8. Semantics

Many people have fals sense od how languages are related to reality and each other

Reality:

e.g. eat = essen/fressen

→ way human culture classifies phenomena of world into types is arbitrary

Traditional classification (Aristotelian)

  • categories defined by checklist of properties shared by all members

  • only two options: in or out

  • all members of category equally good examples

Prototype theory (Eleanor Rosch)

  • categories based on overall similariry with central prototypical member

  • include good examples and less good peripheral members

  • fuzzy boundaries

More complex semantic structures:

  • Cognitive linguistics

    • words not stored separately but organised in coherent structures of world knowledge

    • Frame: pattern/situation with functional slots (e.g. birthday party: cake, balloons, sweets, gifts, …)

    • Script: sequence of events (e.g. dining out: reserve table, go there, enter, greet, …)

Meanings of meaning

The meanings of a word

  • Polysemy: multiple meanings of a word (e.g. star) ←—→ homonymy (coincidental), polysemous words historically related

  • Polysemy often based on cognitive patterns

    • Metaphor based on similarity

    • Conceptual metaphor maps entire domain onto another e.g. knowledge is light

  • Metonymy based on contiguity e.g. co-occurence in reality

Syntagmatic semantics

  • Collocation: statistically significant co-occurence of words e.g. sour milk, to go crazy

  • Selection restrictions

Paradigmatic semantics

  • synonymy: (near-) sameness of meaning e.g. mist, fog

  • antonymy: oppositeness of meaning

    • small/large → gradable antonymy (opposite ends of scale)

    • alive/dead → complementary antonymy (if one true, other must be false no inbetween)

    • teacher/pupil → converse antonymy (if one exists other must also exist)

    • to open/to shut → directional antonymy (opposite directions)

  • Hyponymy: class inclusion e.g. duckbilled platypus - mammal - animal

Semantic change

Important types:

  • generalisation: unkembed “not combed” → unkempt “untidy”

  • specialisation: steorfan “die” → starve

  • metonymy: saelig “blissful” → pious → innocent → pitiable → weak → ignorant → silly “Ignorant”

  • metaphor: weorpan “throw” → warp “twist”

Reasons:

  • change in extralinguistic reality or world-view

  • language contact

  • folk etymology

  • human creativity, desire for expressiveness

  • taboo, euphemism