Chapter 4

The Meaning of
Language
Victoria Fromkin / Robert Rodman/ Nina Hyams
An Introduction to Language, 11th Edition

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 Overview
Sentence meanings ( 語句語意 )
Truth condition
Entailment
Principles of compositionality
Semantic rules
Anomaly, metaphor and idioms
Lexical semantics ( 詞彙語意 )
Lexical relations
Thematic roles
Pragmatics ( 語用學 )
Pronoun and deictic words
Implicature
Presupposition
Speech Act
The Meaning of Language
When you know a language you know:
When a word is meaningful or meaningless, when a word has
two meanings, when two words have the same meaning, and
what words refer to (in the real world or imagination)
When a sentence is meaningful or meaningless, when a
sentence has two meanings, when two sentences have the
same meaning, and whether a sentence is true or false (the
truth conditions of the sentence)

Semantics is the study of the meaning of

morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences
Lexical semantics: the meaning of words and the
relationships among words
Phrasal or sentential semantics: the meaning of
syntactic units larger than one word
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 Truth
Compositional semantics:
formulating semantic rules that build
the meaning of a sentence based on
the meaning of the words and how they
combine
Also known as truth-conditional semantics
because it calculates the truth conditions of a
sentence by composing, or putting together, the
meanings of smaller units according to semantic
rules, the speaker’s knowledge of truth conditions
is central
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 Truth
If you know the meaning of a sentence, you
can determine under what conditions it is true
or false
You don’t need to know whether or not a sentence
is true or false to understand it, so knowing the
meaning of a sentence means knowing under what
circumstances it would be true or false
E.g., John can swim.

Most sentences are true or false depending on the

situation
But some sentences are always true (tautologies 恆真
句)
And some are always false (contradictions 矛盾句 )
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 tautologies 恆真句
The following sentences are always
true.

For example
Circles are round
A person who is single is not married.
 contradictions 矛盾句
Sentences are always false.

For example,
Circles are square.
A bachelor is married.
 Entailment ( 蘊含、意含 )
Entailment: one sentence entails another if whenever the first
sentence is true the second one must be true also

Jack swims beautifully. Jack swims

entails but does not entail
Jack swims. Jack swims beautifully

When two sentences entail each other, they are synonymous, or

paraphrases

Jack postponed the meeting Jack put off the meeting

When one sentence entails the negation of another sentence, the

two sentences are contradictory. contradictions

Jack is alive Jack is dead

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 Contradictory vs.
Contradiction
Contradictory ( 矛盾的 / 對立的 ): opposite
in truth values
Contradiction ( 矛盾句 ): always false

E.g., Jack is alive vs. Jack is dead (two

sentences are contradictory)
E.g., Jack is alive and Jack is dead (this
sentence is a contradiction)
 Ambiguity
Our semantic knowledge also tells us
when words or phrases have more than
one meaning, or are ambiguous

Syntactic ambiguity arises from multiple

syntactic structures corresponding to the same
string of words
The boy saw the man with the telescope

Lexical ambiguity arises from multiple

meanings corresponding to the same word or
phrase
This will make you smart ( 乾淨俐落、聰明伶俐 )
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Compositional Semantics 複合性
語意學
Compositional semantics: to account for
speakers’ knowledge of truth, entailment,
and ambiguity, we must assume that
grammar contains semantic rules for how
to combine the meanings of words into
meaningful phrases and sentences
The principle of compositionality asserts
that the meaning of an expression is composed
of the meaning of its parts and how the parts
are combined structurally

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 Semantic Rules
Semantic Rule I: if the
meaning of NP (an individual) is
a member of the meaning of the
VP (a set of individuals), then
S is TRUE, otherwise, it is FALSE

Word Meaning
Jack refers to the individual Jack
swims refers to the set of individuals that swim

If the NP, Jack, is among the set of individuals that swims

(the VP) then the sentence is TRUE

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 Semantic Rules
Jack kissed Laura.

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 Semantic Rules

If the NP Jack is among the set of people who kissed Laura (the VP),
then the sentence is TRUE
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When Compositionality Goes
Awry: Anomaly ( 語意不規則 )
An anomalous sentence:
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

This sentence is syntactically fine, but

contains semantic violations such as
describing ideas as both colorless and
green

Other sentences are uninterpretable

because they include nonsense words:
He took his vorpal sword in hand
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 When Compositionality Goes
Awry: Metaphor ( 隱喻 )
Metaphors are sentences that seem to
be anomalous but are understood in terms
of a meaningful concept

To understand a metaphor we must

understand the individual words, the literal
meaning of the expression, and facts
about the world

To understand Time is money you need to

know that in our society people are often paid
according to the amount of time worked
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When Compositionality Goes
Awry: Idioms ( 成語 )
Idiomatic phrases are phrases with meanings
that cannot be predicted based on the
meanings of the individual words
The usual semantic rules for combining meanings do
not apply
drop the ball （尤指由於愚蠢或粗心）犯錯誤
put his foot in his mouth 無意中說
出讓人尷尬（或生氣）的話
hit it off 一拍即合
All languages have idioms, but idioms are
rarely directly translatable

kick the bucket = estirar la pata “to stretch the

(animal) leg”
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Some idiomatic phrases
Sell down the river
Rake over the coals
Drop he ball
Let their hair down
Put his foot in his mouth
Throw her weight around
Snap out of it
Give a piece of your mind
Bring a knife to a gunfight
Some idiomatic phrases
Sell down the river 出賣（某人）；背叛（某人）
Rake over the coals 翻舊帳」
Drop he ball 犯錯
Let their hair down 盡情享受
Put his foot in his mouth 一個人說錯話造成尷尬場面
Throw her weight around 作威作福
Snap out of it 迅速擺脫 振作起來
Give a piece of your mind 嚴厲責備，斥責（某人）
Bring a knife to a gunfight 以卵擊石
Semantically transparent ( 語意透明 )
vs. Semantically Opaque ( 語意不透明 )
The degree to which the meaning of a
compound word or an idiom can be
inferred from its parts (or
morphemes/words) (i.e., or from the
literal meanings)

For example
Cross your fingers Transparent or Opaque
Kick the bucket Transparent or Opaque
 Idiomatic meanings in the
mental lexicon
Because of the opaque meanings of
idioms, they must be listed in the
mental lexicon as single item with
their meanings specified and
speakers must learn the special
restrictions on their uses.
Are some idioms more transparent than others? Could you
analyze the idioms offered in class and classify them into
transparent and opaque?

CLASS DISCUSSION
LEXICAL SEMANTICS ( 詞彙語意
學)
Lexical Semantics: Reference
Referent: the real-world object
designated by a word
Jack, the happy swimmer, my friend, and that
guy can all have the same referent in the
sentence Jack swims.

But, some NPs do not refer to any particular

individual, such as: No baby swims.

While the happy swimmer and Jack may refer

to the same individual in some cases, the
happy swimmer means something extra:
The happy swimmer is happy.
Jack is happy.
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Lexical Semantics: Sense
Sense: an element of meaning separate from
reference and more enduring; the manner in
which an expression presents the reference
Barack Obama These have the
The President same reference
Michelle Obama’s husband but different
senses
The word unicorn has sense but no reference

Proper names tend to have reference but no

sense
Sometimes two proper names have the same referent
(Unabomber & Ted Kaczynski); these pairs of nouns are
called coreferential
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Lexical Relations: Synonyms
Synonyms: words or expressions that have the
same meaning in some or all contexts
Apathetic ( 無動於衷 ), indifferent ( 冷漠 )
sofa, couch

Some assert that there are no two words with

exactly the same meanings

After the Norman invasion of England in 1066,

many French words of Latin origin entered the
language, giving rise to synonymous pairs:
English: heal Latin: recuperate ( 療養 )
English: send Latin: transmit

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Lexical Relations: Antonyms
Antonyms are words that are opposite in
meaning

Complementary antonyms:
alive/dead, present/absent, awake/asleep
alive = not dead, dead = not alive

Gradable pairs: no absolute scale

big/small, hot/cold, fast/slow, happy/sad
Some pairs of gradable antonyms contain a marked
and an unmarked term, with the unmarked term
being the one used in questions of degree:
How high is the mountain? NOT How low is the
mountain?
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Lexical Relations: Antonyms

Relational antonyms: display

symmetry in their meaning
give/receive
buy/sell
employer/employee
teacher/student

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PRACTICE: EXERCISE 11
Practice: Exercise 11
 Lexical Relations
Homonyms (or homophones): words
that have different meanings but are
pronounced the same: bear and bare

Homographs are words that are spelled

the same: bear and bear, dove and dove

Heteronyms are words that are spelled

the same but pronounced differently:
dove and dove
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 Lexical Relations
Polysemous words are words with multiple,
conceptually or historically related meanings

diamond: the geometric shape; a baseball field

Hyponyms involve the relationship between

a general term and specific instances of that
term

rose, iris, daisy, and poppy are all a kind of flower,

so rose, iris, daisy, and poppy are all hyponyms of
the word flower
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 Semantic Features
Semantic features are properties that are
part of word meanings and reflect our
knowledge about what words mean

For example, antonyms share all but one

semantic feature
big has the semantic feature “about size” and red has
the semantic feature “about color,” so the two cannot
be antonyms

The semantic features of the word assassin

include that assassins must be human and kill
important people
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 Evidence for Semantic
Features
Speech errors, or “slips of the tongue” provide
evidence for semantic features because the
accidentally uttered word shares semantic
features with the intended word:

牙床

Here nose, neck, gums, and tongues all share the

property of being body parts or parts of the head;
early, late, and young all have to do with time

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Semantic Features of Nouns
Some languages have classifiers, or grammatical
morphemes that indicate the semantic class of the noun

Swahili has one set of singular and plural markers for nouns
that have the semantic feature “human” and another set for
those that don’t

In English the type of determiner that accompanies a noun

depends on whether it is a count noun (can be enumerated
and pluralized) or a mass noun (cannot be enumerated or
pluralized)

Count nouns such as dog and potato can be counted and

pluralized (I have two dogs)

Mass nouns such as rice and water cannot be pluralized or

counted (*I have two rices) and do not take the article a (*I
have a rice)
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Classifiers: 隻、條、顆、張、台、枝…… ..

THINK ABOUT: SEMANTIC

FEATURES OF NOUNS IN MANDARIN
Semantic Features of Verbs
Verbs also have semantic features
attached to them
darken includes the semantic feature
“cause”, as does kill and uglify
break can be analyzed as follows:
“cause” to “become” broken

The semantic features of verbs can

also have syntactic consequences

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Semantic Features of Verbs
Verbs can describe events (eventives) or
states (statives), and these verbs affect
the possible sentence structures:
Eventive sentences sound good when
passivized, put in the progressive, used as
imperatives, and with certain adverbs:
Eventive: Oysters were eaten by John Eventive: John is eating
oysters
Statives: ?Oysters were liked by John Stative: ?John is liking
oysters

Eventive: John deliberately ate oysters Eventive: Eat oysters!

Stative: ?John deliberately liked oysters Stative: ?Like oysters!

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 Argument Structure
Different kinds of verbs take a different number of
NPs as arguments—each verb takes a subject
and:
Intransitive verbs such as sleep take no other arguments
Transitive verbs such as find take an additional argument
(a direct object)
Ditransitive verbs such as give take two additional
arguments (direct and indirect objects)

The verb also determines the semantic properties

of all the arguments
Verbs such as find and sleep require human subjects
Verbs such as drink require a liquid direct object
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 Thematic Roles
Thematic roles express the relation between the
arguments of the verb and the situation the verb
describes

Agent: the ‘doer’ of the action

Theme: the ‘undergoer’ of the action
Goal: the endpoint of a change in location or possession
Source: where the action originates
Instrument: the means used to accomplish an action
Experiencer: one receiving sensory input
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 Thematic Roles
Thematic roles remain the same in
paraphrases because the thematic
roles are in their proper place in
deep structure

The dog bit the stick The stick was bitten

by the dog
agent theme theme
agent

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Exercises 9 (a-e), 14 (a-e)

PRACTICE
 Practice
Exercise 9
a. The (a) and (b) words are male animate.
The (a) words are human.
The (b) words are nonhuman.
b. The (a) words are countable (count nouns).
The (b) words are uncountable (mass nouns).
c. The (a) words are concrete.
The (b) words are abstract.
d. The (a) and (b) words are plants.
The (a) words are trees.
The (b) words are flowers.
e. The (a) words are things that are written. The (b) words are
things to write with (writing implements) .
 Practice
Exercise 14
 Pragmatics
Pragmatics is concerned with our
understanding of language in
context
Linguistic context: the discourse that
precedes the phrase or sentence to be
interpreted
Situational context: everything
nonlinguistic in the environment of the
discourse
For example, “Lion”
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*Pragmatics requires us to make sense of people and what
they have in mind.
 Deixis
Deixis refers to words and expression
whose reference depend on the situational
context
Person deixis: I, you, she, that man, those girls
The meaning depends on who is present or being
discussed

Time deixis: now, then, tomorrow, yesterday

The meaning depends on when the utterance was said
or what period of time is being discussed

Place deixis: here, there, yonder mountains

The meaning depends on where the utterance was
said or what place was being discussed
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 Pronouns and Linguistic
Context
Pronouns get their meaning from other NPs in the
sentence or discourse
Any NP that a pronoun relies on for its meaning is called
an antecedent

Reflexive pronouns always depend on an

antecedent in the same clause for its meaning
John bit himself *John said that the girl bit
himself
*Himself left

Regular pronouns cannot refer to an antecedent in

the same clause
John knows him (him cannot refer to John)
John knows that he is a genius (he can refer to John
or someone else)
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 Implicatures
Implicatures are inferences that
may be drawn from an utterance
based on context

SUE: Does Mary have a boyfriend?

BILL: She’s been driving to Santa
Barbara every weekend.
Bill asserts that Mary drives to Santa
Barbara every weekend and implicates that
she has a boyfriend living in Santa Barbara

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 Presupposition
A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be
the case prior to making an utterance. ( 推定，推測，假定、前提、預設 )
Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions.

“The present King of France is bald.” ( 現在的法國國王禿頭 )

Presupposition: There is presently a king of

France
For
example
e.g. Mary’s brother bought three horses.

Presupposition (Speakers’
Background knowledge of somebody
or something)
Mary exists.
Mary has a brother.
Mary has only one brother.
He has a lot of money.
Maxims of Conversation
Maxims of conversation are
conversational conventions that govern
discourse:
Maxim of Quality: Truth
Maxim of Quantity: Information
Maxim of Relation: Relevance
Maxim of Manner: Clarity
People tend to adhere to these maxims and expect others to
do so also

Therefore, if someone suddenly says, “It’s cold in here” to

someone standing by an open window, the listener can assume
the speaker is violating the maxim of relevance, or she can
assume that the utterance is relevant because the speaker would
like the window closed
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 Speech Acts
The study of speech acts describes how people do
things with language

Performative verbs: verbs that accomplish an action

when they are uttered
When you say, I dare you you have said something and you have
dared someone

Some performative verbs: bet ( 打賭 ), challenge ( 挑戰 ), dare ( 賭 ),

fine ( 罰 ), nominate ( 提名 ), promise ( 承諾 ), resign ( 辭職 )
A test for performativity: performative verbs usually sound good
when you add I hereby to the sentence:
I hereby resign
?I hereby know you
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QUESTION?