OG semantika skripta.docx

Semantics Understanding the basics - focuses on the literal meaning of words, phrases and sentences, but also their integration - the rest of the meaning is left to pragmatics (in use and what users do with meaning) - the understand semantic meaning we have highlight 3 main...

Semantics Understanding the basics - focuses on the literal meaning of words, phrases and sentences, but also their integration - the rest of the meaning is left to pragmatics (in use and what users do with meaning) - the understand semantic meaning we have highlight 3 main components: a. the context in which the sentence is used b. the meaning of the words in the sentence c. the morphological and syntactic structure - in systematic study of meaning we have 3 key perspectives/disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, and psychology - three frameworks: philosophical semantics, lexical semantics, cognitive semantics - the common goal is to understand how language works and what is shared as a part of general human linguistic knowledge, but does it mean to know a language - implies recognizing **anomalies**, the ability to **paraphrase**, to know **synonymy** (in context), to recognize **contradictory** statements (if one T the other is F), to know **antonymy**, to intuitively recognize **semantic features**, to recognize and understand **ambiguity**, to produce and deal with **adjacency pairs** (converse), understanding **entailment** (T1 entails T2), understanding and using **presuppositions** - human linguistic knowledge is comprised of **knowledge of the sound system**, **knowledge of words, creativity**, and **knowledge of grammar** (sentences vs. non-sentences) - all of these make up linguistic competence - e.g. [green] (phonological) → [adj]. (grammatical) [of the colour of growing foliage] (semantic) Philosophical semantics - philosophers approach language from two perspectives: linguistic philosophers and philosophers of language - linguistic philosophers -- interested in solving complex philosophical problems by examining the **use** of certain terms in language - philosophers of language -- interested in the connection between the linguistic and the non-linguistic; the connection between language and the world (proper philosophical semantics) - questions like 'what is meaning?, 'how do we recognize it when we see one?', 'where does it come from?', 'what is it and what gave this their first names?' were first addressed by the philosophers of Ancient Greece, Rome, and India - meaning is a state of mind, but only one of the many possible states of mind -- words make us see only one of the many possible realities/perspectives which makes meaning a sort of 'illusion' - none of the philosophical theories of meaning serve alone as a basis of empirical and comprehensible theory of linguistics semantics, each one has contributed to its further understanding by shedding a light on meaning, language, the human mind and their thoughts - linguistic speculation traces its roots all the way to India -- the Vedic period (1500 BC) with the deification of vak (speech) - most important philosophical works stem from Ancient Grece and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe - Ancient Greece → Plato and his pupil Aristotle - Plato's Cratylus is a dialogue about the origins of language and the nature of meaning: - one character who acts as a teacher, who guides one or more students towards better understanding a topic - comprised of two parts -- 1^st^ one between Socrates and Hermogenes, and the 2^nd^ is the dialogue between Socrates and Cratylus - the dichotomy between conventionalists and naturalists - Aristotle was Plato's student who described the world in terms of the 'common sense' view and he is after direct empirical evidence - famous essay 'On Interpretation' focuses on language and logic (structure of sentence) - different symbols have different status and different thoughts John Locke - defined the **ideational theory of meaning** - words are signs necessary for communication, and these signs stand for ideas which are then, in turn, proper and immediate signification of signs (words) - problems of this theory: a) the separation of thought and language b\) Wittgenstein's (anti-)private language argument -  argues that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent Bertrand Russell - defined the primitive reference theory - words have meaning in that they stand for something other than themselves -- the meaning of the word is the object that it stands for (where 'thing' includes properties, relationships, and syncategorematic words which get their meaning within a context) - problems of this theory: a) co-referring terms which have different meanings b\) reference-lacking terms are not meaningless c\) it cannot account for linguistic structure Gottlob Frege - German mathematician, logician, and philosopher who studied the relationship of logic and mathematics - meaning = sense + reference -- different ways of conceiving same concepts (e.g. four and eight halves -- the same value, but expressed differently) - important to note that while every expression that has meaning has sense, not every expression has reference - Clark Kent and Superman: a) both terms refer to the same person (reference) Ogden and Richards - from the book 'The Meaning of Meaning' - reference -- indicates the realm of memory where recollections of past experiences and contexts exist - referent -- the objects that are perceived and that create the impression stored in the thought area - symbol -- the word that calls up the referent through the mental process of the reference symbol (vehicle) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-- referent - e.g. Apple → the shared concept of apple symbolizes the literal letters ''apple'' which stands for the real-life object apple, which the concept itself is referring to - Willard Van Orman Quine -- American philosopher and logician - **indeterminacy of translation** -- gavagai (rabbit) - Donalds Davidson -- US philosopher - radical interpretation -- the conditions necessary and sufficient for communication to occur are: a. to recognize a speaker as a speaker their beliefs must be mostly coherent and correct b. indeterminacy of meaning doesn't undermine communication, but it musts be constrained just enough Meaning as (meaning in) use - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Austrian origin, studied at Cambridge - notion of family resemblances (family traits) -- e.g. games -- we understand that different titles containing unrelated content all fall into the category of games because they share similar traits that mark them as such (movement mechanics, a leading storyline, unique characters, interactable environment, etc.) - words are understood in mind as a cluster or bundle that has 'family resemblance' - language as a game of chess Meaning as knowledge - Leaonard Bloomfield -- a behaviourist - meaning as a stimulus -- response relationship between a speech form and the speaker knowledge about the world) - but: speakers who do not know complicated terms for e.g. liver as 'large glandular organ in the abdomen of the vertebrates secreting bile' are likely to use the word successfully regardless Lexical semantics Structuralism - a view on language as a self-contained system in which all parts relate to all other parts of the system (de Saussure) - all words are connected to all other words, and the meaning of each words is a result of these interconnections (big vs. large) - a word is a linguistic sign - Ferdinand de Saussure pointed out that every linguistic sign has two components: a. the signifier -- the 'sound image' or form (pronunciation) b. the signified -- the concept represented (meaning) - they both represent an arbitrary relation between each other Words: types -- combinations -- use - defining what words mean and how they mean, and how that meaning is represented - brings up the issue of word use and combinations (large fly vs. large elephant) - words have different status in the lexicon (closed vs. open class) - meaning is an issue of communication (language use) -- we need to consider three levels of meaning: 1) word-meaning 2\) sentence-meaning 3\) utterance meaning - the content of a word is dealt within the field of morphology (these issues are a key to lexicology (developing theory for the latter) and lexicography (the skill of writing dictionaries)) - lexicology -- the part of linguistics which studies words (their elements, meaning, relations) - lexicography -- related field of lexicology which studies words in relation to dictionaries (the inclusion of words in a dictionary) - a dictionary aims to define the sense of a word and in doing so uses lexical relations - lexical vs. functional words which are stored separately in the mind - lemma -- a dictionary entry (e.g. infinitive of verb without to) -- contrast lemma (usually a base form of lexical root -- free morpheme) vs form word (different forms of words -- e.g. plural) - represented in dictionaries in terms of definitions (an attempt to show a definition of a word by means of other words - paraphrasing) - the pitfalls of defining -- obscurity, circularity, superfluous components and disjunctions, too/in-accurate, false components, open-ended definitions - two views: a) sense is a connotative meaning, its is the concept associated with a word, which determines how a word is used b\) the sense of a word is made up of the relationships between this word and other words of the same language (hot as an antonym to cold and a synonym to warm, etc.) - sense relations: semantic feature analysis, lexical relations, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and meronymy, homophony, homonymy, and polysemy, semantic fields - relation of words from the syntactic point of view: verb subcategorization and thematic or 'theta' roles - synonyms in English often result from lexical borrowing - buy vs. purchase, get vs. acquire, talk about vs. discuss, mad vs. insane (Germanic vs. Latin origin) - sometimes things that seem like synonyms are in fact not, as they have small pieces of information that make them distinct from one another - if true synonyms are rare or non-existent, perhaps those related words may be better described as hyponyms of each other (pet -- dog, cat, bird, snake, rabbit, etc.) - puns and polysemy, homonymy, metonymy - derivation (colourless), inflection (played), compounding (fingerprint), blending (smog), clipping (phone), backformation (opt), conversion (to paper, to butter -- category change), metaphorical extension (surf the web, mouse), borrowing (croissant, piano), word coinage (nylon, xerox, clinex), acronyms (NATO, UNESCO, SCUBA) Pragmatics - semiotics is divided into: a) syntax -- the study of the combinational properties of words or the formal relation of signs to one another b\) semantics -- the study of meaning, i.e. of the relation of signs to the entities to which they are applied c\) pragmatics -- the study of the relation of signs to users, i.e. the study of language usage Violation of semantic rules - the rules od language are unlike physics as they are 'violable' to a degree - three main kinds of rule violation: 1) anomaly 2\) metaphor 3\) idiomacity Other key pragmatic notions - **context** (refers to information outside of the text, available to a reader through understanding of genre, situation, and world knowledge) and **cotext** (refers to linguistic material in the surrounding text) - **deixis** -- the use of words or phrases to refer to a specific time (*then*), place (*that*), or person (*you*) and can only be defined in context of the utterance - presupposition - an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse - e.g. Jane no longer writes fiction → presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction. - theories: a. **Speech act theory** - speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well - e.g. \"I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?\" is considered a speech act as it expresses the speaker\'s desire to acquire the kimchi, as well as presenting a request that someone pass the kimchi to them. b. Gricean conversational maxims -- abiding by these maxims creates a cooperative communication - four conversational maxims: manner (to be clear), quantity (to be informative), quality (to be truthful), and relevance (to be relevant) -- these maxims can overlap or be sacrificed in order to achieve a specific outcome, for example politeness Discourse analysis - discourse is a linguistic unit larger than a sentence - there are genres of discourse (various types of discourse in politics, the media, education, science, business, etc.) - transactional function of language -- deals with whereby humans use their linguistics abilities to communicate knowledge, skills and information (to communicate a specific message) - interactional function of language - deals with how humans use language to interact each other socially or emotionally (to maintain a social relationship) - sentence -- an expression with a certain type of meaning using words - utterance -- any act of speech, consists of a phrase, a word, or even a partial word, provided it is language and not just sound ('Fire!' and 'Your house is on fire!' -- provide the same notion of speech act meaning, in this case there is a fire we need to run) - cohesion -- the process of linking and connecting sentences together through a variety of linguistic and semantic ties (anaphoric -- Jack → he, cataphoric that shop → Konzum) - coherence -- the ability to use the broader context of a story or sentence, and the semantic relationships between words to aid understanding and interpretation of language - Information structure -- the given information will be followed by new (e.g. if we mention a flower in a sentence and go on to talk about it in the following one we will address it by the pronoun it which will now be given, and not new information like flower in the former sentence, but we may add a new information by saying 'It is red.', and red will be the new given information) Cognitive Semantics - cognition is a group of mental processes that include attention, memory, language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision-making - cognitive linguistics -- interprets language in terms of mental concepts which underlie its forms - closely associated with semantics Development - Chomsky -- internalized the study of language, but left meaning out of the picture - Rosch -- psychological studies on prototypes -- radial categories and fuzzy edges - in the 1970s Lakoff, Chomsky's student, realized the formalisation of language was drifting too far away from meaning so he took it back to centre stage -- one of the best-known faces in cognitive linguistics - the study of language in a way that us compatible with what is known about the human mind, treating language as a reflecting and revealing mind - cognitive semantics -- study the relationship between experience, embodied cognition and language - how meaning is learned/processed/accessed in the human mind - language is seen as an instrument for organizing, processing and conveying information - separates semantics (meaning) into meaning-construction (form) and knowledge representation (concept) - links with the semantic triangle speaker (mind) word world - central tenets of cognitive linguistics: linguistic meaning is perspectival ([na] fotografiji/[in] the picture, in the tree/on the tree), linguistic meaning is dynamic and flexible (mouse -- animal and device), linguistic meaning is encyclopedic and non-autonomous (knowledge linked to other forms of knowledge), linguistic meaning is based on usage and experience (e.g. Bob killed John -- in Cro obj. and agent positions can be exchanged) - language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty - knowledge of language emerges from language use - grammar is a conceptualization - meaning is the driving force behind language - semantic structure is conceptual structure, but the to are not identical - while all linguistic meanings are cognitive semantics, not all cognitive semantics are linguistic meanings - conceptual structure is embodied - concepts of upness, front -- metaphors: ''I'm feeling up/down'' (good up, bad down) - meaning representation is encyclopaedic -- 'The child I safe', 'The beach is safe', 'The device is safe' - meaning construction is conceptualization - language is not a system of encoded meanings, but, rather, of meaning encoding Key notions - construal -- no direct mapping between the external world and conceptualization (world can be differently encoded in language) - dynamic -- meaning is not a thing, but a process - perspective -- the operation that results in construal - foregrounding -- relative prominence of some components of a situation - the frog is on/in the grass - frame -- multidimensional mental space of related concepts (without the knowledge of one of them, one does not have complete knowledge of any of them; wicket/mother) - image schema -- embodied prelinguistic structure which establishes patterns of understanding and reasoning - metaphor -- a linguistic device that involves the comparison of one concept or idea with another concept or idea, usually from different domains, in order to convey a deeper understanding or evoke a specific imagery - metonymy -- a figure of speech (or trope) in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it\'s closely associated (e.g. using 'crown' for 'royalty') - category (and prototype) -- a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others (Rosch) - any given concept in any given language has a real-world example that best represents this concept (e.g. when asked to give an example of the concept furniture, a couch is more frequently used than, say, a wardrobe) Cognition - the relationship between language and thought has 3 possible answers: a. Mentalistic approach (T → L) -- languages are based on and shaped upon conceptual notions that precede lexical labelling and grammatical constructs b. Deterministic approach (L → T) -- language, to some degree, influences thought c. Relativistic approach (L ⇄ T) -- a mutual interrelationship between language and thought Linguistic relativism - *Franz Boas* -- a German psychologist who became one of the central figures in the early American tradition of anthropological linguistics, followed *Humbolt*'s idea that language is the expression of the spirit of a nation - **Edward Sapir** -- an anthropologist and linguist who worked on Native American languages - studied the ways in which language and culture influence each other -- interested in the relation between linguistic differences, and differences in cultural world views - **Benjamin Lee Whorf** -- Sapir's student who developed Sapir's views - he first advocated the idea that because of linguistic differences in grammar and usage, speakers of different languages conceptualize and experience the world differently - The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis -- the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world, or, in other words, the structure of a language influences its speaker's cognitive processes - has strong deterministic and weak influences version Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) - departing from a programme of trial-and-error investigations aimed at explicating meanings of diverse types in several languages, Wierzbicka formed a hypothesis about a set of primitive concepts - main criteria guiding the empirical evidence: a. defining power -- what role does a concept play in defining other concepts b. universality -- the range of languages in which a given concept has been lexicalised - NSM semantic primitives (atoms) -- I, you, body (substantives), when, now, after (time), where, below, far (space), big, small (descriptors), etc. - words which appear as primitives in every known language in some form Life is a journey - Lakoff and Johnson proposed that conceptual metaphors interact with each other and can give rise to relatively complex metaphor systems - event structure metaphor -- a series of metaphors that interact in the interpretation of utterances - how it applies to 'Life is a journey.': states are locations (at a crossroads in his life), change is motion (he went to his fifties without a hint of a mid-life crisis), causes are forces (he got a head start in life), purposes are destinations (I can't ever seem to get where I want to be in life), means are paths (He followed an unconventional course during his life), difficulties are impediments to motion, purposeful activities are journeys