Semantics

• Semantics

  study of the structure of meaning
• · mapping of a sound sequence onto meaning in words is language-specific

  ↳ words are arbitrary symbols
• Meaning (1) relation between a linguistic expression and the entity for which it can be used

  ↳ Problem: synonyms -> assumes that meaning is entirely dependent on situation context

  AND that synonyms fully have the same meaning (there are always connotations to a word

  e. g. container -> very formal, box -less formal)

  ↳ Problem: doesn't reflect that a third party is involved in semantics (-> word + speaker and their

  concepts + meaning)
• · Whether or not a word may be used for a particular object depends on the speakers' categorisation

  of the object (cognitive/mental)

  concepts: mental categories
• meaning (2): relation between a linguistic expression and a mental category that is used to classify objects
• referent

  object for which the speaker uses a particular expression
• reference

  relation between Linguistic expressions and objects in the outside words

  ↳ can only be established by giving context (eg. box -> she gave him the box
• denotation

  the set of potential referents of a word
• indefinite expressions


  do not explain which specific referent the speaker refers to (e. g. a box)
• definite expressions

  single out one specific referent (e. g. that box over there)
• · indefinite articles introduce referents into the world of a narrative, afterwards referents can be talked about with definite articles -> Listener knows referent and is expected to draw connection
• deictic expressions: can only be understood with situational context e.g. that box over there

  -> where is the speaker pointing?

  ↳“Meet ME HERE a week from Now with about THIS big" not understandable unless given all the context
• Compositional meaning

  combinations of concepts gives meaning (mostly in phrases & sentences
• inferencing

  communicative purpose of a phrase or sentence contributes to meaning
• semantic meaning

  the meaning (of a sentence) itself -> compositionally derived from the meaning of its parts
• pragmatic meaning

  Communicative purpose of a sentence
• · word-meaning may be compositional due to word formation process (polymorphic words)

  · compounds are ambiguous -> have more than one meaning (eg. dog house)

  semantic scope: extension of semantics of a morpheme to one or more linguistic elements

  (occurs with inflectional morphemes)
• · Words are stored in Mental Lexicon

  ↳ enables speech production and comprehension

  · Lexemes comprise information about form (pronunciation, spelling, word-class, inflectional

  class)and meaning
• Lexical fields: structures into which lexemes are organised based on their meaning in a mental lexicon

  ↳ associations
• hyponymy: meaning relations

  ↳ 'red' is a hyponym for colour

  ↳ 'colour' is a hyperonym for 'red'

  ↳ 'green'is a co-hyponym of 'red' for the hyperonym 'colour'
• sense relations: Semantic relations between words that share crucial aspects of their meaning

  ↳ e. g. Sense relations between colours

  · connections between words dependent on speaker's world knowledge and contextual factors like political symbols
• Connotations: associations that are related to a word through world knowledge

  ↳ no true relation, but association with a concept
• Opposites


  words that are associated with each other through negation

  ↳ always a pair of two terms
• Complementary opposites


  there are only two categories with no in-between (eg. dead-alive -it's either -or choice)
• converse relation /converses

  the same situation and are taking up opposite roles /perspectives (e. g. teacher-student)

  complementaries, where both involved enteties are participants in

  -> sentences with converses can be turned around without changing the meaning

  (e. g. converse: buy-sell -> Mary buys the book from John -> John sells a book to Mary)
• antonyms


  the words are two ends of a scale (e. g. big-small -> there is an in-between)

  -> adjectival antonyms are gradeable (-bigger, biggest vs. adjectival complementaries* deader* deadest)
• Polysemy /polysemous lexemes


  Lexemes may have more than one meaning (eg. job -> either task or employment)

  ↳ meaning closely related
• Homonymy /homonymous lexemes


  Lexemes might be related in form without sharing closely related meanings (e. g. bat)
• Synonyms/Synonomy


  Lexemes that are not related in form, but in meaning

  ↳ mostly cannot be used fully interchangeably
• Corpora: compilation of machine-readable texts (both written and spoken)

  ↳ e. g. British National Corpus (BNC), Corpus of Contemporary American English (CoCA)
• register of a language: language varies in different situations and therefore different registers

  are required (e. g. formal language/register vs. Casual language/register)
• Homophones: words unrelated in meaning that sound alike but are spelled differently (e. g. I-eye)

  Homographs: words unrelated in meaning that are spelled alike but sound differently (e. g. tear-tear)
• · reverses/directional opposites: pair of words that refer to a change of direction (eg. push-pull, rise-fall)