BASIC IDEAS IN SEMANTICS

SEMANTICS: the study of meaning in language.

SPEAKER MEANING: what a speaker means when he uses a piece of language.
SENTENCE/WORD MEANING: what a sentence/word means.
Semantic theory deals with semantic facts, facts about meaning.
Level of Semantic Analysis: words, sentences, utterances.
Level of Abstraction: utterances, sentences, propositions.

SENTENCES, UTTERANCES, AND PROPOSITIONS

SENTENCE: a grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete thought. If you change the words or their
order, you create a different sentence.
e.g. Matthew wants a cup of coffee is a sentence.
Coffee, please is not a sentence.
In the kitchen is not a sentence.
Please put it in the kitchen is a sentence.
UTTERANCE: any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that person.
- Doesn’t need to be grammatical.
- Uttered by one person at a specific time, location, and event.
- Should be any piece of language or must belong to a language.
Example of sentence and utterance:
I love Ricky
I love Ricky = 3 utterances and 1 sentence
I love Ricky
PROPOSITION: that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some states of affairs.
The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expressions in the sentence and the situation or action
they are involved in. Proposition must include action + agent + theme.
Example:
- In saying, ‘John can go’ a speaker asserts the proposition that John can go. In saying, ‘Can John go?’ he mentions the
same proposition but merely questions its truth.
- It doesn’t consider the language, so ‘I am cold’ ‘J’ai froid’ ‘Mir ist kalt’ ‘Mne xolodno’ ‘Aku kedinginan’ are the same
proposition.

REFERENCE
Reference: a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are being talked about.
- Have constant reference: everytime a person utters a linguistic expression, the person must mean the same thing.
- No physical referent: function words (a, at, is); abstract notions (love, hate, idea); myth creatures (unicorn).
- One expression — multiple referents
Example: The boy → Hanbin, Gunwook, Gyuvin
- Multiple expressions — one object referent
Expression → Example: Zhang Hao ↴
Expression → Object/Referant The center of ZB1
Expression → The 1st place winner of Boys Planet
Reference has 2 types, speaker-reference and linguistics-reference.
Speaker-Reference: what the speaker is referring to by using some linguistic expression.
Example: If someone jokingly says, “Here comes Queen Elizabeth,” when talking about a snobby person they know, the
person they’re actually referring to is that snobby friend. This kind of reference depends on who is speaking and the situation
and falls under the field of pragmatics.
Linguistics-Reference: deals with reference that is a systematic function of the language itself, rather than of the speaker and
context.
- Coreference: two linguistic expressions that refer to the same real-world entity are said to be coreferential.
e.g. Zhang Hao is the center of ZB1.
- Anaphora: a linguistic expression that refers to another linguistic expression is said to be anaphoric or an anaphor.
e.g. Giselle wants to play whoever thinks himself capable of beating her.
Himself refers to whoever. They’re not coreferential because they don’t have the same extralinguistic referent.
- Deixis: a deictic expression has one meaning but can refer to different entities depending on the speaker and his/her
spatial and temporal orientation.
e.g. You and I, here and there, right and left.
Taerae and Matthew are speaking to each other. When Taerae is speaking, ‘I’ refers to Taerae, and ‘you’ refers to
Matthew. When Matthew is speaking, the referents for these expressions reverse.
Prototype: an object which is held to be very typical of the kind of object which can be referred to by an expression
containing the predicate. Prototype shares family resemblance.
e.g. Cat

Prototype Theory
Example, semantic features: [+laying eggs] [+singing] [+flying] [+having wings] [+having a beak]
SENSE
Sense: how we see an object or the amount of information given about an object.
The Study of Sense (or Meaning)
In sense, there are speaker-sense and linguistic-sense.
Example:
Fred is a real genius → (Sarcastically) Speaker sense of the sentence might be ‘Fred
is below average in intelligence.’
→ (Literally) ‘Fred has a truly superior intellect.’
Lexical Ambiguity: where a word has more than one sense.
Example: I saw bats.
- I used a tool with a sharp blade to slice through baseball bats.
- I viewed some nocturnal flying mammals.
- I viewed baseball bats.
- I used a tool with a sharp blade to slice through nocturnal flying mammals.
Not all cases of ambiguity are lexical, for example like Syntactic Ambiguity.
Example: American history teacher.
- A teacher of American history. [[American history] teacher]
- A history teacher who is American. [American [history teacher]]
Sense Relations: one word has multiple senses.
Bank → The side of the river; A money vault.
Father, Dad → same sense
- Homonymy: senses are unrelated.
a. Sound (Homophony): wring, ring.
b. Orthography/Spelling (Homography): house (N), house (V).
Polysemy: senses are related.
e.g. Magazine (Arabic » maxazin, maxzan [store, save, storage]):
a. Something you read. (storing information)
b. Cartridge to store bullets for a gun. (storing bullets)
- Semantics Similarity (synonymy ≠ same meaning): different phonological words with highly related meanings/senses.
e.g. Sofa (elegant, formal). Couch (lie down).
- Opposite (antonymy)
a. Simple Antonymy (dead-alive)
b. Gradable Antonymy (hot-cold)
c. Reverse (night-day)
d. Converse [opposite relationship] (writer-reader)
- Taxonomic or Hierarchical Relation
a. Taxonomy [horizontal] (e.g. colors [they’re on the same level])
b. Hyponymy [vertical] (e.g. Hyponym: sweep, wipe, scrub. Hypernym: clean.)
c. Lexical Taxonomy
d. Part-Whole Relation (Meronymy)
e. Member-Collection Relation
f. Portion-Mass Relation
LOGIC
The tools of logic can help us to represent meaning.
Aristotle (three steps of type of argument)
a. If Arnd left work early, then he is in the pub. → premises
b. Arnd left work early. → premises
c. Arnd is in the pub. → conclusion
If steps a and b are true, then step c is also guaranteed to be true.
Truth Value
A simple example of a linguistic effect on truth value comes from negating a sentence.
a. Your car has been stolen. →p
b. Your car has not been stolen. → –p
p –p
————
T F If a is true, then b is false.
F T If a is false then b is true.
Truth value of a compound formed by using ‘and’ to join two statements.
a. The house is on fire.
b. The fire brigade are on the way.
c. The house is on fire and the fire brigade are on the way.
p –p p^q (Truth Table)
————————
T T T If a and b are true, then the compound c is also true.
T F F
F T F If either a or b is false, then the compound c will be false.
F F F
Conjunction Reduction
a. [Jiwoong and Matthew] left.
Jiwoong and Matthew left expresses ‘Jiwoong left and Matthew left.’
b. Yujin saw [Jiwoong and Matthew].
Yujin saw Jiwoong and Matthew expresses ‘Yujin saw Jiwoong and Yujin saw Matthew.’
c. Jiwoong was [changing his spark plugs and listening to talkback radio].
Jiwoong was changing his spark plugs and listening to talkback radio expresses ‘Jiwoong was changing his spark plugs
and Jiwoong was listening to talkback radio.’
Propositional Logic: the study of the truth effects of connectives like ᆨ and ^.
Connectives in propositional logic
Connective Syntax English
ᆨ ᆨp it is not the case that p
^ p^q p and q
🇻 p🇻q p and/or q (disjunction/inclusive or)
🇻 𝑒
p🇻 q 𝑒
p or q but not both (exclusive or)

→ p→q if p, then q (material implication)

↔ p↔q p if only if q (biconditional)
disjunction/inclusive or
p –p p
—————————
q 🇻
T T T (p and/or q)
T F T
F T T e.g. I’ll see ZB1 today or tomorrow.
F F F
exclusive or
p –p p 🇻q
𝑒
(p or q but not both)
—————————
T T F
T F T
F T T e.g. You will pay the fine or you will go to jail.
F F F
material implication
p –p p→q (if p, then q)
—————————
T T T e.g.
T F F p = Bin invited Hao
F T T q = Hao will go
F F T p → q = If Bin invited Hao, he’ll go.
1. Bin did invite Hao and Hao will go: the implication is true.
2. Bin did invite Hao, but actually Hao won’t go: the implication is false.
3. Bin didn’t invite Hao, but Hao will go anyway: the implication is true.
4. Bin didn’t invite Hao and Hao won’t go: the implication is true.
biconditional
p –p p↔q (p if only if q)
—————————
T T T ‘if p then q, and if q then p’
T F F
F T F e.g. We’ll leave if and only if we’re forced to.
F F T
p is a necessary condition for q
i.e. p is the only possible cause for q

WORD MEANING
Looking for meaning in different ways: dictionary definitions, meaning in the mind, referential approach.
Dictionary: lexicographers create dictionary definition meanings by studying books, newspapers, and transcripts of everyday
conversation.
The dictionaries that lexicographers create are sometimes called lexicons.
Lexicon → printed dictionary, mental dictionary.
Finding meaning in concept and ideas: this approach associates a meaning with a mental picture.
Lexical Meaning
A dog barked → predicate An activity associated, here, with
↳ referring expressions the referring expression a dog.
The use of language involves naming or referring to some entity and saying, or predicating, something about that entity.
Grammatical Meaning
e.g. A dog barked.
1. Statement vs Question A dog barked. Did a dog bark?
2. Affirmative vs Negative A dog barked. A dog did not bark. No dog barked.
3. Past vs Present A dog barked. A dog barks.
4. Singular vs Plural A dog barked. Some dogs barked.
5. Indefinite vs Definite A dog barked. The dog barked.
Sentences that have the same/similar referring expression and the same predicate can have different grammatical meanings.
Meaning change: Semantic Shift (change in the meaning of words over time)
- Shift in connotation: change in words general meanings over time.
a. Narrowing, the meaning of a word becomes less general than its earlier meaning.
Old English Meaning Modern English Meaning
hund dog hound a particular type of dog
b. Broadening, the process by which the meaning of a word changes to become more generalized over time.
Old English Meaning Modern English Meaning
birdd young bird bird owl of any age
c. Amelioration, shift of word meanings over time from neutral or negative to positive.
Old English Meaning Modern English Meaning
cniht boy, youth, knight military of a king
servant
d. Pejoration, shift of word meanings over time from neutral or positive to negative.
Old English Meaning Modern English Meaning
ceorl peasant, churl a rude person
freeman
- Shift in denotation: complete change in words’ meanings over time.
Shifting to mean something else entirely.
(early)
Old English Meaning Modern English Meaning
blush look, gaze blush to redden in the face
moody brave moody changeable emotional states
Entailment
Sentence A asserts that sentence B is true.
1. I have a blue pen → I have a pen.
2. He is short and cute → He is short.
3. The dog is brown → The dog is loud. ❌
When we read sentences, we make inferences.
e.g. Gwen made a rock album and a rap album.
What we can infer:
1. Gwen made at least two albums. (fact) 1 & 2 → entailment.
2. Gwen has not made a country album. (probably true)
3. Gwen has made a rock album. (fact)
We say that sentence A entails sentence B if B must be true when A is true.
e.g. (1) All doctors save lives. (2) Jimmy, a doctor, saves lives.
(1) I have exactly two dogs. (2) I have less than four hundred dogs.
If A entails B, then “A and B” will often sound redundant as information is being repeated.
e.g. Stefan is a grumpy actor. (1) Stefan is an actor. (2)
A and B test: Stefan is a grumpy actor, AND Stefan is an actor.
↳ sounds redundant
If A entails B, then “A and not B” will lead to a contradiction, a sentence never true.
e.g. (1) Stefan is a grumpy actor. (2) Stefan is an actor.
A and not B test: Stefan is a grumpy actor, AND/BUT Stefan is NOT an actor.
A⊨B A⊨B
true true true false → impossible

NON-LITERAL MEANING
Idioms: multi-word phrases whose overall meanings are idiosyncratic and largely unpredictable, reflecting speaker meanings
that are not derivable by combining the literal senses of the individual words in each phrase according to the regular semantic
rules of the language.
e.g. Head over heels.
Metaphors: conceptual (mental) operations reflected in human language that enable speakers to structure and construe
abstract areas of knowledge and experience in more concrete experiential terms. (Describe something by saying it is
something else)
e.g. He really flared up my temper.
Metonymy: a kind of non-literal language in which one entity is used to refer to another entity that is associated with it in
some way.
e.g. The ham sandwich in the next booth is waiting for his bill.