Lesson: Semantics

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1. COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE 1.1 A Model of Communication For CRUISE meaning makes little sense except in the context of communication. Communication can be conceived as the transfer of information between biological generations via the genetic code, the interaction between the driver and his car, and indeed any sort of stimulus-response situation. COMMUNICATION is the transfer of information between human beings . A Simple Model of Communication (LYONS, 1977) The speaker has something to communicate (MESSAGE). Since messages in their initial form cannot be transmitted directly (at least not reliably), they must be converted into a form that can be transmitted, a SIGNAL. In an ordinary conversation, this involves a process of LINGUISTIC ENCODING, that is, translating the message into a linguistic form, and translating the linguistic form into a set of instructions to the speech organs which result into an English Semantics and Lexicography 1 {message } sender (encodin g) Transmitt ed signal Received signal (decodin g) {message } receiver chann el ….. noise

description

semantics lesson plan

Transcript of Lesson: Semantics

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1. COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

1.1 A Model of Communication

For CRUISE meaning makes little sense except in the context of

communication. Communication can be conceived as the transfer of information

between biological generations via the genetic code, the interaction between

the driver and his car, and indeed any sort of stimulus-response situation.

COMMUNICATION is the transfer of information between human beings.

A Simple Model of Communication (LYONS, 1977)

The speaker has something to communicate (MESSAGE). Since messages

in their initial form cannot be transmitted directly (at least not reliably), they must

be converted into a form that can be transmitted, a SIGNAL. In an ordinary

conversation, this involves a process of LINGUISTIC ENCODING, that is, translating

the message into a linguistic form, and translating the linguistic form into a set

of instructions to the speech organs which result into an acoustic signal. The

initial form of this signal may be termed the TRANSMITTED SIGNAL.

Every mode of communication has a CHANNEL, through which the signal

travels: for speech, we have the auditory channel, for normal writing and sign

language, visual channel, for Braille, the tactile channel, and so on. As the

signal travels from sender to receiver, it alters in various ways, through

distortion, interference from irrelevant stimuli or loss through fading. These are

referred as NOISE. As a result, the signal picked up by the receiver (RECEIVED

SIGNAL) is never precisely the same as the transmitted one. Efficient

communicating systems like language compensate for this loss of information

English Semantics and Lexicography 1

{message}sender

(encoding) Transmittedsignal

Receivedsignal

(decoding) {message}receiver

channel

…..

noise

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by building a degree of redundancy into signal, the information in a signal is

given more than once or the entire message can be reconstructed even if there

is significant loss.

Once the signal has been received by the receiver, it has to be DECODED

in order to retrieve the original message. The message reconstructed by the

receiver would be identical to the message that the sender started with. In the

majority of cases it is close enough. It is worth distinguishing three aspects of

meaning:

A) SPEAKER’S MEANING – speakers’ intended message.

B) HEARER’S MEANING – hearer’s inferred message.

C) SIGN MEANING – the sum of the properties of the signal which make it

(a) more apt than other signals conveying speaker’s intended

message, and (b) more apt for conveying some messages than

others.

In case of established signalling system like language, the meaning of

the signs are not under control of the users; the signs are property of the

speech community and have fixed meanings.

Any natural human language is a complex sign system designed to

ensure infinite expressive capacity – there’s nothing that is thinkable which

cannot in principle be encoded. Each elementary sign is stable symbolic

association between meaning and form (phonetic and graphic); elementary

signs may combine together in a rule-governed way to form complex signs

which convey correspondingly complex meanings.

1.2. Problems of the Study of Meaning

Different branches in the studies of meaning such as lexical semantics or

formal semantics are presented. LYONS defines SEMANTICS as the study of

English Semantics and Lexicography 2

SPEAKER’S MEANINGMEANING HEARER’S MEANING

SIGN MEANING

SPEAKER’S MEANINGMEANING HEARER’S MEANING

SIGN MEANING

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meaning and LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS as the study of meaning in so far as it is

systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages.

The problem of where to draw the line between semantics and

pragmatics is not easy.

SEMANTICS is the study of meaning communicated through language.

Speakers of a language have different types of linguistic knowledge, including

how to pronounce words, how to construct sentences, and about the meaning

of individual words and sentences. In this sense knowing a word unites different

kinds of knowledge. To reflect this, linguistic description has different LEVELS OF

ANALYSIS.

So PHONOLOGY is the study of what sounds a language has and how

these sounds combine to form words; SYNTAX is the study of how words can be

combined into sentences; and SEMANTICS is the study of the meaning of words

and sentences.

Since linguistic description is an attempt to reflect speakers’ knowledge

the semanticist is committed to describing semantic knowledge. This knowledge

allows English speakers to know, for example that both the following sentences

describe the same situation

The

basic task of

semantics is to show how people communicate meanings with pieces of

language. Linguistic meaning is a special subset of more general human ability

to use signs.

According to SAUSSURE, the study of linguistic meaning is a part of this

general study of the use of sign systems. This study is called SEMIOTICS.

Semioticans investigate the types of relationship that may hold between a sign

and the object it represents (or in SAUSSURE’S terminology between a SIGNIFIER

and its SIGNIFIED). One basic distinction is between ICON, INDEX and SYMBOL.

An ICON is where there is a similarity between a sign and what it

represents (portrait – real life subject). An INDEX is where the sign is closely

English Semantics and Lexicography 3

“In the spine, the thoracic vertebrae are above the lumbar

vertebrae”

“In the spine, the lumbar vertebrae are below the thoracic vertebrae”

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associated with its signified (smoke – fire). A SYMBOL is where there is only a

conventional link between the sign and its signified (mourning – black clothes;

three stars – captain). In this classification words would seem to be examples of

verbal symbols.

According to the DEFINITIONS THEORY, we should establish definitions of

the meanings of words to give the meaning of linguistic expressions. We could

then assume that when a speaker combines words to form sentences according

to the grammatical rules of his/her language, the word definitions are combined

to form phrase and then sentence definitions, giving us the meaning of the

sentences. There appear different challenges when attaching definitions to

words.

The first is the problem of CIRCULARITY. We can only state the meaning of

a word by using other words, either in the same or a different language. To

understand the meaning of the word you must understand the words in the

definition. According to the aims of semantics we have to describe the meaning

of these words too.

The second problem we find is to make sure that our definitions of a

word’s meaning are exact. If we ask where the meanings of words exist, the

answer must be: in the minds of native speakers of the language. Thus

meaning is a kind of knowledge. We should make the distinction between

LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE (about the meaning of words) and ENCYCLOPAEDIC

KNOWLEDGE (about the way world is).

The third problem comes from looking at what particular utterances mean

in the context. For example: if someone says to you “Marvellous weather you

have here in Ireland”, you might interpret it differently on cloudless sunny day

than when rain is pouring down. The problem here is that if features of context

are part of an utterance’s meaning, the number of possible situations, and

therefore of interpretations is enormous if not infinite.

These three issues: circularity, the question of whether linguistic

knowledge is different from general knowledge; and the problem of contribution

of context in meaning, show that our definitions theory is too simple to do the

job we want. Semantic analysis must be more complicated than attaching

definitions to linguistic expressions.

English Semantics and Lexicography 4

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To cope with the problem of circularity, one solution is to design a

semantic METALANGUAGE with which to describe the semantic units and rules of

all languages. An ideal metalanguage would be neutral with respect to any

natural languages. Moreover, it should satisfy criteria of clarify, economy,

consistency, etc.

Setting up a metalanguage might help too with the problem of relating

semantic and encyclopaedic knowledge, since designing meaning

representations, for example for words, involves arguing which elements of

knowledge should be included. The knowledge a speaker has of the meaning of

words is often compared to a mental lexicon or dictionary.

In tackling the third problem, of context, one additional solution has been

to assume a split in an expression’s meaning between the local contextual

effects and a context-free element of meaning, which we might call

CONVENTIONAL or LITERAL MEANING. It turns out to be not easy task to isolate the

meaning of a word from any possible context.

For many linguists the aim of doing semantics is to set up a component

of the grammar which will parallel other components like syntax or phonology.

Linguistic knowledge is modulized. As a result, many linguistic theories are

themselves modularized, having something like the boxes in the box below.

In at least one sense, meaning is a product of all linguistic levels.

Changing one phoneme for another, one verb ending for another, or one word

order for another will produce differences of meaning. This view leads some

writers to believe that meaning cannot be identified as a separate level,

autonomous from the study of other levels of grammar.

English Semantics and Lexicography 5

sound PHONOLOGY

SYNTAX SEMANTICS

thought

“…a strict separation of syntax, morphology and lexicon is untenable; furthermore it is impossible to separate linguistic knowledge from extra-

linguistic knowledge”RUDZKA-OSTYN 1993:2

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If an independent component of semantics is identified, one central issue

is the relationship between word meaning and sentence meaning. Knowing a

language involves knowing thousands of words. The mental store of the words,

the LEXICON, is not completely static because we are continually learning and

forgetting words.

Phrases and sentences also have meaning but these are different to

words in terms of PRODUCTIVITY. It is always possible to create new words, but

this is relatively infrequent occurrence. On the other hand, speakers regularly

create sentences that they never used or heard before, confident that their

audience will understand them. According to CHOMSKY, a relatively small

number of combinatory rules may allow speakers to use a finite set of words to

create a very large, perhaps infinite, number of sentences. To allow this the

rules for the sentence must be RECURSIVE, allowing repetitive embedding or

coordination of semantic categories.

If a speaker can make up novel sentences and these sentences are

understood, then they obey semantic rules of the language. So the meanings of

sentences cannot be listed in a lexicon like meanings of words: they must be

created by rules of combination too. Semanticists often describe this by saying

that sentence meaning is COMPOSITIONAL. This term means that the meaning of

an expression is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way

in which they are combined.

A difficult distinction is between SEMANTICS and PRAGMATICS, both

concerning the transmission of meaning through language. Drawing the line

English Semantics and Lexicography 6

NP [NP NP (and NP)*]

* means the optional group is repeatable

I bought [NP a book]

I bought [NP [NP a book] and [NP a magazine]]

I bought [NP [NP a book] and [NP a magazine] and [NP some pens]] etc

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between the two fields is difficult and controversial. Morris divided semiotics in

the following way:

Narrowing signs to linguistic signs, this would give us a view of

PRAGMATICS as the study of speaker/hearer’s interpretation of language, as

suggested by CARNAP

We might interpret crudely as follows:

A speaker can utter the same sentence to a listener, e.g. “The place is

closing”, and mean to use it as a simple statement, or a warning hurry and get

that last purchase (if they are in a department store) or drink (if in a bar). It could

also be an invitation or command to leave. In fact we can imagine a whole

series of uses for this example, depending on the speaker’s wishes and the

situation the participants find themselves in. Some semanticists would claim

that there is some element of meaning common to all these uses and this

common, non-situation specific meaning is what semantics is concerned with.

On the other hand, the range of uses a sentence can be put to, depending on

context, would be the object of study for pragmatics.

One way of talking about this is to distinguish between SENTENCE

MEANING and SPEAKER MEANING. This suggests that words and sentences have

a meaning independently of any particular use, which meaning is then

incorporated by a speaker into a particular meaning she/he wants to convey at

any one time. In this view semantics is concerned with sentence meaning and

pragmatics with speaker meaning.

In order to understand utterances, hearers seem to use both types of

knowledge along with knowledge about the context of the utterance and

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SYNTAX: the formal relation of signs to each other.

SEMANTICS: the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs

are applicable.

PRAGMATICS: the relation of signs to interpreters.

PRAGMATICS – meaning described in relation to speakers and hearers.

SEMANTICS – Meaning abstracted away from users.

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common sense reasoning, guesses, etc. A semantics/pragmatics division

enables semanticists to concentrate on just the linguistic element in utterance

comprehension. Pragmatics would then be the field which studies how hearers

fill out the semantic structure with contextual information and make inferences

which go beyond the meaning of what was said to them (for example that “I’m

tired” might mean “Let’s go home”).

According to SAEED, one way of approaching the problem is by

distinguishing between SENSE OF MEANING and SPEAKERS MEANING, he

suggests that words and sentences have meaning independently of any

particular use and that it is the speaker who incorporates further meaning into

sentence meaning.

SAEED links the semantics-pragmatics overlapping to the concept of

presupposition. The basic idea is that SEMANTICS deals with conventional

meaning – with those aspects which do not seem to vary too much from

context. PRAGMATICS deals with aspects of individual usage and context-

dependent meaning.

BENNETT bases his distinction between semantics and pragmatics on

concepts such as IMPLICATURE and ENTAILMENT.

English Semantics and Lexicography 8

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2. DIFFERENT UNITS OF ANALYSIS: WORDS,

UTTERANCES, SENTENCES, AND

PROPOSITIONS

2.1 Words

When dealing with the nature of meaning, CRUISE and LYONS agree that

it is difficult to define this concept. The definition of words as meaningful units

poses several problems since different criteria come into play in the definition of

a word.

LYONS differentiates words from expressions. He proposes that words as

expressions can be defined as composite units that have both form and

meaning and suggests a more technical term: Lexeme. Not all lexemes are

words and not all words are lexemes. Lyons points out that it is word-

expressions that are listed in the dictionaries and not word-forms.

People have an intuition that meaning is intimately bound up with

individual words. Such an intuition seriously underestimates other aspects of

meaning. It is not, however, in itself, wrong.

What is a Word?

According to BAKER, WORD is the smallest unit which we would expect to

possess individual meaning. Defined loosely, the word is ‘the smallest unit of

language that can be used by itself. Despite this definition, meaning can be

carried by units smaller than the word and often by units much more complex

than the single word and by various structures and linguistic voices.

There has been a great deal of discussion of nature of the word as a

grammatical unit. Probably the best approach is a prototypic one: what is a

prototypical word like? It is a minimal permutable element. This attributes two

features to a prototypical word:

English Semantics and Lexicography 9

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a) It can be moved about in the sentence, or at least its position

relative to other constituents can be altered by inserting new

material.

b) It cannot be interrupted or its parts reordered.

In other words, in making changes to a sentence, we are obliged to treat

its words as structurally inviolable wholes.

Notice that the only possible insertion points are between words. Words

are separated by spaces in writing, although not usually by silences in speech.

They also have a characteristic internal structure, in that they prototypically

have no more than one LEXICAL ROOT.

Some words, such as HEDGE-HOG, BUTTER-FLY, and BLACK-BOARD

seem to have more than one lexical root. However, these are atypical and for

many of them it is impossible to argue that the apparent roots are not fully

autonomous, semantically, but form a fused root.

Other words have no lexical roots at all: these are the so-called

grammatical words like the, and, and, of.

In one sense, obey, obeys, obeying and obeyed are different words (e.g.

for crossword purposes); in another sense, they are merely different forms of

the same word (and one would not expect them to have separate entries in a

dictionary). On the other hand, obey and disobey are different words in both

senses, whereas bank (river) and bank (money) are the same word for

crossword purposes, but we would expect them to have separate dictionary

entries and they are therefore different words in the second sense.

English Semantics and Lexicography 10

(1) “The government is strongly opposed to denationalization.”

Reordering appears in such examples as (2)-(4)

(2) “The Government is opposed to denationalization – strongly.”

(3) “What the government is strongly opposed is to denationalization.”

(4) “It is denationalization that government is opposed to.”

And the possibilities for the insertion of new material are as follows:

(5) “The (present) government, (apparently), is (very (strongly) (and implacably)

opposed (not only) to (creeping) denationalization, but…etc.”

GOVERNment reORDERing STRONGly deNATIONalization OPPOSed

TYPically CLEARer LEXical

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WORD FORMS are individuated by their form, whether phonological or

graphic (most of examples will be both)

LEXEMES can be regarded as groupings of one or more word forms,

which are individuated by their roots and/or derivational affixes.

So, run, runs, running, and ran are word forms belonging to the same

lexeme RUN, while walk, walks, walking, and walked belong to a different

lexeme, WALK. Obey, obeys, obeying, and obeyed belong to a single lexeme

and disobey, disobeys disobeying, and disobey, despite having the same root

as the first set, belong to a different lexeme, distinguished this time by the

possession of the derivational affix dis-.

A simple test for derivational affixes is that they are never grammatically

obligatory. For instance, in “John is disobeying me”, disobey can be substituted

by watch without living an ungrammatical sentence, which shows that dis- is not

essential to the grammatical structure of the sentence. This is true to all

occurrences of dis-. On the other hand, any verb which will fit grammatically into

the frame “John is --- me” must bear the affix –ing, showing that it is not

DERIVATIONAL, but an INFLECTIONAL affix.

Word forms that differ only in respect of inflectional affixes belong to the

same lexeme. It is the word-as-lexeme which is the significant unit for lexical

semantics.

2.2. Utterances, Sentences and Propositions.

English Semantics and Lexicography 11

ObeyDisobey

ObeyObeying

DisobeyDisobeying

ObeyDisobey

ObeyObeying

DisobeyDisobeying

2 different lexemes: Lexeme 1: Obey Lexeme 2: Disobey

1 single lexeme: Lexeme: Obey

1 single lexeme: Lexeme: Disobey

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The three terms are used to describe different levels of abstraction in

language. These different levels of abstraction allow us to identify different units

of analysis in relation to meaning.

An UTTERANCE is created by speaking or writing a piece of language. If

someone says “Today is Tuesday” in a room, this is an utterance; if another

person in the same room also says “Today is Tuesday”, this is another

utterance.

SENTENCES, on the other hand are abstract grammatical elements

obtained from utterances. Sentences are abstracted or generalised from actual

language use. Differences in accent or pitch do not alter the basic content of the

sentence. Speakers seem to discard differences in pitch levels between

women, men and children, some accent differences due to regional or social

variation and certainly those phonetics details which identify individual speakers

and so discard them.

SAEED says that one further step of abstraction is possible for special

purposes: to identify PROPOSITIONS. Certain elements of grammatical

information in sentences were irrelevant; for example, the difference between

active and passive sentences. Because of passive and active sentences share

the same state of affairs they can also be represented by the same proposition.

A proposition can be represented by using capitals in order to avoid

confusion with various sentences which represent it: JOHN PAINTS THE

PICTURE.

In propositions verbs are identified as functions and subjects and objects

as arguments of the function. In such formulae verb endings, articles and other

grammar elements are deleted.

English Semantics and Lexicography 12

John paints the picture (Sentence 1)The picture is painted by John (Sentence 2) The same proposition

John paints the picture (Sentence)JOHN PAINTS THE PICTURE (Proposition)

paint (john, picture)

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Propositions are a way of capturing part of the sentences. They are more

abstract than sentences because the same proposition can be represented by

several different statements. Moreover in non-statements like questions, orders,

etc. they cannot be complete meaning since such sentences include and

indication of speaker’s attitude to the proposition.

2.3. Texts

A TEXT, which may or may not coincide with a sentence, can be defined

as a unit of language in use. A Text is a pre-theoretical term used in linguistics

and phonetics to refer to a stretch of language recorded for the purpose of

analysis and description. What is important is to note that texts may refer to

collection of written or spoken material, e.g. conversation, monologues, rituals

and so on. The term TEXTUAL MEANING is sometimes used in semantics as part

of a classification of types of meaning, referring to those factors affecting the

interpretation of a sentence which derive from the rest of the text in which the

sentence occurs –as when, at a particular point in a play or novel, a sentence or

word appears whose significance can only be appreciated in the light of what

has gone before.

3. MEANING AND THE WORD. DIFFERENT

DIMENSIONS OF MEANING.

English Semantics and Lexicography 13

UTTERANCES are real pieces of speech.

SENTENCES are abstract grammatical elements

PROPOSITIONS are descriptions of states of affairs, the basic element of

sentence meaning.

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Defining meaning is practically the same as to defining the object of

semantics.

There are different views of how semantics should approach the ability to

talk about the world. Two of these are particularly important in current semantic

theories: we can call them the REFERENTIAL (or DENOTATIONAL) APPROACH and

the REPRESENTATIONAL APPROACH.

For semanticists adopting the first approach this action of putting words

into relationship with the word is meaning, so that to provide a semantic

description for a language we need to show how the expressions of the

language can ‘hook onto’ the world.

Thus theories can be called Referential (or Denotational) when their

basic premise is that we can give meaning of words and sentences by showing

how they relate to situations. Nouns, for example, are meaningful because they

denote entities in the world and sentences because they denote situations and

events.

For semanticists adopting the second approach our ability to talk about

the world depends on our mental models of it. In this view a language

represents a theory about reality: about the types of things and situations in the

world. Thus a speaker can choose to view the same situation in different ways.

In English we can view the same situation as either an activity or as a state:

Such situations are influenced by each language’s conventional ways of

viewing situations. Different conceptualisations influence the description of the

real world situations. Theories of meaning can be called representational when

English Semantics and Lexicography 14

There is a casino in Grafton Street.

There isn’t a casino in Grafton Street.

The difference in meaning between these two sentences arises from the

fact that the two sentences describe different situations.

John is sleeping (Action)

John is asleep. (State)

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their emphasis is on the way that our reports about reality are influenced by the

conceptual structures conventionalised in our language.

We can see these two approaches as focusing on different aspects of the

same process: talking about the world.

3.1. Reference

The meaning of linguistic expressions derives from two sources: the

language they are part of and the world they describe. Words stand in a

relationship to the world, our mental classification of it: they allow us to identify

parts of the world, and make statements about them.

Language is used to communicate about things, happenings, and states

of affairs in the world, and one way of approaching the study of meaning is to

attempt to correlate expressions in language with aspects of the world. This is

known as the EXTENSIONAL approach to meaning.

LYONS mentions ODGEN AND RICHARDS’ distinction between REFERENT

and REFERENCE. While the term “referent” specifies any object or state of affairs

in the external world that is identified by means of a word or expression, the

term “reference” points to the concept which mediates between the world or

expression and the “referent”.

According to SAEED, there are some major differences in the ways that

words may be used as referents.

Names and noun phrases can be called NOMINALS. The nominal is the

linguistic unit which most clearly reveals function of language.

We can apply the distinction of REFERRING AND NON-REFERRING

EXPRESSIONS in two ways. Firstly there are linguistic expressions which can

never be used to refer, for example the words so, very, maybe, if, not, all. These

English Semantics and Lexicography 15

In REFERENTIAL THEORIES, meaning derives from language being attached to reality.

In REPRESENTATIONAL APPROACHES meaning derives from language being a reflection of our

conceptual structures.

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words do of course contribute meaning to the sentences they occur in and thus

help sentence denote, but they do not themselves identify entities in the world.

We will say that these are intrinsically non-referring items.

The second use of the distinction REFERRING/NON-REFERRING concerns

potentially referring elements like nouns: it distinguishes between instances

when speakers use them to refer and instances when they do not.

We can distinguish between CONSTANT and VARIABLE REFERENCE. One

difference among referring expressions becomes clear when we look at how

they are used across a range of different utterances. Some expressions will

have the same referent across a range of utterances, e.g. the Eiffel Tower or

the Pacific Ocean. Others have their reference totally dependent on context, for

example I, you, she, it, my office, where to identify the referents we need to

know who is speaking to whom.

Expressions like the Pacific Ocean are sometimes described as having

CONSTANT REFERENCE, while expressions like I, you, she, etc. are said to have

VARIABLE REFERENCE. To identify who is being referred to by pronouns we

obviously need to know a lot about the context in which these words were

uttered. Most acts of referring rely on some contextual information: for example,

to identify the referent of the nominal the President of the United States we

need to know when it was uttered.

DENOTATION is intrinsically connected with reference. According to

LYONS, they are different and he bases his approach on the two ways the

language hooks on the world.

LYONS says that the DENOTATION of an expression is invariant and it is

utterance-independent: The thing or things in the world referred to by a

particular expression is its REFERENT(S): in saying “The cat’s hungry”, I am

referring to a particular cat, and that cat is the referent of the expression the cat.

English Semantics and Lexicography 16

DENOTATION is part of the meaning which the expression has in the language-system,

independently of its use on particular utterance. The denotation of an expression is invariant

and it is utterance-independent.

REFERENCE is variable and utterance-dependent. As a result, lexemes do not have reference.

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We can also consider the whole class of potential referents of the word

cat, the class of cats. This is sometimes called the REFERENCE of the word cat.

But this is clearly different from the designation of particular individuals as in the

case of “The cat’s hungry”, so, to avoid confusion, we shall follow Lyons and

say that the class of cats constitutes the DENOTATION of the word cat. So, in the

sentence “The cat’s hungry”, the word cat denotes the class of cats, but the cat

refers to a particular cat.

3.2. Denotation and Sense

The alternative to an extensional approach to meaning is an INTENTIONAL

approach. The world is associated with some kind of mental representation of

the type of thing that can be used to refer to.

The semantic links between elements within the vocabulary system is an

aspect of their sense or meaning.

English Semantics and Lexicography 17

“The cat’s hungry”“The cat’s hungry”

Cat denotes the class of catsCat denotes the class of catsThe cat refers to a particular

cat

The cat refers to a particular cat

CAT √

PLATYPUSES X

AARDVARKS X

SPINY ANTEATERS X

Sense of theword cat

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The SENSE OF AN EXPRESSION may be defined as the set, or the network,

of sense relations that hold between it and other expressions of the same

language.

This representation constitutes what is called the SENSE of the word (or

at least part of it).

The main function of linguistic expressions is to mobilize concepts.

Concepts are the main constituents of sense, and sense (and hence concepts)

constrains reference.

SAUSSURE distinguished between Signifier and Signified and held that the

meaning of linguistic expressions derives from two sources: the language they

are part of and the world they describe. The relationship by which language

hooks onto the world is called “Reference”, whereas the question of semantic

links between elements within the vocabulary system is an aspect of their

sense. The signifier would be the referent while the signified would be related to

other terms in the same language.

Some authors, for instance LYONS, understand sense in a different way.

For them, sense is a matter of relations between a word and other words in

language. So, for instance, the sense of cat would be constituted by its relations

with other words such as dog (a cat is necessarily not a dog), animal (a cat is

an animal), miaow (The cat miaowed is normal but The dog miaowed is not).

Sense of cat according to Lyons

English Semantics and Lexicography 18

CATCATdog (a cat is necessarily not a dog)

animal (a cat is an animal)

miaow (The cat miaowed is normal but The dog miaowed is not).

SENSE is an interlexical or intralingual relation; it defines the

relations within the same language.

On the other hand, DENOTATION relates expressions to classes

of entities in the world.

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SAEED adopts the position that meaning of a noun is a combination of its

denotation and a conceptual element.

A noun is said to gain its ability to denote because it is associated with

something in the speaker/hearer’s mind. This gets us out of the problem of

insisting everything we talk about exists in reality, but arises the question of

what these mental representations are. Presumably the relationship between

the mental representation and the real world entity would then be one of

resemblance.

This theory runs into serious problems with common nouns. This is

because of the variation in images that different speakers might have of a

common noun like car or house depending on their experience. A problem

arises when trying to find an image for words such as animal, or food; or worse

love, justice or democracy.

The hypothesis that sense of some words, while mental, is not visual but

a more abstract element can help on this. We call this more abstract element a

concept. This concept will be able to contain the non-visual features which

make a dog a dog, democracy democracy, etc

4. TYPES OF MEANING

English Semantics and Lexicography 19

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4.1 Functional Meaning and Content Meaning. Lexical Meaning and

Grammatical Meaning.

Descriptive .vs. Non-Descriptive Meaning

We can distinguish between DESCRIPTIVE and NON-DESCRIPTIVE MEANING.

CRUISE sticks to Lyons’ terminology and maintains the term descriptive meaning

for what others labelled as ideational, referential, logical or propositional

meaning. Cruise also lists a number of prototypical characteristics that

descriptive meaning displays.

INTRINSIC DIMENSIONS OF DESCRIPTIVE MEANING are semantic properties

an element possesses in and of itself, without reference to other elements.

QUALITY is one and at the same time the most obvious and important

dimension of variation within descriptive meaning. It is which constitutes the

difference between red and green, dog and cat, apple and orange, run and

walk, hate and fear, here and there.

Differences of quality can be observed at all levels of specificity. We may

think of hierarchies of semantic domains of various scope or different

English Semantics and Lexicography 20

Compare:

It is not here, it’s there.

It’s not there, it’s here.

Her dress is not red, it’s green.

Her dress is not green, it’s red.

?That’s not my father, that’s my Dad.

?She didn’t’ pass away, she kicked the bucket.

It’s an animal, but it isn’t a dog

*It’s a dog, but it isn’t an animal

Compare:

It is not here, it’s there.

It’s not there, it’s here.

Her dress is not red, it’s green.

Her dress is not green, it’s red.

?That’s not my father, that’s my Dad.

?She didn’t’ pass away, she kicked the bucket.

It’s an animal, but it isn’t a dog

*It’s a dog, but it isn’t an animal

Not X but YNot Y but X

There’s a semantic difference, but not one of a descriptive nature

That items which differ in specificity Hill pass only the half of this test.

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ontological types. A typical set of ontological types at the highest level of

generality is the following:

These represent fundamental modes of conception that human mind is

presumably innately predisposed to adopt.

There are INTRINSIC and RELATIVE DIMENSIONS of descriptive meaning.

Intrinsic Dimensions

Descriptive meaning may vary in INTENSITY, without change of quality.

For instance, one would not wish to say that large and huge differ in quality:

they designate the same area of semantic quality space, but differ in intensity.

Huge is more intense than large, and terrified than scared. Variation in intensity

is only possible in certain areas of quality space.

Differences of descriptive SPECIFICITY show up in various logical

properties.

F r o m t h i s , w e c a n c o n c l u d e t h a t

animal is more general than dog). Similarly, woman is more specific than

person. In all these cases one can say that one term (the more general one)

designates a more extensive area of quality space than other.

English Semantics and Lexicography 21

THING QUALITY QUANTITY PLACE TIME STATE PROCESS EVENT ACTION RELATION MANNER

“It’s a dog” unilaterally entails “It’s an animal”.

“It’s not an animal” unilaterally entails “It’s not a dog”.

“Dogs and other animals” is normal but not “?animals and other dogs.”

an object

an animal

a mammal

a dog

a variety of dog + specific

- specificAccording to Langacker, the less specific the greater distance. For instance, from a great distance, a dog may just look like an object and from a closer distance we can distinguish an animal, a mammal, a dog, a variety of dog …

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It is possible to distinguish several types of specificity. All cases

illustrated above involve TYPE-SPECIFICITY. The more specific term denotes a

subtype included within the more general type.

There is also PART-SPECIFICITY: hand:finger (where finger is more

specific), bicycle:wheel, university:faculty. John injured his finger is more

specific than John injured his hand.

A third type of specificity is INTENSITY-SPECIFICITY, where one range of

degrees of some property is included in another range. For instance, one

reading of large includes all ranges of intensity of “greater than average size”.

Hence It’s huge entails It’s large, but It’s large does not entail It’s huge.

Another dimension of descriptive meaning is VAGUENESS. We shall say

that the meaning of a word is vague to the extent that the criteria governing its

use are not precisely stable. Under the heading of vagueness we shall

distinguish two different subdimensions.

The firs one is ILL-DEFINEDNESS. It is well illustrated by terms which

designated region on a gradable scale such as middle-aged. Age varies

continuously: middle-aged occupies a region on this scale. But we don’t know

when someone begins and ceases to be middle-aged.

The second subtype of vagueness is LAXNESS (vs. STRICTNESS) of

application. For some terms, their essence is easily defined, but they are

habitually applied in a loose way. This seems to be a characteristic of individual

words. For instance, the notion of a circle is capable of a clear definition, and

everyone is capable of grasping the strict notion. But the word circle is

habitually used very loosely, as in “The mourners stood in a circle round the

grave”. No on expects the people form an exact circle here.

BASICNESS is another dimension of descriptive meaning. Some meanings

are considered more basic than others. A general assumption is that the

concrete/observable/basic terms will be the first learned. Cognitive linguists

believe that cognition is built up as it were from concrete to abstract.

English Semantics and Lexicography 22

acceleration speed movement acceleration speed movement

- basic + basic

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Notice that acceleration is not more specific than speed, but it is more

complex. Acceleration depends on the notion of speed, which in turn depends

the yet more basic notion of movement.

A number of linguistic expressions encode as part of their meaning a

particular VIEWPOINT on the events or states of affairs designated. Perhaps the

most obvious example of this is provided by this, that, these, those, here, there,

now, then and so on, which are usually claimed to encode the viewpoint of the

speaker at the moment of utterance. So for instance, the book on the table, if it

was valid for one speaker in a particular context, would be valid for anyone

present; however, the validity of this book here, as a description of the same

book, would clearly depend on the position of the speaker relative to the book in

question.

There are less obvious encodings of viewpoint. Consider the difference

between:

Relative Dimensions

The first parameter is NECESSITY. The simple views of this parameter is

to make sharp dichotomy between necessary and contingent logical

relationships, and use entailment to determine whether or not a feature is

necessary. On the basis of the following we could say that “Being an animal” is

necessary feature of dog, whereas “ability to bark” is not:

English Semantics and Lexicography 23

The village is on the north side of the hill

The village is on the other side of the hill

The village is over the hill

The village is round the other side of the

hill

X is a dog entails X is an animal.

X is a dog does not entail X can bark.

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We can not be confident in our ability to say definitively whether some

sentence A entails another sentence B. Consider the following entailment:

Suppose that neither X nor Y knew that X was Y’s daughter and they got

married. Then X would be Y’s legal wife.

A convenient and rough way of measuring degree of necessity is by

measuring degree of necessity is by means of the but-test:

SUFFICIENCY is a kind of converse of necessity. We normally speak of the

joint sufficiency of a set of features (for instance, the feature [MALE] and [HORSE]

are jointly sufficient to guarantee that anything possessing them is a stallion.)

For instance, the feature [BREATHES] is not very diagnostic for bird, since

many other creatures breathe. The feature [TWO LEGGED] is much better, but

applies also to humans. A maximally diagnostic feature for BIRD is [FEATHERED],

since no other creature has feathers.

Things which are salient stand out from their background in some way,

and have a superior power of commanding attention. One way of interpreting

the notion of SALIENCE is in terms of ease of access of information. Features

English Semantics and Lexicography 24

X is Y’s wife ?entails? X is not Y’s daughter.

It’s a dog, but it is an animal. (tautology)

It’s a dog, but it’s not an animal. (contradiction)

(“is an animal” is a necessary feature of dog)

It’s a dog, but it barks. (tautology)

It’s dog, but it doesn’t bark. (normal)

(“barks” is an expected feature of dog)

It’s a dog, but it’s brown. (odd)

It’s a dog, but it isn’t brown. (odd)

(“brown” is a possible feature of dog)

It’s a dog, but it sings (normal description of an abnormal dog)

It’s a dog, but it doesn’t’ sing (odd-tautology)

(“sings” is an unexpected feature of dog)

It’s a dog, but it is a fish (contradiction)

It’s a dog, but it’s not a fish (tautology)

(“is a fish” is an impossible feature of dog)

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which are easy to get at are going to play a larger role in semantic processing in

real time than those which are harder to get at. When people are asked to list

the characteristics of some entity, under time pressure, there is a strong

tendency for certain features to be mentioned early in everyone’s list. This is

presumably because they are the easiest features to access.

About the NON-DESCRIPTIVE dimensions we can distinguish EXPRESSIVE

MEANING. Compare:

“Gosh!” Is subjective, and does not present a conceptual category to the

hearer: it expresses an emotional state. It’s validity is restricted to the current

state of the speaker. By contrast “I am surprised” expresses a proposition,

which can be questioned or denied, and can be expressed equally well by

someone else or at a different place or time. In a sense, of course, “Gosh!” and

“I am surprised” ‘mean the same thing’, which suggests that the difference

between descriptive and expressive meaning is matter not of semantic quality

but of mode of signification.

Some words possess only expressive and no expressive meaning and to

these we can assign the term EXPLETIVES.

English Semantics and Lexicography 25

IntrinsicDimensions

-Quality- Intensity- Specificity- Vagueness- Basicness- Viewpoint

DIMENSIONS OF DESCRIPTIVE MEANING

- Necessity and Expectedness- Sufficiency- Salience

RelativeDimensions

Gosh!

I am surprised

It’s freezing – shut the bloody window!

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Notice that expressive meaning1 does not contribute to propositional

content, so the action requested would not change if bloody were omitted: a

bloody window (in this sense) is not a special kind of window.

Some words have both descriptive and expressive meaning:

Q u e s t i o n s a n d n e g a t i v e s o n l y o p e r a t e o n d e s c r i p t i v e m e a n i n g i n s u c h

sentences, so, for instance, It wasn’t all that cold in replay to It was damn cold

would deny the degree of cold indicated, but would not call into question the

speaker’s expressed feelings.

Some words seem to be potentially, but not necessarily expressive. With

one type of such words, the expressivity appears only when appropriate

intonation is added:

. Out of a set of near-synonyms, it sometimes happens that some but not

others can be expressively stressed:

Lexical and Grammatical Meaning

A distinction is often made between lexical meaning and grammatical

meaning. A convenient way of presenting the distinction is in terms of sorts of

element which carry the meaning in question. We can divide grammatical units

into CLOSED-SET items and OPEN-SET items.

1 For more information about Expressive Meaning have a look at Lexical Meaning on page 25.

English Semantics and Lexicography 26

A - I was damn cold. (cf. extremely, which has only descriptive meaning)

B – It wasn’t all that cold

Expressively neutral:

Does she still live in Manchester?

Has the postman been yet?

The railway station had already been closed

Expressively stressed:

Are you still here?

Surely she hasn’t gone already?

You mean you haven’t done it yet?

Baby vs. infant, child, neonate

Mother and baby are doing well.

Oh, look! It’s a baby! Isn’t it lovely?

? Oh, look! It’s a child/infant/neonate! Isn’t it lovely?

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Central examples of closed-set items have the following characteristics:

a) They belong to small substitution sets

b) Their principal function is to articulate the grammatical structure of

sentences.

c) They change at a relatively slow rate through time, so that a single

speaker is unlikely to see loss or gain of items in their lifetime. (No

new tense markers or determiners have appeared in English for long

time.) In other words, the inventory of items in a particular closed-set

grammatical category is effectively fixed.

These may be contrasted with open-set items, which have the following

characteristics:

a) They belong to relatively large substitution sets.

b) There is a relatively rapid turnover in membership of substitution

classes, and a single speaker is likely to encounter many losses and

gains in a single lifetime. (Think of the proliferation of words relating to

computing in recent years).

c) Their principal function is to carry the meaning of a sentence.

Both closed-set and open-set items carry meaning, but they different

functions mean that there are differences in the characteristics of meaning that

they typically carry.

A closed-set item, in order to be able to function properly as a

grammatical element, has to be able to combine without anomaly with a wide

range of roots, and for this to be possible, it must have a meaning which is

flexible, or broad enough, or sufficiently ‘attenuated’ not generate clashes too

easily. Hence, meanings such as “past”, “present”, and “future”, which can co-

occur with virtually any verbal notion, and “one” and “many”, which can co-occur

with vast numbers of nominal notions, are prototypical grammatical meanings.

In contrast, there is no limit to the particularity of richness of the meaning

an open-set element may carry, as there are no requirements for recurrent

meanings or wide co-occurrence possibilities. Hence, open-set items typically

carry the weight of the semantic content of utterances. Because of richness of

English Semantics and Lexicography 27

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their meanings and their unrestricted numbers, they participate in complex

paradigmatic and syntagmatic structures.

What are called content words (basically nouns, verbs, adjectives, and

adverbs) prototypically have one open-set morpheme (usually called the root

morpheme) and may also have one or more closed-set items in the form of

affixes. Lexical semantics is by an large the study of the meanings of content

words. Grammatical semantics concentrates on the meanings of closed-set

items. However, a strict separation between grammatical and lexical semantics

is not possible because the meanings of the two kinds of element interact in

complex ways.

A word does not convey ‘a whole thought’: for that purpose, more complex

semantic entities are necessary – built out of words, certainly – having at least

the complexity of propositions (argument+predicate). Words (and at a more

basic level, morphemes) form the building blocks for these more complex

structures.

Languages have words, at least partly, because in the cultures they

serve, the meanings such words carry need to be communicated. This means

that if some culture had a use of notion expressed, then it would not be

surprising if there were a word for it.

A word meaning is not allowed to be on both sides of the vital subject

and the predicate divide. Possible word meanings are constrained in a strange

way by semantic dependencies. It is first necessary to distinguish DEPENDENT

and INDEPENDENT components of semantic combination.

The INDEPENDENT component is the one which determines the semantic

relations of combination as a whole with external items. So for instance, in very

large, it is large which governs the combinability of the phrase very large with

other

items

English Semantics and Lexicography 28

LEXICAL MEANING is related to an open-set class of items or content words.

GRAMMATICAL MEANING refers to close-set class of items or grammar

words.

A very large house

?A very large wind

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There is a semantic incompatibility between large and wind – there is no

inherent clash between very and wind, as normality of a very hot wind

demonstrates. By the similar reasoning, the independent item in warm milk is

milk, and in drink warm milk is drink. By following this line of reasoning, we can

establish chains of semantic dependencies. For instance:

The elements that constitute the meaning of a word must form a

continuous dependency chain. This means, first, that there must be relation of

dependency between elements. This, for instance, rules out “wine slowly” as a

possible word meaning, because there is no dependency between “wine” and

“slowly”. Second, there must be no gaps in the chain which need to be filled by

semantic elements from outside the word. This rules out cases like “very ___

milk”, where the dependency chain would have to be completed by an external

item such as “hot”.

According to ZGUSTA, every word (lexical unit) has something that is

individual, that makes it different from any other word. Ad it is just the lexical

meaning which is the most outstanding individual property of the word.

The LEXICAL MEANING of a word or lexical unit may be thought as the

specific value it has in a particular linguistic system and the ‘personality’ it

acquires through usage within that system.

According to CRUISE, we can distinguish four main types of meaning in

words and utterances: PROPOSITIONAL MEANING, EXPRESSIVE MEANING,

PRESUPPOSED MEANING, and EVOKED MEANING.

The PROPOSITIONAL MEANING of a word or an utterance arises from the

relation between it and what refers or describes in real or imaginary word, as

conceived by the speakers of the particular language to which the word or

utterance belongs. It is this type of meaning which provides the basis on which

we can judge an utterance as true or false.

English Semantics and Lexicography 29

“warm” “milk” “drink”

Propositional Meaning of shirt

‘a piece of clothing worn on the upper part of the body’.

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EXPRESSIVE MEANING cannot be judged as true or false. This is because

expressive meaning relates to the speaker’s feelings or attitude rather than to

what words and utterances refer to.

The difference between Don’t complain and Don’t whinge not lie in their

prepositional meaning but in the expressiveness of whinge, which suggests that

the speaker finds the action annoying.

Words can have propositional meaning and expressive meaning

(whinge), only propositional meaning (book) or only expressive meaning

(bloody). Words which contribute solely to expressive meaning can be removed

from an utterance without affecting its information content.

PRESUPPOSED MEANING arises from co-occurrence restrictions, i.e.

restrictions on what other words or expressions we expect to see before or after

a particular lexical unit. These restrictions are of two types:

a) Selectional restrictions: these are a function of the propositional

meaning of a word. We expect a human subject for the adjective studious and

an inanimate one for geometrical. Selectional restrictions are deliberately

violated in the case of figurative language but are otherwise strictly observed.

b) Collocational restrictions: these are semantically arbitrary restrictions

which do not follow logically from propositional meaning of a word. For instance,

laws are broken in English, but in Arabic they are ‘contradicted’ Because it is an

arbitrary, collocational restrictions tend to show more variation across

languages than do Selectional restrictions.

EVOKED MEANING arises from a dialect and register variation. A DIALECT is

a variety of language which has currency within a specific community or group

of speakers. It may be classified on one of the following bases:

a) GEOGRAPHICALLY – e.g. a Scottish dialect: Church (Br.E.) Kirk (Sc.E)

English Semantics and Lexicography 30

Compare:

Don’t complain

Don’t whinge

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b) TEMPORAL – e.g. words and structures used by members of different

age groups within a community, or words used at different periods in the

history of language: cf. verily and really.

c) SOCIAL – words and structures used by members of different social

classes: cf. napkin and serviette.

REGISTER is a variety of language that a language user considers

appropriate to a specific situation. Register variation arises from the variations

in the following:

a) FIELD of discourse: This is an abstract term for ‘what is going on’ that

is relevant to the speaker’s choice of linguistic items.

b) TENOR of discourse: An abstract term for the relationships between the

people taking part in the discourse.

c) MODE of the discourse: An abstract term for the role that the language

is playing (speech, essay, lecture, instructions) and its medium of

transmission (spoken, written).

Of all the types of lexical meaning explained above, the only one which

relates to the truth or falsehood of an utterance and which can consequently be

changed by the reader or hearer is propositional meaning. All other types of

lexical meaning contribute to the overall meaning of an utterance or a text in the

subtle and complex ways.

4.2 Literal and Non-Literal Meaning

Most people are aware that if someone says Jane’s eyes nearly popped

out of her head, a literal truth has not been expressed. Jane’s eyes were not, as

a matter of fact, on the point of being projected from her head; the message is

rather than Jane was very surprised.

Dictionaries often organise their entries historically, with the earliest first.

It would be a reasonable requirement of a dictionary that it should indicate

which meanings are literal, and which figurative.

English Semantics and Lexicography 31

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The distinction between LITERAL and NON-LITERAL MEANING is assumed

in many semantics texts but attempting to define it soon leads us into some

difficult decisions.

The basic distinction seems a common-sense one: distinguishing

between instances where the speaker speaks in neutral, factually accurate way,

and instances where speaker deliberately describes something in untrue or

impossible terms in order to achieve special effects.

Non-literal uses of language are traditionally called FIGURATIVE and are

described by a host of rhetorical terms including METAPHOR, IRONY, METONYMY,

HYPERBOLE, and LITOTES.

On closer examination it proves difficult to draw a firm line between literal

and non-literal uses of languages. For one thing, one of the ways languages

change over time is by speakers shifting the meanings of words to fit new

conditions. Some new expressions’ metaphorical nature remains clear, as for

example in surfing the internet. After a while such expressions become

fossilized and their metaphorical quality is no longer apparent to speakers. The

vocabulary of a language is littered with fossilised metaphors and this

continuing process makes it difficult to decide the point at which the use of a

word is literal rather than figurative.

The idea is that metaphors fade over time, and become part of normal

literal language. In this approach there is a valid distinction between literal and

non-literal meaning.

Metaphors and other non-literal uses of language require a different

processing strategy than literal language. One view is that hearers recognise

non-literal uses as semantically odd. The hearer makes inferences in order to

make sense out of non-literal utterance.

LAKOFF claim that there is no principled distinction between literal and

metaphorical uses of language. Such scholars see metaphor as an integral part

English Semantics and Lexicography 32

I’m hungry.

I’m starving.

I could eat a horse.

My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.

I’m hungry.

I’m starving.

I could eat a horse.

My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.

Literal meaning

Non-literal meaning

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of human categorisation: a basic way of organising our thoughts about the

world.

4.3 Contextual Meaning

CONTEXTUAL MEANING is realized at the sentence level and is the

meaning expressed by a sentence associated with its context. This type of

meaning is not decided by the word itself but by the context in which the whole

sentence functions.

The meaning of a given word or set of words is best understood as the

contribution that word or phrase can make to the meaning or function of the

whole sentence or linguistic utterance where that word or phrase occurs. The

meaning of a given word is governed not only by the external object or idea that

particular word is supposed to refer to, but also by the use of that particular

word or phrase in a particular way, in a particular context, and to a particular

effect.

There is a difference between the propositional meaning of a word and

the CONTEXTUAL MEANING of the same word. Let us consider, for example, three

lexical items which have the same physical reference in the world of non-

linguistic reality, but are not simply used alternatively in free variation on each

other. The words 'father', 'daddy' and 'pop' refer to the same physical object, i.e.

the male parent. Yet other factors contribute to the choice of one rather than the

other two in different situations. These factors may vary in accordance with the

personality of the speaker or addressor, the presence or absence of the male

parent in question, the feelings the addressor has towards his father as well as

the degree of formality or informality between the two.

The philosopher JOHN PERRY made a while ago the point that an

utterance such as it's raining does not have an explicit meaning (and thus no

truth conditions) outside of its contextual determinants: where is it raining?

When is it raining? Therefore there are constituents of the meaning of an

utterance that can be omitted without the hearer thinking s/he is confronted with

an elliptical clause or a fragment. And what about utterances like aspirin is

better (which demands contextual completion because of the syntactic

requirements of the comparative).

English Semantics and Lexicography 33

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When looking at what particular utterances mean in a context, for

example: if someone says to you “Marvellous weather you have here in

Ireland”, you might interpret it differently on cloudless sunny day than when rain

is pouring down. The problem here is that if features of context are part of an

utterance’s meaning, the number of possible situations, and therefore of

interpretations is enormous if not infinite.

According to CRUSE, one is forced to confront the fact that the semantic

import of a single word form can vary greatly from one context to another.

Regular patterns appear not only in the nature and distribution of the

meanings of a single word in different contexts, but also between words in the

same context.

4.4 Extensions of Meaning: Metaphor and Metonymy.

A typical dictionary definition of METAPHOR is: “The use of a word or

phrase to mean something different from the literal meaning” (Oxford Learner’s

Dictionary)

The Greek word from which the term metaphor originated literally meant

‘transfer’. For Aristotle, what was transferred was the meaning of one

expression to another expression: for him a metaphorical meaning was always

the literal meaning of another expression. (This is the substitution view of

metaphor.)

Richards (1965) made a distinction between three aspects of metaphor:

VEHICLE, the item(s) used metaphorically, TENOR, the metaphorical meaning of

the vehicle, and GROUND, the basis for the metaphorical extension, essentially

the common elements of meaning, which license the metaphor. There must be

some essential connection between tenor and vehicle – a word cannot be used

to mean just anything.

English Semantics and Lexicography 34

The foot of the mountain

VEHICLE: foot

TENOR: Lower portion

GROUND: the spatial parallel between the canonical position of the foot relative to the rest of the

human body, and the lower parts of a mountain relative to the rest of the mountain.

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According to LAKOFF, metaphors are not merely decorative features of

certain styles, but are essential component of human cognition.

METONYMY and METAPHOR are quite distinct processes of extension.

Metaphor is based on resemblance, whereas metonymy is based on

‘contiguity’. Metaphor involves the use of one domain as an analogical model to

structure our conception of another domain; in other words the process crucially

involves two distinct conceptual domains. Metonymy, on the other hand, relies

on an association between two components within a single domain.

There are certain highly recurrent types of metonymy. The following may

be signalled:

a) Container for contained: The kettle is boiling.

b) Possessor for possessed/attribute: Where are you parked?

c) Represented entity for representative: England won the World Cup.

d) Whole for part: I’m going to fill the car with petrol.

e) Part for whole: There are too many mouths to feed.

f) Place for institution: The White House denies the allegations.

5. METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES:

AN INTRODUCTION.

English Semantics and Lexicography 35

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5.1 An Introduction to conceptual categorization.

The name methodological issues deals with the fact that

conceptualisation is something that needs to be approached from a working

perspective. This implies defining units of analysis and the basic types of

operations that relate them.

Concepts have the status of categories: they classify experience and

give access to knowledge concerning entities which fall into them.

Classical and prototypical approaches to definition of concepts constitute

alternative views on categorisation.

The CLASSICAL APPROACH TO CATEGORISATION, which goes back at least

to Aristotle, but is still often taken for granted, defines a category in terms of a

set of NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT criteria for membership. So, for instance the

criteria for some X to qualify for inclusion in the category girl are:

If any of these criteria are not satisfied, the X is not a girl; if the criteria

are satisfied, ten X is a girl. The above criteria can be taken as a definition of

the meaning of girl.

Some problems appear when using a classical approach.

The words like girl, which apparently can be satisfactorily defined by

means of a set of necessary and sufficient features constitute a relatively small

proportion of the vocabulary at large, and are confined to certain semantic

areas and specialised terms for animals specifying age and sex, and so on.

There are many everyday words whose meanings cannot be captured by

means of a set of necessary and sufficient features. For example game. It is

English Semantics and Lexicography 36

X is human

X is female

X is young

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impossible to draw p a list of features possessed by all games which jointly

distinguish games from non-games. We might suggest the following as possible

criteria:

a) involves winning and losing: there are many games which do not

involve winning or losing.

b) involves more than one person: solitaire is a game for one person.

c) has arbitrary rules: children’s games, such as dressing-up games,

have no stable rules.

d) done purely for enjoyment: many games are played professionally.

Another problem is that an Aristotelian definition of a category implies a

sharp, fixed boundary. However, the boundaries of natural categories are fuzzy

and contextual flexible. BERLIN AND KAY (1969), who studied colour categories,

found that while judgements of central examples of colours were relatively

constant across subjects and reliable within subjects on different occasions,

judgements o borderline instances, for instance between red and orange, or

between blue and purple, showed neither agreement amongst subjects nor

reliability with a single subject on different occasions. LABOW (1973), found that

contextual conditions could alter subject’s responses, so that for instance, an

instruction to imagine all the items as containing rice extended the boundaries

of bowl category, while similar instruction to imagine coffee as contents

extended the cup category. Such results receive no natural explanation within

the classical picture.

Everything that satisfies the criteria has the same status, that is to say,

something is either in the category, or not in it, and that is all there is to say

about the matter. However, language users have clear intuitions about

differences of status of items within a category. For example, an apple is a

better example of fruit than is a date, or an olive. In other words, categories

have internal structure: there are central members, less central members, and

borderline cases. No account of these can be given using the classical

approach.

In contrast to the classical approach, there is the PROTOTYPE THEORY.

This holds that the meaning of a word should be described in terms of the ideal

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example of a category. According to ROSH AND MERVIS (1975), the natural

conceptual categories are structured around the ‘best’ examples, or prototypes

of the categories, and that other items are assimilated to a category according

to whether they sufficiently resemble the prototype item.

Subjects are asked to give a numerical value to their estimate of how

good an example something is of a given category – the GOE ratings. For

example, if the category was vegetable, the ratings of various items might be as

follows:

Ratings of GOE may be strongly culture dependent. Familiarity is

undoubtedly a factor influencing GOE scores. For instance, in a British context,

DATE typically receives a GOE score of 3-5 relative to the category of FRUIT, but

an audience of Jordanians accorded in an almost unanimous 1.

There is abundant evidence that prototypically, as measured by GOE

scores, correlates strongly with important aspects of cognitive behaviour. Such

correlations are usually referred to as PROTOTYPE EFFECTS. The principal

prototype effects are as follows:

A) ORDER OF MENTION: When subjects are asked to list the members of

a category, and specially they are put under time pressure, the order

of listing correlates with GOE ratings, with the prototypical member

showing a strong tendency to appear early in the list.

B) OVERALL FREQUENCY: The overall frequency of mention in such lists

also correlates with GOE score.

c) Order of acquisition: Prototypical members of categories tend to be

acquired first, and order of acquisition correlates with GOE rating.

English Semantics and Lexicography 38

1. potato, carrot

2. turnip, cabbage

3. celery, beetroot

4. aubergine, courgette

5. parsley, basil

6. rhubarb

7. lemon

1. very good example

2. good example

3. fairly good example

4. moderately good example

5. fairly poor example

6. bad example

7. very bad example / not an example at all

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D) VOCABULARY LEARNING: Children at later ages of language acquisition,

when vocabulary enlargement can be greatly influenced by explicit

teaching, learn new words more readily if they are provided with

definitions that focus on prototypical instantiations than if they are

given abstract definition that more accurately reflect the total range of

word’s meaning.

E) SPEED OF VERIFICATION: In psycholinguistic experiments in which

subjects are required to respond as quickly as they can to

categorisation task, subjects produce faster responses if the tasks

involve a prototypical member.

F) PRIMING: Subjects see strings of letters flashed on to a screen and

their task is to respond Yes if the string of letters makes a word, and

No if it does not. If a word is preceded by a semantically related word,

response to it will be speeded up. The presentation of a category

name has the greatest effect on the prototype of a category.

5.2 Linguistic Codification: Lexicalization and gramaticalization.

5.3. Iconicity

5.4 Compositionality

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GLOSARY

COMMUNICATION – (Cruise) The transfer of information between human

beings.

LINGUISTIC ENCODING – (LYONS) to translate a message into a linguistic form,

and translate the linguistic form into a set of instructions to the speech

organs which result into an acoustic signal.

LEXEME – (Lyons) Not all lexemes are words and not all words are lexemes.

WORD – (Cruise) It is a minimal permutable element. Words are separated

by spaces in writing, although not usually by silences in speech. They also

have a characteristic internal structure, in that they prototypically have no

more than one LEXICAL ROOT. (Baker) It is the smallest unit which we would

expect to possess individual meaning. Defined loosely, the word is ‘the

smallest unit of language that can be used by itself.

SEMANTICS – (Lyons) the study of meaning. (Saaed) Semantics is the study

of meaning communicated through language. Semantics deals with

conventional meaning - with those aspects which do not seem to vary too

much from context.

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LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS - (Lyons) the study of meaning in so far as it is

systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural

languages.

PRAGMATICS - (Saeed) Pragmatics deals with aspects of individual usage

and context-dependent meaning. (Morris) The relation of signs to

interpreters. (Carnap) The study of speaker/hearer’s interpretation of

language.

PHONOLOGY - (Saeed) The study of what sounds a language has and how

these sounds combine to form words.

SYNTAX – (Saeed) The study of how words can be combined into sentences.

(Morris) The formal relation of signs to each other.

SEMANTICS – (Saeed) The study of the meaning of words and sentences.

(Morris) The relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are

applicable.

ENTAILMENT – (Saeed) Relationship between sentences so that if sentence A

entails a sentence B, then if we know A we automatically know B.

SIGNIFICATION – (Saeed) Process of creating and interpreting symbols.

SEMIOTICS – (Saussure) The study of linguistic meaning as a part of the

study of the use of sign systems.

COMPOSITIONAL MEANING – (LYONS) The meaning of an expression is

determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way in which

they are combined.

REFERENCE – (Saeed) The relationship by which language hooks onto the

world

INTRINSIC DIMENSIONS OF DESCRIPTIVE MEANING – (Cruise) Semantic

properties an element possesses in and of itself, without reference to other

elements.

DIALECT – (M.Baker) Variety of language which has currency within a specific

community or group of speakers.

REGISTER – (M.Baker) Variety of language that a language user considers

appropriate to a specific situation.

EXTRA BIBLIOGRAPHY

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General literature

Tió, J. 1999 Fonaments de la Lingüística. Lleida: Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida

Lyons, J. 1984 Introducción al lenguaje y a la lingüística. Barcelona: Teide

On Lexical Meaning

Baker, M. 1992 In Other Words. London: Rotledge

On Contextual Meaning

http://accurapid.com/journal/14theory.htm

http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol38/no4/p12.htm

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