College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Department of English Language and Literature

Course: English Semantics

Compiled by:
Dilla University
Department of English Language and Literature

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English Semantics and Pragmatics
Module Introduction
Dear students, welcome to this module. This module contains the course English Semantics and
Pragmatics. In this course you will learn about meaning in two aspects. These are meaning
without context in Semantics and meaning without context in pragmatics, which are treated in
different parts. In the Semantics part, you will study word and sentence meanings without
considering speaker’s intention in English. In the Pragmatic part, you will learn the meaning of
words and sentences with speaker’s intention or what is meant in speaker’s utterance in English.
In doing so, you will find out and grasp facts about what is said and what is meant.
This module handles in the Semantics Part, basic ideas in semantics: meaning, types of meaning
(lexical meaning, sentential meaning, denotative meaning, connotative meaning and conceptual
system) and in pragmatics part it contains lexical relations, deixis, cooperation and implicature,
inference and reference, presupposition and entailment, speech acts and events, politeness and
interaction and discourse and culture.
Course objectives
At the end of this course, dear students you will be able to:
 Demonstrate some fundamental, descriptive and analytical skills to deal with the meaning
of words, phrases and sentences.
 Analyze lexical relation and their meanings
 Develop major concepts in linguistic semantics and pragmatics;
 Explain and compare contrasting theoretical accounts of semantic/pragmatic phenomena;

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  Further experience in formulating and expressing linguistically sophisticated ideas in
academically appropriate manners.
Unit One
The Basic ideas in semantics
Unit Introduction
Hello students, welcome to the first unit of this module. I n this unit you will learn the basic
ideas in semantics including the definition of semantics, meaning, types of meaning( lexical
meaning sentential meaning denotative meaning, connotative meaning), conceptual system, the
levels of language meaning (utterance, sentence and proposition) and reference and sense.
Unit objectives
At the end of this unit, learners will able to
- Know the basic ideas in semantics.
- Define semantics.
- Explain meaning.
- Identify types of meaning.
- Describe utterance, sentence and proposition.
- Give the denotative and connotative meaning of different words indifferent languages.
- Know the different approaches to the systematic study of meaning.
1. INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS
Brain storming activity
 What are the two sciences of meaning?
 What is semantics?
 What is the difference between semantics and pragmatics?
Semantics simply implies the study of how meaning in language is produced or created.
Semantics encompasses how words, phrases and sentences come together to make meaning in
language. The term semantics simply means the study of meanings. It has been the subject of
discourse for many years by philosophers and other scholars but later was introduced formally in
literature in the late 1800’s. Hence, we have philosophical semantics, linguistic semantics among
other varieties of semantics. Our point of departure and focus here shall be on linguistics
semantics.

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For the purpose of the present discourse, we shall be focusing on the development and nature of
semantics. Hence, we shall be learning the definition and beginnings of linguistic semantics.
Semantics is the area of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words or the meaning attached to
words or symbols. This view places semantics at the core of communication in language. Indeed,
there is no communication without the sharing of meaning.
Semantics as a term was first formally used by Breal in 1897. Hence, we can deduce that Breal
was the first to bring to the fore in a formally acceptable way, the nature of meaning in language.
Though the quest for the understanding of meaning has always been of interest to scholars,
semantics was not mentioned as a term and did not come up in literature until 1897 when it was
first used by Breal. This first attempt to study meanings by Philosophers brought about the area
of semantics called philosophical semantics which examines the relationship between linguistic
expressions and the phenomena they refer to in the external world. Philosophical semantics
focuses on examining the conditions under which such linguistic expressions and the phenomena
they refer to are true or false. This can be traced to as far back as Plato’s and Aristotle’s works.
However, contemporary philosophical semantics can be traced to the works of the following
authors: Rudolf Carnap [1891 - 1970], Alfred Tarski [Born 1902] and Charles Peirce [1839 -
1914]. According to Peirce, philosophical semantics developed as Semiotics in America while
with the influence of Saussure in France, the term Semiology was used. However, the idea of
truth-based semantics was Tarski’s major contribution.
Linguistic semantics emphasizes the properties of natural languages while pure or logical
semantics is the study of the meaning of expressions using logical systems or calculi. Examining
semantics in this dimension makes it more mathematically related than linguistic in nature. It is
important to note that the discussion of semantics as a branch of linguistics began recently and
this shall be our next focus.
1.1. Brief History of Semantics
Brain storming activities
 When semantics became an independent science of meaning?
 Who coined the term semantics?
Alfred Korzybski was the first person to attempt studying semantics as a distinct discipline,
separate from the discipline of philosophy. Incidentally, Korzybski was a non-linguist who was
passionate about introducing a generally acceptable science of communication. Prior to the work

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of Korzybski, semantics has been looked at from a non scientific perspective but Korzybski’s
work was the first formal attempt at bringing in a scientific model to the study of semantics.
Korzybski started by describing all entities and realities by assigning labels to them. He went
further to group the names into three. He had names for common objects such as chair, stone,
cow etc. He also had labels for groups and collections like nations, animals, people etc.
Korzybski’s third group of labels does not have identifiable referents in the outside world. These
labels are highly abstract and do not readily lend themselves to the assignment of concrete
reality. These labels are only assignable to concrete realities by imagination. Such labels include
but are not limited to freedom, love, democracy etc. They feature in aesthetics, philosophy and
politics. However, this is not the same with common objects since there seems to be a direct
correspondence between items and linguistic expressions. It is interesting to also know that a
serious difficulty tends to be posed by labels for groups as a result of the wide range of items
within the group. The main challenge with abstract labels stems from the fact that meaning does
not have an objective reference in reality because different people will react to different words
differently. For instance, the word “love” would be viewed differently by different people as a
result of their circumstance or present reality. One person who probably is in a loving
relationship will view it positively while another in an unfulfilled relationship will view it
negatively. Hence, their reactions will be different and will therefore evoke different emotions
from them.
Two other scholars, Odgen and Richards came very close to the analysis of meaning by
combining philosophical processes and linguistic methodologies. How did they do this? They
introduced the concept referent to describe the physical object or situation which the word
identifies in the real world. They pointed out that the representation or situation should be seen
as a referent while the actual pronunciation or orthographic representation will constitute the
symbol. For example, the figure or silhouette of an adult female human being will be the referent
while the word used to describe the referent will constitute the symbol. The symbol is similar to
Korzybski’s concept of label. Since the world is dynamic, the study of semantics has not been
left out. One of such areas that have remained dynamic among others is the concept of change in
meaning. Semantics has been at the fore in the study of change in meaning.
7. The modern word car originated from the word chariot.

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Etymology, which focuses on the discovery of the origin and earlier meanings of words, also
played an important role in earlier studies in semantics. However, it should be noted that there is
a challenge with etymological studies. The major one being that no one can state with certainty
the origin of the meaning of any word.
Self-Assessment Exercise
Mention five scholars who have been associated with the development of semantics
CONCLUSION
In this unit, we have tried to explain the concept of semantics as the study of how words, phrases
and sentences come together to create meaning in language. We have also tried to examine the
history of semantics from its first appearance in literature and the contributions of scholars like
Breal, Bloomfield and Korzybski among others.
1.2. The Scope of Semantics
Brain storming activity
What are the concerns of semantics?
Semantics has been identified as a component of linguistics. In its widest sense, linguistics is the
scientific study of language. As a field of study, semantics relates to other disciplines. In this
unit, we shall explore the scope of semantics, pointing out how it relates to other disciplines.
We have noted that semantics has its origin in philosophy. Earlier scholars in philosophical
semantics were interested in pointing out the relationship between linguistic expressions and
identified phenomena in the external world. In the contemporary world, especially in the United
States philosophical semantics has led to the development of semiotics. In some other parts of
the world, and especially, France, the term semiology has been favoured. The reliance on logical
calculations in issues of meaning has led to the development of logical semantics. However, for
our purpose in this course, emphasis is on linguistic semantics, with our interest on the properties
of natural languages. We shall see how this study relates to other disciplines. We shall also
examine the real issues in linguistic semantics.
The Nature of Semantics
In semantics, we study the meaning of words and sentences of languages. Linguistic semantics
studies meaning in a systematic and objective way. Since meaning as a concept is not static, a
great deal of the idea of meaning still depends on the context and participants in the act of
communication. There is a strong connection between meaning and communication.

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Communication as used here is the exchange or relay of information, message, attitude, feelings
or values from one person to another. This is done mainly by the use of language. It is often
expressed that language is a system which uses a set of symbols agreed upon by a group. These
symbols can be spoken or written, expressed as gestures or drawings.
The symbols employed in language must be patterned in a systematic way. Indeed language is
organized at four principal levels – sounds (i.e. Phonetics/phonology), words (i.e. Morphology,
sentences (i.e. syntax) and meaning (i.e. semantics). Indeed, phonology and syntax are concerned
with the expressive power of language while semantics studies the meaning of what has been
expressed. Knowledge of grammar is an aspect of the innate cognitive ability of human beings.
The power of interpretation complements that innate ability. Interpretation is an aspect of
semantics. Therefore, language acquisition or learning includes not only the knowledge of the
organization of sounds and structures, but also how to associate meaning to the structures.
Semantics can, therefore, be characterized as the scientific study of meaning in language.
1.3. Semantics and other Related Disciplines
Brain storming activity
 Dear students do you think that semantics has relation with other disciplines? If so with
which subject has it relation?
 What is the relation between semantics and logic?
 What is the relation between semantics and sociology? And it’s relation with
anthropology?
We recall that philosophy has been linked to the earliest postulation about meaning. There are till
other disciplines that are relevant to semantics. A very strong ally of semantics is logic, itself, a
branch of philosophy. Logical systems are known to exhibit coherent and consistent models for
evaluating thought. Thus, logical postulations are the ideal but may not always reflect the real
world in matters of language.
Semantics is also related to sociology and anthropology because of the connection between
language and culture. The whole essence of cultural relevance in language justified the reliance
on context for the meaning of expressions. Of particular interest to semantics is the intricate
system of kinship terms and colour expressions. By relying on the distinction between deep and
surface meaning and the power of the human brain to generate many paraphrases of a single
structure, semantics is related to psychology. Indeed, the mentalistic approach to meaning and

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language use, in the tradition of generative grammar, is a psychological issue. Furthermore, the
approaches adopted by behavioural semantics in the stimulus – response connection in meaning
are a purely psychological affair. Semantics is also related to communication theory. Information
is carried and processed in the communication system passing through the channel and the
medium. The mineralization of noise and the processing of feedback are aspects of the
communication system. These are achieved by ensuring logical thinking.
1.4. Major Concerns of Semantics
Brain storming activities
- What the major concern of semantics as a science of meaning?
- What are the issues associated with semantics?
- What does naming, sense and reference mean?
Semantics is associated with different issues related to meaning including naming, concept, sense
and reference. Naming as a semantic process derives from the understanding that words are
names or labels for things. The major problem with this naming view of semantics is that it is
only nouns and nominal expressions that can be analyzed semantically. In addition, abstract
nouns like love, hatred, truth will be difficult to explain since they are not living things. There is
a red bull in the park. This will have meaning, only if there is a red bull in a particular park.
Thus, sentences that are lies may not be interpreted.
Concepts mediate between the mind constructs and objects in the real world. Saussure’s sign
theory and Ogden and Richards, semantic triangle derives from the conceptual approach to
semantics. The approach emphasizes the power of the mind to make images and to associate
these images to objects and ideas. The approach is highly mentalistic, relying on the ability to
associate one thing with another. This ability of association may not yield universal
understanding. That explains why language experts develop dictionaries to aggregate meaning on
a universal basis. Interestingly, the production of dictionaries relies heavily on denotations and
connotations, two major angles to the study of meaning.
Reference relates to things, people and events in the world. It is the object or entity to which a
linguistic expression relates. Thus, the referent of the word boy is a human being called boy. If
meaning were restricted to reference, many words without obvious referents will be left out. It
will be difficult to explain the meaning of prepositions, conjunctions and other grammatical
units. Again, several linguistic expressions may relate to single referents. To avoid these

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limitations, semanticists use the words denotation and connotation to distinguish between
meanings based on ostensiveness (i.e. pointing) or reference and extension.
Another interesting area of concern for semantics is sense. Sense explains the system of
linguistic relationships which a lexical item contracts with others. If that relationship is
paradigmatic, we have synonymy, antonymy, etc. But if the relationship is syntagmatic, we have
collocation. The scope of semantics covers a wide range of issues related to meaning. These
issues are discussed in the different segments.
Self-Assessment Exercise
What are the main areas of the concern of semantics?
CONCLUSION
Semantics has been found to be related to a wide range of disciplines because of the general
interest in meaning. In specific terms, semantics has been formed to be relevant to naming,
reference and sense. It is also concerned with the interpretation of sentences.
Approaches to the Study of Semantics
Brain storming activity
 What are the different approaches in semantics?
 Which approach do you support? And why?
Since meaning has occupied a central position in communication, there have been different
perspectives to the study of meaning. That means that across the ages, different approaches to the
study of semantics have emerged. In this unit, we shall focus on some of the time tested
approaches to the study of semantics.
You have learnt that the study of meaning in language has been of interest to both the linguist
and the philosopher. It has also interested the general communicator. The study of semantics has
developed from the earliest times to the modern period, giving it a historical view. That way, we
can focus on four major approaches – traditional, behavioral, structural and generative
perspectives.
1.4.1. Traditional Semantics
Traditional semantics is associated with the works of such great philosophers as Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle as well as many others who came after them. Their main focus was on the nature of
human language itself. Based on their views of the nature of human language, these early
philosophers were into two – the naturalists and the nurturists. To the naturalists, language was

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God-given such that there was hardly anything anybody could do to understand language. Man
was not expected to make alterations, but should concern himself with merely observing and
describing the rules of language. The Greek language was perceived to be the chosen language
upon which all other languages should be based. Later, Latin became the focus of philosophical
analysis.
The nurturists, on the other hand, viewed language as a social property common to a speech
community. Language was therefore perceived to be man’s creation for the convenience of
communication. Thus, in spite of difference in languages, the uniting point is that they are all for
communication. Traditional semantics was also concerned with the relationship between form
and meaning. Following Carnap (1927), Firth (1957) and Ayer (1936), the meaning of a word is
actually what it refers to. This view has also been shared by Ogden and Richards (1933). There
have also been later scholars – Grice (1957) and Katz (1972) who believed that the image of a
word takes shape in the speaker’s or hearer’s mind. Another major view of traditional semantics
is that the meaning of a word can be decoded from its shape or sound. Words in this category are
onomatopoeic. The major ideas in traditional semantics are reference, concepts, truth conditions
etc.
Self-Assessment Exercise
State the contribution of the naturalists and the nurturists.
1.4.2. Behavioral Semantics
This approach has been influenced by the works of Watson Bloomfield and Skinner. Idealism or
mentalism in traditional semantics looks at meaning as something established in the hearer’s or
speaker’s mind. There is usually a non-physical process of thought, concept or feeling generating
a mental experience. On the other hand, Behaviourism relies on observables and records of
utterances. These observables and records are linked to their relationships with the immediate
situations that produce them.
To the behaviourist, there is no belief in such mentalistic constructs as mind, concept and ideas.
As a result, there is no room for introspection as a means of obtaining valid information since
thoughts and feelings are usually personal. As a result of the highly psychological dimension of
this theory, human and animal behaviour is identical. Experiences coming through the senses are
the major sources of knowledge. There is determinism in the affairs of the world. There are
universal laws governing every situation. As a result of this reliance on determinism, there is no

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predictability in evaluating human behaviour. The external environment is perceived to be the
major stimulus to all human utterances. The stimulus-response scenario is synonymous with the
cause and effect connection in most natural situations.
Those who favour the behavioural approach to semantics have argued that by reducing meaning
to observable entities, language, as an aspect of human favour can lend itself to examination.
They also argue that meaning is influenced by reinforcement. The theory stresses nurture rather
than nature. Thus, the physical environment is perceived to contribute to meaning rather than the
internal thought processes.
Though behaviourism tends to lend meaning to experimental explanation, it has been criticized
for its rejection of introspection, concepts and ideas. It is not everything in language that can be
observed physically. The over-reliance on reinforcement tends to present animal and human
behaviour as identical.
1.4.3. Structural Semantics
The father of structuralism is Ferdinand de Saussure. Structuralism as a linguistic theory
considers the structures and systems in language. Emphasis is on the process of segmenting and
classifying the features of utterances. Under structuralism, emphasis is on the analysis of sense
relations that connect words and meaning. Sense is an expression of the system of semantic
relationships a given word keeps with other expressions in a given language. This relationship is
usually paradigmatic in terms of similarity and dissimilarity. The relationship of similarity
occurs as synonymy, while the relationship of dissimilarity is referred to as antonymy. Structural
processes are useful in lexical relations in the study of words.
1.4.4. Generative Semantics
Noam Chomsky is the father of generative grammar. According to the theory of transformational
generative grammar, knowledge of language is generated in the mind. A language user has a
finite set of rules from which he can generate an infinite number of sentences. This power of
generations is facilitated by the power of transformational rules which convert deep structure
sentence types into other various forms via transformations. At the beginning of Chomsky’s
generative grammar, there was the assertion that syntax was autonomous and independent of
semantics. It was only later in Aspects of the theory of Syntax (1965) that Chomsky pointed out
that the semantic component specifies the rules necessary for the interpretation of deep

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structures. This observation enhanced the semantic representation of sentences. Deep structures
specify the original meaning of sentences before the application of transformations.
There was the immediate problem of explaining the meaning of multiple paraphrases from a
single deep structure. Thus, generative semantics would be concerned with sentence meaning
and interpretation. This will require the interpretation of functional roles in sentences. This
interpretation has been explained by the Case theory as propounded by Charles Fillmore, and
further elaborated in Chomsky’s Case theory and thematic theory.
The semantic component has been presented as being partially dependent on syntax and at the
same time distinct. This produces a composite relationship between grammar and meaning. The
deep structure is deemed to determine how sentence parts combine to make meaning for the
whole. The syntactic component is the generative source of grammar. Thus, the output of syntax
forms the input to the semantic component. The semantic component is perceived to operate on
the structural description of sentences to provide a representation of the meaning of sentences.
Grammar as used here is the totality of the mechanism and rules of language organisation
including meaning. As a result of the complexity of this theory, we shall have a more elaborate
discussion of its implication in another unit. Perhaps the philosophical postulations of Aristotle
provided impetus to critical thinking in semantics. Based on the major areas of concern, there
have been traditional semantics, behavioural semantics, structural semantics and generative
semantics.
CONCLUSION
We have observed the progression in the development of semantic thought. We have noted the
positive relationship between semantics and other components of the language system. We can
safely conclude that while syntax, for instance provides the basis for the structure of the
sentence, it is semantics that holds the key to meaning. This means that semantics is critical to
communication.
SUMMARY
In this unit, you have learnt the approaches of the traditionalists, the behaviourists, the
structuralists and the generativists to the study of semantics. You have read that the
traditionalists were related to the early philosophers, while the behaviourists were more
concerned with psychology, with the object of study being what is observed. Structrualists
emphasised the sense relations between words while the generativists depended on the deep

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structures of sentences for meaning. It would be possible to identify the essential ingredients of
these approaches to the study of semantics.
Self-Assessment Exercise
(i)What are the different approaches to the study of semantics?
(ii) Discuss the contributions of the traditionalists to the development of semantics
(iii) Explore how Generative Grammar has featured in the study of semantics.
REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Barnwell, K. (1980). Introduction to semantics and translation. Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
Ogbulogo, C (2005). Concepts in semantics. Lagos: Sam Iroanusi Publications.
2. THE STUDY OF MEANING
2.1. Form and Meaning
Brain storming activity
 Dear students what is meaning for you?
 What are the types of meaning?
 What is the relationship between semantics and meaning?
 What are the different definitions of meaning that are given by different school of
thoughts?
 What do you think the relationship between form and meaning?
 Do you think all syntactically correct sentences are meaningful?
Which school of thought gave proper definition for the term meaning?
The relationship between form and meaning
Semantics studies the relationship between form meanings. Form in language refers to /particular
shape/ structure of words and sentences. Form is the base for meaning. To convey meaning
words or sentences should be in their correct form or structure. In other words sentences must be
syntactically correct to covey meaning. However, it does not mean that all syntactically correct
sentences are meaningful.
For example
 Colorless green ideas sleep furiously together.
 Kim frightened sincerity.
 Thirteen is very crooked.

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We have observed that semantics is the linguistic study of meaning. We have also noted that
meaning is central to the process of communication. Interestingly, there is usually the
controversy about the nature of meaning. We shall explore in this unit the nature of meaning.
Meaning is at the centre of the study of semantics – for both the philosopher and the linguist.
However, there are differences in opinion based on approaches and methods. We shall explore
meaning from the perspectives of the different schools of thought.
2.2. Schools of Thought in Meaning
Both linguists and philosophers agree that meaning is central to semantics. However, there is
considerable disparity among different scholars on the exact conception of meaning. Based on
their understanding of the meaning of meaning and procedures, there are different schools of
thought in relation to meaning. These are the naturalists, the conventionalists and the
contextualists. According to the naturalists with Plato as the chief proponent, the meaning of a
word is the entity or thing it represents. There is an intrinsic relationship between sound and
meaning. The major criticism of this view is that there exist very many words in natural
languages without physical entities.
To the conventionalists, words and their meaning do not necessarily have any direct link.
Whatever connection existing between a word and meaning is through a concept formed in the
minds of the users of the language. Conventionalism derived from the works of Aristotle.
According to J. Firth and other contextualists, the meaning of a word derives from its usage.
Each of these approaches has had a profound impact on the practice of linguistics. Their
contributions shall become apparent as the text progresses. Apart from focusing on the three
principal approaches to the study of meaning, there are thematic, conceptual and associative
types of meaning.
2.3. Types of Meaning
Brain storming activities
 Dear students how many types of meaning do you know before now? if so what are this?
 What our criteria to classify meaning into different categories?
There are three basic types of meaning and these are thematic, conceptual and associative.
Associative meaning can further be divided into connotative, collocative, affective, reflected and
stylistic meanings. We shall for this section concentrate on thematic and conceptual meaning.
2.3.1. Thematic Meaning

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 Brain storming activities
 Student what does thematic meaning mean? Try to define it using your own words.
 What does organization of the message mean?
 What are the three arrangements of communication that are common thematic meaning?
Thematic meaning derives from the organisation of the message presented in a language. It is the
arrangement of the components of communication that determine the point of emphasis. This
arrangement may take the form of passivisation, topicalisation or focus. In the sentences that
follow, different items have been made more prominent by merely re-ordering them.
 1. Jane bought the house – normal SVO order
 2. It was Jane that bought the house – topicalised
 3. The house was bought by Jane – passivised.
 4. The house, Jane painted – focused
In sentence (1) the sentence is in the normal subject verb object order without any special
meaning. Sentences (2) and (4) tend to lay emphasis on Jane, the doer of the action being
referred to. In sentence (3), emphasis is on the house which was bought. Indeed, focused and
topicalised elements in a structure are given prominence within an information structure. A
component of the bit of information can also be made more prominent by stressing it. Consider
further the following:
5. She BOUGHT my newspaper (She did not STEAL it)
6. She bought my NEWSPAPER (not my textbook)
7. SHE bought my newspaper (not any other person)
2.3.2. Conceptual Meaning
Brain storming activity
- The word conceptual meaning is an umbrella term what are the components of
conceptual meaning?
- Student what do you think is conceptual meaning explicit meaning of a word or implicit?
- Do you think that denotative meaning vary from culture to culture? Give your reason.
Conceptual meaning is synonymous with primary, central, logical, cognitive or denotative
meaning of a word. It is the first ordinary meaning listed in dictionaries which is not affected by
the context or emotional overtones associated with the act of communication. There is an

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assumed shared conceptual meaning of every word of a language. There is a universal
implication of the conceptual meaning.
It is possible to express the conceptual meaning of a word using contrastive semantic features.
Such features indicate the attributes present and those that are absent. If a feature is present, it is
specified as [+]; if absent, it is [-]. These contrastive features specifying the attributes of the
words provide the necessary criteria for the correct use of words. The feature specifications for
the words man and woman are as follows:
Man Woman
+ HUMAN + HUMAN
+ MALE - MALE
+ ADULT + ADULT
The conceptual meaning of a word constitutes a major part of the shared system of a language
for all speakers. It is a criteria element of human communication since it is a major factor in
language. The use of this process has been described as componential analysis. It is a major
process in structural semantics.
2.3.2. Associative Meaning
Brain storming activity
 What does associative meaning mean? Give your own answers.
 Student what do you think is associative meaning static or not static?
 What are the different types of meaning included under this umbrella term?
The meaning of a word is affected by the context, background, time and the cultural realities of
the users of language. This type of meaning is not static. It is variable and open ended. Certain
words, structures and styles are usually employed to arouse some emotional reactions in the
hearer. Certain attitudes and forms of behaviour are elicited by the associative meaning of the
words used in communication. These different reactions are derived from the associations which
the words cerate in the minds of language users.
As a result of the great variation in associative meaning, it is not always easy to express that
form of meaning in terms of contrastive semantic features. Indeed, associative meaning reflects
individual differences. There are individualised intentions and interpretations. There is therefore,
the need for all participants in communication to share common reference points, symbols and
background for there to be any meaningful interaction.

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Most of the problems of communication arise when associative meaning is assumed to be shared
by all concerned. There must be a way of ensuring actual sharing of background. For second
language learners, this problem is profound. This explains the enormous difficulty second
language learners’ encounter with decoding the meaning of idioms and figurative expressions.
They also find it difficult to apply appropriate idioms to diverse situations. Associative meaning
can be any of the following:
 Connotative Meaning
 Collocative Meaning
 Reflected Meaning
 Stylistic or Social Meaning

2.3.3. Connotative Meaning

Brainstorming activities
o Student, do you think denotative and connotative meaning as the same? If so how?
o Can you differentiate connotative meanings from denotative meanings? If so how?
o Do you think as connotative meaning has strong relationship with culture? Forward your
own ideas?
Connotative meaning contains elements of the conceptual meaning of a word and the
individual’s personal interpretation of what is communicated. That interpretation is based on the
personal experience of the hearer. This means that connotative meaning varies with the
experience of people in communication. It may also vary from society to society. There are
additional semantic features that are associated with connotative meaning. Thus, a great deal of
the meaning of idioms and figurative expressions derive from connotation. There are symbols in
literature which have different connotations in different cultures. For instance, among the Hausa
in Nigeria, the cricket is associated with the tricks, whereas among the Igbo and the Yoruba, it is
the tortoise that has that attribute. In the Western world, it is the fox that is considered to be very
cunning.
2.3.4. Collocative Meaning
Brainstorming activity
 Student, do you think that words co-occur together and provide meanings? Give your
own justification. Collocation is the natural association and sequence of words in longer

17
 structures. Collective meaning is therefore the meaning of a lexical item deriving from
other lexical items with which
it is associated in a longer structure. The collocative meaning of lexical items in a language is
based on related semantic fields. For instance, job, employment, engagement, and work are all
related. There are also associations that are perceived to be more natural. Consider the following
Examples:
a/ August visitor
b/ Auspicious occasion
c/ Sympathise with
d/ Nutritious food
2.3.5. Affective Meaning
Brainstorming activity
 Student, do you think that as meaning and feeling are related? If so how is their relation?
 What are the words that we use to express our emotional feeling? List them.
Affective meaning is related to the feelings and attitudes of the speaker towards the subject or the
audience. This meaning is achieved by the choice of words. Certain words suggest positive
feelings – love, attraction, happiness, exciting etc. Some others stir up negative reactions
disgusting, nauseating, disappointing, etc. Interjections like ah!, oh!, uh!, mmn! Often suggest
the emotional state of the mind. Other words like darling, daddy, mummy etc. give an impression
of endearment.
2.3.6. Reflected meaning
Reflected meaning relates to expressions with multiple meanings. Words with several meanings
(i.e. polysemous words), have reflected meaning. There is, however, a dominant meaning among
these several meanings. As a particular sense of a word begins to assume prominence, all other
senses begin to be de-emphasized and with time, these other senses disappear. Meat used to refer
to all forms of food and flesh for nourishment. The later meaning seems to have caught on.
2.3.7. Stylistic (or Social) Meaning
When a particular pattern of speech, language variety or speech form is associated with a specific
social context, stylistic or social meaning is achieved. It is common knowledge that a speaker’s
choice of words and structures reveals his or her social, regional, geographical or even economic
background. The choices can also reveal the level of familiarity between the speaker and the

18
hearer. Emphasis is usually on the different stylistic variations open to language users. Based on
the level of familiarity, users have the following possibilities in making requests:
(1) I wonder if I could see you later today (indirect question) used for extreme politeness)
(2) May I see you later today (very formal)
(3) Can I see you later today (causal and less formal?)
CONCLUSION
Meaning has been presented to be at the centre of semantics. Meaning can be thematic,
conceptual, associative, connotative, collocative, affective, reflected or stylistic. We have
discussed these types of meaning.
SUMMARY
In this unit, we have studied the following:
(1) The different schools of thought in the study of meaning
(2) The different types of meaning, thematic, conceptual, and associative.
(3)The ranges of associated meanings, connotative, collocative, and stylistic meaning.
Self assessment
(1) Discuss how the naturalists and nurturists approach the concept of meaning
(2) Write short notes on thematic, conceptual associative, connotative and reflected forms of
meaning.
Levels of meaning
1. Lexical meaning
In linguistics lexical meaning is the meaning of a word in relation to the physical world to
abstract concepts without reference to any sentence in which the word may occur.
It is the meaning of the base morpheme independent of its use within a sentence. It is the
meaning of content word that depends on the nonlinguistic concept it is used to express. It is the
meaning of the word considered in isolation from the sentence containing it and regardless of it
grammatical context.
Example
It refers to the meaning the term “play” not playing, played, and plays.
It does not mean the contextual meaning of words; it means the direct meaning of words.
Example
Where did you get this nice shirt? It does not mean buy, rather the direct meaning the term “get”.

19
Example: huge, attitude, get, bad.
2. Sentential meaning
Sentential meaning refers to the meaning of a sentence built up in apart from the meaning of its
NP and VP. There are several ways of knowing the meaning of a sentence. These are called
aspects of sentential meaning.
2.1 Aspects of Sentential Meaning
We do not communicate with isolated words. Indeed, knowledge of language and the art of
communication depend on our ability to combine words in a systematic way. When words are
combined, we achieve sentential meaning. The study of semantics is also expected to explore
meaning at this level.
Sense or lexical relations are concerned with the meaning of individual words. However, as we
observed in the unit on semantic theories, the function of theories of meaning includes the
explication of sentences. A great deal of the problems of communication derives from the
confusion at the level of sentences. It is, therefore, important that students of language should
explore sources of these problems.
1. Paraphrase
Paraphrase is to the sentence what synonymy is to words. This means that the paraphrase
explains a situation in which two or more sentences have one meaning. Indeed, a sentence can
have many paraphrases. There are two types of paraphrases: lexical and structural
paraphrases. In lexical paraphrases, we have two or more sentences fiving the same
interpretation as a result of the replacement of one word or phrase by another. The following
are examples:
a/ The chef hired a bachelor.
b/ The chef hired an unmarried man.
In the two sentences above, the change in their structure is as a result of the substitution of a
bachelor for an unmarried man. Both a bachelor and unmarried man are phrases. Consider
further the following sentences:
c/ The man was agitated.
d/ The man was anxious.

20
We have achieved the paraphrase by the substitution of the word agitated for another, anxious.
Structural paraphrase is achieved when we alter the arrangements of the sentences through
transformations. The following are examples:
a/ They bought a new apartment (Basic structure or subject + Verb+ object)
b/ It was a new apartment that they bought (Cleft)
c/ What they bought was a new apartment (Pseudo cleft)
d/ A new apartment was what they bought (topicalised)
1. Ambiguity
When an expression can be given more than one interpretation ambiguity arises. Therefore,
while polysemy relates to words, ambiguity is concerned with sentences. We have two types
of ambiguity lexical and structural. Lexical ambiguity occurs when the presence of just a
specific word leads to multiple interpretations. Consider the following examples:
a/ The team has many goals.
b/ She prepared tables.
It should be noted that goals and tables can be interpreted in different easy based on the
contexts. Structural ambiguity is achieved by the organisation of the elements of the
sentence. It is possible to interpret these elements in different ways. Consider these examples:
a/ They promoted all English teachers.
b/ Boiling water can be dangerous.
The ambiguity in the second sentence drives from the possibility of reading the sentence as:
(a) Water that is boiling (i.e. hot) can be dangerous.
(b) The act of boiling water can be dangerous.
The first interpretation makes boiling water as the subject noun phrase whereas in the second
interpretations, boiling water is the complement.
State the two types of ambiguity that can occur in a sentence.
2. Vagueness
A sentence is vague when it has no definite meaning. This lack of meaning may derive from the
incompatibility of the semantic properties of some of the words. Sometimes, a vague
expression may be grammatically well formed, yet its meaning may be farfetched. Consider the
following classical example taken from Chomsky (1965).
a/ Colourless green ideas sleep furiously together.

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It should be noted that many of what we describe as literary language would have been vague
except that we understand the background as literary. Consider further the following example:
b/ The stones consoled her.
This expression is clearly a personification since stones which are inanimate have been endued
with the characteristics of consoling.
3. Tautology
A situation of tautology arises when we have unnecessary repetition of elements in
communication. There is undue emphasis without necessarily making meaning any clearer.
Tautology is closely associated with redundancy which is the introduction of linguistic units
which do not affect the status or meaning of the larger construction. The following are examples
of tautology.
a/ This bachelor has not been married.
b/ The congregations are members of a church.
Other instances of tautology are:
a/ Circumnavigate around
b/ Unlawful theft
c/ Can be able
4. Presupposition
In presupposition, there is usually a piece of information which the speaker assumes the
hearer already knows. This assumption is based on some shared background knowledge
between the speaker and the hearers. An outsider in the circle of communication may be at a
loss. Let us illustrate this situation with the following sentences.
a/ John: Are you able to bring Harry along?
b/ Peter: That will be splendid. On our way, we shall pick up the drinks.
The presupposition in this conversation is that both John and Peter know who Harry is. They
both have an idea of the drinks, and the source from where to bring them.
5. Entailment
In entailment, there is usually a pair of sentences and the truth of one derives from the truth
of other. Consider the following sentences:
a/ Tracy is a spinster.
b/ Tracy is a female.

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Sentence (a) derives from the meaning of sentence (b). This means that if sentence (i) entails
sentence (b) then, sentence (b) is necessarily the implication of sentence (a).
6. Anomaly
Anomaly results from the combination of two semantic features that are not compatible in
describing a phenomenon. Words attract specific selectional restrictions. For instance trees are
vertical while rulers, ropes and snakes are horizontal. For vertical items, we describe them in
terms of tall, while for the horizontal ones we talk of long. Thus, we can have tall trees, tall
buildings tall people, but long ropes, long snakes, long rulers etc. It will, therefore, be anomalous
to have combination with features that are not compatible to describe phenomena.
a/ A long man
b/ A tall snake

7. Contradiction
Contradictory expressions present two opposing proposition at the same time. Thus, a person
cannot be dead and alive at the same time. Other examples of anomaly are:
(a) That circular house is rectangular.
(b) The drains are flooded because there are no rains.
8. Analyticity
We talk about analyticity when we have sentences in the grammatical forms and lexical
meanings of their proposition which make them necessarily true. Consider the following
examples:
(a) Churches are usually attended by Christians.
(b) Unmarried ladies are spinsters.
2.4. Theories of Meaning
Brain storming activity
 What are the different theories of meaning?
 Where is the origin of meaning?
 Which theory of meaning do you support? And why?
Just like every other discipline, there are theories to explain in detail the nature of meaning in a
principled way. The most enduring semantic theories will be presented here.

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It will be recalled that language as a system is organized along the structures of sound, words,
sentences and meaning. Each of these levels can be studied in some details, following specified
formulations or theories. For the purpose of a detailed study of semantics, the theories we shall
explore are expected to explain the nature of word and sentence meaning, among several other
things.
Semantic theories explain the nature of meaning by utilizing a finite set of rules to explain a
variety of semantic phenomena. Any theory of semantics should provide statements that explain
meaning relationship – such as ambiguity, anomaly, contradiction, tautology, paraphrase,
entailment, synonymy, hyponymy. This means that such a theory should be able to explain the
inherent meaning characteristics of words and sentences. Any reliable theory of semantics should
relate meaning to syntax, highlighting the relationship between them. This means that the rules
of sentence construction and those of word meaning should relate to explain in full the meaning
of the sentence.
A viable semantic theory should also relate meaning to the contexts and situations of word and
sentence usage for appropriate interpretation. There should also be a record of facts of meaning,
linguistic reference and truth conditions. These requirements suggest that such a theory should be
a part of the general linguistic theory. That means that semantic rules must have universal
applications. Such rules must give clues to the nature of semantic features which distinguish
lexical items of different languages of the world. Since the theory should account for meaning
properties on all languages, it helps to explain the structure of human languages. These
expectations have been met at different levels by different theories of meaning, including:
1/ the Ideational Theory
2/ the Referential Theory and
3/ the Usage Theory
2.4.1. The Ideational Theory of Meaning
Brain storming activity
o What is the view of ideational theory of meaning about the origin of meaning?
o What are the short comings of ideational theories of meaning?
This theory was developed by the British empiricist philosopher, John Locke. The theory
explains that the meaning attached to words can be separated from the word themselves. This
means that meaning originates in the mind in the form of ideas. Words are just sensible signs for

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the convenience of communication. Language is therefore, a mechanism for expressing thoughts
and thought is viewed as a succession of conscious ideas. The ideational theory is mentalistic.
Thus the meaning of a word is the mental image or idea of the word or the expression generated
in the mind of the speaker or hearer. There is no attempt to define words and expressions using
physical associations. Rather, the range of possible meanings ascribed to a given word is that set
of available feelings, images, ideas, concepts, thoughts and inferences that can be produced as
soon as a word is heard – (Glucksberg 1975:50). The ideational theory is perceived to be abstract
or imprecise because of dependence on mental images for decoding the meaning of words. Ideas
may be too vague to comprehend. There are also many words (especially the abstract ones) that
do not have specific physical realities, let alone mental manifestations. It is unthinkable that the
mind can create an image of what the senses cannot perceive. The theory may not be able to
account for synonymous expressions. It may also be difficult to use the theory to explain the
mental image conjured by sentences. Indeed, sentences derive their meaning more from the word
order.
2.4.2. The Referential Theory of Meaning
Brain storming activity
 What is the approach of referential theory of meaning about the origin of
meaning?
 Dear students do you think the drawbacks of referential theory of meaning?
This theory is associated with Ogden and Richards (1922). According to the Referential theory,
the meaning of a word is the object it refers to in the external world. That actual object is the
referent. The connection between the words or expressions and their referents is through the
process of thought. The words or expressions are just symbols.
One major criticism of this theory is that there are many words without physical objects they
refer to. Such words as intelligent, ugly, rich, poor etc. Which do not have the concrete qualities
of nouns may not have referents. Again, polysemous words (i.e words with more than one
meaning) may have the additional problem of having more than one referent. Items that belong
to groups may not have physical objects that are identical. Every sub-group has specific feature.
Individual members of the smallest sub-groups also have their identities. Therefore, we cannot
talk about absolute identification for referents. The referential theory may not have a way to

25
explain the meaning of words in the categories of adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and
conjunctions.
2.4.3. The Usage Theory of Meaning
Brainstorming activity
 What is the origin of meaning according to usage theory of meaning?
 Dear students do you think that usage theory of meaning has shortcomings?
The German scholar, Wittgenstein (1953), developed this theory. It has been elaborated upon by
J. Firth and M.A Haliday. The usage theory is also referred to as the contextual or operational
theory of meaning. The major motivation was fear that the meaning of certain classes of words
could be lost if meaning were treated as just entities. According to the theory, the meaning of a
word or an expression is determined by the context of its use. It is the effect created by a
linguistic unit within a given context that expresses its full meaning.

CONCLUDING
We have observed that theories provided a concise framework of analysis in semantics. There
are a number of theories in semantics, each with its own merits and shortfalls. We have discussed
the ideational, referential and usage theories of meaning.
SUMMARY
In this unit, we have learnt:
(a) The nature of semantic theories
(b) The origin and features of the ideational referential and usage theories
(c)The criticisms against these theories, as well as their major areas of application
Self-Assessment Exercise
(a) List any three theories of semantics
(b) State any three characteristics of semantic theories
(c) Discuss the nature of theories in semantics.
(d) Provide a critique of the ideational and referential theories of meaning.
REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Kempson, R. (1977). Semantic Theory. London: Cambridge University Press.
Leech, G. (1981). Semantic. London: Penguim Books.
Conceptual system

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A conceptual system is a system that is composed of non physical objects i.e. ideas or concepts.
In this context a system taken to mean an interrelated or interworking sets of objects. Here by
concepts is an abstract idea or mental symbol, typically associated with corresponding
representation in a language or symbology.
Symbol
It is an object that represents, stands for or suggests an idea, visual image belief, action or mental
entity. Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures or visual images and are used to convey
ideas and beliefs.
What distinguishes a conceptual system from physical system?
A conceptual system is non tangible /non physical/ objects such as or ideas or concepts.
It is an abstract idea.
It may be represented in a language or symbols.
Physical systems are tangible
Example –atoms
Rainbow and other untouchable objects are tangible
A physical system can be –touched –observed or sensed by sapient beings.
Levels of language
Utterance, sentence and proposition
The three terms are used to describe the different levels of language.
1. Utterance

Utterance means something said or emitted as a vocal sound. An utterance is a stretch talk by one
person before and which there is silence on the part of that person. It used by a particular person
on particular occasion on a particular language.
An utterance can be a sequence of sentences or a single phrase even a single word.
An utterance is an act of saying that has time, place, speaker and language.
Example
If someone says “senior English majoring students are active participants”.
Utterances are pieces of speech.
Characteristics of utterances
Utterances have the following features

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  Utterances are spoken or they are physical events. Their events are ephemeral: short
lived.
 Utterances may be grammatical or not.
 Utterances involve two parties: speaker and listener.
2. Sentences

Sentences are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances. Sentences are neither
physical object nor physical events. They are conceived as a string of words put together by
grammatical rules of language. A sentence is a grammatically complete string of words
expressing a complete thought.
3. Sentences and Utterances
3.1 Sentences
Although a clear distinction between sentences and utterances is not available, definitions of
each category provided by different linguists can be used for distinguishing between these two
entities. Focusing on linguistic features, Bloomfield (1946:170) defines a sentence as: ―an
independent linguistic form not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger
linguistic form. According to Bloomfield, the sentence is the largest unit of grammatical
description, that is, it is the maximum unit of grammatical analysis. Therefore, the sentence is
conveniently taken as the largest unit of grammatical analysis and the upper limit of structural
statement at the grammatical level (Robins, 1967:191). However, Scheflen (1974:19) defines a
sentence from a relatively conversational point as he states that a syntactic sentence is not
identified according to a grammatical structure; it is instead that unit of speech that is marked off
by certain traditional behaviours that accompany the stream of speech.
Peter Grundy (1995:210) refers to a sentence as the formal output of a grammar in which
constituent items are combined in a limited set of rule-determined configurations. A sentence is,
by definition, grammatically complete. It may, therefore, be preceded and followed by infinite
pause or silence, together with those phonetic features associated in each language with pre-
pausal position; it is usually marked in writing by final punctuation, full stop, question mark,
exclamation mark, or semicolon, and in speech by a characteristic intonation tune. According to
Trask (1999:273), a sentence is the largest linguistic unit, which is held together by rigid
grammatical rules. Utterances can be defined as everything said by one speaker before another
speaker beginning to speak. Harris (1951:14) defines an utterance as: ―any stretch of talk, by

28
one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that person.‖ This definition is
also adapted by Lyons (1977a:26) and Hurford and Heasley (1983:15). An utterance is the use of
a piece of language by a particular speaker on a particular occasion such as a sequence of
sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word. Utterances have verbal and non-verbal
qualities. In defining utterance, Charles Goodwin (1981:7) includes the phenomena of whole
vocal production of the speaker such as midword plosives, inbreaths, laughter, crying, and
pause…etc. Conversation mainly consists of utterances as Lyons (1972:61) argues that sentence
never occurs in speech. In the same vein, Peter Grundy (1995:121) embraces this view as he
remarks that the sentence has been subsumed within the utterance so that it is no longer a
separate component.
According to their form and function, sentences can be classified into different types: simple,
complex, interrogative, negative, exclamatory, declarative, imperative, assertive, and so on.
Similarly, H. P. Grice (in Searle 1974:60) talks of utterance types such as non-sentential
utterance, indicative utterance, imperative utterance, complete utterance, non-complete utterance,
syntactically structured utterance and so on. Characteristic features of sentences and utterances
can be briefly discussed as follows: As sentences are the typical grammatical products, certain
rules and conventions govern their productions. Any sentence conventionally begins with a
capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark, or an exclamatory symbol. A sentence is
an abstract, static and grammatical entity, which is invented by grammarians to exemplify rules
of syntax and semantics. It can be broken up into phrases and these again into words. Among the
constituents of sentences, there exist manifold relationships. Thus, sentences are quite clearly
structural units.
Utterance
An utterance, on the other hand, is a speech act, which is a form of act or activity. Being a speech
act, an utterance is necessarily context bound, whereas a sentence is context free. An utterance is
a unit of communication whose significance or value is established by its contextual situation,
immediate context (neighboring utterances or other linguistic clues) and larger context
(background knowledge and circumstances). According to Blake (1990), every sentence consists
of clause elements: subject, predicate, object, complement and adjunct. It does not mean that
every sentence possesses all of these elements; however, most of the sentences may have subject

29
and predicator. Moreover, the literal meaning is a special feature of a sentence. A sentence being
a purely grammatical object is concerned with semantics.
Therefore, semantics deals with sentence meaning. Utterances have linguistic, non-linguistic and
pragmatic properties. The minimum pragmatic requirement for an utterance is that it has both a
speaker and a hearer who understands the sense of the utterance and is capable of exchanging
their roles. An utterance may be a full sentence, a fragment, a false start, or brief utterances such
as 'mum‘, uhuh‘, ‘yes‘, ‘no‘ and so on. Utterances may omit clause elements that is, subject,
object, verb, etc. An utterance being context-oriented is concerned with pragmatics. Therefore,
pragmatics deals with utterance meaning. In this context, Katz (1977:14) writes: Sentence
meaning is the meaning of a sentence type in the language, whereas utterance meaning is the
meaning of a particular use, or token, of a sentence type on that particular occasion. Grammars
represent sentence meaning because the meaning of a sentence in the language is the meaning it
has by virtue of its having a particular grammatical structure. Pragmatic theories represent
utterance meaning because the meaning of an utterance is the meaning it has by virtue of its
being a specific spatiotemporal occurrence of a particular contextual structure.
It is important to distinguish between word meaning and what is intended to convey when using
a range of words. The distinction is useful in analysing the various kinds of communication
between people made possible by language. Accordingly, it is noteworthy to mention that
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 in the language concerned.
4. Proposition

Proposition is the part of the meaning of the utterance of declarative sentence which describe
some state of affairs.
Propositions are descriptions of state of affairs and basic elements of sentence meaning.
It is a claim about the world. It has just a form of an idea. Proposition is a fact about the world,
which can be true or false.
Example
a/ The boy is playing foot ball. True
b/ Two plus two it makes five.
c/ Italy invaded Ethiopia.

30
d/ Ethiopia was invaded by Italy
e/ It was Ethiopia that Italy invaded.
f/ It was Italy invaded Ethiopia.
g/ What Italy invaded was Ethiopia.
The one who invaded Ethiopia was Italy. These six statements have one proposition. All the
above sentences share same state of affairs; they convey the same conceptual meaning. If one is
false all are also false. The basic concept of the above sentences is Italy invaded Ethiopia. All
sentences are represented by one proposition. Therefore the same proposition can be represented
by using several different statements. Proposition is then a way of capturing part of the meaning
of sentence.
There are various ways to represent or identify propositions.
1. Using capital letters
Example
a/ ROOSVELT INVADED MOSOLONI
b/ THE WAR ENDED
2. Using formulas
Invade (Roosvelt, Mosoloni )
End (war)
The Three aspects of language
Syntax, semantics and pragmatics
-What do you think is the relationship among the three aspects of meaning?
-What is the concern of each aspect of language?
Traditionally, syntax is taken to be the study of the combinatorial properties of words, semantics
to be the study of meaning and pragmatics to be the study of language usage.
Syntax
Syntax is study of the rules by which words are organized into phrases or sentences in a
particular language.
• Referred to as the grammar of the language and allows for more complex expression of
thoughts and ideas by making references to past and future events.
• Syntax is the required grammar and punctuation of the language.
• Syntax is just the “code” you use to describe the semantics.

31
Semantics
It is concerned with the larger meaning component of language.
• It studies More than single words includes complex use of vocabulary, including
structures such as word categories, word relationships, synonyms, antonyms, figurative
language, ambiguities, and absurdities.
• Semantics is all about meaning--what the statements do, what the programs do.
• Semantics has to do with the meaning of constructs in a language, and the meanings of
programs written in that language.
• Semantics is fundamental to everything you do in a language.
Pragmatics
It is concerned with the knowledge and ability to use language functionally in social or
interactive situations.
• It integrates all the other language skills, but also requires knowledge and use of rule
governing the use of language in social context.
• Pragmatics has to do with what’s “good” and “bad” about a language.
3. Lexical sense relations
What do you think is the relationships among
In our study of semantic theories, we noted that viable theories of meaning should be able to
explain the nature of the meaning of words as well as that of sentences. In this unit, we shall
explore the meaning of words, using principally the principle of sense relations.
So far, you have learnt that the meaning of a word may not always be realized from its referential
or denotational characteristics. Indeed, there are many words whose basic characteristics may not
be easy to analyze. Such words are best studied by focusing on the kind of relationship they
create with other words. These relationships are based on the sense of the words. Therefore, we
study words from their sense relations or lexical relations. At this level, we study sense relations
along the following lines: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, and homophony
Synonymy
When reference is made to lexical relation or close relatedness in the meaning of words, we deal
with synonymy. We can therefore, describe pairs of words that have very close similarities in
meaning as synonyms. For example we can have the following pairs of words as synonyms:
Friend/ally: boss/master; amiable/friendly

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It has often been observed that words may not always have exact substitutes in all contexts. This
observation means that we may have absolute, complete and total synonyms when there are
exact substitutes as in:-
- Everybody/Everyone
- Bandit/Brigand
There are also broad or near synonyms as in
- rich / sumptuous
- mature / ripe
Synonymy
Synonymy is one of the characteristic features of the vocabulary of natural languages. English as
a highly developed language is known for its copious stock of synonyms. Even as early as the
Anglo Saxon period, the use of synonyms to add to the variety of language was noticeable. As
Jespersen noted in his book Growth and Structure of the English Language, the wealth of
synonymous terms found in Old English poetry is astonishing. For example, in Beowulf alone,
there were at least thirty six words used for 'hero' and 'prince', seventeen expressions found used
for 'sea', plus thirteen more from other poems, and eleven words for 'ship' or 'boat', plus sixteen
more in other poems (ninth edition, p.53). However, in present day English, most of these terms
have disappeared because we no longer need them.
6.3.1 Definition of Synonyms
Synonyms can be defined as words different in sound and spelling but nearly alike or exactly the
same in meaning. Reasonable as it sounds, this definition is subject to disagreement. The focal
point is what is meant by meaning. As we have already known (See Word Meaning), meaning is
a composite consisting of different types. Does the word 'meaning' mean one type or the total of
all the different types? If one chooses any group of synonyms and analyses them, one will find
different shades of meaning. For example, end/terminate/close are all modes of ending, but to
terminate is to 'end finally' and to close is to 'end gradually'.
Difference is also apparent in pairs of maid/girl, monkey/imitate, and generous/extravagant.
Although they denote similar concept, they differ in stylistic appropriateness and affective
values. Therefore, a better definition might be `one of two or more words in the English language
which have the same or very nearly the same essential meaning.'(WNDS) In other words,
synonyms share a likeness in denotation as well as in part of speech. A verb cannot have an

33
adjective as its synonym, neither can an adverb take a noun as its synonym: *end/final or
*brother/fraternally.
6.3.2 Types of Synonyms
Synonyms can be classified into two major groups: absolute synonyms and relative synonyms.
1. Absolute synonyms also known as complete synonyms are words which are identical in
meaning in all its aspects, i.e. both in grammatical meaning and lexical meaning, including
conceptual and associative meanings. Synonyms of this type are interchangeable in every way. It
is observed that absolute synonyms are rare in natural languages and some people even hold that
such synonyms are nonexistent.
Absolute synonyms are restricted to highly specialized vocabulary, such as scarletfever
/scarlatina in medicine, and composition/compounding in lexicology, etc.
2. Relative synonyms also called nearsynonyms are similar or nearly the same in denotation, but
embrace different shades of meaning or different degrees of a given quality. Take change/
alter /vary for example. To change a thing is to put another thing in its place; to alter a thing is to
make it different from which it was before; to vary a thing is to alter it in different manner and at
different times, e.g. 'A man changes his habits, alters his conduct, and varies his manner of
speaking.' Try to choose the right word to fill each of the blanks.
Change alter
Yesterday I bought a coat, but it was too big, so I took it back and _______ it.
Yesterday I bought a coat, but it was too big, so I took it to the tailor and _______ it
Look at stagger/reel/totter. Stagger implies unsteady movement characterized by a loss of
balance and failure to maintain a fixed course, e.g. stagger under a heavy load; reel suggests a
swaying or lurching so as to appear on the verge of falling, e.g. The drunken man reeled down
the hall; totter indicates the uncertain, faltering steps of a feeble old person or of an infant
learning to walk.
Silent/tacit, shine/glitter /sparkle/glare, different/various, idle /lazy/indolent, strange/odd/quee,r
large/huge/tremendous /colossal and the like all belong to this group. The concept 笑 can be
expressed in a variety of ways, but each is different from the rest: laugh, smile, grin, chuckle,
giggle, chortle, titter, snigger, guffaw, cackle, roar.
6.3.3 Sources of Synonyms

34
1. Borrowing. Modern English is extremely rich in synonyms, which come from different
sources.
The most important source is perhaps borrowing. As Baugh says, 'the richness of English in
synonyms
is largely due to the happy mingling of Latin, French and native elements.'(p.186) As a result of
borrowing, words of native origin form many couplets and triplets with those from other
languages, e.g.
Native/Foreign
room /chamber
foe /enemy
help /aid
leave /depart
wise/ sage
bodily corporal
earthly/ terrestrial
warlike /bellicose
buy /purchase
Native /French Latin
ask question/ interrogate
fast firm /secure
fire flame /conflagration
fear terror/ trepidation
holy sacred/ consecrated
goodness/ virtue probity
time age /epoch
2. Dialects and regional English, e.g.
railway (BrE) railroad (AmE)
mother (BrE) minny (ScotE)
charm (BrE) glamour (ScotE)
ranch (AmE) run (AusE)
job (StandE) gig (BlackE)

35
jim (BlackE) male person (StandE)
3. Figurative and euphemistic use of words, e.g. occupation (profession) walk of life (fig)
dreamer stargazer (fig)
drunk elevated (euph)
lie distort the fact (euph)
4. Coincidence with idiomatic expressions, e.g. win gain the upper hand decide make up one's
mind finish get through hesitate be in two minds help lend one a hand.

6.3.4 Discrimination of Synonyms

Generally speaking, there is no difference between absolute synonyms whereas relative
synonyms always differ in one way or another. The differences between synonyms may boil
down to three areas:denotation, connotation, and application.
Difference in denotation: Synonyms may differ in the range and intensity of meaning. Some
words have a wider range of meaning than others. For example, Timid and timorous are
synonymous, but the former is applied to both the state of mind in which a person may happen to
be at the moment, and to the habitual disposition, and the latter only to the disposition.
Therefore, timid has a wider range of meaning than timorous. It is the same with comprehend
and understand. The verb “understand” is used in a much more extended sense than comprehend.
Whatever is comprehended is understood, but in many cases, comprehend cannot take the place
of understand. It would be quite correct to say, 'I did not comprehend his arguments, although I
understood the language, and all the sentences.'
Antonymy
The relationship of oppositeness is referred to as anynonymy. We always observe that in public
and professional examinations in which knowledge of English is tested, there are sections on
words and opposites. Antonymy occurs in two forms – gradable and non-gradable antonyms. For
adjectives and adverbs, gradable antonyms show degrees and can be compared with suffixes
–er, and –est as well as with the words, more and most – as in:
- Tall Taller Tallest
- intelligent more intelligent most intelligent
- dangerously more dangerously most dangerously

36
On the other hand, non-gradable antonyms do not occur as comparative constructions. Words in
this category are expressed as complementary pairs – such that their exact opposites are the only
options. For example, someone can be male or female, father or mother, dead or alive, married or
single. Other examples of non-gradable antonyms are – close or open, found or lost. There are
also relational opposites which convey the meaning of reciprocal, bilateral or social
relationships. Such meanings are interdependent such that membership of one of the pairs
suggests the other.
The following are common examples:
Teacher – student
Parent – child
Brother – sister
Buy – sell
Servant – master
Wife – husband
Employer - employee
Gradable antonyms
The set of gradable opposites includes many common and prototypical pairs of opposites
including big/little, good/bad, high/low, hot/cold, happy/sad, tall/short, and wet/dry. The defining
property of this set is that the opposites name qualities which are gradable, that is, qualities
which can be conceived of as 'more or less'; therefore the scale (dimension) with which each pair
is associated has a neutral mid interval. Take for example hot and cold, which describe opposite
ends of the scale of TEMPERATURE. Hot and cold are both gradable; for example, we can say
"A is hotter than B," "C is fairly cold," "D is very hot," and so on.6 Between the opposite poles
named by hot and cold, there is a mid interval, so that if something is neither hot nor cold, it
might be warm, cool, or lukewarm, etc.7
Although there are also nouns (e.g., friend/enemy) and verbs (e.g., love/hate and like/dislike)
which show properties of gradability, most attention has been given to the adjectives of this type,
perhaps because the adjectives most clearly exhibit other characteristic properties of gradable
opposites, such as implicit comparison, committedness, and markedness.
Implicit comparison can easily be seen in examples such as big and little, tall and short, young
and old, and hot and cold. Something is described as big or tall or hot in comparison to other

37
things of the same type. This means, for example, that a tall child is tall in comparison to other
children of the same age, but may in fact be much shorter than a short adult, and that a hot day
describes a hotter than average day, but an overall temperature that is much lower than the one
described by a hot oven.
Committedness involves an adjective's behavior in questions. An adjective is said to be
committed if it implies a particular value when used in a question, and impartial or uncommitted
if it does not have such an implication. For example, tall is uncommitted in a question like "How
tall is Pat?" This question is neutral and can be used whether or not the speaker knows Pat's
approximate height and whether Pat is tall, short or of average height. In contrast, the adjective
short is committed; a speaker would only ask "How short is Pat?" if there is some reason to
believe that Pat is shorter than average height. Many pairs of gradable antonyms contain one
committed term and one uncommitted, e.g., old/young, heavy/light, fast/slow; many other pairs
are made up of two committed terms, e.g., innocent/guilty, beautiful/ugly, happy/sad.
Markedness has been used as cover term for several related phenomena which distinguish the
marked member of an antonym pair from the unmarked member. Lehrer (1985) discusses several
of the criteria which have been proposed to define markedness. Committedness is one of them:
the uncommitted member of an antonym pair is said to be unmarked and the committed member
is said to be marked, so old is unmarked, while young is marked. It has also been noted that if the
name of the semantic scale is morphologically related to one of the antonyms, it is related to the
unmarked member, so for example, the name of the scale of LENGTH is related to the unmarked
long rather than the marked short.
Another criterion of markedness is that the unmarked antonym can generally appear in a wider
range of syntactic contexts; in particular, unmarked antonyms can occur with measure phrases
but marked ones usually cannot, so we can say that something is 3 feet tall but not 3 feet short.
Similarly, ratios are usually only possible with the unmarked antonym; we can say that Kim is
twice as old as Pat, but we can't say that Pat is twice as young as Kim. Morphology also plays a
role: in pairs, in which one antonym is derived from the other, the derived member is said to be
marked, so happy is unmarked and unhappy is marked.
Most research on antonymy has focused on gradable opposites, antonyms in the narrow sense,
perhaps because the properties described above are quite subtle and fascinating, but a few
people, including Lyons

38
(1977) and Cruse (1986) have tried to characterize the other sorts of commonly occurring
opposites. These other types lack the special properties found with gradable opposites, but like
them, they show a "dependence on dichotomization" (Lyons 1977). In other words, like
antonyms in the narrow sense, these other types of opposites are also pairs of words which share
some kind of semantic dimension.
Other types of opposites
Complementary antonyms
The type of opposite which is most similar to the gradable opposite is the complementary
opposite, sometimes known as the contradictory. 8 Examples of complementaries include
adjectives such as true/false, dead/alive, and male/female. Like the gradable adjectives, the
complementary adjectives share a semantic dimension, but it is a dimension which has no middle
values. As Cruse describes it: compartments, so that what does not fall into one of the
compartments must necessarily fall into the other" (Cruse 1986, 198).
For example, we know that if a person is not dead, s/he must be alive; if a statement is not true it
is false, and so on. It is sometimes hard to decide whether a pair of opposites belongs in the set of
gradable adjectives or in the set of complementaries, as in the case of clean/dirty. Clean and dirty
are both gradable adjectives: we can say that something is fairly clean, very clean, extremely
dirty, and we can say that X is cleaner/dirtier than Y. However, the scale of clean and dirty does
not seem to have a middle term; whenever something is not clean, it can be described as dirty, so
as Cruse says, it sounds strange to say "It's neither clean nor even slightly dirty."9 The case of
wet and dry (the subject of my third case study) is similar in that there are words such as damp
and moist which appear to name midpoints of the scale. However, as I will show, it seems that
damp and moist are actually just more specific terms for types of wetness. We can gloss damp as
'slightly wet', but we cannot gloss a true midpoint word in this way (e.g., we can't gloss
lukewarm as "slightly hot").
In addition to adjectives, verbs such as pass/fail and obey/disobey, nouns such as day/night,
prepositions such as in/out, and adverbs such as backwards/forwards are also sometimes
considered examples of complementaries. Although by definition, complementaries are pairs
which allow no logical middle term, in actual use, complementaries are sometimes used like
gradable adjectives; for example, we can say that something is almost true, or that someone is
barely alive. However, as Lyons (1977) points out, in these cases it may be the "secondary

39
implications" of the words that are being graded rather than the main sense. That is, someone
who is barely alive is actually entirely alive, but s/he is not as lively or energetic as most people
are.
Reverse antonyms
Directional opposites are another type of opposite, described in Lyons (1977) and in greater
detail in Cruse (1986). These are generally adverbs or prepositions and include pairs such as
up/down, in/out, and clockwise/anticlockwise.
Reversive opposites, described in Lehrer and Lehrer (1982) and Egan (1968), are yet another
type of opposite. Egan describes reversive opposites in this way: these comprise adjectives or
adverbs which signify a quality or verbs or nouns which signify an act or state that reverse or
undo the quality, act, or state of the other. Although they are neither contradictory nor contrary
terms, they present a clear opposition. (Egan 1968, 27a) This class contains many verbs, for
example, tie/untie, marry/divorce, enter/leave, appear/disappear. Cruse and Lyons consider the
reversive verbs to be a subtype of directional opposites, because they all describe activities
which result in an object undergoing a change from one state to another; the two members of the
reversive pair involve the same two states, but the direction of change is different in each case;
for example, the verb tie means roughly 'to cause something to go from the state of being untied
to the state of being tied,' while untie means ' to cause something to go from the state of being
tied to the state of being untied.' Thus Cruse says the opposition seen in pairs of reversive verbs
is similar to the kind of opposition in pairs of directional prepositions such as to/from.
Converse antonyms
Relational opposites (Cruse 1986) (also called relative terms (Egan 1968) and conversive terms
(Lyons 1977)) include pairs such as above/below, predecessor/successor, parent/child and
teacher/student. Egan describes these as "pairs of words which indicate such a relationship that
one of them cannot be used without suggesting the other." Cruse considers this class to also be a
subclass of the directional opposites. He says that these pairs "express a relationship between two
entities by specifying the direction of one relative to the other along some axis." In examples
such as above/below, this axis is spatial, but other examples (e.g., ancestor/descendant) involve
"an analogical or metaphorical extension of spatial dimensions" (Cruse 1986, 231).
Lyons points out that many opposites of this type involve social roles (teacher/student,
doctor/patient) or kinship relations (father/mother), and these types of reciprocal relations have

40
been well documented in many languages in the anthropological literature. The various types of
opposites discussed so far--antonyms, complementaries, directional opposites, and so on--all
illustrate the essential properties of antonymy: they are pairs of words which simultaneously
seem close and yet far apart in meaning, words which share some kind of semantic dimension
but denote contrasting values along that dimension. But simply looking at the different types of
opposites does not go very far in explaining what makes two particular words antonyms and why
some words have no antonyms. To address these questions, it is useful to look at near-opposites,
pairs of words which contrast in some way but which do not seem to be "real" opposites.
Understanding what prevents some words from being opposites will lead to a deeper
understanding of the essential properties of antonymy. In the next section, some examples of
near-opposites are given, along with the suggestions that have been given to explain why these
pairs are just near opposites rather than antonyms.

Hyponymy
When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, we have hyponymy. For
instance, included in animals are dogs, elephants, goat, etc. We can also relate hyponymy to
professions to include law, medicine, teaching, banking, etc. There is always a hierarchical
relationship drawing from the general to samples. The general term is usually referred to as
superordinate term while the terms that indicate inclusion are referred to as hyponyms. Simply
then, hyponymy is about relations of inclusion.
As such, we can say that flower is a superordinate term while rose, hibiscus, cauliflower,
sunflower, carnation, forget-me-not, etc. are hyponyms of flower. Co-occurring hyponyms are
referred to as co-hyponyms. Thus, table, chair, cupboard, wardrobe, bookshelf, bedstead are co-
hyponyms while their superordinate term is furniture.
You should find other examples to practice and you will find it very interesting, almost like a
game.
Homonymy
Homonymy explains a situation of identical spelling or pronunciation but with different
unrelated meanings. Such words usually create problems of ambiguity. Consider the following.

41
Homonyms are words that sound alike but have different meanings. Homophones are a type of
homonym that also sound alike and have different meanings, but have different spellings.

Homophones

Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but which are different in spelling and
meaning, e.g., "to", "two", and "too". Not all words that are spelled identically are pronounced
identically, so they may be homographs without being homophones, e.g., "lead" as a metal and
as the verb 'to go in front'.

accept/except buy/by/bye

capital/capitol eminent/imminent

fair/fare lie/lye

meat/meet/mete role/roll

scene/seen whine/wine

ad - advertisement add - join, combine

advice - guidance advise - recommend
aid - assist, assistance aide - one who gives assistance
ail - to suffer poor health ale - a beverage
air - atmosphere ere – before heir - one who inherits
property
aisle - a passage I'll - contraction of I will isle - island
allusion - an indirect reference illusion - false appearance
altar - table in a church alter - to change
ate - past tense of eat eight - the number 8
bail - to clear water bail - release of a prisoner bale - a large bundle
band - a ring, something that band - a group banned - prohibited
binds

42
bare - uncovered bear - large animal bear - support, yield
bases - starting points bases - four stations on a baseball basis - a basic principle
field
beat - to strike, overcome beat - exhausted beet - a plant with red roots
blew - past tense of blow blue - the color
bread - baked food item bred - produced
buy - purchase by - near, through bye - goodbye

Homographs
Homographs are words that are spelled alike, but have different meanings and usually different
pronunciations, e.g., "stalk" as a plant stem and as the verb meaning to pursue stealthily.
Homographs also come from entirely different sources. Homonyms are words spelled or
pronounced alike but which have different meanings. Since homonym can be used to
(ambiguously) describe either a homograph or homophone, it is best avoided.

In addition to homophones (words with the same sound, but different

spellings, meanings, or origins), there are also homographs (words
with the same spellings, but different meanings, origins, or
pronunciations. There are two large subgroups:

Subgroup 1:

These common words have the same spelling and pronunciation, but
very different meanings and/or origins. Common examples:

Homographs differences*
bear (N)bear (N): a kind of animal
bear (V) bear (V): to carry

date (N)date (N): a kind of fruit; a calendar time

date (V) date (V): to determine the age; to "go out"

fast (Adj)fast (Adj): quick

43
fast (V) fast (V): to abstain from (choose not to eat) food

hide (N)hide (N): animal skin

hide (V) hide (V): to conceal

net (N)net (N): woven trap made of rope or cord

net (Adj) net (Adj): amount remaining after deductions

pick (N)pick (N): a kind of tool

pick (V) pick (V): to choose

Subgroup 2:

These words have the same spelling, but different stress. The stress
changes for the noun and verb forms of these words. Examples:

homographs* Differences
áddress (N)address (N): where one lives
addréss (V) address (V): to give a speech; to write
an address

cómpress (N)compress (N): medicine put on a cloth

compréss (V) and worn next to the skin
compress (V): press together

éxport (N)export (N): something that is exported

expórt (V) export (V): to send a product outside a country (to be sold)

ínsult (N)ínsult (N): insulting action or words

insúlt (V) insúlt (V): to say or do something
which is offensive or rude

44
cónvert (N)convert (N): someone who has changed
convért (Adj) from one group (for example, a religion) to another
convert (V): to change from one form
to another

désert (N)desert (N): dry place

desért (V) desert (V): abandon

lie (untruth) and lie (prone)

fair (county fair), fair (reasonable).

read (present tense--pronounced [ ríjd ] /

read (past tense--pronounced [ red ]

lead (verb--pronounced [ líjd ] /

lead (noun [Pb]--pronounced [ led ]

do (noun [music]--pronounced [ dóu ] /

do (verb--pronounced [ dúw ]

lead (to go in front of)/lead (a metal)

wind (to follow a course that is not straight)/wind (a gust of air)

bass (low, deep sound)/bass (a type of fish)

Homonymy
Homonyms are generally defined as words different in meaning but either identical both in sound
and spelling or identical only in sound or spelling.
6.2.1 Types of Homonyms
Based on the degree of similarity, homonyms fall into three classes: perfect homonyms,
homographs and homophones.

45
1. Perfect homonyms are words identical both in sound and spelling, but different in meaning,
e.g.
bank n. the edge of the river, lake, etc.
bank n. an establishment for money business
bear n. a large heavy animal
bear v. to put up with
date n. a kind of fruit
date n. a boy or girl friend
2. Homographs [homo(same)+graph(writing)] are words identical only in spelling but different
in sound and meaning, e.g.
bow /bau/ n. bending the head as a greeting
bow /b?u/ n. the device used for shooting arrows
sow /s?u/ v. to scatter seeds
sow /sau/ n. female adult pig
3. Homophones [home(same)+phone(sound)] are words identical only in sound but different in
spelling and meaning, e.g.
dear /di/ n. a loved person
deer /di?/ n. a kind of animal
right /rait/ a. correct
write /rait/ v. to put down on paper with a pen
rite /rait/ n. a ceremonial procedure
son /s?n/ n. a male child of someone
sun /s?n/ n. the heavenly body from which the earth gets warmth and light
Origins of Homonyms
There are various sources of homonyms: change in sound and spelling, borrowing, etc.
1. Change in sound and spelling. Some homonyms are native by origin, derived from different
earlier forms in Old English. The change in sound and spelling gradually made them identical in
modern English, e.g.
ear n. an organ with which to listen and hear, from eare (OE)
ear n. the grain bearing spike of corn or wheat, from ?r (OE)
long a. not short, from lang (OE)

46
long v. to want very much, from langian (OE)
2. Borrowing. As a result of heavy borrowing from other languages, many words of foreign
origin coincide in sound and/or spelling with those of native origin or with those of other foreign
origin, e.g.
fair n. a market, borrowed from feria (L)
fair a. pretty, from f?ger (OE)
ball n. an round object to play with, from beallu (OE)
ball n. a dancing party, borrowed from baller (OF)
3. Shortening. Many shortened forms of words happen to be identical with other words in
spelling
or sound, e.g.
ad n. shortened from advertisement
add v. to cause an increase
rock n shortened from rock `n' roll
rock n. a large mass of stone
NOW n. from the initials of National Organization of Women
now adv. at present
6.2.3 Differentiation of Homonyms from Polysemants
Perfect homonyms and polysemants are fully identical with regard to spelling and pronunciation.
This creates the problem of differentiation. The fundamental difference between homonyms and
polysemants lies in the fact that the former refers to different words which happen to share the
same form and the latter is the same word which has several distinguishable meanings. One
important criterion is to see their etymology, i.e. homonyms are from different sources whereas a
polysemant is from the same source which has acquired different meanings in the course of
development. The second principal consideration is semantic relatedness. The various meanings
of a polysemant are correlated and connected to one central meaning to a greater or lesser
degree, e.g. neck (See 5.1 Polysemy). On the other hand, meanings of different homonyms have
nothing to do with one another. In dictionaries, a polysemant has its meanings all listed under
one headword whereas homonyms are listed as separate entries. Here are the characteristics of
each:
polysemant:

47
(1) same source, different meaning
(2) meanings related
homonyms:
(1) different source, different meanings
(2) meanings not related
6.2.4 Rhetoric Features of Homonyms
As homonyms are identical in sound or spelling, particularly homophones, they are often
employed to create puns for desired effect of, say, humour, sarcasm or ridicule. Consider the
following conversation that took place between a waitress and a customer in a restaurant.
[25] "You're not eating your fish," the waitress said to him. "Anything wrong with it?"
"Long time no sea," the man replied.
Long time no see is usually said as a form of greeting between two friends when they meet after
a long time. Here the customer cleverly employed the structure of the idiom to his advantage to
criticize in a humorous way the bad quality of the food served at the restaurant. Long time no sea
implies that `sea food kept for a long time is not fit for eating'. Here is another example.
[26] "On Sunday they pray for you and on Monday they prey on you."
This was the remark made by a London worker on one Sunday morning when he saw groups of
the so called pious gentlemen and ladies entering the church for prayer. Prey meaning 'plunder'
or 'rob' sounds the same as pray. In the church, the gentlemen and ladies pray for blessing from
the God, but once out of church, they show their true features, ruthlessly exploiting the working
people like ferocious animals preying on their victims. The sardonic tone is unmistakable.

Hypernymy

Hyponymy and hypernymy both refers to the relationship semantics inclusion that holds between
more general and the more specific term. The more general term which is super-ordinate term is
called hyperym and the most specific term is hyponym.

Example

Dog and cat are hyponyms of animal.

Examples:

48
- Bank (of a river)
- Bank (financial institution)
- Fly (an insect)
- Fly (to move in the air)
- Lead (verb to guide)
- Lead (an element used in making pencil)
When homonymy is partial, we have heteronymy. It is possible to have a situation of homonymy
at one medium of language – such as in writing – but pronounced differently as in
Lead - /li:d/ and
Lead - /led/.
This situation is referred to as homography. With this distinction, it has become more common to
reserve the term homophony to the reference to identical pronunciation as in:
Key and quay /ki:/
Been and bean /bi:n/
Court and caught /kЭ:t/

Polysemy
A situation of polysemy arises when one form of a word has multiple meanings which are related
by extension. Words that are polysemous have single entries in the dictionary. However, there
are numbers that suggest the list of possible meanings – as shown below:
Foot 1 – of a person
2 – of a bed
3 – of a mountain
It should be noted that homonyms are listed as different lexical items in the dictionary.
The word polysemy refers to the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. A
polyseme / polysemous/ or polysemic word is a word or a phrase with multiple meanings
/referents/. It is the direct opposite of monosemy ie a one-to-one match between a word and a
meaning.
Example
Good = good person
=Good idea

49
 =Good instrument.
Bank = financial institution
Bank of a river
Hook = a piece of material usually metal
= trap made of metal
=Sharply covered material.
Polysemy
Polysemy is a common feature peculiar to all natural languages. This is particularly true of
highly developed languages like English. In modern English, an overwhelming majority of
words are polysemous. A casual glance of any pages of an English dictionary will justify the
fact. There are words that have two or three senses, and the most commonly used ones can have
as many as over a hundred.
However, when a word is first coined, it is always monosemic. But in the course of development,
the same symbol must be used to express more meanings. The result is polysemy. But how does
a word acquire new meanings? In what way are the meanings related to one another?

6.1.1 Two Approaches to Polysemy

The problem of interrelation of the various meanings of the same word can be dealt with from
two different angles: diachronic approach and synchronic approach.
1. Diachronic approach. From the diachronic point of view, polysemy is assumed to be the
result of growth and development of the semantic structure of one and same word. At the time
when the word was created, it was endowed with only one meaning. This first meaning is the
primary meaning. With the advance of time and the development of language, it took on more
and more meanings. These later meanings are called derived meanings as they are all derived
from the primary meaning. Take the word face for example (WNWD).
(1) the front of the head;
(2) the expression of the countenance;
(3) a surface of a thing;
(4) the side or surface that is marked , as of a clock, playing card, domino, etc.;
(5) the appearance; outward aspect; resemblance;
(6) [CH idiom] dignity; selfrespect; prestige, as in lose

50
/save face;
(7) the topography (of an area);
(8) the functional and striking surface (of a tool, golf club, etc.);
(9) [Colloq] effrontery; audacity;
(10) what is shown by the language of a document, without explanation and addition;
(11) [Mining] the end of a tunnel, drift, etc. where work is being done;
(12) [Typography] the type surface on which a letter is cut.
Of the twelve meanings spelled out above, (1) is the primary meaning the basic meaning of the
word face. All the rest are derived later on from the primary meaning. These meanings were
acquired by extension, narrowing, analogy, transfer, etc.
There are also many instances in which the primary meaning gave birth to new meanings, and as
a result the primary meaning became either obsolete or disappeared altogether. For example, the
basic sense of the word harvest was 'time of cutting', now the word is used in the sense of
'reaping and gathering the crops' or 'a season's yield of grain or fruit', etc. The primary meaning
is no longer in common use. Another good example is pain, whose original meaning was 'penalty
or punishment', and now this meaning is preserved only in such phrases as pains and penalty and
upon/under pain of, the derived meanings 'suffering', 'great discomfort of the body or mind' have
become prevalent.
2. Synchronic approach. Synchronically, polysemy is viewed as the coexistence of various
meanings of the same word in a certain historical period of time, say, Modern English. In this
way, the primary meaning of a word is the core of word meaning called the central meaning. The
derived meanings, no matter how many, are secondary in comparison. In the case of the word
face, (1) is the central meaning and all the rest are minor ones. This does not necessarily mean
that the secondary meanings are secondary in importance. There are cases where the central
meaning has gradually diminished in currency with the changes that have taken place in culture
and society, and one of the derived meanings has become dominant. This can be exemplified by
the word gay. The word used to mean (1) joyous and lively; merry; happy; (2) bright, brilliant;
(3) given to social life and pleasure; (4) wanton; licentious; (5) homosexual (WNWD). The order
of the senses indicates the development, the first meaning being the basic and primary and the
last the latest. But in usage and currency, the opposite is true. In both CCELD and LDCE, Sense

51
(5) is arranged as No. 1 because it is rated as the most frequently used meaning. Compare: gay:
(1) joyous and lively; merry; happy
(2) bright, brilliant
(3) given to social life and pleasure
(4) wanton; licentious
(5) homosexual (WNWD)
gay: (1) homosexual
(2) bright or attractive
(3) cheerful; happy; full of fun (LDCE)
gay: (1) homosexual
(2) lively and enjoyable (person)
(3) lively and interesting (place)
(4) bright and pretty (colour)
(5) lively and pleasant (music) (CCELD)
6.1.2 Two Processes of Development

The development of word meaning from monosemy to polysemy follows two courses,
traditionally known as radiation and concatenation.
1. Radiation is a semantic process in which the primary meaning stands at the centre and the
secondary meanings proceed out of it in every direction like rays. The meanings are independent
of one another, but can all be traced back to the central meaning. If we give a graphic description
of the meanings of face, it would look very much like a wheel of the bicycle.
Radiation of meanings of face
The word neck affords another good example. The primary meaning is (1) that part of man
oranimal joining the head to the body; from this are derived (2) that part of the garment; (3) the
neck of an animal used as food, e.g. the neck of lamb; (4) a narrow part between the head and
body or base of any object, e.g. the neck of a violin; (5) the narrowest part of anything: bottle,
land, strait or channel
(WNWD). Though the referent of each of the five may not be the same, yet they are all related to
the central meaning. Meaning (2) is an instance of transfer, (3) an instance of specialization, and
(4) and (5) are instances of extension.

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2. Concatenation, meaning 'linking together', is the semantic process in which the meaning of a
word moves gradually away from its first sense by successive shifts until, in many cases, there is
not a sign of connection between the sense that is finally developed and that which the term had
at the beginning (Rayevskaya 1957) or between the first sense and the latest. In plain terms the
meaning reached by the first shift may be shifted a second time, and so on until in the end the
original meaning is totally lost. The word treacle is an illustrative example (WNWD): treacle
(1) wild beast
(2) remedy for bites of venomous beasts
(3) antidote for poison or remedy for poison
(4) any effective remedy
(5) (BrE) molasses
The word neck affords another good example. The primary meaning is (1) that part of man or
animal joining the head to the body; From this are derived (2) that part of the garment; (3) the
neck of an animal used as food, e.g. the neck of lamb; (4) a narrow part between the head and
body or base of any object, e.g. the neck of a violin; (5) the narrowest part of anything: bottle,
land, strait or channel
(WNWD). Though the referent of each of the five may not be the same, yet they are all related to
the central meaning. Meaning (2) is an instance of transfer, (3) an instance of specialization, and
(4) and (5) are instances of extension.
2. Concatenation, meaning 'linking together', is the semantic process in which the meaning of a
word moves gradually away from its first sense by successive shifts until, in many cases, there is
not a sign of connection between the sense that is finally developed and that which the term had
at the beginning (Rayevskaya 1957) or between the first sense and the latest. In plain terms the
meaning reached by the first shift may be shifted a second time, and so on until in the end the
original meaning is totally lost. The word treacle is an illustrative example (WNWD): treacle
(1) wild beast
(2) remedy for bites of venomous beasts
(3) antidote for poison or remedy for poison
(4) any effective remedy
(5) (BrE) molasses

53
Unlike radiation where each of the derived meanings is directly connected to the primary
meaning, concatenation describes a process where each of the later meaning is related only to the
preceding one like chains. Though the latest sense can be traced back to the original, there is no
direct connection in between. Now consider the senses of treacle. Senses (1) and (2) are now
entirely lost; (3) and (4) are obsolete, and only (5) remains common in use. Without a knowledge
of etymology of the word, no one can make any connection between Sense (1) and Sense (5).
The same can be said of candidate (ibid):
Unlike radiation where each of the derived meanings is directly connected to the primary
meaning, concatenation describes a process where each of the later meaning is related only to the
preceding one like chains. Though the latest sense can be traced back to the original, there is no
direct connection in between. Now consider the senses of treacle. Senses (1) and (2) are now
entirely lost; (3) and (4) are obsolete, and only (5) remains common in use. Without a knowledge
of etymology of the word, no one can make any connection between Sense (1) and Sense (5).
The same can be said of candidate (ibid): candidate
(1) whiterobed
(2) office seeker in white gowns
(3) a person who seeks an office
(4) a person proposed for a place, award, etc.
Radiation and concatenation are closely related, being different stages of the development
leading to polysemy. Generally, radiation precedes concatenation. In many cases, the two
processes work together, complementing each other.
Metonomy
Metonomy is the act of referring something by the name of something else that is closely
connected with it. Example
White house for US government
Throne for king
Walya for Ethiopian football team
Ethiopia built a new airport. Here Ethiopia is a metonomy of government of Ethiopia.
Adult- young relation
It is a type of relation deals with age specification
Adult young

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Lion calf
Dog puppy
Male-female relation
It is a relation deals with maleness and femaleness.
Male female
Ox cow
Husband wife
uncle aunt
Member-collection
It is a relation two terms in which one is a unit and the other is its collection.
Member collection
Tree forest
Sheep flock
Ox cattle
Ship fleet
Portion-mass
It is the relationship between mass noun and the usual unit of measurement or division.
Portion mass
Drop water
Cup coffee
Kilo Sugar
Loaf bread

Homonyms

HOMONYMS are words that sound alike but have different meanings. Homophones are a type
of homonym that also sound alike and have different meanings, but have different spellings.

Homophones

55
Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but which are different in spelling and
meaning, e.g., "to", "two", and "too". Not all words that are spelled identically are pronounced
identically, so they may be homographs without being homophones, e.g., "lead" as a metal and
as the verb 'to go in front'.

accept/except buy/by/bye

capital/capitol eminent/imminent

fair/fare lie/lye

meat/meet/mete role/roll

scene/seen whine/wine

ad - advertisement add - join, combine

advice - guidance advise - recommend
aid - assist, assistance aide - one who gives assistance
ail - to suffer poor health ale - a beverage
air - atmosphere ere – before heir - one who inherits
property
aisle - a passage I'll - contraction of I will isle - island
allusion - an indirect reference illusion - false appearance
altar - table in a church alter - to change
ate - past tense of eat eight - the number 8
bail - to clear water bail - release of a prisoner bale - a large bundle
band - a ring, something that band - a group banned - prohibited
binds
bare - uncovered bear - large animal bear - support, yield
bases - starting points bases - four stations on a baseball basis - a basic principle
field
beat - to strike, overcome beat - exhausted beet - a plant with red roots

56
blew - past tense of blow blue - the color
bread - baked food item bred - produced
buy - purchase by - near, through bye - goodbye

Homographs
Homographs are words that are spelled alike, but have different meanings and usually different
pronunciations, e.g., "stalk" as a plant stem and as the verb meaning to pursue stealthily.
Homographs also come from entirely different sources. Homonyms are words spelled or
pronounced alike but which have different meanings. Since homonym can be used to
(ambiguously) describe either a homograph or homophone, it is best avoided.

In addition to homophones (words with the same sound, but different

spellings, meanings, or origins), there are also homographs (words
with the same spellings, but different meanings, origins, or
pronunciations. There are two large subgroups:

Subgroup 1:

These common words have the same spelling and pronunciation, but
very different meanings and/or origins. Common examples:

homographs differences*
bear (N)bear (N): a kind of animal
bear (V) bear (V): to carry

date (N)date (N): a kind of fruit; a calendar time

date (V) date (V): to determine the age; to "go out"

fast (Adj)fast (Adj): quick

fast (V) fast (V): to abstain from (choose not to eat) food

hide (N)hide (N): animal skin

hide (V) hide (V): to conceal

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net (N)net (N): woven trap made of rope or cord
net (Adj) net (Adj): amount remaining after deductions

pick (N)pick (N): a kind of tool

pick (V) pick (V): to choose

Subgroup 2:

These words have the same spelling, but different stress. The stress
changes for the noun and verb forms of these words. Examples:

homographs* Differences
áddress (N)address (N): where one lives
addréss (V) address (V): to give a speech; to write
an address

cómpress (N)compress (N): medicine put on a cloth

compréss (V) and worn next to the skin
compress (V): press together

éxport (N)export (N): something that is exported

expórt (V) export (V): to send a product outside a country (to be sold)

ínsult (N)ínsult (N): insulting action or words

insúlt (V) insúlt (V): to say or do something
which is offensive or rude

cónvert (N)convert (N): someone who has changed

convért (Adj) from one group (for example, a religion) to another
convert (V): to change from one form
to another

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désert (N)desert (N): dry place
desért (V) desert (V): abandon

lie (untruth) and lie (prone)

fair (county fair), fair (reasonable).

read (present tense--pronounced [ ríjd ] /

read (past tense--pronounced [ red ]

lead (verb--pronounced [ líjd ] /

lead (noun [Pb]--pronounced [ led ]

do (noun [music]--pronounced [ dóu ] /

do (verb--pronounced [ dúw ]

lead (to go in front of)/lead (a metal)

wind (to follow a course that is not straight)/wind (a gust of air)

bass (low, deep sound)/bass (a type of fish)

Hypernymy

Hyponymy and hypernymy both refers to the relationship semantics inclusion that holds between
more general and the more specific term. The more general term which is super-ordinate term is
called hyperym and the most specific term is hyponym.

Example

Dog and cat are hyponyms of animal.

Attributive and referential use

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“I will call the two uses of descriptions I have in mind the attributive use and the referential use.
A speaker who uses a description attributively in an assertion states something about whoever or
whatever is the so-and-so. A speaker who uses a description referentially in an assertion, on the
other hand, uses the description to enable his audience to pick out whom or what he is talking
about and states something about that person or thing. In the first case the description might be
said to occur essentially, for the speaker wishes to assert something about whatever or whoever
fits that description; but in the referential use the definite description is merely one tool for doing
a certain job - calling attention to a person or thing - and in general any other device for doing
the same thing
. . would do as well.” (46)
Donnellan's distinction
• A definite description is used referentially when the speaker uses the description to enable his
audience to identify the thing she means to be talking about, and then says something it.
◦ Alice uses 'the bartender' referentially. It would have served her purposes just as well to say
“He is making a mess!” or “That guy is making a mess!”
• A definite description is used attributively when the speaker means to say something about
whatever or whoever satisfies the description.
◦ Alice does not use 'the bartender' attributively. If her assumption that the guy making drinks is
the bartender were corrected, she wouldn't say, “Well, I just meant that whoever is the bartender
is making a mess, whether or not it's the guy making drinks.” It's that guys in particular she
means to be talking about.
• The distinction is not, according to Donnellan, a semantic or syntactic ambiguity in sentences
containing definite descriptions. (Note, some commentators misinterpret Donnellan on this.).
Definite descriptions (as in The murderer of Smith is insane) can have at least two
interpretations: a referential one, in which insanity is predicated of a particular individual who
killed Smith, and an attributive one, in which insanity is predicated of whoever it is that killed
Smith.
When communicating, people often need to talk about the world around them. Specifically, they
often mention things and events, and to do so they use expressions that refer to these entities.
One particular type of referring expression is a definite description (a description containing the
X). These expressions can have at least two different interpretations (Donnellan, 1966, 1978;

60
Searle, 1979). For example, a sentence containing a definite description (as in 1a; adapted from
Donnellan, 1966, see Roberts, 1993):
1a. The murderer of Smith is insane. Can be interpreted referentially (Donnellan, 1966) when it
is understood to mean something like (1b).
1b. I think the particular person just convicted of Smith’s murder is crazy.
The same sentence has an attributive interpretation when its understood meaning is more as in
(1c).
1c. I think anyone who would have killed Smith must be crazy.
The distinction between referential and attributive descriptions was originally drawn to criticize
Russell’s (1905) account of definite descriptions.
Roughly speaking, Russell believed that the description the man drinking a martini in a sentence
(2; adapted from Donnellan, 1966):
2. The man drinking a martini is going to be ill. Meant that: (1) there is exactly one man drinking
a martini and (2) anything that is the man drinking a martini is going to become ill. (Of course,
there may be more than one man drinking a martini in the world, so the must be interpreted
relative to a discourse context.) Russell’s analysis describes the attributive interpretation,
because the person who will be ill is identified by virtue of the description (martini drinking), but
it fails to account for referential uses.
Names and referents
A referent is
-what a word or symbol stands for.
-a concrete thing that is being referred to.
- an object or idea to which a word or phrase /symbol/ refers
- a person or thing to which a linguistic expression refers.
- the real object.
Example
An actual chair is the referent of the word chair.
An actual pen is the referent of the word pen.
An actual house is the referent of the word house.

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Deixis
 What do you think is deixis?
 Do you know this word before now?
Deixis refers to words that have no exact referents or meaning without context. It is the study of
deictic or indexical expressions in language. Any linguistic varieties applied to accomplish
pointing out are called deictic expressions or indexical. For example let see the deictic
expressions below
I will bring you a gift and put it here tomorrow. From the above example, the speaker uses the
pronoun I to point out himself. In other words the pronoun “I” refers to the person who is
currently speaking. At the same time the speaker uses “you” to point out the intended addressee
or hearer. On the hand the word “here” indicates the place of an utterance. The word “tomorrow”
indicates the time after utterance the utterance is spoken. Suppose, it was not directly said to
certain people but was written in a note that people find it somewhere the message will mean
nothing because that people cannot get complete information who the speaker is when and where

62
the exact time and place is. In other words they do not have clear information who speaks it
when and where was it spoken or written.
Deixis is a type of reference constituted by the meaning of a linguistic sign being relativized to
the extra-linguistic context in which the sign is used. The semiotic nature of this kind of
reference, its exact communicative prerequisites and functions, its acquisition by children, and its
processing have long puzzled linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and anthropologists. This
article presents an introduction to some of the research that has focused on deictic signs and
meanings and their phenomenology. It is one of the fundamental design features of human
language that the interpretation of linguistic utterances may strongly depend both on the
linguistic and the non-linguistic context. This context dependence of linguistic reference is
known as indexicality (cf. Silverstein 1976). It has been argued by philosophers that in fact
without some such underlying indexicality in all referring expressions, no successful reference to
the world would be possible (Putnam 1975). Take, for example, the utterance She brought this
flower for me yesterday. The noun flower has a meaning that can be defined independently of
context (e.g. >the reproductive organs of a plant and their colored (non-green) envelope=), and it
can be used to refer to real or imaginary flowers that fulfill this definition. Yet, in order to
successfully refer to a plant as a flower, more than mere knowledge of the meaning of flower is
required: speaker and addressee have to agree on the plant being identifiable by that term
(botanists for example use the term differently – they do not require the envelope to be colored).
However, there are expressions that point to the context in their very meaning, such that they
cannot be used to refer to anything before the relevant information from the context is retrieved.
In the above example, the pronoun she takes up a referent of feminine gender that must have
been introduced in the preceding stretch of discourse (if the speaker announced in the preceding
utterance that he is planning to marry his girlfriend Helen, then it will be inferred that it was
Helen who brought him the flowers). This illustrates anaphoric reference. Deictic reference
occurs whenever a linguistic sign receives part of its meaning from the extra-linguistic context.
For example, the pronoun me refers to the speaker - it has a different meaning depending on who
utters it. The demonstrative this selects a referent in the speaker=s proximity - this flower, as
opposed to that one over there (at least in its most simple spatial use). The verb bring designates
transport to a deictically defined location (here); this could be the location at which the
conversation takes place, or the speaker=s home (there are in fact many possibilities). The past

63
tense of brought indicates that the flower arrived at this location prior to the time of utterance,
and the adverb yesterday restricts this time interval to the day before the day of utterance. So in
order to know what exactly is meant by She brought this flower for me yesterday, and whether
this statement is true, one first needs to know who uttered it, on what day, and where.
It can be argued that reference to most objects (including people), places, and times in the real
world (to be precise, to all those that neither have a proper name nor a unique status, such as
celestial bodies) ultimately requires some form of deictic anchoring. To understand this claim,
one may select an object at random from the environment and try to make a statement about it
that avoids any form of deixis. If the claim is correct, it follows that language could not be used
to talk about the real world (other than in generic statements) without deictic reference. The term
deixis refers to a class of linguistic expressions that are used to indicate elements of the
situational and/or discourse context, including the speech participants and the time and location
of the current speech event (cf. Bühler 1934; Frei 1944; Lyons 1977, 1979; Fillmore 1982, 1997;
Levinson 1983, 2004). English has a wide variety of expressions that are commonly analyzed as
deictics: personal pronouns such as I and you , spatial adverbs such as here and there ,
demonstratives such as this and that , temporal adverbs such as now, then, today, ago, and
recently , motion verbs such as come and go , and tense morphemes such as the future auxiliary
will and the past tense suffi x -ed (cf. Lyons 1977; Fillmore 1997). In addition, grammatical
constructions such as the imperative and the vocative are often characterized as deictics (cf.
Levinson 1983). Deictic expressions raise important issues for semantic theory (cf. article 4
(Abbott) Reference ). In (formal) semantics, deictic expressions (also called indexicals ; cf.
Peirce 1955) are defi ned as linguistic signs with “direct reference” (Kaplan 1989: 483). In
contrast to content words, deictic expressions do not evoke a concept of some entity (Frege’s
sense ) but establish a direct referential link between world and language (cf. article 61
(Schlenker) Indexicality and de se ). Since the interpretation of deixis is immediately determined
by aspects of the speech situation, deictic expressions require a particular treatment in semantic
theory (cf. Kaplan 1989; see also papers in Davis 1991, vol. III and
Kasher 1998, vol. III).

64
The deictic centre
A linguistic phenomenon that crucially relies on this ability is deixis. As Bühler (1934) and other
theorists have pointed out, the use of deixis involves a particular viewpoint called the deictic
centre or the origo (cf. Bühler 1934; Lyons 1977). The deictic centre is the centre of a coordinate
system that underlies the conceptualization of the speech situation.
In the unmarked case, the deictic centre is defi ned by the speaker’s location at the time of the
utterance. Deictic expressions are used to indicate a location or point in time relative to the
deictic centre. For instance, the spatial adverbs here and there can be used to express a contrast
between two different locations based on their relationship to the origo: here marks the area that
is conceptualized as the deictic centre, and there indicates a location that is not included in this
area. In the literature, here and there are commonly characterized as proximal and distal deictics,
but the attributes ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’ must not be taken in the absolute sense of these terms
because the deictic centre and the speech situation are conceptual units that cannot be equated
with the physical location in which the speech event occurs. Consider for instance the use of the
spatial deictic here in
Examples (1a-e).
(1) a. Here where I am
b. Here in this room
c. Here in Jena
d. Here in Germany
e. Here on this planet
What these examples illustrate is that the area included in the deictic centre (denoted by here )
varies with the construal of the speech situation. In (1a), here refers to a location that is further
specifi ed by the pronoun I , indicating that the deictic centre is basically identical with the
speaker’s body; but in all other examples the deictic centre includes a much larger area organized
around the speaker’s location at the time of the utterance: In
(1b) the deictic centre is the room in which the speech event is taking place, in (1c) it is the city
of Jena, in (1d) it is a country, and in (1e) the deictic centre consists of the whole planet. In other
words, the referent of here varies with the conceptualization of the speech situation. The distal
term there is used in contrast to here ; it can refer to any location in the speech situation as long
as it is not included in the area conceptualized as the deictic centre. In general, here and there ,

65
and other proximal and distal deictics, do not express absolute measures of distance, but
differentiate between two different locations relative to the deictic centre within the current
construal of the speech situation.
In conversations, the deictic centre is constantly changing between the communicative partners.
Every time a new speaker adopts the turn, the speech event is conceptualized from a different
point of view, which means that expressions such as here and there and I and you refer to
different entities when used by different speakers. Adult speakers are so used to this procedure
that they do not realize the constantly changing perspective that is involved in the use of deictic
expressions; but children have great difficulties with the alternating point of view. Although
English-speaking children begin to use deictic expressions very early, they often misinterpret
their meaning and use (cf. Clark 1978; Tanz 1980;
Wales 1986). For instance, it is well-known that some children begin to use the personal
pronouns I and you as fixed expressions for the child and an adult speaker. Consider for instance
the dialog in (2) between a two-year-old English-speaking boy and his mother (cf. Clark 1978:
101).
(2) Mother: What do you want?
Child: Daddy toothbrush.
Mother: Oh you want Daddy’s toothbrush, do you?
Child: Yes . . . you want to put the frog in the mug. [you = I]
Mother: I think the frog is too big for the mug.
Child: Yes you can put the duck in the mug [you = I]
make bubble . . . make bubble.
Mother: Tomorrow. Nearly all the water’s run out.
Child: You want Mummy red toothbrush . . . yes [you = I] you can have Mummy old red
toothbrush.
In this example, both the boy and his mother use the pronoun you with reference to the child,
suggesting that the boy misinterprets the term as some sort of proper name. The same absolute
use of personal pronouns has been observed in many other studies.
Consider for instance the following example from a diary study adopted from Clark
(1978: 101).
(3) a. I carry. [= you carry; a request to be picked up]

66
b. Yacky tease you . [= Yacky is teasing me]
c. Papa help you . [= Papa help me]
d. You want cake. [= I want cake]
In these examples, the deictic pronouns I and you are used as fi xed expressions for the child and
one of his parents: the fi rst person pronoun I refers to the parent, notably the father, and the
second person pronoun you is used in self reference to the chi
It is generally acknowledged that perception of and orientation in space are determinant factors
in human action and interaction. As such, speech heavily depends on knowledge of the context:
Where and When is a sentence uttered, and by Whom. These three dimensions are traditionally
seen as the so-called deictic centre of all linguistic events, without which no linguistic expression
can be properly interpreted. Svorou’s (1993) observation, that social and psychological
conditions are also relevant factors in the deictic anchorage of language, fully applies to the East-
Nusantara Region.
With deixis we mean here all cues provided by a language that localise a speech event and its
participants (Speaker, Hearer and narrated participant) in space and time. Anderson and Keenan
(1985) distinguish three major categories of deixis: person deixis, spatial deixis and temporal
deixis. The category linking social and psychological factors is tentatively labelled
‘psychological’ deixis at the workshop.
Definitions of Deixis
Deixis is one of the most important notions in general linguistics and is a vital link between the
real life environment around us (time frame, physical location, people involved, etc) and what
we actually say (the linguistic terms used). Deixis has always been at the heart of reference
research as widely known literature in semantics and pragmatics demonstrates. Being
fundamental, it is in the common focus of several disciplines: Cognitive Science, Linguistics and
Psychology. The origin of deixis is ‗deiktikos‟ (deictic) in Greek, meaning ‗pointing‘, which
reflects the core function of deixis. Deixis has been called by different names in different
approaches: Pure index (Pierce 1932), Zeigwörter (index) + Symbolwörter (symbol) (Bühler
1934), Indexical symbol (Burks 1948), Indicator (Goodman 1951), Indexical expression (Bar-
Hiller 1954), and Shifter (Jespersen 1965[1924], Jakobson 1971[1957]). Since the Greek period,
deixis has been a subject of study in philosophy. In recent years, many studies on deixis have
been conducted from the linguistic point of view (Bühler 1934; Fillmore 1971b, 1975, 1997;

67
Lyons 1968, 1977b; Levinson 1983; Anderson and Keenan 1985; and Diessel 1999, among
others). The present study focuses on basic functions corresponding to the meaning of ‗deiktikos
„mentioned above. The important feature of deictic pointing is that it cites not only referents but
also gestures towards locating them – in relation to a speaker and a hearer. Expressions like I,
we, you, this, that, here, there, now, yesterday, next year are all indexed to the speaker in
speaking; that is, they take their current interpretation from the speaker at the moment of
speaking. It is necessary for a listener to identify the speaker, and the time and place of utterance,
in order to interpret fully what was said, and what was meant by what was said.
In literature, there have been three traditionally recognized categories of deixis based on three
axes, namely, spatial-socio-temporal axes. Spatial deixis is based on spatio-axes, (e.g., this, that,
here, and there). Personal deixis is based on socio-axes (e.g., I and you). Temporal deixis is
based on temporal axes (e.g., now, today, and yesterday) but not including before or earlier
(Fillmore 1982: 35, 38, Jarvella and Klein 1982: 2). Levinson (1983), following Lyons (1968,
1977a), and Fillmore (1975), adds to them social deixis, that is, honorific and discourse (or text)
deixis.
However, as a start it will be useful to take a bird‘s eye view of different definitions of deixis in
general. Crymes (1968:63) has defined deixis as ―any pointing that locates either a real-world
referent or a linguistic referent in terms of its orientation to the speaker spatially, temporally,
discriminately, affectively‖. Fillmore (1982: 35) has defined deixis as the name given to uses of
items and categories of lexicon and grammar that are controlled by certain details of the
interactional situation in which the utterances are produced. For Yule (1996: 9), deixis is a
technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic ones that means ‗pointing‘ via language.
Fillmore also (1997:59) refers to deictics as those lexical items and grammatical forms which can
be interpreted only when the sentences in which they occur are understood as being anchored in
some social context, that context defined in such a way as to identify the participants in the
communication act, their location in space, and time during which the communication act is
performed. For Bühler (1934), any expression which locates a referent in space or time is a
deictic expression. Deixis stands at the crossroads of two major fields, namely, semantics and
pragmatics. Lyons (1977:636) has used the term deixis to cover the function of personal and
demonstrative pronouns, of tense and of variety of other grammatical and lexical features which
relate utterances to the spatio-temporal co-ordinates of the act of utterance. Lyons (1977:637) has

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defined deixis as follows: ―By deixis, is meant the location and identification of persons,
objects, events, processes and activities talked about, or referred to, in relation to the spatio-
temporal context created and sustained by the act of utterance and the participation in it,
typically, of a single speaker and at least one addressee.‖ Attempting to grammaticalize the
aspects of deictic use in languages, Levinson (1983:54), however, prefers to define deixis as
follows: Deixis concerns the ways in which languages encode or grammaticalize features of the
context of utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in which the interpretation of
utterances depends on the analysis of that context of utterance. Deixis, in a broad sense, is
potentially context-dependent linguistic expression and typically anchoring in the perspective of
the speaker. In this regard, the view that deixis is, in fact, a part of pragmatics is highly
advocated, as its interpretation depends directly and primarily on features of the context
involved, i.e., context-dependent, such as the speaker and addressee, their location in space and
time, etc.
Types of deixis
Person deixis usually localises an entity in relation to the position of the Speaker and/or Hearer
(a so-called ‘positional’ system). First and second person pronouns typically refer to the speaking
and hearing speech-participant(s), whereas third person pronouns designate the non-speech or
narrated participant. Many Austronesian languages in East-Nusantara encode additional
information about the referent, for example the number of individuals referred to (singular,
dualis, trialis, plural), its classification (male, female, animate, inanimate, edible) or social status
(impersonals, deferential pronouns).
Spatial deixis localises both the Speech participants and narrated participants in space. Some
languages in East-Nusantara, as for example Ewaw (SE Maluku) only have one term, for which
it is very difficult to define its meaning. Many languages, however, may display a two-term or
three-term positional system, designating locations in space with reference to the position of the
Speaker (cq. ‘this’=near the Speaker, versus ‘that’=near the Hearer and/or ‘yonder’=not-near any
of the Speech participants). Not only the relative distance between the object referred to and the
Speaker/Hearer may be encoded. Many languages in East-Nusantara are reported to also indicate
the level on which the referent is located relative to the Speaker’s/Hearer’s position. Most non-
Austronesian languages on Alor (NTT), for example obligatorily signal whether the object is
located above or below the Speaker, or on the same level.

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Temporal deixis as it proposed by Anderson and Keenan (1985) localises the speech event in
time by means of adverbs (‘now’, ‘then’) or nouns (‘Tuesday’, ‘April’). Tense inflection on
verbs can also be analysed as temporal deixis in this respect. It is suggested in the literature, that
temporal deixis by means of adverbs or demonstrative is least common in the languages of the
world. This workshop intends to investigate this claim for East-Nusantara. Leti (Southwest
Maluku), for example, has a set of three determiners clearly originating from a spatial deictic set
that locates the narrated event in time with reference to the moment of speech.
‘Psychological’ deixis encodes information about the referent that is related to the psychological
framework of the Speech participants rather than to the localisation of the Speech event in space
and time. Leti (Southwest Maluku), for example, has a separate set of person pronouns that
signals the Speaker’s attitude (acceptance versus rejection versus unacquaintance) toward the
referent. In Taba (North Maluku), on the other hand, the acquaintance or unacquaintance of the
Speech participants is a semantic extension of the directionals meaning ‘upward’ and
‘downward’, respectively. In Blagar (Nusa Tenggara Timur), the Speaker’s acquaintance is
implied in all deictic morphs connoting ‘close to the Speaker’, whereas the Speaker’s
unacquaintance is implied by all morphs meaning ‘close to neither the Speaker nor the Hearer’.
This workshop intends to investigate and compare the patterns of ‘psychological’ deixis in East-
Nusantara.
Deictic categories
Deictic expressions are commonly divided into semantic categories; three categories are
traditionally distinguished: person, place, and time (cf. Bühler 1934). In English, each category is
associated with particular deictic expressions: I and you are person deictics, here and there and
this and that are place deictic expressions, and now and then , and today , yesterday and
tomorrow are temporal deictics. In addition to person, place and time, some studies assume two
further deictic categories: discourse deixis and social deixis (cf. Lyons 1977; Levinson 1983,
2004; Fillmore 1997). Discourse deixis is concerned with expressions making reference to
linguistic entities in the ongoing discourse, and social deixis is concerned with the social
relationship between the interlocutors. Like person, place and time deixis, discourse deixis and
social deixis may be expressed by particular terms. For instance, the English expressions the
latter and the aforementioned are discourse deictics, and the French pronouns tu ‘you.familiar’
and vous ‘you.unfamiliar’ are instances of social deixis.

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Tab. 90.1 provides an overview of the deictic categories that are commonly distinguished in
descriptive approaches to deixis (e.g., Levinson 1983, 2004; Fillmore 1997).

Deixis category Example

Person deixis I, you, he, she, they
Place deixis Here, there, this, that
Time deixis Now, then, today, yesterday
tomorrow
Social deixis The latter, the aforementioned
Discourse deixis

Participant deixis
Participant deixis subsumes the traditional categories of person and social deixis. In the
literature, it is commonly assumed that person deictics function to identify the speech
participants, but this assumption is not consistent with their use. Since speaker and hearer are
usually aware of their communicative roles, person deictics are only rarely used to“identify” the
speech participants in the surrounding situation (e.g., I want to talk to you [pointing to a
person]); instead, they usually function to indicate the semantic roles of speaker and hearer in the
event that is expressed by an utterance (e.g., Peter noticed that I gave you the book ). Since the
speech participants are aware of each other, the use of person deictics is similar to the use of
anaphors: Both types of expressions function to denote a ‘familiar’ or ‘activated’ referent, i.e., a
referent that is in the interlocutors’ current focus of attention.
Place deixis.
The core of place deixis constitutes a small class of expressions that are of fundamental
signifi cance to the organization of the deictic system: demonstratives such as English this and
that and here and there (cf. Himmelmann 1997; Diessel 1999; Dixon 2003; see also article 40
(Büring) Pronouns ). In the literature, demonstratives are commonly described as one type of
place deixis, serving grammatical functions as pronouns, determiners, and adverbs; but this
analysis does not adequately characterize their function and status in language (cf. Diessel
2006a)

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 Deixis
The term deixis refers to a class of linguistic expressions that are used to indicate elements of the
situational and/or discourse context, including the speech participants and the time and location
of the current speech event (cf. Bühler 1934; Frei 1944; Lyons 1977, 1979; Fillmore 1982, 1997;
Levinson 1983, 2004). English has a wide variety of expressions that are commonly analyzed as
deictics: personal pronouns such as I and you, spatial adverbs such as here and there ,
demonstratives such as this and that , temporal adverbs such as now, then, today, ago, and
recently , motion verbs such as come and go , and tense morphemes such as the future auxiliary
will and the past tense suffi x -ed (cf. Lyons 1977; Fillmore
1997). In addition, grammatical constructions such as the imperative and the vocative are often
characterized as deictics (cf. Levinson 1983).
Functions of deixis
Deixis is the act of referring to the context of an utterance. Deictic markers are devices which
point to elements of the context of an utterance. These elements include the speech act
participants and their social status (social deixis), as well as space / time coordinates (in reality or
in the imagination), pointed at entities that are not necessarily spatio-temporally individuated
objects (ostensive deixis in general). Another function of deictics is the tracking of a previously
introduced referent (anaphoric deixis), of a proposition (discourse deixis), of a text (pure text
deixis).
Participant deixis
Participant deixis subsumes the traditional categories of person and social deixis. In the
literature, it is commonly assumed that person deictics function to identify the speech
participants, but this assumption is not consistent with their use. Since speaker and hearer are
usually aware of their communicative roles, person deictics are only rarely used to “identify” the
speech participants in the surrounding situation (e.g., I want to talk to you [pointing to a
person]); instead, they usually function to indicate the semantic roles of speaker and hearer in the
event that is expressed by an utterance (e.g., Peter noticed that
I gave you the book). Since the speech participants are aware of each other, the use of person
deictics is similar to the use of anaphors: Both types of expressions function to denote a
‘familiar’ or ‘activated’ referent, i.e., a referent that is in the interlocutors’ current focus of
attention.

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Object deixis.
Object deixis subsumes the deictic categories of place, time, and discourse. Place deictic
expressions refer to concrete objects and locations in the situation surrounding the speech
participants, but time and discourse deixis are more elusive. Time deictic expressions indicate a
point in time relative to the moment of the speech event, and discourse deictic expressions locate
linguistic elements in the ongoing discourse. Since time and discourse are abstract entities they
are not immediately available for a concrete act of reference such as pointing. However, in
language time and discourse are commonly conceptualized in spatial terms making them more
objective (see below). This explains why time and discourse deixis are frequently expressed by
spatial terms, suggesting that place deixis provides the conceptual and linguistic foundation for
more abstract varieties of object deixis (cf. Lyons 1977: 718).
Place deixis.
The core of place deixis constitutes a small class of expressions that are of fundamental
signifi cance to the organization of the deictic system: demonstratives such as English this and
that and here and there (cf. Himmelmann 1997; Diessel 1999; Dixon 2003; see also article 40
(Büring) Pronouns ). In the literature, demonstratives are commonly described as one type of
place deixis, serving grammatical functions as pronouns, determiners, and adverbs; but this
analysis does not adequately characterize their function and status in language (cf. Diessel
2006a).
Deixia and Anaphora
Deixis and Anaphora: Anaphora, as a term, is used in two ways in the literature: (a) as a general
description of coreferential process, where one element refers back to another;(b) in the
restrictive and ‗technical‘ sense of anaphoric binding, where the ‗anaphor‘ is restricted to
necessarily referentially dependent noun phrase (Lebeaux, 1992). Anaphora is sometimes
characterised as the phenomena whereby the interpretation of an occurrence of one expression
depends on the interpretation of an occurrence of another or whereby an occurrence of an
expression has its referent supplied by an occurrence of some other expression in the same or
another sentence. Anaphora is considered as a fundamental mode of reference in pronoun.
Toolan (1990:129) refers to anaphora as ―the coreferential tie or relation between a pronoun

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(the anaphor) and a – usually preceding – phrase or clause (the antecedent)‖. Crymes (1968)
emphasizes that deixis and anaphora may be signalled simultaneously by the same pointing
word, as in:
Take a look at this book. This is the best book I‘ve read in a long time.
The relation between the pronoun and its antecedent is not to be confused with that between the
pronoun and its referent as the traditional grammarians tend to say that a pronoun ‗refers‘ to its
antecedent which refers to the referent of the antecedent expression with which it is correlated,
for example:
The Empress hasn‟t arrived yet but she should be here any minute
The relation between she and its antecedent expression (the NP the Empress) is not to be
confused with that between she and its referent (the Empress person, not a linguistic form)
(Lyons 1977; Huddleston 1984). Himmelmann (1996: 240) calls anaphora ‗tracking use‘ and
defines it as the use of demonstratives for referents which have already been mentioned.
Anaphora is regarded as the use of a word referring back to a word used earlier in text or
conversation to avoid repetition, for example the pronoun he, she, it, they and the verb do in:
I like it and so do they
Crystal (1997:19) describes anaphora as ―a term used in GRAMMATICAL description for the
process or result of a linguistic UNIT deriving its interpretation from previously expressed unit
or meaning (the ANTECEDENT)‖. Anaphora is often contrasted with cataphora where the words
refer forwards, and sometimes with deixis or exophora where the words refer directly to the
extralinguistic situation. Lyons (1991:166) argues that deixis is both ontogenetically and
logically prior to anaphora. By this, he means that the deictic use of pronouns and other such
expressions precedes their anaphoric use in the earliest stages of language-acquisition. The
primacy of deixis is a principle that can be related very directly to what Stirling and Huddleston
(2002) have described anaphora as the relation between an anaphor and an antecedent, where the
interpretation of the anaphor is determined via that of the antecedent. For example:
Max claims he wasn‘t told about it.
Reading this sentence, we are concerned with he (the anaphor) and Max (the antecedent) and he
is understood to refer to the same person as Max by virtue of the relationship of anaphora.
Anaphora and deixis have a great deal in common. Forms may be simultaneously deictic and

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anaphoric (Stirling and Huddleston, 2002). For example: i) Sue is coming over later; we are
having lunch together. ii) I was born in London and have lived here all my life.
To interpret (i), we refers to the set consisting of Sue and me: the speaker component of this is
determined deictically by virtue of we being a 1st person pronoun, while the inclusion of Sue in
the set is determined anaphorically by virtue of the previous mention of her. In (ii) here is
anaphoric in that it obtains the interpretation ―in London‖ from the preceding preposition
phrase, but at the same time it is deictic in that it refers to a place, which includes where the
utterance-act takes place.
Entailment
Entailment is a term derived from formal logic and now often used as part of the study of
semantics. All the other essential semantic relations like equivalence and contradiction can be
defined in terms of entailment.
Crystal defines it as "a term refers to a relation between a pair of sentences such that the truth of
the second sentence necessarily follows from the truth of the first, e.g. I can see a dog entails 'I
can see an animal'. One cannot both assert the first and deny the second".
Lyons points out that entailment is "a relation that holds between P and Q where P and Q are
variables standing for propositions such that if the truth of Q necessarily follows from the truth
of P (and the falsity of Q necessarily follows from the falsity of P), then P entails Q".
Thus, Lyons treats entailment from a logical point of view. For instance, the sentence John is a
bachelor entails three other sentences as follows: 1.a. John is unmarried.
b. John is male.
c. John is adult.
The relations between such words as bachelor and unmarried, male, adult can be handled in
truth-conditional terms.
The truth conditions in John is a bachelor are included in the conditions for John is unmarried,
John is male and John is adult. It should be clear from this example that entailment here is not
being used in the sense of material implication, which does not necessarily correspond exactly to
the use of anything found in natural language, it is valid because of the truth functions assigned
to it. We have here strict implication which involves truth in all possible worlds. Hence, to say
that

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John is a bachelor entails 'John is unmarried' is to say that in all possible worlds, if the first is
true, the second is true (Palmer, 1988: 203).
Entailment in semantics, is the principle under certain conditions the truth of one statement
ensures the truth of the second statement. It is also called strong implication. In other words one
statement entails another when the second is a logically necessary consequence of the first.
Example
Kebede lives in Toronto entails Kebede lives in Canada.
Entailment relates by logical implication, two sentences A and B such that the truth of B follows
from the truth of A. It is symbolized by //- . A entails B ( A//- B) if whenever A is true the B
must also be true.
Example
A. Mary window broke. entails
B. The window broke.
A. Gemechu and feyssa went to the party. Entails
B. Gemechu went to the party.
Entailments are sentences that stand in an implicational relation, where the truth of the first
guarantees the truth of the second.
– The anarchist assassinated the emperor.

– The emperor died.

A: Everyone passed the examination.

B : No-one failed the examination.
A entails B
– whenever A is true, B is true

– the information that B contains is contained in the information that A conveys

– a situation describable by A must also be a situation describable by B

– A and NOT B are contradictory.

So, the first sentence entails the second.

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Generally speaking, entailment is not a pragmatic concept (i.e. having to do with the speaker
meaning), but it is considered a purely logical concept.
Ordered Entailments
1) Bob ate three sandwiches.

a) Someone ate three sandwiches. (Who ate the sandwiches)

b) Bob did something to three sandwiches. (What Bob did)
c) Bob ate three of something. (What Bob ate)
d)Something happened. (What happened)
The speaker will necessarily produce a very large number of background entailments
but
the speaker will indicate how these entailments
are to be ordered
How?
by stress
by using special structures
So
The hearer will understand which entailment is assumed
to be more important for interpreting intended meaning
What is the foreground entailment?
BOB ate three sandwiches.
Bob ATE three sandwiches.
Bob ate THREE sandwiches.
Bob ate three SANDWICHES.
Presuppositions vs. entailments
 Utterances and their presuppositions.

1) She has stopped smoking.

presupposes
She used to smoke.
2) My dog ate my bag.
presupposes

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I have a dog, and I have (had) a bag.
 Utterances and their entailments.

The emperor was assassinated

entails
1) Someone was assassinated.
2) The emperor died.
Pragmatics: Conversational Implicature and Speech Acts Theories
It will be most inconceivable to limit the study of semantics to the abstract study of meaning.
Indeed, a dependable theory of meaning should explore language use. The relationship between
semantics and language use is referred to as pragmatics. We shall explore this relationship in the
course of this unit.
Pragmatics is concerned with the range of choices and constraints available to users, and based
on the context. In pragmatics, emphasis is on the pairing of sentences and their appropriate
contexts. The choices made in language have been found to affect the listeners and their
responses. It is possible to observe norms of politeness, appropriateness, formality and respect in
the way language is used. It is believed that pragmatics determines the appropriate interpretation
of sentences since there could be differences between literal and implied meanings. Differences
in meaning are at the instance of the situation, the shared background and the linguistics context
of the expressi
Pragmatics, according to Kempson (1986) is the study of the general principles necessary for
retrieving information from a specific utterance based on the context. Emphasis is not necessarily
on the grammatical or structural properties of the sentence. Indeed, a great deal of what we do in
human communication is determined from the context. This means that the meaning of any
stretch of communication is based on the interpretation of the listener. We also lay emphasis on
the message, the participants, the deductions to be made from the utterance, the implications of
what is said or assumed and the impact of the non-verbal aspects of the interaction on the
meaning. In terms of objectives, pragmatics deals with the totality of the processes through
which utterances convey meaning hearing in mind the context and how participants respond to
the meanings intended. It will therefore be easy to see that the common tie between pragmatics
and semantics is language. However, while semantics is concerned with language meaning,
pragmatics is concerned with language use. This will necessarily mean that the contextual

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approach to meaning will be very relevant to pragmatics. Since the full manifestation of
language from the point of use deals on the implied processes, we shall explore the nature of
implicature.
Implicatures
•The capacity of interlocutors to make sense of the utterances they exchange in spite of some
missing elements, is that such elements are often implicated and such implicatures are made
possible by cooperation between speaker and listener.

•Expecting to observe the CP enables language users to realise when a certain assumption has
been suspended and why interlocutors have chosen to disregard an accepted set of conversational
postulates.
Grice views pragmatic interpretation as heavily relying on inferencing processes: the hearer is
able to hypothesise about the Speaker’s meaning, based on the meaning of the sentence uttered,
on background or contextual assumptions and, last but not least, on general communicative
principles which speakers are expected to observe.
•“To imply is to hint, suggest or convey some meaning indirectly by means of language”
(Thomas 1995: 58).

•In his explanation of implied or additional meaning, Grice distinguishes between two kinds of
implicatures:
–Conventional implicatures, which convey the same extra meaning regardless of context and
which are always lexicalized;

–Conversational implicatures, which convey different meanings according to different contexts,

i.e. are calculated afresh each time the Speaker and the Hearer interact.
Conventional implicatures are carried by a restricted number of words: but, even, therefore, yet.

•Grice gives the following convincing examples:

–He is poor but honest.
an utterance stating that honesty appears contrary to expectations in relation to financial
underprivileges.
–John is an Englishman therefore he is brave.
an utterance which triggers entailment built on the argumentative of reaching a conclusion based
on a set of premises:

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•Premise 1: All Englishmen are brave.
•Premise 2: John is an Englishman,
•Conclusion: John is brave
Conversational implicatures:
–A: Is that scotch over there?

–B: Help yourself.

A’s utterance is literally a request for information (on the nature of the liquor), yet B interprets it
as a request for a drink. Nothing in the literal meaning of A’s utterance could lead B to that
interpretation, which can only be derived by means of conversational implicature.
Implicatures
It is always common to hear people argue over what is meant, and what is implied. This means
that there could be differences between what a speaker says and how the listener interprets it.
However, success in communication depends on how well the meaning intended by the speaker
and the implicature of the listener converge. This is usually possible when participants in
communication obey principles of conversational implicature. Implicture, a term coined by H.P.
Grice refers to what is suggested in an utterance and which may not have been expressed. The
speaker deliberately breaks the rules of a conversational maxim to convey additional meaning.
For instance, it is possible to respond to the question:
1. Do you really believe Betty?
The answer could be
2. She was speaking grammar.
The answer implies, among other things that Betty was not telling the whole story. It is expected
of people in communication to obey certain co-operative principles. These principles have been
presented as maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner.
Quantity – provide the right quantity of information, i.e.
i. Make your contribution information enough;
ii. Do not make your contribution more informal than necessary.
Quality – make your contribution true, i.e
i. Do not say what you believe is not rue;
ii. Do not say that for which you lack evidence.

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Relation – Be relevant
Manner – be perspicuous, i.e.
i. Avoid obscurity of expression;
ii. Avoid ambiguity
There are also conventional implicatures used for communicating non-truth-conditional meaning
for specific linguistic expressions.
For example:
Ade is an Ibadan businessman; he is very rich
This will have the conventional implicature that all Ibadan businessmen are rich.
Co-operative principles
It is expected of people in communication to obey certain co-operative principles. These
principles have been presented as maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner.
Cooperative Principle - CP
•Grice (1975) proposes that participants in a conversation obey a general ‘Cooperative Principle’
(CP), which is expected to be in force whenever a conversation unfolds:
“Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”
The capacity of interlocutors to make sense of the utterances they exchange in spite of some
missing element, is that such elements are often implicated and such implicatures are made
possible by cooperation between speaker and listener.

•Expecting to observe the CP enables language users to realise when a certain assumption has
been suspended and why interlocutors have chosen to disregard an accepted set of conversational
postulates.
Conversational maxims
•Implicatures can be established by envisaging the four conversational rules or ‘Maxims’
comprised by the CP:
I. Maxims of Quantity:
1. Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
II. Maxims of Quality: Supermaxim: Try to make your contribution one that is true.
1. Do not say what you believe to be false.

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2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
III. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.
IV. Maxims of Manner: Supermaxim: Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4. Be orderly.
Violation of a maxim
•Violation is defined as the unostentatious or ‘quiet’ non-observance of a maxim. A Speaker who
violates a maxim will be liable to mislead (Grice 1975: 49).
•Violating a maxim is quite the opposite of flouting a maxim. Violating a maxim rather prevents
or at least discourages the Hearer from seeking for implicatures and rather encourages their
taking utterances at face value. Examples:
–Violation of the Quantity Maxim:
–Supervisor: Did you read the articles and write up the review of literature?
–Supervisee: I certainly read the articles. Weren’t they captivating!
–Violation of the Quality Maxim
–A: You stained my dress with red wine, you klutz!
–B: Nobody will notice.
Violation of the Relation Maxim

–A: Did you like my presentation?

–B: The attendance was impressive, wasn’t it?

–Violation of the Manner Maxim

–Pierce: Major Frank Burns, M.D., manic-depressive. It’s an honourary title.

–Trapper: He’s also schizoid.

–Pierce: He sleeps in two bunks. (M.A.S.H.)

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Maxim of Quantity
 provide the right quantity of information, i.e.
 Make your contribution information enough;
 Do not make your contribution more informal than necessary.
Maxim of Quality
 make your contribution true, i.e
 Do not say what you believe is not rue;
 Do not say that for which you lack evidence.
Maxim of Relation
o Be relevant
Maxim of Manner
 be perspicuous, i.e.
 Avoid obscurity of expression;
 Avoid ambiguity
The Speech Acts Theory and Types of Acts in Language
Austin (1962) describes the Speech Acts theory as an approach that explains the roles of
utterances in shaping the attitudes of participants in interpersonal communication. Speech acts
reveal the intentions of speakers and the effects the speaker’s utterances and expressions have on
the hearers. The implication of speech acts is that every utterance has a purpose which derives
from the specific context. It has been observed that language use depends on such contextual
factors as social and physical conditions, attitudes, abilities, beliefs and the relationship existing
between the speaker and the listener.
There are different types of speech acts, the most common being the following:
(a) Representative Acts;
(b) Declarative Acts
(c) Directive Acts
(d) Expressive Acts; and
(e) Commissive Acts.
Representative Acts – These acts describe events, processes and states. Usually, the speaker is
committed to the truth of the assertion, claim, report, suggestion, prediction, description,
hypothesis or conclusion.

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Declarative Acts – These are acts that immediately change the state of affairs to which they
apply. These acts are used in arresting, christening, marriage, sentencing, acquittal etc. Consider
the following:
(i) I discharge and acquit the accused.
(ii) I hereby name this baby Amanda.
Directive Acts – In directive acts, the addressee is instructed to carry out some instruction by
responding verbally to an utterance or by performing some physical actions. The acts can be
questions, commands, requests, pleas or invitation – e.g.
(i) Kindly lend me some money!
(ii) Please, be my guest!
(iii)What is your name!
Expressive Acts - Expressive acts show the psychological states – feelings and attitudes towards
some events and affairs. These usually occur in greetings, scolding, condoling, appreciating,
thanking, congratulating, apologising, etc.
(i) We congratulate you on your success.
(ii) I apologise for my mistakes
Commissive Acts - In Commissive Acts, the speaker is committed to some future action as in
challenging, betting, promising, offering, threatening, vowing, warning, etc.
(i) I pledge a hundred thousand Naira.
(ii) We promise to build them a house.
It should be noted that commissive acts carry specific performative verbs – promise, swear,
name, pledge, warn, advise, declare, bet.
Levels of Speech Acts
There may be some confusion regarding types and levels of speech acts. We have already
discussed types of speech acts – representative, declarative, directive, expressive and
commissive. For levels of speech acts, emphasis is on the different stages of interaction between
the speaker and the listener through the use of speech acts. Three distinct levels are usually
observed – locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.
Locutionary Acts – These are observed as the processes of producing grammatical and
meaningful utterances which can be recognised by the hearer.

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Illocutionary Acts – Illocutionary acts are the force behind the utterances. Indeed, the speaker
performs these acts to achieve the purpose of communication as a statement, a question, a
command, an invitation, a threat, a request, an apology etc. It is possible, for instance, to use a
sentence that has the structure of a statement for the purpose of a warning. For example:
(i) You will lose all your deposits – (from a financial adviser to a client)
This sentence may be a warning or a piece of advice. Therefore, it is possible to use identical
utterance types for different tokens based on the intentions of the speaker and the context.
Perculationary Acts – These are the effects of the speaker’s utterance on the behaviour of the
hearer. They are the acts performed by the hearer as a result of the effect of the speaker’s
utterances. It is assumed, for instance, that the hearer will respond to a question of the speaker in
a specific way, or behave in accordance with the demands of the context. It should be noted that
the illocutionary force is the intended effect of an utterance on the hearer from the point of view
of the speaker. The perlocutionary effect is the actual effect of the speaker’s utterance on the
action, behaviour, attitude or belief of the hearer. Maximum communication is achieved when
there is illocutionary uptake. This situation arises when the listener understands the intended
effect of the speaker. This demand is at the core of semantics since meaning must be shared.
CONCLUSION
We have explored meaning beyond the abstract level of deep structure sentences. Indeed, we
have examined language in use. This is the core of pragmatics. Our focus in this unit has been on
speech acts.
POLITENESS AND INTERACTION
 Brown and Levinson (1978) suggest that a need to be polite is common to all cultures.
 In a common sense: Being polite -showing good manners and consideration for other
people (e.g. open the door for a lady, give your seat to an elderly person in public
transport).
 Linguistic politeness: the way people choose to speak and how the hearers react to
their speech.

Politeness...
• “ … is one of the constraints of human interaction, whose purpose is to consider other`s
feelings, establish levels of mutual comfort, and promote rapport.” Hill et al. (1986: 282)

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 • “ … what we think is appropriate behaviour in particular situations in an attempt to
achieve and maintain successful social relationships with others.“ (Lakoff 1972: 910)

THE CONCEPT OF FACE

Brown and Levinson (1978) have concluded that, in order to enter into social relationships, all
people must acknowledge the face of other people.
•As a technical term, face means the public self-image of a person. It refers to that emotional
and social sense of self that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize.
Face
• public self-image that every member of society wants to claim for itself

• negative face refers to the want of every competent adult member that his actions be
unimpeded by others

• positive face refers to the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least
some others

According to Yule (2002), “politeness in an interaction can be defined as the means employed
to show awareness for another person’s face.” (Yule 2002:40). What is face and why is it
important in interaction? Yule (2002) writes “face refers to our emotional and social sense of self
that everyone has and expects everyone else to recognize”. (Yule 2002:42).
Discourse
The term discourse denotes both written and spoken communications. It is the ways in which
language is used socially to convey broad historical meanings. It is also a language identified by
the social conditions of its use by who is using it and under what conditions.
The term discourse is also used to refer to meaning at the more micro level. Discourse is mainly
used to describe verbal repots individuals. In the study of language, discourse refers to the
speech patterns and of language, dialect and acceptable statements within a community.
The term is generally used to designate the forms of representation, codes, conventions and
habits of language that produce culturally and historically located meanings.
Discourse generally refers to written or spoken communication. It is the sequence of sciences.
Discourse analysis

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Discourse analysis is sometimes defined as the analysis of language beyond the sentence. It is the
study of the ways in which language is used in text and contexts.
Coherence
Coherence in discourse refers to the logical or smooth flow of ideas. It is the relationship
between sentences in idea flow.
Background knowledge
Back ground knowledge refers to the pre-existing knowledge to interpret what is being said by
others. It is the patterns to interpret new experiences.
Cultural schemata
It is the common term to describe cultural familiar patterns.
Discourse
Discourse is a concept that is frequently used in literary discussions today. There are different
definitions of discourse, which are sometimes contradictory. Discourse refers to the set of norms,
preferences, and expectations relating language to context, which language users draw on and
modify in producing and making sense out of language in context (Ochs, 1992). Different
discourse analysts have tried to define it in different ways to restrict the scope of this vast
domain to meet the needs of their individual purposes. Discourse knowledge, relating language
to psychological as well as social context, allows language users to produce and interpret
discourse structure such as verbal acts (e.g. request or offer) , conversational sequences (such as
questions and answers ), activities (such as story-telling and arguing), and communicative styles
(such as women‘s speech) (Ochs, 1992). Broadly speaking, the term ‗discourse‘ may be said to
cover a whole range of human interactive behaviour. Thorat (2000: 9) argues that any
meaningful interaction between or among interactants could legitimately be labelled as
discourse. Connected by means of certain logical, chronological, or psychological links,
utterances do not occur at random in a discourse. Discourse thus means any continuous
composition of the utterances in which they show different levels of anchorage. For Van Dijk
(1977: 3), discourse is: ―a sequence of sentences or utterances on any particular topic, on a
particular occasion.‖ A discourse is any connected piece of speech or writing and may be
produced by a single speaker or writer, or by two or more people engaging in a conversation or
(rarely) in a written exchange (Trask, 1999).

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The study of discourse is characterised by having two fundamental properties, which are
cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is the presence of explicit linguistic links which provide
recognisable structure, such as she, this, after, therefore and but. Most researchers regard
cohesion as a strictly linguistic phenomenon (Karmiloff-Smith, 1985). Logical and cohesive
devices combine linguistic units into stretches of meaningful discourse. Coherence is the degree
to which a discourse makes sense in terms of our knowledge of the world. For example, in
response to the question Who's going to drive to the Christmas party?, the remark Susie‟s on
antibiotics might seem irrelevant and uncooperative, but of course it makes perfect sense if we
know about the real world links between alcohol and Christmas parties, alcohol and driving, and
alcohol and antibiotics (Trask, 1999). Coherence refers to the connectivity of the elements of a
text. According to Lyons (1981:199), the connectivity of the elements of a text is essentially a
matter of meaning and reference; a matter of content rather than form. Halliday and Hasan
(1976: 4) semantically attribute coherence to the ―intra- textual semantic relations‖ which are
―primarily non-structural‖ (Halliday, 1978:133). For Halliday, coherence means ―discourse
well-formedness in terms of discourse relevance and discourse topic‖. Coherence thus is the
general principle that facilitates the production and interpretation of human interaction.
Coherence may be viewed from two angles: local and global. Local coherence refers to
organisation of propositions at the level of sentences, whereas global coherence refers to the
further organisation of ideas at the level of higher units like paragraphs, chapters, sections,
volumes/books, etc within the text (Jarange, 2006). Local coherence is the organising principle
underlying the structure of a paragraph, while global coherence is the organising principle
underlying the structure of the text as a whole. At both local and global levels, there is both
semantic and pragmatic coherence, the first defined in terms of propositions, and the latter in
terms of speech acts (Patil, 1994: 23).
Discourse could be classified into two major categories: verbal and non-verbal discourse. Non-
verbal discourse (e.g. mimes or gestures) is by definition non-linguistic. On the basis of the
medium of expression, verbal discourse could be classified into two sub-categories, namely,
spoken and written discourse. According to the nature and role of interlocutors‘ mutual
participation, spoken or written discourse could be classified into two major categories:
‗monologic‘ and ‗dialogic‘ discourse. A monologic discourse lies in an uninterrupted flow of
communicative activity on the part of one person. A dialogic discourse, on the other hand, is

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composed of one or more utterances by two or more interlocutors on a given topic, on a given
occasion (Van Dijk, 1977: 3). According to Spielmann (1989:104), discourse types are classified
into narrative, procedural, oratory, explanatory, argumentative, and conversational. The present
study makes use of the non-verbal discourse, i.e. gestures, and the verbal, especially written.
DISCOURSE AND CULTURE
Once they have gained the floor, speakers have to organize the structure and content of what they
want to say (discourse) and express everything in a coherent way, as well as in accordance with
what they suppose their listeners know or don’t know.
From the structural point of view, the focus of discourse analysis is on the explicit connections
between sentences that create cohesion or on the elements of textual organization that are typical
of different text types (storytelling, commentary, instructions, opinion expressing etc.)
Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link various parts of a
text. These relations organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the
reader/listener to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in
the surrounding sentences. Cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual
words and expressions that we can see or hear. The five main cohesive devices in English are:
reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. The term reference is
traditionally used in semantics for the relationship that exists between a word and what it points
to in the real world. As a cohesive device, instead of denoting a direct relationship between
words and extra-linguistic objects, reference is limited to the relationship of identity which exists
between two linguistic expressions.

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For example, in Mr Smith has resigned. He announced his decision this morning.

The pronoun he points to Mr Smith within the textual world itself. Reference in the textual sense
occurs when the reader /listener has to retrieve the identity of what is being talked about by
referring to another expression in the immediate context. The resulting cohesion lies in the
continuity of reference. (see deixis)

Substitution and ellipsis, unlike reference, are grammatical rather than semantic relationships. In
substitution, an item is replaced by another item:

Do you like movies?

I do.

In the above example, do is a substitute for like movies. Items commonly used in substitution in
English include do, one, and the same.

Ellipsis, instead involves the omission of an item. In other words, in ellipsis, an item is replaced
by nothing. This is a case of leaving something unsaid which is nevertheless understood. Here is
an example:

Joan brought some

carnations,and Catherine

some roses.(brought in the

second clauseis ellipted.)

Conjunction involves the use of formal markers to relate sentences, clauses and paragraphs to
each other. Unlike reference, substitution, and ellipsis, the use of conjunction does not instruct
the reader/listener to supply missing information either by looking for it elsewhere in the text or
by filling structural slots. Instead, it signals the way the writer/ speaker wants the reader / listener
to relate what is about to be said to what has been said before.

Conjunctions can be:

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a. additive: and, or also, in addition, furthermore, besides, for instance;

b. adversative: but, yet, however, instead, on the other hand, nevertheless;

c. causal: so, consequently, for, because, for this reason;

d. continuative: now, of course, well, anyway, surely, after all.

Lexical cohesion refers to the role played by the selection of vocabulary in organizing relations
within a text. A given lexical item cannot be said to have a cohesive function per se, but any
lexical item can enter into a cohesive relation with other items in a text.)

Lexical cohesion can be divided into two main categories: reiteration and collocation.
Reiteration, as the name suggests, involves repetition of lexical items. A reiterated item may be a
repetition of an earlier item, a synonym or near-synonym, a super-ordinate, or a general word.

For example:

There is a boy climbing that tree.

The boy is going to fall if he doesn't take care. (repetition)

The lad's going to fall if he doesn't take care. (synonym)

The child's going to fall if he doesn't take care. (superordinate)

The idiot's going to fall if he doesn't take care. (general word

Collocation, as a subclass of lexical cohesion, covers any instance which involves a pair of
lexical items that are associated with each other in the language in some way, such as:

Various kinds of opposites: e.g. boy/girl; love/hate; order/obey.

Pairs of words from the same ordered series: e.g. Tuesday /Thursday; August/December;
dollar/cent.

Part-whole relations: car/brake; body/arm; bicycle/wheel.

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Part-part relations: mouth/chin; brake/ wheel.

Co-hyponymy: red/green(colour); chair/table(furniture). Associations based on a history

of co-occurrence: e.g. rain, pouring, torrential, wet; hair, comb, curl, wave; etc.

From the point of view of pragmatics, the focus is on what is unsaid and yet communicated, i.e.
on what the speaker has in mind (intends, knows, believes, expects).

Generally people expect coherence from what is said or written, i.e. that it will make sense in
terms of their normal experience of things. This “normality” of course depends on each
individual or community.

An English speaker will know immediately that, even if two expressions such as “Plant sale” and
“Garage sale” have the same structure, the second does not mean that someone is selling garages,
but rather that they are selling things from their garage.

Since familiarity and knowledge are the basis of coherence, we tend to give a coherent
interpretation even for texts that potentially do not have it.

If we read a newspaper headline like: “Man robs bank with a banana”, we don’t think the author
of the article is crazy, but probably tend to imagine that the man used the banana as if it was a
gun.

Background knowledge

Our ability to interpret the unsaid is usually based on pre-existing knowledge structures, familiar
patterns that we use to interpret new experiences. A common term to describe these patterns is
schemata. If they are fixed patterns, they are also called frames.

For example, in our frame for an apartment is included at least a kitchen, a bathroom and a
bedroom, so usually these elements are not stated unless there is more than one.

Moreover, if we read an advertisement of the type:

Two-bedroom apartment for rent, € 800

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On the basis of our experience we will also know that “€ 800” means “per month” and not “per
year” or “per week”

More dynamic types of schemata, involving a sequence of events, are often described as scripts.
We use scripts to interpret accounts of what happened. We have scripts for what happens in all
sorts of events, such as travelling by train, going to see the doctor, etc. and we tend to fill in the
parts that are not stated.

Generally members of the same culture share the same frames and scripts, but with members of
different cultures there may be problems of communication.

Schemata and scripts, like the maxims of the cooperative principle, the politeness strategies we
mentioned, the mechanism of turn-taking, etc. are all culturally determined.

Hence the necessity of contrastive and cross-cultural pragmatics.

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