Chapter 6: Semantics
- Semantics- the subfield of linguistics that studies linguistic meaning and how expressions convey meanings
An Overview of Semantics
- Lexical semantics- the meaning of words and other lexical expressions
- Compositional semantics- phrasal meanings and how phrasal meanings are assembled
- The number of words in a given language are limited, but there is an infinite number of sentences and phrasal expressions
- Sense- the mental representation of an expression’s meaning; a concept
- Reference- an expression’s relationship to the world; the entity in the world to which the expression represents
Lexical Semantics
- A community of native speakers of a language is the highest authority of word meaning - even higher than dictionaries
- Dictionaries are written to be a practical aid to people who already speak a language and cannot make theoretical claims about the nature of meaning
- Mental images help conceptualize concrete, physical ideas, however perspective and experience often cause variances in individual mental images
- Semantic relationships of words focus on word reference
- Hyponymy- a set of words in which the reference of X is always included in the set in the reference of Y
- All poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles
- Sister terms- two words in which their references are on the same level and are contained in the same sets
- Synonymy- two words that have exactly the same reference
- Couch/sofa, groundhog/woodchuck
- Antonymy- two words that are related in a way that contrasts with each other
- Complementary pairs- two words in which nothing in the world can be in both of their references
- Ex) dead or alive
- Gradable pairs- represents points on a continuum; something can be one or the other of a reference, or somewhere in between
- Ex) water can be hot or cold, but by saying it is one does not imply that it is the other
- Reverses- pairs of words that suggest some kind of movement in which one word suggests the “undoing” of the movement suggested by the other
- Converses- pairs of words that are two opposing perspectives or points of view
- Ex) send/receive, under/over
Compositional Semantics: The Meaning of Sentences
- Proposition- the claim expressed by a sentence
- Cannot be a word in isolation
- Truth value- the ability to be true or false
- A defining characteristic of a proposition is that it can be true or false, therefore all propositions have a truth value
- Truth conditions- the conditions that would have to hold in the world in order for a proposition to be true
- Entailment- when the truth of one sentence guarantees the truth of another sentence
- Ex) “all dogs bark” guarantees “Sally’s dog barks”
- Mutual entailment- when two propositions guarantee each other
- Incompatible- it is impossible for both propositions to be true
- Ex) “No dogs bark” is incompatible with “all dogs bark”
Compositional Semantics: Putting Meanings Together
- Sentences with the @@same words in different orders@@ could @@express different propositions@@
- Ex) “Sally loves Polly” and “Polly loves Sally”
- Principle of Compositionality- the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meaning of the words it contains and the way in which these words are syntactically combined
- Pure intersection- when there are two independent sets of entities used to describe a more specific set of entities
- Ex) there is a set of all sweaters, a set of all green things, and a set of all green sweaters
- Relative intersection- the reference of an adjective has to be determined relative to the reference of the noun
- Ex) “mice” and “big mice”
- Subsective adjectives- adjectives that serve as a subset of a larger, more specific set
- Non-intersection- there is not a reference to the object denoted by the noun
- Ex) alleged thief or possible solution
- Anti-intersection adjectives- the reference of the resulting adjective-noun combination cannot overlap with the noun’s reference
- Ex) “fake”