SEMANTICS

The words Fire Department make it sound like they’re the

ones who are starting fires, doesn’t
it? It should be called the “Extinguishing Department.” We
don’t call the police the “Crime
Department.” Also, the “Bomb Squad” sounds like a terrorist
gang. The same is true of wrinkle
cream. Doesn’t it sound like it causes wrinkles? And why
would a doctor prescribe pain pills?
I already have pain! I need relief pills! Carlin (1997)
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and
sentences. In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to
focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on
what an individual speaker (like George Carlin) might want
them to mean on a particular occasion. This approach is
concerned with objective or general meaning and avoids
trying to account for subjective or local meaning.
 MEANING
While semantics is the study of meaning in language, there is more interest in certain
aspects of meaning than in others. We have already ruled out special meanings that
one individual might attach to words. We can go further and make a broad distinction
between conceptual meaning and associative meaning.
Conceptual meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the
literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe. Some of
the basic components of a word like needle in English might include “thin, sharp, steel
instrument.” These components would be part of the conceptual meaning of needle.
However, different people might have different associations or connotations attached
to a word like needle. They might associate it with “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or
“drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find” (especially in a haystack), and
these associations may differ from one person to the next. These types of associations
are not treated as part of the word’s conceptual meaning.
 SEMANTIC FEATURES

One way in which the study of basic conceptual meaning might be helpful would be as
a means of accounting for the “oddness” we experience when we read sentences such
as the following:
The hamburger ate the boy.
The table listens to the radio.
The horse is reading the newspaper.
We should first note that the oddness of these sentences does not derive from their syntactic structure.
According to the basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences, we have well-formed structures.
NP V NP
The hamburger ate the boy
 Semantic roles

Instead of thinking of words as “containers” of meaning,

we can look at the “roles” they fulfill within the situation
described by a sentence. If the situation is a simple
event, as in The boy kicked the ball, then the verb
describes an action (kick). The noun
phrases in the sentence describe the roles of entities,
such as people and things, involved in the action. We can
identify a small number of semantic roles (also called
“thematic roles”) for these noun phrases.
 LEXICAL RELATIONS

Not only can words be treated as “containers” of meaning, or as fulfilling “roles” in

events, they can also have “relationships” with each other. In everyday talk, we
often explain the meanings of words in terms of their relationships. If we’re asked
the meaning of the word conceal, for example, we might simply say, “It’s the same
as hide,” or give the meaning of shallow as “the opposite of deep,” or the meaning
of daffodil as “a kind of flower.”
In doing so, we are characterizing the meaning of each word, not in terms of its
component features, but in terms of its relationship to other words. This approach is
used in the semantic description of language and treated as the analysis of lexical
relations. The lexical relations we have just exemplified are synonymy
(conceal/hide), antonymy (shallow/deep) and hyponymy (daffodil/flower).
 PRAGMATICS

• Communication clearly depends on not only

recognizing the meaning of words in an
utterance, but recognizing what speakers
mean by their utterances. The study of what
speakers mean, or “speaker meaning,” is called
pragmatics.
In many ways, pragmatics is the study of “invisible” meaning,
or how we recognize what is meant even when it isn’t
actually said or written. In order for that to happen, speakers
(or writers) must be able to depend on a lot of shared
assumptions and expectations when they try to
communicate. The investigation of those assumptions and
expectations provides us with some insights into how more is
always being communicated than is said.
Driving by a parking garage, you may see a large sign like the
one in the picture. You read the sign, knowing what each of the
words means and what the sign as a whole means. However,
you don’t normally think that the sign is advertising a place
where you can park your “heated attendant.” (You take an
attendant, you heat him/her up, and this is where you can park
him/her.) Alternatively, the sign may indicate a place where
parking will be carried out by attendants who have been
heated. The words in the sign may allow these interpretations,
but we would normally understand that we can park a car in
this place, that it’s a heated area, and that there will be an
attendant to look after the car.
IN THE OTHER PICTURE, ASSUMING THINGS ARE
NORMAL AND THIS STORE HAS NOT GONE INTO
THE BUSINESS OF SELLING YOUNG CHILDREN, WE
CAN RECOGNIZE AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR A SALE
OF CLOTHES FOR THOSE BABIES AND TODDLERS.
THE WORD CLOTHES DOESN’T APPEAR IN THE
MESSAGE, BUT WE CAN BRING THAT IDEA TO
OUR INTERPRETATION OF THE MESSAGE AS WE
WORK OUT WHAT THE ADVERTISER INTENDED US
TO UNDERSTAND. WE ARE ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN
CREATING AN INTERPRETATION OF WHAT WE
READ AND HEAR.
 CONTEXT
There are different kinds of context. One kind is described as linguistic
context, also known as co-text. The co-text of a word is the set of other words
used in the same phrase or sentence. The surrounding co-text has a strong
effect on what we think the word probably means. If the word bank is used in
a sentence together with words like steep or overgrown, we have no problem
deciding which type of bank is meant. Or, if we hear someone say that she has
to get to the bank to withdraw some cash, we know from this linguistic
context which type of bank is intended.
• More generally, we know how to interpret words on the basis of physical
context.
• If we see the word BANK on the wall of a building in a city, the physical
location will influence our interpretation.
 DEIXIS
There are some very common words in our language that can’t be interpreted
at all if we don’t know the context, especially the physical context of the
speaker. These are words such as here and there, this or that, now and then,
yesterday, today or tomorrow, as well as pronouns such as you, me, she, him,
it, them.
Some sentences of English are virtually impossible to understand if we don’t
know who is speaking, about whom, where and when. For example: You’ll
have to bring it back tomorrow because she isn’t here today.
Expressions such as tomorrow and here are obvious examples of bits of
language that we can only understand in terms of the speaker’s intended
meaning. They are technically known as deictic (/daɪktɪk/) expressions, from
the Greek word deixis, which means “pointing” via language.
We use deixis to point to things (it, this, these boxes) and
people (him, them, those idiots), sometimes called person
deixis.
Words and phrases used to point to a location (here, there,
near that) are examples of spatial deixis, and those used to
point to a time (now, then, last week) are examples of
temporal deixis.
People can actually use deixis to have some fun. The bar
owner who puts up a big sign that reads Free Beer Tomorrow
(to get you to return to the bar) can always claim that you are
just one day too early for the free drink.
 REFERENCE
In discussing deixis, we assumed that the use of words to refer to people, places and times
was a simple matter. However, words themselves don’t refer to anything. People refer. We
have to define reference as an act by which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a
listener (or reader) to identify something. To perform an act of reference, we can use
proper nouns (Chomsky, Jennifer, Whiskas), other nouns in phrases (a writer, my friend, the
cat) or pronouns (he, she, it). We sometimes assume that these words identify someone or
something uniquely, but it is more accurate to say that, for each word or phrase, there is a
“range of reference.” The words Jennifer or friend or she can be used to refer to many
entities in the world. As we observed earlier, an expression such as the war doesn’t directly
identify anything by itself, because its reference depends on who is using it.
We can also refer to things when we’re not sure what to call them. We can use expressions
such as the blue thing and that icky stuff and we can even invent names. For instance, there
was a man who always drove his motorcycle fast and loud through my neighborhood and
was locally referred to as Mr. Kawasaki. In this case, a brand name for a motorcycle is being
used to refer to a person.
As in the “Mr. Kawasaki” example, a successful act of reference
depends more on the listener’s ability to recognize what we mean
than on the listener’s “dictionary” knowledge of a word we use.
For example, in a restaurant, one waiter can ask another, Where’s
the spinach salad sitting? and receive the reply, He’s sitting by the
door. If you’re studying linguistics, you might ask someone, Can I
look at your Chomsky? And get the response, Sure, it’s on the shelf
over there. These examples make it clear that we can use names
associated with things (salad) to refer to people, and use names of
people (Chomsky) to refer to things. The key process here is called
inference.
 ANAPHORA
We usually make a distinction between introducing new referents (a
puppy) and referring back to them (the puppy, it). We saw a funny
home video about a boy washing a puppy in a small bath. The puppy
started struggling and shaking and the boy got really wet. When he let
go, it jumped out of the bath and ran away. In this type of referential
relationship, the second (or subsequent) referring expression is an
example of anaphora (“referring back”). The first mention is called
the antecedent. So, in our example, a boy, a puppy and a small bath
are antecedents and The puppy, the boy, he, it and the bath are
anaphoric expressions.
Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already introduced entity. Mostly
we use anaphora in texts to maintain reference. The connection between an antecedent
and an anaphoric expression is created by use of a pronoun (it), or a phrase with the plus
the antecedent noun (the puppy), or another noun that is related to the antecedent in
some way (The little dog ran out of the room). The connection between antecedents and
anaphoric expressions is often based on inference, as in these examples.
We found a house to rent, but the kitchen was very small.
I caught a bus and asked the driver if it went near the downtown area.

In the first example, we must make an inference like “if X is a house, then X has a kitchen” in
order to interpret the connection between antecedent a house and anaphoric expression the
kitchen. In the second example, we must make an inference like “if X is a bus, then X has a
driver” in order to make the connection between a bus and the driver. We have used the
term “inference” here to describe what the listener (or reader) does. When we talk about an
assumption made by the speaker (or writer), we usually talk about a “presupposition.”
 PRESUPPOSITION
When we use a referring expression like this, he or Shakespeare, we usually assume that
our listeners can recognize which referent is intended. In a more general way, we design our
linguistic messages on the basis of large-scale assumptions about what our listeners already
know. Some of these assumptions may be mistaken, of course, but mostly they’re
appropriate. What a speaker (or writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or reader)
can be described as a presupposition.
If someone tells you Your brother is waiting outside, there is an obvious presupposition
that you have a brother. If you are asked Why did you arrive late?, there is a presupposition
that you did arrive late. And if you are asked the question When did you stop smoking?,
there are at least two presuppositions involved. In asking this question, the speaker
presupposes that you used to smoke and that you no longer do so. Questions like this, with
built-in presuppositions, are very useful devices for interrogators or trial lawyers. If the
defendant is asked by the prosecutor, Okay, Mr. Buckingham, how fast were you going
when you ran the red light?, there is a presupposition that Mr. Buckingham did in fact run
the red light. If he simply answers the How fast part of the question, by giving a speed, he is
behaving as if the presupposition is correct.
One of the tests used to check for the presuppositions underlying
sentences involves negating a sentence with a particular
presupposition and checking if the presupposition remains true.
Whether you say My car is a wreck or the negative version My car is
not a wreck, the underlying presupposition (I have a car) remains
true despite the fact that the two sentences have opposite meanings.
This is called the “constancy under negation” test for identifying a
presupposition. If someone says, I used to regret marrying him, but I
don’t regret marrying him now, the presupposition (I married him)
remains constant even though the verb regret changes from
affirmative to negative.