1

LECTURE NOTES IN SEMANTICS

Course for Second-Year Students (L2 English Department)

Prepared and Taught by

CT. MUTEGHEKI BAHA Laurent

Academic Year: 2025–2026

 2

Course Description:

This course provides a foundational introduction to the study of semantics, the branch of
linguistics concerned with meaning. We will explore how language communicates meaning,
moving from the level of words to sentences and utterances. The course is designed to bridge
theory and practice, equipping students with the conceptual tools to analyse meaning in English
and in their own linguistic environments. We will address fundamental questions: What is
meaning? How do words relate to the world and to each other? How do we interpret what people
say beyond the literal words they use? This course will be of direct relevance to your studies in
literature, translation, and language teaching.

Course Objectives:
By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Define the scope and key concerns of semantics.

2. Distinguish between different types of meaning (e.g., conceptual, associative, social).
3. Analyse word meaning using the concepts of sense, reference, and semantic features.
4. Explain and identify sense relations such as synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and polysemy.
5. Deconstruct sentence meaning using thematic roles.
6. Differentiate between sentence meaning (semantics) and speaker meaning (pragmatics) using
Grice‘s Cooperative Principle.
7. Apply theoretical concepts to the analysis of real-world language data, including English,
French, Swahili, and local Congolese languages.

Course Structure:

Chapter 1: What is Semantics? The Study of Meaning

Chapter 2: Types of Meaning
Chapter 3: Word Meaning: Sense, Reference, and Semantic Features
Chapter 4: Sense Relations: How Words Relate to Each Other
Chapter 5: Sentence Meaning: Thematic Roles
Chapter 6: Beyond the Words: An Introduction to Pragmatics
Glossary of Key Terms
 3

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS SEMANTICS? THE STUDY OF MEANING

1.1 Introduction: The Power of Meaning

Consider the following scenario: A mother says to her son, ―It‘s getting late.‖ The son, who is
playing outside, immediately understands that he must come inside. How does he know this? The
mother‘s statement is a simple observation about time. Yet, the son interprets a command. This
simple, everyday miracle is the heart of semantics. We communicate and understand meaning in
a flash, without conscious effort. But how does this work? Semantics is the discipline that
systematically investigates this ―how.‖ It is the study of the meaning that is encoded in our
languages. As you, students of the English Department at ISP Bukavu, go on to become teachers,
translators, and literary scholars, a solid grasp of semantics will be your most powerful tool. It is
the bedrock upon which clear communication, accurate translation, and profound literary
interpretation are built.

1.2 Defining Semantics

The term "semantics" comes from the Greek verb sēmainein, meaning "to mean" or "to signify."
In its broadest sense, semantics is the study of meaning. However, we must be more precise. For
the linguist, semantics is the systematic study of meaning in human language. It is a branch of
linguistics, alongside phonetics (the study of speech sounds), phonology (the study of the sound
system), morphology (the study of word structure), and syntax (the study of sentence structure).

A useful formal definition is this: Semantics is the scientific study of the meaning conveyed by
words, phrases, and sentences in a language.

This definition highlights two key aspects:

1. Scientific Study: Semantics is not about our personal opinions on what a word means. It is a
rigorous, analytical discipline that seeks to describe meaning objectively, based on observable
linguistic evidence.
2. Levels of Language: Meaning operates at multiple levels. We have word meaning (lexical
semantics), phrase meaning, and sentence meaning (sentential semantics). A central goal of this
course is to understand how the meaning of a whole sentence is built from the meanings of its
parts.

1.3 The Importance of Studying Semantics

Why should we dedicate an entire course to this subject? The study of semantics has profound
implications across your academic and professional domains.

For the Teacher of English: Understanding semantics is crucial for explaining vocabulary.
Why are big and large almost the same, but we say "a big mistake" and not typically "a large
 4

mistake"? Semantics provides the tools to answer such questions. It helps you teach connotation,
word families, and precise expression.

For the Translator: Translation is not merely the substitution of one word for another. It is the
transfer of meaning. A French speaker knows that un poisson is "a fish," but the English idiom
"to feel like a fish out of water" cannot be translated literally into French as se sentir comme un
poisson hors de l'eau, as this misses the idiomatic, cultural meaning. A semantic analysis helps a
translator find the equivalent expression: se sentir comme un poisson dans l’eau (to feel like a
fish in water) in French, or even better, ne pas se sentir à sa place. In Swahili, the concept
of ubuntu in many Bantu languages has no single-word equivalent in English. Translating it
requires unpacking a whole semantic field of humanity, community, and shared virtue.

For the Student of Literature: Metaphor, irony, and symbolism—the very fabric of poetry and
prose—are semantic phenomena. When Shakespeare writes, ―All the world‘s a stage,‖ he is not
making a literal claim. Semantics helps us analyse how this metaphor works: a set of features
from the concept ‗stage‘ (performance, actors, roles, temporary nature) are mapped onto the
concept ‗world‘.

For Everyday Communication: We are all, unconsciously, expert semanticists. We detect

ambiguity instantly. The headline "Burundian President Visits Wounded Soldiers" is ambiguous.
Did the president visit soldiers who were already wounded, or did a visit from the president
somehow wound the soldiers? Our semantic knowledge allows us to dismiss the absurd reading.
The study of semantics makes this unconscious knowledge conscious and systematic.

1.4 Key Distinctions in the Study of Meaning

To set the stage, we must separate semantics from other fields that also deal with meaning.

Semantics vs. Pragmatics: This is a fundamental distinction. Semantics deals with sentence
meaning: the literal, context-independent meaning of words and sentences. Pragmatics deals
with speaker meaning (or utterance meaning): what a speaker intends to communicate in a
specific context. The mother's statement, "It's getting late," semantically conveys information
about the time of day. Pragmatically, in that context, it was a command. We will explore
pragmatics in detail in Chapter 6.

Semantics vs. Semiotics: Semiotics is the general study of signs. A sign is anything that stands
for something else. Smoke is a sign of fire. A red light is a sign to stop. Linguistics, and therefore
semantics, is a subfield of semiotics that focuses specifically on linguistic signs (words,
sentences).

Speaker Knowledge vs. Semantic Knowledge: Your general knowledge about the world is
vast. You know that elephants are grey, that the capital of the DRC is Kinshasa, and that water is
 5

wet. This is encyclopaedic knowledge. Semantic knowledge, in contrast, is your knowledge of

the meaning of words and sentences as part of your linguistic system. It is what allows you to
know that the sentence "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is syntactically well-formed but
semantically anomalous (nonsensical). You don't need to check the world to know this; your
semantic knowledge tells you that "green" cannot logically be "colourless" and that "ideas"
cannot literally "sleep."

1.5 Chapter Summary and Exercises

In this introductory chapter, we have defined semantics as the scientific study of linguistic
meaning and situated it within the broader fields of linguistics and semiotics. We have
distinguished it from pragmatics and world knowledge, and we have underscored its practical
importance for students of English. Meaning is not a simple, single thing; it is a complex
structure that we will begin to unpack in the next chapters.

Exercises:

1. Defining the Field: In your own words, explain the difference between semantics and
pragmatics. Provide one original example of a sentence where the semantic meaning and the
pragmatic meaning diverge.
2. Ambiguity: The following sentences are ambiguous. Provide two interpretations for each,
explaining what makes each interpretation possible.
a. The teacher said on Monday she would give a test.
b. Visiting relatives can be tiresome.
c. I saw a man with a telescope on the hill.
3. Reflection: Think of a word in Swahili, Lingala, or Kifuliiru that is difficult to translate directly
into English. What does this difficulty suggest about the relationship between words, concepts,
and culture?
 6

CHAPTER 2: TYPES OF MEANING

2.1 Introduction: More Than Meets the Dictionary

If I ask you, ―What does the word home mean?‖, your immediate answer might be ―a place
where someone lives.‖ This is its basic, descriptive meaning. But does this definition fully
capture the feeling of warmth, safety, and belonging that the word home evokes? This chapter
explores the idea that words carry multiple layers of meaning simultaneously. The British
linguist Geoffrey Leech, in his influential book Semantics, categorised these layers into seven
distinct types. For our purposes, we will focus on the four most prominent and directly
applicable types: conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, and affective
meaning. Understanding these layers is essential for any sophisticated analysis of language.

2.2 Conceptual Meaning (Denotation)

Conceptual meaning, also known as denotation, is the core, logical, central meaning of a word.
This is the meaning you find in a dictionary. It is relatively stable and is what allows us to use
language to talk about the world factually.

Woman: [+ human], [+ adult], [- male].

Carpenter: a person whose job is making and repairing wooden objects.

Lake Kivu: a large body of freshwater situated between the DRC and Rwanda.

Conceptual meaning provides the essential features that a thing must have to be a member of the
category described by the word. It is this type of meaning we use to define things, to make
logical propositions, and to establish truth. Without conceptual meaning, communication would
be impossible; a table could just as easily be a chair. In language teaching, this is the first layer
of meaning we establish.

2.3 Connotative Meaning (Connotation)

Connotation is the communicative value an expression has in addition to its purely conceptual
content. It consists of the attributes, associations, and emotional overtones that a word evokes in
the mind of a speaker and hearer. Unlike the stable conceptual meaning, connotation is variable,
depending on culture, personal experience, and historical period.

Consider the difference between woman and lady. Conceptually, they both refer to an adult
female human. Their connotations, however, are different. Lady often carries connotations of
elegance, politeness, or higher social standing. You might say, "She is a real lady," to
compliment her behaviour, but you would say, "She is a real woman," to refer to her strength or
maturity.
 7

Connotations can be positive, neutral, or negative. A single conceptual referent can be described
by words with vastly different connotations:

Positive: statesman, slender, thrifty

Neutral: politician, thin, economical
Negative: political hack, skinny, stingy

Connotation is deeply cultural. In many Western societies, the owl is associated with wisdom. In
some parts of East Africa, however, an owl is traditionally associated with a bad omen or death.
The word dog has largely positive connotations in English (―man‘s best friend,‖ ―loyal‖), but in
many other cultures and languages, the connotations can be predominantly negative, related to
impurity or lowliness. A translator from Swahili to English, for instance, must be careful. The
word nyani (baboon) when applied metaphorically to a person, has strong negative connotations
of stupidity or ugliness in Swahili, arguably stronger than calling someone a "monkey" in
English. Understanding connotation is key to appreciating tone in literature and avoiding cultural
faux pas in communication.

2.4 Social Meaning

Social meaning is the information a word or utterance conveys about the social circumstances of
its use and the social identity of its speaker. Through our choice of language, we often reveal our
geographical origin, social class, relationship to our listener, and the formality of the situation.

Think of the many ways to address a person:

Good morning, Professor Mukwege. How do you do?

Hello, Dr. Mukwege. How are you?
Hi, Denis. How’s it going?
Hey, man! What’s up?

All these utterances serve a similar conceptual purpose (greeting), but they encode starkly
different social meanings about the relationship between the speakers (hierarchical vs. intimate)
and the formality of the setting. In French, the choice between vous and tu is a prime
grammatical marker of social meaning. While modern English lacks this pronoun distinction, it
expresses social meaning through vocabulary choice (e.g., a cheap restaurant vs. an inexpensive
bistro; to die vs. to pass away; a job vs. a profession).

In our Congolese context, the multilingual landscape offers a rich field for social meaning.
Imagine an ISP Bukavu student who speaks Lingala at home, French in a formal lecture, Swahili
in the marketplace, and a local language like Mashi with their grandparents. The very act of
choosing one of these codes over the others conveys powerful social meaning about identity,
 8

solidarity, and context. The same speaker shifting from French to Swahili signals a shift in
footing and audience.

2.5 Affective Meaning

Affective meaning is closely related to connotation but specifically concerns the speaker‘s
feelings and attitudes towards the listener or the subject matter. It is the emotional layer of
language. Intonation and voice quality are key carriers of affective meaning, which makes it
challenging to study in written text alone.

When a professor says, ―Will you please be quiet,‖ the politeness of the words is contradicted by
a sharp tone and heavy stress, conveying the real affective meaning of irritation and command.
Conversely, a term of endearment like honey or darling conveys positive affective meaning. In
the DRC, it is common to hear people addressed as papa, maman, chef, or mon frère as everyday
greetings, even to strangers. The choice of mon frère (my brother) instead of the more
formal monsieur (sir) uses affective meaning to create a feeling of solidarity, warmth, and shared
identity, deliberately softening the social distance.

2.6 Chapter Summary and Exercises

This chapter has demonstrated that word meaning is not a monolithic entity. Conceptual meaning
forms the logical core, but words pulse with the life of connotative, social, and affective
meanings. These layers are activated differently in various contexts and are vital for
understanding the full communicative power of language, a theme we will revisit when we look
at literature and translation.

Exercises:

1. Connotation Analysis: For each of the following pairs, identify the term with the more negative
connotation and explain the difference.
a. childlike / childish
b. thrifty / miserly
c. aroma / stench
d. unconventional / eccentric
2. Social Meaning in Multilingualism: Interview a classmate who speaks at least three languages
(e.g., French, Swahili, and a local language). Ask them to describe a typical day and note
with whom and in which situations they use each language. Write a short paragraph explaining
what social meanings (solidarity, formality, authority, intimacy) each language choice
communicates.
3. Layers of Meaning: The title of Chinua Achebe‘s novel Things Fall Apart carries conceptual,
connotative, and affective meanings. Analyse the title on all three levels. How does the title‘s
meaning change if you consider it conceptually versus connotatively?
 9

CHAPTER 3: WORD MEANING: SENSE, REFERENCE, AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

3.1 Introduction: How Words Capture the World

How does the word river connect to the mighty Congo River that thunders just miles from our
campus? And how does the word student relate to you, the reader of this text? This chapter
moves from the layers of meaning to the fundamental mechanisms of how words mean. We will
explore three core concepts: reference, the link between words and things; sense, the system of
meaning relationships inside the language; and semantic features, the micro-components that
build up word meaning. These concepts are the basic analytical tools of lexical semantics.

3.2 Reference

Reference is the most direct way a word can have meaning. A word‘s reference is the actual
thing, person, or entity in the world that it picks out. When we say, "The President of the DRC,"
we are referring to a specific person, Félix Tshisekedi, in the real world. The referring expression
is a label, and the referent is the real-world entity being labelled.

Key properties of reference:

Not all words refer: The word Felix refers to a person. But what about beautiful, under, and,
or believe? These words do not refer to objects. They have meaning purely through their sense
relations.

Same referent, different words: The phrases "the morning star" and "the evening star" both
refer to the same physical object (the planet Venus), but they do not have the same sense. They
describe the planet under different conditions, carrying different descriptive meanings.

Variable reference: Words like I, you, here, today, this are called deictic expressions. Their
reference is not fixed; it depends entirely on who is speaking, where, and when. If I say "I," it
refers to the instructor. If you say "I," it refers to you. The referent shifts every time the speaker
changes.

Non-existent referents: We can use words like unicorn, Superman, and the present King of
France without a problem, even though they have no referent in the real world. This is a crucial
fact that proves meaning cannot be reduced to reference alone. We must have a separate, mental
level of meaning called sense.

3.3 Sense

Sense is the system of linguistic relationships a word has with other words in the language. It is
the word's "mental concept" and its place in the network of its synonyms, antonyms, and
 10

hypernyms. Sense is internal to the language system; it is meaning without necessarily needing a
real-world referent.

This is what allows us to understand unicorn (a horse-like creature with a single horn on its
forehead) and a square circle. We know the sense of square and circle, and we can see that they
logically contradict each other, making the phrase nonsensical, even though we can perfectly
understand the senses of the individual words.

The distinction between sense and reference was brilliantly illustrated by the German
philosopher Gottlob Frege. A classic example: The Morning Star and The Evening Star. Both
expressions have the same referent (the planet Venus), but a very different sense. "The Morning
Star" has the sense of "a bright celestial body visible in the east just before sunrise." A person
who knows both expressions might not even know they refer to the same object. Sense,
therefore, is the mode of presentation of the referent. It is the meaning we grasp when we
understand a word, and it is the domain of the dictionary and the thesaurus.

3.4 Semantic Features: The Atoms of Meaning

One powerful way to analyse the sense of words is to break them down into their smallest
components of meaning, just as phonology breaks sounds down into distinctive features. This
approach is called componential analysis, and these components are semantic features. A
semantic feature is a primitive, atomic concept, usually represented in square brackets and
capitals, e.g., [+ ANIMATE] or [- MALE].

A classic example is the analysis of the English kinship system:

Word ADULT HUMAN MALE GENERATION

man [+] [+] [+] +1
woman [+] [+] [-] +1
boy [-] [+] [+] 0
girl [-] [+] [-] 0
father [+] [+] [+] +2
mother [+] [+] [-] +2

With a small set of binary features, we can precisely define these words and show the systematic
ways they differ. Man and boy are distinguished only by the feature [±
ADULT]. Man and woman are distinguished only by [± MALE]. This analysis is not just a
game. It has powerful practical applications:

Explaining Semantic Anomaly: A sentence like "The rock is thinking" is anomalous because
the verb think requires an animate, human subject, but rock has the features [- ANIMATE, -
HUMAN].
 11

Explaining Selectional Restrictions: We can say "the man sneezed" but not "the ant sneezed".
This is because sneeze requires a subject with a certain respiratory anatomy, which ants lack.
Semantic features help us formalise this linguistic knowledge.

Analysing Metaphor: When a poet writes "The stone wept," they are deliberately violating a
semantic feature rule. This violation is what forces us to a figurative interpretation, creating the
poetic effect.

3.5 Chapter Summary and Exercises

We have seen that reference provides the hook from language to the world, sense provides the
mental network of relationships, and semantic features provide the fine-grained components of
that mental meaning. These are not competing theories of meaning, but complementary ways of
looking at the same complex phenomenon. A speaker of a language holds all this knowledge in
their head, and semantics is the discipline that makes this implicit knowledge explicit.

Exercises:

1. Sense and Reference: For the following expressions, state whether they have (a) reference but
no sense, (b) sense but no reference, or (c) both sense and reference.
o The capital of Belgium
o A round square
o The first woman on Mars
2. Semantic Feature Analysis: Using the features [+/- HUMAN], [+/- ADULT], [+/- MALE], [+/-
ANIMATE], perform a componential analysis for the following set of words: boy, cow, hen, girl,
bull, rooster, man, woman. Draw a table like the one in section 3.4.
3. Language Application: Translate the words in question 2 into Swahili or your local language. Is
the semantic feature system the same? For example, in English, we have one word cow for the
animal and beef for its meat. How does your language categorize this? What does this tell you
about semantic features across languages?
 12

CHAPTER 4: SENSE RELATIONS: HOW WORDS RELATE TO EACH OTHER

4.1 Introduction: The Mental Web

No word exists in isolation. In our minds, a vast and complex network connects every word to
thousands of others. When you hear the word hot, the concept of cold is immediately, if
subconsciously, activated. The word red is linked to crimson and scarlet, but also to colour. This
chapter is an exploration of this mental lexicon's architecture. These systematic relationships are
called sense relations. By mastering them, you will not only enrich your vocabulary but also
gain a tool for precise critical analysis.

4.2 Synonymy

Synonymy is the relationship between two words that share the same conceptual
meaning. Big and large are synonyms. Begin and commence are synonyms. However, absolute
or perfect synonymy—where two words are interchangeable in all contexts—is remarkably rare.
In almost all cases, differences appear in one of the layers of meaning we discussed in Chapter 2.

The differences between synonyms can be:

Stylistic: Gentleman (formal) vs. guy / chap (colloquial). To pass away (euphemism) vs. to
die (neutral) vs. to kick the bucket (slang).

Collocational: Words have preferred partners. We say a deep river but not profound river. We
say profound thoughts but not deep thoughts (though we might say deep thinking). A car can
be powerful but not strong, while tea can be strong but not powerful.

Connotative and Affective: As we saw earlier, thrifty and stingy share a conceptual core of
'spending little money,' but stingy carries a strong negative connotation that thrifty lacks.

Dialectal: Autumn (British English) vs. fall (American English). Boot (of a car) vs. trunk.

The existence of perfect synonyms would be economically inefficient for a language; where two
words seem to overlap perfectly, they tend to diverge in meaning or one falls out of use. For the
language student, the critical skill is not just knowing that two words are synonyms, but knowing
precisely how they are not identical.

4.3 Antonymy

Antonymy is the relationship of oppositeness in meaning. It is a powerful cognitive device, as we

often define a concept by what it is not. We can classify antonyms into three main types, and
being able to distinguish them is a sign of a true linguist.
 13

Gradable Antonyms: These are opposites that exist on a continuous scale, allowing for degrees
of comparison. They are usually adjectives. Hot and cold are gradable antonyms. Between them
lies a scale of warm, tepid, cool. Crucially, the negative of one member does not automatically
imply the other. "The coffee is not hot" does not necessarily mean it is cold; it could be
lukewarm. "He is not tall" does not mean he is short. In your essays, this logic is crucial for
evaluating arguments.

Complementary Antonyms (Binary Antonyms): These are pairs where there is no middle
ground. The assertion of one entails the denial of the other, and vice versa. They are a true binary
system. Alive and dead are the classic example. If an animal is not alive, it is dead; if it is not
dead, it is alive. There is no 'mostly alive' state. Other examples
include present/absent, same/different, pass/fail (in the sense of a final result), and true/false.

Relational Antonyms (Converses): These pairs represent a relationship from opposite

perspectives. If X gives Y a book, then Y receives a book from X.

One event, two different semantic angles. Common examples

include husband/wife, teacher/student, buy/sell, parent/child, above/below, before/after. If
"Patrice is Joelle‘s husband," then it logically follows that "Joelle is Patrice‘s wife." In relational
antonyms, if X does something to Y, Y must do the converse to X.

4.4 Hyponymy

Hyponymy is the relationship of inclusion. It is the hierarchical, "is-a-type-of" relationship that

structures our mental categories. The superordinate (more general) term is the hypernym. The
subordinate (more specific) terms are its hyponyms.

Hypernym: Flower

Hyponyms: Rose, lily, tulip, hibiscus

A rose is a type of flower. The relationship is transitive: a Labrador is a type of dog; a dog is a
type of mammal; a mammal is a type of animal; an animal is a type of living organism. This
forms a vast taxonomic hierarchy. Co-hyponyms are hyponyms at the same level: rose,
lily, and tulip are co-hyponyms of flower. Hyponymy is an indispensable tool for building
vocabulary and for clear writing. In defining a complex term in an essay, we often start with the
hypernym: "Semantics, a branch of linguistics, is the study of..."

4.5 Polysemy and Homonymy

These are relations of a single word form with multiple meanings, but their nature is very
different.
 14

Polysemy (from Greek poly- 'many' + sema 'sign') is when a single lexeme has multiple, but
historically and conceptually related meanings. The word head, for example: the head of a
person, the head of a department, the head of a river, the head of a nail. All these meanings share
a core concept of 'top, front, or most important part.' Similarly, run can mean a person running, a
machine operating, a film showing, a liquid flowing, and much more. All are connected by a
family resemblance of dynamic, continuous activity.

Homonymy is when two completely different lexemes happen to share the same written and/or
spoken form purely by historical accident. There is no conceptual link between them.

Homophones: Same sound, different spelling and

meaning. flour / flower; write / right; two / too / to. This is the source of many puns in English.

Homographs: Same spelling, but different sound and meaning. lead (the metal, /lɛd/)
vs. lead (to guide, /liːd/); a tear (/tɪər/) in your eye vs. a tear (/tɛər/) in your shirt.

Perfect Homonyms: Same spelling and sound, different meaning. bat (flying mammal)
vs. bat (sports equipment); bank (financial institution) vs. bank (side of a river).

The distinction between polysemy (one word with related meanings) and homonymy (two
different words that look the same) is often determined by etymology and speaker intuition. It‘s a
fuzzy, not a crisp, boundary, but the conceptual distinction is vital for dictionary-making (a
polysemous word gets one entry, homonyms get two) and for understanding ambiguity.

4.6 Chapter Summary and Exercises

This chapter has provided you with a basic toolkit for mapping the semantic landscape of a
language. Synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and the polysemy/homonymy distinction are not
just labels to memorise but are analytical concepts that reveal the hidden architecture of the
lexicon. With these tools, you can systematically describe how the meaning of any word is
positioned relative to all others.

Exercises:

1. Antonym Classification: Classify the following pairs of antonyms as gradable, complementary,

or relational.
a. import / export
b. married / unmarried
c. empty / full
d. employer / employee
e. clean / dirty
 15

2. Hyponymy Hierarchy: Construct a small hierarchy for the lexical field of "furniture." Start with
the hypernym furniture and provide three levels of hyponyms. For example: furniture > seating
> chair.
3. Polysemy or Homonymy? For the word ear (organ of hearing vs. the part of a cereal plant
containing seeds), would you classify this as a case of polysemy or homonymy? Justify your
answer by considering whether the two meanings share a conceptual link.
 16

CHAPTER 5: SENTENCE MEANING: THEMATIC ROLES

5.1 Introduction: When Words Become Actions

In the previous chapters, our primary unit of analysis was the word. But we don‘t speak in single
words. We weave them into sentences to describe events, states, and actions. This chapter
bridges the gap between lexical semantics and the study of how words combine to form larger
meanings. We will explore a very practical tool for analysing sentence meaning: thematic roles.
Understanding thematic roles will transform the way you read a sentence, making you see the
hidden drama of participants and actions that lie beneath the surface syntax.

A simple syntactic analysis labels the parts of a sentence as Subject, Verb, and Object. But this is
only the surface grammar. Consider these two sentences:

1. John broke the window with a stone.

2. The stone broke the window.

Syntactically, "John" is the subject of (1), and "the stone" is the subject of (2). But are they the
same kind of entity in the unfolding of the event? Our intuition tells us no. A person and a tool
play fundamentally different roles in an action. Thematic roles (also called theta-roles or
semantic roles) are our way of capturing this deep, semantic structure. They describe the
universal roles that entities (people, things, abstractions) play in the situations described by
verbs.

5.2 A Gallery of Thematic Roles

Thematic roles are like the cast of characters in the drama of a sentence. The verb is the director,
and each noun phrase has a part to play. Here are the most central roles:

Agent: The initiator of an action, capable of acting with volition. The agent is typically, but not
always, animate. In David wrote the essay, David is the Agent. The test for an agent is that it
does the action intentionally. In The dog bit the postman, the dog is the agent.

Patient (or Theme): The entity that undergoes the action or is in a state. The patient‘s condition
is changed by the action. In David wrote the essay, "the essay" is the Patient, because it comes
into existence through the writing. In The wind shattered the window, "the window" is the
Patient.

Experiencer: An entity that experiences a sensory, cognitive, or emotional state. The

experiencer does not act; they feel, perceive, or think. In Patricia heard the music, Patricia is the
Experiencer. She is not "doing" anything to the music. In I love the aroma of Congolese coffee,
 17

"I" is the Experiencer. Verbs of perception (see, hear), cognition (know, believe), and emotion
(love, hate, fear) typically have an Experiencer, not an Agent.

Instrument: The entity with which an Agent performs an action. In David broke the window
with a stone, "a stone" is the Instrument. It is the means used by the agent. We can often
paraphrase the Instrument using the verb use: "David used a stone to break the window."

Location: The place where an action or state occurs. In The children are playing in the garden,
"in the garden" is the Location. In He put the book on the shelf, "on the shelf" is the Location.

Source and Goal: The starting point and ending point of a transfer or motion. In The student
travelled from Bukavu to Goma, "Bukavu" is the Source (where the motion begins), and "Goma"
is the Goal (where it ends). In He gave a gift to his mother, "his mother" is the Goal (the
recipient).

Beneficiary (Recipient): The entity for whose benefit the action is performed. In I bought some
flowers for my sister, "my sister" is the Beneficiary.

5.3 Applying Thematic Roles

Let's apply these roles to a sentence:

Last night, Uncle Mumbere carved a wooden statue for his son with a new knife in the workshop.

Agent: Uncle Mumbere (the one who performs the carving)

Patient: a wooden statue (the thing that is created/changed)
Beneficiary: his son (the person for whom the action is done)
Instrument: a new knife (the tool used)
Location: in the workshop (where the action happened)
Time: Last night (when the action happened)

The true power of this analysis emerges when we see how the same role can be expressed in
different syntactic positions.

Active Voice: The agent is the subject. The chef (Agent) cooked the meal (Patient).

Passive Voice: The patient becomes the subject, and the agent can be removed or
downgraded. The meal (Patient) was cooked by the chef (Agent). The passive voice is a
grammatical tool for de-emphasising or hiding the Agent.
 18

Different Verb Choices: The window broke. (Patient as Subject). The stone broke the
window. (Instrument as Subject). John broke the window with a stone. (Agent as Subject). The
same real-world event can be narrated from the perspective of different participants. This is a
fundamental insight for the analysis of discourse and narrative. A politician might say, "Mistakes
were made," using a passive to hide the Agent. A journalist might say, "Police shot protesters"
(Police as Agent) or "Protesters were shot" (Protesters as Patient), with each choice framing the
event differently.

5.4 Thematic Roles in Language Teaching and Translation

For a future English teacher, thematic roles are a goldmine. Instead of teaching the passive voice
as a mysterious and difficult formula, you can teach it as a simple re-mapping of roles: "We use
the passive voice when we want the Patient to be the subject of the sentence, usually because the
Agent is unknown, obvious, or we want to hide it."

For a translator, thematic roles are a universal grid. Languages might order words differently, but
the roles remain. To translate J’aime ma mère (French) into Swahili, the role "Experiencer" maps
to the subject in French (Je), but in Swahili, the structure shifts: Ninampenda mama yangu. The
deep role of Experiencer is still there, but the surface expression is different. Translating by
matching only surface forms (I = Mimi) leads to error. Translating by matching thematic roles
leads to fluency.

5.5 Chapter Summary and Exercises

Thematic roles offer us a way to talk about the semantic architecture of a sentence, separate from
its syntactic form. They reveal the deep who-did-what-to-whom-with-what-and-where. This is a
foundational concept for semantics, and it has immediate practical value in language teaching,
text analysis, and translation.

Exercises:

1. Role Identification: Identify the thematic roles of the italicised noun phrases in the following
sentences.
a. The children were frightened by the noise.
b. The key opened the door.
c. The witness described the suspect to the police.
d. I flew from Kinshasa to Addis Ababa.
e. The architect drew up the plans for my parents.
2. Syntactic Analysis of Roles: Consider the sentence: The mason built the wall.
a. What is the role of "the mason"?
b. Rewrite the sentence so the patient is the subject.
c. Rewrite the sentence so the instrument ("his trowel") is added, but the agent is not mentioned.
 19

3. Cross-Linguistic Reflection: In English, we say "I like you," with "I" as the subject. In Swahili,
the construction is Ninakupenda, which could be glossed literally as "I-you-like." The Spanish
equivalent, Me gustas, literally means "You please me." Use thematic roles to explain these
different grammatical structures for expressing the same situation. Who is the Experiencer, and
who is the Stimulus of the emotion in each case?
 20

CHAPTER 6: BEYOND THE WORDS: AN INTRODUCTION TO PRAGMATICS

6.1 Introduction: When Meaning Means More

Throughout this course, we have focused on semantics: the literal, encoded meaning of words
and sentences. But language would be a poor tool if that were all there was. As our opening
example showed, a mother's statement, "It's getting late," is rarely just a commentary on the time.
This final chapter is a bridge to the field of pragmatics, the study of "invisible" meaning.
Pragmatics investigates how we interpret what people mean in a given context, how we manage
to communicate much more than we literally say, and how we make sense of each other in
conversation. This chapter is not the end of the road but the gateway to a deeper study of
communication.

6.2 Semantics and Pragmatics: A Firm Distinction

We must be absolutely clear. Semantics is concerned with sentence meaning: what the words
and grammar, by themselves, objectively mean. Pragmatics is concerned with speaker
meaning or utterance meaning: what a person intends to convey by using a sentence on a
particular occasion.

Consider the following utterance: "It's hot in here."

 Semantic Analysis: This sentence asserts a proposition about the ambient temperature at a
specific location. It is a declaration about the physical state of the world.
 Pragmatic Analysis: In a stuffy room with a closed window, this utterance is almost certainly a
request: "Please open the window." In a room with a broken air conditioner, it is a complaint. In
a sauna, it‘s a statement of the obvious, perhaps even a joke. The semantics stay the same; the
pragmatics shift dramatically with context.

6.3 The Co-operative Principle

Why don't we all constantly misunderstand each other? The philosopher of language H.P. Grice
proposed a powerful answer. He suggested that conversation is a rational, cooperative activity.
Participants tacitly agree to follow a general Co-operative Principle: "Make your conversational
contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."

In other words, we assume people are working with us to communicate, not against us. Grice
broke this general principle down into four conversational maxims, which are like the unwritten
rules of talk:
 21

1. The Maxim of Quantity:

o Make your contribution as informative as is required.
o Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
(Be appropriately informative. Don't leave out crucial information, and don't give unnecessary
detail.)
2. The Maxim of Quality:
o Do not say what you believe to be false.
o Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
(Be truthful.)
3. The Maxim of Relation (Relevance):
o Be relevant.
4. The Maxim of Manner:
o Avoid obscurity of expression.
o Avoid ambiguity.
o Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
o Be orderly.
(Be clear, direct, and logical.)

6.4 Flouting the Maxims: The Birth of Implicature

The most interesting thing is that we don't always follow these maxims. In fact, we often
deliberately and blatantly violate or flout them. When a speaker flouts a maxim, the hearer
assumes the speaker is still being cooperative at a deeper level and searches for a deeper, non-
literal meaning. This inferred meaning is called a conversational implicature.

Flouting Quantity:
A professor writes a letter of recommendation for a student applying for a philosophy job: "Dear
Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular.
Yours, etc."
The professor has blatantly given far less information than expected. The implicature is clear:
Mr. X is no good at philosophy.

Flouting Quality (The Irony Case):

A student submits a clearly plagiarised essay. The professor comments: "What a wonderfully
original piece of work."
The professor has said something she believes to be false. The blatant violation of the Quality
maxim generates the implicature: "This is a terrible, unoriginal piece of work." This is how irony
works.
 22

Flouting Relation:
A: "Are you going to Jean-Paul’s party?"
B: "I have an exam tomorrow."
B‘s reply is not a direct answer to the question, thus flouting the maxim of Relation. But A
assumes B is being cooperative and constructs the implicature: "No, I am not going to the party,
because I need to study."

Flouting Manner:
A parent says to a child, in front of a guest: "What did we say we do with the sticky-fingered-
sweet-device after dinner?"
The long-winded, obscure wording (instead of "chocolate bar") is a flagrant violation of Manner.
It is done to obscure the message from the guest, but the child should understand the implicature.

6.5 Pragmatics in Our Context

An understanding of Gricean pragmatics is a profound tool for the student in Bukavu. We

navigate complex, multilingual societies where indirectness is often a cultural value. A request
for a favour might be conveyed through a long story, through a series of compliments, or through
a proverbial saying. This is a systematic flouting of Manner to create a polite and face-saving
implicature. The literal semantic meaning is minimal, but the pragmatic meaning—the real
request—is paramount. Similarly, politeness formulas in French, the art of shikamoo in Swahili
culture, or the use of koko and nyokulu titles in Lingala—all are pragmatic choices that signal
respect, construct identity, and manage social relations far beyond the semantic content of the
words.

6.6 Chapter Summary and Conclusion

This course has taken you on a journey from the core of the word to the edge of the utterance.
We have seen that meaning is a rich, multi-layered construct built from semantic features,
assembled into words with sense and reference, connected through sense relations, and
orchestrated in sentences by thematic roles. Finally, we saw that this entire semantic apparatus is
wielded by speakers in context, who can exploit and transcend literal meaning through the
principles of pragmatics to forge human connection, irony, and subtext. As you continue your
studies in language, literature, and culture at ISP Bukavu, carry these tools with you. They will
turn every sentence you read or hear into a field of discovery.

Exercises:

1. Maxim Identification: For each example, identify the maxim that is being flouted and describe
the likely implicature.
a. A: "Did you like my new hairstyle?" B: "Your dress is very nice."
b. Asked to provide a reference for a former employee known for his bad temper, the former
 23

boss writes: "Jean-Paul was always... sober."

c. A: "Do you know what time it is?" B: "Well, the sun is about to set."
2. Real-World Analysis: Politicians and advertisers are masters of pragmatic meaning. Find an
advertisement (from a magazine, billboard, or social media) in the Bukavu area. Describe its
literal semantic message and then analyse its deeper pragmatic meaning. What does it want you
to infer?
3. Cultural Translation: The English idiom "Can you pass the salt?" is literally a question about
ability, but pragmatically, at a dinner table, it is a request. Think of a polite request in French or
Swahili that uses a similar "disguise" (e.g., using a question to give a command). Explain the
semantic and pragmatic layers.
 24

GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS

Agent: The thematic role of the entity that intentionally performs an action.
Antonymy: The sense relation of oppositeness in meaning.
Collocation: The habitual and preferred co-occurrence of words (e.g., blond and hair).
Componential Analysis: The analysis of word meaning into a set of primitive semantic features.
Connotation: The associations, overtones, and emotional colouring of a word.
Co-operative Principle: Grice's principle that participants in a conversation are assumed to
work together to achieve communicative goals.
Denotation: See Conceptual Meaning.
Experiencer: The thematic role of the entity that experiences a sensory, cognitive, or emotional
state.
Flouting a Maxim: Blatantly violating a conversational maxim to generate a conversational
implicature.
Homonymy: The relation between two different words that share the same form (spelling and/or
pronunciation).
Hyponymy: The hierarchical sense relation where the meaning of one word (hyponym) is
included in the meaning of another (hypernym).
Implicature: An additional, unstated meaning that has to be inferred by the hearer based on
context and the Co-operative Principle.
Instrument: The thematic role of the entity used by the agent to perform an action.
Patient (Theme): The thematic role of the entity that undergoes the action or is in a state.
Polysemy: The case where a single word has multiple, conceptually related meanings.
Pragmatics: The study of speaker meaning and how context contributes to interpretation.
Reference: The relationship between a linguistic expression and a real-world entity (a referent).
Semantic Feature: A primitive, atomic component of meaning, e.g., [+ ANIMATE].
Semantics: The scientific study of the meaning encoded in language.
Sense: The system of linguistic relationships a word has with other words; its meaning internal
to the language system.
Synonymy: The sense relation of sameness in meaning.
Thematic Role: The semantic part played by a noun phrase in the event or state described by a
verb.
 25

References

Cruse, D. A. (2011). Meaning in language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics (3rd ed.).
Oxford University Press.
Frege, G. (1948). Sense and reference. The Philosophical Review, *57*(3), 209–230. (Original work
published 1892)
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics,
Vol. 3: Speech acts (pp. 41–58). Academic Press.
Hurford, J. R., Heasley, B., & Smith, M. B. (2007). Semantics: A coursebook (2nd ed.). Cambridge
University Press.
Katz, J. J., & Fodor, J. A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory. Language, *39*(2), 170–210.
Kearns, K. (2011). Semantics (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Kroeger, P. R. (2019). Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics (2nd ed.).
Language Science Press.
Leech, G. (1981). Semantics: The study of meaning (2nd ed.). Penguin Books.

Lyons, J. (1977). Semantics (Vols. 1–2). Cambridge University Press.

Murphy, M. L. (2003). Semantic relations and the lexicon: Antonymy, synonymy and other
paradigms. Cambridge University Press.
Ogden, C. K., & Richards, I. A. (1923). The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of
language upon thought and of the science of symbolism. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Palmer, F. R. (1981). Semantics (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Saeed, J. I. (2016). Semantics (4th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

Ullmann, S. (1962). Semantics: An introduction to the science of meaning . Basil Blackwell.

Yule, G. (2014). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.