Semantics
The systematic study of
linguistic meaning
Linguistic Meaning
? The meaning of linguistic items.
? (linguistic item = anything,from
a word,to a grammatical morpheme
or a combination of words).
? Different from personal/social/
cultural meanings.
Different meanings of meaning
? What is the meaning of the word book?
?A specific book?
?The class of all books?
?The idea of ?bookness? (i.e,the
idea of what makes a book a book)
Semantic triangle
idea/concept
sign (phonemes/graphemes) real world
? Concept,mental class of things/humans/events/
properties,etc,that share certain features in meaning
(i.e,which are sufficiently similar to each other).
? In other words,a concept is what allows us to recognize
something as a book,as green,as walking,etc.
Speaker meaning
? He is really stupid!
? What do you mean by stupid?
? Not the idea of stupidity but what is the intention of
using this word at all.
? Meaning as relation between sign and intention of speaker,
speaker meaning.
? Speaker meaning is less an object for semantics but
rather for pragmatics/discourse analysis
Reference
? Can you give me this book over there!
? Meaning as relation between sign and specific
thing/ person/event/property in the,real word” is
reference.
? It only becomes relevant in discourse/texts,i.e,
when linguistic item actually used.
Sense
? Meaning as relation between the sign and the concept/idea,
sense.
Connotations
? slut
? prostitute
? brat
? child
? ethanol
? alcohol
? obtain
? get
? scopophilic
? Peeping Tom
? Meaning as associations evoked
by concept = connotations
? affective connotations
? intertextual connotations
How do we know whether it is just a
connotation?
? He is not skinny but slim.
? If you can say this then the two terms differ in
sense.
??You cannot get it there but you can obtain it.
? PARENTAL ADVISORY,EXPLICIT LYRICS
??It is a prick and not a penis.
Lexical semantics
? Mental lexicon,list of all the words that we know in
our heads,stored there together with information
about the grammatical and phonological properties of
the words together with information about their
meanings,
? Lexical semantics studies the organization of the mental
lexicon,this is,how lexemes are ordered there,Lexical
semantics thus particularly looks at the meaning
relationships that lexemes have with each other in the
lexicon.
? Assumption,meanings of a word can be described by the
company it keeps.
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relation
? The wine is ________
? red
? white
? delicious
? very good
? Paradigmatic relationship,alternatives/contrasts
? red wine
? Syntagmatic relationship,combination
Lexical relations
? Within the lexicon,lexemes have different meaning
relationships to particular other lexemes,These
relationships are called lexical relations.
? flower – rose
? whale – dolphin
? bird – blackbird
? blue – navy blue
? move – walk
? Hypernymy = relation between a general (hypernym) and
a specific lexemes (hyponym),the former implying the
latter.
? Lexemes that are hyponyms of the same hypernym are
co-hyponyms.
? nose — face
? wheel — car
? Austria — Europe
? page — book
? branch — tree
? Meronymy,relation between part and whole,e.g.
? get – become
? meronymy — part:whole relation
? mercury — quicksilver
? despite — in spite of
? Synonymy,relation between lexemes with the same
meaning.
? like ‘as? versus like ‘love?
? pupil ‘Schüler? versus pupil ?Pupille?
? Homonymy,relation between lexemes that have the same
form but different meanings,e.g.
? homophones,e.g,buy — by; read — red; bee — be;
gaol — jail
? homography,e.g,lead — lead,bow — bow
? head
? single
? Polysemy,relation between lexemes with the same form
but different meanings but the meanings are clearly
related.
? Feder
? black – white
? married – unmarried
? girl – boy
? Antonymy,relation between lexemes whose meaning are
opposites.
? black – white big – small
? married – unmarried male – female dead – alive
? gradable antonyms,intermediate steps between the two
poles.
? non-gradable antonyms,no intermediate steps,just binary
relation.
Semantic field
? Semantic relations do not hold just between pairs
of lexemes,but also between whole groups.
? Mother,daughter,father,son,children,parents,
aunt,uncle,nephew,niece,cousin
? Semantic field (or word field),a group of lexemes
which are densely linked with each other,They
somehow together cover one area of meaning,e.g,
family relations,colours
? Please,please me; With the Beatles; A hard day’s night;
Beatles for sale; Help!; Rubber Soul; Revolver; Sgt,
? Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; Magical mystery tour;
Yellow Submarine; The Beatles; Abbey Road; Let it be
? exams,professor,teach,main building,Aula,lecture,
Introduction to English linguistics,registration,study,
blackboard,Mensa,copy cheque,term paper
Collocations
? Word partnerships,i.e,words that tend to occur
together,e.g,red and wine.
? flock lions
? school wolves
? pride bees
? pod fish
? pack cows
? herd whales
? swarm birds
? Collocates of on the verge of
? war 22
? collapse 15
? death 14
? disaster 13
? bankruptcy 7
? revolution 6
? extinction 5
? starvation 5
? chaos 4
? defeat 4
? Collocates of on the brink of
? tears 32
? collapse 20
? extinction 16
? bankruptcy 14
? death 7
? war 7
? losing 5
? retirement 5
? starvation 5
? hysteria 4
Internal structure of meaning
? Can you define the meaning of
? foal
? die
? Definitions show you that we can take meanings apart,
divide them into their components.
? But what are these components?
Componential analysis
? The first attempt at semantic analysis was
componential analysis.
? It assumes that all meanings can be decomposed into
semantic features,which are usually binary,i.e,
[± ]
? woman,[+ human] [+ female] [+ adult]
? man,[+ human] [- female] [+ adult]
? girl,[+ human] [+ female] [- adult]
? boy,[+ human] [- female] [- adult]
? But...
? What about snake?
? Or breast-stroke?
? So componential analysis only works with a few concepts.
Let?s try another one
? long
? high
? deep
? broad
? They all refer to extension in space,and all refer
to the upper pole of this dimension.
? What then are the differences?
? What can they go together with?
? take give
? borrow lend
? buy sell
? come go
? huge and large
? hot and warm
? terrified and scared
? look and stare
? talk and whisper
? red and scarlet
What is a bird?
Prototypes
? Sense (and thus concepts) are not homogenous,There are
elements which are more at the centre of a meaning
category and elements that are more at the margins,
? And they do not have clear boundaries either,this is
green and this is blue,but what about this?
? The centre is called the prototype of the meaning.
? It might be defined by features (e.g,the prototypical
bird can fly) or by exemplars (e.g,the prototypical
bird is the robin).
Prototype effects
? Prototypical members are more likely to be mentioned
first if you ask people to give you as many examples of a
category as possible (e.g,birds or trees)
? Prototypical members are more likely to be learned first
in language acquisition
? Prototypical members are more easily recognized than non-
prototypical members.
? In the absence of other evidence prototypes function as
default options.
Grammatical semantics
? Grammatical semantics deals with grammatical
meaning.
? lexical meaning,meaning of lexemes
? grammatical meaning,meaning of grammatical words,
bound morphemes,and syntactic constructions.
Modifying other meanings
? Many of these linguistic items modify the meanings of
events expressed by verbs,entities expressed by nouns,
properties expressed by adjectives.
? The comparative in the adjective has the meaning
?more of the property?
? The plural in nouns signifies ?more than one entity?.
? Tense in the verb modifies temporal structure of event
and positions event relative to time of speaking
Sentence meaning
? She watched the audience during the performance.
? proposition,meaning unit that expresses a state of
affairs (Sachverhalt) and can therefore be true or
false,A proposition is like a play and can be
analysed into
? action (processes) – watching
? characters (participants) – she; the audience
? wings/props (circumstances) – during the
performance
Thematic roles
? Participants have different roles in the processes.
? Agent,initiate a process – she hit the ball
? Patient,affected by a process – she hit the ball
? Recipient,she gave all the money to the poor
The systematic study of
linguistic meaning
Linguistic Meaning
? The meaning of linguistic items.
? (linguistic item = anything,from
a word,to a grammatical morpheme
or a combination of words).
? Different from personal/social/
cultural meanings.
Different meanings of meaning
? What is the meaning of the word book?
?A specific book?
?The class of all books?
?The idea of ?bookness? (i.e,the
idea of what makes a book a book)
Semantic triangle
idea/concept
sign (phonemes/graphemes) real world
? Concept,mental class of things/humans/events/
properties,etc,that share certain features in meaning
(i.e,which are sufficiently similar to each other).
? In other words,a concept is what allows us to recognize
something as a book,as green,as walking,etc.
Speaker meaning
? He is really stupid!
? What do you mean by stupid?
? Not the idea of stupidity but what is the intention of
using this word at all.
? Meaning as relation between sign and intention of speaker,
speaker meaning.
? Speaker meaning is less an object for semantics but
rather for pragmatics/discourse analysis
Reference
? Can you give me this book over there!
? Meaning as relation between sign and specific
thing/ person/event/property in the,real word” is
reference.
? It only becomes relevant in discourse/texts,i.e,
when linguistic item actually used.
Sense
? Meaning as relation between the sign and the concept/idea,
sense.
Connotations
? slut
? prostitute
? brat
? child
? ethanol
? alcohol
? obtain
? get
? scopophilic
? Peeping Tom
? Meaning as associations evoked
by concept = connotations
? affective connotations
? intertextual connotations
How do we know whether it is just a
connotation?
? He is not skinny but slim.
? If you can say this then the two terms differ in
sense.
??You cannot get it there but you can obtain it.
? PARENTAL ADVISORY,EXPLICIT LYRICS
??It is a prick and not a penis.
Lexical semantics
? Mental lexicon,list of all the words that we know in
our heads,stored there together with information
about the grammatical and phonological properties of
the words together with information about their
meanings,
? Lexical semantics studies the organization of the mental
lexicon,this is,how lexemes are ordered there,Lexical
semantics thus particularly looks at the meaning
relationships that lexemes have with each other in the
lexicon.
? Assumption,meanings of a word can be described by the
company it keeps.
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relation
? The wine is ________
? red
? white
? delicious
? very good
? Paradigmatic relationship,alternatives/contrasts
? red wine
? Syntagmatic relationship,combination
Lexical relations
? Within the lexicon,lexemes have different meaning
relationships to particular other lexemes,These
relationships are called lexical relations.
? flower – rose
? whale – dolphin
? bird – blackbird
? blue – navy blue
? move – walk
? Hypernymy = relation between a general (hypernym) and
a specific lexemes (hyponym),the former implying the
latter.
? Lexemes that are hyponyms of the same hypernym are
co-hyponyms.
? nose — face
? wheel — car
? Austria — Europe
? page — book
? branch — tree
? Meronymy,relation between part and whole,e.g.
? get – become
? meronymy — part:whole relation
? mercury — quicksilver
? despite — in spite of
? Synonymy,relation between lexemes with the same
meaning.
? like ‘as? versus like ‘love?
? pupil ‘Schüler? versus pupil ?Pupille?
? Homonymy,relation between lexemes that have the same
form but different meanings,e.g.
? homophones,e.g,buy — by; read — red; bee — be;
gaol — jail
? homography,e.g,lead — lead,bow — bow
? head
? single
? Polysemy,relation between lexemes with the same form
but different meanings but the meanings are clearly
related.
? Feder
? black – white
? married – unmarried
? girl – boy
? Antonymy,relation between lexemes whose meaning are
opposites.
? black – white big – small
? married – unmarried male – female dead – alive
? gradable antonyms,intermediate steps between the two
poles.
? non-gradable antonyms,no intermediate steps,just binary
relation.
Semantic field
? Semantic relations do not hold just between pairs
of lexemes,but also between whole groups.
? Mother,daughter,father,son,children,parents,
aunt,uncle,nephew,niece,cousin
? Semantic field (or word field),a group of lexemes
which are densely linked with each other,They
somehow together cover one area of meaning,e.g,
family relations,colours
? Please,please me; With the Beatles; A hard day’s night;
Beatles for sale; Help!; Rubber Soul; Revolver; Sgt,
? Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; Magical mystery tour;
Yellow Submarine; The Beatles; Abbey Road; Let it be
? exams,professor,teach,main building,Aula,lecture,
Introduction to English linguistics,registration,study,
blackboard,Mensa,copy cheque,term paper
Collocations
? Word partnerships,i.e,words that tend to occur
together,e.g,red and wine.
? flock lions
? school wolves
? pride bees
? pod fish
? pack cows
? herd whales
? swarm birds
? Collocates of on the verge of
? war 22
? collapse 15
? death 14
? disaster 13
? bankruptcy 7
? revolution 6
? extinction 5
? starvation 5
? chaos 4
? defeat 4
? Collocates of on the brink of
? tears 32
? collapse 20
? extinction 16
? bankruptcy 14
? death 7
? war 7
? losing 5
? retirement 5
? starvation 5
? hysteria 4
Internal structure of meaning
? Can you define the meaning of
? foal
? die
? Definitions show you that we can take meanings apart,
divide them into their components.
? But what are these components?
Componential analysis
? The first attempt at semantic analysis was
componential analysis.
? It assumes that all meanings can be decomposed into
semantic features,which are usually binary,i.e,
[± ]
? woman,[+ human] [+ female] [+ adult]
? man,[+ human] [- female] [+ adult]
? girl,[+ human] [+ female] [- adult]
? boy,[+ human] [- female] [- adult]
? But...
? What about snake?
? Or breast-stroke?
? So componential analysis only works with a few concepts.
Let?s try another one
? long
? high
? deep
? broad
? They all refer to extension in space,and all refer
to the upper pole of this dimension.
? What then are the differences?
? What can they go together with?
? take give
? borrow lend
? buy sell
? come go
? huge and large
? hot and warm
? terrified and scared
? look and stare
? talk and whisper
? red and scarlet
What is a bird?
Prototypes
? Sense (and thus concepts) are not homogenous,There are
elements which are more at the centre of a meaning
category and elements that are more at the margins,
? And they do not have clear boundaries either,this is
green and this is blue,but what about this?
? The centre is called the prototype of the meaning.
? It might be defined by features (e.g,the prototypical
bird can fly) or by exemplars (e.g,the prototypical
bird is the robin).
Prototype effects
? Prototypical members are more likely to be mentioned
first if you ask people to give you as many examples of a
category as possible (e.g,birds or trees)
? Prototypical members are more likely to be learned first
in language acquisition
? Prototypical members are more easily recognized than non-
prototypical members.
? In the absence of other evidence prototypes function as
default options.
Grammatical semantics
? Grammatical semantics deals with grammatical
meaning.
? lexical meaning,meaning of lexemes
? grammatical meaning,meaning of grammatical words,
bound morphemes,and syntactic constructions.
Modifying other meanings
? Many of these linguistic items modify the meanings of
events expressed by verbs,entities expressed by nouns,
properties expressed by adjectives.
? The comparative in the adjective has the meaning
?more of the property?
? The plural in nouns signifies ?more than one entity?.
? Tense in the verb modifies temporal structure of event
and positions event relative to time of speaking
Sentence meaning
? She watched the audience during the performance.
? proposition,meaning unit that expresses a state of
affairs (Sachverhalt) and can therefore be true or
false,A proposition is like a play and can be
analysed into
? action (processes) – watching
? characters (participants) – she; the audience
? wings/props (circumstances) – during the
performance
Thematic roles
? Participants have different roles in the processes.
? Agent,initiate a process – she hit the ball
? Patient,affected by a process – she hit the ball
? Recipient,she gave all the money to the poor
