hi everyone welcome thanks for joining

me

in this video i will be discussing

semantics which has to do with the study

of

meaning in terms of words phrases and

sentences

specifically in this video i'll be

talking about lexical semantics which

has to do with the study

of words now in this video i'll be

covering several concepts including

lexical relations componential analysis

and prototype theory

first let's clarify the scope of

semantics itself

semantics is concerned with denotational

meaning

rather than connotational meaning

meaning that semantics is focused on

what something means rather than how it

is used in context

that is the domain of pragmatics now

for example consider this image is this

a chair

what about this or this

there's no easy answer to those

questions and hopefully by the end of

this video you will see that it largely

depends on the person being asked that

question

so first let's talk about lexical

relations

now lexical relations has to do with the

meanings of words in relationship

to one another and there are several of

these that we'll talk about first let's

talk about

synonymy synonyms are words with similar

meanings

such as big and large small

and little doctor and physician each

pair

there has very similar meanings so they

might be different words but they have

very

similar meanings those are synonyms now

we could also talk about

antonyms which is the opposite because

antonyms are words that have

opposite meanings there's actually two

types of antonyms

there's gradable antonymy and

non-gradable antonymy

gradable antonyms are those in which

there's a kind of graded difference it's

something that you could imagine on a

continuum or a spectrum

for example wide and narrow something

could be kind of wide and kind of narrow

it's unclear where one stops and the

other begins

similarly with kind of short and kind of

tall

it's unclear where one stops and the

other begins

so non-gradable antonyms are different

they

they are either one or the other and

they fail the

kind of test so you can either be

alive or dead you can't really say

something is kind of alive or kind of

dead

never mind all the zombies that you've

seen in movies if you think about the

meaning of something

as a living being it's either alive or

it's dead

similarly somebody could either be

married or unmarried

you're either one or the other there is

no kind of

in-between it's not a graded category

those are non-gradable antonyms

next we can talk about hypotony and

hypotonomy

is when the meaning of one form is

actually included
in the meaning of a larger other form so

for example

a daisy is a hyponym of flour a carrot

is a hyponym of vegetable

aspen is a hyponym of tree a cat

is a hyponym of a vomit maker these are

all examples of the meaning

of one word being included in the

meaning of a larger category

now we can next talk about homophony and

homophony are forms that

sound the exact same and that's what the

word means homo as in same and

phone same sound but they are actually

spelled differently

and they have very unrelated meanings so

we could talk about

c the c is in the body of water and we

could talk about c

as in the action that you perform with

the eyes to look we could also talk

about

bear as in being naked and we could talk

about bear

as in the creature that you don't want

to encounter in the woods

these are homophones these are often

confused with homo nyms

so that means same name homonym

so homonyms are forms that sound the

same and they

are spelled the same but they have

unrelated meanings

so for example consider the word uh bank

as in the side of a river and bank as in

a financial institution

they spell this they're spelled the same

they sound the same but they have very

unrelated meanings we could also talk

about

a pen as in a writing instrument and a

pen

as in a small enclosed space where we

might keep livestock or

unruly children in both of those

examples again we're talking about forms

that are the exact

same they're spelled the same they sound

the same but

unrelated meanings now we could talk

about

polysemy and polysimi has to do with

words

that are the same they

they're spelled the same they sound the

same but they have

related meanings often based on metaphor

so for example consider the foot as in

an anatomical part but we could also

talk about the foot of a table

or the foot of a mountain so using the

metaphor here of the anatomical part

that's sort of the start the source for

us to understand that

it's the part of the table that's

holding the rest of the table up

or the same thing with a mountain

similarly we could talk about a mole as

in the

mammal that burrows underground

spends most of its life in the

subterranean environment and we could

also talk about

a mole as in a spy or somebody who's

been planted for the purpose of

espionage

that's sort of using a metaphorical

relationship with the animal because it

is

a mole as in a human being a spy is

perceived as being hidden

or unseen that's polysemy the pali

meaning many

and seem meaning meaning so many

meanings

next we could talk about metonymy and

metonymy is really interesting because

it's a big category

but it's really the idea that you're

referring to one thing

based on some close relationship to

another thing

and this could be in terms of

association like for example when

a server says table 14 needs water

of course table 14 doesn't need anything

it's an inanimate object

but it is used to refer to the customer

who is seated

at that table they're the ones who need

water so it's based on association

but we could also talk about metonymy in

terms of

referring to a container to talk about

the contents

like when for example i say i ate the

whole bag

i didn't literally eat the bag if i did

i wouldn't be making this video i would

be in the hospital so i'm just

referring to bag to talk about the

container the chips that are inside of

it for example

but we could also talk about metonymy in

terms of a part

whole relationship where for example a

captain might say

on a boat all hands on deck that means

that the people themselves they have to

go up and do work

they have to be on deck but we're just

picking out one salient feature of the

human being

the hand to refer to the whole body so

incidentally that last example of a part

whole relationship is often called

synecdoche

and many scholars treat metonymy and

synecdoche as two separate ideas

and also incidentally if you're really

interested in seeing a great example of

synecdoche on film i encourage you to

watch synecdoche new york

it's a fantastic movie and it really

provides a cinematic display

of this concept of a part whole

relationship and i think philip seymour

hoffman's hoffman's

best role anyway i digress so

now let's talk about confidential

analysis

componential analysis involves analyzing

the meaning of words based on

certain identifiable semantic features

so for example we can take the word bird

and we can assign

a number of semantic features to it

based on what we see in the real world

that for example

birds have feathers they may sing songs

and they can

fly this is not an exact exhaustive list

of course it's just

a really short and simple list but this

is probably what we most identify with

birds

right so this is really useful for

differentiating the meaning of the word

bird to compare compared to other

critters in the animal kingdom such as a

dog

because a dog has none of these things

but this approach is not without its

problems

so as you may have noticed there is a

reliance here on binary categorization

and that means that something either is

or is not a member of a category

and that's kind of a problem because

while a robin may sing

songs it may have feathers and it may

fly what about a penguin

a penguin has none of these things yet

we still call it a

bird so this actually brings us to

prototype theory which addresses some of

the problems with confidential analysis

prototype theory addresses some of the

problems with componential analysis

namely its reliance on binary semantic

features because

prototype theory instead looks at

meaning as

a lot of gray area it's a scaled

idea here so it's not as if something

either is or

is not a member of a category it's

whether or not something

is or is not a best representation of

that category

so all of this really started back in

the 1970s with the work of eleanor roche

who revolutionized the figure the field

of cognitive psychology and semantics in

linguistics

by looking at meaning in this way rather

than in terms of a traditional

uh aristotelian or coming from aristotle

approach in which

something either is or is not a member

of a category

so now we can return to this example of

a bird

and not look at it in terms of its

semantic features but

look at it from a prototype perspective

and we can do this through a brief

thought experiment so

if i ask you what is your birdiest bird

that might sound like a strange question

but i am not asking what is your

favorite bird

rather i'm asking when i say the word

bird what type of bird

appears in your mind now depending on

who you

are and your immediate environment you

might say

a robin or a sparrow a hawk

perhaps an eagle but you're not likely

to say

a penguin or an emu an ostrich or

a roadrunner all of those are of course

birds but they don't readily possess the

qualities that we

tend to identify with most birds so

some represent some types of birds are

better representations of that category

than

others and this is the idea of prototype

theory

that there are some representatives that

are better for that category than others

similarly i could ask you what is your

fruitiest fruit

another weird question right but i'm not

asking your favorite fruit but when i

say

fruit what type of fruit appears in your

mind

for most people or well depending on

where you are raised but

most americans might say an apple an

orange

a banana but probably you're not going

to say a tomato because even though a

tomato is technically a fruit

it doesn't possess the quality that we

readily associate with fruit which is

sweetness so again some members of a

category are better representatives of

that category

than others so unfortunately prototype

theory is not without its problems

just like with confidential analysis

prototype theory

really works best when we're talking

about concrete objects

such as birds or fruit but it's

less useful when we're talking about

abstract concepts such as fear

and love in which a prototypical member

of that category is more difficult to

conceive of

still prototype theory is really useful

for linguists who take

especially a usage-based approach to the

study of language

because it acknowledges meaning as a

shifting fluid thing

that is also culturally determined so

depending on

where you live you're going to say that

your prototypical fruit or your

prototypical bird

is different than perhaps somebody who

is living in the united states

that's just based on the fruit and the

birds that you see around you in your

immediate environment

so it has its advantages and

disadvantages but i would invite you to

consider prototype theory as an

improvement upon

the older confidential analysis approach

which was based on binary semantic

features

it's more inflexible and rigid okay

that's all for this video i hope that

you found this useful

in the meantime thank you so much for

watching and i'll see you next time

take care