Semantics Notes

Overview

  • What is Semantics?
    • The study of meaning in language.
    • Its role in linguistics and other cognitive disciplines.
  • Place in Linguistic Theorizing:
    • The place of semantic studies in linguistic theorizing in the last century
  • Lexical Meaning:
    • Focus on lexical meaning, the meaning of words.
  • Expression of Meaning:
    • Ways in which meaning can be expressed:
      • Non-linguistically (semiotics).
      • Linguistically (phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax).

Importance of Meaning

  • Controls Memory and Perception: Meaning influences how we remember and perceive things.
  • Goal of Communication: Meaning is fundamental to communication.
  • Underlies Social Activities and Culture: Meaning shapes social interactions and cultural norms.
  • Distinguishes Human Cultures: It differentiates human cultures from others.

Semantics: The Core of Linguistics

  • Main Task:
    • Conveying meaning is the primary function of language.
  • Essential for Language Study:
    • Semantics is crucial for all language-related studies.
  • Window into Cognitive System:
    • Provides insight into the functioning of our cognitive system.
  • Co-evolution with Brain Structure:
    • Our semantic system and brain structure co-evolved for meaning.

Form and Meaning

  • Form:
    • Any piece of language (e.g., sigma /sɪgmə/).
  • Meaning:
    • Example: ‘a successful, confident person worth admiring’.
    • Example: ‘the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet (Σ, σ, ς)’.
  • Illustrates the relationship between linguistic form and its associated meaning.

Definitions of Semantics

  • Lyons (1977):
    • Semantics is the study of meaning.
  • Hurford & Heasley (1983):
    • Semantics is the study of meaning and language.
  • Saeed (1997):
    • Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language.
  • Löbner (2002):
    • Semantics is the part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning.
  • Frawley (1992):
    • Linguistic semantics is the study of literal, decontextualised, grammatical meaning.
  • Kreidler (1998):
    • Linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organise and express meanings.

What is Meaning?

  • Representation of a word (e.g. /dɅk/ or /dAk/ for duck).

Ogden-Richards Triangle of Meaning

  • Components:
    • Symbol: Word.
    • Thought or Reference: Concept.
    • Referent: Thing.
  • Relationships:
    • Symbolises (causal relation) from Symbol to Thought.
    • Refers to (other causal relations) from Thought to Referent.
    • Stands for (an imputed relation) from Symbol to Referent.

Grzegorczykowa's Modified Triangle

  • Components:
    • Signs: Linguistic expressions; words.
    • Concepts and Ideas: Cognitive images.
    • World phenomena denoted by expressions.
  • Relationships among signs, concepts, and phenomena.

Defining Meaning

  • Grzegorczykowa (2001):
    • Meaning is a property of an expression that refers to a class of external phenomena, distinguished and interpreted by speakers.
    • Meaning is not real objects or thoughts but relations between phonemic sequences and classes of phenomena, cognitively distinguished.
  • Maćkiewicz (1999), Wierzbicka (1990):
    • The meaning of a word is what people understand or mean when they use it.
    • Meaning is subjective, based on human experience and imagination.

Questions Arising from Meaning

  • Definition and Measurement:
    • How can the meaning of a word be defined or measured?
  • Representation:
    • How can the meaning of a word be represented?
  • Expressibility:
    • Can languages express all meanings, or are there limitations? (e.g., expressing colors).
  • Types of Meaning:
    • Are there different types of meaning?
  • Children Learning Meaning:
    • How do children learn meaning? Do cognitive structures precede language, or vice versa?
  • Changes of Meaning:
    • What laws govern the changes of meaning over time? (e.g., catedra -> cathedral, caderas).
  • Cross-linguistic Differences:
    • Do different languages structure and express meaning in significantly different ways? (e.g., emotions in Chinese).
  • Linguistic Code Correspondence:
    • Which parts of the linguistic code correspond to which parts of meaning?

A Short History of Semantics

  • Early Stages:
    • Not straightforward; traced back to the first studies of language.
    • Semantics had a central place in linguistic studies from the beginning.
  • Circa 4th Century BCE:
    • Aristotle (Ancient Greece).
    • Pāṇini (India): Created the first grammar of Sanskrit.
  • 19th Century:
    • Historical-comparative linguistics.
      • Sir William Jones: Proto-Indo-European.
      • The Neogrammarians: Grimm's Law.
  • 19th - 20th Century:
    • Linguistics as an autonomous discipline since Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).
  • Ferdinand de Saussure:
    • Langue and parole.
    • Signifier and signified.
      sign = \frac{signifié}{signifiant}
  • 20th Century:
    • Semantics was banned from linguistics by American structuralism (e.g., Leonard Bloomfield).
    • Noam Chomsky - generativism - semantics still not deemed important.
  • Late 20th Century - 21st Century:
    • Ronald Langacker: Co-founder of cognitive linguistics.
    • Emphasized conceptualization and mental imagery.
    • George Lakoff: Conceptual metaphors and embodied cognition.
    • Metaphors We Live By (1980, with Mark Johnson).

Semantic Studies: Problems

  • Abstract Nature:
    • Compared to phonetics, morphology, and syntax, semantics is more abstract.
    • Meaning cannot be observed directly.
  • Functions of Language:
    • Communicative function.
    • Representational function.

How to Communicate Meaning

  • What is Communication?
    • Communication is the process of sending and receiving messages through verbal or nonverbal means.
    • Includes sender, message, receiver, and feedback.

Semantics vs. Semiotics

  • Semantics:
    • The study of meaning in language.
  • Semiotics:
    • The study of sign processes and meaning-making.

Meaning Communicated Through Language

  • Phonology:
    • Sound symbolism, onomatopoeia, intonation.
  • Morphology:
    • Inflectional morphemes, derivational morphemes.
  • Lexicon:
    • Open-class words, closed-class words.
  • Syntax:
    • Word order.
    • Children using syntax to deduce meaning.
    • Semantic constructions.

Phonology

  • Phonosemantics:
    • Sound symbolism.
    • Non-arbitrary connection between sound and meaning.
    • Words that sound like what they mean’.
    • Diminutives, maluma vs. takete, onomatopoeia, prosody.

Morphology

  • Word Structure:
    • Different parts of words indicate different meaning.
    • Free and bound morphemes.
    • Studies bound morphemes: inflectional or derivational.
  • Inflectional Morphemes:
    • Do not change the grammatical category of the stem (e.g., dog-dogs).
  • Derivational Morphemes:
    • Change the category (e.g., work – worker).

Inflectional vs. Derivational Meanings

  • Inflectional Meanings:
    • Plurality, possession, gender, size (nouns).
    • Tense, person, number, aspect (verbs).
  • Derivational Meanings:
    • Larger number, not finite.
    • Range of meanings much broader.
    • Meaning not always transparent (e.g., -ful).

Lexicon

  • Open-Class Words (Content Words):
    • Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs.
    • More numerous, less frequent, longer, acquired earlier.
    • Formation of neologisms (prequel, webinar).
  • Closed-Class Words (Function Words):
    • Conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, determiners.
    • Less numerous, more frequent, shorter, acquired later.
    • Some aphasic patients lose only closed-class words (“telegraphic speech”).

Syntax

  • Word Order:
    • The dog bit the man vs. The man bit the dog.
  • Compositionality:
    • Olive oil – made of olives; Baby oil - ?; blue eyes (iris) vs. red eyes (sclera).
  • Grouping Words:
    • [the mother of the boy] and [the girl] – two persons.
    • The mother of [the boy and the girl] – one person.
  • Construction Grammar:
    • [Subject + Verb + Object 1 + Object 2] = “to transfer something to someone”.
  • Syntactic Bootstrapping:
    • Children learn word meanings by recognizing syntactic categories.

Conclusion

  • Meanings can be expressed by different linguistic mechanisms.
  • Some linguistic elements correspond to more than one meaning.
  • Complex relationship between “element of meaning” and “elements of language”.

Summary

  • Semantics is important and not easy to study.
  • Central to all types of linguistic analyses.
  • Deciding what to include in a theory of meaning is problematic.
  • Linguists had varying interest in semantics throughout the history of linguistic studies.
  • Meaning is expressed non-linguistically and linguistically.
  • Meanings can be expressed in different linguistic levels:
    • Phonology (sound symbolism, intonation).
    • Morphology (inflectional morphemes, derivational morphemes).
    • Lexicon (open-class words, closed-class words).
    • Syntax (word order, children using syntax to deduce meaning).