it to cease entailing "the president is dead"
while also preserving the meaning of the first sentence.

It is always common to hear people argue over what is meant, and what is
implied. This means that there could be differences between what a speaker
says and how the listener interprets it. However, success in communication
depends on how well the meaning intended by the speaker and the
implicature of the listener converge. This is usually possible when
participants in communication obey principles of conversational implicature.
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ACTIVITY

(i) Discuss about Grice's conversational maxims.

(ii) Describe about conversational implicatures.
(iii) Differentiate between scalar implicature and conventional implicature.

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 Chapter 9

Indirect speech acts

Introduction
Deborah Tannen (1981) recounts the following experience as a visitor to
Greece:

While I was staying with a family on the island of Crete, no matter how early I awoke, my
hostess managed to have a plate of scrambled eggs waiting on the table for me by the time I
was up and dressed; and at dinner every evening, dessert included a pile of purple seeded
grapes. Now I don’t happen to like seeded grapes or eggs scrambled, but I had to eat them
both because they had been set out–at great inconvenience to my hosts–especially for me.
It turned out that I was getting eggs scrambled because I had asked, while watching my
hostess in the kitchen, whether she ever prepared eggs by beating them, and I was getting
grapes out of season because I had asked at dinner one evening how come I hadn’t seen
grapes since I had arrived in Greece. My hosts had taken these careless questions as hints–
that is, indirect expressions of my desires. In fact, I had not intended to hint anything, but
had merely been trying to be friendly, to make conversation.

Tannen’s hosts believed that she was trying to communicate more than the
literal meaning of her words, that is, that she was trying to implicate
something without saying it directly. Moreover, the implicature which they
(mistakenly) understood had the efect of doing more than the literal meaning
of her words would do. Her utterances, taken literally, were simply
questions, i.e., requests for information. Her hosts interpreted these
utterances as implicated requests to provide her with scrambled eggs and
grapes. In other words, Tannen’s hosts interpreted these utterances as
indirect speech acts.

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 A speech act is an action that speakers perform by speaking: offering
thanks, greetings, invitations, making requests, giving orders, etc. A direct
speech act is one that is accomplished by the literal meaning of the words
that are spoken. An indirect speech act is one that is accomplished by
implicature.
Tannen (1981) states that “misunderstandings like these are commonplace
between members of what appear to (but may not necessarily) be the same
culture.

However, such mix-ups are especially characteristic of cross-cultural

communication.”1 For this reason, indirect speech acts are a major focus of
research in the areas of applied linguistics and second language acquisition.
They also constitute a potential challenge for translation.

We begin this chapter in §10.2 with a summary of J.L. Austin’s theory of

speech acts, another foundational contribution to the field of pragmatics.
Austin begins by identifying and analyzing a previously unrecognized class of
utterances which he calls performatives. He then generalizes his account of
performatives to apply to all speech acts.

Searle builds on Austin’s theory, with certain modifications, and goes on to

propose answers to two fundamental questions: How do hearers recognize
indirect speech acts (i.e., how do they know that the intended speech act is
not the one expressed by the literal meaning of the words spoken), and
having done so, how do they correctly identify the intended speech act?
(Both of these issues tend to be difficult for even advanced language
learners.) An important part of Searle’s answer to these questions is the
recognition that indirect speech acts are a special type of conversational
implicature.
In the following section, we touch briefly on some cross-linguistic issues,
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including the question of whether Searle’s theory provides an adequate
account for indirect speech acts in all languages.

Performatives

The definition of sentence meaning is cited below in (1):

(1) “To know the meaning of a [declarative] sentence is to know what the
world would have to be like for the sentence to be true.”
(Dowty et al. 1981: 4)

Perhaps you wondered, gentle reader, how we might define the meaning of
a non-declarative sentence, such as a question or a command? It must be
possible for someone to know the meaning of a question without knowing
what the world would have to be like for the question to be true. A question is
not the sort of thing which can be true, but clearly this does not mean that
questions are meaningless.

Concerning declarative sentences, however, we find some for which the

definition in (1) does not seem to be directly applicable. J.L. Austin, in a 1955
series of lectures at Harvard University (published as Austin 1962), called
attention to a class of declarative sentences which cannot be assigned a truth
value, because they do not make any claim about the state of the world.
Some examples are presented in (2–3).2 Austin’s examples:

(2) a. ‘I do’ (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife) – as

uttered in the course of the marriage ceremony.
b. ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ – as uttered when smashing
the bottle against the stem.
c. ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.’
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 (3) Further examples:
a. I hereby sentence you to 10 years in prison.
b. I now pronounce you man and wife.
c. I declare this meeting adjourned.
d. By virtue of the authority vested in me by the State of XX, and
through the Board of Governors of the University of XX, I do hereby
confer upon each of you the degree for which you have qualified,
with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities appertaining.

Austin pointed out that when someone says I now pronounce you man and
wife or I hereby declare this meeting adjourned, the speaker is not describing
something, but doing something. The speaker is not making a claim about
the world, but rather changing the world. For this reason, it doesn’t make
sense to ask whether these statements are true or false. It does, however,
make sense to ask whether the person’s action was successful or appropriate.
Was the speaker licensed to perform a marriage ceremony at that time and
place, or empowered to pass sentence in a court of law? Were all the
necessary procedures followed completely and correctly? etc.

Austin called this special class of declarative sentences performatives. He

argued that we need to recognize performatives as a new class of speech acts
(things that people can do by speaking), in addition to the commonly
recognized speech acts such as statements, questions, and commands. Austin
refers to the act which the speaker intends to perform by speaking as the
illocutionary force of the utterance.
As noted above, it does not make sense to try to describe truth conditions
for performatives. Instead, Austin says, we need to identify the conditions
under which the performative speech act will be felicitous, i.e. successful,

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valid, and appropriate. He identifies the following kinds of felicity
conditions:

(4) Felicity conditions (Austin 1962: 14–15):

(A.1) There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a

certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering
of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and
further,
(A.2) the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be
appropriate for the invocations of the particular procedure
invoked.

(B.1) The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly

and
(B.2) completely.

(C.1) Where, as often, the procedure is designed for use by persons

having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of
certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then
a person participating in and so invoking the procedure must in
fact have those thoughts or feelings, and the participants must
intend so to conduct themselves, and further
(C.2) must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.

Austin referred to violations of conditions A–B as misfires; if these

conditions are not fulfilled, then the intended acts are not successfully
performed or are invalid. For example, if a person who is not licensed to
perform a marriage ceremony says I now pronounce you man and wife, the
couple being addressed does not become legally married as a result of this
utterance. Violations of C Austin called abuses. If this condition is violated,
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the speech act is still performed and

Austin distinguished illocutionary act, the act which the speaker intends to
perform “in speaking”, from locutionary act (the act of speaking) and
perlocutionary act (the actual result achieved “by speaking” the
utterance).
4
I have replaced Austin’s “gamma” (Γ) with “C”, for convenience. would
be considered valid, but it is done insincerely or inappropriately. For exam-
ple, if someone says I promise to return this book by Sunday, but has no
intention of doing so, the utterance still counts as a promise; but it is an
insincere promise, a promise which the speaker intends to break.
Performatives can be distinguished from normal declarative sentences by
the following special features:

(5) Properties of explicit performatives:

• They always occur in indicative mood and simple present tense,
with a non-habitual interpretation. As we will see in Chapter 20,
the simple present form of an event-type verb in English typically
requires a habitual interpretation; but this is not the case for the
examples in (2–3).
• They frequently contain a performative verb, i.e. a verb which can
be used either to describe or to perform the intended speech act
(e.g. sentence, declare, confer, invite, request, order, accuse, etc.).
• Because the speaker is the one performing the speech act,
performative clauses normally occur in the active voice with a
first-person subject, as in (2–3). Passive voice with second or
third-person subject is also possible with certain verbs; see
examples in (6).

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 • Performatives can optionally be modified by the performative
adverb hereby; this adverb cannot be used with non-performative
statements.

(6) a. Passengers are requested not to talk to the driver while the bus is
moving.
b. You are hereby sentenced to 10 years in prison.
c. Permission is hereby granted to use this software for non-
commercial
purposes.
d. Richard Smith is hereby promoted to the rank of Lieutenant
Colonel.

Austin refers to performative sentences that exhibit the features listed in

(5) as explicit performatives. He notes that explicit performatives can often
be paraphrased using sentences which lack some or all of these features. For
example, the performative I hereby order you to shut the door is more
commonly expressed using a simple imperative, Shut the door! Similarly, the
performative I hereby invite you to join me for dinner would be more politely
and naturally expressed using a question, Would you like to join me for dinner?
Since the same speech act can be performed with either expression, it would
seem odd to classify one as a performative but not the other. We will refer to
utterances which function as paraphrases of explicit performatives but lack
the features listed in (5) as implicit performatives.
Conversely, it turns out that most speech acts can be paraphrased using an
explicit performative. For example, the question Is it raining? can be
paraphrased as a performative: I hereby ask you whether it is raining. In the
same way, simple statements can be paraphrased I hereby inform you that…,
and commands can be paraphrased I hereby order/command you to…. Once
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again, if the same speech act can be performed with either expression, it
seems odd to classify one as a performative but not the other. These
observations lead us to the conclusion that virtually all utterances should be
analyzed as performatives, whether explicit or not.

But if all utterances are to be analyzed as performatives, then the label per-
formative doesn’t seem to be very useful; what have we gained? In fact we
have gained several important insights into the meaning of sentential
utterances. First, in addition to their propositional content, all such utterances
have an il-locutionary force (the act which the speaker intends to perform by
speaking), which is an important aspect of their meaning. In the case of
explicit performatives, we can identify the illocutionary force by simply
looking at the performative verb; but with implicit performatives, as
discussed below, the illocutionary force depends partly on the context of the
utterance.

Second, all utterances have felicity conditions. Certain speech acts

(namely statements) also have truth conditions; but felicity conditions are
something that needs to be analyzed for all speech acts, including statements.
As discussed in the following section, in order to explain how indirect speech
acts work, we need to identify the felicity conditions for the intended act.

The concept of felicity conditions is useful in other contexts as well. For

example, it would be very odd for someone to say The cat is on the mat, but I
do not believe that it is.5 Austin suggests that this statement is not a logical
contradiction but rather a violation of the felicity conditions for statements.
One of the felicity conditions would be that a person should not make a
statement which he knows or believes to be false (essentially equivalent to
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Grice’s maxim of Quality). It is just as outrageous to make a statement and
then explicitly deny that you believe it, as it is to make a promise and then
explicitly deny that you intend to carry it out (I promise that I shall be there,
but I haven’t the least intention of being there). We might refer to such an
utterance as a pragmatic contradiction. This is an example of Moore’s
paradox.

A similar situation would arise if someone were to say All of John’s

children are bald, when in fact he knew perfectly well that John had no
children. Austin says that the problem with this statement is the same as with
a man who ofers to sell a piece of land that does not belong to him. If a
transaction were made under these circumstances, it would not be legally
valid; the sale would be null and void. Austin says that the statement All of
John’s children are bald would similarly be “void for lack of reference” if
John has no children. So Austin may have been the frst to suggest that
presupposition failure is a pragmatic issue (an infelicity), and not purely
semantic.

Indirect speech acts

The Nigerian professor Ozidi Bariki describes a conversation in which he said

to a friend:

“I love your left hand.” (The friend had a cup of tea in his hand). The
friend, in reaction to my utterance, transferred the cup to his right hand.
That prompted me to say: “I love your right hand”. My friend smiled,
recognized my desire for tea and told his sister, “My friend wants tea” …
My friend’s utterance addressed to his sister in reaction to mine was a
representative, i.e. a simple statement: “my friend wants a tea”. The girl
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 rightly interpreted the context of the representative to mean a directive.
In other words, her brother (my friend) was ordering her to prepare some
tea. (Bariki 2008)

This brief dialogue contains two examples of indirect speech acts. In both
cases, the utterance has the form of a simple statement, but is actually
intended to perform a different kind of act: request in the first case and
command in the second. The second statement, “My friend wants tea,” was
immediately and automatically interpreted correctly by the addressee. (In
African culture, when an older brother makes such a statement to his
younger sister, there is only one possible interpretation.) The frst statement,
however, failed to communicate. Only after the second attempt was the
addressee able to work out the intended meaning, not automatically at all, but
as if he was trying to solve a riddle.

Bariki uses this example to illustrate the role that context plays in enabling
the hearer to identify the intended speech act. But it also shows us that context
alone is not enough. In the context of the first utterance, there was a natural
association between what was said (your left hand) and what was intended (a
cup of tea); the addressee was holding a cup of tea in his left hand. In spite of
this, the addressee was unable to figure out what the speaker meant. The
contrast between this failed attempt at communication and the immediately
understood statement My friend wants tea, suggests that there are certain
principles and conventions which need to be followed in order to make the
illocutionary force of an utterance clear to the hearer.
We might define an indirect speech act (following Searle 1975) as an utter-
ance in which one illocutionary act (the primary act) is intentionally
performed by means of the performance of another act (the literal act). In

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other words, it is an utterance whose form does not reflect the intended
illocutionary force. My friend wants tea is a simple declarative sentence, the
form which is normally used for making statements. In the context above,
however, it was correctly interpreted as a command. So, the literal act was a
statement, but the primary act was a command.

Most if not all languages have grammatical and/or phonological means of

distinguishing at least three basic types of sentences: statements, questions,
and commands. The default expectation is that declarative sentences will
express statements, interrogative sentences will express questions, and
imperative sentences will express commands or requests. When these
expectations are met, we have a direct speech act because the grammatical
form matches the intended illocutionary force. Explicit performatives are also
direct speech acts.

An indirect speech act will normally be expressed as a declarative,

interrogative, or imperative sentence; so the literal act will normally be a
statement, question, or command. One of the best-known types of indirect
speech act is the Rhetorical Question, which involves an interrogative
sentence but is not intended to be a genuine request for information.

Why is the statement I love your left hand not likely to work as an indirect
request for tea? Indirect speech acts are a type of conversational implicature,
so speakers can be quite creative in finding novel ways to express them.
However, Searle (1969, 1975) observes that the most common and reliable
strategies are typically related to the felicity conditions of the intended (i.e.,
primary) act in certain specific ways. Searle re-stated Austin’s felicity
conditions under four headings: preparatory conditions (background
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circumstances and knowledge about the speaker, hearer, and/or situation
which must be true in order for the speech act to be felicitous); sincerity
conditions (necessary psychological states of speaker and/or hearer);
propositional content (the kind of situation or event described by the
underlying proposition); essential condition (the essence of the speech act;
what the act “counts as”). These four categories are illustrated in Table 10.1
using the speech acts of promising and requesting.

Generally speaking, speakers perform an indirect speech act by stating or

asking about one of the felicity conditions (apart from the essential
condition). The examples in (7) show some sentences that could be used as
indirect requests for tea. Sentences (7a–b) ask about the preparatory condition
for a request, namely the hearer’s ability to perform the action. Sentences
(7c–d) state the sincerity condition for a request, namely that the speaker
wants the hearer to perform the action. Sentences (7e–f) ask about the
propositional content of the request, namely the future act by the hearer.

(7) a. Do you have any tea?

b. Could you possibly give me some tea?
c. I would like you to give me some tea.
d. I would really appreciate a cup of tea.
e. Will you give me some tea?
f. Are you going to give me some tea?

All of these sentences could be understood as requests for tea, if spoken in the
right context, but they are clearly not all equivalent: (7b) is a more polite way
of asking than (7a); (7d) is a polite request, whereas (7c) sounds more
demanding; (7e) is a polite request, whereas (7f) sounds impatient and even
rude.
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 Table 1: Felicity conditions for promises and requests (adapted from Searle
1969, 1975. S = speaker, H = hearer, A = action)

promise request
preparatory conditions (i) S is able to perform A H is able to perform A
(ii) H wants S to
perform A, and S
believes that H wants S
to perform A
(iii) it is not obvious
that S will perform A
sincerity condition S intends to perform A S wants H to perform A
propositional content predicates a future act by predicates a future act
S by H

essential condition counts as an undertaking counts as an attempt by

by S to do A S to get H to do A

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 Not every possible strategy is actually available for a given speech
act. For example, asking about the sincerity condition for a request is
generally quite unnatural: #Do I want you to give me some tea? This is
because speakers do not normally ask other people about their own
mental or emotional states. So that specific strategy cannot be used to
form an indirect request.
We almost automatically interpret examples like (7b) and (7e) as
requests. This tendency is so strong that it may be hard to recognize
them as indirect speech acts. The crucial point is that their grammatical
form is that of a question, not a request. However, some very close
paraphrases of these sentences, such as those in (8), would probably not
be understood as requests in most contexts.

(8) a. Do you currently have the ability to provide me with

tea?
b. Do you anticipate giving me a cup of tea in the near
future?

We can see the difference quite clearly if we try to add the word
please to each sentence. As we noted in Chapter 1, please is a marker
of politeness which is restricted to occurring only in requests; it does
not occur naturally in other kinds of speech acts. It is possible, and in
most cases fairly natural, to add please to any of the sentences in (7),
even to those which do not sound very polite on their own. However,
this is not possible for the sentences in (8). This difference provides
good evidence for saying that the sentences in (8) are not naturally
interpretable as indirect requests.

(9) a. Could you possibly give me some tea, please?

b. Will you give me some tea, please?
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 c. I would like you to give me some tea, please.
d. Are you going to give me some tea (please)?
e. Do you currently have the ability to provide me with tea
(#please)?
f. Do you anticipate giving me a cup of tea in the near future
(#please)?

The contrast between the acceptability of (7b) and (7e) as requests vs.
the unacceptability of their close paraphrases in (8) suggests that the
form of the sentence, as well as its semantic content, helps to determine
whether an indirect speech act will be successful or not. We will return
to this issue below, but frst we need to think about a more fundamental
question: How does the hearer recognize an indirect speech act? In
other words, how does he know that the primary (intended)
illocutionary force of the utterance is not the same as the literal speech
act suggested by the form of the sentence?
Searle suggests that the key to solving this problem comes from
Grice’s Cooperative Principle. If someone asks the person sitting next
to him at a dinner Can you pass me the salt?, we might expect the
addressee to be puzzled. Only under the most unusual circumstances
would this question be relevant to the current topic of conversation.
Only under the most unusual circumstances would the answer to this
question be informative, since few people who can sit up at a dinner
table are physically unable to lif a salt shaker. In most contexts, the
addressee could only believe the speaker to be obeying the
Cooperative Principle if the question is not meant as a simple request
for information, i.e., if the intended illocutionary force is something
other than a question.
Having recognized this question as an indirect speech act, how does
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the addressee fgure out what the intended illocutionary force is?
Searle’s solution is essentially the Gricean method of calculating
implicatures, enriched by an understanding of the felicity conditions for
the intended speech act. Searle (1975) suggests that the addressee
might reason as follows: “This question is not relevant to the current
topic of conversation, and the speaker cannot be in doubt about my
ability to pass the salt. I believe him to be cooperating in the
conversation, so there must be another point to the question. I know
that a preparatory condition for making a request is the belief that the
addressee is able to perform the requested action. I know that people
often use salt at dinner, sharing a common saltshaker which they pass
back and forth as requested. Since he has mentioned a preparatory
condition for requesting me to perform this action, I conclude that this
request is what he means to communicate.”
So it is important that we understand indirect speech acts as a kind
of conversational implicature. However, they are different in certain
respects from the implicatures that Grice discussed. For example, Grice
stated that implicatures are “non-detachable”, meaning that semantically
equivalent sentences should trigger the same implicatures in the same
context. However, as we noted above, this is not always true with
indirect speech acts. In the current example, Searle points out that the
question Are you able to pass me the salt?, although a close paraphrase
of Can you pass me the salt?, is much less likely to be interpreted as a
request (#Are you able to please pass me the salt?). How can we account
for this?
Searle argues that, while the meaning of the indirect speech act is
calculable or explainable in Gricean terms, the forms of indirect speech
acts are partly conventionalized. Searle refers to these as “conventions
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of usage”, in contrast to normal idioms like kick the bucket (for ‘die’)
which we might call conventions of meaning or sense.
Conventionalized speech acts are different from normal idioms in
several important ways. First, the meanings of normal idioms are not
calculable or predictable from their literal meanings. The phrase kick the
bucket contains no words which have any component of meaning
relating to death.
Second, when an indirect speech act is performed, both the literal and
primary acts are understood to be part of what is meant. In Searle’s
terms, the primary act is performed “by way of” performing the literal
act. We can see this because, as illustrated in (10), the hearer could
appropriately reply to the primary act alone (A1), the literal act alone
(A2), or to both acts together (A3). Moreover, in reporting indirect
speech acts, it is possible (and in fact quite common) to use matrix
verbs which refer to the literal act rather than the primary act, as
illustrated in (11–12).

(10) Q: Can you (please) tell me the

time?
A1: It’s almost 5:30.
A2: No, I’m sorry, I can’t; my watch has
stopped. A3: Yes, it’s 5:30.

(11) a. Will you (please) pass me the salt? b. He

asked me whether I would pass him the salt.

(12) a. I want you to leave now (please).

b. He told me that he wanted me to
leave.

In this way indirect speech acts are quite similar to other

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conversational implicatures, in that both the sentence meaning and the
pragmatic inference are part of what is communicated. They are very
different from normal idioms, which allow either the idiomatic meaning
(the normal interpretation), or the literal meaning (under unusual
circumstances), but never both together. The two senses of a normal
idiom are antagonistic, as we can see by the fact that some people use
them to form (admittedly bad) puns:

(13) Old milkmaids never die – they just kick the bucket.

Birner (2012/2013: 196) points out that under Searle’s view, indirect
speech acts are similar to generalized conversational implicatures. In
both cases the implicature is part of the default interpretation of the
utterance; it will arise unless it is blocked by specific features in the
context, or is explicitly negated, etc. We have to work pretty hard to
create a context in which the question Can you pass the salt? would
not be interpreted as a request, but it can be done.
Searle states that politeness is one of the primary reasons for using
an indirect speech act. Notice that all of the sentences in (7), except
perhaps (7f), sound more polite than the simple imperative: Give me
some tea! He suggests that this motivation may help to explain why
certain forms tend to be conventionalized for particular purposes.

Indirect speech acts across languages

Searle states that his analysis of indirect speech acts as conventions of

usage helps to explain why the intended illocutionary force is
sometimes preserved in translation, and sometimes not. (This again is
very different from the idiomatic meanings of normal idioms, which
generally do not survive in translation.) He points out that literal
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translations of a question like Can you help me? would be understood
as requests in French and German, but not in Czech. The reason that the
intended force is sometimes preserved in translation is that indirect
speech acts are calculable. They are motivated by Gricean principles
which are widely believed to apply to all languages, subject to a
certain amount of cultural variation. The reason that the intended force
is not always preserved in translation is that indirect speech acts are
partly conventionalized, and different languages may choose to
conventionalize different specific forms.
It is often difficult for non-native speakers to recognize and
correctly interpret indirect speech acts in a second language.
Wierzbicka (1985: 175), for example, states: “Poles learning English
must be taught the potential ambiguity of would you– sentences, or
why don’t you– sentences, just as they must be taught the polysemy of
the word bank.” This has been a major area of research in second
language acquisition studies, and most scholars agree that this is a
significant challenge even for advanced learners of another language.
There is less agreement concerning whether the same basic
principles govern the formation of indirect speech acts in all
languages. Numerous studies have pointed out cross-linguistic
differences in the use of specific linguistic features, preferred or
conventionalized patterns for specific speech acts, cultural variation in
ways of showing politeness, contexts where direct vs. indirect speech
acts are preferred, etc.

Searle (1975: 69) suggests that a doctor might ask such a question to
check on the progress of a patient with an injured arm.

Wierzbicka (1985) argues that Searle’s analysis of indirect speech

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acts is not universally applicable, but reflects an Anglo-centric bias.
She points out for example that English seems to be unusual in its
strong tendency to avoid the use of the imperative verb form. The
strategy of expressing indirect commands via questions is so strongly
preferred that it is no longer a marker of politeness; it is frequently
used (at least in Australian English) in impolite speech laced with
profanity, obscenity, or other expressives indicating anger, contempt,
etc. Kalisz (1992) agrees with many of Wierzbicka’s specific
observations concerning differences between English and Polish, but
argues that Searle’s basic claims about the nature of indirect speech acts
are not disproven by these differences.
It is certainly true that there is a wide range of variation across
languages in terms of what counts as an apology, promise, etc., and in
the specific features that distinguish appropriate from inappropriate
ways for performing a particular speech act.

In a similar vein, Egner (2002) shows that in many African cultures, a

promise only counts as a binding commitment when it is repeated.
Clearly there are many significant differences across languages in the
conventional features of speech acts; but this does not necessarily mean
that the underlying system which makes it possible to recognize and
interpret indirect speech acts is fundamentally different.
Searle’s key insights are that indirect speech acts are a type of
conversational implicature, and that the felicity conditions for the
intended act play a crucial role in the interpretation of these
implicatures. Given our current state of knowledge, it seems likely that
these basic principles do in fact hold across languages. But like most
cross-linguistic generalizations in semantics and pragmatics, this

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hypothesis needs to be tested across a wider range of languages.

Conclusion

A speech act is an action that speakers perform by speaking. Languages

typically have grammatical ways of distinguishing sentence types
(moods) corresponding to at least three basic speech acts: statements,
commands, and questions. When the speaker’s intended speech act (or
illocutionary force) corresponds to the sentence type that is chosen, a
direct speech act is performed. In addition, the declarative sentence
type is generally used for a special class of direct speech acts which we
call explicit performatives. When the speaker’s intended speech act
does not correspond to the sentence type that is chosen, an indirect
speech act is performed. Indirect speech acts are conversational
implicatures, and their interpretation can be explained in Gricean
terms; but in addition, they are often partly conventionalized.
All speech acts are subject to felicity conditions, that is, conditions that
must be fulfilled in order for the speech act to be felicitous (i.e., valid
and appropriate). Successful indirect speech acts typically involve literal
sentence meanings which state or query the felicity conditions for the
primary (i.e., intended) speech act.

Discussion exercises

A. Identifying indirect speech acts.

B. Identify both the literal and primary
act in each of the following indirect speech acts (square brackets
are used

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 to provide [context]):

1. [S1: My motorcycle is out of the shop; let’s go for another

ride.] S2: Do you think I’m crazy?

2. [senior citizen dialing the police:] I’m alone in the house and
someone is trying to break down my door.

3. [S1: I’m really sorry for bumping into your car.]

S2: Don’t give it another thought.

B. Indirect speech act strategies. Assume that the felicity

conditions for
offers are essentially the same as for promises. (The main
difference is that an offer does not count as a commitment on the
part of the speaker unless and until the addressee accepts it.) Try to
make up one example of a sentence that would work as an indirect
offer for each of the following strategies:

1. by querying the preparatory conditions of the direct offer;

2. by stating the preparatory conditions of the direct offer;
3. by stating the propositional content of the direct offer;
4. by stating the sincerity condition of the direct offer.

Homework exercises

A. Performatives. State whether the following utterances would be

naturally interpreted as explicit performatives, and explain the evidence
which supports your conclusion.

1. I acknowledge you as my legal heir.

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 Model answer
I hereby acknowledge you as my legal heir is quite
natural. The verb is simple present tense, referring to a
single event with no habitual meaning. It is active
indicative with first person singular subject. Therefore
this utterance is an explicit performative.

2. Smith forbids you to communicate with his daughter.

3. I request the court to reconsider my petition.
4. I’m promising Mabel to take her to a movie next week.
5. I promised Mabel to take her to a movie next week.
6. I expect that you will arrive on time from now on.

7. You are advised that anything you say may be used as evidence
against you.

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167
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Semantics: A course book, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
3. R. Kroeger. 2018. Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and
pragmatics. Textbooks in Language Sciences 5. course book, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press.
4. Peccei, Jean Stilwell. (1999) Pragmatics. Routledge.
5. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan: AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE ON
SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS, 2018