The Semantics of the Sentence

Speech Act
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 Speech Act
 Austin (“How to do things with words”): some
sentences are used not just to state something, which
is true or false:
Examples
• I apologize.
• I declare the meeting open.
 These sentences are used to do things. They are
performatives/ vs. all other utterances – constatives.
 Austin’s Speech Act Theory
 Differentiation between performatives and constatives:
adverb “hereby”
Examples
I hereby apologize.
I hereby declare the meeting open.
 Examples of performative verbs in English:
to say to withdraw
to protest to declare
to object to promise
to apologize to thank, etc.
 Austin’s Speech Act Theory
• Argues that truth conditions are not central to language
understanding. Utterances do not only say things, they do
things.
• Distinction between constatives and performatives.
Performatives cannot be false, but they can fail to do
things. Performatives are not a special class of sentences.
Some sentences are explicitly performatives, others can be
implicitly. The performative/constative distinction does not
really exist. Rather, they are special cases of a set of
illocutionary acts.
 Austin’s Speech Act Theory
• Constatives can be true or false; performatives can't be true or false. But
performatives can go wrong.
 Conditions for performative sentences, which make them successful
("felicitous“ conditions):
 Condition 1: There must be a conventional procedure following a
conventional effect;
The circumstances and the persons must be appropriate.
 Condition 2: The procedure must be executed:
• Correctly
• Completely.
 Austin’s Speech Act Theory
 Condition 3:
 Often The person must have the requisite thoughts,
feelings and intentions, as specified in the procedure.
 If consequent conduct is specified, then the relevant
parties must do so.
• Favorite examples: marriages
 Austin’s Speech Act Theory
• Performatives: explicit and implicit.
• Performatives and constatives are just two
subclasses of illocutionary acts.
• Illocutionary acts consist of other classes of
speech acts.
 Austin’s Speech Act Theory
Each speech act consists of 3 components:
• Locutionary act (the actual words which the
speaker is saying).
• Illocutionary act (the intention of the speaker).
• Perlocutionary act (the effect of the utterance
on the hearer).
• Examples (From "Sense and Sensibility") Wait, he
is kneeling down.

Austin’s Speech Act Theory
Austin (1962)
 Speech acts
 Performative sentences uttered by an authority
(they change the state of the world)
 Any sentence in real speech contains
 Locutionary act – utterance with particular meaning
 Illocutionary act – asking, answering, promising, etc.
 Perlocutionary act – effect upon feelings, thoughts,
etc.
Austin’s Speech Act Theory

Types of speech acts:
 Verdictives (e.g. estimating, assessing, describing);
 Exercitives (ordering, appointing, advising);
 Commissives (promising, betting);
 Behabitives (apologizing, congratulating, thanking);
 Expositives (arguing, insisting).
Changes in the
Meaning of Words 

Extension , Narrowing
Extension
Widening of meaning
(Extension or generalization).
The meaning of the word is
widened (this is usually
observable diachronically).
E.g.: rubbish in Old English
only meant broken stones.
Present-day expression is wider
and covers all kinds of unwante
d or left-over property; camp
had only the meaning of the
military camp.
Narrowing
Narrowing of meaning
(specialization or restriction).
Here, the new meaning is
more precise, covers only the
part of the original meaning.
E.g.: hound was originally the
general word for dog, today it
only marks its hunting breeds.
Meat was the word for the
food, today it is restricted for
a type of food only.
 Amelioration
If a word acquires certain pleasant connotations that it did not have
before, the semantic change in the meaning of that word is known as
amelioration. Some philologists use the term elevation instead of
amelioration. In Greek, the word angel meant “messenger”.It was
because of the influence of Christianity that the meaning of this word
was elevated from “messenger” to “God’s messenger”. The word
chancellor is derived from the Late Latin cancellarius meaning “secret-
ary”.In Latin this word was used for a person stationed at the bar of
a law court. But nowadays the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the
person having the highest responsibility for finance in Britain and
a vice-chancellor is the head of a university.
 Degeneration
If with the passage of time a word acquires a pejorative meaning, the
change in the meaning of that word is called degeneration. Some
philologists use the term deterioration for Such semantic changes.
In Old English the word villain was used for peasants who lived
a simple and rustic life in villages but in Modern English it is a word
used for scoundrels. Like notice, notorious is derived from the Latin
root notus, which means “known”. From the etymology of this word we
can deduce that at one time it meant “well-known” and that it did not
have any pejorative connotations at that time.
 Intensification
In many cases the change of meaning is describable in ter
ms of intensification, i.e., change from a weaker to a strong
er meaning. During the Middle English period the word dise
ase meant “lack of ease, discomfort”. Later on this word ac
quired a greater intensity of meaning and nowadays it is us
ed as a synonym for “illness”.
The Old English word for kill, for example, meant “strike, be
at, torment”. It was in the 14th century that this word acquir
ed the more intensive meaning of “put to death”. Some ling
uists (e.g., Bloomfield 1933:426) use the term litotes (a tradi
tional term of rhetoric) for this type of semantic change.
 Weakening
The change in the semantic content of certain words can be un
derstood in terms of a movement from a stronger to a weaker
meaning. Nowadays, if we say that we are astonished or astou
nded, we mean to say that we are amazed.
The word astonish, like the word astound, expresses a high de
gree of surprise but nothing more than surprise. Similarly, whe
n we say that we were stunned to hear the news of someone’s
sudden death, we mean to say that we are shocked
to hear that news. To be stunned is to be shocked or pained; th
e word stun does not mean anything stronger than
that.
 Synechoche
In certain cases the meaning of a part is shifted to the meaning
of the whole or the meaning of the whole is shifted to the mean
ing of one of its parts. Bloomfield (1933:427) uses the term
synecdoche, a term used in traditional rhetoric, for semantic ch
anges of this type.
The word town, for example, is the Modern English version of t
he Old English word tun derived from the Old High Germanic
word tunaz, which meant “fence, hedge”. Fences were parts of
towns. With the passage of time the meaning of the part was tr
ansferred to the meaning of the whole.
 Metonymy
In some cases the meaning of an object changes in such a wa
y as to be applicable to another object associated with it. In Ol
d English the word ceace, for example, meant “jaw”. The mean
ing of this word as well as its spelling has changed during the l
ast few centuries and it has been handed down to us in the for
m of the Modern English word cheek. Similarly, the word
joue in Old French meant cheek.
 Metonymy
The meaning of this word changed as it moved from French to
English and from the early stages of English to Modern English.

The English word jaw is the Modern English descendant of

that word in Old French. So the word that meant “jaw” during th
e Old English period means cheek in Modern English and the
word that meant “cheek” in Old French means “jaw” in Modern
English.
 Metaphorical Extension
In many cases the shift of meaning operates through a metaph
or in the sense that the new meaning of the word is a metaphor
ical extension of its old meaning. The word bitter, for example, i
s derived from the Germanic word “bitan”, which meant “bite”.

The sense of biting was later transferred metaphorically to the

word bitter. So when we say that a particular item of food is bitt
er in taste we say in that metaphorical sense that that item of fo
od bites us when we eat it. Similarly, a hippopotamus (hippos =
horse; potamos = river) is so called because to the people of a
ncient Greece it looked like a horse.
Thank you
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