Semantics

Topic 5

Topics in Semantics
utterance & sentence sense & reference sense relations
synonomy/antonymy/hyponymy/homonymy paraphrase/contradictory/entailment

<Pragmatics>
Conversational Implicature - Grice's 4 maxims Speech Acts - Performatives - direct vs. indirect speech acts Locution/Illocution/Perlocution Presupposition Deixis

Part 1. Semantics
Semantics: the study of the linguistic meaning (of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences) in language

an introductory passage
"...that shows that there are three hundred and sixty four days when you might get un-birthday present.
"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."

* speaker meaning vs. sentence meaning

speaker meaning: what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language sentence meaning (or word meaning): what a sentence or word means.

 Conversation I

comparing two conversational exchanges (I and II)

A: "Nice day." B: "Yes, a bit warmer than yesterday, isn't it?" ... B: "Have you been away on holiday?" A: "Yes, we went to Spain." B: "Did you? We're going to France next month." A: "Oh. Are you? That'll be nice for the family. Do they speak French?" B: Sheila is quite good at it, and we're hoping Martin will improve." A: "I expect he will. I do hope you have a good time." ...

 Conversation II Husband: "When I go away next week, I'm taking the car." Wife: "Oh. Are you? I need the car here to take the kids to school." Husband: "I'm sorry, but I must have it. You'll have to send them on the bus." Wife: "That'll be nice for the family. Up at the crack of dawn, and not home till mid-evening! Sometimes you are very inconsiderate." Husband: "Nice day."

 The same sentences are used by different speakers on different occasions to mean (speaker meaning) different things. -- the importance of speaker meaning. The speaker meaning sometimes can completely override the sentence meaning. e.g. The prime minister of the country is made of iron. This suitcase is killing me. Still people cannot have an ordinary conversation without knowing the meanings of the words they are using.

 Therefore, both sentence meaning and speaker meaning have to be taken seriously in order to set up a proper and complete theory of meaning.

utterances () and sentences ()

Read the following aloud. Honesty pays
Read it again. Then youve made two distinct utterances using one and the same sentence.

 An utterance is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that person In other words, utterances are physical objects or events that will go away once they are made. And utterances are affected by the speaker, place, and time factors. On the other hand, a sentence is an abstract entity, that is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of language and the result of abstract thinking e.g. All the plays titled Macbeth start with the same sentence, but with different utterance, every time.

reference and sense

In everyday conversation, the words meaning, means, mean, meant etc. are sometimes used to indicate reference and sometimes to indicate sense
reference: the thing(s) in the world that are picked out by the linguistic expression e.g. John is in the beech tree. identifies identifies a person a thing sense: not the concrete things in the world but the abstract entity/meaning represented by the linguistic expression e.g. John vs. the man sitting next to Mary - these two expressions can have the same reference, but not the same sense

 Depending on whether a given expression always refers to the same thing or not, it is said to have either constant or variable reference. constant reference: John, The People's Republic of China, the 5th President of the Republic of Korea, Oct 12, 2000, Halley's Comet variable reference: my friend, your left ear, this page, the present president of the Republic of Korea, yesterday

 Referential theory of meaning The meaning of a linguistic expression is its reference The Rule of Identity The expressions with the same meaning can be exchanged without causing any meaning change.

Frege's notion of meaning There are two levels of meaning - sense and reference

 Opaque context the same expression yields different meanings when uttered in some specific contexts e.g. Dennis thinks that .... Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky. The man next to Dennis had an affair with Lewinsky.

Dennis believes that Clinton had an affair with Lewinsky. Dennis believes that the man next to him had an affair with Lewinsky. Opaque contexts show us that there is more to meaning than just reference and we need sense in addition to reference if we want to have a more pertinent view of meaning.

 Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference (e.g. almost, nearly, and, but, very) A referring expression is any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone (or a clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used with a particular referent in mind.

 analytic vs. synthetic sentence

An analytic sentence is one that is necessarily true, as a result of the words in it (tautologies). A synthetic sentence is one which is not analytic, but can be sometimes true, sometimes false, depending on the circumstances. Cats are animals. Bachelors are unmarried. The boy is his own father's son. Bachelors cannot form lasting relationships. No cat likes to bathe. John is nine years old.

contradiction: a sentence that is necessarily

false, as a result of the senses of the words in it

This animal is a vegetable. This girl is her own mother's mother. John killed Bill, who remained alive for many years after.
[disregarding the figurative use] e.g. That man is not a human being.

Sense relations
Why sense relations?

Sense is an abstract concept and hence it is not easy to define exactly what sense is.
e.g. What is the sense of the word 'cat'? 1) all the cats that can be referred to by this word? 2) the sum total of the various properties about cats? has four legs & two ears, makes a 'meow' sound, of some size & weight (but how big?) 3) ...

Why sense relations? (2)

Hence, instead of defining sense directly, researchers tried to find the sense of some expressions through the sense relations, which concern the relative positioning of the expressions in regard to other expressions. This might be a more effective way of illuminating the meaning of sense.

 Synonymy: the relationship between two predicates that have the same sense (with strict definition, it is hard to find real synonyms)
The thief tried to conceal/hide the evidence. I'm going to purchase/buy a new coat. John's father is very stubborn/obstinate. You have my profound/deep sympathy. It's a very wide/broad street. How many kids/children have you got? He comes to see us every fall/autumn. (abstracting away from any stylistic, social or dialectal associations) and freedom-liberty, boot/trunk

 Paraphrase: a sentence which expresses the same proposition as another sentence is a paraphrase of that sentence (paraphrase is to sentences as synonymy is to predicates) Bachelors prefer red-haired girls. Unmarried men prefer girls with red hair Girls with red hair are preferred by unmarried men John sold the book to Mary's sister. Mary's sister bought the book from John.

 What is important is whether the sentences in concern can have different truth conditions. If not, they are paraphrases of each other.
word:synonym = sentence:paraphrase

 Hyponymy: a sense relation between predicates (or sometimes longer phrases) such that the meaning of one predicate (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other.

e.g. honesty is the hyponym of virtue. fear-emotion/cow-animal/

- synonymy is a special case of hyponymy in the sense that two synonyms are hyponyms of each other.

 Entailment A proposition X entails a proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X. (A sentence expressing proposition X entails a sentence expressing proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X)

John killed Bill entails Bill died. John ate all the apples. entails Someone ate all the apples.

- Does [John cooked an egg] entail [John boiled an egg] or the other way around? John boiled an egg - John cooked an egg I saw a boy - I saw a human being John stole a car - John took a car I ran to the house - I went to the house

 transitivity of entailment
If A entails B and B entails C, then A entails C John likes all the animals. John likes all the cats. John likes all small cats.

- Paraphrase may be a special case of entailment in the sense that paraphrase is symmetric entailment. It is hard to lasso elephants. Elephants are hard to lasso.

 the relationship between hyponymy and entailment

A B tulip flower sheep animal steal take -------hyponymy---------> A B
Henry was chewing a tulip Henry was chewing a flower Denis got savaged by a sheep Denis got savaged by an animal David stole a pound of beef David took a pound of beef. --------entailment--------->

 the Basic Rule of Sense Inclusion Given two sentences A and B, identical in every way except that A contains a word X where B contains a different word Y, and X a hyponym of Y, then sentence A entails sentence B.

 systematic exceptions 1) not A Henry was not chewing a tulip B Henry was not chewing a flower Denis didn't get savaged by a sheep Denis didn't get savaged by an animal David didn't steal a pound of beef David didn't take a pound of beef. A<--------entailment---------B

2) all
A B A B A B Henry was chewing all my tulips Henry was chewing all my flowers All Denis's sheep have foot-rot All Denis's animals have foot-rot Mary colored all the square shapes purple Mary colored all the rectangular shapes purple. A <--------entailment---------B

3) gradable adjectives

A John saw a big mouse B John saw a big animal A tall pygmy came in A tall person came in. We went in a small bus. We went into a small vehicle. That was an expensive sandwich. That was an expensive meal -------no entailment----------

Oppositeness of meaning (antonymy)

There is no simple meaning of antonymy as words may be opposite in meaning in different ways, and some words have no real opposites between predicates: binary antonyms/ converses/gradable antonyms/ multiple incompatibility between sentences: contradictory

1. binary antonyms (compelmantarity); predicates which come in pairs and between them exhaust all the relevant possibilities; they are characterized by the fact they divide a conceptual domain into two mutually exclusive compartments, so that what does not fall into one of the compartments must necessarily fall into the other" e.g. true-false, male-female, dead-alive, married-unmarried but not the following hot-cold, love-hate, thick-thin, buysell

2. converses: (=relational opposites) If a predicate describes a relationship between two things (or people) and some other predicate describes the relationship obtained when the two things (or people) are mentioned in the opposite order, then the two predicates are converses of each other.

e.g. parent and child are converses , because if X is the parent of Y, then Y is the child of X (below-above, grandparent-grandchild, own-belong to, greater than-less than) converses applying to examples containing three objects buy-sell, borrow-lend, give-take, e.g. if X borrows something from Y, then Y lends something to X

3. multiple incompatibility There are more than two members in a semantic system that are mutually incompatible spring-summer-winter-fall Sunday-Mon.-Tues-Wed-Thurs-Fri-Sat. names of plants names of metals

4. gradable antonyms: two predicates are gradable antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous scale of values (a scale which typically varies according to the context of use)
hot and cold are gradable antonyms since there are many intermediate levels such as warm, lukewarm, cool, tepid... also hot-cold are relative to the context ('hot' in weather may be 'cold' in cooking) e.g. tall-short, long-short, clever-stupid, love-hate

 A good test for gradability is whether the adjective can be modified by very, very much, how, how much. e.g. How tall is he? He is very tall. *How dead is he? *He is very dead. Also the predicate on the positive side or upper scale is used in the unmarked question. : How expensive is the car? How tall is he? How far is it from here? How high is it?

Contradictory
A proposition is a contradictory of another proposition if it is impossible for them both to be true at the same time and of the same circumstances.
e.g. This beetle is alive vs. This beetle is dead. Mary is Ann's parent. vs. Mary is Ann's child. John loves California vs. John hates California. but, John owns three male cats. vs. John owns three female cats. Some people love California vs. Some people hate California

Ambiguity
A word or sentence is ambiguous when it has more than one sense. - A sentence is ambiguous if it has two (or more) paraphrases which are not themselves paraphrases of each other.
e.g. We saw her duck i) We saw the duck belonging to her. ii) We saw her lower her head. (i and ii are not paraphrases) The chicken is ready to eat (ambiguous) Visiting relatives can be boring

 A word or phrase is ambiguous if it has two (or more) synonyms that are not themselves synonyms of each other trunk - I) elephants proboscis ii) chest (i/ii are not synonyms of each other, therefore, trunk is ambiguous)

there are two classes of ambiguous words (homonymy and polysemy)

A. homonymy Homonyms are different words that are pronounced the same, but may or may not be spelled the same. The different senses of the word are far apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way (accidentally converge on the same form/pronunciation) e.g. tale-tail to-too-two bear-bear-bare (V-N-A) mug ( drinking vessel vs. gullible person) bark (of a dog vs. of a tree) steer (to guide vs. young bull) pole (stick vs. Norht pole)

B. polysemy when a word has several very closely related senses e.g. mouth (of a river vs. of an animal) ceiling (top inner surface vs. upper limit) earth (our planet/soil) tail (of a coat vs. of an animal) bear (tolerate vs. carry)

cf. homograph: different words spelled identically and possibly pronounced the same (in which case, they become homonyms) e.g. bear (V vs. N) homographs and homonyms pen (for writing vs. cage) homographs and homonyms but, lead (verb vs. noun) homographs, but not homonyms tail vs. tale not homographs, but homonyms

heteronyms: homographs that are pronounced

differently (like lead) bow, wind, lead, dove (N. vs. V-past)

Homonym

homograph

heteronym

Pronounced identically Spelled identically

yes maybe

maybe yes

no yes

 generalization about ambiguous words and sentences Not all sentences which contain ambiguous words are ambiguous. Also there are sentences which are ambiguous even though they dont contain any ambiguous words. e.g. kind (generous vs. class/sort) A kind young man helped me to cross the road. A pike is a kind of fish. John went to the bank (to deposit the money). The captain corrected the list.

 lexical ambiguity vs. structural ambiguity lexical ambiguity : an ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a word structural ambiguity : an ambiguity resulting from different relationship among the words

Principle of compositionality
Principle of compositionality The meaning of an expression is composed of the meanings of its parts and how they are combined structurally. In other words, the meaning of a linguistic expression is built both on the words it contains and its syntactic structure.

Semantic Rules for meaning computation (P. 179)

What is the meaning of the sentence Jack swims? The meaning of a sentence is its truth value and if we know the meaning of a sentence, we know when it is true or false. Semantic Rule I If the meaning of NP (an individual) is a member of the meaning of VP (a set of individuals), then S is TRUE; otherwise it is FALSE.

Semantic rules for meaning computation (2)

What is the meaning of Jack kissed Laura?

Semantic Rule II. The meaning of [ V NP] is the set of individuals such that X is the first member of any pair in the meaning of V whose second member is the meaning of NP.

When compositionality go awry(P181)

1. Anomaly (meaningless words, or wrong combination) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously a table ago; Twas brillig, and the slity toves 2. Metaphor (requires a lot of creativity and imagination) Our doubts are traitors; Walls have ears Time is money; 3. Idioms (fixed meanings, no compositionality)

Evidence for semantic features

Semantic properties are not directly observable but they can be inferred from linguistic evidence. 1)From speech errors, or slips of the tongue
bridge of the nose -> bridge of the neck he came too late -> he came too early Mary was young -> Mary was early

The incorrectly substituted words are not random substitutions but share some semantic feature with the intended words

Evidence for semantic features (2)

2) We can group the words on the basis of semantic properties (See p.194) doctor dean professor teenager bachelor parent baby child