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Meaning and Lexical Semantics

  • linguistic study of the meaning of individual words 
    • syntax-semantics interface
    • lexical semantics (word level meaning)
  • Ferdinand de Saussure
    • sign: complex understanding of the physical form of a word in relationship to what the word means
    • signified ➝ concept / meaning component of a word
    • signifier ➝ phonetic / physical component of a word
    • clarifies that concepts (cognition) are distinct from labels (words)
      • relationship between words and meaning is significant but arbitrary
  • there’s a relationship between a word’s sense and its reference to something in the outside world
    • semiotic triangle
  • reference is the language by which language hooks onto the world
    • the speaker can estimate what the speaker knows and assumes that they share a common world of discourse
  • sense: one meaning of a sign in a particular context
  • languages are a series of interrelated signs but every language is different
  • Lexical Semantics: meaning of words in isolation
    • languages organize meanings systematically
    • lexicon / network / semantic map
    • when a word is activated, similar words are also activated
    • prototype theory: when speakers of a language acquire vocabulary for the first time, they adopt a mental prototype
    • prototype is best bird. farthest from prototype is bad bird
    • accounts for overgeneralization with children’s acquisition. prototypes sharpen with time
    • prototypes play an important role in default reasoning
    • assumptions will replace specific actual info in speech
  • Meaning Relationships
    • some of the lexical fields are closed sets
    • days of the week / months ➝ also has associated cyclical order
    • lexical fields can be small or large
    • thick and thin
    • girl and boy, child and adult, adult and man/woman
    • partial synonyms: meaning components are shared between lexical items, but they’re not the same 
    • have different registers
    • antonyms: two expressions with opposing meanings
    • complementary: states of being
      • married/single, dead/alive, hit/miss
    • gradable: non-directional continuum of meaning 
      • wet~dry (soaking, wet, damp, dry)
      • hot~cold
    • reverse: directional movement along the continuum
      • ascend ~ descend. either going up or going down. have to stop going up to start going down
    • converse: opposite meaning relationships based on the pov of the speaker / listener
      • i’m worker, you're boss (employee ~ employer
      • X lends Z to Y - Y borrows Z from X
    • directional opposites: matter of perspective from a single person’s perspective
      • my right or your right?
    • taxonomic levels: speakers prefer to categorize reality at a basic level
      • hyponymy: relationship of an item and its subsets. 
      • dog. hyponyms: weiner, pug, doodle
      • weiner. hypernym: dog
      • hypernym is the basic word for the subsets
      • taxonomic sisterhood: relationship of words at the same level (weiner, pug, doodle, golden = sisters)
  • Other Relations
    • meronymic relations: conditioned by experience
    • ex: birds: feathers, beak, talon, wings
    • gender: lion ~ lioness, goose ~ gander
    • age: dog ~ puppy, kid ~ toddler ~ baby
    • derivation