SEMANTICS

September, 2022
The words Fire Department make it sound like they’re the ones who are starting fires,
doesn’t it? It should be called the “Extinguishing Department.” We don’t call the police
the “Crime Department.” Also, the “Bomb Squad” sounds like a terrorist gang. The same is
true of wrinkle cream. Doesn’t it sound like it causes wrinkles? And why would a doctor
prescribe pain pills?I already have pain! I need relief pills! (Carlin, 1997)
What is semantics?
❏ The study of the meaning and interpretation of words, signs,
phrases and sentences.
❏ How we built and share meaning and how it changes
❏ It determines reading comprehension, how we understand others
and the decision we make based on our interpretations.
❏ Objective and general meaning.
Types of meaning
Literal meaning Figurative meaning

Take concepts at face value Similes and metaphors to

represent meaning and convey
greater emotion

Conceptual meaning Associative meaning

Basic, essential components of meaning that are Different connotations attached to a word that
conveyed by the literal use of a word. may differ from one person to the next.
•Ex: Needle ‘thin, sharp, steel instrument’ •Ex: ‘pain’, ‘illness’, ‘blood’, ‘drugs’.
•‘Nurse’
• Pig
Semantic features
Accounting for the ‘oddness’ we experience when we read sentences:
The hamburger ate the boy
Syntactically correct, but semantically odd.
The table listens to the radio

Components of the conceptual Components of the conceptual

meaning of the noun ‘hamburger’ meaning of the noun ‘boy’

-Animate + Animate

Unable to ‘eat’ Capable of ‘eating’

something something
We can characterize the feature that is crucially required in a noun in order, supplementing the
syntactic analysis with semantic features.
The _________ is reading the newspaper.
N (+human)
This approach would give us the ability to predict which nouns make this sentence semantically
odd.
For many words in a language it may not be easy to come up with neat components of meaning:
advice, threat or warning.
 Although agents are typically human, they
Semantic roles: Agent and theme can also be non-human entities:
The wind kicked the ball
Roles words fulfill within a situation described by a sentence The dog caught the ball.

The boy kicked the ball

(agent) (theme) The theme is typically non-human,
but can be human: The dog chased the
boy

‘The entity that ‘The entity that

performs the is involved in The same physical entity can be agent and
action’ or affected by theme at the same time:
the action’ The boy cut himself
 Semantic roles: Instrument and experiencer
If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, that other entity fills the role of instrument.
❏ He drew the picture with a crayon
❏ She stirred the ingredients with a wooden spoon
When a noun phrase is used to designate an entity as the person who has a feeling, perception or state, it fills the
semantic role of experiencer.
❏ The boy feels sad
❏ Did you hear that noise?
 Semantic roles: Location, source and goal

❏ Location: where the entity is (on the table)

❏ Source: where the entity moves from (from Chicago)
❏ Goal: where it moves to (to New Orleans)
Transferring money from savings to checking
Examples
Agent
Mary saw a fly on the wall Experiencer
She borrowed a magazine from George Theme
Instrument
She squashed the bug with the magazine Location
Source
She handed the magazine back to George Goal
Lexical relations: synonymy
❏ Two or more words with very closely related meanings.
❏ They can often be substituted for each other in sentences.
❏ The idea of ‘sameness’ is not necessarily ‘total sameness’
Examples:
Answer - Reply (to answer a test / to reply a test)
People - Persons
Black eye - circumorbital haematoma
Lexical relations: antonymy
Two words with opposite meanings.
Gradable: Opposites along a scale
❏ They can be used in comparative constructions
❏ The negative of a gradable pair does not necessarily imply the other.
‘I’m bigger than you’ ‘My car isn’t old’
Non - gradable: Direct opposites
❏ Comparative constructions are not normally used.
❏ The negative of a non-gradable pair does imply the other member.
‘Deader’ or ‘more dead’ ‘My parents aren’t alive’
Reversives: ‘do the reverse’ (examples: enter/exit – pack/unpack – tie/untie - buy-sell )
Lexical relations: hyponymy
❏ When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the relationship is described as
hyponymy.
❏ Animal/dog dog/poodle Flower/ rose
❏ The relation of hyponymy captures the concept of ‘is a kind of’.
Lexical relations: prototypes
❏ ‘The idea of the characteristic instance’ of a category is known as the prototype.
❏ In explains the meaning of certain words in terms of resemblance to the clearest example.

Individual experience can

lead to substantial variation
Lexical relations: homophones and homonyms
❏ When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation, they are
described as homophones
(meat-meet, flower-flour, right-write)
❏ When one form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meaning, they are
described as homonyms.
Bat (flying creature) - bat (used in sports)
Race (contest of speed) - Race (ethnic groups)
Lexical relations: polysemy
One form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings that are all related by extension.
Head
❏ Object on top of our body
❏ Froth on top of a glass of beer
❏ Person at the top of a company day and month on a letter

Date (thing we can eat) Date (a point in time) an appointment

social meeting
homonymy
word play
Why are trees often
mistaken by dogs? Because
of their barks

Why is 6 afraid of 7?
Lexical relations: metonymy
Relationship between words, based simply on a close connection in every day experience.
❏ Container-–content: bottle/water
❏ Whole-part relation: car/wheels
❏ Representative–-symbol relation: King/Crown
It makes it possible for us to understand things such as:
❏ He drank the whole bottle
❏ Chile votes
❏ The White house said…