.

Demonstrating semantic knowledge

2. Grasping Relationships and Hierarchies

• Semantic knowledge involves understanding how concepts relate to one another in a vast network.
• Example: "Canine"
Hierarchy (Hyponymy/Hypernymy):
A poodle is a type of dog.
A dog is a type of canine.
A canine is a type of mammal. This creates a taxonomy.

Part-Whole Relationships (Meronymy):

A paw is a part of a dog.
A pack is a group of dogs.

– Similarity (Synonymy):
"Canine" is a more formal synonym for "dog."
Opposition (Antonymy):
"Alive" is an antonym for "dead."
 2
3. Utilizing Context for Disambiguation
• The same word or phrase can have wildly different
meanings based on the situation.
• Example: "Bank"
– "I need to deposit my check at the bank." → (Financial
institution)
– "We had a picnic on the bank of the river." → (Land alongside a
river)
– "The airplane began to bank to the left." → (Aerodynamic
maneuver)
– Semantic knowledge uses the context ("deposit," "river,"
"airplane") to select the correct meaning.
 3
4. Making Inferences and Understanding Implications
• This is the ability to "read between the lines" and derive information that
is not explicitly stated.
Example Statement: “
The meeting was scheduled for 3 PM, but Mark's flight from London
landed at 3:30."
• Explicit Facts: Meeting time, Mark's flight landing time.
Semantic Inferences:
– Mark is traveling from London (he is likely in a different time zone).
– The airport is not the meeting location (he must travel from the
airport).
– Therefore, Mark will be late for the meeting. (This conclusion is
not stated but is logically inferred.)
 4
5. Comprehending Analogies and Metaphors
• This requires mapping the relationships from one
domain to another, which is a high-level semantic skill.
• Analogy: "Memory is to a computer as a shelf is to
a librarian."
– A shallow understanding sees four unrelated nouns.
– A semantic understanding maps the relationship: both
"memory" and "shelf" are storage systems that their
respective agents ("computer" and "librarian") use
to organize and retrieve information.
 Unit Two; Language use
1
2.1. What is Pragmatics?
• Pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to
meaning.
• It's the branch of linguistics that looks beyond the literal,
dictionary definitions of words and
• sentences (which is semantics) to figure out what a
speaker intends to communicate and how a
listener interprets that communication.

• Syntax is the study of the rules for forming grammatical

sentences.
 2
• Syntax is the study of the rules for forming
grammatical sentences. (e.g., "The cat sat on the mat"
is grammatical; "Sat cat the mat on" is not.)
• Semantics is the study of the literal meaning of
words and sentences. (e.g., "The cat sat on the mat"
refers to a feline creature in a seated position on a
floor covering.)
• Pragmatics is the study of what the speaker means
by that sentence in a specific context. (e.g., "Could
you pass the salt?" is semantically a question about
ability, but pragmatically it's a request for action.)
 3
2.2. Key Concepts in Pragmatics (How We Use Language)
• Here are the core ideas that illustrate how pragmatics works
in everyday language use.
1. Speech Acts
• This concept, developed by J.L. Austin and John Searle,
• states that we use language to do things, not just to state
things.
• Every utterance is a kind of action.
• The work of J. L. Austin-How to Do Things with Words led
philosophers to pay more attention to the non-declarative
uses of language.
 4
• Speech act theory is similar to physical acts.
People also perform acts by using language.
e.g. to give orders, to make requests, to give
warnings or to give advice, etc.
• It aims to answer this question: What do we do
when using language?
 5
• Speech acts are acts of communication (such as
an apology, complaint, compliment etc.)
• E.g. It‘s hot here ‘may be a ‗request instead of
simple information about weather.
• Every time a speaker utters a sentence, he
attempts to accomplish something with the words.
• Specifically, he intends to have some effect on the
listener and he wants the listener to recognize this
intention.
 6
• Speaker and hearer are usually helped in this
process by the context called speech events;
determine the interpretation of an utterance as
performing a particular speech act.
 7
The terminology he introduced
• Locutionary Act: The act of saying
something itself, with a specific meaning.
• Illocutionary Act: The intention behind
the utterance (the function it performs).
– Example: Saying "I promise I'll be
there" performs the act of promising.
 8
– Other illocutionary acts: requesting,
warning, inviting, apologizing, declaring
(e.g., "I now pronounce you husband and
wife").
• Perlocutionary Act: The effect the utterance
has on the listener.
– Example: A warning ("Watch out!") might
have the effect of frightening someone or
making them jump aside.
 9
For instance,
• (1) I bet you six pence it will rain tomorrow.
• (2) I apologize.
• (3) I sentence you to ten years of hard labor.
• (4) I give my word.
• These sentences are not used to describe some states
of affairs, but to do certain things: to bet, to apologize,
to pass sentence, and to promise, respectively.
• Surfaces of a speech act are Locutionary Act and
Perlocutionary Act.
 10
2. Implicature (Conversational Implications)
The term “Implicature” accounts for what a speaker
can imply, suggest or mean, as distinct from what
the speaker literally says (Grice, 1975).
• Implicature - any meaning conveyed indirectly or
through hints, and understood implicitly without
ever being explicitly stated‖ (Grundy, 2000).
 11
• It covers the family of verbs such as ‗imply,
suggest, mean‘, which refer to the meaning of
an utterance as understood in a given context.
Implicature: a neology by Paul Grice (1913-
1988) -
 12
Scalar (Quantity) Implicature
• A scalar implicature is a quantity implicature based
on the use of an informationally weak term in an
implicational scale.
• Scalar implicatures arise in examples e.g. Some
professors are famous where the speaker‘s use of
some‘ typically indicates that s/he had reasons not to
use a more informative term, e.g. ‗all‘. Some
professors are famous, therefore, gives rise to the
implicature that not all professors are famous.
 13
• Similarly, in the utterance, Some of the boys
went to the party‘, the word ‗some‘ implicates
"not all of the boys went to the party."
 14
Strong Implicature ?maxims of relation?
• Strong implicature is a communicated
implication of an utterance which is the main
communicative point of the utterance.
• The idea is that sometimes a speaker intends
that her hearer grasp a particular implication
without which the utterance would not be
relevant. Bill‘s utterance has a strong
implicature:
 15
Albert: Can you give me a hand with this work?
Bill: I‘ve a huge amount of my own work to do, and I
promised the boss I‘d give it priority.
• If Albert does not understand that Bill is implicating
that he can‘t help him then he has missed the main
point of Bill‘s utterance. Strong implicature is
implicature that is related directly by the spoken
utterances or is that premises and conclusions which
the hearer is strongly encouraged but not actually
forced to supply.
 16
• Classic examples of scales include numerals (<
… three, two, one>), modals (, ), connectives (),
adverbs (), degree adjectives () and verbs of
ranking (, ) or completion ( start, finish).
• Sometimes, what we mean is not directly stated
but is implied.
• The philosopher H.P. Grice argued that
conversations follow a cooperative principle. He
proposed four "maxims" we generally follow:
 17
• Maxim of Quality: Be truthful.
• Maxim of Quantity: Be as informative as
required, but not more.
• Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
• Maxim of Manner: Be clear and orderly.
 17
• When a speaker ignores one of these maxims,
they often create an implicature an implied
meaning that the listener must infer.
Example:
A: What do you think of my new dress?
B: Well, the color is nice! ( ignoring the maxim of
quantity it's not informative enough).
Implicature: Person B implies that she doesn't like
the dress overall but is being polite.
 18
Deixis (Pointing with Language)
• Any linguistic form that we use to accomplish
this task of pointing out is called deixis
expressions.
• When you notice a strange object and ask,
What is that?, you are using a deictic
expression (that) to indicate something in the
immediate context.
 19
• Deixis is also called indexical expressions.
• The function of indexical expressions is to tell
us where to look for a reference.
• This reference is mostly related to a particular
person, place or time.
• Deixis is also known as the Indexicality of
language ‘as it operates as indexes of specific
meaning in a context.
 20
• These are the common words in our language
that can‘t be interpreted at all if we don‘t know
the context, especially, the physical context
e.g. spatial (place)
• deixis (here, there, this, that),
• temporal (time)
• deixis (now, then, tomorrow, yesterday),
person deixis (you, me, she, him), etc.
 21
3.1. Spatial Deixis
• Spatial deixis are used to indicate the relative
location of people and things.
• Also known as place deixis‘. Some pure place
deictic words are: here and there (adverbs);
this and that (demonstrative pronouns).
 22
• Pragmatic basis of spatial deixis is actually
psychological distance.
• Physically close objects will tend to be treated
by the speaker as psychologically close.
Sometimes, speaker marks physically distant
thing, generally, as psychologically distant e.g.
that man over there.
 23
• However, a speaker may also mark something
physically close as psychologically distant e.g.
(a perfume being sniffed by the speaker) ‗I
don‘t like that‘.
 24
3.2. Person Deixis
• Person Deixis an expression used to point to a
person (me, you, him, them) is an example of
person deixis.
• Person deixis operates on a basic three part
division, exemplified by the pronouns
• for first person (―I , me, mine‖),
• second person (you, your, yours),
• and third person (he, she, it).
 25
• A speech event includes at least two persons:
First person, speaker and Second person =
addressee.
• Usually, the third person is not grammatically
marked, because the only two persons of
importance are the first person and the second
person.
• It is possible to have deictic pronouns for the
third person as in:
 26
3.3. Temporal Deixis
• Temporal deixis is also known as time deixis‘.
It is concerned with the encoding of the
temporal points and spans relative to the time
at which an utterance is produced in a speech
act (Huang, 2014).
 27
• It includes time adverbs e.g. now, then, soon,
last week, today, tonight, yesterday, tomorrow,
etc.
• Now ‘indicates both the time coinciding with
speaker‘s utterance and the time of the
speaker‘s voice being heard.
 28
3.4. Discourse Deixis
• Discourse deixis is also called text deixis.
• In discourse deixis, there are words that make
reference to some statement or utterance to
point to the current, preceding or following
utterances in the same spoken or written
discourse, e.g. the next chapter‘, in the last
paragraph‘, etc. (Haung, 2014).
 29
• There are many words and phrases, in English,
that indicate the relationship between utterance
and the prior discourse such as
• but, therefore, in conclusion, to the contrary,
still, however, anyway, well, besides, actually,
all in all, so, after all, etc.
 30
Presupposition
• A presupposition is something the speaker assumes
to be the case prior to making an utterance.
• Speakers, not sentences, have a presupposition. An
entailment is something that logically follows
from what is asserted in the utterance.
• Sentences, not speakers, have entailments. We can
identify some of the potentially assumed
information associated with the utterance as in
 31
• 1) Mary’s brother bought three horses.
• Here, the speaker will normally be expected to
have the presupposition that a person called
Mary exists and that she has a brother.
• A more specific presupposition is that Mary
has only one brother and he has a lot of money
 32
A presupposition is an underlying assumption
that is taken for granted to be true for an
utterance to make sense.
• Utterance: "Have you stopped eating meat?"
– Presupposition: You used to eat meat.
• Utterance: "She regrets saying that."
– Presupposition: She said that.
 33
[Link]
• Politeness generally refers to the ideas like
being tactful, modest and nice to other people.
In pragmatics, politeness can be defined as
showing awareness and consideration of
another person‘s face‘ (Yule, 2010).
• Politeness means having or showing good
manners and respect for the feelings of others‖
(Wehmeier 2000, p. 976).
 34
• According to Yule (2010), politeness can be
treated as a fixed concept, as in the idea of polite
social behavior‘, or etiquette, within a culture.
• Within interaction, a specified type of politeness
is at work, for which we need the concept of
• ‘Face‘ public self-image of a person – emotional
and social sense of self that one expects everyone
else to recognize.
 35
• For example, ‗Don‘t impose. I‘m sorry to
bother you but…. is a polite way.
• Politeness may not always be a matter of
words but how you say them.
 36
4.1. Positive and Negative Politeness
A positive politeness
strategy leads the requester to appeal to a common goal,
even friendship, via expressions such as: [a] How about
letting me use your pen?
[b] Hey, buddy, I‘d appreciate it if you‘d let me use your
pen.
These expressions do represent a greater risk for the refusal.
It may be proceeded by some ‗getting to know you‘ talk,
designed to establish the necessary common ground for this
strategy. For instance, Hi. How‘s it going? Okay if I sit here?
 37
• We must be interested in the same crazy stuff.
You take a lot of notes too, huh?
• Say, do me a big favor and let me use one of
your pens‘.
• Moreover, positive politeness is a strategy used
when the speaker is at least familiar with the
listener.
• It recognizes the person‘s status while also
acknowledging the familiarity.
 38
• Negative politeness is also used when
speakers know they are impinging on a
person‘s time and want to show respect.
• For example, stopping a person on the street
for instance, to ask for directions requires
negative politeness.
 39
4.2. Politeness Strategies
• Solidarity strategy is the tendency to use positive
politeness, emphasizing closeness between the speaker and
the hearer.
• It will include personal information, use of nicknames,
sometimes even abusive terms (particularly among males),
and shared dialect or slang expressions.
• A solidarity strategy will be marked via inclusive terms
such as we‘and ‗let‘s‘,
• for example in the party invitation as in: ‗Come on, let‘s
go to the party. Everyone will be there. We‘ll have fun‘.
 40
• Deference strategy is the tendency to use
negative politeness forms, emphasizing the
hearer‘s right to freedom. A deference strategy
is involved in what is called formal
politenesses.
• It is impersonal, as if nothing is shared, and
can include expressions that refer to neither
the speaker nor the hearer e.g. Customers may
not smoke here, sir
 41
• Pre-sequences is an assumption says that face is
typically at risk when the other is involved with it.
• Pre-request is a way to avoid this risk.
• It can help to know the answer either with go-
ahead ‘or a stop ‘response in these sentences
• (a) Him: Are you busy? (=pre-request),
• (b) Her: Oh, sorry. (=stop). Moreover, children
often use pre-announcements to check if their
parents are willing to pay attention
 41
4.3. Applying Politeness
• Here is an activity for the students. You are supposed to find
requesting strategies ranging from the more direct to the more
indirect ones:
• Can you……..?
• Do you think you could…..?
• I wonder if you could……..?
• Could you………?
• I wonder if you could……..?
• Would you…………?
• Would it be possible for you to……?
 Why Pragmatics Matters: Real-World Examples

Utterance Literal (Semantic) Meaning Pragmatic Meaning (In Context)

A request to open a window or turn on the

"It's hot in here." A statement about temperature.
AC.

"Do you have the

A yes/no question about possession. A request to tell me what time it is.
time?"

Could be genuine, or could be a polite way to

"I'm fine." A statement of being okay. end a conversation when one is clearly not
fine (sarcasm/implicature).

Could be an answer to "Where's the

"The coffee is on the
A statement of fact. coffee?", an offer ("Help yourself"), or a
table."
warning ("Be careful not to knock it over").
 43
2.2. Natural and conversational signs
• Natural and conversational signs refer to the ways signing
adapts, shortens, and becomes more fluid during casual
communication, much like spoken language contractions
("don't," "gonna," "wanna").
• Key features that make signing natural and
conversational
• 1. Non-Manual Signals (NMS) / Facial Expressions
• This is arguably the most important aspect. Sign languages
are not just hands; they are full-body languages.
 44
• Raised/Eyebrows: Used for yes/no questions and to show
surprise or curiosity.
• Furrowed Brows: Used for "wh-" questions (who, what,
where, when, why).
• Mouth Morphemes: Specific mouth shapes that convey
adverbial information (e.g., puffing cheeks for "very
large," pressing lips together for "precise" or "exact").
• Head Nods/Tilts: A nod can affirm, a tilt can show
curiosity or doubt.
• Without these, signing looks robotic and can be
grammatically incorrect or ambiguous
 45
2. Signing Space & Body Shift
• In conversation, signers use the space in front of them
dynamically.
• Role-Shifting: The signer's body and eye gaze shift to
indicate different speakers in a story. Leaning slightly left
and looking right might represent one person talking to
another.
• Spatial Agreement: Signs are directed toward specific
points in space that have been established to represent people
or objects (e.g., signing "ask-him" by moving the sign
toward a point on the right, where you've set up the "him").
 46
3. Pacing & Rhythm
• Natural signing has a flow, much like the cadence
of speech.
• Pauses: Used for dramatic effect or to separate
ideas.
• Speed: Signing speeds up during exciting parts of
a story and slows down for emphasis or clarity.
• Fluency: Signs blend into one another smoothly,
without jerky, separate movements.
 47
4. Contractions & Shortening
• Just as we say "gimme" instead of "give me," signers shorten
signs in conversation.
• Fingerspelling Reduction: Common finger spelled words (like
"OK," "DOG," "BUS") are often abbreviated to just the first
letter or a quick, fluid letter combination.
• Lexicalized Fingerspelling: A finger spelled word becomes so
common it evolves into a single, distinct sign (e.g., #JOB,
#BANK, #PIZZA).
• Sign Reduction: Signs made with two hands might be
produced with only one hand if the other is holding something.
Parts of the movement path might be minimized for speed.
 48
5. Conversational Fillers & Feedback
• These are the signs and signals that keep a conversation flowing
and show you're listening.
• Back-Channeling: The sign language equivalent of "uh-huh,"
"really?", and "mm-hmm." Signs like:
– YES (a quick, repeated nod with the "S" hand shape)
– RIGHT (the "R" hand shape shaking up and down)
– Head Nods while the other person is signing.
• Fillers: Signs like um, well, or let-me-see are used to hold the
floor while thinking.
• Repair Strategies: Signs like what?, slow-down, spell-
again are used to clarify misunderstanding.
 49
2.3. Linguistic signs
• The concept of the linguistic sign is one of the most
fundamental ideas in modern linguistics, primarily
established by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure in the early 20th century.
• Linguistic sign is not just a word; it is the basic
unit of language. It is a double-sided psychological
entity that connects two inseparable elements:
 50
The Signifier (Significant)
The form of the sign. This is the physical,
perceivable part.
– It can be a sound pattern (like the sounds /k/,
/æ/, /t/ for "cat"),
– its visual representation (the written letters C-A-T),
– or even a gesture in sign language.
– Crucially, it's not the physical sound itself but
the mental impression of that sound.
 51
The Signified (Signified)
• The concept or meaning that the signifier evokes.
– It is not the actual object in the real world (a real, furry
cat) but the mental concept of a cat the idea of a small,
furry, four-legged feline.
– It is abstract and psychological.
• The key takeaway is that the sign is the whole
union of the sound-image and the concept. One
cannot exist without the other in language.
•