SEMANTICS

The study of linguistic meaning: that is, the

meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
 Semantics is part of grammar proper
Points in No one comprehensive and authoritative
Semantics theory of linguistic meaning.
 The word fly has more than one meaning
in English. The word moth does not.
The word hide can mean the same thing as
conceal.
Points in The meaning of the word fear includes the
meaning of the word emotion, but not vice
Semantics versa.
The words sister and niece seem to be
closer in meaning that the words sister
and girl.
 In the sentence Jimmy Carter was the 39th
president of the United States, the phrases
Jimmy Carter and the 39th president of the
United States refer to the same person.
Points in The phrases, however, don’t mean the
Semantics same thing.
In the sentence Monica believes that she is
a genius, she can refer either to Monica or
someone else.
 If someone were to ask you to name a
bird, you would probably think of a robin
before you would think of an ostrich.
Points in The sentences A colorless gas is blue and
Oxygen is blue are both false, but for
Semantics different reasons.
The sentences John’s wife is six feet tall is
neither true nor false, if John does not
have a wife.
BACKGROUND
 Used to characterize the SENSE of words.
This method represents the sense of a word
in terms of semantic features.
SENSE
Lexical Man Woman Boy Girl
Decomposition Adult + + - -
Male + - + -
 Man Woman Boy Girl Stallion Mare colt filly
Adult + + - - + + - -
Male + - + - + - + -
Human + + + + - - - -

• This method allows us, at least in principle, to characterize the senses of

a potentially infinite set of words with a finite number of semantic
features.

• Lexical decomposition in terms of semantic features provide a useful,

but somewhat limited, account of the meaning of words.
  Contains a group of words which are related in
their meaning
Exercise: Identify the word that does not belong
to the group and suggest a suitable semantic
field for the group.
SENSE  banana, apple, orange, apricot, flower
Semantic Field  Uncle, aunt, friend, grandmother, cousin
 Car, ship, plane, lake, boat
 Honesty, reliability, generosity, truthfulness
 Running, swimming, thinking, skating
 REFERENCE
Study of - Is the study of what objects are referred to by
linguistic expressions.
REFERENCE
and
 Ex. Washington DC is the capital of United
TRUTH States
CONDITIONS  Washington DC and the expression the capital
of United States refer to the same entity.
 TRUTH CONDITIONS
- Is the study of conditions under which a
Study of statement can be judged true or false.
REFERENCE
and  Ex. If the sentence
TRUTH Fred is 80 years old is true,
CONDITIONS  then the sentence
Fred is over 50 years old is necessarily true.
 Three Areas:
 Sense
 Reference
SEMANTICS  Truth
SENSE
 The study of sense (meaning) can be divided
into two areas: speaker-sense and linguistic-
sense.

Speaker-sense is the speaker’s intention in

producing some linguistic expression. This is
SENSE outside the domains of semantics.
Ex. Fred is a real genius. (sarcastically)
Linguistic-sense is the meaning of a linguistic
expression as a part of language.
Fred is a real genius. (literally)
 LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
 A word is lexically ambiguous if it has more
than one sense
 Fly – a noun (an insect, a zipper on a pair of
pants, or a baseball hit into the air with a bat)
SENSE and a verb.
But not all cases of ambiguity are lexical
Ex. American history teacher
 A teacher of American history
 A history teacher who is American.
 Syntactic ambiguity
 HYPONYMY
A word that contains the meaning of a more
general word known as the superordinate.

SENSE Oak contains the meaning of tree

Oak is a hyponym of the superordinate tree
 HYPONYMY
Hence, a hyponym is a word whose meaning
contains all the same feature values of
another word, plus some additional feature
values.
SENSE Ex.
The meaning of the word sow has exactly
the same feature values as the word pig
(e.g., [-human]) plus some additional feature
values (e.g., [+adult], [-male])
 SYNONYMY
Two words are synonymous if they have the
same sense; that is if they have the same
values for all of their semantic features.
SENSE Ex. Big and large

However, no words mean exactly the same

thing in all contexts.
My big sister; My large sister.
 SYNONYMY
Synonymity does not capture differences in
connotations, or the associations the
speaker have with the word.
SENSE Ex.: Sanitation Engineer and Garbage Collector

Synonymous words may also differ in

register or level of formality.
Ex.: A guy walks into a bar . A man walks into a bar.
 ANTONYMY

GROUPS OF ANTONYMS
Binary antonym
SENSE Gradable antonym
Converse antonym
 BINARY ANTONYMS

Are pairs that exhaust all possibilities along

some dimension
Dead and alive
ANTONYMS Everything that can be dead or alive is, in
fact, either dead or alive: there is no middle
ground between the two.

DEAD ALIVE
 GRADABLE ANTONYMS

Are pairs that describe opposite ends of a

continuous dimension
Hot and cold
ANTONYMS Not everything that can be hot or cold is, in
fact, either hot or cold.

HOT . . . WARM. . . . COOL . . . COLD

 CONVERSE ANTONYMS

Pairs that describe a single relationship

between two items from opposite
perspectives (relational)
ANTONYMS Above and below
If a picture is above a sofa, then the sofa is
necessarily below the picture
ABOVE
BELOW
 Converse Antonym: If X is_____Y then Y is
_____ X.
Ex. If X is aboveY, thenY is below X.

Binary antonym: If X is not _____, then X

must be _____.
ANTONYMS Ex. If John is not dead, then he must be
alive.

Gradable antonym: X is very____

Ex. This soup is very hot/cold.
REFERENCE
 Speaker reference – what the speaker is
referring to by using some linguistic
expression.
Here comes Queen Elizabeth.

REFERENCE Linguistic reference – is the systematic

denotation of some linguistic expression as
part of a language.
Here comes Queen Elizabeth.
 POINTS UNDER REFERENCE
Referent
Extension
Prototype
REFERENCE Stereotype
Coreference
Anaphora
Deixis
 REFERENT
The entity identified by the use of a referring
expression such as a noun or noun phrase.

REFERENCE That bird looks sick.

That bird – is the particular bird you are
pointing at
 EXTENSION
Refers to the set of all potential referents
for a referring expression.

Ex. Extension of bird is the set of all entities

REFERENCE (past, present, and future) that could be
systematically be referred to by the
expression bird.

The extension of bird is the set of all birds

 A typical member of the extension of a
referring expression .
 A robin or a bluebird might be a prototype
PROTOTYPE of a bird.
 A list of characteristics describing a
prototype
The stereotype of a bird might be something
like it has two legs, tow wings, has feathers,
STEREOTYPE is about six to eight inches from head to tail,
makes a chirping noise, lays eggs, builds
nests.
 Two linguistic expressions that have
the same extralinguistic referent.
Jay Leno is the host of the “Tonight Show.”
Jay Leno and the host of the Tonight show
COREFERENCE are coreferential because they both mean
the same thing; that is they are
synonymous.
 The process of replacing a longer
expression by a pronoun or another
kind of “pro-form”.

Jan saw the boy with the telescope.

ANAPHORA
Dan also saw him.

Emily hugged Cassidy as did Zachary.

I am sick, which depresses me.
 Can be found in proform which is to express
stands for another word, phrase, clause or
sentence where the meaning is retrieved
from the context
ANAPHORIC
Proform – is used to avoid the usage and the
EXPRESSION
repetition of the word used in one sentence.
Examples of Proforms:
Pronoun, Pro-adjective, Pro-verb, Pro-
adverb, Pro-sentence
 Pronoun- is used to substitute a noun or
noun phrase in a sentence
ANAPHORIC Laptop is the most important gadget in
student life because it is needed to do
EXPRESSION assignment and search for material.
EXAMPLES
Pro-Adjective- used to substitute an
adjective or phrase that functions as an
adjective
Her dress is green. So is mine.
 Pro-adverb– used to substitute an adverb or
phrase in a sentence.
He exercised regularly. I did too.
ANAPHORIC
Pro-verb– it is used to substitute for a verb
EXPRESSION
or verb phrase
EXAMPLES
I like cats as he does.
Pro-sentence– substitutes an entire
sentence or subsentence
Do you love animals? Yes, I do.
 A deictic expression has one meaning but
can refer to different entities depending on
the speaker and his or her spatial and
temporal orientation.
DEIXIS
(DIKE-SIS)
Ex.You and I, Here and There, and Right and Left.
I = Jack You= Jill
Ex. Members of the Congress believe they
deserve a raise.
TRUTH
CONDITIONS
Categories The study of different types of truth
in the embodied in individual sentence.
study of
truth in The study of different types of truth
relations that hold between
Semantics sentences.
 Different types of truth embodied in
individual sentence

Truth Analytic sentence – one that is necessarily true

simply by the virtue of the words in it.
Conditions
A bachelor is an unmarried man.
 Different types of truth embodied in
individual sentence
Contradictory sentence – one that is
Truth necessarily false simply by the virtue of the
Conditions words in it.
A bachelor is a married man.
A blue gas is colorless.
A square has five equal sides.
 Different types of truth embodied in
individual sentence
Synthetic sentence – may be true or false
Truth depending on how the world is.
Conditions My next door neighbor, Din, is married.
Different types of truth relations that hold
between sentence

1. Entailment
2. Presupposition
  A proposition (expressed in a sentence) that
follows necessarily from another sentence.
Ex.
Entailment  John fried fish entails John cooked fish.

 The Duke of New York suffered a fatal heart

attack entails The Duke of New York is dead.
  A proposition that is assumed to be true in order
to judge the truth or falsity of another sentence.
 John didn’t pass chemistry presupposes that
Presupposition John took chemistry.
 The Duke of New York is dead presupposes that
there is a Duke in New York.