UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION TO
ENGLISH SEMANTICS
For 3rd year Student

2020
How do you know if a language learner knows the
meaning of a word?
• Knows what the word collocates with.
• Knows its definition: intensional meaning
• Knows homophones.    bare - bear / be@ /
• Knows homographs: tear (v) – tear (n)
• Knows its homonym.
• Knows its synonym/ its antonym
• Can identify its referent: extensional meaning
• Can use it in sentence: category, subcategory.
• Able to "name" an object, event, idea, ...
• Knows its polysemy.
• Knows its semantic features = similarities and
differences of words.
• Morphemes: smallest meaningful units 09/06/21
• Lexical - Functional/Grammatical
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How do you know if a language learner knows the
meaning of a sentence?
• Literal meaning: semantics
• Can respond properly - pragmatic (intended meaning)
• Know its truth value: analytic - synthetic [background
knowledge]
• How to contradict a statement = Its contradiction.
• Knows its entailment.
• Knows the presupposition of a sentence
• Know how to paraphrase a sentence
• Knows that a sentence is ambiguous
• Interpret the intonation = prosodic features = supra
segmental
• Can answer a question. (see below)
• Performs the speech act and responds to the intended
meaning of sentences
• Knows if a sentence is anomalous = makes sense. =
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 SEMANTICS
Unit 1 ABOUT SEMANTICS
A. What is semantics?
Two senses for semantics:
the study of meaning
of linguistic expressions

Apart from
Including the concern of
Features of the context
Features of the context
Conventions of language use
Conventions of language use
The goals of the speaker
The goals of the speaker
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B. Meaning:
1. Definition:
Two components of Meaning:

Reference Sense
anything in the system of paradigmatic
referential realm and syntagmatic
denoted by a word relationships between
or expression lexical units

Referential realm: anything, real or

imagined, that a person may talk about.
Paradigmatic Relationship: The set of substitutional relationships
a linguistic unit has with other units in a specific context
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2. The use of the verb MEAN

LINGUISTIC LINGUISTIC
PERSONAL REFERENTIAL
SUBJECT MEAN OBJECT
I/ You/ He Thing/ person
This word/ it clever

PersonalI subject MEAN that man over

Referential there
object

“Cute”
Linguistic subject MEANS very clever
Linguistic object
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3. Sentence meaning & speaker meaning
affected by
Literal meaning of the speaker
goal & will Intended
words counted as
Linguistic/ dictionary meaning
meaning of the speaker

?
 It’s hot. (high temperature) 
4. Informative meaning vs Communicative meaning
It’s hot. (high temperature) Implicature?
Hello! Greeting
5. A Two-level analysis:
from literal meaning to communicative meaning.
E.g. This suitcase is killing me. PR.p.6
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4. The meaning of meaning
Different meanings of the words ‘mean/ meaning’
John means to write. ‘intends’
A green light means go. ‘indicates’
Health means everything. ‘has importance’
His look was full of meaning. ‘special import’
What is the meaning of life? ‘point, purpose’
What does ‘capitalist’ mean to you? ‘convey’
What does ‘cornea’ mean? ‘refer to in the world’

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5. Three conceptions of meaning
Words, concepts and things
The ‘semiotic triangle’ of Ogden Richards (1923, p.99):

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C. SOURCES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO STUDY OF MEANING

The study of reference & the study of truth conditions

1. Reference is the study of what objects linguistic
expressions (i.e. words, phrases, sentences, and so on)
refer to.
E.g. Boris is the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Boris & the Prime Minister of Great Britain refer to the
same entity, namely Boris Johnson

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2. Truth conditional semantics
the study of the condition under which a statement can
be judged true or false.
E.g.
Cats are mammals.
Truth conditions also involves truth relations that hold
between sentences.
E.g.
if the sentence Fred picked a rose is true, then the
sentence Fred picked a flower is necessarily true.
Fred picked a rose (T) Fred picked a rose (T)

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 The End of Chapter 1

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