semantics sense vs. reference phrasal semantics

SemanticsSense vs. referencePhrasal semantics

LING 200

Spring 2003Reading: Files 7.2, 7.4

Sense vs. reference

1. --‘What does [kuutibkuutib] mean?’

--‘Let’s ask Joyce.’

vs. --‘Let’s ask the TA who studied Arabic.’

2. ‘I want to be the president of the U.S.’

vs.

‘I want to be George W. Bush.’

Sense vs. reference

• Reference (‘extension’): identity of real world object

• Sense (‘intension’): (compositionally determined) meaning

• Same referent, unequal sense– ‘Anya’ vs. ‘the TA who speaks Russian’

• ‘Anya’ has no inherent meaning (female given name)

• cf. ‘the TA who speaks Russian’

Sense vs. reference

• Reference but not sense. Many proper names– ‘Anya’– ‘George W. Bush’

• Sense without reference– ‘the queen of the United States’– ‘the B wing elevator in Padelford Hall’

Iconic vs. non-iconic reference

• Arbitrariness of sound meaning– [hr] ‘hair’ vs. ‘hare’

• Onomatopoeia– to neigh, meow, bark, moo, oink, etc.

Iconic vs. non-iconic reference

BANANA ENGLAND

Prototypical reference• For many common nouns, the set

of possible referents are clustered around a prototype.

• E.g. ‘bird’• Prototypical exemplars of a

category are more readily processed than atypical exemplars.

Reference and prototypes• Prototypes vs. set of possible referents:

– some set overlap possible:• ‘bowl’ vs. ‘cup’

• ‘a few’ vs. ‘several’

• ‘blue’ vs. ‘green’

Reference and prototypes

Coreference• Grammatical encoding of reference• Pronoun form. Reflexive pronouns:

singular plural

1 myself ourselves

2 yourself yourselves

3 himself, herself, itself themselves

Coreference

• Aixa asked if Joyce could excuse herself.

• Aixa asked if Joyce could excuse her.

‘herself’ must be coreferential with another NP in the same sentence

‘her’ must not be coreferential with another NP in the same sentence

Coreference

• Joyce burped.

Aixaj asked S[if Joycei could excuse herselfi].

• Aixa burped.

Aixaj asked S[if Joycei could excuse herj].

Sentence (phrasal) semantics

• How do the meanings of lexical items combine?

• What are the rules for determining the relationships between complex meanings?

• Compositionality

• Anomaly

• Entailment

Sentence (phrasal) semantics

Compositionality

• Synonymous phrases– It's hard to find a good latte.

– = A good latte is hard to find.

• Principle of Compositionality/Frege's Principle: – Sentence meaning is determined by morpheme

meaning and syntactic structure

– Meaning of • Dave loves Rose. vs.

• Rose loves Dave.

Non-compositionality• Idioms/proverbs: literal vs. figurative

(noncompositional) meaning (‘free translation’)

idiom phrasal category

noncompositional meaning

to spill the beans VP ‘to divulge an important secret’

to split hairs VP ‘to insist on minute detail’

to put one’s foot in one’s mouth

VP ‘say something stupid, regrettable, insensitive’

More idioms

to go down VP ‘to occur (important or dangerous event)’

to run up VP ‘to incur a large expense’

dead end NP ‘termination of street with no connection to another street’

black market NP ‘illegal trading or exchange’

Idioms in other languages: Sekani

idiom phrasal category

literal meaning noncompositional meaning

tche nikl VP ‘it wagged its tail’

‘he/she/it died’

thìtshìsniõ VP ‘he/she put my head in the water’

‘he/she criticized me’

thehkhahce ilà NP ‘frog hand’ ‘slow, clumsy hands’

Idioms in other languages: Witsuwit’en

idiom phrasal category

literal meaning

noncompositional meaning

[y ste] VP ‘he/she stays home’

‘she is pregnant’

[nyzil utily

VP ‘he/she/it likes your smell’

‘he/she/it is used to you’

[c’t’xwts’y il]

NP ‘bird backpack’

‘large wet snowflake’

[lyap tat p yininye]

S ‘the devil fought with his wife’

‘there was a hail storm’

Anomaly• Semantically ill-formed phrases

– meanings that cannot combine with each other– The slideshow amused the students.

vs.– #The slideshow amused the projector.

• Syntactic well-formedness independent of semantic well-formedness– ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’

Anomaly

• Anomalous expression = ‘oxymoron’– Sign in a London department store:

Bargain basement upstairs– On a church door:

'This is the gate of Heaven. Enter Ye all by this door.' (This door is kept locked because of the draught. Please use side door.)

– Outside a disco:Smarts is the most exclusive disco in town. Everyone welcome.

Entailment• If X entails Y, then whenever X is true Y is

also true. – X: Last night I did the dishes and straightened

the living room.

entails:• Y: Last night I did the dishes.

– X: Mike Price was fired.

entails:• Y: Someone was fired.

Entailment• Mutual entailment = complete synonymy• ‘Put off’ is synonymous with ‘procrastinate about’

– If– The professor put off writing the paper. entails – The professor procrastinated about writing the paper.

• and– The professor procrastinated about writing the paper.

entails – The professor put off writing the paper.

– Then– The professor put off writing the paper.

• is synonymous with– The professor procrastinated about writing the paper.

Predicting entailment

1. Factive verbs: be sorry, regret, stop

Factive verbs entail the truth of their complements.

• I’m sorry you were late. entails

• You were late.

• I regret the incident. entails

• There was an incident.

• When did you stop beating your wife? entails

• You were beating your wife.

• Complements of factive verbs cannot be ‘cancelled’– Aixa is sorry the party is over (#but it’s still

going on).

• Complements of non-factive verbs can be cancelled– Aixa said the party is over (but it’s still

happening).– Aixa thinks the party is over (but it’s actually

still in full swing).

Predicting entailment

2. Dictum de Omni

If sentences X and Y differ only in that X contains a hyponym (special case) of Y, then X generally entails Y.

Dictum de Omni

dill pickle is a hyponym of pickle

X: Dave ate a dill pickle. entails

Y: Dave ate a pickle.

Japanese car is a hyponym of car

X: Anya bought a Japanese car. entails

Y: Anya bought a car.

But:celebrity boxing is a hyponym of boxingX: Darva Conger enjoys celebrity boxing.

does not entail:

Y: Darva Conger enjoys (all forms of) boxing.

Actually, Y entails X!

Predicting entailment

Predicting entailment

3. Dictum de nulloIf sentences X and Y differ only in that X contains a

hypernym (general case) found in Y, then X generally entails Y.

Syntactic conditions under which Dictum de Nullo applies instead of Dictum de Omni: – Negative sentences– Conditional sentences– Sentences containing ‘all’, ‘every’; habitual sentences

Negative sentences

• Seattle is a hypernym of Ballard

• X: ‘Bill Gates doesn't live in Seattle.’ entails

• Y: ‘Bill Gates doesn't live in Ballard.’

Conditional sentences

• sports car is a hypernym of German sports car

• X: If Bill bought a sports car, then it must be a nice car. entails

• Y: If Bill bought a German sports car, then it must be a nice car.

Sentences with 'every'

• boxing match is a hypernym of celebrity boxing match

• X: Darva Conger watched every boxing match. entails

• Y: Darva Conger watched every celebrity boxing match.

Habitual sentences

• boxing is a hypernym of celebrity boxing

• X: Darva Conger enjoys boxing. entails

• Y: Darva Conger enjoys celebrity boxing.

Entailment summary

• Possible to predict when some sentences entail other sentences.

• Depends on– whether sentence contains a factive verb or not– which sentence contains hypernym vs.

hyponym– type of sentence: positive vs. negative

/conditional / ‘every’, habitual

“It’s just semantics”• Semantics overlaps with morphology, syntax• Semantic competence • Lexical semantics• Cross-linguistic variation in the number of

morphemes to encode concepts• Semantic relations: antonymy, synonymy,

ambiguity, hyponymy, entailment• Sense vs. reference, coreference• Compositional and non-compositional aspects of

linguistic meaning