SEMANTICS (1)
DR. ANSA HAMEED
PREVIOUSLY….
Levels of Language
Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
TODAY’S LECTURE
Semantics: An Introduction
Semantics: Lexical & Sentential
Sentential Semantics
Each of us has meaning
and we bring it to life
.(Joseph Campbell)
SEMANTICS
Etymology:
Greek word: Semantikos
Giving signs
Definition:
The field of linguistics concerned with the study of meanings in
language
Semantics is traditionally defined as the study of meaning in
language.
SEMANTICS
Use of Term Semantics
•First used in 1894 in ‘Reflected meanings: a point
in semantics’.
•M. Bréal: ‘An Essay on Semantics’ (1897)
•Most important usage of the term: Ogden and
Richards: ‘The Meaning of Meaning’ (1923)
•(Malinowski:‘The problem of meaning in
primitive languages’)
SEMANTICS
Why Meaning are Important????
To understand language
the meaning of words and of the morphemes that
compose them
Words into phrases and sentences (Semantics)
Context which determines the meaning (Pragmatics)
SEMANTICS
Difficulty with Meanings:
Linguists and dictionary makers face considerable problems in
dealing with meaning. There are two traditional schools of
theories of meaning: the reference theory and the
representation theory .
Some have been trying to establish definitions of the meanings
of words so that the meaning of linguistic expressions can be
given. Saeed (1997) calls it the definition theory.
SEMANTICS
Referential Theory of Meanings
•The referential theory holds that a linguistic sign derives its
meaning from it refers to something in the reality.
•This suggests that language is a system of arbitrary vocal
symbols used for human communication.
•For example, words like man, fish, are meaningful in that they
each refer to an individual or a collection of living beings
existing in the reality.
•
•However, some linguistic signs, like God, ghost, dragon,
unicorn, merely denote something imaginative.
SEMANTICS
Representational Theory of Meanings
•The representational theory holds that language in general, and
words in particular, are only an icon (or representation) for an
actual thing (or form) being symbolized.
•In other words, they conjure in our minds pictures of the things,
happenings and ideas. This suggests that there is one kind of
"natural" resemblance or relationship between words and the
things represented by them. For the most part, this seems to
happen.
•But there are a number of function words, such as a, an, the, or,
which "conjure" no pictures of this kind.
Types of Meanings
Conceptual Meanings
Associative Meanings
Thematic Meanings
Types of Meanings
Conceptual Meanings/ Denotative Meanings
Conceptual meaning is also called "logical" or "cognitive" meaning.
This refers to the definition given in the dictionary. It is widely assumed to
be the central factor in linguistic communication and is integral to the
essential functioning of language.
For example, man can be defined by the contrastive features [+Human],
[+Male], [+Adult], as distinct from girl, which can be defined as
[+Human], [-Male], [-Adult].
Associative Meaning
This refers to the meaning associated with the conceptual meaning,
which can be further divided into following five types:
1. Connotative meaning: This is the communicative value attributed to an
expression over and above its purely conceptual meaning.
e.g. woman
2. Social meaning: This refers to what is communicated of the social
circumstances of language use, including variations like dialect, time,
topic, style.
3. Affective meaning: This is what is communicated of the feelings and
attitudes of the speaker/writer towards the listener and/or what is talking
about.
4. Reflected meaning: This is the meaning when we associate one sense
of an expression with another.
5. Collocative meaning: This refers to what is communicated through
association with words which tend to occur in the environment of
another word.
Thematic Meanings
This is what is communicated by the way in which the message is
organized in terms of order and emphasis. Now compare the following
pair of sentences:
(1) The young man donated the kidney voluntarily.
(2) The kidney was donated by a young man voluntarily.
SEMANTICS
Meanings at two levels:
At word level: Lexical Semantics
At Phrase/Sentence Level: Sentential
Semantics
WHAT IS MEANT BY PHRASAL/SENTENTIAL
SEMANTICS?
DEFINITIONS:
Phrasal or Sentential semantics is the branch of
Semantics concerned with the meaning of the syntactic
units larger than the word.
Calculating meanings at Sentence level:
The linguistic knowledge permits us to formulate semantic
rules to build the meanings of a sentence from the meaning of
its words and the ways whereby they combine syntactically.
This aspect pertaining to sentential meaning is linguistically
referred to as ‘Truth Conditional Semantics’(because it
takes the semantic knowledge of truth as basic). It is also
called Compositional Semantics(as it calculates the truth
value of a sentence by composing or putting together the
meanings of smaller units)
SOME PROMINENT MANIFESTATIONS OF
SENTENTIAL SEMANTICS
1. TAUTOLOGY(or ANALYTIC SENTENCES)
It generally speaking refers to needless repetition of an idea, statement,
or word however within sentential semantics , tautology implies the
philosophical interpretation whereby it refers to the restricted number
of sentences that are always true ,irrespective of the situation in which
they are uttered . e .g :
Cows are Animals
Circles are round
Man is mortal
2.CONTRADICTIONS
Contradictions refer to the kind of sentences that are always
false .e.g:
Man is immortal
A bachelor is married.
Elizabeth ,the queen of England is a man.
Circles are the triangles.
3.PARADOXES
1.Paradoxes refer to those sentences to which it is difficult to
ascribe a truth value .
2. a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed
to common sense and yet is perhaps true.
"War is peace.“
"Freedom is slavery.“
"Ignorance is a bliss
4. ENTAILMENT
Entailment describes a situation in which the truth of one sentence
necessarily ‘entails or implies’ the truth of another sentence .
For example the sentence A assassinated B entails that B is dead
Similarly the sentence The brick is red entails that The brick is not
white /yellow/blue etc
The sentence John is a renowned poet entails that John is a poet.
(Much of what we know about the world comes from knowing the
entailments of the true sentences)
5.PARAPHRASES OR SYNONYMOUS SENTENCES
Two sentences are Synonymous or Paraphrases if both of them are either
True or False with respect to the same situation e.g :
a. The police chased the burglar &
The burglar was chased by the police.
b. Paul bought a car from Jack &
Jack sold a car to Paul
c. John was absent &
John was not present
6.AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES
Sometimes the sentential expressions have more than one meaning, such
kind of sentences are known as ‘Ambiguous Sentences’ .
For example:
The old lady whacked the girl with an umbrella is ambiguous because it
can mean:
(1.The old lady whacked the girl with the help of an umbrella) OR (2.The
old lady whacked a girl who was holding an umbrella)
6.AMBIGUOUS SENTENCES
Following are some more examples:
The novel dealing with the Hatred of the Killer(i.e.’ either someone hated the
killer’ OR ‘the Killer hated someone’ can be the underlying interpretation.)
John saw a man with the telescope (i.e. either John saw a man who was
holding a telescope OR John saw a man by using a telescope)
7.ANOMALOUS SENTENCES
Anomalous
sentences are the kind of sentences that follow the rules of Syntax but go against the rules of Semantics.
A famous sentences :"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"
as presented by Noam Chomsky in his book entitled Syntactic Structures is an example of an anomalous sentence (i.e. a sentence
that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical).
Following are some more examples:
The oak tree is a beautiful animal.
The flowers stole the pie and ran home.
The Fish likes to go to school.
8.IDIOMS
Sometimes the meanings of the phrases cannot be inferred from the
meanings of the individual words. Such expressions are called Idioms
For Example:
A battle/war of nerves
Fool's paradise
The smoking gun
To beat about the bush
To smell a rat
9.METAPHORS
In some cases, the sentences are ‘ambiguous ‘ but the literal meaning is so
unlikely that listeners stretch their imagination for another
interpretation .This ‘stretching’ is based on semantic properties that are
‘inferred’ .Such non-literal interpretation at sentential level are referred to
as ‘metaphorical expressions ‘ or simply the Metaphors. e.g:
Dr. Jack is a butcher.
John is tiger.
The world is a stage.
Time is money.
RECAP
Semantics
Types of Meanings
Sentential Semantics
Meaning is considered to be the soul of any language. Knowing a language means to
know how to produce and understand sentences with particular meanings. The
principle of compositionality states that the meanings of phrases and sentences
depend upon the syntactic arrangement of lexical items .We thus comprehend the
phrases and sentences because we know the meanings of individual words and the
rules for combining their meanings.
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one
the feeling that nothing remains to be said.(Jean Rostand)
REFERENCES
Allwood, Jens and Peter Gardenfors (eds) 1999. Cognitive semantics. Meaning and
cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chomsky, N., 2000, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Fine, K., 2007, Semantic Relationism, New York: Blackwell Publishing.
Foster, J., 1976, “Meaning and Truth Theory,” in Evans and McDowell (1976), 1–32.
Goodman, S. and Graddol, D. (1996) Redesigning English: new texts, new identities. London:
Routledge.
Horwich, P., 1998, Meaning, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hudson , R, A.Sociolinguistics,2nd ed, Cambridge University press, :Cambridge
Kittay, Eva. 1987. Metaphor. Its cognitive force and linguistic structure. NewYork: Oxford
University Press.
Oxfords Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (2005).p.362
Prasad, Tarni. (2012) A Course in Linguistics. New Delhi:PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
