There are two components of meaning:
There is a continuum between Semantics (things that are true by the DEFINITIONS and RULES) and Pragrmatics (things that are true by virtue of the REAL WORLD). Consider the following sentences:
Each one of us knows thousands of words. Some of these words have very complicated meanings. We feel that these words can be defined in terms of "simpler" words:
We can take this idea further and develop a conception of SEMANTIC FEATURES which encode the CORE PROPERTIES of words. Since the semantic features cover only core properties, they will NOT capture every nuance of meaning. For example FEMALE and HUMAN are characteristics shared by words such as "woman", "mother", and "widow". FEMALE and NONHUMAN characterize "lioness", "ewe" and "mare".
The border between including a concept in the definition and not doing so can be very fuzzy:
The quality of NEVER-MARRIED and MARRY-ABLE might be part of the meaning as well.
Verbs have semantic features too, giving classes of verbs such as:
There is abundant psychological evidence for semantic features:
Semantic Features are NOT based on scientific/biological taxonomies. Rather, items are often classified with respect to HUMANS. For example relative size, bigger/smaller than a human being. Or, whether something is dangerous to human beings. There is little (if any) evidence for semantic features for MAMMAL (including whales especially) or RODENT (biologically defined as a subclass with the special characteristic of ever-growing teeth). Thus, though for SCIENTIFIC purposes (biology, etc.) we make up categories such as MAMMAL and RODENT to explain facts of species and evolution, these categories do NOT necessarily plan a role in the cognitive (mental) classification of animals.
Some semantic feature IMPLY the presence of others:
Verbs and adjectives encode features of their ARGUMENTS:
Likewise, we know when actions or properties are incompatible, thus one cannot "cut" a liquid or "bend" a liquid.
Two words with the same semantic features (meaning) but which sound different are called SYNONYMS (e.g. "sofa"/"couch").
Two words that sound (or are spelled) the same but which have different semantic features (meanings) are called HOMONYMS or HOMOPHONES (e.g. "bear"/"bare").
One word with multiple related meanings is called POLYSEMOUS.
In practice it can be difficult to distinguish homophony from polysemy.
Homonyms are one source of AMBIGUITY. One sentence can be understood in different ways if the meaning of one of the words changes:
Polysemous words can also lead to ambiguity:
So "X married Y" is ambiguous between marry1 and marry2.
Consider the following sentences:
Now consider the analogous sentences for renting instead of buying, with John and Bill playing the analogous roles again:
Thus, "X rented the house" is ambigous in a way which "buy"/"sell" are not.
Synonyms are different words with the same (or similar) meaning. Some people claim that there are no perfect synonyms, by which they mean words X and Y such that every sentence with X can be changed to a sentence with Y without changing the meaning. But this is too strong a requirement, because it requires ALL meanings of X and Y to be the same, and ALL grammatical properties of X and Y to be the same.
ANTONYMS are NOT words with totally different meanings. Rather they are words which are different along ONE DIMENSION. For example, "bachelor" is ADULT UNMARRIED HUMAN MALE. The antonym of "bachelor" is NOT a NONADULT MARRIED NONHUMAN FEMALE. One possibility for an antonym for "bacholor" is "husband", changing only the UNMARRIED feature. Another possibility would be to change the MALE to FEMALE, giving "spinster". Changing ADULT or HUMAN do not seem to yield antonyms, leading us to speculate that the features might be more or less SALIENT.
There are several kinds of antonyms:
Naming is not only a linguistic function, many other factors are involved. There are very few real constraints on names:
The meanings of combinations of words is largely a product of the conbinations of the meanings of the words:
However, since some words have NEGATIVE meanings, the meaning of the composite can get complicated.
Some adjectives have a meaning that is largely independent of the noun that they modify. One example is color words:
are both "red" in the same way.
Other adjectives (for example size words) have a context (prototype) set up by the noun, and the adjectives compare to the prototype:
As someone said, a big mouse is still smaller than a small elephant.
In both morphology and syntax, the HEAD sets up the main component of meaning and the context modifies the meaning:
In the case of sentences, the parts of the sentence play specific roles in the meaning, as determined by the verb.
John put the book on the table ==== ======== ============ Agent Theme Goal (a Location)
The themeatic roles for "put" are Agent (for the subject), Theme (for the object) and Goal (for the prepositional phrase). Notice that the PP must be of the correct type:
Some thematic roles:
Another example:
The boy carried the red brick from the wall to the wagon. ======= ============= ============= ============ Agent Theme Sourc Goal
Syntactic scope affects meaning.
has two scope possibilities for "old":
Scope also affects the interpretations of pronouns. Consider the sentence:
In this sentence it is possible to interpret HE in two ways:
as in "What about Clark? Oh, the president thinks that he will win."
Now consider the sentence
In this sentence only one reading is possible:
The reading HE = THE PRESIDENT is not possible! Why are the sentences different? First, some terminology. Let's call the item providing the reference for the pronoun its ANTECENDENT.
But, consider the following sentences:
or
These sentences, in which the pronoun (HIS/HIM) precedes its antecedent (THE PRESIDENT) are OK. Just like the Yes/No Question rule (Subject-Aux Inversion, see the Syntax notes) it is NOT the temporal order (first, last) that matters, rather it is the position in the syntactic tree. For pronoun-antecedent relations, the important notion is the SCOPE of the pronoun. Remember that the scope of an item are the things it modifies, the node where the item is joined into the rest of the tree. In the following diagrams the scope of the pronouns is marked under the words.
S
/ \
/ VP
/ / \
/ / S
/ / / / | \
NP / | NP | VP
/ \ / | | | |
Art N V Comp N Aux V
| | | | | | |
THE PRESIDENT thinks that HE will win.
================
S
/ \
/ VP
/ / \
/ / S
/ / / / \ \
NP / / NP \ VP
| / / / \ \ |
N V Comp Art N Aux V
| | | | | | |
HE thinks that THE PRESIDENT will win.
=====================================
S
/ \
/ VP
/ / \
/ | S
/ | / \ \ \
NP | / NP \ VP
/ \ | / / \ \ |
Art N V Comp Art N Aux V
| | | | | | | |
HIS mother thinks that THE PRESIDENT will win.
==========
S
/ \
NP \
/ / \ \
/ / S VP
/ / / \ / \
/ / / VP | S
/ / / / \ | / \ \ \
/ / NP / NP | / NP \ VP
/ / | / | | / / \ \ |
Art N N V N V Comp Art N Aux V
| | | | | | | | | | |
The woman who married HIM thinks that THE PRESIDENT will win.
===========
S
/ \
NP VP
/ / \ / \
/ / S | S
/ / / | \ | / \ \ \
/ / | NP VP | / NP \ VP
/ / | | | | / / \ \ |
Art N Comp N V V Comp Art N Aux V
| | | | | | | | | | |
The woman that HE married thinks that THE PRESIDENT will win.
===============
As we can see, when the scope of the pronoun does NOT include THE PRESIDENT it is possible for the pronoun to be interpreted as referring to the president. When THE PRESIDENT is within the scope of the pronoun, co-reference is NOT possible.
The principle is:
Recall that there is a transformational rule of passive that can apply to (1) to make (2).
The passive transformation moves the Object NP into Subject position and moves the Subject NP to a "by" phrase. However, passive cannot apply to STATIVE verbs:
Thus, there can be semantic restrictions on the application of transfomational rules.
Truth is a complicated matter. For the purposes of this course, we are only interested in a few distinctions about truth. The distinctions we are interested in are:
Frege noticed that we have different reactions to the following sentences:
But Venus is both the morning star and the evening star, so "the morning star" and "the evening star" have the same reference (refer to the same actual item). But we don't feel that sentence (2) is tautologous. Therefore the meaning of a sentence involves more than reference, it also involves how one determines reference.
It is also possible for a NP to have sense without having reference:
"The present king of France" fails to refer — there is no such actual person. But sense of it is clear: a person who presently rules the country of France as a monarch. So we know how to go about determining the reference of "the present king of France" though that search actually comes up empty.
Grice discovered a number of conversational maxims (rules) that people generally obey. Two of them are:
The following discourse representations a failure of cooperation:
Or, if you know for sure that you're leaving on Tuesday it's misleading to say: "I'm leaving on Monday or Tuesday."
Austin noticed that some sentences are special in that they DO things. One class is PERFORMATIVES. When spoken such sentences do the work:
Another case is the use of questions and statements as requests for action:
Statements or questions that presuppose a related sentence. "Leading" questions or statements. "When did you stop beating your donkey?" presupposes:
"I'll have some more coffee." presupposes that you have already had some.
Deixis means pointing out. Deitic elements rely on the speech act circumstances to be interpreted. Their interpretation is variable depending on where, when, by whom, etc. the sentence is uttered.
The sentence:
usually means:
NOT,
The sentence:
can be true if: