TEACHING PYRAMID

PRAGMATICS

Ho
w?
t? SEMANTICS
a
wh

SYNTAX

MORPHOLOGY

PHONOLOGY

Why?
In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on
what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what
an individual speaker might want them to mean on a
particular occasion. (Yule, 2006)
 Literal use of a word Different associations
e.g., steel instrument, sharp e.g. pain, drugs, etc.
 ODDNESS S

SEMANTIC FEATURES
NP VP
NP
D N V
D N
The hamburger ate the boy

NP VP
NP
D N V D N

The table drinks the coffee.

FEAUTURES OF WORDS (NOUNS)

The………is reading the newspaper.

N [+human]
Semantic AGENT AND THEME
Roles
The boy kicked the ball.

E/A T
The wind blew the man away.

A car ran over the ball.

Instrument and experiencer

The boy cut the rope with an old razor

He drew the picture with a crayon

Instruments
 Instrument and experiencer

Feeling

Perception experiencer

State

The boy feels sad.

 Location, source and goal

Where an entity is… …on the table… location

Where the entity moves from… …from Chicago… source

Where it moves to is… …to New Orleans… goal

Semantic roles
 Semantic roles

The cat […] killed the mouse […].

The girl [….] gave the flowers […] to her mother […].

We can represent these observations in the following way:

KILL [Agent_________________Theme]
GIVE [Agent___________ Theme, Goal]
 Semantic roles
How would you define the set of semantic roles for the following
verbs, using the format illustrated? Are there required roles and
optional roles?

break, build, die, eat, fear, kiss, like, occupy, offer, open, put,
receive, send, sneeze, steal, taste, teach, understand, want, write
 Lexical relations
“We often explain the meanings of words in terms of their relationships. We
characterize the meaning of each word, not in terms of its component
features, but in terms of its relationship to other words.” (Yule, 2012)