Semantics S5: Language Meaning Analysis

• Semantics S5 introduces basic concepts related to the analysis of natural language meaning.
• It surveys philosophy of language, structural semantics, and lexical semantics.

Course Content

• Covers the historical introduction to semantics.
• Discusses denotation vs. connotation and logic of classes.
• Examines intension vs. extension, contextual meaning, and collocation meaning.
• Deals with reference vs. sense, paradigmatic & syntagmatic relations of sense.
• Includes componential analysis, semantic fields, and sense relations.

Recommended Reading

• Semantics: The Study of Meaning by Leech Geoffrey N (1981, Penguin Books).
• Semantics, Volume 1 by Lyons John (Jun 2, 1977, Cambridge University Press).
• Semantics by Palmer Frank Robert (1981, Cambridge University Press).

Introduction to Semiotics

• Some philosophers were concerned with semiotics.
• Semiotics includes syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

History of Semantics

• Semantics originated recently in the 19th century.
• The term originates from the Greek verb 'to signify'.
• Philosophers were interested in words' meanings over their syntactic functions early on.
  • Democritos (460-370 BC) discussed two types of multiple meanings.
  • Aristotle (384-322 BC) defined the word as the smallest significant unit.
• Bréal first used 'Semantics' in 1883 as a historical study.
• Semantics was neglected in modern linguistics, considered mainly philosophy, logic, and psychology.
• Jost Trier's "theory of semantic fields" shifted semantics to descriptive uses.
• A key question became: "what is to be understood by meaning?".

Meaning Defined

• Meaning is "the sense a word or groups of words conveys".
• Ogden and Richards listed 22 definitions of 'meaning' in The Meaning of Meaning (1923).
• Linguistics distinguishes between lexical meaning (e.g., ball, boy, hit) and grammatical meaning (e.g., "The boy hit the ball").
• Semantics concerns itself with the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
• The focus is primarily on word meaning.

Terminological Illustrations

• Within semantics, the most useful notion of 'word' is that of 'lexeme' as "an item of meaning".
• 'lexeme' is one kind of word as opposed to other types of words.
• Lexemes are headwords or base forms, e.g., v. sing, without 'to' for infinitives.

Types of Meaning: Denotative vs. Connotative

• Denotative meaning relates a lexeme to the external world, e.g., a house.
  • 'girl' denotes something "a real being" with features like "Leaving being", "female sex", "non-adult".
• Denotatum is a particular class and denotata are the individual animals; the denotatum of 'cow' is a particular class of (cow) and the invididual animals (cows) are its denotata.
• Denotatum of 'red' is a property and denotata are red objects; the denotatum of 'red' is a particular property (i.e the colour red) and its denotata are red objects.
• Denotation relates to the philosophical intension and extension of an expression within logic of classes.

Logic of Classes

• Class: a set of individuals (objects) with common properties.
• 'Individuals' refers to physical objects in a specific class.
• Example: If X is {a, b, c, d}, then X is the class whose members are a, b, c, and d, and "a ∈ X" symbolizes class membership.
• Class inclusion: If Y is {b, c} and Y ⊆ X (Y is included in X), then all members of Y are included in X, and Y is a subclass of X.
• A class contains members but includes subclasses.

Intension and Extension

• Class-membership can be defined by: Listing members (extensional definition) or defining intension based on common properties..
• The greater the extension of a term, the less its intension, and vice versa.
  • 'animal' → living being that can feel and move about (birds, dogs, fish, snakes...).
  • 'cow' → animal, bovine, female.
• Denotation involves both intension and extension.

Connotative Meaning

• Connotative meaning is added to the denotation of words.
• It involves associations a word has beyond its denotation.
  • Example 'dove'
    • Denotation: 'bird', 'a small head', 'short legs', and 'a cooing voice'
    • Connotation: peace and love
• Linguistically significant are associations a word holds for a community or a defined group within a language community.
• Everyday language is more charged with connotations than scientific and technical discourse.

Reference and Sense

• Reference indicates what things are talked about.
• This involves language and the thing referred to in the world.
• "this pen" has many potential referents.
  • The same expressions can have variable reference.
  • Some expressions can have a constant reference.
• The notions "existence" and "reference" can extend to words representing non-physical things.
• The reference of a lexical item need not be precisely determined.
  • Examples being ‘hill’ and ‘mountain’ or ‘chicken’ and ‘hen’.
  • The reference of hill overlaps mountain.
• Languages impose lexical categorization on the world and draw boundaries arbitrarily.

Sense

• Sense relates to the system of relationships that are between linguistic elements.
• A word's sense is its place in the system, contrasting with other words.

Sense vs. Reference

• Gottlob Frege distinguished sense and reference in 1892.
• Sense differs from reference: two items may have the same reference but differ in sense.
  • "The morning star is the evening star" = the planet Venus.
  • Has the same referent, but a deferent meaning.
• Husserl distinguished them as well.
  • "The victor of Janna" / "The looser of Waterloo"= Napoleon
• An expression can have sense without reference, e.g., "The present queen of France is Algerian".

De Saussure's Theory of Signs

• Sense as meaning type relates to this theory.
• Each has signified, and a signifier.
  • Signified: the meaning or concepts a signifier stands for.
  • Signifier: sounds or graphic signs a speaker uses to refer to a physical or abstract concept (e.g. /teibl/ for table).

Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Relations

• Syntagmatic relations are contrasts a unit has by its combination with other units on the same level.
  • Examples: Blond & hair, bark & dog, kick & foot.
    • She has blond hair which has a linear or horizontal relationship
    • The dog barks.
    • He kicked his foot.
• Paradigmatic relationships relate forms that might occupy the same place in structure.
  • He walks slowly, quickly, lightly.

Contextual Meaning

• Contextual meaning is when a word's meaning depends on use.
  • Hard can mean:
    • (contrasted with soft) not easily cut (as hard as a rock)
    • (contrasted with easy) difficult to understand (a hard exercise)
    • Causing unhappiness (have a hard time)
    • severe/harsh (a hard father)
  • Light adj not heavy
  • Light woman = frivolous
  • Green grass/green eye.

Collocation Meaning

• Collocation is using two or more lexical items in habitual associations.
• Quirk defines it as "the conventional combination and selection of lexical items according to the expectation of the addressee".
• Collocation restrictions:
  • Based on the meaning: For example, green doesn't collocate with cow.
  • Based on range: pretty girl/woman/lady (female) vs. handsome boy/man/husband (male).
  • Neither meaning nor range: addled eggs, rancid butter/bacon.

Semantic/Lexical Fields

• This is tightly related to De Saussure's structuralism
• The theory explains that meaning depends on the relation with systematic units.
• De Saussure's system concept is Trier's basis for semantic fields.
• These fields are "living realities intermediate between individual words and the totality of the vocabulary."
• Trier states that share property of being integrated in a larger structure and with the vocabulary the property of being structured in terms of smaller units.”".

Componential Analysis and Semantic Features

• Aims to decompose the senses of lexemes into minimal and contrastive semantic features.
• The theory is based on the analysis of the semantic structure of words.
• Content words can partially be defined by semantic features or components.
• Meaning can be specified by indicating "+" (presence) or "-" (absence) for semantic features.
  • Example:
  • "man"
    • [+ Human] (distinguishes from 'bull')
    • [+ Male] (distinguishes from 'woman')
    • [+ Adult] (distinguishes from 'child')
• The relevant sense of 'man' is represented by [+ Human], [+ Male], [+ Adult].
  • 'bull' would have [-Human], [+ Male], [+ Adult].
  • 'woman' will have [+ Human], [- Male], [+ Adult]
• Sounds are distinguished by distinctive features; /b/ in ball is [voiced, bilabial, stop] while /p/ in pass is [voiceless, bilabial, stop].
• Lexemes unmarked for sex or adulthood, such as 'child', use "+/-" to indicate features that may or may not be part of their contextual sense.
• Boy broken down semantically- [+human], [+male], [-adult].
• A difference between 'boy' and 'man' is attributed to the existence of [+adult].

Sense Relations: Synonymy

• This defines "sameness of meaning".
• Two words are synonyms if they have the same meaning.
  • sofa/couch
  • happy/glad
  • Cease / stop
  • Quick / fast
• English has many synonyms.
• To linguists, no real synonyms exist, with no 2 words of the exact same meaning.
• Technical terminologies may show real synonymy, like medicine.
  • caecitis / typlitis
• Phonetics may demonstrate synonymy of words
  • S and Z are spirants / fricatives
  • P and K are stops / occlusives.
• But complete synonyms of natural language are rare, with assumed differences in meaning and distinction.
• Typical differences:
  • one term is more general than another
    • refuse / reject
  • one term is more professional
    • disease / illness
  • one term is more literary
    • passing away / death
  • one term is more colloquial
    • turn down / refuse
• Substitution tests help delimit synonyms, interchanging terms in some contexts.
  • broad - wide
    • "the broadest sense" = "the widest sense"
• Broad and wide are near synonyms
  • liberty – freedom
    • But “I am not at the liberty to tell you" != freedom
  • Liberty and freedom are near synonyms.
• Finding opposites is another method.
  • Deep will overlap with profound in "deep sympathy” “profound sympathy."
• Shallow water vs profound is not correct.

Polysemy

• Polysemy is where one word has multiple meanings.
• The noun "board" means a thing plank, a tablet, a table, or a group.
• Sources of polysemy:
  • Shifts in application where adjectives change meanings based on qualifying nouns.
  • Social milieu (specialization) and in general; For example, paper for official document, newspaper, examination, a set of examination questions, communication communication read or sent to a learned community.
  • Figurative language extends word meaning, like ‘eye’ can be for organ, of a fountain, in architecture (dome).

Homonymy

• This shows words of similar form, but different in meaning (may have different spellings).
  • tail - tale /teil/ (homophones)
  • maid - made /meid/ (homophones)
  • to - too- two /tu/ (homophones)
  • Bank(river)/ bank(money)- bank (homophones and homographs)

Hyponymy

• is a sense relation in which words such that meaning of one is included in the meaning of the other
• This is usually inclusion
  • Examples: vegetable (superordinate), with potato, tomato, cabbage, cucumber (co-hyponyms)
  • virtue (superordinate) with honesty, patience, prudence, gratitude (co-hyponyms)
• Relations of hyponymy may not be systematic.

Incompatibility

• The relation holds/is established beetween words with contradictory meanings.
  • "This is a rose" is incompatible with other lexical items in the semantic field of 'flower' such as
  • 'tulip', 'daisy', 'marguerite', 'jasmine', 'iris’
• When someone says I am sitting on a chair it impliciyl excludes- am sitting on a stool or settee or armchair

Antonymy

• Includes one kind of meaning of the opposite.
  • Alive-dead
  • weak-strong
  • over-under
• Relations of antonymy are not uniform.

Gradable Opposites

• Narrow - wide small-large tall-short hot-cold
• The adjectives may subject to comparasion: "A is as hot as B" or "A is hotter than B"
• The degress of graduallity will change words meanungs
• "very narow or very wde"
• "Warm is in both tepid or warm"
• '“Narrow - wide small - large tall – short hot – cold".'

Ungradable Opposites

• Ungradable antonmys words with no inbetweensSingle-martial/ dead alive
  • SingleMarried / DeadAlive /
• Pairs such words invovle relatships
  • “If so and so is not married" is considered the opposite.

Relational Opposites / Converses

• One memeber fo opposiets refers to convrese relations
  • Overunder: where If the book is over the table, then table is under the book.
  • Mary gave chocolate to Bill and then Bill recive chocolate from Mary.
• “relatship exsit betwno words with similar but contradcitos"
• 2 kinds of coonverses
  • 1. Gramttical: Act normal
  • 2. lexical Before After