UNIT 1: SEMANTICS IN LINGUISTICS

● WHAT A MODULAR THEORY OF LANGUAGE MEANS?

Linguists identify different levels of analysis (i.e. components of grammar: sound,
phnology, syntax, semantics, thought). Another way of describing this is to say that
linguistic knowledge forms distinct modules, or is modularized.

● SYNONYMY, CONTRADICTION, AMBIGUITY AND ENTAILMENT.

-Ambiguity: the context will cause one of the senses to be selected: She gave her the
slip.
-Entailment: a relationship between sentences so that if a sentence A entails a
sentence B, then if we know A we automatically know B. Or alternatively, it should be
impossible, at the same time, to assert A and deny B.
-Henry murdered his bank manager.
-Henry's bank manager is dead.

● WHAT IS METALANGUAGE? WHY DO WE NEED A SEMANTIC

METALANGUAGE?
Metalanguage is the tool of description. To cope with the problem of circularity, one
solution is to design a semantic metalanguage with which to describe the semantic
units and rules of all languages. So in a grammar of Arabic written in French, Arabic
is the object language, and French is the metalanguage. An ideal metalanguage
would be neutral.
Setting up a metalanguage might help too with the problem of relating semantic and
encyclopedic knowledge , since designing meaning representations, for example for
words, involves arguing about which elements of knowledge should be included.

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORD MEANING AND SENTENCE MEANING.

Productivity: it is always possible to create new words, but this is a relatively
infrequent occurrence. On the other hand, speakers regularly create sentences that
they have never used or heard before.
Creativity of sentence formation (Chomsky): a relatively small number of combinatory
rules may allow speakers to use a finite set of words to create a very large, perhaps
infinite, number of sentences.
The meanings of sentences cannot be listed in a lexicon like the meanings of words.
There is also a question of levels: there is a more stable body of word meanings in
the lexicon, and the limitless composed meanings of sentences.

● CONCEPTS OF PRODUCTIVITY AND RECURSIVITY IN RELATION TO

SENTENCE MEANING.
-Productivity: see above.
-Recursivity: Rules for sentence formation must be recursive, allowing repetitive
embedding or coordination of syntactic categories.
● WHAT IS ‘COMPOSITIONALITY OF MEANING’?
Sentence meaning is compositional. This means that the meaning of an expression
is determined by the meaning of its component parts and the way in which they are
combined.

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LINGUISTIC AND ENCYCLOPAEDIC KNOWLEDGE.

Linguistic knowledge is about the meaning of words and encyclopedic knowledge is
about the way the world is.

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REFERENCE AND SENSE.

The relationship by which language hooks onto the world is usually called reference.
The semantic links between elements within the vocabulary system is an aspect of
their sense, or meaning.

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NOTIONS OF UTTERANCE, SENTENCE AND

PROPOSITION. HOW DO THEY RELATE TO DIFFERENT LEVELS OF A
LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION?
An utterance is created by speaking (or writing) a piece of language. Sentences, on
the other hand, are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances.
Sentences are abstracted, or generalized, from actual language use. If four people
say ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ we have four utterances and only one
sentence.
Propositions are descriptions of states of affairs and which some writers see as a
basic element of sentence meaning: ‘Caesar invaded Gaul’/’Gaul was invaded by
Caesar’ share the same proposition.

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LITERAL AND NON LITERAL MEANING

(FIGURATIVE).
The basic distinction seems a common-sense one, but it is not so simple.
Languages change over time by speakers shifting the meanings of words to fit new
conditions. Metaphorical quality is no longer apparent to speakers (faded or dead
metaphor).

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENTENCE MEANING AND SPEAKER MEANING

(DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS).
Pragmatics is the study of the speaker’s/hearer’s interpretation of language.
Semantics is concerned with sentence meaning.
UNIT 2: MEANING, THOUGHT AND REALITY
● WHAT DOES IT MEAN REFER OR DENOTE?
The action of picking out or identifying with words is often called referring or denoting.
The entity referred to is usually called the referent (the denotatum).
Some writers use the term denote for the relationship between a linguistic expression
and the world, while refer is used for the action of a speaker in picking out entities in
the world. Referring is what speakers do, while denoting is a property of words.

● RELATION BETWEEN MEANING AND CONCEPT.

For some theories, meaning is a combination of its denotation and a conceptual
element. Some concepts become lexicalized and some not.

● RELATION BETWEEN CONCEPTS OF REFERENCE AND SENSE AND THE TWO

APPROACHES TO THE ANALYSIS OF MEANING
(REFERENTIAL/DENOTATIONAL THEORIES AND REPRESENTATIONAL
THEORIES)
We can understand and use expressions that do not have a real-world referent, and
we can use different expressions to identify tha same referent, and even use two
expressions without being aware that they share the same referent, then it seems
likely that meaning and reference are not exactly the same thing.
Sense is primary in that it allows reference. The meaning of an expression will arise
both from its sense and its reference.

For referential or denotational theory meaning is the action of putting words into
relationship with the world. To provide a semantic description for a language we need
to show how the expressions of the language can “hook onto” the world. Their basic
premise is that we can give the meaning of words and sentences by showing how
they relate to situations.

In representational theories, our ability to talk about the world depends on our mental
models of it. Language represents a theory about reality, about the types of things
and situations in the world. A speaker can choose to view the same situation in
different ways (i.e. John is sleeping / John is asleep).
Different conceptualizations influence the description of the real-world situations. The
emphasis is on the way that our reports about reality are influenced by the
conceptual structures conventionalized in our language.

In referential theories, meaning derives from language being attached to, or

grounded in, reality. In representational approaches meaning derives from language
being a reflection of our conceptual structures.

● DIFFERENT WAYS IN WHICH LANGUAGE IS USED TO REFER TO SOMETHING.

● DIFFERENT TYPES OF REFERENCE (CONSTANT REFERENCE, VARIABLE
REFERENCE, DEICTIC REFERENCE, KIND REFERENCE).
Some expressions will have the same referent across a range of utterances (The
Eiffel Tower): CONSTANT REFERENCE, but in other expressions a reference
depends on context (I wrote to you): VARIABLE REFERENCE.

Deixis is used for words whose denotational capability so obviously needs contextual
support (here).
Natural kinds is a term in the philosophy of language for nouns referring to classes
which occur in nature (giraffe, gold…).

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REFERRING AND NON-REFERRING EXPRESSIONS.

There are linguistic expressions which can never be used to refer (so, very,
maybe…). They are non-referring items. However, nouns are potentially referring
expressions.
Sometimes a nominal can be a referring expression and sometimes not (or even can
be ambiguous):
They performed a cholecystectomy this morning. (referring expression).
A cholecystectomy is a serious procedure. (generic interpretation)

● DIFFERENT SEMANTIC APPROACHES TO THE DESCRIPTION OF PROPER

NAMES.
Description theory: a name is taken as a label or shorthand for knowledge about the
reference. Understanding a name and identifying the referent are both dependent on
associating the name with the right description. Christopher Marlowe: The writer of
the play Dr Faustus / The Elizabethan playwritght murdered in a Deptford tavern.

Causal theory: names are socially inherited, or borrowed. The users of the name
form a kind of chain back to an original naming or grounding. Speakers may use
names with very little knowledge of the referent.
UNIT 3: WORD MEANING

● LEXEMES, ORTHOGRAPHIC WORDS, GRAMMATICAL WORDS, LEMMAS,

LEXICAL ENTRIES.
Lexemes are semantic words. Words can be identified orthographically or at the
levels of phonology, where they are strings of sounds that may show internal
structuring which does not occur outside the word.
In syntax, the same semantic word can be represented by several grammatically
distinct variants (grammatical words): walks, walking, walked.
Dictionary writers economize by grouping senses and listing the shared properties
just once at the head of the group. That group is a lexical entry and it can contain
several lexemes or senses.
Lemma is a form of a lexeme used to identify it (i.e. as the citation form in a
dictionary entry.

● WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO GIVE A DEFINITION OF WORD? WHY IS IT

NECESSARY TO HAVE SEVERAL CRITERIA FOR ‘WORDNESS’?
Edward Sapir: it is not good simply using a semantic definition as a basis. across
languages speakers package meaning into words in very different ways. Words seem
to have some psychological reality for speakers.
A grammatical definition (Leonard Bloomfield): a word is a minimum free form. The
word is the smallest unit of speech (for ordinary life).
This distributional definition (grammatical definition) identifies words as independent
elements (they are able to occur in isolation).
Lyons: morphemes sticking together. Attachments between elements within a word
will be firmer than will the attachments between words themselves.
There are borderline cases.

● HOW VARIOUS CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS CAN INFLUENCE AND/OR ALTER

WORD MEANING?
Usually it is easier to define a word if you are given the phrase or sentence it occurs
in.

● WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO STUDY COLLOCATIONS AND IDIOMS? WHAT

HAPPENS TO THE WORD MEANING IN THESE TWO TYPES OF
CONSTRUCTIONS?
The restricting influence is the tendency for words to occur together repeatedly,
called collocation. These collocations can undergo a fossilization process until they
become fixed expressions.
Idioms are expressions where the individual words have ceased to have independent
meanings.

● EXPLAIN WHAT LEXICAL AMBIGUITY MEANS AND APPLY THE TESTS TO

DETECT IT.
In examples of vagueness the context can add information that is not specified in the
sense, but in examples of ambiguity the context will cause one of the senses to be
selected.
 Test Zwicky and Sadock and Kempson: use of abbreviatory forms like do so, do so
too, so do.
Duffy discovered a mole // Duffy discovered a small burrowing mammal. // Duffy
discovered a long-dormant spy.
Duffy discovered a mole, and so did Clark.
Whichever sense is selected in the first clause has to be repeated in the second
(lexical ambiguity). By contrast, in vagueness, the unspecified aspects of meaning
are invisible.
Test 2: one sense being in a network of relations with certain other lexemes and
another sense being in a different network. I go for a run every morning / I go for a
jog every morning / ?I go for an enclosure every morning. (run is ambiguous because
it can mean jog or enclosure).
Test 3: It employs zeugma (feeling of oddness or anomaly when two distinct senses
of a word are activated at the same item (in the same sentence) and usually by
conjunction): Jane drew a picture and the curtains.
If zeugma is produced, we can identify ambiguity.

● DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXICAL RELATIONS.

Homonimy: unrelated senses of the same phonological word (homographs and
homophones).
Polysemy: the different senses of a word are judged to be related.
Synonimy: different phonological words that have the same or very similar meanings.
Antonyms: words which are opposite in meaning (complementary antonyms,
gradable antonyms, reverses, converses, taxonomic sisters).
Hyponymy: a relation of inclusion. A hyponym includes the meaning of a more
general word (superordinate).
Meronimy: it describes a part-whole relationship between lexical items (i.e. cover and
page are meronyms of book).
Member-collection: relationship between the word for a unit and the usual word for a
collection of the units (i.e. ship-fleet).
Portion-mass: relation between a mass noun and the usual unit of measurement or
division (i.e. a drop of liquid).

● DIFFERENT TYPES OF DERIVATIONAL RELATIONS.

Causative verbs: wide (state) - widen (change of state-inchoative) widen (the cause
of the change of state-causative).
The road is wide. The road widened. The City Council widened the road.
Not all causative verbs are derived from adjectives (i.e. kill).
Agentive nouns: There are several types, for example, derived from verbs and ends
in the written forms -er or -or (i.e. toaster).

● MAIN AIMS AND METHODS OF LEXICAL TYPOLOGY.

Language’s lexicon reflects interaction between the structures of the language, the
communicative needs of its speakers and the cultural and physical environment they
find themselves in.
Comparison of lexical organization or principles: patterns of lexical relations, for
example the cross-linguistic study of polysemy.
Comparison of lexical fields and individual lexical items. It can be seen as the
investigation of the ways in which concepts are mapped into words across languages
(kinship, special relations, time and color terms).
UNIT 4: SENTENCE RELATIONS AND TRUTH

● WHY THE NOTIONS OF TRUTH AND TRUTH VALUE ARE NEEDED IN THE
SEMANTIC DESCRIPTION OF SENTENCES?
Semanticists call a sentence’s being true or false its truth-value, and the facts that
would have to obtain in reality to make a sentence true or false, its truth conditions.

● HOW THE LOGICAL OPERATIONS (NEGATION, CONJUNCTION, DISJUNCTION,

MATERIAL IMPLICATION AND EQUIVALENCE (i.e. BI-CONDITIONAL)) WORK?

○ Negation:

p ㄱp

T F

F T

● Conjunction:

p q p⋀q

T T T

T F F

F T F

F F F

● Disjunction/inclusive or:

p q p⋁q

T T T

T F T

F T T

F F F
 ● Exclusive or (XOR) (but not both):

p q p⊻q

T T F

T F T

F T T

F F F

○ Material implication:

p q p→q

T T T

T F F

F T T

F F T

○ Bi-coditional (if and only if):

p q p≡q

T T T

T F F

F T F

F F T

● STATEMENTS THAT ARE CHARACTERIZED AS NECESSARILY TRUE/FALSE, A

PRIORI/A POSTERIORI TRUTH.
For example, tautologies (My father is my father) are always true. We don’t have to
check if it is true or not. In the same way, contradictions are always false.
A priori truth is the truth that is known before or without experience (i.e. My father is
my father).
A posteriori truth is the truth which can only be known on the basis of empirical
testing.
Necessary truths cannot be denied without forcing contradiction (i.e. Two and two
make four).
Contingent truths can be contradicted depending on the facts (i.e. The dodo is
extinct).
Analytic truth: the meaning of the words within them is included in its own words. it
doesn’t add anything new (i.e. My father is my father).
 Synthetic truth: My father is a sailor.

● HOW THE RELATION OF ENTAILMENT CAN BE STATED IN TERMS OF TRUTH

VALUES?
A sentence p entails a sentence q when the truth of the first (p) guarantees the truth
of the second (q), and the falsity of the second (q) guarantees the falsity of the first
(p). (The anarchist assassinated the emperor. The emperor died.)

p q

T → T

F → T of F

F ← F

T of F ← T

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AND ENTAILMENT AND A PRESUPPOSITION. APPLY

TESTS TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE TWO.
Entailment may include hyponymy, passivization, paraphrases and synonymy.
Presupposition (i.e. Her husband is a fool. She has a husband.) seems sensitive to
facts abouth the context of utterance.

Truth table for presupposition:

p q

T → T

F → T aquí

T or F ← T

TEST: if we negate an entailing sentence, then the entailment fails; but negating a
presupposing sentence allows the presupposition to survive. NEGATING THE
PRESUPPOSING SENTENCE DOES NOT AFFECT THE PRESUPPOSITION,
WHEREAS NEGATING AN ENTAILING SENTENCE DESTROYS THE
ENTAILMENT:

Entailment: I saw my father today. I saw someone today.

Not-entailment: I didn’t see my father today. I saw someone today. (NOT RELATED)

Presupposition: The mayor of Liverpool is in town. There is a mayor of Liverpool.

Presupposition: The mayor of Liverpool isn’t in town. There is a mayor of Liverpool.
 ● CASES OF PRESUPPOSITION FAILURE.
Using a name or a definite description to refer presupposes the existence of the
named or described entity. The problem arises when there exists no referent for the
nominal.The King of France is bald. There is a King of France.

p q

?(T of F) ← F
Truth-value gap

A speaker’s use of definite NPs like names and definite descriptions to refer is
governed by conventions about the accessibility of the referents to the listener.

● WHAT A PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGER IS?

Particular words or constructions that produce other types of presupposition. Some of
them derive from syntactic structure (i.e. cleft or pseudo-cleft).
It was his behavior with frogs that disgusted me.
What disgusted me was his behavior with frogs.
Something disgusted me.

Time adverbial clauses and comparative clauses:

I was riding motorcycles before you learned to walk.
You learned to walk.

He’s even more gullible than you are.

You are gullible.

Certain words (lexical triggers). Many of them are verbs. Regret and realize are
factive verbs because they presuppose the truth of their complement clause:
Sean realized that Miranda had dandruff.
Miranda had dandruff.

Aspectual verbs (start, begin, stop): the new situation is both described and is
presupposed not to have held prior to the change.
Judy started smoking cigars.
Judy used not to smoke cigars.

● LINKS (IF THEY EXIST) BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXICAL

RELATIONS AND DIFFERENT TYPES OF SENTENCE RELATIONS.
UNIT 5: SENTENCE SEMANTICS 1: SITUATIONS

● CLASSIFICATION OF SITUATION TYPES (p.118)

● RELATIONS (OR ABSENCE THEREOF) BETWEEN VARIOUS CATEGORIES

CHARACTERIZING SITUATION TYPES.
Semelfactives are instantaneous atelic events (knock, cough…). Achievements are
instantaneous changes of states, with an outcome of a new state (reach the top, win
a race…).
● TEST TO DETERMINE A SITUATION TYPE OF A PREDICATE.
○ Statives:
■ Only non-statives occur in the progressive: *I am knowing Swahili.
■ Only non-statives occur as imperatives: ?Know Swahili!
■ Simple present verb forms: current time of speaking with statives and
a habitual reading with non-statives: Isabel knows Cannes // Isabel
visits Cannes.
■ If a situation type can occur in the frame What happened was… it is a
non-stative: ?What happened was that Alice was intelligent.
○ Duratives:
■ The temporal adverbial in (a period) only occurs with telic situation
types: They reached the school in half an hour // ?They played cards
in half an hour.
■ The time adverbial for (a period) does not occur with telic situation
types: They played cards for half an hour // ?They reached the school
for half an hour.
■ Finish occurs with accomplishments: Joan finished fixing the car //
?Joan finished fixing cars (activity) // ?Joan finished recognizing her
old boss (achievement)
 ■ Using the adverb almost. Accomplishments have two readings: the
event is not completed and the event has not occurred at all: John
almost wrote a novel.
Achivements and activities only have the second reading: John almost
played (activity) // John almost noticed the mistake (achievement).

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TENSE AND ASPECT. TENSE VS. ASPECT

REALIZATIONS IN COMPLEX FORMS LIKE HAVE BEEN WORKING.
Tense allows a speaker to locate a situation relative to some reference point in time,
most likely the time of speaking.
Aspect systems allow speakers to relate situations and time, but instead of fixing
situations in time relative to the act of speaking, like tense does, aspect allows
speakers to view an event in various ways: as complete, or incomplete, as so short
as to involve almost no time, as something stretched over a perceptible period, or as
something repeated over a period.
English progressive forms:
Present progressive
Past progressive
Future progressive
Proximate future:
I’m catching the midnight train tonight.
English perfect forms:
Present perfect
Past perfect
Future perfect
English simple forms:
Simple present
Simple past
Simple future
● EXAMPLES WITH REAL TENSE FORMS OF DIFFERENT TEMPORAL
SCHEMATA EXPRESSED BY MEANS OF EVENT TIME, REFERENCE TIME AND
SPEECH TIME (E, R, S).
S=speech point.
R=Reference point.
E=Event point.
● EXAMPLES OF:
DIFFERENT SITUATIONS TYPES.
DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT ASPECTS.
DIFFERENT TENSE FORMS.

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EPISTEMIC AND DEONTIC MODALITY. EXAMPLES.

Modality is a cover term for devices which allow speakers to express varying degrees
of commitment to, or belief in, a proposition.
-Epistemic modality: the speaker is signaling degrees of knowledge: She must have
left by now // She couldn’t have left by now // She might have left by now …
-Deontic modality: the verbs mark the speaker’s attitude to social factors of
obligation, responsibility and permission. There are two types of social information:
obligation and permission: You must take these books back (obligation) // You might
leave them there (permission).
● IDENTIFICATION AND EXAMPLES OF PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDE VERBS.

● RELATION BETWEEN MODALITY AND CONDITIONAL SENTENCES, MODALITY

AND MOOD (AS A VERBAL CATEGORY).
When modality distinctions in English are marked by verb endings that form distinct
conjugations, they are called moods. Subjunctive mood in some European
languages, for example.
Indicative mood is used for descriptions of factual, or real, situations.
A speaker may inted a sentence as a statement, a question, a command or a wish.
There are changes in verbal morphology associated with the different social functions
or speech acts that a speaker may intend: optative mood: if only he would get well.

● IDENTIFICATION AND EXAMPLES OF VARIOUS EVIDENTIALITY MARKERS.

Evidentiality allows a speaker to communicate her attitude to the source of her
information.This is possible in English by the use of a separate clause or by
parenthetic adverbials.
UNIT 6: SENTENCE SEMANTICS 2: PARTICIPANTS

● IDENTIFICATION AND EXAMPLES OF ARGUMENTS WITH DIFFERENT

THEMATIC ROLES (AGENT, PATIENT, EXPERIENCER, GOAL, ETC.)
● ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS OF A THEORY OF THEMATIC ROLES.
Authors disagree about what if any distinctions are to be made between patient and
theme, for example, or between agent and related roles like actor, experiencer, and
so on.
The first problem is about delimiting particular roles.
The second problem: how do we define theta-roles in general?
● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SEMANTIC NOTION SUCH AS THEMATIC ROLE
AND A GRAMMATICAL FUNCTION SUCH AS SUBJECT.
The observation is that when speakers are constructing a sentence, they tend to
place an agent into subject position, the next preference being for a recipient or
beneficiary, then theme/patient, then other roles.
AGENT >
RECIPIENT/BENEFICIARY>THEME/PATIENT>INSTRUMENT>LOCATION

● EXAMPLES OF VERBAL THETA GRIDS AND THEIR REALIZATIONS.

It is the listing of thematic roles made by a particular verb (what thematic roles its
arguments may hold):
put V: <AGENT, THEME, LOCATION> John put the book on the shelf.
Agent is underlined because it would be the subject.
loan V: <AGENT, THEME, RECIPIENT> Barbara loaned the money to Michael.
borrow V: <RECIPIENT, THEME, SOURCE> Michael borrowed the money from
Barbara.

● DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARGUMENTS AND ADJUNCTS (ESPECIALLY FROM

A SEMANTIC VIEWPOINT). DIFFICULTIES IN MAKING THE DISTINCTION
BETWEEN ARGUMENT AND ADJUNCT PRECISE.
Adjuncts are seen as less structurally attached to the verb:
Roland put the book in the bathroom: V: <AGENT, THEME, LOCATION>
Roland read the book in the bathroom
*Roland put the book.
Roland read the book.
‘In the bathroom’ is an adjunct.

● EXAMPLES OF ARGUMENT STRUCTURE OPERATIONS: CAUSATION, VOICE

ALTERNATIONS (PASSIVE AND MIDDLE VOICE), REFLEXIVIZATION, ETC.
○ Causation:
■ The water boiled // Helen boiled the water.
■ The ice melted. // The sun melted the ice.
■ The fruit trees blossomed. / ?The early spring blossomed the fruit
trees.
○ Passive voice:
■ Billy groomed the horses. // The horses were groomed by Billy. (point
of view of the agent // patient (or other roles)).
○ Middle voice: it emphasizes that the subject of the verb is affected by the
action described by the verb.
■ Neuter intransitives: The stick bends.
■ Bodily activity and emotions: I sit down here.
■ Reflexives: I wash myself.
■ Autobenefactive: the action of the subject is done for his or her own
benefit (classical Greek for example).
● NOTION OF NOMINAL CLASSIFIER.
Noun classifiers are morphemes or lexical words that code characteristics of the
referent of the noun, allowing the speaker to classify the referent according to a
system of semantic/conceptual categories.
-Numeral classifiers: they occur when the entity is being counted.
-Possessive classifiers: they occur in constructions describing possession.
-Verbal classifiers: they occur as a morpheme attached to the verb. They serve to
classify (intransitive) subjects or objects.
UNIT 7: CONTEXT AND INFERENCE.

● EXAMPLES OF DEICTIC CATEGORIES OF DIFFERENT TYPES.

Elements of language that are contextually bound are called deictic (I, you, her, and
so on need various forms of contextual support).
○ Spatial deixis:
■ Adverbs of location: It’s too hot here in the sun, let’s go over there.
■ Demonstratives work in a similar way.
■ Information about motion toward and away from the speaker: come
and go.
○ Grammaticalization of context:
■ In some languages there are semantic obligatory distinctions that
include deictic terms: ellos (masculine); ellas (feminine): They.
○ Extensions of spatial deixis:
■ In many languages spatial deixis terms, such as demonstratives, are
extended to refer to time (metaphorical shift).
○ Person deixis:
■ It grammaticalizes the roles of participants: the current speaker (I),
addressee(s) (You), and others (he, she…).
○ Social deixis:
■ Information about the social identities or relationships of the
participants in the conversation. European languages: “familiar” and
“polite” pronouns.
● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DISCOURSE AND BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE.
Discourse is the talk itself. Background knowledge is the knowledge a speaker might
calculate others would have before, or independently of, a particular conversation, by
virtue of membership in a community.
● HOW FOCUS AND TOPIC ARE ‘SIGNALLED’ OR MARKED IN SENTENCES?
Given: the already present knowledge.
New: the additional information.
The prominent part is usually called the focus.
Topic is a general idea among participants of what the current topic of discussion is.
The topic sets a spatial, temporal, or individual framework within which the main
predication holds.
○ Intonation: HENRY cleaned the kitchen (Given=the kitchen was cleaned;
New=Henry did it). Henry cleaned THE KITCHEN (given=Henry cleaned
something; New=It was the kitchen).
○ Syntactic constructions: clefts or pseudo-clefts: It was yesterday that Bob
came // It was Bob who came yesterday (clefts) —---- What we want is a
living wage. (pseudo-cleft).
● NOTION OF INFERENCE. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INFERENCE AND
ENTAILMENT.
Listeners actively participate in the construction of meaning, in particular by using
inferences to fill out the text toward an interpretation of speaker meaning (i.e.
anaphora).
● GRICEAN MAXIMS:
WHAT ARE THEY?
They are not rules, nor moral principles.The listener will assume,that a speaker will
have calculated her utterance along a number of parameters:
● The Maxim of Quality: Tell the truth.
● The Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as
possible.
● The Maxim of Relevance (Relation): Make your contributions relevant.
● The Maxim of Manner: avoid ambiguity and obscurity, be brief and
orderly.
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF MAXIM VIOLATIONS.
The speaker secretly may break the maxims, i.e. lying, (violating the maxims) or
seeking a linguistic effect (flouting)
EXAMPLES FOR VARIOUS CASES OF MAXIM VIOLATIONS.
Metaphors and hyperbole (but they are flouting).

● MAIN PRINCIPLES OF RELEVANCE THEORY.

Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own
optimal relevance.
As it is a communicative intent, the speaker has to calculate the relevance of her
utterance with the hearer’s role in mind. (calculate between communicative profit and
loss from the hearer’s point of view).
UNIT 8: FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE: SPEECH AS ACTION

● DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENTENCE TYPES AND SPEECH ACTS. EXAMPLES

OF MISMATCHES.
Part of the meaning of an utterance is its intended social function. We need to learn
the uses to which utterances are conventionally put in the new language community
and how these uses are signaled. We need, as hearers, to know whether we have
been asked a question, invited to do something, and so on. Such functions of
language are called speech acts.
When there is a conventional match between grammatical form and speech act
function we can identify a sentence type.

Sentence type Speech act

Mary will paint the wall. Declarative Assertion

Will Mary paint the wall? Interrogative Question

Mary, paint the wall! Imperative Order

If only Mary would paint the wall. Optative Wishes

However, interrogatives can be used for other speech acts than asking questions,
and the same is true to a greater or lesser degree of the other sentence types.

● MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF PERFORMATIVE STATEMENTS. EXAMPLES.

○ Explicit performatives
■ They tend to begin with a first person verb in a form we could describe
as simple present: I bet, I warn, We request…
■ This verb belongs to a special class describing verbal activities, for
example: promise, warn, sentence, name, bet, pronounce.
■ Generally their performative nature can be emphasized by inserting
the adverb hereby, thus I hereby sentence you to…
 Examples:
I promise to take a taxi home.
I bet you five pounds that he gets breathalyzed.
I declare this meeting open.
I warn you that legal action will ensue.
I name this ship The Flying Dutchman.

A performative that works is called felicitous and one that does not is infelicitous (i.e.
you cannot rename a ship by walking up to it in dock and say I name this ship The
Flying Dutchman). The enabling conditions for a performative are felicity conditions.

● MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF IMPLICIT PERFORMATIVES.

In some cases, the performatives are performed but with a relaxation of some of the
special characteristics:
○ You are (hereby) charged with treason.
○ Passengers are requested to avoid jumping out of the aircraft.
○ Five pounds says he doesn’t make the semifinal.
○ Come up and see me sometime.

They’ll relate with these corresponding explicit performatives:

○ I (hereby) charge you with treason.
○ We request that passengers avoid jumping out of the aircraft.
○ I bet you five pounds that he doesn’t make the semifinal.
○ I invite you to come up and see me sometime.

Austin proposed marks like the mood of the verb, auxiliary verbs, intonation and so
on. The majority of the performatives are implicit, needing expansion to make explicit
their force.

● WHAT IS A LOCUTIONARY ACT? WHAT IS AN ILLOCUTIONARY ACT? WHAT IS

A PERLOCUTIONARY ACT?
Austin proposed that communicating a speech act consists of three elements: the
speaker says something, the speaker signals an associated speech act, and the
speech act causes an effect on her listeners or the participants.
● Locutionary act: the first element. The act of saying something that
makes sense in a language, that is, follows the rules of pronunciation
and grammar.
● Illocutionary act: the second element. The action intended by the
speaker. The uses to which language can be put in society. The term
speech acts is often used with just this meaning of illocutionary acts.
● Perlocutionary act: the third element. It is concerned with what follow
an utterance: the effect or “take-up” of an illocutionary act. Less
interest to linguists due to they are less conventionally tied to
linguistics forms.
● FIVE TYPES OF SPEECH ACCORDING TO SEARLE’S CLASSIFICATION.
○ REPRESENTATIVES, which commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed
proposition (paradigm cases: asserting, concluding).
○ DIRECTIVES, which are attempts by the speaker to get the addressee to do
something (requesting, questioning).
○ COMMISSIVES, which commit the speaker to some future course of action
(promising, threatening, offering).
○ EXPRESSIVES, which express a psychological state (thanking, apologizing,
welcoming, congratulating).
○ DECLARATIONS, which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of
affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extralinguistic institutions
(excommunicating, declaring war, christening, marrying, firing from
employment).
UNIT 9: MEANING COMPONENTS
● BASIC PRINCIPLES AND MECHANISMS OF THE LEXICAL COMPONENTIAL
ANALYSIS.
Words are not the smallest semantic units but are built of smaller components of
meaning which are combined differently (or lexicalized) to form different words.
Semantic components are semantic primitives. This kind of analysis is often called
componential analysis:

● WHAT KIND OF LEXICAL RELATIONS CAN BE DERIVED FROM A THEORY OF

MEANING COMPONENTS?
Hyponymy. A lexical item P can be defined as a hyponym of Q if all the features of Q
are contained in the feature specification of P:

Antonymy (incompatibility). Lexical items P, Q, R… are incompatible if they share a

set of features but differ from each other by one or more contrasting features:

● HOW THE MEANING OF LEXICAL COMPONENTS CAN BE EXTENDED

BEYOND LEXICAL ANALYSIS? RAPPAPORT HOVAV & LEVIN’S, TALMY’S,
JACKENDORFF’S AND PUSTEJOVKY’S THEORIES.
○ Rappaport Hovav & Levin: different verbs belong to different sets of verbs.
From a componential point of view, the presence of these different semantic
components in these verbs causes them to participate in different grammatical rules.
Distinction between event schema, for a verb’s grammatically relevant features, and
root meaning, for the idiosyncratic component of a verb’s meaning. A verb’s meaning
consists of a combination of both.
This approach thus seeks both to reflect that the lexical semantics of verbs contains
both individual content and grammatically relevant semantic structure and to show
something of the nature of their combination.

● Talmy: Elements of meaning are combined not only in single words but also
across phrases. Semantic components associated with verbs of motion.
○ The Figure: an object moving or located with respect to another object
(the Ground).
○ The Motion: the presence per se of motion or location in the event.
○ The Path: the course followed or the site occupied by the Figure
object with respect to the Ground object.
○ The Manner: the type of motion.

Charlotte swam away from the crocodile.

Figure: Charlotte.
Ground: crocodile.
Path: away from.
Manner of motion: swam.

○ Jackendoff: He developed a decompositional theory of meaning which he

calls conceptual semantics. The central principle of this approach is that
describing meaning involves describing mental representations (Mentalist
Postulate).
Meaning in natural language is an information structure that is mentally
encoded by human beings.
Sentence meaning is constructed from word meaning. Meaning must serve
as a basis for inference.
● Entailment schema: x cause E to occur entails E occur

○ Pustejovsky: Lexical meaning is best accounted for by a dynamic approach

including rules of combination and inference. He proposes four levels of
semantic representations for lexical items:
 ■ Argument structure: the semantic arguments of an item and the liking
rules to syntax.
■ Event structure: the situation type of an item.
■ Qualia structure: a classification of the properties of an item.
■ Lexical inheritance structure: how the item fits into the network of the
lexicon.

● SEMANTIC REPRESENTATIONS USED IN THE THEORIES DISCUSSED IN THIS

CHAPTER.

● RELATE SEMANTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF VARIOUS THEORIES TO

NATURAL LANGUAGE SENTENCES.
UNIT 10: FORMAL SEMANTICS
● LOGICAL METALANGUAGE TO REPRESENT SOME SIMPLE ENGLISH
SENTENCES (WITH OR WITHOUT QUANTIFIERS)
● TRUTH RELATIONS BETWEEN SENTENCES AND PARTS OF SENTENCES
WITH LOGICAL CONNECTIVES (AND, OR, IF, NOT)
● SEMANTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF VARIOUS THEORIES TO NATURAL
LANGUAGE SENTENCES
● LOGICAL QUANTIFIERS IN SEMANTIC REPRESENTATIONS
● DYNAMIC APPROACHES TO MEANING WITHIN THE FORMAL SEMANTIC
FRAMEWORK

EXERCISES
UNIT 11: COGNITIVE SEMANTICS
● RELATION BETWEEN MEANING AND MENTAL CATEGORIES THAT IS
ASSUMED IN COGNITIVE SEMANTICS.
● ‘EVOLUTION’ OF CATEGORIZATION (i.e. HOW THE NOTION HAS DEVELOPED
IN COGNITIVE SEMANTIC THEORIES?)
● HOW THE BASIC MEANING SCHEMAS ARE APPLIED IN SEMANTICS?
EXAMPLES OF LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA EXPLAINED BY MEANS OF IMAGE
SCHEMAS
● CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR THEORY. EXAMPLES OF METAPHORIC
TRANSFER. BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF METAPHORS.
● NOTIONS OF METONYMY AND MENTAL SPACES.
● MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF LANGACKER’S MODEL OF COGNITIVE
GRAMMAR
● BASIC NOTIONS OF CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR