Semantics

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Semantics??(?)?
Language without meaning is meaningless. ?????????
????
1982)
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Topics

• 1. Linguistic meaning (??(?)??)
• 1.1. Meaning linguistic units
• 1.2. Seven types of meaning communicated by
  language
• 2. Word meaning (????)
• 2.1. Sense (????), denotation (???? / ??),
  semantic field (???)
• 2.2. Sense relations

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1. Linguistic meaning (??(?)??) 1.1. Meaning
linguistic units
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What is meaning?

• What is the meaning of meaning (and related
  words such as mean)?
• Non-linguistic meaning (???(?)??)
• I did not mean to hurt you. ?
• Life without faith has no meaning. ?
• Dark clouds mean rain. ?
• Linguistic meaning (??(?)??)
• What is the meaning of "perplexity"?
• "Perplexity" means 'the state of being puzzled'.

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Word meaning (????)

• Noun
• Mary / John, cat / dog, dragon /
  unicorn, honesty / loyalty
• Verb
• obtain / get, govern / control
• Adjective
• happy / sad, hot / cold

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• E.g. the semantic rules (????) for adjective-noun
  combinations

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Grammatical meaning (????)

• Functional categories
• subject, verb, object, complement, adverbial,
  etc.
• Other grammatical categories
• person, number, tense, aspect, voice, etc.

semantic roles
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Sentence meaning (????)

• Various types of sentence
• declarative, interrogative, imperative, etc.
• Sentence meaning is the product of both word
  meaning and grammatical meaning.
• E.g., compare
• The dog chased the cat.
• The cat chased the dog.

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Utterance meaning (????)

• Various types of utterance
• statement, question, directive, etc.
• Sentences vs. utterances
• Abstract vs. concrete
• E.g. Brother A My mother washed the dishes.
• Brother B My father dried.

semantics vs. pragmatics
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• Utterance meaning is the product of both ________
  meaning ________ meaning.
• E.g. three utterance meanings associated with the
  sentence "Can you tell me the time?
• (1) a request for the time
• (2)
• (3)

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1.2. Seven types of meaning communicated by
language
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Descriptive meaning (????)

• Describing states of affairs (?? / ??).
• There is somebody lecturing in this room.
• There is somebody smoking in this room.
• There is somebody daydreaming in this room.

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Affective meaning (????)

• Displaying (note not describing) the speaker's
  moods, attitudes, and feelings
• Interjections (???)
• "Aha!", "Wow!, "Hurray!"
• Stress (??) and intonation (??)
• John is REALLY SMART!
• Choice of words
• statesman/__________, clever/__________

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Social meaning (????)

• Conveying information about the social
  circumstances of language use
• Dimensions of socio-stylistic variation
• Dialect (??)
• Regional dialect (????) and social
  dialect (????)
• Time (??)
• A language of the fifteenth century, etc.

The language of lying
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• Province (??)
• Languages of law, of science, of advertising,
  etc.
• Status (??)
• Formal (????), colloquial (?????), slang (??),
  etc., languages
• Modality (??)
• Languages of instant response (say, in the
  Internet), lectures, jokes, etc.
• Singularity (?????)
• The style of Shakespeare, of ???, etc.

??
???
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• Further examples on status
• abode (poetic) / ___________ (very formal)
  / residence (formal) / ___________ (general)
• cast (literary ???????) / __________
  (general) / chuck (casual, slang)
• After casting a stone at the police, they
  absconded (??) with the money.
• They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did
  a bunk (??) with the loot (??).

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Class practice 1

• What semantic features make this passage humorous
  (???)?

Lewis Carroll 1832-98
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Connotative meaning(???? or ????)

• Connoting typical properties of the referents
• ________
• Experienced in cookery, skirt or dress wearing,
  emotional, sensitive
• ________
• Dirty, lazy, fat

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Reflected meaning (???? or ????)

• What is communicated through association with
  another sense of the same expression
• Taboo words (???)
• intercourse, ejaculation, erection

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Collocative meaning (????)

• The associations a word acquires on account of
  the meanings of words which tend to occur in its
  environment
• ________
• girl / woman / flower / garden / colour / village
  / etc.
• ________
• boy / man / car / vessel / overcoat / airliner /
  etc.

Collocation blond, school / herd, happy / merry
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Thematic meaning (????)

• What is communicated by the way in which the
  message is organized in terms of ordering, focus,
  and emphasis
• I do not recommend any further disciplinary
  action" vs. No further disciplinary action is
  recommended (by me)"
• "He stopped at the end of the corridor" vs.
  "At the end of the corridor, he stopped"
• "Bill uses an ELECTRIC razor"

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2. Word meaning (????)2.1. Sense (????),
denotation (???? / ??), semantic field (???)
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Sense (????) and denotation (???? / ??)

• As two ways of explaining meaning
• What is the meaning of perplexity?

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• These two expressions have the same __________
  but different __________.
• "the greatest scientist of the 20th century
• "the founder of the Theory of Relativity (???)"

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Semantic field (???)

• A set of words with an identifiable semantic
  affinity (???????)
• Colour
• blue, red, purple, crimson, violet, etc.
• Animal
• bird, sparrow, hawk, dog, snake, etc.

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• ________
• happy, ecstasy, sad, angry, depressed, etc.
• ________
• cup, mug, wine glass, tumbler, goblet, etc.
• The sense of words can be characterized by
  identifying sense relations among words in a
  semantic field.

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2.2. Sense relations
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Homonymy (????), polysemy (????), dictionary
making

• Homonymy
• Different words that are pronounced the same

Homonymy or polysemy?
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• Polysemy (????)
• A single word having multiple meanings
• _________ is polysemous
• part of the body
• 'part of shirt or other garment
• 'part of bottle
• 'narrow strip of land', etc.

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• Criteria of determination
• 1. etymology (??), 2. meaning
• Related _________ but unrelated _________
• pupil ('school-child')
• pupil ('part of the eyeball')
• Unrelated _________ but related _________
• meal (repast ?)
• meal (flour ??)

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Class practice 2

• The following are all polysemous words, with
  their two closely related senses indicated. State
  what these senses have in common.
• Example drive (1. as in "drive a nail" 2. as
  in "drive a car")
• Both senses contain the concept of causing
  something to move in a particular direction.

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• i. "cup" (1. drinking vessel 2. cup of a flower)
• ii. "ceiling" (1. top inner surface of a room 2.
  upper limit)
• iii. "guard" (1. person who guards, sentinel 2.
  solid protective shield, e.g. around machinery)
• iv. "chimney" (1. pipe or funnel-like structure
  on a building for smoke to escape through 2.
  narrow vertical space between rocks up which a
  climber can wriggle by pressing against the sides)

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Synonymy (????)

• Identity of meaning
• Web-thesaurus
• http//www.kwuntung.net/synonym/
• http//thesaurus.reference.com/
• A sign in the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park
  states
• Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plague,
  molest, worry, badger, harry, harass, heckle,
  persecute, irk, bullyrag, vex, disquiet, grate,
  beset, bother, tease, nettle, tantalize, or
  ruffle the animals.

????? ????
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• Absolute synonymy (????)
• Words having all their meanings the same in all
  their contexts of occurrence
• Almost non-existent and probably restricted to
  highly specialized vocabulary that is purely
  descriptive.
• E.g. caecitis / typhlitis (???)

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• Complete synonymy (in a certain range of
  contexts) (????)
• Words having all their meanings the same in a
  certain range of contexts
• Relatively rare
• E.g. broad / ________
• "They painted a broad/_______ stripe right
  across the wall.
• "He has broad/?_______ shoulders.
• "The door was three feet ?broad/_______."

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• Descriptive synonymy (????)
• Words having the same descriptive meaning
• Relatively abundant
• E.g. father / ________ / ________ / ________
  ____________ / die / ___________
• Synonymy across languages
• Even descriptive synonymy across languages is far
  less common than bilingual dictionaries suggest.
• Word-for-word translation is generally impossible
  between any two natural languages.

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Antonymy (????)

• Opposition of sense
• A poem with antonyms (???)
• As a rule, man is a fool
• When its hot, he wants it cool
• When its cool, he wants it hot
• Always wanting what is not.

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• 1. Polar opposition (or gradable antonymy)
• hot / cold, big / small, high / low, old
  /________
• Gradable
• extremely cold, hotter
• hot / ________ / ________ / cold
• happy, gloomy, euphoric, so-so, despondent,
  elated, sad

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• Variable gradation norms
• "A small elephant is bigger than a big mouse"
• Neutral usage of unmarked terms (????)
• How high is it? It is three feet high.
• Specific usage of marked terms (????)
• How low is it? It is three feet low.

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• 2. Binary taxonomic opposition (or
  non-gradable antonymy)
• male / female, married / single, alive / dead
• Non-gradable
• 3. Multiple taxonomic opposition
• metal ? gold / copper / iron / etc.,
  color ? red / orange / blue / etc.

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• 4. Relational opposition
• nouns ? husband / wife, parent /________
• verbs ? buy / sell, lend /_________
• spatial terms ? above / below, in
  front of /_________
• The comparative forms of gradable antonyms are
  relational opposites. E.g. older / younger

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• 5. Inverse opposition
• all / some, possible / necessary, allow /
  compel, . . .
• Criterion ? check for synonymy after performing
  these operations
• Substituting one inverse term for another
• Changing the position of a negative in relation
  to the inverse term
• E.g. "All of us are non-smokers" is synonymous
  with __________ of us are smokers".
• "Some countries have no lake" is synonymous with
  __________ countries have a lake.

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Class practice 3

• State the types of opposition of meaning
  illustrated by the following pairs of words.
• 1. off / on 2. murderer / victim
• 3. chair / sofa 4. still / already
• 5. dark / light 6. triangle / circle
• 7. employer / employee 8. present / absent
• 9. fertile / sterile 10. become / remain

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Assignment 6 (No submission needed)

• 1. For each pair of words below (a) give a
  sentence in which the two words could be used
  interchangeably without altering the sense of the
  sentence (b) give another sentence using the
  first word of each pair where a different
  (probably unacceptable) sense is obtained when
  the other word is substituted.
• i. deep / profound ii. side / edge

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• 2. Provide paraphrases (??) for the following
  sentences, which may be either lexically or
  structurally ambiguous, or both.
• E.g. I saw him walking by the bank.
• Meaning 1(2) I saw him and he was walking by
  the river bank (financial institution).
• Meaning 3(4) I was walking by the river bank
  (financial institution) when I saw him.
• i. Wanted A man to take care of a cow that does
  not smoke or drink. (Four meanings)
• ii. Time flies like an arrow. (Three meanings)

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• Reading
• Ke, Wenli (1994), "Semantics and Translation."
  ??????????????(1983-1992),800-815??
• Leech, G. (1981), Semantics The Study of
  Meaning, 2nd ed., chapter 2.
• Lyons, J. (1981), Language and Linguistics An
  Introduction, sections 5.1-5.3.

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• Supplementary Reading
• Nida, E. A. (1975), "Semantic Structure and
  Translating," in The Bible Translator, vol. 26,
  no. 1, pp. 120-132.
• Palmer, F. R. (1981), Semantics, 2nd ed.
• Zeng, Xiancai (1995), "Semantics," in Chan, S. W.
  D. E. Pollard (eds.), An Encyclopaedia of
  Translation Chinese-English, English-Chinese,
  pp. 960-970.

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• Overall Supplementary Reading
• Liu, Miqing (1995), "Grammar and Translation," in
  Chan, S. W. D. E. Pollard (eds.), An
  Encyclopaedia of Translation Chinese-English,
  English-Chinese, pp. 301-16.
• Lyons, J. (1981), Language and Linguistics An
  Introduction.
• Nida, E. A. (1972), "Linguistic Theories and
  Bible Translating," in The Bible Translator, vol.
  23, no. 3, pp. 301-308.
• Nida, E. A. (1998), Language, Culture and
  Translating, chapters 2-6.