Semantics Second Edition John |. Saeed ( Blackwell b PublishingIntroducing Linguistics This outstanding series is an indispensable resource for students and teachers ~ a concise and engaging introduction to the central subjects of contemporary linguistics. Presupposing no prior knowledge on the part of the reader, each volume sets out the fundamental skills and knowledge of the field, and so provides the ideal educational platform for further study in linguistics. 1. Andrew Spencer Phonology 2. John I. Saeed Semantics, Second Edition 3. Barbara Johnstone Discourse Analysis 4. Andrew Carnie SyntaxSemantics Second Edition John I. Saeed ¢ Blackwell OD Puriishing© 1997, 2003 by John I. Saeed 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of John I. Saeed to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. Alll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First edition published 1997 Second edition published 2003 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Reprinted 2004 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saeed, John I. Semantics / by John I. Saeed.—2nd ed. p.cm. — (Introducing linguistics ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-631-22692-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-631-22693-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Semantics. I. Title. II. Series. 325 .S2 2003 401.43—-de2t 2002007791 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 105/12 pt Plantin by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed and bound in the United Kingdom. by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: http://www.blackwellpublishing.comTo Joan and AlexanderContents List of Figures and Tables xv Preface xvii Abbreviations and Symbols xix Part | Preliminaries 1 “1 Semantics in Linguistics 3 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2. Semantics and Semiotics 5 1.3. Three Challenges in Doing Semantics 6 1.4 Meeting the Challenges 7 1.5 Semantics in a Model of Grammar 9 1.5.1 Introduction 9 1.5.2 Word meaning and sentence meaning 10 1.6 Some Important Assumptions u 1.6.1 Reference and sense 12 1.6.2 Utterances, sentences and propositions 12 1.6.3 Literal and non-literal meaning 15 1.6.4 Semantics and pragmatics 17 1.7. Summary 19vill 2 Contents Further Reading Exercises Notes Meaning, Thought and Reality 1 Introduction 2.2 Reference 2.2.1 Types of reference 2.2.2 Names 2.2.3 Nouns and noun phrases Reference as a Theory of Meaning Mental Representations 2.4.1 Introduction 2.4.2 Concepts 2.4.3 Necessary and sufficient conditions 2.4.4 Prototypes 2.4.5 Relations between concepts 2.4.6 Acquiring concepts 2.5 Words, Concepts and Thinking 2.5.1 Linguistic relativity 2.5.2 The language of thought hypathesis 2.5.3 Thought and reality 2.6 Summary Further Reading Exercises Notes Part Il Semantic Description /3 Word Meaning [3.1 Introduction 3.2 Words and Grammatical Categories 3.3. Words and Lexical Items 3.4 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning 3.5 Lexical Relations 3.5.1 Homonymy 3.5.2. Polysemy 3.5.3 Synonymy 3.5.4 Opposites (antonymy) 3.5.5 Hyponymy 19 19 24 23 23 25 25 27 28 30 32 32 34 35 37 38 40 40 41 43 44 46 47 47 49 St 53 53 59 63 63 64 65 66 68Contents } 3.5.6 Meronymy 3.5.7 Member-collection 3.5.8 Portion-mass “3.6 Derivational Relations 3.6.1 Causative verbs 3.6.2 Agentive nouns 3.7 Lexical Universals 3.7.1 Colour terms 3.7.2 Core vocabulary 3.7.3 Universal lexemes 3.8 Summary Further Reading Exercises Notes Sentence Relations and Truth 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Logic and Truth 4.3. Necessary Truth, A Priori Truth and Analyticity 4.4 Entailment 4.5 Presupposition 4.5.1 Introduction 4.3.2 Tavo approaches to presupposition 4.5.3 Presupposition failure 4.5.4 Presupposition triggers 4.5.5 Presuppositions and context 4.5.6 Pragmatic theories of presupposition 4.6 Summary Further Reading Exercises Notes Sentence Semantics 1: Situations 5.1 Introduction 5.2. Classifying Situations 5.2.1 Introduction 5.2.2 Verbs and situation types 5.2.3 A system of situation types 5.2.4 Tense and aspect 5.2.5 Comparing aspect across languages 5.2.6 Combining situation type and aspect 70 71 7 7 72 73 73 74 76 78 79 79 80 83 86 86 88 94 98 101 101 102 104 106, 107 109 110 110 ql 14 116 116 17 117 119 123 124 130 133x Contents 5.3 Modality and Evidentiality 5.3.1 Modality 5.3.2 Mood 5.3.3 Bvidentiality 5.4 Summary Further Reading Exercises Notes 6 Sentence Semantics 2: Participants 6.1 Introduction: Classifying Participants 6.2. Thematic Roles 6.3. Grammatical Relations and Thematic Roles 6.4 Verbs and Thematic Role Grids 6.5 Problems with Thematic Roles 6.6 The Motivation for Identifying Thematic Roles 6.7 Voice 6.7.1 Passive voice 6.7.2 Comparing passive constructions across languages 6.7.3 Middle voice 6.8 Summary Further Reading Exercises Notes 7 Context and Inference 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Deixis 7.2.1 Spatial doixis 7.2.2 Grammaticalization of context 7.2.3 Extensions of spatial deixis 7.2.4 Person deixis 7.2.5. Social deixis 7.3 Reference and Context 7.4 Knowledge as Context 7.4.1 Discourse as context 7.4.2 Background knowledge as context 7.4.3 Mutual knowledge 7.4.4 Giving background knowledge to computers 7.5. Information Structure 135 135 138 141 143 143 144 147 148 148 149 154 156 158 161 164 164 168 170 174 174 175 178 181 181 182 182 186 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 196Contents xi 7.5.1 The information status of nominals 196 7.5.2 Focus and topic 199 7.5.3 Information structure and comprehension 201 7.6 Inference 202 7.7. Conversational Implicature 204 7.7.1 Grice’s maxims of conversational cooperation 204 7.7.2 Generalizing the Gricean maxims 207 7.7.3, Relevance theory 208 7.8 Summary 210 Further Reading 212 Exercises 212 Notes 217 8 Functions of Language: Speech as Action 219 8.1 Introduction 219 8.2 Austin’s Speech Act Theory 222 8.2.1 Ieroduction 222 22.2 Evaluating performative utterances 224 8.2.3 Explicit and implicit performatives 225 8.2.4 Statements as performatives 226 8.2.5 Three facets of a speech act 227 8.3. Categorizing Speech Acts 228 8.4 Indirect Speech Acts 230 8.4.1 Introduction 230 8.4.2 Understanding indirect speech acts 232 8.4.3 Indirect aces and politeness 234 8.5 Sentence Types 237 8.6 Summary 239 Further Reading 240 Exercises 240 Notes 242 Part Ill Theoretical Approaches 245 9 Meaning Components 247 9.1 Introduction 247 9.2 Lexical Relations in CA 248 9.2.1 Binary features 249 9.2.2 Redundancy rules 249 9.3 Katz’s Semantic Theory 250xii Contents. 9.3.1 Introduction 250 9.3.2 The Katzian dictionary 251 9.3.3 Projection rules 251 9.4 Grammatical Rules and Semantic Components 254 9.4.1 The methodology 254 9.4.2. Thematic roles and linking rules 257 9.5 Components and Confiation Patterns 262 9.6 Jackendoff’s Conceptual Structure 266 9.6.1 Introduction 266 9.6.2 The semantic components 267 9.6.3 Localist semantic fields 269 9.6.4 Complex events and states 270 9.6.5 THINGS: Semantic classes of nominals 27 9.6.6 Cross-category generalizations 272 9.6.7 Processes of semantic combination 273 9.7 Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon 276 9.7.1 Bent structure 277 9.7.2 Qualia structure 281 9.8 Problems with Components of Meaning 283 9.9 Summary 284 Further Reading 285 Exercises 285 Notes 290 10 Formal Semantics 292 10.1. Introduction 292 10.2 Model-Theoretical Semantics 295 10.3 Translating English into a Logical Metalanguage 296 10.3.1 Introduction 296 10.3.2 Simple statements in predicate logic 296 10.3.3 Quantifiers in predicate logic 298 10.3.4 Some advantages of predicate logic wanslation 301 10.4 The Semantics of the Logical Metalanguage 302 10.4.1 Introduction 302 10.4.2 The semantic interpretation of predicate logic symbols 303 10.4.3 The domain 304 10.4.4 The denotation assignment function 304 10.5 Checking the Truth Value of Sentences 305 10.5.1 Evaluating a simple statement 306 10.5.2 Evaluating a compound sentence with » ‘and’ 306 10.5.3 Evaluating sentences with the quantifiers V and 3 308 10.6 Word Meaning: Meaning Postulates 310