About Semantics
SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in
LANGUAGE.
‘. . . that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-
four days when you might get un-birthday presents.’
‘Certainly,’ said Alice.
‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s
glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,” ’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course
you don’t – till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knockdown
argument for you.” ’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown
argument,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a
scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean –
neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make
words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to
be master – that’s all.
The word mean, then, can be applied to people who use
language, i.e. to speakers (and authors), in roughly the sense
of ‘intend’. And it can be applied to words and sentences in a
different sense, roughly expressed as ‘be equivalent to’
(Hurford, 2007).
Semantic meaning vs. pragmatic meaning
Semantic meaning is context-free whereas pragmatic meaning is
context-dependent (To, 2007).
e.g.
(1) A: ‘Would you like a piece of cake?’
B: ‘I’m on a diet.’
The semantic meaning of ‘I’m on a diet’ in (1) is ‘I want to
lose weight by eating the food which is not rich in fat, sugar,
etc.’
The pragmatic meaning of ‘I’m on a diet’ in (1) is ‘I don’t want
any piece of cake’ or ‘I’m afraid that I have to refuse your
invitation.’
Semantic meaning vs. pragmatic meaning
(2) Tom : ‘Do you like the wine I picked out?’
Gina : ‘It’s Italian, isn’t it?’
The semantic meaning of ‘It’s Italian, isn’t it?’ in (2) is ‘Is it
right that the wine is made in Italy?’
The pragmatic meaning of ‘It’s Italian, isn’t it?’ in (2) is ‘I don’t
like the wine yon picked out.’
Speaker meaning vs. sentence meaning (or word meaning)
Speaker meaning is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to
convey) when he uses a piece of language.
Sentence meaning (or word meaning) is what a sentence
(or word) means, i.e. what it counts as the equivalent of in
the language concerned.
Many sentences do carry information in a straightforward
way while many sentences are used by speakers not to
give information at all, but to keep the social wheels
turning smoothly (Hurford, 2007).
Exercise 1
Read the following conversation between two people, A and
B, at a bus stop one morning. (The lines are numbered for
reference.) Then answer the questions (1)–(8).
1 A: ‘Nice day’
2 B: ‘Yes, a bit warmer than yesterday, isn’t it?’
3 A: ‘That’s right – one day fine, the next cooler’
4 B: ‘I expect it might get cooler again tomorrow’
5 A: ‘Maybe – you never know what to expect, do you?’
6 B: ‘No. Have you been away on holiday?’
7 A: ‘Yes, we went to Spain’
8 B: ‘Did you? We’re going to France next month’
9 A: ‘Oh. Are you? That’ll be nice for the family. Do
they speak French?’
10 B: ‘Sheila’s quite good at it, and we’re hoping Martin
will improve’
11 A: ‘I expect he will. I do hope you have a good time’
12 B: ‘Thank you. By the way, has the 42 bus gone by
yet? It seems to be late’
13 A: ‘No. I’ve been here since eight o’clock and I
haven’t seen it’
14 B: ‘Good. I don’t want to be late for work. What time
is it now?’
15 A: ‘Twenty-five past eight
1. Does speaker A tell speaker B anything he doesn’t already
know in lines 1, 3, and 5?
2. Does A’s statement in line 7 give B any new information?
3. When B says ‘Did you?’ in line 8, is he really asking A to
tell him whether he (A) went to Spain?
4. Is there any indication that A needs to know the
information that B gives him about travelling to France?
5. Does A’s ‘That’ll be nice for the family’ in line 9 give B
any information?
6. Do A’s statements in lines 13 and 15 give B any
information that he (B) needs?
7. At what point does this conversation switch from an
exchange of uninformative statements to an exchange of
informative statements?
8. At what point does the information exchanged begin to be
of a sort that one of the speakers actually needs for some
purpose in going about his everyday business?
Exercise 2
Consider the following strained exchange between husband
and wife. Then answer the questions (1)–(8).
H: ‘When I go away next week, I’m taking the car’
W: ‘Oh. Are you? I need the car here to take the kids to
school’
H: ‘I’m sorry, but I must have it. You’ll have to send them
on the bus’
W: ‘That’ll be nice for the family. Up at the crack
of dawn, (ironically) and not home till mid-evening!
Sometimes you’re very inconsiderate’
H: ‘Nice day’
1. This conversation includes three utterances which were
also used in the polite bus stop conversation between A
and B. Identify these three utterances.
2. When the wife in the above exchange says ‘Are you?’ is
she thereby in some sense taking up a position opposed to
that of her husband?
3. In the bus stop conversation, when A says ‘Are you?’
(line 9), is he in any sense taking up a position opposed to
B’s position?
4. When the wife, above, says ‘That’ll be nice for the
family’, is she expressing the belief that her husband’s
absence with the car will be nice for the family?
5. When A says to B at the bus stop ‘That’ll be nice for the
family’, is he expressing the belief that going to France
will be nice for the family?
6. Is A’s remark at the bus stop ‘Nice day’ a pointed change
of subject for the purpose of ending a conversation?
7. What is the function of this remark of A’s?
8. When the husband uses these same words about the
weather, above, what does he mean by it?
Exercise 3
Look at the following utterances and state whether they are
intended to be taken literally.
1 Tired traveller: ‘This suitcase is killing me.’
2 Assistant in a shop: ‘We regularly do the impossible;
miracles take a little longer.’
3 During a business meeting: ‘It’s a dog-eat-dog situation.’
4 During a heated argument: ‘Don’t bite my head off!’
5 Hungry person at the dinner table: ‘I could eat a horse!’
- The same sentences are used by different speakers on
different occasions to mean (speaker meaning) different
things.
- Once a person has mastered the stable meanings of words
and sentences as defined by the language system, he can
quickly grasp the different conversational and social uses
that they can be put to.
- The gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning
is such that it is even possible for a speaker to convey a
quite intelligible intention by using a sentence whose
literal meaning is contradictory or nonsensical.
Sematic features: definition
- Semantic features (or semantic components or semantic
properties) are the smallest units of meaning in a word
(Richards et al., 1987, as cited in To, 2007).
- We identify the meaning of a word by its semantic
features.
e.g.
- father may have the following semantic features:
[+human], [+male], [+mature], [+parental] and
[+paternal].
- hen may be described as a set of the following semantic
features: [+animate], [+bird], [+fowl], [+fully grown] and
[+female].
Sematic features: definition
Semantic features or properties are part of word meanings
and that reflect our knowledge about what words mean.
Semantic features are among the conceptual elements that
are part of the meanings of words and sentences.
e.g. The assassin killed Thwacklehurst.
Knowledge of assassin tells us …
It was some person who murdered some important person
named Thwacklehurst.
An animal did not do the killing.
Thwacklehurst was not an average citizen.
Sematic features: characteristics (1)
1. Some semantic features need not be specifically
mentioned. This generalization can be expressed as a
redundancy rule.
e.g.
A word that is [+human] is [+animate]. That is why
[+animate] need not be specified as a semantic feature of
father, girl, professor, etc. since the semantic feature can be
inferred from [+human].
Sematic features: characteristics (2)
2. Some redundancy rules infer negative semantic features.
Thus, semantic features are often shown in the form of
binary oppositions. which can be stated in terms of pluses
and minuses (that is, [+] and [-]).
e.g.
If father [+human], it is therefore [-inhuman];
If father [+male], it is therefore [-female];
If father [+mature], it is therefore [-immature];
If father [+paternal], it is therefore [-maternal].
Sematic features: characteristics (3)
3. Different words may share the same semantic feature. In
other words, the same semantic feature can be found in
many different words.
e.g.
Doctor, engineer, teacher, physicist, chemist, tailor,
hairdresser, etc. all share the same semantic feature
[+professional],
Sematic features: characteristics (4)
4. The same semantic feature can occur in words of
different parts of speech. In other words, words of
different parts of speech may share the same semantic
feature.
e.g.
[+female] is part of the meaning of the noun mother, the verb
breast-feed and the adjective pregnant. And [+educational] is
a semantic feature found in the nouns school, teacher,
textbook, etc. and in the verbs teach, educate, instruct, etc.
Sematic features: characteristics (5)
5. The semantic properties of words determine what other
words they can be combined with.
e.g. The two following sentences are grammatically correct
and syntactically perfect but semantically anomalous.
(1) My brother is an only child.
(2) The bachelor is pregnant.
Sematic features: characteristics (6)
(1) My brother is an only child.
(2) The bachelor is pregnant.
(1) is strange, or semantically anomalous, because this
sentence represents a contradiction: brother is [+having
at least one sibling] while an only child is [+having no
other sibling];
(2) is semantically anomalous for a similar reason: bachelor
is [+male] whereas pregnant is [+female].
Sematic features: Practice
Exercise 3
Below is Noam Chomsky's famous classic example of
semantically anomalous sentences. Please explain why the
sentence is semantically anomalous.
(3) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Sematic features: Practice
Exercise 4
Please explain why Dylan Thomas’s phrase a grief ago is semantically
anomalous. What poetic effect is created?
A Grief Ago
A grief ago,
She who was who I hold, the fats and the flower,
Or, water-lammed, from the scythe-sided thorn,
Hell wind and sea,
A stem cementing, wrestled up the tower,
Rose maid and male,
Or, master venus, through the paddler's bowl
Sailed up the sun;
Sematic features: Practice
Exercise 4
Please explain what is semantically anomalous in the phrases from E.
E. Cummings. What poetic effects are created?
the six subjunctive crumbs twitch
a man . . . wearing a round jeer for a hat
children building this rainman out of snow