Exhaustive Semantics Study Guide: Lexical and Sentence Meaning
Course Overview: Semantics by Dr. Fatemah Bazzi
Required Course Content and Chapters:
Introduction (Page 1)
The Dimensions of Meaning (Page 6)
Lexical Semantics Part One (Page 15)
Lexical Semantics Part Two (Page 25)
Sentence Semantics Part One (Page 35)
Classifying Situations (Page 46)
Sentence Semantics Part Two (Page 58)
Semantics and Pragmatics (Page 67)
Information Structure (Page 78)
Speech Act Theory (Page 87)
Exercises (Page 94)
Licensing Definite Nominals through Lexical Relations
Conceptual Framework: The accessibility of a definite nominal in a sentence can be licensed by a preceding sentence. This licensing relationship relies on specific lexical relations or listener inferences.
Hyponymy:
Example: "I chose a dog for her. The animal turned out to be vicious."
Justification: The accessibility of "the animal" is derived from hyponymy because "dog" is a hyponym of "animal".
Meronymy:
Example: "Don’t buy this car. The engine is useless."
Justification: The accessibility of "the engine" is derived from meronymy because an engine is a part of a car (a part-whole relationship).
Inference (Inferential Accessibility):
Example: "She walked into the cinema. The seats had all been removed."
Justification: The nominal occurs with a definite article because the speaker assumes the referent is "given" or accessible. This is based on background knowledge; listeners know that cinemas typically contain seats.
Synonymy:
Example: "A: Have you met the company’s chairman? B: The director is my uncle."
Justification: In the specific context of these sentences, "chairman" and "director" function as synonyms. A chairman is defined as a person in charge of a company's board of directors or a meeting.
Lexical Semantics: Lexical Relations and Ambiguity
Lexical Ambiguity: Occurs when a single word (lexeme) has more than one possible meaning.
Homonyms:
Definition: Words that have identical pronunciation and spelling but possess unrelated or entirely different meanings.
Example Sentence: "Yesterday, I went to the bank to withdraw money, but on my way I sat on the river bank for half an hour."
Explanation: The two instances of "bank" refer to a financial institution and the edge of a stream, respectively. They are homonyms because their meanings are unrelated despite identical forms.
Polysemy:
Definition: Lexemes that have two or more related meanings. Often, one meaning is basic (anatomical or literal), and others are derived or metaphorical.
Example Sentence: "The head of our company is very funny because sometimes he comes to work with colorful ribbons covering his head."
Explanation: "Head" refers to both a "leader/principal person" and the "upper part of the human body containing the brain." These are polysemous because the meaning of "leader" is abstractly derived from the literal anatomical head's relation to the body.
Antonymy Types:
Binary Antonyms vs. Non-binary Antonyms: Used to distinguish opposites. For example, "old" and "young" are non-binary (gradable) antonyms.
Reverse Antonyms vs. Converse Antonyms: Used for relational opposites. Example: "above" and "below" are examined as either reverses or converses (relational opposites).
Sentence Semantics: Utterances, Sentences, and Propositions
Utterance:
Definition: A specific event involving the production of language at a particular time and place involving at least one person.
Example: "Your smile is scary."
Characteristics: The meaning is tied to the physical-social context, including the time, place, people involved, their backgrounds, and their relationships.
Sentence:
Definition: An abstract construction of words in a specific, meaningful sequence determined by the rules of the language.
Example: "In the farm, the boy smiled when he was holding his brother's hand."
Characteristics: The meaning is determined by individual word meanings and the syntactic construction, which is known to all speakers of the language. It is not tied to a specific event.
Proposition:
Definition: The semantic content of an assertion, expressing a relation to an action or state, but not necessarily forming a complete sentence that asserts something.
Example: "The boy's smile while visiting the farm with his brother."
Characteristics: It shares the same semantic content as a related sentence but lacks the grammatical structure to make a formal statement or assertion.
Classifying Situations: Verb Forms and Aspects
Tense vs. Aspect:
Tense: Relates to the location of an event in time (Past, Present, Future).
Aspect: Relates to the temporal distribution or "contour" of an event (how it is viewed in time).
Stative vs. Dynamic Verbs:
Stative Verbs: Describe a state or condition (e.g., "think").
Dynamic Verbs: Describe an action, change, or process (e.g., "work", "eat").
Inchoative vs. Resultative:
Inchoative: Focuses on the beginning of a new state or a change of state.
Example: "The leaves on the trees have turned brown."
Logic: Even if the action is interrupted, "turning brown" is a true description of the process that occurred.
Resultative: Focuses on a process viewed as having a final point of completion.
Example: "I used dried leaves to bake some food."
Logic: If the action is interrupted, it is no longer true to describe the food as having been baked.
Semantic Differences in Verb Forms:
Simple Present vs. Present Progressive: "My brother works in France" (Habitual/State) vs. "My brother is working in France" (Temporary/Ongoing).
Simple Past vs. Past Perfect: "They founded a school of medicine in 2018" (Specific past event) vs. "By 2018, they had founded a school of medicine" (Action completed prior to a past reference point).
Habitual vs. Present Perfect: "They eat a lot of carrots" (Habit/General truth) vs. "They have eaten a lot of carrots" (Completed action with present relevance).
Idioms vs. Ordinary Phrases
Idioms:
Definition: Phrases or expressions with figurative, non-literal meanings.
Key Characteristic: They are "frozen in form." They do not allow for word order changes, passive transformations, or relative clause modifications without losing their idiomatic sense.
Examples:
Sell down the river: To betray someone for personal benefit.
Haul over the coals: To scold or reprove someone severely for an error.
Eat my hat: A humorous phrase declaring certainty that something will not happen.
Let their hair down: To cease acting formally; to relax and enjoy.
Put his foot in his mouth: To say something foolish or stupid.
Comparison of Form:
Ordinary Phrase: "She put her bracelet in her drawer" can be changed to "Her bracelet was put in her drawer" (Passive) while maintaining the original meaning.
Idiom: "She put her foot in her mouth" (Idiomatic meaning: said something foolish) cannot be changed to "Her foot was put in her mouth" without losing the idiomatic meaning and becoming literal.
Child Language Acquisition Sequence
Sequence of Meaning Acquisition:
Reference: Children first learn to associate words with specific objects in their environment.
Denotation: Following reference, children learn the general conceptual meaning or the class of objects a word refers to.
Connotation: Finally, children learn the emotional or cultural associations attached to words.
Technical Questions and Discussion
Analyzing Student Performance (Sample Exam Questions):
Question: Use "the student" as a referring expression and "think" as a predicate to illustrate different situations.
Requirements:
Sentence with a stative verb.
Sentence with a dynamic verb.
Two different utterances.
Two different propositions.
One sentence entailing another.
One affirmative sentence and its negative version with the same meaning.