• 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”