introduction to semantics. the scope of semantics 2.1 naming (denotation, reference,...) 2.2...

Introduction to SEMANTICS

THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS

2.1 NAMING (denotation, reference,...) 2.2 CONCEPTS 2.3 SENSE AND REFERENCE 2.4 THE WORD 2.5 THE SENTENCE

Frank R. Palmer – Chapter II

Starting point:

Language = a communication system with on the one hand the signifier, on the other the signified.

SIGNIFIED (the object in the world)

SIGNIFIER (the word in the language)

PROBLEM: How to establish the nature and relationship of these two? ( to be dealt with in Subchapter 2.2)

2.1 NAMING

WORD vs. EXPRESSION (i.e., a sequence of words)

DENOTATION vs. REFERENCE

_____ indicates a class of persons, things, etc. _____ indicates the actual persons, things, etc.

(no consistency in use among scholars...)

2.1 NAMING – terminology

Noun = ‘the name of a person of thing‘ (traditional grammar)X

Impossible to extended the theory to other parts of speech, e.g., adjetives, verbs or prepositions.

Colours as names – OK...X How to regard relevant, useful, or difficult as names ?

Verbs – run illustrated by a picture of a running boy.. (difficult to identify what is denoted by the verb )

Theory of naming

Proper nouns – attractive approach... (Paris, Monday)

Used to refer to particular people, places, times, etc.X

Do they have any denotation? Do they have meaning?

*What does John Smith mean? *What is the meaning of Paris?

Theory of naming applied to nouns

PROBLEMS: 1. non existent entities (unicorn, goblin, fairy)

do not denote objects in the world 2. abstract terms (reference to imaginary items)

inspiration, hate, or nonsense no physical objects to be named by

called ‘abstract THINGS‘

– because they have NOUNS corresponding to them

circular definition ‘things are what are named by nouns‘


3. different expressions different meanings X the same

denotationBoth evening star and morning star denote

Venus.


Words denote a whole set of rather different objects(When is a hill a hill and not a

mountain?) Dividing line between the items denoted by one

word is VAGUE; overlapping.

REALIST VIEW: all things called by the same name have some common property

NOMINALIST VIEW: all things called by the same name have nothing in common but the name

‘Realist‘ and ‘nominalist‘ views

Are realist and nominalist views of naming valid approaches?

Why (not)?

Question:

No.

Nominalist – objects named e.g., hill or chair, do have something in common.

Realist – there are no clearly defined ‘natural‘ classes of objects. The classification differs from language to language.

Answer:

According to Palmer, there are no precise equivalents of such English words as stool, chair, arm-chair, couch, sofa in other languages.

EN X FR arm-chair ≠ fauteuil (presence of arms not necessary)

Colour systems – reflect the interests of people who speak a language

Example: crosslinguistic comparison

Eskimo – 4 words for snow(snow on the ground, falling snow, drifting snow, and snowdrift)

Hopi – only 1 word to denote ‘a flier‘ (a plane, an insect, a pilot)

Culture is relevant X cultural reality is NOT categorized independently of language

Example: crosslinguistic comparison

Scientific classifications are NOT typical of everyday experience

Ordinary language – terms are not clearly defined, classes not rigorously established

Scientific language:Salt = sodium chloride = NaCl

Ordinary language:Salt = belongs with pepper, appears on the

table

Ordinary language vs. Scientific language

Russell (1940s) Object words:

learned ostensibly (by POINTING AT objects) have OSTENSIVE DEFINITIONS

Dictionary words: Have to be defined in terms of object words

OSTENSIVE DEFINITION – not that easy (what exactly am I pointing at? A chair? Its leg? The wood it is made of?)

Object word vs. Dictionary word

The strongest view: relating the meaning of a sentence to things and events in the world

There is a horse on the lawn. – usable only if there is a horse on the lawnX lies, mistakes...

The weaker view: seeing meaning in terms of conditions under which the sentence would be true

(a certain animal being at a particular time on a specially prepared are of grass)

Naming theory for sentences

View relating words and things directlyX

Relating words and things through the mediation of concepts of the mind

The best known theories: De Saussure – ‘sign‘ theory Ogden & Rochards – ‘semiotic triangle‘

2.2 Concepts

Linguistic sign consists of a signifier and a signified.

More strictly: Signifier = sound image Signified = concept ---linked by a psychological

‘associative‘ bond---

De Saussure – ‘sign theory‘

Symbol = word Thought or referrence = concept Referent = object

Ogden & Richards - ‘semiotic triangle‘

‘Semiotic triangle‘

Q: What precisely is the ‘associative bond‘ of de Saussure or the link between Ogden and Richard‘s symbol and concept?

A1: When we think of a name we think of the concept and vice versa.

Q: What is meant by thinking of a concept? A: Having an image of a chair when we talk about

chairs. Palmer: I do not visualise a chair in my mind‘s

eye every time I utter the word chair!

Problem:

Q: What precisely is the ‘associative bond‘ of de Saussure or the link between Ogden and Richard‘s symbol and concept?

A2: Permanent association stored in the mind or in the brain.

Palmer: we cannot look into ourminds to recognize them; Introducing concepts = setting up, in some inaccessibe place, entities that are by definition mirror images of the words that they are supposed to explain circuar definition of meaning

Problem:

Concepts explain nothing at all It is like former scholars‘ attempt to explain

fire by positing the existence of the substance ‘phlogiston‘ (cannot be disproved but nothing is gained...)

Philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world – mostly EMPIRICIST (based on experience and evidence)Xmany linguist accept a CONCEPTUALIST view of meaning

Palmer‘s view of concepts:

Ideas: Intuition and introspection must play a

large part in our investigation of language Seeing meaning in terms of the mental

entities called concepts

2.2 CONCEPTS

1 There is no parallel between neurons in theoretical physics and concepts in the mind of an individual

Neurons – exist, necessary for predicting, explaining

X Concepts – have no claim to existence

Palmer‘s arguments against concepts:

2 Concepts are inaccessible to anyone but the individual totally subjective views I can never know what your meanings are.


3 Arguments about intuition and introspection are irrelevant.

We can introspect butwe merely produce for ourselves some more examples of our language.

X We need to establish phonological or

grammatical rules or structures we need to investigate a lot of data


= the view of language that sees meaning as part of the signified/ signifier relation

- Encouraged by the statement that words and sentences have meaning...

- X- It does not follow from that that there is an

entity that IS meaning!

Dualism

For a word to MEAN something is similar to a notion that a signpost POINTS somewhere.

It doesn‘t make sense to ask ‘what is it that words mean‘ or ‘what is it that signposts point to‘.

It is sense only to ask IN PARTICULAR (not in general):

‘What does THIS word mean?‘

Meaning and semantics

The aim of semantics:

NOT to search for the entity called ‘meaning‘but

To understand HOW IT IS that words and sentences can ‘mean‘ at all.

Wittgenstein: ‘for a large class of words ... the meaning of a word is its use in the language‘.

Meaning and semantics

Reference vs. Denotation (discussed above) Now: Reference vs. Sense

Both sense and reference = aspects of meaning REFERENCE = relationship between linguistic

and extralinguistic realities. SENSE = relationships between linguistic

elements themselves (intralinguistic relations)

2.3 SENSE and REFERENCE

Consider the words ram and ewe:

Reference: ram and ewe refer to particular animals ( derive their meanings in this way)

Sense: ram and ewe belong to the pattern cow/bull, sow/ boar, mare/ stallion --- relation to sex and gender traditionally treated as a part of grammar.

Semantics: both sense and reference matter

1 duck/ duckling; pig/ piglet

2 father/ son; uncle/ nephew

3 narrow/ wide; dead/ alive; buy/ sell

What kind of sense relations are there between these words?

Complete: The ultimate aim of the dictionary is to

supply its user with _______ (sense/ referential) meaning. It does so by relating, via_______ (sense/ referential) relations, a word whose meaning is unknown to a word or words whose _______ (sense/ reference) is already understood.

Dictionary – relations of sense or reference?

1 Semantics related to NON-LINGUISTIC entities (relationship of ______ (sense/reference))

2 Semantics related to LINGUISTIC entities(relationship of ______ (sense/reference))

Two kinds of semantics:

What kind of sentences are the following ones?

Match the sentences with their meanings: A. the first implies/ presupposes the second B. Anomalous C. Ambiguous D. Paraphrase or synonymous E. Contradictory F. One follows from the other

Sentence meaning (and its relation to word meaning)

His typewriter has bad intentions.

A. the first implies/ presupposes the second B. Anomalous C. Ambiguous D. Paraphrase or synonymous E. Contradictory F. One follows from the other

Match the sentences with their meaning:

My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor.



John was looking for the glasses.



The needle is too short. The needle is not long enough.



Many of the students were unable to answer your question.

Only a few students grasped your question.



How long did Archibald remain in Monte Carlo? Archibald remained in Monte Carlo for some time.



In 1960s – tendencies to limit semantics to sense relations (Fodor, Katz).

‘A semantic theory explains the interpretive ability of speakers.‘ – determining number of readings of a sentence

The speaker‘s ability does not include his ability to relate to the world of experience (!).

Defining semantics (attempts)

It is not always possible to distinguish between sense and reference because the categories of our language correspond (to some degree) to real-world distinctions.

Not all languages make the same distinctions

Indeterminacy in the categorization of the real world

Remember:

Reasonable assumption: WORD = one of the basic units of semantics

X

PROBLEMS:

2.4 The word

‘full‘ words and ‘form‘ words Henry Sweet Boys like to play. – which word is a ‘form‘

word?

The meaning of ‘form‘ words can only be stated in relation to other words.

1 Words have different kinds of meaning

Decision about spacing based on the main stress

(‘blackbird X ‘black ‘bird) BUT ‘shoe polish – 1 stress

Bloomfield: word = the minimum free form, the smallest form that can occur in isolation

2 The word is not a clearly defined unit

Bloomfield – suggestion:the MORPHEME = a unit of meaning

e.g., -berry in blackberry

e.g., loved = love + d (adore + past) X took? need to redefine the word: LEXEME

LOVE, LOVED = 2 forms of the same word


LEXEMES – dictionary headings we can talk about meaning of words

(lexemes) + meaning of grammatical elements (e.g., past tense)

Word defined as lexeme


COMPOUNDS (e.g., rainbow, pancake, cowboy)

- problems with stating the meaning of the elements (grammatical words, elements of case in Latin, elements within words that are not grammatical yet have little/ no meaning:

Cran- in cranberry – no independent meaning)

Cf. also: strawberry, gooseberry


COMPOUNDS

Greenfinch – bullfinch – chaffinch

Which morphemes help you guess the meaning of the word?


Greenfinch – bullfinch – chaffinch

Words beginning with sl- are ‘slippery‘ Slide, slip, slush, sludge,

...or ‘pejorative‘ : Slattern, slut, sloppy

sk- – surfaces or superficiality – any examples?

-ump – some kind of roundish mass

We cannot separate the initial/ final cluster and state the meaning of the remainder (sl-ide)

Phonaestetic words

Transparent words: meaning can be determined from the meaning of their parts

X Opaque words

T: doorman O: axe

TRANSPARENT & OPAQUE words

EN : thimble --- GER: Fingrhut (finger-hat) EN: glove --- GER: Handschuh (hand-shoe) EN: linguistics --- GER: Sprachwissenshaft

(language-science)

A degree of transparency and opacity (chopper – can be an instrument that chops;

does a screwdriver actually drive screws?; hammer - *an instrument that ‘hams‘.)

TRANSPARENT & OPAQUE words in different languages

Their meaning cannot be predicted from the meanings of individual words

Semantically single units X not single grammatical units

Kick the bucket; fly off the handle; spill the beans

X kick the table; fly off the roof; spill the coffee

IDIOMS

Heavy smoker; good singerA smoker who is heavy? (heavy smok+er)A singer who is good? (good sing+er)

Sometimes semantic division overrides word division

A smoker who smokes heavilyA singer who sings wellAlternative solution in terms of DEEP STRUCTURE

Consider also: an artificial florist, a criminal lawyer

What does it mean...?

Possible view: sentence = basic unit of meaning

Traditionally: sentence = expression of a complete thought

Sentence = essentially a grammatical unit Syntax – describes the structure of the

sentence Subject + verb (predicate) Incomplete sentences (ellipsis) – answers;

links to previous discourse (Coming? Coming!)

2.5 THE SENTENCE

Both words and sentences have meaning. The meaning of the sentence can be

predicted from the meaning of the words it contains.

Meaning of the sentence is influenced by many factors:

2.5 THE SENTENCE

1 PROSODIC AND PARALINGUISTIC FEATURES 2DEVICES INDICATING WHAT IS IMPORTANT,

INTERESTING, OR NEW (intonation, active/ passive, word order)

3 SPEECH ACTS 4 SAYING ONE THING, MEANING ANOTHER

THING 5 PRESUPPOSITION 6 SOCIAL RELATIONS

Meaning of the sentence

Sentence meaning is directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence

Utterance meaning includes all various types of meaning discussed above (1-6)

Sentence meaning & utterance meaning

Thank you for your attention!

introduction to semantics. the scope of semantics 2.1 naming (denotation, reference,...) 2.2...

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