Semantics and Pragmatics Overview

Semantics

• Semantics is the study of meaning in language, encompassing sound, word, and grammar.
• It involves how individuals speak and write, using phrases and expressions.
• It also includes the systems of communication particular to a specific country.
• This also applies to symbolic systems and rules for writing instructions used in computing.

Pragmatics

• Pragmatics interacts with semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, and phonetics, concerning meaning in context.
• It examines the links between literal meaning and broader phrases, sentences, and words.
• It involves a study of meaning based on context.

Naming (Ferdinand de Saussure)

• A word/sound in a language is a signifier.
• The corresponding concept or object is the signified.
• These are connected; words "stand for" or "refer to" objects/concepts.
• Examples of parts of speech connected to the signified: Verbs, adjectives, prepositions

Realistic and Nominalist View of Naming

• A realistic view suggests objects with the same name hold some features in common.
• A nominalist view argues objects have no common features but are simply given the same name.

Scientific and Dictionary Definitions

• Scientific language is precise and formal.
• Dictionary definitions aim to illustrate a term's meaning through the use of object-focused terms, offering a way for a learner to identify and learn specific things.

Concepts and Associative Bonds

• Concepts are psychological associations of sound or images.
• The relationship between associated data is the associative bond.
• Meaning arises from our ability to connect mental representations of concepts.

Semantic Relations

• Hyponymy: A relationship of inclusion between specific concepts and broader concepts (e.g., rose is a type of flower).
• Synonymy: Words/phrases having similar meanings.
• Antonymy: Words having contrasting meanings; gradable (hot/cold) or non-gradable (dead/alive).

Semantic Relations (Continued)

• Lexical fields: Paradigmatic groupings in the lexicon, where all elements share a part of speech (e.g., nouns).
• Grammatical meaning: Meaning derived from affixes, function words, and grammatical relationships.
• Lexical meaning: Meaning derived from lexeme's in different word classes – noun, verb, adjective, adverb (e.g., nouns describe things).

Semantic Approaches

• Structural semantics analyzes language as a system, recognizing that the meaning of any element is relative to other elements within the system.

Componential Analysis

• Semantic components are features that analyze words (e.g. whether something is countable).
• Categorization attempts to group related concepts based on common properties.
• Prototype theory suggests that some members of a category are better examples (or prototypes) than others.

Sentence Structure

• Propositions are statements composed of predicates (verb phrases) and arguments (noun phrases).
• The number or parts of verbs (e.g., 0, 1, or 3 places) and the presence of explicit/implicit arguments (e.g., the presence of a subject/object) affect how a proposition is structured.

Speech Acts

• Speech acts are actions performed with language, including requests, commands, and commitments.
• They are categorized as Constatives (describing states of affairs) or Performatives (performing actions).
• Felicity conditions specify the circumstances in which a performative act is deemed valid.

Speech Act Types

• Declarations: Speech acts that change the world via utterance (e.g., "I pronounce you husband and wife").
• Representatives: Statements about the truth of an assertion.
• Expressives: Expressions of emotion and attitudes.
• Directives: Speech acts attempting to cause another person to perform an action.
• Commissives: Commitments to future actions.

Direct and Indirect Speech Acts

• Direct speech acts: The grammatical structure directly indicates its communicative function.
• Indirect speech acts: The grammatical structure differs from its communicative function.

Code & Organon Models of Communication

• The Code Model involves a sender, encoding a message through a common code, and the receiver decoding it.
• The Organon model suggests communication involves a sender, symbol, a signal transmitted to a receiver. This also involves objects (states of affairs) and symptoms.
• Both models address the roles of encoding, message, and decoding in the communication process.

Entailment and Implicature

• Entailment: If one sentence is true, another sentence is necessarily true (unconditional, regardless of context).
• Implicature: A suggested meaning implied but not explicitly stated, often context-dependent.
• Both are significant components of how we understand and interpret communication.

Pragmatics (Continued)

• Context: Includes situational context (observations, what we can see and know), co-textual context (the preceding discourse), and background context (prior knowledge shared by speakers).
• Speech acts: Actions performed by using language (e.g., requests, promises)
• Conversational implicature: Meaning implied but not explicitly expressed, in a way that relies on conversational assumptions.
• Grice's Maxims: Guidelines of appropriate conversation (Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner).