Semantics

The meaning of language

Emma
Little intro
meaningful word: filck
meaningless word: blick
meaningful sentences: Emma swims.
meaningless sentences: Swims metaphorical every. (???)
Sometimes two words have the same meaning : sofa and couch
Sometimes two sentences have the same meaning : Emma put off the
meeting. /
Emma put the meeting off.
Sometimes words or sentences have opposite meanings : alive/dead; Emma
swims./ Emma doesn’t swim.
Truth conditions
You know the words that refer to real-world objects (e.g. chair)

and the words that do not refer to actual objects (e.g. unicorn)

you still have a sense of what they mean.

If you know the meaning of the sentence, you know its truth condition.

● In some cases it’s obvious, or redundant. e.g. All bachelors are single.
● In other cases, you need some futher, nonlinguistic knowledge.
e.g. Molybdenum conducts eletricity.
What is Semantics?
The study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, words, phrases,
and sentences is calles semantics.
Subfields:
● Lexical semantics: refers to the meaning of words and the
relationships among words.
● Phrasal or semantical semantics: refers to the meaning of
syntactic units lager than the word.
What is Pragmatics?

The study of how context affects meaning.

example:
“It’s cold in here.”comes to be interpreted as “Close the
window.” in certain situations.
Truth-conditional semantics

knowing the meaning combines syntactically build into the meaning

of the words of a sentence

truth-conditional
semantics
● It often called truth-conditional semantics because
it takes speakers’ knowledge of truth conditions as
basic.

● It also called compositional semantics because it

calculates the truth value of a sentence by
composing the meanings of smaller units.
Truth value
Truth value
If you heard the sentence “Tom swims.”
you know the meaning of the sentence.
Then you will judge the sentence to be true.
Truth value

In the other hand…

Truth value
If you heard the sentence “Tom swims.”
but you believe that Tom never learned to swim.
Then you will judge the sentence to be false.
You will think the speaker is misinformed or lying.
knowing the meaning of sentence can determine under what
condition it is true or false.
Truth value

You don’t need to actually know whether a sentence is

true or false to know its meaning. Knowing the
meaning tells you how to determine the truth value.

● “Copper conducts electricity”

understandable, can determine whether is true or false
● “Swims metaphorical every.”
meaningless, can’t determine whether is true or false
Tautologies
For most sentences, the true or false are in a given situation.
However, some sentences are always true regardless of the circumstances.
They are called Tautologies.
Their truth is guaranteed solely by the meaning of their parts and the way they
are put together
e.g.
“Circles are round.”
“A person who is single is not married.”
Contradictions
Sentences which are always false.
e.g.
“Circles are square.”
“A bachelor is married.”
Entailment
The meaning relation.

entails
Emma swims beautifully. Emma swims.
X

entails
Emma doesn’t swim. Emma doesn’t swim beautifully.
X
Synonymous( or paraphrases)
Two sentences are both true or both false in the same situation.
e.g.
“Emma put off the meeting.” and “Emma postponed the meeting.”
(when one is true and the other must be true and vice versa)

Combine the notion about Entailment with Synonymous…

Two sentence are synonymous if they entail each other.
Contradictory sentences
Whenever one is true, the other is false.
Or there is no situation in which they are both true or both false.
e.g.
“Emma is dead.” and “Emma is alive."
If Emma is alive is true, then the sentence Emma is dead is false.
They have opposite truth value.
Combine the notion about Entailment with Contradictory…
Two sentence are contradictory if one entails the negation of the
other.
e.g.
Emma is alive. entails the negation of Emma is dead.
and vice versa.
Ambiguity
When words or phrases( including sentences) have more than one
meaning, they are ambiguous.
● Lexcial ambiguity: at least one word in a phrase has more than
one meaning.
e.g. This will make you smart.
● Structural ambiguity:
e.g. The boy saw the man with a telescope.
Principle of compositionality

Linguistic expresson is built both on the words it contains and on its

syntactic structure.

combine structurally
meanings meaning of an expression

Principle of compositionality
Compositional Semantics
The meaning of phrase is determined by combining the meanings of words into
meaningful phrases and sentences.

Debby
Semantics Rules
Sentence: Jack swims

Word Meanings

Jack refers to the individual Jack

Swims refers to the set of individuals that swim

Semantic Rule I
TP

NP T

Jack T VP
-pst

swim
Semantic Rule I
TP

NP T

T VP
-pst

If the meaning of NP is a member of the meaning of VP,

then the sentence is true.
Sentence: Jack kissed Laura

Word Meanings

Jack refers to the individual Jack

Laura refers to the individual Laura

kissed refers to the set of pairs of individuals X and Y

 TP

NP T

Jack T VP
+pst

V NP

kiss Laura
 Semantic Rule II
• By applying Semantic Rule II, which
VP
establishes the meaning of VP as a certain

V set of individuals (those who kissed Laura).

V NP • Semantic Rule I gives the meaning of the

sentence to be true whenever the meaning
of Jack is a member of the set (kissed
Laura).
Sentence: Jack swims beautifully

● The meaning of beautifully reduces the set of individuals who swim to

the smaller set of those who swim beautifully.

● Any situation that make Jack swims beautifully true necessarily makes
Jack swims true.

● Hence, Jack swims beautifully entails Jack swims.

When compositionality goes awry
Angella
Anomaly
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• Semantic violation
• Semantically anomalous
Uninterpretable words
● Words that have no meaning

“Twas briling, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
Uninterpretable words
He took his vorpal sword in hand

He took his sword, which was vorpal, in hand.

It was in his hand that he took his vorpal sword.

Assuming that vorpal means the same thing in the three sentences, you
can decide that the sense—the truth conditions—of the three sentences
are identical.
Semantic violations in poetry
a grief ago (in Dylan Thomas’s phrase)

a week ago *a table ago

an hour ago *a dream ago
a month ago *a mother ago

ago is used with words specified by some temporal features.

 Semantic violations in poetry
● a grief ago (in Dylan Thomas’s phrase)

● A durational feature to grief for poetic effect

● While a grief ago is anomalous, it evokes certain emotions
● Breaking the rules creates the desired imagery
Mataphor
Allen
Metaphor

. When what appears to be an anomaly is nevertheless understood in

terms of a meaningful concept, the expression becomes a metaphor.

⇒ there is no strict line between

anomalous and metaphorical expressions.

. Metaphorical use of language is language creativity at its highest.

Metaphor

. Metaphors may have a literal meaning and their metaphorical meaning.

. To interpret a metaphor, we need to understand the individual words, the literal

meaning of the whole expression, and facts about the world.

Ex: Time is money.

⇒ the metaphors take the abstract concept of time and treat it as a concrete
object of value.
Metaphor

● Metaphor has a strong cultural component.

Ex: “ I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratched.”

— from Shakespeare

⇒ Shakespeare’s society commonly depicts “Fortune” as a woman.

Idioms
Angela
•Because the words (or morphemes) of a language are arbitrary (not predictable by
rules), they must be listed in a mental lexicon.

•Languages also contain many phrases whose meanings are not predictable on the basis
of the meaning of the individual words.

•Such expressions are called idioms, or idiomatic phrases.

Usual semantic rules for combining meanings do not apply
•Idioms act very much like individual morphemes in that they are not
decomposable, but have a fixed meaning that must be learned.

•Idioms tend to be frozen in form and hence do not readily undergo rules that
change word order or substitution of their parts.
Example
• Same structure
1. She put her foot in her mouth.
2. She put her bracelet in her drawer.

• Sentence 2 is clearly related to :

3. The drawer in which she put her bracelet was her own.
4. Her bracelet was put in her drawer.
• The idiomatic sense of sentence 1 is lost in sentence 5 and 6
(1. She put her foot in her mouth.)
5. The mouth in which she put her foot was her own.
6. Her foot was put in her mouth.
• Substituting hand for foot → lose the idiomatic meaning

• put one's foot in one's mouth : to say something by accident that embarrasses or upsets someone
Exceptions
•Some idioms allow their parts to be removed.

The FBI kept tabs on radicals.

Tabs were kept on radicals by the FBI.
Radicals were kept tabs on by the FBI.
• Idioms often lead to humor.
• He ate his hat.
• What did the doctor tell the vegetarian about his surgically
implanted
heart valve from a pig?
That it was okay as he didn’t “eat his heart out.”
Idioms may even show disrespect for syntax
•deep six
Containing parts that are never used as verbs, is itself a word meaning
“to put the kibosh on”

•Drop the ball (to make a mistake)

If the person in charge doesn’t drop the ball, then he/she has “dropped the ball.”
And if that person does indeed drop the ball, then he/she has not “dropped the
ball.”
•Although all languages have idioms, they rarely if ever translate word from one
language to another.
e.g.
“Kick the bucket” as meaning “to die”
(The same combination of words in Spanish)
“patear el cubo” has only the literal meaning of “striking a specific bucket with a
foot”
Lexical semantics (Word Meanings)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87854i 18:16-19:28;
22:57-23:25

Meaning of most sentences: Semantic rules

Meanings of words: Conventional
Theories of Word Meaning
Reference: meaning of a word or expression,
associate with the object it refers to (the word
jack)
Referent: the real-world object (The person Jack)
Ziyon saw Michael was a happy swimmer.
NPs:(refer to Michael)
● a happy swimmer
● my friend
● that guy
● him
NPs:(refer to Ziyon)
● I
● You
More to the meanings
● No baby swims has NPs, but it is not meaningless.
● Superman and Clark Kent have the same reference,
but substitution of either one will take away its
truth value from true to false.
● Ex. Superman is a hero vs. Clark Kent is a hero.
● Ex. Tsai Ing-wen vs. the President of Taiwan
Sense
Speakers know the meanings of many words that have no
real-world referents (Ex. hobbits, unicorns, and Harry Potter, of,
and by, will, or may) Part of the meaning of a word
is the mental image it conjures
However… up.

What about very, if and every?

oxygen vs. nitrogen?
Conclusion
Reference is associated with its referent
Sense contains the information needed to complete the
association and suggest properties that the referent may
have.
 Lexical Relations
symnonyms / antonyms / homonyms / polysemous / hyponyms

Joy
Synonyms
→ words that have the same meaning
ex:sofa, couch

→ After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, many French words of

Latin origin entered the language, giving rise to synonymous pairs
ex: English: heal Latin: recuperate
English: send Latin: transmit
Antonyms
→ words that are opposite in meaning

Complementary antonyms:
alive/dead, present/absent, awake/asleep

Gradable pairs: no absolute scale

big/small, hot/cold, fast/slow, happy/sad

Relational antonyms: display symmetry in their meaning

give/receive, buy/sell, employer/employee
Homonyms (or homophones)
→ words that have diferent meanings but are pronounced the same
ex: bear and bare

Polysemous
→ words with multiple meanings related conceptually or historically
ex: diamond: the geometric shape; a baseball field

Hyponyms
→ show the relationship between a general term and specific instances of it
ex: red is a hyponym of color = color has hyponym of red
lion is a hyponym of animal = animal has hyponym of lion
Semantic
Feature
Joy
Semantic Features

→ Properties that are part of word meanings and reflect our knowledge
about what words mean

ex1: big has the semantic feature “about size”

red has the semantic feature “about color”
— so the two cannot be antonyms

ex2: The assasin killed Putin

The semantic features of “assassin” : assassins must be human
and kill important people
Evidence for Semantic Features

Speech errors, or “slips of the tongue” provide evidence for semantic

features because the accidentally uttered word shares semantic features
with the intended word:

nose and neck, gums and tongues all share the property of being body
parts
early, late, and young all have to do with time
Semantic Features and
Grammar
Claire
Semantic Features of Nouns

→ The same semantic feature may be shared by many words.

“Female” is a semantic feature.

e.g. tigress hen maiden woman

doe mare vixen widow ewe

→ The words in the last two columns are also distinguished by

the semantic feature “human.”

e.g. doctor dean professor

teenager bachelor parent
Semantic Features of Nouns
In some languages, nouns occur with classifiers, grammatical
morphemes that indicate the semantic class of the noun.

In Swahili,
→ A noun that has the semantic feature “human” is prefixed
with m- if singular and wa- if plural.
e.g. mtoto(child), watoto(children)

→ A noun that has the semantic feature “artifact” is prefixed

with the classifiers ki if singular and vi if plural.
e.g. kiti(chair), viti(chairs)
Semantic Features of Nouns
Semantic properties may have syntactic and semantic effects.

→ The kinds of determiners that a noun may occur with are

controlled by whether it is a “count” noun or a “mass” noun.
Semantic Features of Nouns
Different languages may treat the same object differently.

→ In English, the words hair, furniture, and spaghetti are mass

nouns. However, in Italian,these words are count nouns.
Semantic Features of Nouns

→ Even within a particular language we can have

different words —count and mass— to describe the
same object or substance.

In English,
shoes (count) and footwear (mass)
coins (count) and change (mass)
Semantic Features of Verbs
Verbs also have semantic features as part of their meaning.
→ “Cause” is a feature of verbs.

→ “Go” is a feature of verbs that mean a change in location

or possession.
Semantic Features of Verbs
Verbs can either describe events or states.

→ Eventive sentences still sound natural when passivized,

when expressed progressively, when used as imperatives, and
with certain adverbs.
Semantic Features of Verbs
Verbs can either describe events or states.

→ The stative sentences seem peculiar, if not ungrammatical

or anomalous, when cast in the same form. (The preceding “?”
indicates the strangeness.)
Semantic Features of Verbs
Negation is ungrammatical in certain simple affirmative
sentences, but grammatical in corresponding negative ones.

Such expressions are called negative polarity items because

they require a negative element such as “not” elsewhere in the
sentence.
Semantic Features of Verbs

“Doubt” and “refuse” have “negative” as a component of their

meaning. “Doubt” may be analyzed as ‘think that not,’ and
“refuse” as ‘intend not to.’
The negative feature in the verb allows the negative polarity
item ever to occur grammatically without the overt presence
of "not".
Argument Structure
and
Thematic Roles
Ann
Argument Structure
The various NPs that occur with a verb are its arguments.
→ Intransitive verbs have one argument:
the subject
e.g. The baby was sleeping.
→ Transitive verbs have two arguments:
the subject and direct object
e.g. I found you.
→ Ditransitive verbs have three arguments:
the subject, direct object, and indirect object
e.g. John threw Mary a ball.
Thematic Roles
Relations such as agent and theme are called
thematic roles.

1. The boy rolled a red ball.

agent theme
the “doer” the “undergoer”
Thematic Roles
Goal: the endpoint of a change in location or
possession.

2. The boy threw the red ball to the girl.

agent theme goal

destination
Thematic Roles
Source: where the action originates
Experiencer: one receiveing sensory input
Instrument: the means used to accomplish the action

3. Professor Snape awakened Harry Potter with his wand.

source experiencer instrument
Thematic Roles
The particular thematic roles assigned by a verb can be traced
back to components of the verb’s meaning.
● Throw, buy, and fly contain a feature “go” expressing a
change in location or possession.
→ The feature “go” is thus linked to the presence of the thematic
roles of theme, source, and goal.

● Awaken or frighten have a feature “affects mental state”.

→ One of its arguments takes on the thematic role of experiencer.
Theta Assignment
● = thematic role assignment
● is connected to syntactic structure.
4. John sold the book to Mary.
agent theme goal (endpoint of the transfer)

5. Mary bought the book from John.

agent theme source (initiator of the transfer)

Buy / Sell are relational opposites.

→ Both contain the semantic feature “go” (the transfer of goods
or services) and they differ only in the direction of transfer.
Theta Assignment
● Thematic roles are always assigned to the same d-structure
position.
6. The dog bit the stick.
d-structure
agent theme
The stick was bitten by the dog. s-structure
theme agent
7. The trainer gave the dog a treat. d-structure
goal theme
The trainer gave a treat to the dog. s-structure
theme goal
Theta Assignment
● Thematic roles may remain the same in sentences that are not
paraphrases.
entails
9. The boy opened the door with the key.
agent theme instrument
10. The key opened the door.
instrument theme
11. The door opened.
theme
 Pragmatics
The study of the extra-truth-conditional meaning, not
literal meaning but a part of discourse.

David
Pronouns and other deictic words

e.g. lay a bet

a. Extremely explicit, unnatural discourse.

b. Natural. We accustomed to using these shortcuts.

Pronouns and other deictic words
a. Context- independent meanings

eg. December 12, 2012, Arnold, I.

b. Context- dependent meanings

eg. 1. here and there: locations as references.

2. then and now: temporal reference.
3. he and she: human references.
Pronouns and other deictic words
a. Reference resolution
i. Linguistic context: anything that has been uttered in the
discourse prior to or along with the pronoun.

b. situational context
i. Anything non-linguistic.
ii. Gesture.
Pronouns and linguistic context
a. reflexive pronoun: -self -selves
i. Is a sort of pronoun that needs to receive its reference
via linguistic context.
ii. Must match the person, gender, and number of its
antecedent.
b. Antecedent
i. Another NP.
ii. Co-refer with reflexive pronoun.
iii. Must precede the reflexive pronoun.
Implicature
a. An implicature is a great example of extra-truth-
conditional meaning.

eg. John: Do you know how to change a tire?

Jane: I know how to call a tow truck.

eg. Dana: Do these slacks make my butt look big?

Jamie: You look great in chartreuse.
Maxims of Conversation

● British philosopher H. Paul Grice formulated it.

● Speakers of all language follow to cooperative
principles for communicating called maxims of
conversation.
Maxims of Quality: Truth
● Do not say what you believed to be false.
● Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Quantity: Information
● Make your contribution as informative as required.
● Do nnot make your contribution more informative than is required.

Relation: Relevance
● Be relevant.

Manner: Clarity
● Avoid obscurity of expression.
● Avoid ambiguity.
● Avoid unnecessary wordiness.
● Be orderly.
Dad: Very nice girl, what do you think, Hon?
Mom: The turkey sure was moist.

➔ example of the Maxim of Relavance being flouted.

➔ Add “Toni baked it every ten minutes” to weaken that Mom dislikes
Toni.
“It’s cold in here.”
––say this to a person standing by an open window might
be interpreted as a request to close it

➔ the maxim of “relevance” or “say neither more nor less

than the discourse needed” explains it.
The theory of speech acts

We can use language to do things.

e.g. lay a bet

issue warning
christen boats
place name in nomination
offer congratulations
swear testimony
Presupposition
Jason
Presupposition
Situation that must exist for utterances to be appropriate are
called presupposition.
e.g. I am sorry that the team lose.
“It must be true that the team lost.”
Presupposition hold up under negation.
e.g. I am NOT sorry that the team lose.
“still need the team to have lost.”
Presupposition
Presupposition are different from implicatures.
e.g. If the team didn’t lose after all
“I’m sorry that the team lost.” → inappropriate
Presupposition are differ from entailments.
e.g. Jon killed Jim entails Jim died.
No such entailment follows from Jon did not kill Jim.
Speech Acts
Jason
The theory of speech acts

We can use language to do things.

e.g. lay a bet

issue warning
christen boats
place name in nomination
offer congratulations
swear testimony
Performative verbs

I warn you that there is a sheepdog in the closet.

Other performative verbs: bet, promise, nominate, etc.

Using performative verb in a sentence adds something extra

over and above the statement.
Performative sentences

I bet you five dollars the Yankees win.

I dare you to step over this line.
I nominate Batman for mayor of Gotham City.

● the speaker is the subject.

● affirmative & declarative
● in the present tense
illocutionary force

It may accompany circumstances without overt performative verbs.

e.g. I’ve got five bucks that says you’re wrong.
Summary
Cathy
Semantics
● The study of linguistic meaning
● lexical semantics→ words and morphemes
compositional semantics→ phrases and sentences
● pragmatics→the study of how context affects meaning
Compositional semantics
build up a sentence by using semantic rules
● know the truth-condition of declarative sentences
● know entailment of a sentence
● know when two sentences are paragraphes or contradictory
● know when a sentence is a tautology or contradiction
● know when a sentence is ambiguous
Compostional semantics
● when larger units does not follow from the meaning of its parts
○ Anomaly: when the pieces do not fit sensibly together
→ colorless green ideas sleep furiously
○ Metaphors: when a anomalous sentence is understood in
a meaningful concept→ time is money
○ Idioms: fixed expression must be learned as a whole unit
→ bring a knife to a gun fight
Lexical semantics
● lexiacal relations: synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms
● Semantic features: such as,
○ noun: count or mass nouns
○ verbs: eventive or stative verbs
● Argument structures of verbs:
○ intransitive, transitive, ditransitive
● Thematic roles of argument:
○ agent; theme; goal; source; instrument; experiencer
Pragmatics
● Literal meaning isn’t the only sort of meaning we use when
we use language to communicate
→ some meaning is extra-truth-conditional, the study of it
is pragmatics.
How speakers can convey meaning without expressing it literally
● by deictic terms→ pronouns, demonstratives, prepositions……
○ context can be used to supplement linguistic meaning, it
may be:
■ linguistic context
■ situational context
● by implicatures→ an implied meaning that does not
semantically entail.
● Maxims of discourse: a general cooperative principle for
communicating properly
● Presuppositions: what must be true for utterances to be
appropriate.
● Speech act: people use language to do things
○ lay bets, issue warning, nominate candidates
Activities
Esther & Fiona
Activities