SEMANTICS

by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen

1
 AMBIGUITIES
I saw him walking by the bank.

We laughed at the colorful ball.

The police were urged to stop drinking by

the fifth.

I said I would file it on Thursday.

2
I cannot recommend visiting professors too
highly.

The license fee for pets owned by senior citizens

who have not been altered is $1.50.

What looks better on a handsome man than a

tux? Nothing!
(Attributed to Mae West)

3
 COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

H. P. Grice said that we should be

communicative, relevant, brief, and
truthful.

QUANTITY: Say neither more nor less

than the discourse requires.

4
RELEVANCE: Be relevant.

MANNER: Be brief and orderly; avoid ambiguity

and obscurity.

QUALITY: Do not lie; do not make unsupported

claims.

NOTE: The characters we remember both from

literature and from real life are the ones who
violate these principles.

5
 DEIXIS
Deictic words get their meanings from
the time, the place, or the persons in
the context:

TIME: after, before, last week, next April,

now, seven days ago, then, that time,
this time, tomorrow, two weeks from
now…
6
PLACE: back, before, behind, front, here, left,
right, that place, there, these parks, this city,
those towers over there, yonder mountains…

PERSON: he, her, hers, him, his, I, it, me, mine,

our, ours, she, their, they, them, us, we, you,
your, yours…

7
 FRAME SEMANTICS
Using Predicate Calculus as a model, Charles Fillmore
devised Case Grammar, in which verbs are classified in
terms of their arguments.

Here, the environment becomes the “case frame.”

Each case frame is thought of as a small abstract scene or

situation.

To understand the semantic structure of the verb, it is

necessary to understand the properties of such
schematized scenes.

8
A verb can be intransitive, linking,
transitive or ditransitive. Although
this is a syntactic notion, it has
important semantic consequences.

Syntactic transitivity involves

Subjects, Subject Complements,
Direct Objects, Indirect Objects
and Object Complements.

9
Fillmore says that If we change from
a syntactic to a semantic bias, we
can say that the “case frame” of a
verb involves the following “Deep
Cases”: Agent, Instrument,
Experiencer, Object, Source, Path,
Goal, Time, Place, Manner, Extent,
Reason, etc.

10
If we do this, we can say that the different types
of verbs have different case frames, so that
the following classifications are not only
semantic, but syntactic as well:

CHANGE VERBS: brighten, demolish

CONTACT VERBS: hit, touch
EXPERIENCE VERBS: see, enjoy
LOCATION VERBS: bottle, button
MOTION VERBS: walk, throw
SYMMETRICAL PREDICATES: resemble
The verbs in each of these categories tend to
have the same “Case Frames” as do the other
verbs in the same category.

11
Lakoff seems to be cementing terminology that has
previously been unstable.

In 1985, Fillmore developed his frame semantics.

Since that time various terms have been proposed

—”Frame” by Minsky, Winograd and Charniak,
“Schema” by Bartlett and Rulmelhart, “Scripts” by
Schank and Abelson, “Global Pattern by de
Beaugrande and Dressler, “Pseudo-text” by Wilks,
“Cognitive Model” by Lakoff, “Experiential
Gestalt” by Lakoff and Johnson, “Base” by
Langacker, “Scenes” by Fillmore, etc.

12
 Gamson & Lasch Frames

1. Metaphors

2. Exemplars such as Historical Examples

3. Catch Phrases

4. Depictions

5. Visual Images or Icons

13
 HOMONOMY VS. POLYSEMY

Two different words that sound or look alike

are called “homonyms.”

Two different senses of a single word are

called “polysemes.”

A “wedding ring,” a “boxing ring,” and a

“bathtub ring” are polysemes, but what
about a ring on a telephone?

14
 HUMPTY DUMPTY LANGUAGE
“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!’”

15
“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.”
(from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass)

16
 IDIOMS
bite your tongue let your hair down
cut it out put your foot in your mouth
eat my hat rake someone over the coals
get a piece of my mind raining cats and dogs
hit the ceiling sell someone down the river
hit it off snap out of it
kick the bucket throw your weight around

17
 IRONY
I’m not kidding.

Literally…
Some of my best friends are…black, gay,
Mexican, women….

To make a long story short.

18
 LEGAL LANGUAGE
Because it has to account for all possibilities,
legal language must be precise and
sometimes a bit redundant. That’s why
lawyers use such terms as “cease and
desist,” or “give and bequeath.”

A sign in the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park,

however, takes this type of language a bit
further:

19
“Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plague,
molest, worry, badger, harry, harass, heckle,
persecute, irk, bullyrag, vex, disquiet, grate,
beset, bother, tease, nettle, tantalize, or ruffle
the animals.”

20
 PRESUPPOSITION
“Fats regretted that he had to pay alimony
to Bessie” presupposes that “Fats had to
pay alimony to Bessie.”

“Fats did not regret that he had to pay

alimony to Bessie” also presupposes that
“Fats had to pay alimony to Bessie.”

21
 SPEECH ACTS
Commissives (Affect Speaker, Subjective)
TYPES: Oath, Offer, Promise

Declaratives (Change the Macrocosmic Social World)

TYPES: Baptism, Marriage

Directives (Change the Microcosmic Social World)

TYPES: Command, Request

Expressives (Feelings of Speaker)

TYPES: Apology, Thanks

22
Interrogatives (Hearer Knows Best)
TYPES: Closed (yes-no), Loaded, Open

Imperatives (Directives) (Affect Hearer)

TYPES: Request, Requirement, Threat, Warning

Performatives (Affect world)

TYPES: Agreement, Appointment, Baptism,
Declaration of Independence, Dedication, Marriage

Representatives (Objective Descriptive Statements)

TYPES: Statement that is either True or False

23
 SYNTAX VS. SEMANTICS
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Chomsky points out that from a syntactic perspective, this

sentence is perfect. But he says it is “meaningless” because
“colorless” cancels out “green” etc.

Chomsky, therefore, wants to exclude such sentences from

discussion.

“Haj Ross and George Lakoff were the first to protest against this
syntactic straitjacket.”

24
 THEMATIC ROLES
Subject, Direct Object and Indirect Object are
syntactically determined. Deep Cases like
Actor, Experiencer, Instrument, and Object
(or Patient) are semantically determined.

Actor = Animate Cause

Experiencer = Animate Effect
Instrument = Inanimate Cause
Object = Inaminate Effect

25
Normally, the most active deep case is
selected as the subject of the
sentence:

The Actor if there is one

If not, the Instrument if there is one

If there is no Actor or Instrument, the

Object becomes eligible. Therefore
we have the following:

26
The boy opened the door
with the key.

The key opened the door.

The door opened.

27
 Non Actors as Subjects
The cake smelled good.

The cake tasted good.

The painting looked great.

The bell sounded loud.

The fur felt soft.

28
 MORE TYPICAL SENTENCES

Someone smelled the cake.

Someone tasted the cake.

Someone looked at the painting.

Someone heard the bell.

Someone felt the fur.

29
In an Active Sentence the most
active Deep Case is eligible to
become the Subject and the least
active is eligible to become the
Direct Object.

In a Passive Sentence the least

active Deep Case is eligible to
become the Subject and the most
active case becomes an Object of
the Preposition “by.”
30
But what about converses like “buy” and
“sell,” or “rent to” and “rent from”?

“John bought the car from Mary” is true if

and only if “Mary sold the car to John”
is true.

“John rented the house to Mary” is true if

and only if “Mary rented the house from
John.”

31
 TRUTH
It’s cold outside. (empirical)

A king is a ruler. (linguistic)

Life is a box of chocolates (general metaphorical)

Saphire Lake (specific metaphorical)

Happy Birthday! (speech act: wish)

32
John Saw Mary. = Mary was seen by John.

John broke the window with a hammer. = The

window broke.

John bought a car from Mary. = Mary sold a car

to John.

John rented the house from Mary. = Mary rented

the house to John.

Half of the students in the class are boys. = Half

of the students in the class are not boys.

33
John and Mary had a child = Mary
and John had a child.

Getting married and having a child is

better than having a child and
getting married. =/= Having a child
and getting married is better than
getting married and having a child.

34
I got drunk and crashed my car =/= I
crashed my car and got drunk.

Mary is a nice girl and she takes

swimming lessons. ct. Mary is a
nice girl but she is poor at tennis.

35
Jacob Mey says that
communication is not a
matter of logic or truth, but
of cooperation.

36
 SNIGLETS

Rich Hall invented the term “sniglet” for

a word that should be in the dictionary,
but isn’t.

Elbonics (el bon’ iks) n. The actions of

two people maneuvering for one
armrest in a movie theater

37
• Esso Asso (eso a’so): The person
behind you in a right-hand turn lane
who cuts through the Esso Station

• Pupkus (pup’kus) n. The moist residue

left on a window after a dog presses its
nose to it

• Phonesia (fo nee’ zhuh) n. The

affliction of dialing a phone number
and forgetting whom you were calling
just as they answer

38
39
 Web Site on Semantics:
The Turbo Encabulator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLDgQg6bq7o

40