31.03.

2021

Course outline for weeks 5-7

English Linguistics  The Study of Meaning
Semantics

Week 6-7  Lexical Semantics

 Meaning Relations Among Words
Semantics  Word Meaning
Dr. Erdem Akbas  Conceptualisation and Categorisation
Erciyes University, 2021  Sentence Meaning
www.erdemakbas.webs.com  Meaning Relations Among Sentences
https://york.academia.edu/ErdemAkbas
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/erdem_akbas/  Sentence Interpretations

The Study of Meaning Branches of Semantics

 “Language without meaning is meaningless.” (Roman Jakobson)  In order to be able to communicate with others in a particular
 What do linguists mean when they say that they study meaning? Linguists language, we must learn and adhere to the agreed-upon
working in the field of semantics are interested in meaning in human language meanings o f words, and the ways in which words are combined to
(or linguistic meaning). form larger meaningful units such as phrases and sentences
 For thousands of years, philosophers have been concerned with more general
 Accordingly, semantics can be split up into two major branches:
questions of meaning and the nature o f meaning, but we will only address
linguistic meaning here.  Lexical semantics is concerned with the meaning o f words and
 There is an arbitrary but systematic relationship between the form and the the meaning relationships among words, whereas Sentential
meaning of each word in a certain language. semantics (or phrasal semantics) deals with the meaning o f
 According to Saussure, each linguistic sign (or word) consists o f two inseparably syntactic units larger than words, i.e. phrases, clauses and
connected parts, namely a sound sequence (or signifier) and a concept (or sentences, and semantic relationships between them.
signified).
 The speakers of a certain language or language variety are aware of the
generally agreed-upon meaning(s) o f words
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Lexical Semantics Synonymy-1

 Imagine you have to write an essay describing the process of buying
your first house. What can you do to avoid using the Word buy over and
over again?
 Morphology states that words are made up of one or more so-called
morphemes, defined as the smallest meaning-carrying units in language.  One strategy would be to choose other verbs with the same or nearly
In lexical semantics we will discuss the meaning o f words, keeping in the same meaning, such as purchase or acquire.
mind that words may consist of several morphemes.  Buy, purchase and acquire are said to be synonyms (/ˈsɪnənɪm/), the
 Meaning Relations Among Words: The words o f a certain language or semantic relation between them is termed synonymy (/sɪˈnɒnɪmi/).
variety can be semantically related to one another in a number o f  Synonyms are traditionally defined as words with the same meaning. It is,
different ways. We will now take a look at the most important o f these however, rare for words to have exactly the same meaning (or perfect
meaning relations (or sense relations). synonymy).
 Many linguists claim that it would be uneconomical for one language to
have two or more words with exactly the same meaning and thus prefer
to define synonymy as extensive semantic similarity.

Synonymy-2 Antonymy-1
 For example, synonyms may differ with regard to stylistic level (buy ~  Word pairs that are opposite in meaning are called antonyms. (/ˈantənɪm/)
purchase, cf. the example sentences in Style, or social or regional variety  The semantic relationship between them is referred to as antonymy.
(e.g. BrE lift ~ AmE elevator). Some pairs of synonyms in English Antonyms are opposites with respect to at least one component o f their
 car ~ automobile meaning, but share all other aspects of their meaning.
 worker - employee  For example, the verbs come and go are opposites with respect to
 house - domicile direction but both involve the notion of movement.
 begin - commence  To specify the “kind of oppositeness”, linguists distinguish several major
 informal - casual types of antonyms.
 eat – consume  Word pairs like present ~ absent or dead ~ alive are referred to as
complementary pairs. Complementary antonymy is characterised by an
 Lists of synonyms can be looked up in a thesaurus (θɪˈsɔːrəs) . Thesauruses are
either-or relationship between the two members of such a pair, and by the
dictionaries in which words with similar meanings are grouped together.
fact that the negative of one of the words is synonymous with the other.
 It does not only provide lists o f synonyms, but can also help us to find the opposite
o f synonyms, namely antonyms. /kɒmplɪˈmɛnt(ə)ri/
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Antonymy-2 Antonymy-3
 For example, a person can be either present or absent and either dead or  Gradable antonymy is sometimes also referred to as polarity, because
alive. Furthermore, not present is synonymous with absent and not absent is gradable pairs are often opposite poles of a continuum o f expressions,
synonymous with present, just as not dead is synonymous with alive and not with one or more intermediate stages between them:
alive is synonymous with dead.
 Antonym pairs such as hot ~ freezing or small ~ large belong to a different
type of antonymy. Pairs like these are referred to as gradable pairs, while
the type of antynomy is accordingly called gradable antonymy.  The example shows that there is obviously not an either-or relationship
 In these cases, the opposite o f one o f the words is not necessarily between gradable antonyms. In gradable pairs, more of one is less o f the
synonymous with the other. We all know from our favourite fast food place other.
that drinks do not only come in small and large, but that there is at least a  More smallness is less largeness and hotter is less freezing. Most gradable
medium in between. pairs are pairs of adjectives that do not by themselves provide an absolute
scale but are always related to the expression they modify.
 So not large is not necessarily synonymous with small, just as not hot is not
necessarily synonymous with freezing.  For example, even a large bee is still much smaller in absolute size than a
small horse.

Antonymy-4 Antonymy-5
 Some pairs of gradable antonyms show an asymmetry with respect to their  Another type o f antonymy can be illustrated by pairs like teacher ~ pupil
usage conditions. and buy ~ sell.
 This means that one of the words can appear in more contexts than the  The words in these pairs are called relational opposites, as they describe
other. the same situation from opposite perspectives.
 When we ask questions like How old are you? and How high is the  If X is Y’s pupil, than Y is X’s teacher, and if X buys something from Y, then Y
skyscraper?, we automatically use old not young and high not low. sells something to X.
 The expressions with the wider range o f uses, here old and high, are called  For example, nouns derived from verbs by adding the bound derivational
unmarked, whereas the expressions with the more limited range o f uses, suffixes -er and -ee respectively are usually relational opposites. If X is Y’s
here young and low, are referred to as marked. We say that these employee, than Y is X’s employer. Think about the pair interviewer ~
gradable antonyms differ with respect to markedness. interviewee.
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Antonymy-6 Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity-1

 The fourth and last type of antonymy we would like to address here shows
in pairs such as come ~ go and rise ~ fall.  Knowing a word involves both knowing the pronunciation and the meaning of the
word.
 We have said previously that come ~ go are opposites with respect to the
 This corresponds to Saussure’s model of the linguistic sign, which always consists of
direction of a movement.
a sound sequence (=form) as well as a concept (= meaning).
 The same holds true for the pair rise ~ fall. Pairs like these that describe the
 However, there are soundsequences that have two or more different
opposite directions o f a movement are thus called directional opposites.
meanings. When the individual meanings o f a sound sequence are
historically and/or semantically related, we speak o f one polysemous word
that has a range o f different meanings. When the individual meanings o f
a sound sequence are unrelated, we speak o f separate words that are
homophones.
 According to the above distinction, homophony occurs where one form
has two or more completely distinct meanings, as in /rait/ representing both
right and write.

Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity-2 Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity-3
 Homophones are thus different words with the same pronunciation.  The entry for the verb buy in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) can serve as an
illustration for a polysemous word:
 In dictionaries, homophones are usually represented by separate entries.  buy/bai /verb
Spelling is completely irrelevant.  WITH MONEY
 1 sb sth| _ sth (for sb) to obtain sth by paying money for it: [vnn, vn] He bought me a new coat.
 Write and right are homophones just like bank ‘the side o f a river’ and He bought a new coat for me. [vn] Where did you buy that dress? I bought it from a friend for
bank ‘a financial institution’, because each o f the two pairs consists o f ilO. [v] If you’re thinking of getting a new car, now is a good time to buy. [vn-adj] I bought my
car second-hand. OPP sell
different words with an identical pronunciation.
 2 [vn] (of money) to be enough to pay for sth: He gave his children the best education that
 On the other hand, as we have said above, polysemy occurs where one money can buy. Five pounds doesn’t buy much nowadays.
lexeme has a range o f different but related meanings.  3 [vn] to persuade sb to do sth dishonest in return for money SYN bribe: He can’t be bought (=
he’s too honest to accept money in this way).
 Polysemy is an extremely widespread phenomenon, as it is very common  OBTAIN
for words to have more than one meaning.  4 [vn] [usually passive] to obtain sth by losing sth else of great value: Her fame was bought at
the expense of her marriage.
 Take a look at any page of a dictionary and you will most likely find a  BELIEVE
number of words with more than one definition.  5 [vn] (informal) to believe that sth is true, especially sth that is not very likely: You could say you
were ill but I don’t think they’d buy it (= accept the explanation).
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Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity-4 Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity-5
 Both polysemy and homophony refer to a single form that has two or more  In our example, liver is used as an ambiguous noun that either means ‘a
meanings. Such words with more than one meaning are called ambiguous, large organ in our body’ or ‘a person who lives’.
and accordingly polysemy and homophony are said to create lexical  In the second rather exceptional meaning, liver is interpreted as a noun
ambiguity. that is derived from the verb live by adding the derivational suffix -er.
 The sentence She has bought it could mean either that she has obtained  In our explanation o f the ambiguity in this example, we have just used the
something by paying money for it or, metaphorically, that she believes lexically ambiguous term organ that can either refer to a body part or a
something she has heard to be true (the definitions 1 and 5 in the above musical instrument.
entry for buy from the OALD).
 In this case, however, it becomes immediately clear from the context that
 In this case, we cannot tell which o f the two possible meanings o f buy the organ refers to a body part, as it would be very unlikely for a musical
speaker or writer o f the sentence intended. The sentence is ambiguous. instrument the size o f an organ to be “in our body”.
Many puns and jokes are based on ambiguity. Consider the following
example:  Thus, we can say that on the one hand lexical ambiguity is extremely
widespread, but on the other hand it rarely causes real comprehension
 Is life worth living? It depends on the liver. problems in everyday speech.

Homophony, Polysemy and Lexical Ambiguity-6 Homography, Heteronymy, and Homonymy-1

 Homophony and polysemy have so many things in common that it is in  Words that are spelled the same but have different meanings are referred
many cases difficult if not impossible to distinguish between these two to as homographs, such as bank ‘a financial institution’ and bank ‘the side
types, especially from a purely synchronic point o f view. o f a river’, or dove /dAv/ the bird and dove /douv/, the past tense o f the
 It is not always clear where to draw the line and decide whether two verb dive in American English.
meanings are related or unrelated.  This relationship is called homography. Homographs that are not
 Etymological information, i.e. information about the history o f individual pronounced identically, such as dove /dʌv/ and dove /douv/ are also
words, can provide some clues, but there is no general agreement on how called heteronyms.
far back in time we should go in our research and how similar the meanings  This means that all heteronyms are homographs, but not all homographs
have to be in order to be called “related”. are also necessarily heteronyms.
 All homographs that are not heteronyms are pronounced the same and
thus homophones, such as bank ‘a financial institution’ and bank ‘the side
of a river’.
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Homography, Heteronymy, and Homonymy-2

 The following table should help to clarify the distinctions between the
somewhat overlapping semantic terms we have looked at so far:

Homonymy and Polysemy Homonymy and Polysemy

 A word is polysemous if it can be used to express different meanings. The difference  A clear case of homonymy 2: The word bark in sentence (2-a) and the word Bark in sentence (2-b).
between the meanings can be obvious or subtle.
(2) a. My dog would always bark at mailmen.
 Two or more words are homonyms if they either sound the same (homophones), have the
b. The tree's bark was a rusty brown.
same spelling (homographs), or both, but do not have related meanings.
 A clear case of polysemy 1: The word Newpaper in the following sentences. The object that got
 In other words, if you hear (or read) two words that sound (or are written) the same but are
wet cannot fire people, and the company didn't get wet. Still, it's obvious that the same word is
not identical in meaning, you need to decide if it's really two words (homonyms), or if it is one
used to refer to them both.
word used in two different ways (polysemy).
(3) a. The newspaper got wet in the rain.
 A clear case of homonymy 1: The word down in sentence (1-a) and the word down in
sentence (1-b). These are two words that happen to share sound and spelling. There is no b. The newspaper fired some of its editing staff
relation between them:  A clear case of polysemy 2: The word Good in the following two examples. In one case it's a moral
(1) a. Sarah climbed down the ladder. judgement, in the other case it's a judgement of skill.
b. Sarah bought a down blanket. (4) a. John was a good man. He donated a lot of money to charity.
b. Bill was a good painter. His drawings always were exciting to look at
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Synonymy-Antonymy-Homonym, Homophones Last semantic relation: Hyponymy, Hyperonymy and

Meronymy
 The last semantic relation we want to look at here involves hierarchies in the vocabulary!
Down vs. Up Young vs. old Man vs. woman
 When the meaning o f one word is included in the meaning o f another, we speak o f
Husband vs. wife Come vs. Go Teach vs.learn hyponymy.
 For example, words like peach, orange and mango are hyponyms o f the more general
Beautiful vs. Lovely Achieve vs. Fail Weather - Whether expression fruit. This means that peach, orange and mango are subordinate to the term
fruit. The term fruit itself, on the other hand, is called a hyperonym, because it is
Brave – Cowardly Mature – Immature Buy vs. By superordinate to the more specific terms peach, orange and mango.

Cell vs. Sell Cautious –vsCareless Enormous vs. Huge

Arrive – Depart Full vs. Empty Affect vs. Effect

Introverted vs. Shy Attractive vs. Pretty Eye vs. I

Wait vs. Weight Risky vs. Dangerous Organization vs. Institution

Single – Married Gigantic vs. Massive Knight vs. Night

Last semantic relation: Hyponymy, Hyperonymy and

Meronymy Word Meaning
 A different kind o f hierarchical relationship is involved in partwhole relations. A pit (or stone)  Linguists have developed a relatively precise system to describe meaning relations
is a part o f a peach just as the trunk and the branches are parts o f a tree. Pit is thus a so-
called meronym o f peach, and trunk and branch are meronyms o f tree. among words.
 Meronymy is different from hyponymy in that it refers to terms for parts o f real objects,  Humans have been interested in meaning for thousands o f years. However, we still
whereas hyponymy refers to a hierarchy between sets o f words. do not know much about the nature o f meaning and how meaning is represented
 This means that a peach is not a part o f an actual fruit but that the word peach is an in the human mind. Let us now take a look at some well-known proposals
element in the semantic class o f fruit. concerning the meaning o f expressions, keeping in mind that many questions
regarding meaning are still unanswered and that the terminology is not yet
standardised and still under discussion
 Three pairs o f terms play an important role in semantic analysis: connotation ~
denotation, sense ~ reference and intension~ extension.
 Generally speaking, the first term in each pair relates to the language-internal (or
intra-linguistic) side o f meaning, whereas the second terms relate to language-
external (or extra-linguistic) reality
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Connotation and Denotation Connotation and Denotation

 When we hear a word, usually a number o f associations come to our mind.
 For example, for most people who live in the southern part o f Germany
near the Alps, the word winter evokes associations o f snow, ice, freezing
cold, slippery roads, skiing, and the like, which are also called the
connotation o f the expression.
 In this case, winter is defined within the network o f words that we think o f
when we hear the term winter.
 In contrast with connotation, denotation refers to the relationship between a
linguistic expression and the concrete language external entities to which it
refers.
 The denotation o f winter is found in its dictionary definition o f ‘the season
between autumn and spring’

Sense and Reference Sense and Reference

 The sense o f an expression is the meaning it has within a language.  The distinction o f sense and reference, however, has its limitations.
 It is essentially defined by its relations with other expressions, i.e. within its network o f  There are some words that clearly have a sense, but no obvious referents in
synonyms, antonyms etc. the real world, such as unicorns and dragons.
 The reference o f a word, on the other hand, is defined as its direct relation to the  There may also be more than one expression to talk about the same referent,
extra-linguistic world. Reference is the relationship between an expression and the
just think o f the phrases the leader o f the Republican Party and the President
persons, objects, entities or states o f affairs in the real world to which it refers.
o f the United States.
 The sense o f the term cow is ‘a large four-legged animal kept on farms to produce
milk or beef, whereas the reference are all the cows out there in the world, no  The expressions differ in sense but may well refer to the same referent, e.g.
matter what colour or size they are. currently to George W. Bush. This example also indicates that an expression
with one particular sense may be used to refer to different entities in the real
 The pair sense ~ reference can also be explained by using an analogy with money,
world and that these referents may change over time.
because money is also a symbolic system. When you point to all the things you can
buy with 50 cents, you are indicating what would be called the referents o f 50 cents  The sense o f the President o f the United States remains constant, whereas in
in language. To describe 50 cents by indicating its position in the monetary scale this case the referents have to change periodically, as it is required by law.
would be its sense: five times a dime (10 cents), twice a quarter (25 cents) or half a
dollar.
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Intension and Extension Intension and Extension

 The intension o f an expression is the set o f semantic properties which define it. For  Extension, on the other hand, refers to the class o f entities to which an
example, the term bird evokes language-internal definitions like ‘animate’ and ‘not expression can be applied. The extension o f the term bird would be a list o f
human’ that are part o f its intention. entities including robin, dove, parrot, duck, ostrich etc., but also the mythical
 The notion o f intension is thus very similar to the notion o f sense. Linguists now bird phoenix.
frequently specify the sense/intension o f an expression by indicating its so-called  The extension o f an expression can be defined as the class o f its potential
semantic features (or semantic properties) referents. Of course, the extension o f an expression can change over time
 Bird could be characterised by the semantic features [+animate], [-human], as well, as indicated in the following figure:
[+wings] and [+feathers], whereas the intension o f child can be described as
[+animate], [+human] and [+young].
 In this approach, a word’s intension is broken down into semantic components,
which is why this approach is called componential analysis.
 The componential analysis o f words allows us to group entities into natural classes.
For example, all animals are part o f a class that is defined by the semantic features
[+animate, -human], while child, baby, girl and boy can be placed in a class
characterised by the features [+animate, +human, +young]. Intensions are often
said to correspond to mental images

Intension and Extension Conceptualisation and Categorisation

 So far, we have looked at the definition and analysis o f meaning from a
predominantly language-internal perspective.
 To sum up, we can say that the corresponding pairs connotation ~  This kind o f semantic analysis is called structural semantics, as it is essentially based
denotation, sense ~ reference and intension ~ extension are parts o f an on the assumption that every linguistic element is integrated into the structure o f the
attempt to explain the organisation o f our mental lexicon, i.e. how words language system through a network o f relations.
and meaning are represented and processed in our mind.  Current lexical semantics is still to a large extent committed to these structuralist
assumptions and the view that language is a system o f related and interdependent
elements.
 In the 1930s, structuralist assumptions o f the relation o f words were applied to a
then new approach called the semantic field theory.
 This theory holds that words do not exist in isolation but form a so-called semantic
field (or lexical field) with other semantically related words. Colour terms are often
cited as an example o f a semantic field. According to this theory, for example, the
English terms red and blue are related in that they are both colours, i.e. They are
hyponyms o f the term colour.
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Fuzzy Concepts Prototypes

 Concepts differ with respect to the question how clear-cut the boundary o f the  Many concepts do not only have fuzzy boundaries, their members can also
concept is. be graded according to their typicality.
 The concept referred to by the expression the President o f the United States is rather  For example, even assuming that we all think along the lines o f the
clear-cut: only one person can be the elected leader o f the United States o f dictionary definitions and imagine birds as ‘creatures that are covered with
America.
feathers, have two wings and two legs, and the majority o f which can fly’,
 Other concepts are not so straightforward, just imagine words like tall or strong. How we still have a feeling that some o f these animals are more birdlike than
tall does a person have to be to be called tall, or how much weight does a person others.
have to be able to lift to be called strong.
 Our intuition tells us that robins and sparrows are more typical and thus better
 Some people clearly fall into the category strong and others clearly do not, but
examples o f birds than are penguins or ostriches.
there are also a lot o f borderline cases for whom we are unable to decide
definitively whether or not they count as strong.  This intuitive grading o f the members o f the concept bird reflects the fact
 The notion o f “strength” obviously does not have a clear-cut boundary and is thus that many concepts have an internal structure. In this case, robins are felt to
called a fuzzy concept. Fuzziness o f this kind is characteristic o f the human be one o f the most prototypical members o f the concept bird, whereas
conceptual system ostriches and penguins are considered less typical and thus more peripheral
examples

Prototypes Metaphor
 Prototypes, such as robins for the concept bird, are cognitive reference  Another important notion o f cognitive semantics is the assumption that the
points. Due to the important role prototypes play in cognitive semantics, the concepts expressed by language are interconnected and make up a huge
term prototype semantics is sometimes used as an alternative. network.
 In many cases, one concept can be understood in terms o f the other. This
type o f interconnection is called metaphor. We are all familiar with the term
metaphor as referring to literary devices. In the linguistic sense, however,
metaphors are a part o f the conceptual system that is shared by all human
beings.
 The use o f metaphors is so common that most o f them are frequently not
even noticed by many speakers. For example, at least in Western languages,
the notion o f time is often treated in everyday language as i f it were a
concrete valuable commodity.
 This is illustrated in the following examples from English:
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Metaphor Sentence Meaning

 (1) Home cleaning tips and tricks to save time
 (2) Ideas on how to spend time with your kids  So far, we have essentially concentrated on the meaning o f words.
 (3) Invest your time profitably and study linguistics  Most o f the time, however, we communicate in larger units such as phrases and
 (4) Time is money sentences.
 The meaning o f phrases and sentences is studied in sentential semantics (or
phrasal semantics).
 The analysis o f phrase and sentence meaning is based on the so-called Principle
o f Compositionality:
The meaning of a phrase or a sentence is determined by the meaning of its
component parts and the way they are combined structurally

Meaning Relations Among Sentences Paraphrase

 Two sentences that have the same meaning are said to be paraphrases o f each
other.
 Similar to words, sentences have meanings that can be analysed in terms o f their  Common ways to produce paraphrases are, for instance, to replace one word
relation to the meaning o f other sentences. We will now look at three important with a synonymous expression, as in the example sentences (5a) and (5b), or to
types o f semantic relations among sentences. rephrase an active sentence in the passive voice or vice versa, as in the pair o f
sentences (1a) and (6b).
 Paraphrase
 (1a)We have just bought a fairly expensive house
 Entailment
 (1b) We have just purchased a fairly expensive house
 Contradiction
 (2a) The dog chased the cat
 (2b) The cat was chased by the dog
 Sentences (a) and (b) in the above examples are very similar in meaning and one cannot
be true without the other sentence also being true.
 Pairs o f sentences that are true under the same circumstances are said to have
the same truth conditions.
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Paraphrase Entailment
 The type o f semantics that approaches meaning by employing the notion o f  There are also cases in which the truth o f one sentence entails (or implies) the
truth is called formal semantics. truth o f another sentence.
 The part o f the meaning o f a sentence that can be said to be either true or false  The relation between such sentences is accordingly referred to as entailment.
is called the proposition (or propositional content).
 In each o f the following pairs o f sentences, the meaning o f sentence (a) entails
 At the sentence level, paraphrases are the equivalent o f synonyms at the lexical the meaning o f sentence (b):
level.  (3a) The cat killed the mouse
 As with synonyms, many linguists hesitate to speak about sentences with identical entails
meanings, as there is a minor stylistic difference between (1a) and (1b) and a
subtle difference o f emphasis between (2a) and (2b) (for buy ~ purchase).  (3b) The mouse is dead

 These linguists claim that paraphrases, like synonyms, are never perfect and that  (4a) Anna likes every single kind of fruit
we are actually concerned with sentences that have very similar meanings. entails

 (4b) Anna likes oranges

Entailment Contradiction
 Paraphrases, as in (1a) and (1b), and (2a) and (2b), have the same truth  In contrast to paraphrases, there are pairs o f sentences which contradict each
conditions and always entail each other. other. This means that the truth o f one sentence implies the falseness o f the
 The entailment involved is symmetrical. The entailment in the pairs (3a) and (3b), other, as illustrated in the pairs (5a) and (5b), and (6a) and (6b):
and (4a) and (4b) is o f a different kind: it is asymmetrical.  (5a) Cheeky is a dog
 (3a) entails that (3b) is true and (4a) entails that (4b) is true but the reverse does
not follow.  (5b) Cheeky is a cat

 We cannot conclude from our knowledge that the mouse is dead that it was  (6a) It is freezing in here
necessarily a cat which killed it. Similarly, Anna could like oranges but hate  (6b) It is hot in here
peaches.
 If the sentence (5a) is true, i.e. if it is true that Cheeky is a dog, then it cannot be
 The entailment in the pair (4a) and (4b) is the result o f the lexical meaning
true that sentence (5b) is true as well, as it is impossible for one animal to be a
relation between the terms fruit and orange. Orange is a hyponym o f fruit. So if it
is true that she really likes all kinds o f fruit, she must like oranges as well, as they dog and a cat at the same time.
are members o f the class o f fruit.  The sentences contradict each other, because if one o f the sentences is true, the
 There are many examples o f entailment that are based on hyponymy between other is necessarily false. We say that there is a contradiction , which could also
lexical items. For example, the sentence Cheeky is a dog entails the sentence be called “negative entailment”.
Cheeky is an animal, as dog is a hyponym o f animal.
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Contradiction

 (6a) It is freezing in here

 (6b) It is hot in here
 The pair o f sentences (6a) and (6b) follows the same logic. It cannot be hot and
freezing in the same room at the same time.
 In this case, the contradiction is based on the use o f a pair o f antonyms, namely
hot and freezing.
 Antonymy can thus be one source for contradiction between sentences.

Sentence Interpretations Sentence Meaning and Syntax

 After having looked at the most important meaning relations between sentences,  Consider the following pair o f examples, involving two fictional characters from
we will now turn to some selected cases o f sentence interpretation. the animated comedy series South Park: Kenny McCormick, who routinely gets
 Sentence Meaning and Syntax killed in each episode o f the series, and Eric Cartman, one o f his friends:

 The above-mentioned Principle o f Compositionality states that the meaning o f a  (1) Eric kills Kenny
sentence depends on the meaning o f its components and the way these  (2) Kenny kills Eric
components are combined.
 Although sentences (1) and (2) are made up o f exactly the same words and kills
 This principle emphasises the importance o f lexical semantics as well as syntax for is inflected in exactly the same way in both sentences, it still requires no further
the interpretation o f sentence meaning. We are all familiar with the fact that the explanation that the sentences mean something completely different.
syntactic structure o f a sentence is relevant
 A mere change in word order, i.e. exchanging the subject and the object,
 to its meaning in a number o f ways. Most fundamentally, the same words can be creates semantically quite distinct sentences. As in most cases, the Principle o f
combined differently to form sentences with entirely different meaning. Compositionality proves to be valid in this example.
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Structural Ambiguity
Structural Ambiguity
 Sometimes, however, even identical strings o f words can have more than one possible
meaning. The phrase rich women and men allows two different interpretations (or readings).
 Rich can be interpreted as a property of both the women and the men in question, or o f just
the women alone.
 Figure below shows that the two readings o f the phrase are due to a structural difference.
 Phrases and sentences that have more than one possible meaning are thus said to be  The structure o f example (a) in Fig above indicates that both the women and the men are
structurally ambiguous. rich, whereas the structure in example (b) represents the reading that the adjective rich only
applies to the women.
 But structural ambiguity does not only occur in simple phrases, it can also be found in whole
sentences.
 Consider the sentence Anna saw tourists with binoculars.
 In one interpretation, the preposition phrase with binoculars modifies the noun tourists, i.e.
Anna noticed tourists who had binoculars with them.
 In the other possible reading, the preposition phrase with binoculars modifies the verb, i.e.
Anna saw the tourists by using a pair o f binoculars.

Structural Ambiguity
Limits of Compositionality
 The Principle o f Compositionality, however, does have its limits.
 When we say that Kenny from example (Kenny kills Eric) passes away or bites the
dust, it means nothing else than that he dies.
 We have no difficulty understanding the words pass, away, bite, the, and dust,
but we can still not immediately infer the meaning o f the whole phrases from this
knowledge o f the individual meanings o f the words.
 Fixed phrases o f this kind are called idioms (or idiomatic phrases).
 As the meaning o f idiomatic phrases cannot be predicted from the words they
are made up of, they have to be learned just like individual words.
 The same holds true for exocentric compounds such as blackbird and redneck,
 The tourists thus have the binoculars in example (a) in Fig above, whereas it is Anna who uses which have meanings that cannot be inferred from the meaning o f their
binoculars to see the tourists in (b). components.
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Presuppositions Presuppositions
 We have seen that our knowledge o f word meanings and syntactic structures is  Presuppositions are different from entailment, among other things, in that
important in interpreting sentences, but there are even more factors involved in presuppositions also hold true when the presupposing sentence is negated . This is
sentence interpretation. illustrated in the following examples:
 When we utter a sentence, in many cases our attitudes and beliefs as well as the
attitudes and beliefs o f the addressee play an important role for the way the
sentence is interpreted.
 The sentence The mayor of Boston is in town today implies the belief or
assumption o f the speaker that there is a mayor o f Boston.
 Such an assumption is called a presupposition.
 The sentence The mayor o f Boston is in town today is said to presuppose the
sentence There is a mayor o f Boston.  Presuppositions also hold true in questions. The question Is the mayor o f Boston in
town today? also presupposes the sentence There is a mayor o f Boston.

Presuppositions
 In the sentence She managed to open the door, the verb manage implies that
she both tried and succeeded to open the door.
 The presupposed sentence would be She tried to open the door.
 There are a number o f words like manage that are regularly associated with, i.e.
they trigger, certain assumptions.
 Such words are called presupposition- triggers.
 As presuppositions play an important role in the interpretation o f meaning in
context, they are on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, which
we will discuss NEXT week!