ENG102

• Semantics


  The study of meaning
• Types of Meaning


  • Conceptual meaning
  • Associative meaning
• Conceptual meaning


  The meaning that is true for everyone, e.g. the word 'sea' refers to something large and filled with saltwater
• Associative meaning


  The meaning that varies from person to person, e.g. the word 'sea' may be associated with pirates, shipwrecks, storms, battles, etc.
• Conceptual meaning

  The meaning that is expressed in the definition, e.g. 'concise' means expressed in few words
• Associative meaning

  The meaning that is not part of the definition but is a connotation, e.g. 'concise' being a good thing
• Reference

  What an expression refers to in the real world, e.g. 'Wikibooks' refers to the website, 'Barack Obama' refers to the first black president of the US
• Constant reference


  When an expression always refers to the same thing regardless of context, e.g. 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea', 'Noam Chomsky'
• Sense


  The meaning of a word as defined in a dictionary, which does not necessarily relate to objects in the real world
• Pragmatics


  The study of how context affects meaning
• Semantic features


  Features used to express meaning, e.g. 'castle' has the features [+large, +building, +fortified]
• Types of context


  • Physical context (such as where a sign is located)
  • Linguistic context (such as preceding sentences in a passage)
• A sentence can be syntactically correct but semantically meaningless, e.g. 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously'
• Semantic features can be used to determine what words can fit into a sentence, e.g. 'The N[+living] was killed'
• Deixis


  'Pointing'. Sometimes, in discourse, you may 'point' to a person, time or place. Context is always necessary to understand deixis.
• Lexical relations


  • Homophony
  • Homonymy
  • Polysemy
  • Synonymy
  • Antonymy
  • Hyponymy
• Deictic expressions


  • He
  • Here
  • Last night
• Person deixis


  He refers to a person, understood by the listener in context
• Homophony


  When two words have the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning, e.g. 'bare' and 'bear'

  
• Spatial deixis


  Here refers to a place, understood by the listener in context
• Homonymy


  When two words have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings, e.g. the verb 'bear' and the noun 'bear'

  
• Polysemy


  When a single word has multiple meanings, e.g. the verb 'bear' can mean 'tolerate', 'bring', or 'have'
• Temporal deixis


  Last night refers to the night before the utterance of the sentence, which also depends on context
• Reference


  Referring to something in the real world. Context is usually needed to determine the reference
• Synonymy


  When two words are close in meaning but not identical, e.g. 'insinuate' and 'suggest'
• Types of Antonyms


  • Gradable antonyms
  • Non-gradable antonyms

  
• Inference


  • Needed to identify what a speaker is referring to
• Anaphora


  Referring back to something previously mentioned
• Gradable antonyms

  Words with various degrees, e.g. 'happy' and 'sad'
• Presupposition


  Hidden assumptions when we talk
• Non-gradable antonyms


  Words without degrees, it's either one way or the other, e.g. 'on' and 'off'
• Presupposition examples


  • Where is your book about pragmatics? - The listener has a book about pragmatics.
  • Why do you like pragmatics? - The listener likes pragmatics.
• Reversives


  When not X does not imply Y, e.g. 'I did not close the windows' does not imply 'I opened the windows'
• Speech acts


  The purpose of an utterance is not just to convey the intended information. There are three levels: Locution (the act of saying), Illocution (the purpose of saying), Perlocution (the effect of saying)
• Converse/Reciprocal antonyms


  If A happened before B, then B must have happened after A, e.g. if A is B's parent, then B is A's child
• Types of speech acts

  • Direct (syntactic structure determines illocutionary force)
  • Indirect (speech act not associated directly with syntactic structure)
• Hyponymy


  When one word indicates a category that is a subset of another category, e.g. 'child' is a hyponym of 'human'
• Searle's classification of speech acts

  • Directive (commands)
  • Expressive (expresses a feeling)
  • Declaration (the speech act does something)
  • Commissive (promises to do something in the future)
  • Representative (describes a state of affairs)
• Prototype


  A hyponym that is more representative of the superordinate than most, e.g. 'salmon' is the prototype for 'fish'
• Metonymy


  When a word is used in place of another related word, e.g. 'bottle' for 'alcohol', 'pen' for 'written word', 'crown' for 'royal person', 'suits' for 'businesspeople'