Introduction to
Semantics
Instructor: Ta Le Minh Phuoc
Semantics vs. Pragmatics
• Both are the study of meaning.
• Semantics: the meaning apart from the context.
• Pragmatics: the meaning derived from the context.
Let’s think…
“Trust me, you’re the last person.”
How do you understand the meaning of the underlined phrase
“the last person”?
Semantics
“Trust me, you’re the last person.”
+ the: definite article
+ last: the only one that remains.
+ person: a human.
à ‘the last person’: the only human that remains.
Pragmatics
Will you love Trust me,
someone else? you’re the
last person.
Pragmatics
Trust me,
you’re the
last person.
May I be your
boyfriend?
Pragmatics
Trust me,
you’re the
Am I late for
last person.
the meeting?
Types of meaning
• Conceptual meaning: the basic, essential components of
meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word.
(focus of semantics)
• Associative meaning: different people might have
different associations attached to a word.
Types of meaning
Unluckiness
Intelligence
A CROW
Semantic features
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”
----- Noam Chomsky
1/ Syntactically speaking, is this sentence
grammatical?
2/ Semantically speaking, what is odd with
this sentence?
Semantic features
+ We can analyze the word ‘idea’ and ‘boy’ in terms of
semantic features:
Semantic features ‘Idea’ ‘Boy’
Human - +
Animate - +
Feelings - +
à ‘Idea’ has [-human], [-animate], [-feelings] à It
cannot go with ‘sleep’ or ‘furious’. But ‘boy’ can
because it has [+human], [+animate], [+feelings].
Exercise 1: Find the semantic features of the
following nouns to illustrate their differences.
‘student, lion, rabbit, whale, lettuce, astronaut, love’
Draw a table, make sure each has one ‘+’ to distinguish
itself from the others.
Semantic roles
+ A semantic role: the relationship between a participant
and the main verb.
Ex: He shot a bird.
Semantic roles: Agent and theme
+ Agent: the doer of the action.
+ Theme: the argument that is affected by the action.
Ex: John ate a hamburger.
+ Agent: John.
+ Theme: a hamburger.
Semantic roles: Experiencer
+ Experiencer: the argument that has a feeling, perception
or state.
Ex: Dave felt sad.
+ Experiencer: Dave.
Semantic roles: Instrument
+ Instrument: the entity used by an agent to perform an
action.
Ex: They travelled by car.
+ Agent: They.
+ Instrument: car.
Semantic roles: Location
+ Location: where an entity is.
Ex: I placed the vase on the table.
+ Location: the table.
Semantic roles: Source and Goal
+ Source and Goal: the beginning and the ending location of
a movement.
Ex: He commutes to work from District 12 to District 1.
+ Source: District 12
+ Goal: District 1.
Semantic roles: Recipient and Beneficiary
+ Recipient: an argument who receives something.
+ Beneficiary: an argument who benefits from the action.
Ex: I sent him a parcel.
I baked a cake for John.
Exercise 2: Identify the arguments involved in each action and
their semantic roles
a. Henry sent flowers to Jolie.
b. The boy loves his mother.
c. The students went to Singapore.
d. The teacher put his laptop on the table.
e. The butcher cut the meat with a knife .
f. Dan withdrew money from the bank.
g. The student carried the bag for her teacher.
Lexical relation: Synonymy
+ Two words share the same or very closely related meaning.
Ex: big – large
+ Synonyms are not always 100% the same in terms of meaning.
Ex: hungry - starving
Lexical relation: Synonymy
Lexical relation: Antonymy
+ Two words have opposite meanings.
Ex: happy – sad
+ Non-gradable/Complementary pairs: the pair expresses a binary
relationship.
Ex: alive – dead
+ Gradable pairs: the pair has middle levels between them. The
negative of one does not necessarily mean the other.
Ex: small – big
Lexical relation: Antonymy
+ Reversives: the two actions have the opposite direction. The
negative of one does not necessarily mean the other.
Ex: enter – exit
Lexical relation: Antonymy
+ Relational opposites: a symmetrical relationship between two
words.
Ex: teacher – student
Lexical relation: Hyponymy
+ The meaning of one word
contains the meaning of the
other.
Ex: fruits - dragon fruit
+ fruits: superordinate terms.
+ apple – dragon fruit: co-
hyponyms.
Lexical relation: Polysemy
+ One word has more than two related meanings.
Ex:
(1) I love foot massage.
(2) The village is at the foot of a mountain.
Lexical relation: Homophony
+ Two different words have the same pronunciation but different
spellings and meanings. They are called ‘homophones’.
Ex: see / sea
Lexical relation: Homonymy
+ Two different words have the same spelling but different
meanings (pronunciation can be the same or different). They
are called ‘homonyms’.
Ex: bat / bat (the same pronunciation)
Lexical relation: Homonymy
Ex: lead / lead (different pronunciation)
Word play
Question: A doctor and a businessman are
competing with each other for a beautiful girl.
When the businessman is about to go for a
business trip. He gives the girl a fruit. What
is this kind of fruit?
Word play
Word play
• Word play: the use of words in unexpected
combinations à to create interesting
language.
• Employed by writers, poets, comedians, etc.
Word play: Anomalous utterances
• Anomalous utterances: include words in which
the semantic properties do not match.
Ex: My car is hungry for petrol.
‘A car’ has a semantic feature [-animate] à
Inanimate objects cannot be ‘hungry’.
Word play: Contradictions
• Contradictions: utterances in which the
semantic properties of one word are in direct
opposition to those of another.
Ex: My husband is a child.
+ ‘husband’: [+adult]
+ ‘child’: [-adult]
Word play: Oxymorons
• Oxymorons: phrases that combine contradictory
words.
Ex: bittersweet chocolate.
Word play: Oxymorons
Metaphors
+ Metaphors: anomalous utterances in which two dissimilar
items are symbolically considered to be similar.
Metonymy
+ Using one word to relate to another.
Ex: The White House has passed a new law.
Metonymy