semantics

2022
 Semantics
• Gr. sēmantikos significant sēma a sign
The study of meaning of words, sentences, denotations, connotations,
implications ambiguities.

philosophers or psychologists.
Plato absolute meaning – an element of the true reality – what we call
Platonic ideas)
Aristotle signs reflect reality which does not change, when expressed in
different words,
The Bible: God formed the beasts.... And brought them onto Adam to see
what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof. Genesis 2: 19 => lge was formed
by men, words are names for things.
Lock, Leibnitz.
• at first meaning was studied in purely diachronic terms
• the idea that meaning is absolute survived the recognition that words
are just labels. It still exists.
? Defining
Fish
apparently simple words

France
 France
• France is beautiful
• France is important in the EU
• France beat Germany ?? army, football..
• France voted against the EU constitution
• as a state/ referendum
Ideal (meaning) MAN
Ideal (meaning) MAN
 meaning
1. context independent – static, fixed, stable, “timeless”??
2. context dependent – can be interpreted
• other words/context clarifies
• background/encyclopedic knowledge football; The
cat jumped over the wall.
• settings of the communication, norms, scripts (what
happens in a restaurant, hairdresser’s)
• intentions and interpretations

the child is safe,

the beach is safe
the spade is safe
 meaning Literalism

• John opened the window

• his mouth
• the book
• the briefcase
• the curtains

• the wall
• the wound
• the dam
carpenter, surgeon, sapper

• a bank account
• the conversation
• the meeting

Meaning is not in words, it appears in communication. It is not static but protean, fuzzy and changing.
“Word meanings cannot be pinned down, as if they were dead insects. Instead they flutter around
elusievely like live butterflies (Aitchison 1994: 39-40).
• You shall know a word by the company it
keeps (Firth 1957:11).

• But also the larger context

 subjectivity
our own experience with words.
As I understand it,
You misunderstood me,
I did not mean it like that..
I always thought that it meant...
You put a different meaning into what I said.

What is correct?
we never had the same sort of experience.
how can we establish contact?

• People often say what they do not mean, often they do not what
they say or know what they mean and
• what we hear and understand is another matter.
 context
• There was not a single man at the party.
 meaning
• Semantics deals with context independent meaning.
• Pragmatics deals with relatedness of language and other
facets of life.
• Open the window
• Stuffy here…
• It’s for you, ..the call.
• I am in the bath. .. Can’t pick up
• Semantics studies sense relations – quite many
• Meaning relations – referential – how the word relate to
an object
• I and You problem, I as an object can be I, you, he
 Patrick Hanks

• Words do not have meanings

• They have potential meanings,
determined by context
 THE (Meaning and USE)
• Meaning? Rules
• You are not the John I knew
Danish or Norwegian and Hebrew or Arabic use an affix to show
a particular object or use in a general sense
Latvian or Indonesian can also deploy a demonstrative ‘this’ and
‘that’
Urdu or Japanese – nothing at all.
Origin unclear this, gendered OE articles ?
The letter y in terms like ‘ye olde tea shop’ is from the old rune
Thorn
 THE
• American English ‘I play guitar’
• British English ‘I play the guitar’

• Americans, Jews
• The Americans, the Jews – potentially
negative
• But the – often signals prestige
• Men use the more than women
 Sense relations – word in a vocab

• Synonymy - sameness of meaning. There is hardly true

synonymy, always a touch of difference.
• Antonymy -- oppositeness of meaning.
• Polysemy or multiple meanings.
set (was the most polysemantic word),
put (occupies the longest space in dictionary),
run (645 meanings)
You put a vase on the table now, you used to set..
Run is expanding because more and various machines,
also it is more dynamic, mobile
• Homonymy - identity of form difference in meaning.
 Sense relations
hyponomy – inclusion
apple and orange are hyponyms of fruit
which is their hyperonym or
superordinate word.
Fruit is a hyponym of eatable or tree.
rhubarb or tomato ? are they vegetables or
fruit?

Superordinate word for

fork, woman, river, red, school….
• Marked versus unmarked
nurse; far, tall, thick, warm
Male nurse, 5 foot tall

• Restrictedness
maiden attributively only
speech/voyage/flight
Meaning and Reality
 Meaning and Reality

• film -- when we are moved to tears or frightened – we

know it is a film.
• Does music have a meaning, does it express smth –
can it be put in words?
• Generally how do we know what smth means?
• We have a natural tendency to associate the meaning
of a word with the inner picture we have of it, or with
the real phenomenon that functions as an external
reference.
• Blue; sinij, goluboi. How can an English person know?
How can a Russian person imagine which blue?
• Where does the meaning lie, exist…
 Meaning?
• Concepts can change – car, pen, telephone
• Wittgenstein: the meaning of the word is its use... to understand a
word we must have also an idea of situation and what occurs.
Green
• Leaves
• Colour
• the road is free
• Eco food
There must be regularity of use and public agreement along the lines
of good bad, valuable, exceptional. So it is not a private connection
to mental picture. We have accumulated knowledge about the
meanings in our head.
• Word is a label - sportsman, girl, dill, dog,
• Euphemism, dysphemism South African story
 words that do not exist English (concept and
meaning is understandable)
• Fernweh (G) – a longing for a faraway place, you
have never seen
• Uitwaaien (Dutch) go for a walk in a strong wind
• Desenrascano (Portuguese) – improvising in difficult
situations
• Backpfeifengesicht (G) face in need of a fist
• Janein ?????
• Schadenfreude joy about smb.’ s misfortune
• Korean people always use uri nara (our country) instead of nae nara (my
country). 'Nae nara' sounds weird. It sounds like they own the country,” Lee
said. “Nae anae (my wife) sounds like he is the only person who has a wife
in Korea.”
 Snow innuit
tla – snow
tlapa – powder snow
tlayinq – dirty snow
tlapinti – snow pour/storm
tlapi – summer snow
maxtla – snow that fills the village
ylaipi – tomorrow’s snow
skriniya – snow that does nt reach the ground
sotla – snow, shining in the sun
tlun – snow shining in moonlight
briktla – snow useful/good for building igloos
 Defining
• Complicated -- usually hyponomy is involved,
but different associations with what is what.
• Superordinate word + intrinsic function or
restriction/delimitation
• table
• bed
• head
• cheese
• cup
• god Oh, my God !
 DEFINING
Cup –
• A small round container, usually with a handle, from which liquids
are drunk, esp. hot liquids, such as tea or coffee,
• This container with the liquid in it
• The amount held by one cup

• CUP vs MUG ????

• Newspaper hitting flies

These are easy as they are material simple objects, More abstract --
 DEFINING
• time
• thought
• family
• lips
• white
• smells…
• Non - neutral
• fascism, beauty, God,
• treachery – betrayal – disloyal – not loyal – faith
- supporting
 LIFE 1st meaning

- the quality which people, animals, and plants have when they are not dead, and which objects
and substances do not have (COBUILD)
- the period between birth and dead (Cambridge)
- the state of an organism characterized by certain actions or abilities that include metabolism,
growth, reproduction and response (Longman)
- the ability to grow and produce new forms that distinguishes living animals and plants from dead
ones and from rocks, metals etc. (Oxford)
- the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body or inanimate matter
(Webster)
- the ability to grow and produce new forms that distinguishes living animals and plants from dead
ones and from rocks, metals etc. (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 1995)
- the quality which people, animals, and plants have when they are not dead and which objects
and substances do not have. (Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, 1987)
- the period between a person’s birth and death during which they are alive. (Longman Dictionary
of Contemporary English, 1995)
- the state of being of a functioning plant or animal. (The Newsbury House Dictionary of American
English, 1996)
- the active force that makes those forms of matter (animals and plants) that grow through feeding
and produce new young forms like themselves, different from all other matter (stones, machines,
objects, etc.). Dictionary of Contemporary English, A.Langenscheidt-Longman Dictionary, 1981)
 FRUIT ?
fruit is the edible, seed-
bearing structure that
develops from a flower
after it has bloomed.

Avocado is a fruit.
 Biological definition vs. culinary
everyday perception
Despite its biological classification as a fruit,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1893,
that the tomato is a vegetable because the
public perceived it as such.

Theoretically, the cucumber should be considered a fruit since it

develops from a flower, but given its texture and use, cooks often
classify it as a vegetable.
• Rhubarb declared a fruit by a New York court
in 1947, rhubarb is technically a vegetable.
• Vegetables are garden plants with edible
parts (leaves, roots, bulbs, sprouts, stems,
shoots, and seeds). Biologically speaking,
crops such as lentils and soybeans are also
considered vegetables.
 Meaning
• Popper: you really cannot define, you fall
into the trap by having to define more and
more.
• Numerous words can have various
meanings and in an isolated way
everybody will not accept the first
meaning.
• Even in dictionaries there are a variety of
definitions for simple words.
 Theory of semantic fields
(Bedeutungsfelder)
• Trier and Porzig 1934. Dealt with words as
related or contrasted within a set -- grouped
them -- colours,
• words beginning with com point at togetherness
- communism, commission, cooperate, collective
• Slicing up the world different in different
languages arm hand leg foot – roka, kāja –
different number of hyponyms.
• Even where there seems to be a match between
words - sausage - desa - Wurst - kolbasa
what they are made of, what they are eaten with,
how they are cooked?
Componential analysis COOKING

With water with fat in oven contact with flame gentle

cook 0 0 0 0 0
boil + - - + -
simmer + - - + +
fry - + - + 0
roast - - + - 0
toast - - - + 0
bake - - + - 0

• + marked by - marked by absence O not

distinct
 Componential analysis
Dwellings
•House - permanent + solid material (brick,
wood, glass...)
•Tent - not permanent, not solid material
•Hut – permanent, solid material
•...
 Componential analysis
analysed in terms of semantic features or sense components -- male :: female, young ::
old.
Humans like categorizing and contrasting opposites -- in many cases it works (yet
South::North are these opposites, day:: nigh)
boy, girl, man, woman, granny, grandpa
Movement verbs
components: limbs constant contact speed

walk feet + slow

run feet - fast
crawl hands + legs + slow
jog feet - slow
sprint feet - very fast

Stroll :: walk usually another component is added, e.g. manner.

set diagnostic components for acquaintance, friend, colleague, associate

all are relationship, positive -- ? Business, closeness
 Charles Fillmore
• Scenes and frames
• Words are frames, they create mental
scenes
• Scenes are language-related, experience-
related
• Important that scenes are similar for
understanding, for loyal translation -
sausage.
 Notion

• Word Notion Phenomenon Triangle

definition
• The meaning is given by the speaker and it may be
broader than the notion as there is attitude. People may
have crazy ideas of what some words mean, yet there is
communication so there must be some agreement
(correct behaviour)
• Notions may be difficult -- imagine the notion of fruit,
image what is the image for time, cause
• cleverness :: wisdom – sage plus common sense
and recognizable?
 Other ideas
Ferdinand de Saussure, language and the world
(reference). Language is a system that represents the
reality in a particular way – we can see the world only
through this matrix: mushrooms, snow. Concepts and
sounds are not isolated units. They determine one
another. The part of reality covered by a concept is what
is not covered by another concept.

The relationships between concepts provide the basic

semantic architecture of a language.
Japanese have ganbatte? – keep fighting (thrive in
adversity) Turies.., tik un tā English keep smiling;
Finnish sisu
US Relax, UK good luck (role of fortune), Arabic iusallah
– God willing
 Whorf
language is a dictator. People see the world through particular
structures of their language. This reduced the role of individual and
also the role of the universal (common to all languages).
metaphors – Hugo -- revolution was like an ocean
Mayakovski -- ocean is like a revolution.

Communists saw the world as class structure,

now we see it as market, customers, goods
human can be seen as a computer, computer as a human
Wittgenstein arbitrariness of meaning - there was an agreement
among humans on the meaning and reality. Deep, profound “given”
agreement conforming with regularity and there was a custom of
acceptance. The opposite would lead to an infinite regress of
different interpretations.
 National peculiarities
A small clip showing a woman walking.
Comments:
German – A woman walking towards a shop
English – A woman walks

German – focus on aim

English – Focus on action
 Japanese - it has wabi-sabi

Perfect but with some lack of symmetry, some sign of wear or age.
Acceptance of transience, nature and melancholy, favouring the
imperfect and incomplete in everything, from architecture to pottery to
flower arranging.

Wabi = the elegant beauty of humble

simplicity
Sabi = the passing of time and subsequent
deterioration.
«the uncompromising touch of mortality to focus the mind on the
exquisite transient beauty to be found in all things impermanent».
 snail and slug

• Gliemezis ::
gliemis/kailgliemezis

• German only
Schnecke…. but
• Schnecke mit/ohne
Haus
• Weinbergschnecke
 Prototype theory
• As formulated in the 1970s by Eleanor Rosch and others, prototype theory was a
radical departure from traditional necessary and sufficient conditions as in Aristotelian
logic, which led to set-theoretic approaches of extensional or intensional semantics.
• instead of a definition based model - e.g. a bird may be defined as elements with the
features [+feathers], [+beak] and [+ability to fly] prototype theory would consider a
category like bird as consisting of different elements which have unequal status - e.g.
a robin is more prototypical of a bird than penguin,
• bed is more of a furniture than fridge or lamp,
• dog is more of a mammal than whale.
• Can you give some?

• Man and woman?

• Cat and dog as pet? Alligator, flies…
• This leads to a graded notion of categories, which is a central notion in many models
of cognitive science and cognitive semantics, e.g. in the work of George Lakoff
(Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, 1987).
 Popper’s 3 worlds

1. the objective reality -- chairs, people, cats, rainbow;

2. the subjective (individual consciousness, mental states),
perceptions;
3. the world of ideas (not individual’s) – as they exist in public domain –
books, databases, libraries, news – it is objective. MEMES
The worlds interact.
• A book is world one, but its content exists in world 3, you can throw
out your book, but the contents will exist.
• Theories start in W2 (individual) – enters W3, when we spread and
teach, can be written down in a book or on the blackboard, or the
fence.
• They say W3 has a plastic control over our behaviour…
• Codes that we use are constantly under review – precedent based
meaning, consensus based meaning. Words and meanings are in
public use – we borrow them, but we can mal-use them, change
them, we look back to our previous experience of the word and the
meaning…
 Stuka
• Exists in nature
• Concept
• name
• For many name, concept not known
Sturzkampfflugzeug
dive bomber
language users regularly apply the terms
"boy" and "girl" in ways that go beyond mere
semantic features.
people are more likely to consider a young
female a "girl" (as opposed to "woman"),
than they are to consider a borderline-young
male a "boy" (as opposed to "man")
 Meaning
Abstract > contextual > pragmatic
Dictionary meaning > sense > force = communicative intention (Austin).

referential
functional
• Referential approach tries to establish relations between a word and the thing it
denotes. A word refers to or denotes something, e.g. a cat denotes a particular
animal. The relation between the word and its referent is arbitrary. There is usually no
obvious connection between the sound sequence and the animal. In other languages
we have different sound sequences. There are exceptions though -- sound imitation
words. Gift -- talent, (G) poison, L. kaps, E. cups; eyes, aiz.
• Many words are vague in their reference river, stream, brook -- no clear dividing
line of meaning, sometimes very unclear referents. As a result reference is often
excluded from semantics.
• Functional approach studies words and their meanings in speech. The meaning of a
linguistic unit can be stated only through its relations to other linguistic units. How do
you do? That will do. Do me a favour. Do it.
• Both approaches can be used together. They are not alternatives
 Meaning
Word meaning is not homogeneous.
Grammatical meaning is common to words of a
certain class writes, does, goes -- meaning of
the 3d. person ; best nicest, most - superlative
degree.
Lexical meaning -- meaning proper to words in all
their forms and distributions throughout the
paradigm. It remains unchanged throughout.
• The two meanings are not distributed evenly and
they are not equally important.
I am coming tomorrow on the train at 6 o’clock.

Grammatical words are small -- pronouns,

determiners, prepositions, conjunctions,
auxiliary words -- in them the grammatical
meaning predominates.
Redundancy spagh…
 Lexical meaning
• denotational meaning or component Cognitive
meaning.
• connotational element of meaning. (Affective
meaning) stylistic quality or emotive value --
associations. dad, daddy
• In most cases the two elements coexist.

• What connotations do CAVIAR, CANDLE, MILK,

PIG, PIGLET have?
• Personal: swimming -- recreation, training,
drowning.
 Emotive meaning
Highly literary words can have stylistic but no emotional
value
• get well -- recover – recuperate; famous – notorious,
hate – loathe (disgust), new – novel (striking), invent
-- fabricate
Stylistically neutral, emotionally negative deception
• revolt - riot -- emotionally negative
• freedom fighter, partisan, guerrilla, terrorist, bandit
• cautious – can be positive or negative
Narrower than connotation is emotive meaning,.
• justice, young, progressive, democracy, imperialism,
God in politics Victorian era, rightwing, leftwing
• Healthy, live :: ill, dead syn
 Ideology and emotive meaning
NAZI blind faith, fanatic
COMMY scientific (sure, true), working class, progressive, construction,
Mr. Herr, bourgeois, right-wing, idealism, market, speculation,
Internationalism :: cosmopolitanism materialism :: idealism but ideals..

Europe, liberal, market, homosexual... Anti-waxxer

Russian Inomarka, geiropa, liberasti

Emotive meaning is widely used in ads

fantastic, real, modern, healthy, delicious, special (car?) unique offer

Osgood -- speakers react to words in 3 dimensions

good or bad, active or passive, strong or weak.
tornado, lilac, Islamic fundamentalists
 vague meaning words

• Were there many people? -- Millions..

• He wanted a pen or something...
• She inquired about you, etc.
 ambiguity
WORK – piece, process, product, result
• This work took 10 years
• Her work is still incomplete
• The work was on the desk
• Her work is skilfull
• etc
Nonverbal pictograms
idiographic
 Meaning
Primary and secondary
• tube a musical wind instrument >
tube of wood and metal >
tube for smoking
• board -- timber piece > surface of wood > notice board .. food put
on table (board and lodgings) > committee

Direct and figurative meaning.

Relationship between the structure of the word and its meaning.
• Glove Handschuh, skate Schlittschuh, to ski Ski fahren,
laufen
• root words are usually unmotivated town - urban, Stadt - stadtig
 Phonetic Motivation
direct connection between the phonetic structure of the word and its
meaning -- onomatopoeic words slam, cuckoo, buzz, purr,
grumble, crash, splash, buzz, ding-dong
Sounds can evoke light, colour, state of mind. Some linguists suggest
that sounds as such are emotional
• dumb, dull, clumsy --- dullness, heaviness
• gli light
• fly, flitter, flee, flip, fling, flick movement
• slide, slip, slope, slurp, slue, slither downward movement,
rushing, sucking sound
• -sh bash, dash, flash, hush, rush, splash swift strong movement
• st - stingy, skimp, scanty, scrape, spare, stint

sound symbolism roll cut

 perceived differently

• cock a doodle doo,

• German kikeriki,
• French cocorico,
• Arabic kuku-kookoo.
duck:
• quack in English,
• coin coin in French,
• cua cua in Spanish.
 grammatical / morphological
motivation
morphological structure. One- morpheme words are
naturally nonmotivated. Some derivatives are
motivated.
• Re- rewrite, yet repeat is unmotivated
• armchair, friendship, careless
If you cannot guess the meaning the compound is
unmotivated or idiomatic wallflower, butterfly,
mustard plaster
Can be partially motivated if one element is clear the other
is not.
• cranberry -- diachronically cran < crane (bird of the
marshes)
• mermaid (mere OE sea)
 Semantic motivation

see the link between direct and transferred.

• the root of evil, branch of science, family tree, nip
sth in the bud. maybe partial, board…
demotivated.
• Breakfast breakan fast
• daisy OE daeges eage (days eye)
• husband OE hūs bonda (housedweller)
• elbow -- OE elln boga (bend of arm)
In different languages may have different associations
• handkerchief
• Taschentuch, kabatlakats
• nosovoi platok
 PRAGMATIC MEANING
speaker meaning, as opposed to linguistic meaning.

• Locutionary meaning (semantic, logical meaning)

• Illocutionary force (function as a speech act)
• Perlocutionary effect (effect on the receiver)
You are going to regret it
• Future prediction
• Threat or statement
• Scare
But you normally talk about the intended effect -- you want to assure,
but you scare.

A boy from a camp, lost his bearings. Smell of coffee... Meaning

 Pragmatic meaning
- I am afraid, I am out of petrol
- I think there is a garage round the corner.