Transcript meaning

Introduction to
SEMANTICS
Frank R. Palmer – Chapter II
THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS
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2.1 NAMING (denotation, reference,...)
2.2 CONCEPTS
2.3 SENSE AND REFERENCE
2.4 THE WORD
2.5 THE SENTENCE
2.1 NAMING
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 – terminology
 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...)
Theory of naming
 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 applied to nouns
 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‘
Theory of naming applied to nouns
3. different expressions  different meanings
X the same denotation
Both evening star and morning star denote Venus.
‘Realist‘ and ‘nominalist‘ views
 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
Question:
 Are realist and nominalist views of naming valid
approaches?
 Why (not)?
Answer:
 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.
Example: crosslinguistic comparison
 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
Ordinary language
vs. Scientific language
 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
Object word vs. Dictionary word
 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?)
Naming theory for sentences
 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 lawn
X 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)
2.2 Concepts
 View relating words and things directly
X
 Relating words and things through the mediation of
concepts of the mind
 The best known theories:
 De Saussure – ‘sign‘ theory
 Ogden & Rochards – ‘semiotic triangle‘
De Saussure – ‘sign theory‘
 Linguistic sign consists of a signifier and a signified.
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More strictly:
Signifier = sound image
Signified = concept
---linked by a psychological
‘associative‘ bond---
Ogden & Richards - ‘semiotic triangle‘
 Symbol = word
 Thought or referrence = concept
 Referent = object
‘Semiotic triangle‘
Problem:
 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
Palmer‘s view of concepts:
 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)
X
many linguist accept a CONCEPTUALIST view of
meaning
2.2 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
Palmer‘s arguments against
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.
Palmer‘s arguments against
concepts:
 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
Dualism
= 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!
Meaning and semantics
 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‘.
2.3 SENSE and REFERENCE
 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)
Semantics: both sense and reference
matter
 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.
What kind of sense relations are
there between these words?
 1 duck/ duckling; pig/ piglet
 2 father/ son; uncle/ nephew
 3 narrow/ wide; dead/ alive; buy/ sell
Dictionary – relations of sense or
reference?
 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.
Two kinds of semantics:
1 Semantics related to NON-LINGUISTIC entities
(relationship of ______ (sense/reference))
2 Semantics related to LINGUISTIC entities
(relationship of ______ (sense/reference))
Sentence meaning (and its relation to
word meaning)
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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
Match the sentences with their
meaning:
 His typewriter has bad intentions.
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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.
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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:
 John was looking for the glasses.
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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:
 The needle is too short.
 The needle is not long enough.
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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:
 Many of the students were unable to answer your question.
 Only a few students grasped your question.
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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:
 How long did Archibald remain in Monte Carlo?
 Archibald remained in Monte Carlo for some time.
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A. the first implies/ presupposes the second
B. Anomalous
C. Ambiguous
D. Paraphrase or synonymous
E. Contradictory
F. One follows from the other
Defining semantics (attempts)
 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 (!).
Remember:
 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
2.4 The word
 Reasonable assumption:
 WORD = one of the basic units of semantics
X
PROBLEMS:
1 Words have different kinds of
meaning
 ‘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.
2 The word is not a clearly defined
unit
 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
2 The word is not a clearly defined
unit
 LEXEMES – dictionary headings
  we can talk about meaning of words (lexemes) +
meaning of grammatical elements (e.g., past tense)
 Word defined as lexeme
2 The word is not a clearly defined
unit
 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
2 The word is not a clearly defined
unit
 COMPOUNDS
 Greenfinch – bullfinch – chaffinch
 Which morphemes help you guess the meaning of the
word?
Greenfinch – bullfinch – chaffinch
Phonaestetic words
 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)
TRANSPARENT & OPAQUE words
 Transparent words: meaning can be determined from
the meaning of their parts
 X
 Opaque words
 T: doorman
 O: axe
TRANSPARENT & OPAQUE words in
different languages
 EN : thimble --- GER: Fingrhut (finger-hat)
 EN: glove --- GER: Handschuh (hand-shoe)
 EN: linguistics --- GER: Sprachwissenshaft (languagescience)
 A degree of transparency and opacity
 (chopper – can be an instrument that chops; does a
screwdriver actually drive screws?; hammer - *an
instrument that ‘hams‘.)
IDIOMS
 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
What does it mean...?
Heavy smoker; good singer
A 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 heavily
A singer who sings well
Alternative solution in terms of DEEP STRUCTURE
Consider also: an artificial florist, a criminal lawyer
2.5 THE SENTENCE
 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:
Meaning of 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
Sentence meaning & utterance
meaning
 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)
Thank you for your attention!