Semantics chapter1 PG Semantics and the subject matter of semantics

Semantics and the subject matter of semantics Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning in language (Lyons, 1977: 1; Hurford, Heasley, 1983: 1) Saeed (2003: 3): “Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences”.

Assoc Prof Dr Ho Ngoc Trung

hongoctrung74@gmail.com

0913 30 64 84

 Credits: 02

 Coursebook: Understanding English

Semantics by Nguyen Hoa

 Recommended reading: Lectures on

Discourse Analysis by Ho Ngoc Trung

 Assessment:

- Mid-term test

- Assignment

- To help students understand deeply about the meaning

- To help students know about semantics and the subject matter of semantics, word meaning, dimensions of word meaning, sense relations, sentence meaning and utterance meaning

- To enable students to know how to use words correctly according to different contexts

Students have to

 take part in all the lessons

 prepare the lessons carefully and finish all home assignments

 make presentation

1 Abbot, B (1999) The formal approach to meaning: Formal semantics and its recent developments Journal of foreign languages, 119: 1, 2-20.

2 Austin, J L (1962) How to Do Things with Words Oxford: Clarendon Press.

3 Barcelona, A (ed.) (2000) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: a Cognitive Perspective Mouton Berlin & New York.

4 Bloomfield, L (1930) Language London: Allen and Unwin.

5 Brown, G and Yule, G (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: CPU.

6 Bruce, I (1998) The role of "sense" in Gottlob Frege's theory of meaning An essay University of New England, NSW, Australia.

7 Bybee, J (1985) Morphology Amsterdam: Benjamins.

8 Carnap, R (1937) The logical syntax of language New York: Harcourt Brace.

9 Carnap, R (1942) Introduction to semantics Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

10 Carnap, R (1956) Meaning and necessity, 2nd edn Chicago: Chicago university Press.

11 Chomsky, N (2000) New horizona in the study of language and mind Cambridge: CUP.

12 Delahunty, G P & Garvey, J J (1994) Language, grammar, communication New York: Mc Graw-Hill, Inc.

13 Fauconnier, M (1985) Mental spaces: aspects of meaning contraction in natural language Cambridge, Mass-London: MIT Press.

14 Frawley, Charles C (1992) Linguistic semantics Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence Erbaum Associates.

15 Goddard, C (1998) Semantic analysis New York: OUP.

Semantics and the subject matter of

semantics

 Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning in language (Lyons, 1977: 1; Hurford, Heasley, 1983: 1)

 Saeed (2003: 3): “Semantics is the study

of the meaning of words and sentences”.

Three main approaches in semantics study:

- Lexical semantics: deals mainly with word meaning and relations between them (e.g word structure, differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure between different languages, the relationship of word meaning

to sentence meaning and syntax)

- Formal/logical semantics: is concerned with relations between expressions, especially sentences which express propositions It considers proposition as the meaning of the sentence and is concerned with the

truth conditions.

- Cognitive semantics: meanings of expressions are mental

- The main points of cognitive semantics:

+ Meaning is conceptualisation in a cognitive model.

+ Semantic models are mainly perceptually determined.

+ Semantic elements are based on spatial or topological objects.

+ Cognitive models are primarily schematic.

image-+ Semantics is primary to syntax and partly determines it.

+ Concept shows prototype effects.

• Cognitive semantics is concerned with

perspective, imagery, construal, figure-ground organization, abstraction, prototype,

conceptual metaphor, experiential gestalt,

idealized model.

• conceptual metaphor: not a figure of

speech, but a way of imposing our understanding of one sort of thing into another.

a snake in the grass / Kẻ thù giấu mặt Time is money / Thời gian là vàng

 Syntax studies the structure of

well-formed phrases and sentences

 Semantics deals with the way syntactic structures are interpreted.

Word order (syntax) and meaning:

John kissed Mary.

Mary kissed John.

 Semantics studies meaning in a systematic way It studies how language organizes and expresses meaning.

 Within the scope of the subject, we will

look at word meaning, sentence meaning and utterance meaning

“…that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days

when you might get un-birthday presents.”

“Certainly,” said Alice.

“And only one for birthday presents, you know There’s glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously “Of course you don’t - till

I tell you I meant ‘there’s a nice knockdown argument for you.’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown argument,” Alice

objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful

tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean

so many different things.”

“the question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

Meaning: semantics and pragmatics

Semantics (literal, outside context): words and sentences

Pragmatics: (nonliteral, within context): linguistic context and situation context

It’s cold.

Meaning is the convergence of three points: language, mind and world.

The mind-world: studies such things as perception, action, the mind’s bodily constitution and intentionality

The mind-language: says that using and understanding language is a mental activity, and this activity is what meaningful language exists for.

The language-world: maintains that language is the medium by which we describe and explain reality.

The key to meaning is the notion of condition (correct use)

truth-(i) An intrinsic property

(ii) The other words annexed to a word in a

dictionary

(iii) The connotation of a word

(iv) The place of anything in a system

(v) That to which the user of a symbol actually

(b) believes himself to be referring

(c) believes the user to be referring

 Smith means well/ Mary means business

 That skull-and-cross bones means

danger.

 Smoke means fire.

 She didn’t really mean what she said.

 The referential (or denotational

theory)

theory

 The verificationist theory

 The referential (or denotational

theory): the meaning of an expression

is what it refers to, denotes, or stands for

Note: For some words there are simply

no referents: all functional words: a,

the…

Some expressions point to non-existent

or fictional referents: elves, gnomes…

- The idea, held by some, that

things out there in the world do not have an inherent structure and that any structure we

perceive is just that: perceived

1. The referential (or denotational

theory)

The meaning of an expression is

what it refers to, or denotes, or stands for

There are two variations of this

referential approach

The first, the meaning of the word is

what refers to: My mother: a

teacher, a daughter, a beautiful woman

The second variation identifies the

meaning of a word with the relation between the word and its

referent: because, and, on…

2 The ideational, or mentalist

theory: the meaning of an expression is the idea, or concept, associated with it in the mind of anyone who knows and understands the expression

3 The behaviourist theory: the

meaning of an expression is either the stimulus that evokes it

or the response that it evokes, or

a combination of both, on particular occasions of utterance

4 The meaning-in-use theory: The

meaning of an expression is determined by, if not identical with, its use in the language

5 The verificationist theory: The

meaning of expression is, if it has

verifiability of the sentences, or propositions, containing it

6 The truth-conditions theory: the

meaning of an expression is its contribution to the truth conditions

of the sentence containing it.

+ The meaning of a sentence is the

conditions under which it is true

+ The meanings of the parts of a

sentence lie in their contribution to the truth conditions.

The meaning of an expression can be viewed as a combination

of features, we can decompose the meaning of a word into what

we call semantic features or properties

All content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) are defined by semantic properties.

For example:

Semantic properties of verbs:

1. Motion: bring, fall, walk…

2. Contact: hit, kiss, touch…

4. Sense: see, hear, feel…

Property actress baby girl bachelor mare

-One way of representing semantic properties is by use of semantic features

notational device for expressing the presence (+) or absence (-) of semantic properties by pluses and minuses

Baby [+human], [+ young], [-abstract]

Woman [+ human], [+female], [-young] Mare [-human], [+equine], [+female],

[-young]

A feature that differentiates nouns is the semantic feature [-/+count]

Examples:

Dog [+count]

Rice [-count]

5.1 Denotative meaning 5.2 Connotative meaning 5.3 Structural meaning

5.4 Categorial meaning

5.1 Denotative meaning

5.1.1 Conceptual meaning: refers to

the logical sense of the utterance and

is recognizable as a basic component

of grammatical competence:

Dog: a common animal with four legs, especially

kept by people as a pet or to hunt or guard things

Cat: a small animal with fur, four legs, a tail and

claws, usually kept as a pet or for catching mice, or any member of the group of similar animals such as the lion

5.1.2 Referential: refers to objects

or things: Look at that dog.

Open the door!

5.2 Connotative: is unstable, varies

according to culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual.

Denotation Connotation

new recent origin better improved

excuse explanation weak reason

5.3 Structural/associative meanings include: 5.3.1 Reflected meaning: a phenomenon

whereby a single word or phrase is associated with more than one meaning.

In the case of Reflected meaning, more than one meaning surfaces at the same time  ambiguity

Chronic bronchitis

Chronic: long-lasting / bad

My dear old car: dear: lovely / expensive

5.3.2 Collocative meaning: It consists of the

associations a word acquires on account of the meaning of words which tend to occur in its environment

It is that part of the word meaning suggested

by the words that go before or come after a word in question.

Heavy smoker (a person who smokes a lot)

Heavy news (a piece of sad news)

Heavy schedule (a very tight schedule)

5.3.3 Associative meaning: arises because of its

association with other meanings: good vs bad

5.3.4 Thematic meaning: is communicated

by the way in which a speaker or writer organizes the message in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis.

Jenny often pairs me off with her cousin.

I am often paired off with Jenny’s cousin.

5.3.5 Categorial meaning: is one part of grammatical meaning which words derive from being a member of one category rather than another.

Eg

strength (n) strong (adj) strengthen (v) strongly (adv)

DENOTATION The meaning a word acquires by virtue of what it refers to

The meaning a word acquires

by virtue of where, when, how, and by whom, for what purpose and in what context it is or may

be used.

The meaning a word acquires

by virtue of its membership in a system or a set

The meaning a word acquires

by virtue of grammatical classification

- Dances, dancing and danced have

the same lexical meaning and different grammatical meaning:

- Dances – 1st person sg, Present

Simple, dancing – Participle 1;

danced – Participle 2

- The meaning of words is a combination of the lexical meaning and the grammatical meaning

- It is sometimes difficult to draw a borderline between lexical and grammatical meaning.

- Lexical meaning is studied by

grammatical meaning is the

Grammatical meaning refers to that part of meaning of the word which indicates grammatical concept or relationships such as the word class, singular and plural forms of nouns, tense meaning of verbs

and their inflectional forms (forget,

forgetting).

- The relationship between sentence and utterance is like language to speech.

Eg: “I’ve got some homework to do tonight” response to an invitation to go out

excuse for not washing the dishes.

- An utterance is an act of speech or writing at a particular time and in

a particular place

- An utterance contains the meaning

of the sentence, the meaning of the circumstances or context (the time, the place, the people involved, their background)

- Discourse analysis is concerned with many aspects of linguistic performance as well

as linguistic competence.

- Discourse analysis involves questions of style, appropriateness, cohesiveness, rhetorical force, topic structure, difference between written and spoken discourse, and so on.