Introduction to Semantics

Class starts at 19h10

l.l |What is semantics
 The study of meaning.
 What is meaning?
 A word’s meaning is simply its dictionary definition?
 A word’s meaning is determined by the people who use it, not, ultimately,by a dictionary.
 What is meaning?
 No one has yet developed a comprehensive, authoritative theory of linguistic meaning.
 We can discuss some of the phenomena that have been thought to fall within the domain
of semantics and some of the theories that have been developed to explain them.
 The basic repository of meaning within the grammar is the lexicon.
 The lexicon provides the information about the meaning of individual words
relevant to the interpretation of sentences.
 SemanticsVs. Pragmatics:
 Unlike pragmatics, semantics is a part of grammar proper, the study of the internal
structure of language.
 Semantics deals with the description of word and sentence meaning.
 Pragmatics deals with the characterization of speaker-meaning.
l.l |Neither God nor Humpty Dumpty
 We cannot assume that there is some God-given, meaningful
connection between a word in a language and an object in the world.
 Chair, Chaise, Stuhl, sedia.
 This means that the words chair is
 Arbitrary.
 And conventionally used by English speakers when they wish to refer
to that type of object that we sit on.
 The problem with conventionality:
 Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’sThrough the Looking Glass:
 “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful
tone. “It means what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
 The notion that we can make words mean whatever we personally
choose them to mean cannot be a general feature of linguistic
meaning.
 It creates chaos.
l.l |Reference
 Speaker-reference:
 If I utter the sentence “Here comes President Reagan”, to refer to a
big lady coming down the sidewalk.
 The speaker-reference of the expression President Reagan is the
big lady.
 So, Speaker-reference is what the speaker is referring to by using
some linguistic expression.
 Linguistic-reference:
 When I say “Here comes President Reagan”, in this case, it must refer to
the public figure Ronald Reagan.
 Linguistic-reference is the systematic denotation of some
linguistic expression as part of a language.
 Linguistic-reference, in contrast to speaker-reference, is
within the domain of semantics.
l.l | Referent
 Equating a word’s meaning with the entities to which it refers – it
referents.
 The meaning of the word dog corresponds to the set of entities
(dogs) that it picks out in the real world.
 There is a problem with words such as unicorn and dragon.
 They have no referents in the real world even though they are far
from meaningless.
 A problem of a different sort arises with expressions such as the
President of the united states and the leader of the Republican
Party.
 Although these two expressions may have the same referent, we
would not say that they mean the same thing.
l.l | Extension and Intension
 The impossibility of equating a word’s meaning with its referents
has led to a distinction between extension and intension.
 A word’s extension corresponds to the set of entities that it picks out in
the world.
 The extension of “woman” would be a set of real word entities (women)
 A word’s intension corresponds to its inherent sense, the concepts that it
evokes.
 The intension of “woman” involve notions like ‘female’ and ‘human’.
 What is the nature of a word’s inherent sense or intension?
 Prototype
 A “typical” member of the extension of a referring expression.
 A robin or a bluebird might be a prototype of bird (an ostrich isn’t).
 An Arab father.
 Stereotype:
 A list of characteristics describing a prototype.
l.l | Types of linguistic reference
 Coreference:
 Two linguistics expressions that have the same extra linguistic referent are said to
be coreferential.
 This is the previous president of the U.S.A.
 This is Barack Obama.
 They have the same extra-linguistic referent.
 Anaphora
 A linguistic expression that refers to another linguistic expression.
 Mary wants to play whoever thinks himself capable of beating her.
 Himself necessarily refers to whoever.
 It would be inaccurate to claim that whoever and himself are
coreferential.
 Because there may not be anyone who thinks himself of capable of beating Mary.
 It is common, for coreference and anaphora to coincide.
 President Reagan believes himself to be invincible.
 Coreference deals with the relation of a linguistic expression to some entity in
the real world.
 Anaphora deals with the relation between two linguistic expressions.
l.l | Deixis
 An expression that has one meaning but refers to different
entities as the extralinguistic context changes.
 I’ll see you tomorrow.
 the personal pronouns: I, me, you …
 Deictic expressions have a “pointing” function; they point to
entities within the context of the utterance.
 Anaphora and deixis can intersect.
 President Reagan believes that he is invincible.
 The expression he can refer either to:
 1- the President Reagan
 2- to some other male in the context of the utterance.
 In the first case, a pronoun refers to another linguistic expression, it
is used anaphorically;
 When, as in the second case, it refers to some entity in the
extralinguistic context, it is used deictically.
l.l | Semantic features
 Another approach to meaning which tries to equate a word’s intension with an
abstract concept consisting of smaller components.
 Why are these sentences ‘odd’:
 The hamburger ate the man/ My cat studied linguistics/ Tables listen to music.
 The oddness of these sentences does not derive from their syntactic
structure.
 The kinds of nouns which can be subjects of the verb ate must denote entities
which are capable of ‘eating’.
 A crucial component of meaning which a noun must have in order to be used as
the subject of the verb ate may be as general as ‘animate being’.
 We can then take this component and use it to describe part of the
meaning of words as either +animate or –animate.
 Give the crucial distinguishing features of the meanings of this set of English
words (table, cow, girl, woman, boy, man)
 You can say that at least part of the basic meaning of the word boy in English
involves the components ( +human, +male, -adult ).
 You can also characterize that feature which is crucially required in a noun in
order for it to appear as the subject of a verb, like read. (N +human)