Some questions Semanticists ask

1. What are meanings — definitions? ideas in our heads? sets of objects in the
world?
2. • Can all meanings be precisely defined?
3. • What explains relations between meanings, like synonymy, antonymy
(oppositeness), and so on?
4. • How do the meanings of words combine to create the meanings of sentences?
5. • What is the difference between literal and non-literal meaning?
 Some questions Semanticists ask
6. • How do meanings relate to the minds of language users, and to the things words
refer to?
7. • What is the connection between what a word means, and the contexts in which it
is used?
8. • How do the meanings of words interact with syntactic rules and principles?
9. • Do all languages express the same meanings?
10. • How do meanings change?
 Lesson 2.

1. What is the linguistic meaning?

2. Some initial concepts
 What is the linguistic meaning?

• According to Cruse (2004) linguistic meaning must either be

conventionally associated with the linguistic forms used, or be inferable
from the latter in conjunction with contextual knowledge. We will discuss:
1. Contextual normality
2. How meaning varies with context
3. Kinds of meaning
4. New meanings from old
 Contextual Normality
• Cruse introduces the idea of contextual normality.
• all meaning is potentially reflected in fitness for communicative intent.
• It will be assumed that a way of tapping into this is in terms of contextual
normality:
• every difference of meaning between two expressions will show up as
a difference of normality in some context.
 Contextual Normality
• Thus, we know that illness and disease do not mean the same, because:
• during his illness is normal,
• but during his disease is not;
• almost and nearly do not have precisely the same meaning, because:
• very nearly is normal
• but very almost is not (Cruse, 2004).
 How meaning varies with context

• The meanings of all linguistic expressions vary with the context

in which they occur. For instance, the periods of time denoted
by month in (1) and (2) are quite likely to be different:
(1) He’s here for a month. (how many days?)
(2) He’s here for the month. (how many days?)
 How meaning varies with context

• The meanings of all linguistic expressions vary with the context

in which they occur. For instance, the periods of time denoted
by month in (1) and (2) are quite likely to be different:
(1) He’s here for a month. (could be four weeks; not dependent on the
time of utterance)
(2) He’s here for the month. (will depend on the time of utterance, but
could be 31 days).
 Kinds of meaning
• There are different sorts of meaning, each with
different properties.
• For instance, whatever the difference in meaning
between (3) and (4), it does not affect the truth or
falsity of the statement:
(3) The old man popped his clogs last week.
(British English)
(4) The old man passed away last week.
 What happens when meanings combine
• Another vital aspect of semantics is how simple(r) meanings combine to form
more complex meanings.
• To some extent this is a function of grammatical structure.
• For instance, the way red and hat combine in a red hat is not the same as the
way turn and red combine in to turn red.
• But differences occur even within the same grammatical construction: the mode
of combination of red and hat in a red hat is different from that of long and
eyelash in long eyelashes (compare long eyelashes and a long river)
 New meanings from old
• A striking feature of linguistic expressions is their semantic flexibility
• Beyond their normal contextual variability, they can be bent to semantic
ends far removed from their conventional value:
• e.g. You'll find her in the telephone book
• e.g. I got 500 likes on this particular post
• The study of such extensions of meaning is an important task for
semantics.
 Some initial concepts
• Lexeme
• Sense / reference
• Denotation / connotation
• Compositionality
• Levels of meaning
 Initial concepts:
Lexeme
• For many linguists: the word is the most basic and obvious unit of
language.
• In many languages, a single word can appear in many different
morphological forms
• English: go – goes – going – gone – went
• Arabic: ‫ ذھﺐ – ذھﺒﻮا – ذھﺒﻨﺎ – ﯾﺬھﺒﻮن – اذھﺐ – ذھﺒﺘﻤﺎ – ﺗﺬھﺒﻦ‬etc.
• what information do these verb forms carry other than the verb in these
two languages??
 Initial concepts:
Lexeme

• In Ancient Greek single verb, tithemi, which means ‘put’, has

several hundred different forms which convey differences of
person, number, tense and mood
• as e-the- -ka ‘I put’
• tithei-eten ‘you two might put’
• tho- -men ‘let us put’, etc
 Initial concepts:
Lexeme

• Lexeme: the abstract unit which unites all the morphological

variants of a single form. This means that go, goes, went, going, etc
are instantiations of the same lexeme go.
 Initial concepts:
Lexeme
• A lexeme is usually referred to using the ‘citation form’ of the lexical item, which
is one of these morphological variants and it differs from a language to another.
For example:
• English lexeme form is the infinitive form (without any inflection morphology)
• Arabic?
• The citation form, for some languages, can be the form of the lexical item which
is represented in a dictionary entry.
17
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference

• The sense of a lexeme is the general meaning or the concept underlying the
word. This can be what is contained in the dictionary entry of a
particular lexical item.
• The word’s referent is the object which it stands for on a specific
occasion of use.
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference
• Senses of the word ‘queen’:
• female reigning monarch
• second highest ranking piece in a game of
chess
• third highest card in a suit, behind ace
and king
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference

• Referents of the word ‘queen’:

• The Queen fell off the table.
• United Kingdom >> Queen Elizabeth II
• Denmark >> Queen Margrethe
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference

• Example 1:
• ‫ﺑﺎدﻓﻊ ﻟﻚ آﺧﺮ اﻟﺸﮭﺮ‬
• ‫ھﻞ ﻋﻠﯿﻨﺎ اﻟﺸﮭﺮ‬
à Identify the sense / referent of the word ‫ ﺷﮭﺮ‬in the
previous sentences.
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference
• Example 2:
• I spoke to the Prof of Semantics about my
research topic.
àIdentify the sense / referent of ‘Prof of
Semantics’ in the following:
àBA program at the UOB in Sems I, 2023-2024
àBA program at the UOB in Sems II, 2023-2024
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference / denotation
• We can see that a word’s referent is the particular thing, person, place, etc.
which an expression stands for on a particular occasion of use, and it
changes each time the word is applied to a different object or situation in
the world.
• By contrast, a word’s sense does not change every time the word takes on a
new referent.
• The entire class of objects, etc., to which an expression correctly refers is
called the expression’s denotation.
 Exercise
• Think of a lexical item (or phrase) that is associated with a particular sense,
but can have different referents.

• Think of some lexical items (or phrases) that have different senses, but all
have the same referent.

24
 Serena
Williams?
Who are:

Michael Jordan?
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference / denotation

• Words have the referents they have by virtue of a certain act on the part
of the speaker: the act of reference.
• We will use this term to describe what the speaker does in applying a
particular language expression to a particular referent in the world.
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference / denotation
• Example:
• Josh adopted his first cat in the summer of 1995.
à Recovering the referent intended: it is only in virtue of an act of reference,
undertaken by the speaker, that the words ‘Josh’, ‘first cat’, and ‘the summer of 1995’,
have the referents they do.
• I saw that dog again.
à In order to recover the referent that dog, you (the hearer) are going to need to know
which dog I (the speaker) am talking about.
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference / denotation / connotation

• Connotation:
• It names those aspects of meaning which do not affect a word’s sense,
reference or denotation, but which have to do with secondary factors
such as its emotional force, its level of formality, its character as a
euphemism, etc.
 Initial concepts:
Sense / reference / denotation / connotation
• Examples:
• Police officer and cop (similar denotations
but different connotations)
• brat and child
• toilet and restroom
• Single and spinster
• Other examples?
 Initial concepts:
Compositionality

• What does the term productivity mean in linguistics?

• the fact that the vocabulary of any given language can be used to construct a
theoretically infinite number of sentences (not all of which will be meaningful), by
varying the ways in which the words are combined.
• How many sentences can you form using the following words?
• speeding, cat, car, a, hit, my
• think of grammatical sentences that do not make sense.
• My laptop flew out the window and landed on the back of the moon
 Initial concepts:
Compositionality
• The fact that we can still make some sense of the previous sentence (even
though it’s meaningless, based on our world knowledge) is due to meaning
being compositional.
• What does that mean?
• What happens when you hear an utterance that contains a word whose meaning you
don’t recognize?
• Is all meaning compositional?
 Initial concepts:
Compositionality

• Meaning in idioms is non-compositional.

• Think of examples of idioms in English and Arabic.
Initial concepts:
Compositionality
Initial concepts:
Compositionality
 Initial concepts:
Compositionality

• Idioms are all over the language, which means that it’s difficult
to rely on the concept of compositionality to decode language,
especially in the case of second language learners.
• Discuss how non-compositionality can influence the process of
translating from one language to the other.
 Levels of meaning

• Lexical meaning vs phrasal meaning (discussed earlier regarding

compositionality)
• Sentence meaning vs utterance/speaker meaning i.e. semantics and
pragmatics (read the handout)
 Questions for discussion:

• Some linguistic expressions have a sense but do not have a

reference/denotation. Do you think there could be any linguistic
expressions with reference/denotation but no senses? If so, what
are they? If not, why not?
 Questions for discussion:
• Consider the following quotation:
• We must not allow our words to change their meanings, but must make sure
that we use them in their correct senses. For if we are careless with meanings,
we will lose them, and there will be many ideas which we will no longer be able
to express. For ‘disinterested’ does not mean the same as ‘uninterested’,
‘fulsome’ does not mean the same as ‘full’, ‘infer’ does not mean the same as
‘imply’. If we lose these differences of meaning, we will lose the differences in
the concepts they express.
• Do you agree with these statements? What assumptions about language do they contain?
 Questions for discussion:
• Consider the following words: squabble, fight, argue, bicker, dispute,
disagree, debate, contend, spat. Describe how they differ in sense and
connotation.