Semantics: Meaning in Language

Semantics

• Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
• It focuses on conventional meanings rather than individual interpretations.
• Semantics is concerned with linguistic meaning shared by competent language users.
• It aims to articulate shared knowledge of word, phrase, or sentence meanings.

Meaning

• Semantics is interested in objective or factual meaning, not subjective or personal meaning.
• Referential meaning: Basic, essential components of meaning conveyed by literal use of a word.
• Dictionaries are designed to describe referential meaning.
• Associative or emotive meaning: Feelings or reactions to words, varies among individuals/groups, not part of referential meaning.
• Studying referential meaning helps explain the "oddness" of certain sentences like "The hamburger ate the boy".
• "Ate" requires an animate entity, which a hamburger lacks.

Semantic Features

• Words can be analyzed using semantic features, such as [+animate] or [+human].
• This helps characterize nouns required by specific verbs.
• Predicts which nouns fit appropriately in a sentence and which seem odd.
• N [+animate] ate all the food.
• N [+human] is reading the newspaper.

Componential Analysis

• Semantic features analyze how words are connected.
• Features like [+human] or [+adult] are basic meaning components.
• TABLE 9.1 COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
  • boy = +human, -adult, -female
  • girl = +human, -adult, +female
  • man = +human, +adult, -female
  • woman = +human, +adult, +female

Words as Containers of Meaning

• Analyzing word meaning has problems.
• Difficulties arise in identifying components for words like "advice," "threat," and "warning."
• The approach views words as "containers" carrying meaning components.
• This approach lacks practical use.

Semantic Roles

• Semantic roles are the "roles" words fulfill in a sentence.
• In "The boy kicked the ball," roles describe entities involved in the action.
• Semantic roles are also called "thematic roles" or "case roles".

Agent and Theme

• Agent: The entity that performs the action (e.g., "The boy" in "The boy kicked the ball").
• Theme: The entity involved in or affected by the action (e.g., "the ball" in "The boy kicked the ball").
• Theme can be an entity being described.
• Agents are typically human but can be non-human entities or natural forces.

Instrument and Experiencer

• Instrument: An entity used by an agent to perform an action (e.g., "an old razor" in "The boy cut the rope with an old razor").
• The preposition "with" often indicates instrument.
• Experiencer: Entity with a feeling, perception, or state (e.g., "The woman" in "The woman feels sad").
• Experiencers are not performing an action.

Location, Source and Goal

• Location: Where an entity is in the description of an event (e.g., "on the table").
• Source: Where an entity moves from (e.g., "from Chicago").
• Goal: Where an entity moves to (e.g., "to New Orleans").

Scenario Example

• Mary (EXPERIENCER) saw a fly (THEME) on the wall (LOCATION).
• She (AGENT) borrowed a magazine (THEME) from George (SOURCE).
• She (AGENT) squashed the bug (THEME) with the magazine (INSTRUMENT).
• She (AGENT) handed the magazine (THEME) back to George (GOAL).
• "Gee thanks," said George (AGENT).

Lexical Relations

• Words have "relationships" with each other.
• Meanings are explained through relationships in everyday talk.
• Examples of lexical relations are synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy.

Synonymy

• Synonyms: Words with closely related meanings.
• Synonyms are often substitutable in sentences.
• Examples: almost/nearly, big/large, buy/purchase
• "Sameness" of meaning should be viewed as "close synonyms".
• Word appropriateness can vary between synonyms.
• Regional differences exist in synonymous pairs.
• Synonyms can differ in formality.

Antonymy

• Antonyms: Forms with opposite meanings.
• Examples: alive/dead, big/small, happy/sad
• Types of antonyms:
  • Gradable: Opposites along a scale.
  • Non-gradable: Direct opposites ("complementary pairs").
  • Reversives: One is the reverse action of the other.
• Gradable antonyms: Used in comparative constructions, negative of one doesn't imply the other.
• Non-gradable antonyms: Cannot be used in comparative constructions, negative of one implies the other.
• Reversives: Indicate doing the reverse of an action.

Hyponymy

• Hyponymy: When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another.
• Examples: animal/horse, insect/ant, flower/rose
• The concept of "inclusion" is if an object is A, then necessarily B
• Investigating connections is looking at hierarchical relationships.

Hyponymy diagram

• living thing

  • creature
    • animal
      • bird
        • insect
          • vegetable
            • flower - tree
    • dog
      • horse
        • duck
          • parrot
            • ant - cockroach - turnip - rose - banyan - pine
    • terrier
      • parakeet -fir
    • schnauzer
      • yorkie

• "Horse is a hyponym of animal."

• Examples of hyponym relationships:

  • "Ant is a hyponym of insect."
  • "Turnip is a hyponym of vegetable."

• Animal, insect, and vegetable are called superordinate (= higher level) terms.

• Words sharing a superordinate term are co-hyponyms.

• Relationship captures concept of "is a kind of."

• “A schnauzer is a kind of dog"

Prototypes

• Co-hyponyms of "bird" are not equally good examples.
• The characteristic instance of a category is the prototype.
• bird, explained not by component features, but resemblance to the clearest example
• Can help explain the meaning of certain words
• Prototype explains meaning by resemblance to the clearest example

Homophones and Homonyms

• Homophones: Different written forms with the same pronunciation.
• Examples: bare/bear, flour/flower, meat/meet
• Homonyms: One form with two or more unrelated meanings.
• Examples: bat (flying creature) / bat (used in sports), sole (single) / sole (part of foot or shoe)
• Homonyms have separate histories and meanings.

Polysemy

• Polysemy: One form with multiple related meanings.
• head, object on top of body/person at top of company
• If unsure of homonymy vs. polysemy, check a dictionary and homonyms have separate entries while polysemy are multiple of the same word.

Word Play

• homonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy are the basis of word play
• Plays on the word lamb
• Plays on the word leg and foot
• Homophones or homonyms also are used in word play

Metonymy

• Metonymy: Relationship based on close connection in everyday experience.
• It is based on relation of container-contents (bottle/water, can/juice), whole-part (car/wheels, house/roof) or a representative symbol (king/crown).
• It explains: the phrase "He drank the whole bottle" and statements like "The White House has announced".

Collocation

• mature speakers know which words tend to occur with other words.
• hammer --> nail
• Organizes as knowledge based on collocation/frequently occurring words.
• Corpus linguistics: examines which words occur together and frequency of co-occurrence.
• Corpus linguistics uses databases to find frequent words/phrases and collocations