Introduction to English Linguistics
Part I
Cornelia Hamann
Handout based on word by
Cornelia Hamann
And
Geneveva Puskas (Syntax)
For additional reading please consult
Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams: An Introduction to Language
Stand: 22.3.2005
Semantics and Pragmatics
Cornelia Hamann
University of Oldenburg
1. Introductionp. 3
2. Lexical Semanticsp. 4
2.1. Semantic properties and semantic featuresp. 4
2.2. Relationships between words (-nyms)p. 7
2.3. Levels of languagep. 11
3. Phrasal and sentential semanticsp. 12
3.1. Three basic approaches to meaningp. 12
3.2. Building up meaningsp. 13
3.2.1. Important constraintsp. 13
3.2.2. From atomic to complex expressions p. 16
3.3. Sentence meaningp. 21
3.3.1. Preliminary considerationsp. 21
3.3.2. The definition of sentence meaningp. 23
3.3.3. Meaning relations between sentencesp. 23
4. Pragmaticsp. 26
4.1. Conversational Maximsp. 26
4.2. Speech Actsp. 28
4.3. Discourse and Situation (Deixis)p. 29
References p. 33
Chapter 4
Semantics and Pragmatics – the meaning side of language
1. Introduction
Semantics and pragmatics describe how meaning is assigned to the expressions of a language. To understand an utterance we must know the meanings of words and morphemes, we must know how the meanings of words combine into the meanings of larger syntactic units and how the meanings of such phrases combine into sentence meanings, and finally we must interpret the utterance according to the context in which it is made. So there are several layers which contribute to the final interpretation or “reading“ of an utterance. Normally, interpretation proceeds in three steps.
Step 1: The meanings of words (mare) and morphemes (un-) have to be defined.
Such meanings are discussed and defined in lexical semantics.
Step 2: The meanings of lexical units (mare, brown) must be combined to form larger chunks of meanings (brown mare) in order to arrive at the meaning of phrases and constituents. The rules for combining meanings are discussed in phrasal or sentential semantics. The most fruitful way to define sentence meaning with respect to the meaning of the parts of a sentence is truth conditional semantics.
Step 3: Some expressions and their “meaning“ can only be fully interpreted when the situational or discourse context are taken into account. The contribution of context (situation, discourse) to the meaning of a phrase or sentence is dealt with in pragmatics. The situational context may tell us that a question like “can you pass the salt?“ is not a question and should not be answered by “yes, I can“, but is actually a request and that the appropriate “answer“ is to pass the salt.
Example (1)
Heloveshisnew girlfriend
WordWWWLOVE
Meaning
WWW = male person (not the speaker or the hearer) salient in the discourse context
LOVE: is a verb which takes a complement (and a subject) and…
Phrasal( WWWi( ( WWWi( ))))
compositon
same person
WWW is the subject of the sentence etc.
SituationJohnJohn‘s
Discourse
2. Lexical Semantics
2.1. Semantic properties and semantic features
Speakers of a language share a basic vocabulary. This mental store of words and morphemes and their meanings is called a lexicon. Because we are not speaking of a written dictionary or a lexicon in the usual sense, this shared knowledge which is stored somewhere in the brain is called the mental lexicon. It contains the phonological shape of a word (pronunciation and stress) and the minimal, shared meaning definition which enables speakers of the same language to communicate.
Example (2)
human
a’ssassinmurderer
murderer of important person
(3)The assassin of Thwacklehurst escaped.
Even if you do not know who Thwacklehurst is, you can deduce from your knowledge of word meaning, see (2), that Thwacklehurst must be an important person. You also know that he was killed and that he was killed by some other person – not a wolf or a snake or some other animal, even though nothing of this is explicitly mentioned in sentence (3). Such pieces of information on which speakers agree are part of the semantic properties of a word.
In example (2) we have split up the meaning of assassin into several smaller components. Such meaning components (pieces of information) of words (or morphemes) are called semantic properties or semantic features. When trying to define word meaning, one way to go is to find as many of these properties of a word as is possible.
Some common, recurring properties are [animate], [human], [male], [female]. Such basic properties can be supplemented with more specific properties like [(very) young], [married/single] or [was married and partner died]. Table 1 and table 2 give examples of how semantic features approximate word meanings.
Table 1
father / parent / husband / baby / child / widow / studentanimate / + / + / + / + / + / + / +
human / + / + / + / + / + / + / +
male / + / +/- / + / +/- / +/- / - / +/-
female / - / +/- / - / +/- / +/- / + / +/-
young / - / - / - / + / + / - / +
married / +/- / +/- / + / - / - / - / +/-
was married, partner died / +
Table 2
father / woman / girl / mareanimate / + / + / + / +
human / + / + / + / -
male / + / - / - / -
female / - / + / + / +
young / - / - / + / -
special / parent / equine
Consider the word list: lioness, doe, ewe, hen, mare, vixen, niece, debutante, girl, maiden, wife, woman. The words all share the feature [female]. Words which share a feature form a semantic class with respect to this feature. In the above list, two classes emerge if you consider the feature [human].
Focussing on the feature [human], the semantic class includes doctor, father, boy, widow, aunt, uncle, niece, girl, maiden, wife, woman. The words, niece, debutante, girl, maiden, wife, woman, aunt have the feature [female] and the feature [human]. They are both in the class of humans and in the class of females. They are thus in the intersection of these two classes.
Considering similarities and contrasts in meaning helps to find the semantic properties of words. Note that by considering such properties or features you arrive at word fields.
Note also that the tables could be made more concise if one leaves out one of the features [male] or [female] and uses only one of them. This works because [+male] is the same as [-female] and [+female] is the same as [-male]. Table 1 and 2 are redundant in information with respect to these features (but not wrong).
In order to describe the meaning of verbs other features are needed. Again, some features are useful in almost any verb description, whereas others specify certain verb meanings or contrast the meanings of two verbs. An important feature is [motion], as shown in table 3.
Table 3
walk / run / stalkmotion / + / + / +
on foot / + / + / +
slow / + / - / +
fast / - / + / -
purposeful / - / - / +
Contrasting walk and stand, the feature [motion] would be differently specified:
walk: [+motion, ….], stand: [-motion,…]
Another verb feature is [cause]. It occurs in darken or kill which can be described as [cause to become dark] and as [cause to die]. We also find verbs for which [contact] is the important feature (touch, kiss), for which [creation] plays a role (build, make, draw), or for which [result] is the dominant feature (reach, die, drown).
The tables we have drawn specifying features as +/- are a formal way of capturing the semantic properties of words. Features have been used also in other fields of linguistics (phonology, syntax). Such formal descriptions of linguistic expressions are often called ‚structural linguistics‘. Decomposition of word meanings into semantic features would thus sometimes be called ‚structural semantics‘.
Features can be relevant for a noun, but equally for a verb. Features can be shared, or there can be a feature clash, in which case an utterance does not make sense or cannot be interpreted.
If someone says „X swims“, you know that X is in a liquid. If „X splashes“, again [+liquid] is a feature. Moreover, from example (4) based on your knowledge about the features of swim (and container), you can deduce that goop has the feature [+liquid], you can also figure out that goop is a noun from the way it is used here.
(4) I saw a bug swimming in a container of goop
Having figured out this feature of goop, you know that examples (5a) and (5b) make sense, because pour and drink are also marked [+liquid]. Example (5c) does not make sense because cut and eat are marked [+solid]. In example (5c) there is a feature clash.
Note that drink is marked as [+liquid], whereas eat is marked as [+solid] in English.
So only (6a) is a good English sentence, (6b) is not. German is different here, (6c)!
(5a)I‘ll pour the goop away
(5b)Bill always drinks goop for breakfast
(5c)*#Bill always cuts his goop and eats it
(6a) drink your soup
(6b) *#eat your soup
(6c) Ich esse meine Suppe nicht!
Some semantic features have consequences for syntax – for the way in which words can be combined. The feature [+/-count] is important for nouns and influences the type of articles, determiners and quantifiers the noun can combine with or whether the noun can form a plural or not.
(7)Count nounMass noun
dog[+count]rice[-count]
I have a dog*I have a rice
I‘ll walk the dog*I’ll have the rice (?)
I have two dogs*I have two rice
I have many dogs*I have many rice, much rice
I have dogs*I have rices
If a noun has the feature [+count], it can combine with articles, with numerals, with the quantifier many, and it forms a plural. If a noun is [-count], it cannot take articles, numerals, and cannot take the quantifier many, it takes much instead. It cannot form a plural either. The features [concrete] and [abstract] do not predict whether a noun is a count noun or not:
(8)[+concrete, +count]: book, dog, man, desk…
[+concrete, - count]: rice, tea, flour, furniture…
[+abstract, +count]: idea, view, concept…
[+abstract, - count]: love, hate…
2.2. Relationships between words ….-nyms
If two words have the same pronunciation but different meanings, they are called homonyms.
(9) file, trunk, tail/tale, to/two/too.
Homonyms create ambiguity: a long tail – a long tale. They can be disambiguated via feature (in)compatibility: a bushy tail/*tale, a romantic tale/*tail.
The homonym bear/bare includes a noun, a verb and an adjective. Bear, the verb, has several meanings which are related semantically: (i) tolerate, (ii) carry, (iii) support. A word with several related meanings like bear is called polysemous.
Words which are spelled in the same way are called homographs. Homographs can be homonyms, see (10).
(10)pen – enclosure for animals
pen – writing utensil, pencil.
However, they often are not homonyms, see (11).
(11) lead (verb) [i:]
lead(noun)[:]
Note that homonyms need not be homographs, (12)
(12) tale/tail.
Homographs like lead/lead with different pronunciations are called heteronyms.
Examples for heteronyms are: lead, wind (noun/verb). bow is a homograph with three meanings. It is also a heteronym. One of these pronunciations is a homonym, see (13)
(13)bow[b]bow and arrows
heteronym
verb
bow[]homonym
front of a ship
Words that sound different, but have the same meaning are called synonyms. Full synonymy is difficult to find, mostly there are slight differences in meaning or in use.
Sofa and couch may be full synonyms, but if one considers
apathetic/phlegmatic/sluggish/indifferent these are listed as synonyms even though they do not mean exactly the same things. So often an overlap in features is enough and to be safe, one sometimes speaks of partial synonymy only. English is particularly rich in synonyms (or partial synonyms) due to its history and the French vocabulary which enriched the Anglo Saxon base, see (14)
(14)cherité – that is luve (quote from a Middle English text)
help – aid
begin – commence
hide – conceal
feed – nourish
wife – spouse
yard – court
drink – beverage
Sometimes synonymy exists in one use of a word, but not in others. In such a case, a polysemous word shares one of its meanings: mature and ripe or profound and deep are examples, see (15) and (16)
(15)this fruit is mature – this fruit is ripesynonymous
this dog is mature – this dog is ripenot synonymous (ripe=smelly)
(16)deep thought – profound thoughtsynonymous
deep water – *profound waterprofound does not combine with
[+concrete] nouns
Replacing a word in a sentence with its synonym does not change the meaning of the sentence. The two sentences are paraphrases of each other, see (17).
(17) She forgot her glasses = She forgot her spectacles
paraphrase
glasses = spectacles
synonyms
Sometimes several specific terms can be subsumed under a more general term. Red, blue, yellow are all words for colours. In such cases, the more general term (here colour) is called the hypernym and the more specific or sub-terms are called hyponyms, see (18).
(18)HyponymsHypernym
red, blue, greencolour
dog, cat, whalemammal
lion, flea, ant, cat, henanimal
Red is a hyponym of colour/coloured. Coloured/colour is a hypernym of red etc.
The relation of hypo/hypernyms gives rise to a meaning relation between sentences:
(19)If X is hyponym (rose), then X is hypernym (flower). See (20).
The reverse does not hold.
(20)a. If a ball is red, it is coloured. (If a ball is coloured it is not necessarily red)
b. If an animal is a cat, it is a mammal
c. If John picked a rose, he picked a flower
d. If John ate an apple, he ate a fruit
If two terms express opposites of meaning, they are called antonyms.
There are two large groups of antonyms shown in (21).
(21)group Igroup II
dead – alivebeautiful – ugly
present – absentgood – bad
perfect –faultytall – short
awake – asleep…
…
If you negate one of the terms of the pairs of antonyms of group I you get a synonym of the other term of the pair. Take dead, negate it, you get not dead which is a synonym of alive. Do it in the other direction: take alive, negate it, you get not alive, which is a synonym for dead as shown in (22). Note that you can do this in both directions.
(22)not dead = alivenot alive = dead
Normally antonyms are adjectives which come in pairs. Antonyms of group I are called complementary pairs because one term is the complement of the other. (In set theory the complement of a set Z is defined as the set containing all those elements which are not in Z. Think of the set of all the (principally) animate entities which are alive. If an animate entity is not in this set, it is necessarily dead. The set of animate entities that are dead is the complement of the set of animate entities which are alive.)
Group II is called the class of gradable antonyms because terms of this class can be true of something to a certain degree, in some instances more in some instances less. Gradable antonyms enter into a scale of comparison. They can take -er, -est or more, most establishing a scale of comparison. John may be tall, Bill may be taller still and Peter could be the tallest of the three. Dicky, on the other hand, could be short, so that John, Bill and Peter are all taller than he is. Obviously we are comparing the four boys on a scale of height with Dicky being at one end of this scale and Peter on the other. So tall and short, the two terms of a pair of gradable antonyms, are involved with the same scale, the scale of heights (for boys), with short boys on one end of this scale and tall boys on the other end. These ends are called poles, the negative and the positive pole.
(23) gives a list of some gradable antonyms and (24) gives a sketch of the scale involved for tall and short. Note that gradable antonyms are always relative, which means that Peter can be tall for a boy but need not be tall if you consider the standards for men or for basketball players. These terms thus apply relative to the class described by the noun: a big ant is not big in an absolute sense, it is not a big animal, only big for an ant.
(23) beautiful – ugly
good – bad
big – small
tall – short
fast – slow
happy – sad
(24)x------x------]------[x------x------>
… …
1.50 1.80 2.00
short men tall men
height of men
negative pole positive pole
The terms of such a pair are antonyms, but the relationship between the terms is different from that of complementary antonyms. Compare (25) with (26) and (27).
(25)If x is alive, x is not dead. If x is not dead, x is alive.
alive => not dead, not dead => alive
(26) If x is ugly, x is not beautiful.
If x is beautiful, x is not ugly.
ugly => not beautiful
beautiful => not ugly
(27)a. If a model is not beautiful, she is not necessarily ugly.
b. If a boy is not tall, he is not necessarily short.
not beautiful ≠> ugly , not ugly ≠> beautiful.
We can make the deduction in one direction, but we cannot reverse the direction of the deduction. The reason is that the terms of a pair or gradable antonyms are valid for the end zones, the poles. In between these poles, however, there is a sort of grey zone, and somebody with a measure in this intermediate zone is neither short nor tall, see sketch (28) and example (29). If x in (28) is marking Bill’s height, then it would be true to say (29) in such a situation.
short mentall men
(28)------]------x--[------>
(29) Bill is not really tall, but he is not short either.
The surprising fact is that tall can be used in certain sentences, even if somebody is short, see (30a, b).
(30) a. Silvio is only 5 feet and 6 inches tall – he is a very short man.
b. How tall is Silvio? – I don’t know, but he is quite short.
Because tall in this use only means the height on the scale and it does not involve any expectation about Silvio’s height, it is called the unmarked term of the pair. If you ask (30c) instead of (30b), you expect Silvio to be short, or already know that he is short. Therefore, short is called the marked term.
(30) c. How short is Silvio?
Antonyms and especially complementary antonyms are evidence for the fact that you can break up meanings into parts. These pairs exist on their own, but the meaning relations pertaining between nouns are often due to the fact that their features are specified differently as in a complementary pair. That a boy cannot also be a girl is due to the fact that a boy is [+male] and a girl is [+female] and these terms are complementary antonyms, see (31).