Chapter 5 Meaning-S语言学

Section One the Referential Theory

Q1. What is semantics?

Q2. What is the referential theory?

Semantics

The subject concerning the study of meaning is called SEMANTICS. More specifically, semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular.

Meaning has always been a central topic in human scholarship, though the term “semantics” has only a history of a little over a hundred years. There were discussions of meaning in the works of the Greek philosopher Plato as early as in the fifth century before Christ. In China, Lao Zi had discussed similar questions even earlier. The fact that over the years numerous dictionaries have been produced with a view to explaining the meaning of words also bears witness to its long tradition. Nevertheless, semantics remains the least known area in linguistics, compared with phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax.

Meanings of “meaning”

One difficulty in the study of meaning is that the word “meaning” itself has different meanings. In their book The Meaning of Meaning written in 1923, C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards presented a “representative list of the main definitions which reputable students of meaning have favored” (p. 186). There are 16 major categories of them, with sub-categories all together, numbering 22.

The referential theory

The theory of meaning, which relates the meaning of a word to the thing, it refers to, or stands for, is known as the referential theory. This is a very popular theory. It is generally possible, as we have shown in the previous section, to explain the meaning of a word by pointing to the thing it refers to. In the case of proper nouns and definite noun phrases, this s especially trues. When we say “The most influential linguist Noam Chomsky teaches at MIT”, we do use “the most influential linguist” and “Noam Chomsky” to mean a particular person, and “MIT” a particular institution of higher learning.

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Words are in different sense relations with each other. Some words have more similar senses than others. For example, the sense of desk is more closely related to that of table than to chair. Conversely we can say the sense of desk is more different from that of chair than from table. And the sense of desk is included in the sense of furniture, or the sense of furniture includes that of desk. As a result the sense of a word may be seen as the network of its sense relations with others. In other words, sense may be defined as the semantic relations between one word and another, or more generally between one linguistic unit and another. It is concerned with the intra-linguistic relations. In contrast, as we alluded to earlier, reference is concerned with the relation between a word and the thing it refers to, or more generally between a linguistic unit and a non-linguistic entity it refers to.

There are generally three kinds of sense relations recognized, namely, sameness relation, and oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation.

Synonymy Antonymy Hyponymy

Section Two Componential Analysis

Q1. What is Componential analysis?

Q2. What is the meaning smaller than word? 5. Componential analysis

Componential analysis refers to an approach adopted by structural semanticists in describing the meaning of words or phrases. This approach is based on the belief that the total meaning of a word can be analyzed in terms of a number of distinct elements or meaning components (called semantic features)

The study of meaning in any language shows that lexical items overlap in meaning and share common properties e.g. Lions and tigers both contain an element of “wild animalness”. Calf puppy and baby can be considered as all sharing an element of non adultness, while cow, woman and tigress all containing an element of “femaleness”, But because of other properties each word contains, none of them will be said as being synonymous to any one of the others.

One attempt to account for this phenomenon is to assume that lexical items, like phonemes are made up out of a number of component parts. Componential analysis is often seen as a process aiming at breaking down the meaning of a word into its minimal distinctive features or properties, which are also called components by some linguists. One way of describing the components of a word is to use feature symbols,

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which are usually written in capitalized letters, with “+” “-“ before them, plus sign indicates the presence of a certain property, and minus sign indicates the absence of it. e.g.

man : + HUMAN+ ADULT+ MALE woman: + HUMAN+ ADULT- MALE boy: + HUMAN- ADULT+ MALE girl: + HUMAN- ADULT- MALE

words like father, mother, daughter and son, which involves a relation between two entities, may be shown as follows:

father = PARENT (X,Y) & MALE (X) mother = PARENT (X,Y) & MALE (X)

verbs can also be analyzed in this way, for example take = CAUSE (X, (HAVE (X,Y)) give= CAUSE (X, (HAVE (X,Y)))

•Advantages: by specifying the semantic features of certain words, we may better

account for sense relations,

Synonymy ---- having the same semantic components Antonymy ----- having a contrasting component Hyponymy-----having all semantic components of another.

•Disadvantages: It would be senseless to analyze the meaning of every word by

breaking it into its meaning components.

Section Three Sentence Meaning

Q1. What is Sentence meaning?

Q2. What is logical semantics? Sentence meaning

The defining of sentence meaning has turned out to be a more complicated issue than the defining of the meanings of individual lexical items.

The meaning of a sentence is the sum total of the meanings of all it components. The meaning of a sentence is a product of both lexical and grammatical meaning. There are two aspects to sentence meaning: grammatical meaning and semantic meaning. (An integrated theory)

(Text book) The meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the constituent words and the way they are combined (the principle of compositionality)

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Logical semantics (prepositional logic & predicate logic)

Prepositional logic (prepositional calculus or sentential calculus): is the study of the truth conditions for propositions

Proposition: “is what is expressed by a declarative sentence when that sentence is uttered to make a statement” (Lyons 1977:141-2), a very important property of which is that it has a truth value. It is either true or false.

Disadvantage: concerned with the semantic relation between propositions, treats a simple proposition as an unanalyzed whole. If snow is white, grass is green

If snow is black, grass is green (cf. truth table P180, P q, p→q)

Predicate logic ( predicate calculus): is the study of the internal structure of simple propositions.

Disadvantage: Socrates is a man, Socrates is rational, Socrates ran. All these three words are treated as one-place predicates, while in English they belong to three different word classes. Besides, there are more quantifiers in natural languages than all and some, such as, many, most, dozens of, several, a few etc. But there is no adequate provision for them in predicate logic.

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Chapter 5 Meaning

Teaching aims: enable the students to have a better understanding of semantics and

wording meaning.

Focal points: Leech’s seven classifications of meaning, semantic triangle, sense

relations between words and sentences

Teaching difficulties: sense relations between sentences, different types of antonymy

Teaching procedure

The subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics. In this chapter, we will study another branch of linguistics-----semantics. 1. An Introduction

Definition: In linguistics, it is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular. Its goal is to reveal how language is matched with their proper meanings by the speakers of that language. Semantics is an old and young branch.

Dating from Plato, the study of meaning has a long history. Philosophers,

psychologists, and sociologists all claim a deep interest in the study of meaning, although they differ in their focus of interest.

Philosophers: the relation between linguistic expression and what they refer to in the

real world and evaluation of the truth value of it.

Psychologists: understanding the working of human mind through language. So you many find several books bearing the title “semantics” but talking about different things. Here we just focus on linguistic semantics.

In linguistics, compared with other branches we have discussed, semantics is very young and new. The term semantics is a recent addition to the English language. It has only a history of over 100 years.

13 French linguist Breal coined “semantique” 17 Breal first use it as the science of meaning. 1900 its English version came out

1980s semantics began to be introduced into China “Cinderella of linguistics” (Kempson)

One of the most famous books on semantics is The Meaning of Meaning published in 1923.

2. Meanings of “meaning” P158 2.1 what is meaning?

What is the meaning of “desk”? √

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I didn't mean to hurt you. (intend)

Life without faith has no meaning. (value) It was John I mean not Harry (refer to ) √ 7 Types of meaning (G. Leech)

Denotation: the core sense of a word or a phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world.

Connotation: some additional, esp. emotive meaning. 3. The referential theory

Relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stand for. 3.1 Semantic triangle

Proposed by Ogden & Richards in their “The Meaning of Meaning”. They saw the relationship between the word and the thing it refers to is not direct. It’s mediated by concept.

thought or reference

symbol referent

In this diagram, the symbol or form refers to linguistic elements (words, phrases), the referent refers to the things in the real world, and thought or reference refers to “concept”.

e.g. The dog over there looks unfriendly.

The word “dog” is directly associated with a certain concept in our mind, i.e. what a “dog” is like, but it is not directly linked to the referent (the particular dog) in this particular case. Thus, the symbol of a word signifies thing by virtue of the concept associated with the form of the word in the mind of the speaker of a language, and the concept looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word.

3.2 Sense & reference

sense and reference are the two terms often encountered in the study of word meaning.

They are two related but different aspects of meaning.

Sense-----the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the

features of the linguistic form; It’s abstract and de-contextualized. It’s the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in. It is concerned with the intra-linguistic relations. Reference-----What a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; It deals with

the relationship between the linguistic elements and the non-linguistic world of experience.

For example, the word “dog” is given the definition “a common domestic animal kept

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by human beings for work, hunting etc or as a pet”. This doesn’t refer to any particular dog that exists in the real world, but applies to any animal that meets the features described in the definition, so this is the sense of the word “dog”. But if we say “The dog is barking”, we must be talking about a certain dog existent in the situation, the word “dog” refers to a dog known to both the speaker and the hearer. This is the reference of the word “dog” in this particular situation.

To some extent, we can say every word has a sense, i.e. some conceptual content. But not every word has a reference e.g. grammatical words like but if etc, don’t refer to anything.

Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations.

e.g. I was one bitten by a dog.

Mind you. There is a dog over there.

Here the two “dog” bear the same sense, but have two different references in the two utterances.

Sometimes linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense

e.g. “morning star” and “ evening star” can refer to the same star “Venus” 2. Major Sense relations

Words are in different sense relations with each other

There are generally 3 kinds of sense relations: sameness relation, oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation 4.1. synonymy

Sameness or close similarity of meaning.

Words that are close in meaning are called synonyms. 4.2 Antonymy

Oppositeness of meaning

Words that are opposite in meaning are antonyms. Oppositeness can be found on different dimensions. ①Gradable antonymy (mainly adj.)

good/ bad, long /short, narrow/ wide

They are gradable. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. There are often intermediate forms between them.

②Complementary antonymy

alive/ dead, male/ female, present/ absent, pass/ fail , boy/ girl

It is characterized by the feature that the denial of one member of the pair implies the

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assertion of the other and the assertion of one means the denial of the other.

In other words, it is not a matter of degree between two extremes, but a matter of either one or the other.

③Converse antonymy (relational opposites)

buy/ sell, lend/ borrow, before /after, teacher/ student, above /below

The members of a pair do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. They show the reversal of a relationship between two entities. 4.3 Hyponymy ( a matter of class membership)

the sense relation between a more general,more inclusive word and a more specific words .

cow/ animal, rose/ flower, honesty/ virtue

The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific word are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same super-ordinate are co-hyponyms to each other.

1. Sense relations between sentences

Sense relationships also exist between sentences 4.1 A entails B ( A is an entailment of B )

A: He has been to France. B: He has been to Europe. A: John picked a tulip. B: John picked a flower.

Entailment is a relation of inclusion if x entails y, the meaning of x is included in y. In term of truth value: If x is true, y is necessarily true; If x is false, y may be true or false; If y is true, x may be true or false, If Y is false, x is false. In formula: A→B

-B→-A

4.2 Presupposition (A presupposes B)

A: The queen of England is old. B: England has a queen. A: Is your father at home? B: You have a father.

It refers to the kind of meaning which the speaker doesn’t assert but assumes the hearer can identify form the sentence.

In term of truth value: If A is true, B must be true. If A is false, B is still true; If B is true, A is either true or false. If B is false, no truth value can be said about A. In formula: A→B

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-A→B

4.3 A is inconsistent with B

A: John is married B: John is a bachelor

In term of truth value: If A is true, B is false and if A is false, B is true. 4.4 A is synonymous with B

A: The boy killed the dog. B: The dog was killed by the boy. 4.5 A is a contradiction

My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor. 4.6 A is semantically anomalous

The table has bad intentions.

Homework

Exercises: Identify the relations between the following pairs of sentences:

A: Tom’s wife is pregnant. B: Tom has a wife.

A: My sister will soon be divorced. B: My sister is a married woman. A: He likes swimming. B: He likes sports. A: John is an orphan. B: John has no father.

Self-study guide

Read Chapter 5 Semantics in “ Modern Linguistics” by He Zhao-xiong

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