Transcript semantic features

Introduction to linguistics II
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FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND
LITERATURE
G. TOGIA
SECTION ΠΗ-Ω
10/14/2009
Reading material
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 1. Dirven, R. & M. Verspoor (1998). Cognitive
Exploration of Language and Linguistics.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Chapters 2, 7, and 8.
 2. Yule, G. (2006) (3rd edition). The Study of
Language. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.

Chapters 10, 11, 12, 18 and 19.
 3. Handouts.
 4. Self-assessment tests.
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Aim of the course
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 To become familiar with issues relating to:

the study of linguistic meaning, comprising semantic,
pragmatic and textual parameters in the production and
understanding of utterances in discourse.

the study of language in its regional and social dimensions.
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Part 1: Semantics
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CONCEPTUAL AND ASSOCIATIVE MEANING
SEMANTIC FEATURES
SEMANTIC/THEMATIC ROLES
PROTOTYPES
LEXICAL RELATIONS
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Today’s topics
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 Conceptual and associative meaning
 Semantic features
 Semantic/thematic roles
 You can study these topics in:
 George Yule:

Chapter 10.
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Semantics
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 Semantics is the study of the meaning of Natural
Language expressions:

Expressions include words, phrases, and sentences.
 What is the goal of such study?
 Provide a definition of meaning.
 Explain semantic relations between expressions.
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What is meaning? an example
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 Mare – stallion
 Heavy – light
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What is meaning? Dictionary definitions?
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 How can we define meaning?
 Is it the dictionary definition of a word?

Problem: circularity

e.g.
 pride: the belief that you are better or more important than
other people .
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What is meaning? Mental images?
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 So, we need to find a way of viewing meaning
independent of language.
 Is meaning the mental image conjured up by a word
(e.g. Parthenon, Big Ben)?
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What is meaning? Reference?
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 Is meaning the thing a word points to in the world,
that is, its referent?
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What is meaning?
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 Meaning is something that speakers of a language
know.

Linguistic vs. encyclopedic knowledge
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Conceptual and associative meaning
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 Words do not have single, simple meanings.
 Conceptual meaning:
 the basic elements conveyed by the literal meaning of a word.
 Associative meaning (or connotation):
 the associations (emotional or otherwise) a word evokes.
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Conceptual and associative meaning: example
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 Take the words apple or organic .
 Or, the words woman and chick.
 Or, the words innocent and genuine.
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Semantics
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SEMANTIC FEATURES
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Why is conceptual meaning helpful?
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 It allows us to account for the oddity of sentences
such as:

?The apple ate the hay.
?The dog read the newspaper.
?Definiteness melted in the sun.

Syntactically good, but semantically odd. Why?


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Semantic features: definition
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 A procedure for analysing meaning into its crucial
elements or features.

Helps us to differentiate the meaning of one word from
another.
 Words are composed of smaller meaning
components, which are combined to form different
words.
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Semantic features: examples
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 Woman:

[+animate], [+human], [+female], [+adult]
 Boy:

[+animate], [+human], [-female], [-adult]
 Horse:

[+animate], [-human], [-female], [+adult], [+equine]
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Semantic features: examples
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 The same feature may be part of the meaning of
many words:

“human” : helps us to define, bachelor, parent, child, etc.
 Woman, maiden in comparison with doctor, parent.
 Child in comparison with doctor, parent.
 Think of the words father and uncle.
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Semantic features: problem
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 There are many words in a language that cannot be
defined in terms of their semantic features.

E.g. advice, threat, warning.
Exercises 1 - 4
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Semantics
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SEMANTIC/THEMATIC ROLES
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Semantic/thematic roles
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 Semantic features approach:
 Words are thought of as ‘containers’ of meaning.
 Semantic roles approach:
 Another way to analyse meaning:

words can be thought of in terms of the ‘roles’ they fulfill in the
situation described in a sentence.
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Semantic/thematic roles
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 An example:

The cat chased the mouse

2 entities in specific roles:
 The entity which carries out the action
 The entity which is affected by the action
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The number of semantic roles
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 There is a small number of semantic roles:
 Agent and theme.
 Instrument and experiencer.
 Location, source and goal.
 Role assigners are mostly verbs and prepositions.
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Agent and theme 1
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 The boy kicked the ball.
 The boy:
 Agent
 The ball:
 Theme

Theme can also be an entity described:
• My dress is red.
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Agent and theme 2
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 The wind opened the door.
 The earthquake destroyed the city.
 The dog bit the girl.
 The girl cut herself.

Agents and themes can be human and non-human.
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Instrument and experiencer
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 The boy cut the rope with a knife.
 A knife:
 Instrument
 The girl feels sad.
 Did you hear that noise?
 The girl, you:
 Experiencer

E.g. See, hear, enjoy, know.
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Location
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 The ball is under the bed.
 The bed:
 Location
 Examples: on the table, in the house, etc.
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Source, goal
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 She moved from Greece to England.
 Greece:
 Source
 England:
 Goal/recipient
 Examples:
 She borrowed a magazine from George. Source
 She handed the magazine back to George. Goal
Exercises 5 - 9
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Summary
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 Semantics is:

the study of words, phrases and sentences.
 When discussing meaning some linguists are
interested mainly in conceptual meaning,
others in both conceptual and associative
meaning.

In this course, we will focus on conceptual meaning.
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Summary
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 We can think of the conceptual meaning of
words as:
 The
crucial features that differentiate the
meaning of words.
 The
roles words fulfil in the situation described
by a sentence.
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Next week...
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 Polysemy. Homonymy. Homophony.
 Prototypes.
 Metonymy and metaphor.
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