That’s Just Semantics

1. That’s Just Semantics Katie Welch, PhD LING3311-001

2. How do we know what words mean? • When we want to know what a word means, we often turn a familiar source—the dictionary. • Why is the dictionary not a sufficient method for determining meaning?

3. Semantics: The Meaning of Meaning • Semantics is a subfield of linguistics that deals with meaning • Looks at meaning on both the word (lexical) and phrasal (compositional) level • Meaning involves two aspects: sense and reference

4. Reference • Reference is the actual thing the word refers to • The referent of proper nouns are generally easy to identify (ex. White House, Hawaii) • Common nouns are much more difficult to identify (woman, dog) • But, what do we do with words that don’t have a referent? (unicorn, nonexistent)

5. Sense • Sense is the aspect of the word’s meaning that is independent from what the word actually refers to in the “real world” • It is considered the speaker’s mental conception of the word (goes beyond the “mental image” of the word) • Take out of a piece of paper and draw your mental image of the following words:

6. Flower

7. Teacher

8. Eat

9. the

10. Activity • Both sense and reference are necessary components to the theory of meaning • But, neither one is sufficient in and of itself. • With a partner, take 20 minutes to determine why reference/sense are: • Necessary • Insufficient Cite specific data to support your position. (Hint: Look at Section 6.1 in your textbook)

11. Lexical Semantics: Meaning Relationships • Syntonomy= two words have the same meaning (ex. couch, sofa) • Hyponomy= a certain subset of words is always contained within a larger set (ex. Poodles, Dogs) • Antonymy= “opposites” • Complementary pairs (x or y or neither but not both) • Gradable pairs (“not x” does not imply “not y”) • Reverses (x undoes y) • Converses (if x has reference, y must, too)

12. Lexical Semantics: Features • Lexical decomposition is a process by which we break down words into smaller parts (features) • Boy/Girl & Man/Woman can be broken down into its features • +human • +female/+male • +child/+adult • Any time that we use a word yet deny some of its semantic features, the sentence is semantically anomalous (p. 246)

13. Review • What is semantics? What is lexical semantics? • How do we encode meaning in our lexicon? • When we perform lexical decomposition, we break the meaning of a word down into its ___________. • What is sense? What is reference? What are the limitations of each? • Describe two words in a hyponomous relationship.

14. Compositional Semantics Lexical semantics does not give us a full picture of meaning We communicate on the phrasal/sentence level The compositional level is both infinite and productive We learn words independently and individually, but we don’t “learn” sentence meaning Instead, we compute them via compositional rules

15. Compositional Semantics • Understanding a sentence’s meaning involves the use of truth conditions and truth meanings • Truth conditions are the conditions that would have to exist for the sentence to be true • See example p. 249 • Allows referents to exist in nonactual scenarios • Truth value refers to whether or not the sentence is actually true

16. Principle of Compositionality • The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its words in conjunction with the way they are put together syntactically