Semantics presentation

‘LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS’
PREPARED AND PRESENTED
BY
AZMAT ARAA
Monday,
March 16,
2015 1

study of the MEANING OFTHE ‘MEANING’
Monday, March 16, 2015 2

Semantics is taken from the Greek word ‘Semantikos’
meaning sign.
The word ‘meaning’ can be defined in many ways, but
the most pertinent definition to linguistics is :
“ Meaning is the function of signs in language.”
This understanding of meaning corresponds to
German philosopher Ludwig Wittgensteins’ definition:
“ The meaning of a word is its use in the language.”
(in other words, the role a word plays in the language).

Meaning has interested philosophers for thousands of years. The
Greek philosophers were the first people known to have debated
the nature of meaning. They held two opposing views on the
subject.
The Naturalist view , held by Plato and his followers, maintained
that there was a direct association between a word and its
meaning,and the words were only names for the objects.
4

The concept of a word’s meaning was first made
explicit in Greek philosophy by Aristotle.
Definitions have been particularly important for
conceptual theories of meaning which
traditionally assumed a close link between
concepts and definitions: knowing the concept
HORSE, for example, is simply the ability to use
the word horse in a way that accords with or fits
its definition. 5

Since about the sixteenth century, dictionaries have
played an extremely important role in the way we
think about and use our own language.
6

signifier ____________________________ signified
linked by an associative bond
(sound image) (concept)

Ogden and Richards saw this relationship between words and
concepts as a TRIANGLE.
Thought or Reference
Symbol Referent

According to this theory there is no direct link between
symbol and referent i.e.(language and the word).This link
is established via thought or reference, the concepts of
our minds. It avoids problems faced by naming the
words,i.e classification of words.
what exactly is the associative bond of Saussure or the
link between Ogden and Richards’ symbol and concept?
We don’t relate words to concepts every time we utter
them rather this permanent association is stored in our
brains. Hence, we can say that concept is the meaning of
the word. Many linguists accept conceptual view of
meaning which stemmed from ‘mentalism ‘ of Chomsky.
We understand the meaning of a word just like we can
read a signpost. Monday,March16,2015
9

The purpose of semantics is not to search for
an elusive entity called ‘MEANING’, rather it is
an attempt to understand how it is that words
and sentences can ‘mean’ at all or ‘how they
can be meaningful?’
Wittgenstein says, “Don’t look for the meaning
of a word, look for its use.”
Hence, with the assistance of Semantics we can
investigate USE.!

REFERENCE
Reference deals with
the relationship
between the linguistic
elements;words,senten
ces etc, and the non-
linguistic world of
experience.
SENSE
Sense relates to the
complex system of
relationships that hold
between the linguistic
elements themselves
(mostly the words); it is
concerened only with intra-
linguistic relations.

SENSE RELATIONS
No doubt, SENSE
RELATIONS have formed
an important part of the
study of language.
Linguists and philosophers
are more concerned with
the sense relations ,
BECAUSE
There are extremely great
theoretical and practical
difficulties in handling
Reference (Content)
satisfactorily.
THE ONLY
CONCERN OF
SEMANTICS

To linguists and non-linguists alike, the word is the
most basic and obvious unit of language. But in
many languages a single word can appear in many
different morphological forms.Thus, in English, go,
goes, went, have gone and to go are all forms of the
verb to go. Other languages have many more
morphological variants of a single word-form. In
Ancient Greek, for example, a single verb, tithe-mi,
which means ‘put’, has several hundred different
forms, which convey differences of person, number,
tense and mood.Monday, March 16, 2015 13

The lexeme is the name of the abstract unit which
unites all the morphological variants of a single
word.Thus, we can say that go, goes, went, have
gone and to go all are instantiations of the lexeme
to go.
We usually refer to the lexeme as a whole using one
of the morphological variants, the citation form.
( Nick Riemer)

All human languages have the property of
productivity.This is simply the fact that the
vocabulary of any given language can be used to
construct a theoretically infinite number of
sentences (not all of which will be meaningful),by
varying the ways in which the words are combined.
For example, given the words the, a, has, eaten,
seen, passing, contemporary, novelist and buffalo,
the following figure among the large number of
meaningful sentences that can be constructed:
Monday,March16,2015
15

1. The novelist has seen the buffalo.
2. A novelist has eaten the buffalo.
3. A contemporary novelist has seen a
buffalo.
4. The novelist has seen a passing buffalo.
5. A buffalo has eaten a passing
contemporary novelist and so on.

One especially important category of non
compositional phrase is idioms. For example, if we
say that so-and-so has thrown in the towel, most
English speakers will recognize that we are not
talking about anyone literally ‘throwing’ a ‘towel',
but that we simply mean that the person in question
has given up on whatever venture is being spoken
about.This phrase is not compositional, since its
overall meaning, does not derive from the meanings
of its individual component lexemes.

Based on the distinction between the meanings of
words and the meanings of sentences, we can
recognize two main divisions in the study of
semantics: lexical semantics and phrasal
semantics.
Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning,
whereas phrasal semantics is the study of the
principles which govern the construction of the
meaning of phrases and of sentence meaning out
of compositional combinations of individual
lexemes.

SENTENCE MEANING
The sentence meaning of the
given example is the
literal, compositional meaning
as built up from the meanings of
the individual
words of the sentence. If we did
not speak English, we could
discover
the sentence meaning by
finding out what its
translationwas in our own
language.
UTTERANCE MEANING
The utterance meaning, by
contrast, is the meaning
which
the words have on a particular
occasion of use in the
particular context in
which they occur.

There are many uses in which words seem to acquire a
strongly different meaning from the one they normally have.
Suppose that while cooking Peter has just spilled a large
quantity of spaghetti carbonara all over the kitchen floor.
Hearing the commotion, Brenda comes into the kitchen,
sees what has happened, and utters (33)
You’re a very tidy cook, I see.
It is clear that Brenda doesn’t literally mean that Peter is a
tidy cook, but that she is speaking ironically.What she
actually means is the opposite of Brenda is drawing
attention to the fact that Peter has precisely not beena tidy
cook. In cases like this, we say that there is a difference
between sentence meaning and utterance meaning.

LEXICAL
RELATIONS
Relationships like Synonymy, Antonymy,
Meronymy and so on all concern the
paradigmatic relations of an expression: the relations
which determine the choice of one lexical item over
another. In the construction of any utterance, the
speaker is typically confronted with a choice
between various lexical items.kitchen is a meronym
of restaurant; often is the antonym of rarely, many is
(in this context) a synonym of numerous, and sushi is
a hyponym of Japanese food.Monday, March 16, 2015 21

Speakers of English can readily agree that words like good-
bad, love-hate and in-out are opposites or antonyms.The
notion of oppositeness involved here seems to cover several
different types of relation; in general, however, antonymy
may be characterized as a relationship of incompatibility
between two terms with respect to some given dimension of
contrast.
Some words seem to have more than one antonym,
depending on the dimension of contrast involved (girl has
both boy and woman, depending on whether the dimension
of contrast is sex or age; sweet has both bitter and sour.

Not every word has an obvious antonym: library, of,
and corresponding are three cases for which there is
no obvious relevant dimension of contrast and for
which antonyms are consequently hard to identify.
And even where an obvious dimension of contrast
does exist, antonyms are not always available: angry,
for instance, does not have any obvious antonym in
English even though we can easily conceive of the
scale of arousal and calmness to which it belongs.

In antonymy, the principal distinction we have to
make is between gradable and non-gradable
antonyms. Non-gradable antonyms are antonyms
which do not admit a midpoint, such as male-female
or pass fail. Assertion of one of these typically entails
the denial of the other.
Thus, if someone is female, they are necessarily not
male, and someone who has failed an exam has
necessarily not passed it. Gradable antonyms,
however, like hot-cold or good-bad, seem to be more
common than non gradable ones.

A gradable pair of antonyms names points on a scale
which contains a midpoint: thus, hot and cold are
two points towards different ends of a scale which
has a midpoint, lexicalized by adjectives like tepid,
which is used to refer to the temperature of liquids
which are neither hot nor cold, but somewhere in
between.A consequence of the fact that gradable
antonyms occur on a scale is the fact that they are
open to comparison.
Thus, we may say that one drink is hotter than
another, or that some water is less cold than another.

List ten gradable and five
non-gradable antonym
pairs.

A certain number of words in English which have
more than one meaning can be given descriptions
which make them seem autoantonymous, i.e. their
own opposites.
(Murphy 2003: 173).
Thus, temper means both ‘to harden’ and ‘to soften’;
cleave means both ‘stick together’ and ‘force apart’
and sanction means both ‘to approve’ and ‘to
censure’.

Furthermore, there are many denominal verbs for
putting in or taking out things which show similar
autoantonymy, (e.g. to string a bean vs. to string a
violin.
Murphy points out (2003: 173) that contextual
factors limit the risk of confusion in many of these
cases: if you temper your comments you are softening
them, not making them harder, whereas tempering
metal can only refer to hardening it.

Meronymy (Greek meros: ‘part’) is the relation of part
to whole: hand is a meronym of arm, seed is a
meronym of fruit, blade is a meronym of knife
(conversely, arm is the holonym of hand, fruit is the
holonym of seed, etc.).
Surprisingly, not all languages seem to have an
unambiguous means of translating the phrase ‘part
of’ but meronymy is nevertheless often at the origin
of various polysemy patterns (where a single word
has more than one meaning; and an important
lexical relation for that reason.

Hyponymy (Greek hypo- ‘under’) is the lexical
relation described in English by the phrase
kind/type/sort of. A chain of hyponyms defines a
hierarchy of elements: sports car is a hyponym of car
since a sports car is a kind of car, and car, in turn, is a
hyponym of vehicle since a car is a kind of vehicle.
Other examples of hyponym hierarchies include
• blues – jazz – music,
• ski-parka – parka – jacket,
• commando – soldier – member of armed forces,
• martini – cocktail – drink and
• paperback – book

A given word or phrase is accepted as
having the same meaning as another word
or phrase if its substitution for the other
in the given context yields an utterance
which they will accept as having the same
meaning as the first utterance.
(Lyons 1968: 75)

It has often been suggested that English is
particularly rich in Synonyms for the
historical reason that its vocabulary has
come from two different sources, from
Anglo-Saxon on the one hand and from
French, Latin and Greek on the other.

 There are no real synonyms; no two words
have exactly the same meaning. It would
seem unlikely that two words with exactly
the same meaning would both survive in a
language. If we look at possible synonyms
there are at least five ways in which they can
be seen to differ.

 Words in different dialects
 Fall___ autumn
 Cowshed, cow house, byre, haystack,
hayrick, haymow
 Tap, faucet, spigot

Words in different styles or registers
Smell, obnoxious effluvium, ‘orrible stink
Gentleman, man, chap,
Pass away, die, pop off

 Different in emotive or evaluative meaning
 Statesman/politician
 Hide/conceal
 Thrifty/economical/stingy
 Fascist/liberal

 Collocationally restricted words
 May be calledTrue synonyms
 (occur in different environments)
 Rancid occurs with bacon or butter
 Addled with eggs or brains

 Same words have a set of different meanings
 Such words are called polysymic words
 Dictionary meaning of ‘flight’
 Passing through the air
 Power of flying
 Air jouney
 Unit of the Air Force
 Volley
 Digression
 Series of steps

 Wind (verb) and wind (noun) are spelt in the
same way but pronounced differently
(homography)
 Sight/site, rite/right are spelt differently but
pronounced in the same way (homophony)

 Identical forms , different origin (homonym)
 Given separate entries
 Identical forms, same origin (polysemy)
 Given single entry

 Meanings overlap
 Loose sense of synonymy
 Exploited by the dictionary makers
 Mature/adult/ripe/perfect/due
 Govern/direct/control/determine/require
 Loose/inexact/free/relaxed/vague/lax
 /slack/unbound/inattentive/

On the traditional view of metaphor, which goes
right back to Aristotle, metaphors are principally
seen as a matter of (especially literary) usage.
On this understanding, metaphors assert a
resemblance between two entities.
Thus, the metaphor the holiday was a nightmare
works because it asserts a resemblance or similarity
between the holiday and a nightmare.

Understanding the meaning of the metaphorical
utterance involves identifying things which holidays
and nightmares might hold in common,
such as being unpleasant.
Metaphors like this are no more than isolated
usages which can only be discussed on a case-by-
case basis: we should not expect there to be any
significant generalizations about metaphorical
usages.

Another important structural relation is the
relation of metonymy.
In traditional rhetoric, metonymy is the figure
of speech based on an interrelation between
closely associated terms – cause and effect,
possessor and possessed, and a host of
possible others.

The common element in metonymy is notion of
contiguity: the things related by a metonymy can
be understood as contiguous to (neighboring)
each other, either
conceptually or in the real world. Here are some
examples:
a. Moscow has rejected the demands.
b. The kettle is boiling.
c. This cinema complex has seven screens.
d. I saw the doctor today.
e. My bags were destroyed by customs.

In (4a) we understand that Moscow refers to the
Russian government. In(4b) it isn’t the kettle itself,
but the water inside it, which is boiling. In
(4c) the cinema is not claimed to just have seven
screens: the speaker means that it has seven
separate auditoriums, each with its own screen.
In (4d) the speaker does not mean that they just saw
the doctor: they mean that they consulted the
doctor. In (4e) it was not just the bags, but their
contents as well which were destroyed.

Notice the difference between metonymies and
metaphors: in metaphor, there is a relation of
mapping between two concepts, with the structure
of one concept (NIGHTMARE, UNPLEASANT) being
imposed onto another (HOLIDAY, BORING).
Metonymies do not serve to structure one concept
in terms of another: it is not possible to articulate the
detailed mappings we established in the love and
obligation cases. Instead, they draw on the
associations within a single conceptual ‘domain’,
allowing one part of a concept to convey another.

The arrangement of words(or lexemes) into
groups(or fields) on the basis of an element of
shared meaning .It is also called lexical field
analysis.
Although the terms lexical field and semantic
field are usually used interchangeably,Siegfried
Wyler makes this distinction: a lexical field is “a
structure formed by lexemes” while a semantic
field is “the underlying meaning which finds
expression in lexemes”.

Semanticists often divide the meaning of a
word into semantic components based on real
world concepts such as
human/live/dead/animal/plant/thing/ etc.
Discussing the meaning of words by breaking it
down into smaller semantic components such
as this is called
COMPONENTIALANALYSIS.

With
back
With legs For a
single
person
For
sitting
With
arms
rigid
chair + + + + _ +
Arm chair + + + + + +
Stool _ + + + _ +
sofa + + _ + + +
Bean bag _ _ + + _ _

Thus the level, chair adds a specification which we
could describe as ‘for one person to sit on’ to piece of
furniture, and armchair adds ‘with arms’ to chair.
Similarly, we could describe the difference between
chair and sofa through a contrast between the feature
‘for one person to sit on’ (chair) and ‘for more than one
person to sit on’ (sofa). Continuing in this way, we
could envisage an entire description of the semantic
field of words for furniture items based on the
presence or absence of a finite number of features,
conceived as the ‘conceptual units out of which the
meanings of linguistic utterances are built’ .Monday, March 16, 2015 52

Its embodiment in binary features (i.e. Features with
only two possible values, + or −) represents a
translation into semantics of the principles of
structuralist phonological analysis, which used binary
phonological features like [± voiced], [± labial] [±
nasal],etc. to differentiate the phonemes of a
language.The componential analysis of meaning like
the one sketched inTable is precisely analogous to
the feature specifications of phonemes advanced in
the structuralist tradition.

Thus, just as sofa can be described through the use
of binary semantic components like [+ with back], [+
with legs], [− for a single person], [+ for sitting], [+
with arms], [+ rigid], so the phoneme /d/ of English
would be described (in the system of Chomsky and
Halle 1968) as a constellation of the following
distinctive features: /d/ [+ consonantal, − nasal, −
sonorant, + anterior, + coronal, + voiced . . . ]

A standard dictionary represents the contrast between chair
and sofa through differing definitions, as follows;
chair ‘a separate seat for one person, of various forms,
usually having a back and four legs’
sofa ‘a long upholstered seat with a back and arms for two or
more people’ (Concise Oxford 1995).
The componential analysis represents the same difference in
meaning simply through the presence or absence of a single
feature, [for a single person], an analysis which struck many
linguists as superior in terms of its concision.

table horse Boy Man Girl woman
animate _ + + + + +
human _ _ + + + +
female _ _ _ _ + +
adult _ + _ _ _ +

Despite the popularity it enjoyed for a time, especially in structuralist
circles, componential analysis is confronted with a number of serious
problems. One important problem is the rigidity of the binary feature
system, according to which the only possible value of a specified
semantic feature is + or − (or unspecified).
This aspect of the analysis came to be seen as increasingly
unsatisfactory from the 1970s onward, largely in light of psychological
evidence about human categorization.
Another serious problem was the fact that it seemed simply not to
apply to many areas of the vocabulary. Componential analysis is
particularly suited to restricted semantic fields from which intuitively
obvious semantic distinctions can easily be abstracted.
57

The most obvious types of lexeme to which it can be applied
are nouns with obvious properties available for conversion
into features (‘with legs’, ‘to sit on’, ‘for one person’, etc.).
Elsewhere, however, the utility of features is much less clear.
In spite of these problems, the use of distinctive features in
componential analysis had some subtle consequences for
many linguists’ conception of semantics, by making
meaning seem something much more concrete and uniform
than it had appeared in traditional dictionary definitions.

A collocation is two or more words that
often go together.These combinations
just sound "right" to native English
speakers, who use them all the time.
Other combinations may be unnatural and
just sound "wrong".

Falling rising tone
She is very clever.
She is so pretty.
You are such a loyal friend.
These utterances don’t mean what they
mean!!!

Semantics
Not a single, well-integrated discipline.
No absolute distinction between
grammar and Semantics.
It relates to sum total of human knowledge.

THANKYOU!

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