Predicate: most meaningful word in the proposition.

Da origen a todos los demás

elementos de una proposición. It is the lexical item of one of the four major lexical

categories: verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions

Proposition: tenseless set of relationship between a predicate an its arguments

Valency: the number of obligatory arguments/constituents that a predicate requires

Test for arguments vs. adjuncts: If the test constituent can appear after the combination

which occurred/happened in a relative clause, it is an adjunct, not an argument. E.g.:

Bill left on Tuesday -> Bill left, which occurred/happened on Tuesday (adjunct)

Tom put the knife in the drawer -> Tom put the knife, which occurred/happened in the drawer

(argument)

Telic: processes which are viewed as having a final point of completion (end or goal):

our attention is directed to this end of the process. If the action is interrupted, it is no

longer true; if the action is completed there is a change of state or outcome. A situation is

[+ telic] if it has a natural final point, when the final point is reached there is a change of

state or outcome and the event is complete. Telic comes from the Greek word telos,

which means culminations. They are events that culminate (example: “Joan built a yacht”

… if it is interrupted then he didn’t build anything because he didn’t finish)

Atelic: If the action is interrupted, they can still be true descriptions of what went on.

They have arbitrary final points, they can stop at any time (example, “the ice melted”…

if it stops melting it still melted in the past). States are always atelic. A situation is [-

telic] if it has an arbitrary final point, it can stop at any time.

Accomplishment: (it is an accomplishment (end) of a durative event (not of a state)): the

thing that culminates is durative. We can ask: “HOW LONG did something happen

for?”. Usar adverbio como “carefully” para saber si dura tiempo. They are heterogeneous

Achievement: (successful reaching of something which is instantaneous/punctual): the

thing that culminates is punctual. We can ask: “WHEN did something happen?”. There

can’t be an achievement after an aspectual verb like “stop” or “finish”, because one

cannot stop or finish a process which has no duration at all.

Both achievement and accomplishments are punctual (because there is an instantaneous

change at the end), the difference is that achievements are the culmination points of

instantaneous events and accomplishments are the culmination point of durative events

The role of telicity:

Telicity means a purpose or goal orientation, but essentially, telicity really means

something in the world is different. Telicity is mostly present in dynamic predicates,

because states and activities are usually atelic.

Telling them apart:

Activity and Accomplishment: Is the world, or are the participants, changed or different in
some way as a result of the event? If yes, Accomplishment. If no, Activity.

Accomplishment and Achievement: Does the event occur over time? If

yes, Accomplishment. If no (happens instantaneously), Achievement.

Activity and Achievement: If the event has duration and it is not telic, Activity. If it has
no duration, but is telic, Achievement.

Copular verbs: linking verbs, verbs of perception, verb of

becoming/inchoative/process…
Dynamic (input of energy) vs Stative verbs

Tests:

1) If the verb can be used in the continuous form, it is dynamic; if not, it is stative, e.g.:

Tom told me the truth (dynamic) / Tom was telling me the truth

I like school (stative) / *I am liking school (WRONG)

2) If the verb refers to a change of state from being one thing into another thing, it is

dynamic: if not, it is stative, e.g.:

Tom cried (dynamic) – Tom wasn’t crying and suddenly he was

Tom enjoys traveling (stative) – There is no movement, process or change

3) If the verb can be used in the imperative, it is dynamic; if not, it is stative, e.g.:

Learn Spanish! (dynamic) – Correct

Know Spanish! (stative) – Incorrect

4) If the verb can be used with verbs such as “persuade” or “command”, it is dynamic; if

not, it is stative, e.g.:

She persuaded Mary to wash her car (dynamic) – Correct

She persuaded Mary to know Greek (stative) – Incorrect

5) Dynamic verbs accept the negation of permission, Stative verbs don’t:

He may not go to the cinema (may has to be unstressed, the stress falls on not) – Correct

He may not believe that I came (= he has no permission to believe…) – Incorrect

6) Dynamic verbs can become the focus of pseudo-cleft sentences. Stative verbs cannot:

What he did was persuade me to come – Correct

What he did was believe that I came - Incorrect

Control/ECM/Raising predicates

Control verbs: they assign a theta role to its subject and its complement. They are

usually valency 2 or 3 and the complement is a non-finite clause (PRO subject which is

co-referential with the subject of the main clause SUBJECT CONTROL) or an object

(in objective case) and complement clause (the clause has a subject which is co-

referential with the object of the main clause OBJECT CONTROL). Subject control

verbs select an argument referring to an animate being as subject. This is a pragmatic

restriction (can be ignored with a metaphor interpretation, e.g.: the water wants to boil is

not correct but it can be metaphorically).

Subject control verbs: want, need, expect, prefer, decide, chose, try, hope, like, love,

hate, plan, promise, manage + PRO to do something

Example: I want PRO to study grammar

Subject control adjectives (?): willing, reluctant, keen, capable + PRO to do

something

Tests: we can form the passive “to study grammar was wanted by me”

Object control verbs: persuade, tell, ask, order, urge, oblige, promise, convince +

somebody + PRO to do something

Example: I persuaded her that she should study grammar/to study grammar

Tests: the main verb imposes some condition on the first complement: it has got to be

animate and assigns the theta role of affected/goal

Exceptional case marking verbs (ECM): they are monotransitive verbs which select

one complement clause with overt subject (small clause) or a non-finite clause. They are

valency 2. They determine the accusative case of the pronoun which is inside the small

clause.

ECM verbs: believe, expect, prove, consider, and:

A) Verbs of mental state: want, prefer, like, imagine, hate, suspect, judge, know +

somebody to do something
B) verbs of perception: see, hear, feel + somebody/something doing something

c) Causative verbs: make, let, allow + someone to do something

Tests:

1) argument movement: we form the passive with the subject of the small clause. “I

believe her to be sincere” goes into “she is believed to be sincere”

2) ECM allows for expletitive it

“Sue believes it to be raining”

Raising predicates: They are valency 1 predicates; they are intransitive verbs that select

a complement clause and have originally no subject

Raising verbs: seem, happen, turn out, tend, appear + infinitival clause

Raising adjectives: sure, certain, likely, bound

Aspectual verbs (they are raising): begin, start, continue, stop, tend, going to, etc

“seem”, “sure” and “certain” can sometimes select two arguments, an experiencer and a

theme “it seems to me that john is asleep”

Tests:

1) Expletive “there” can often combine with a raising predicate:

“There seemed to be objections”

2) Raising often allows the alternative formulation with expletive it and a full clause or

the infinitive:

“It seemed that Sam stopped”

3) the verb doesn’t assign a subject: in the verb “seem” there is no “seemer” for example,

nobody is doing “seeming”

Localist theory: (theory of the eleven meanings, the most primitive notion is the one

of place). Can be manifested in nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs (or the whole

proposition)

Propositional context: relationship between predicates and arguments with no tense. A

proposition may be stative (location) or dynamic (movement)

Modality: attitude of the speaker:

cognition (what we know – epistemical meaning): know, believe, suspect, wonder, doubt,

belief, assumption, certainty, idea, certain, true, knowledge, believable, ignorant,

certainly, possible, probably, doubtfully, etc.;

volition (what we like/feel – deontic meaning): want, like, hope, desire, wish, abhor,

enjoy, adore, love, passion, hatred, disgust, expectation, wish, desire, keen on, interested

in, beautiful, horrible, handsome, disgusting, terrific, hopefully, wishfully, willingly, etc.

(There is no volition if we have the verb to be, because it is stative)

(There is an end goal/objective in most volition)

Aspect: the meaning that is present in predicates, nouns, adjectives or adverbs (how an

event or state manifest through time). Aspectual words: begin, start, stake off, stop,
finish, give up, call off, beginning, ending, opening, closure, permanent, incessant,

continuous, permanently, continuously, continually

Cause: ergative sentences (make, have, get). transitive verbs, or verbs that imply

causation. “They caused something/somebody to be…”

Perception: verbs of perception, verbs of bodily perception/sensation, psychological

verbs. ASSOCIATED WITH COGNITION

Quantity: mainly expressed in cardinal numbers, expression of degree and comparison

Logical relations: coordinating conjunctions, negation and certain verbs than imply

making a logical relation (notion of togetherness: same place and same time, the

coordination at the phrase level comes from the coordination at the sentence level)

Communication: mainly manifested in verbs of communication, deverbal nouns:

proposal, suggestion (they come from verbs of communication)

Time: the notion of time

Aspect

Aside from progressive and perfective aspects, all of the rest can be lexically manifested

in a specific word or be the aspect of the whole proposition. Tense locates a situation in

time, whereas aspect specifies “the internal temporal structure of the situation”.

Progressive aspect: “Maria is eating pie”. Aspectual meaning: duration/continuity.

Gramatically manifested

Perfective aspect: “John has broken his leg”. Aspectual meaning: completion.

Gramatically manifested
Durative aspect (homogeneous (constant) or heterogeneous (interruptions) “it is

breaking” aspectual meaning: duration/continuity. Lexically manifested

Ingressive aspect: “it is beginning to break”. Aspectual meaning: ingression.

Egressive aspect: “the baby stopped crying”. Aspectual meaning: egression.

Punctual aspect: “She found the key”. Aspectual meaning: instantaneity/momentariness.

Iterative aspect: “She tapped her foot against the floor”. Aspectual meaning: repetitive

(very short intervals within brief time spans (repetition of punctual actions)).

Habitual aspect: “John shaves at night”. Aspectual meaning: habituality (repetition of an

action, routine, etc.)

Telicity

All aspects can have telicity (have an end/goal).

Tests:

1) If there is telicity and the action is interrupted then it is no longer true (and therefore

not telic). If the action is completed there is a change of state or outcome. Also test for

accomplishment.

2) Most of the time a proposition is atelic if it also is cognitive, because there is no

intention/end goal/objective

3) One common way to gauge whether an English verb phrase is telic is to see whether

such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a time-frame

adverbial) can be applied to it (added at the end). Conversely, a common way to gauge

whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as for an hour (a time-span

adverbial) can be applied to it (added at the end). Also test for accomplishment.

4) One reliable test to distinguish between telic and atelic verb phrases is to try using the

gerund form of the verb phrase as direct object of complete or finish, which refer to the

natural point of completion of an action. Only telic verb phrases can be used in this way.

Also test for accomplishment.

Accomplishment: it is an accomplishment (end) of a durative event: the thing that

culminates is durative. Test: we can ask: “HOW LONG did something happen for?”

Example: “Alexander ran a race”. We can’t interrupt the action for it to be true. Ran is

durative and we can ask “HOW LONG did he ran a race for?”

Achievement: successful reaching of something which is instantaneous: the thing that

culminates is punctual. Test: we can ask: “WHEN did something happen?”. They can be

inside punctual aspects (if the aspect has an end point).

Example: “Alexander won a race”. We can’t interrupt the action for it to be true. There is

a change of outcome after he wins. Winning is punctual and we can ask “WHEN did he

won the race”

Theta roles

Action tier (for dynamic verbs)

We ask, if there was some action in the part of the entity, “what did X do

(subject/actor/agent/external causer)” or “what happened to x (direct object/affected)”

Actor (syntactically subject in intransitive predicates): entity that performs an action

without affecting any other entity. It is an animate entity. “Silvia left the room”

Agent (syntactically subject in transitive predicates): entity that performs an action and

affects some other entity. It is an animate entity. “Tom broke a window”

Affecting (Kreidler) (dynamic or stative verbs / adjectives): entity that without any

action, affects another entity. “The decision surprised us” / “Oliver envied his brother”

Affected/patient (syntactically DO): entity that exist before the action is performed and

that is affected by the action of the verb. “Tom broke a window”

Effect/result/resultant (palacios): entity that comes into effect/existence because of the

action of the verb. “I’m digging a hole” / “Baird invented a television”

External causer (palacios): inanimate entity that causes an event or affects another

entity. “The electric shock killed him” / “fever overtook her”

Instrument: the object with which an action is performed. Generally inanimate entity

which an agent uses to perform an action or instigate a process. “with” appear in the

paraphrasing. “The computer has solved the problem” = “somebody has solved the

problem with a computer”

Beneficiary (syntactically it is the intended recipient (IO): entity for whose benefit the

event took place. Appears with verbs of giving. “for” appears in the paraphrasing. “She

made Bill a cake” = “she made a cake for Bill”

Thematic tier (for dynamic and stative verbs)

We are concerned with the movement or lack of movement of the entities.

Theme: theme by default when no other role applies or…:

Dynamic verb: entity in motion or located after motion. “john put the book on the table”

Stative verb 1: entity located somewhere. It is a real entity. “the pencil was on the table”

Stative verb 2: entity metaphorically located in someone’s mind. Abstract idea. “John

believes that Mary is clever”

Stative verb 3: entity that is characterized, the topic of the predicate. “the boy is clever”

Source: the entity from which motion takes place, either literally or metaphorically.

Sometimes introduced by “from”. “John returned from Paris”

Path: the entity that describes from where to where the motion takes place (the distance

covered between the source and the goal). “The party lasted all night”

Goal or Recipient (depends if syntactically IO (receiver of the DO)): the entity towards

which motion takes place, either literally or metaphorically. “Paul told his friends the

truth”

Place (same as goal/locative/location): (Kreidler) entity that names the location in which

the action of the predicate occurs / (Saeedj) The place in which something is situated or

takes place / (Cowper) The place (concrete or abstract) where something is / (Palacios)

The argument denotes a place or location. The sentence can sometimes be paraphrased

by means of the word there (existencial there). “Paul has two pens” / “the fireman
climbed a ladder” / “Annie stayed in Toronto” (concrete), “Annie kept the book”

(abstract)

Experiencer (outside the action and thematic tier) (verbs of perception or verbs that

can be paraphrased by “know/believe” (verbs that express emotions or knowledge), the

entity that experiences something or knows/believes something/someone –

Saeed/palacios): entity which is aware of the action or state described by the predicate,

but it is not in control of the action or state. It has to do with volition/cognition (entities

that feel or perceive events). They occur with stative verbs and adjectives. “Kevin felt

ill”

The recipient of a private state (H. Jackson)

The individual who feels or perceives the event (Cowper)

Percept (outside the action and thematic tier) (Cowper): An entity which is

experienced or perceived. “Susie saw the monster”, “It seemed to Oliver that there

would be not be any more food”, “The stories frightened the children”

Eventive (Palacios): The argument denotes an event. Event nouns (i.e. demonstration,

arrival, lesson, party, mass, rally, etc.) are related to dynamic verbs that also denote

events. They are abstract nouns. “The meeting was yesterday”, “The match is

tomorrow”, “The Norman invasion was in 1066)

Reference and more

Saaedj

Chapter 2

The action of picking out or identifying with words is often called referring or denoting

(we can use the word Paris to refer to or denote the city). The entity referred to, in this

case the city, is usually called the referent (or denotatum).

To some authors, denote is used for the relationship between a linguistic expression and

the word, while refer is used for the action of a speaker in picking out entities in the

world.

In “A sparrow flew into the room”. The 2 noun phrases a sparrow and the room refer to

things in the world, while the nouns sparrow and room denote certain classes of items.

Referring is what speakers do, while denoting is a property of words.

Denotation is a stable relationship in a language which is not dependent on any one use

of a word. Reference, on the other hand, is a moment-by-moment relationship: what

entity somebody refers to by using the word sparrow depends on the context

Referring and non-referring expressions: there are linguistic expressions which can never

be used to refer, for example the words so, very, maybe, if, not, all. These words do of

course contribute meaning to the sentences they occur in and thus help sentences denote,

but they do not themselves identify entities in the world. Nouns are usually referring

expressions since they are used to identify entities in the real world (unless they are used

in a general way, then they have a non-referring reading).

Constant versus variable reference: variable depends on context (like pronouns),

constant does not (like the Eiffel Tower)

Deixis (means “pointing” in Greek): context-dependent elements whose denotational

capability needs contextual support.

The term extension of an expression is the set of things which could possibly be the

referent of that expression. E.g.: the extension of the word toad is the set of all toads.

We need more than just reference to understand meaning. We also need sense

Sense: it allows reference, it is because we understand the expression the President of

Ireland that we can use it to refer to a particular individual at any given time. Other ways

of describing this same person will differ in sense but have the same reference. Thus, a

noun is said to gain its ability to denote because it is associated with something in the

speaker/hearer’s mind.

Because of the problems with necessary and sufficient conditions, or definitions, several

more sophisticated theories of concepts have been proposed. One is the notion of

prototypes.

Prototypes: this is a model of concepts which views them as structured so that there are

central or typical members of a category. Chair is a more central member of the category

FURNITURE than lamp, for example. Speakers tend to agree more readily on typical

members than on less typical members; they come to mind more quickly, etc.

Frames or Idealized Cognitive Models (ICMs): the relationship between linguistic

knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge, the speaker has folk theories about the world,
based on their experience and rooted in their culture. They are not scientific theories or

logically consistent definitions, but collections of cultural views.

Ostensive definition: to define something by pointing at an example of that thing. Even

so, ostensive definition depends on prior knowledge of some word meanings

(Gavagai/rabbit example)

Linguistic relativity: the link between language and though. The way we think about the

world is determined by our cultural and linguistic background.

Such evidence for mental processes not involving language is often used to argue that

cognitive processes do not employ a spoken language like English or Arabic but make

use of a separate computational system in the mind: a language of thought. The basic

idea is that memory and processes such as reasoning seem to make use of a kind of

propositional representation that does not have the surface syntax of a spoken language

like English. Another idea is that language underspecifies meaning and has to be

enriched by hearers, this would seem to fit naturally with the idea that speakers are

putting their thoughts into language. This “language of thought” is sometimes called

Mentalese. When we want to speak, we translate from Mentalese into our spoken

language. This is a position opposed to linguistic relativity, the language of though is

universal.

Denotational approach: emphasizes the links between language and external reality

Representational approach: emphasizes the link between language and conceptual

structure
Chapter 3

Logical words: they are not used to refer to something (not, and, or, all, any). They are

very consistent in meaning across a whole range of contexts.

Lexical entry: they are the entries of lexical words in dictionaries, the same lexical word

may contain several lexemes or senses (meanings).

Homonymy: unrelated senses of the same phonological word. Some authors distinguish

between:

Homographs: different senses of the same written word

Homophones: different senses of the same spoken word

Polysemy: polysemy is invoked if the senses are judged to be related. Polysemous senses

are listed under the same lexical entry, while homonymous senses are given separate

entries.

Synonymy: different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings.

Antonymy: words which are opposite in meaning. There are different kinds:

Simple antonyms: the negative words imply its positive, and vice versa. E.g., dead/alive

Gradable antonyms: the positive of one does not necessarily imply the negative of the

other. E.g., rich/poor. This relation is typically associated with adjectives. The terms are

usually relative. E.g.: hot and cold

Reverse: reverse relation is between terms describe movement, where one term describes

movement in one direction, and the other the same movement in the opposite direction.
E.g., push/pull. The term can also be applied to any process which can be reversed: e.g.,

inflate/deflate

Converses (or relational anonyms): describes two entities from alternate viewpoints. E.g.

own/belong to, above/below, employer/employee

Taxonomic sisters: Taxonomies are classification systems; we take as an example the

color adjectives in English. We can say that the words red and blue are sister-members of

the same taxonomy and therefore incompatible with each other. They can be closed: we

can’t easily add another item (e.g. days of the week), or open: we can add another item

(e.g. flavors of ice-cream sold in a shop). Taxonomies typically have hierarchical

structure, and thus we will need terms to describe vertical relations, as well as the

horizontal “sisterhood” relation, these are:

Hyponymy: relation of inclusion. A hyponym includes the meaning of a more general

word, e.g., dog and cat are hyponyms of animal.

Hypernym: the general word (superordinate) which encompasses more specific words.

Another lexical relation that seems like a special sub-case of taxonomy is the ADULT-

YOUNG relation (e.g., dog/puppy) and the MALE-FEMALE relation (e.g., dog/bitch)

Meronymy: term used to describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items. Thus

cover and page are meronyms of book. We can identify this relationship by using

sentence frames like X is part of Y, or Y has X. e.g., A page is a part of a book, or A book

has pages. (It is almost the same as hyponymy). They can be necessary (nose of a face)

or optional (cellar of a house). Some meronyms (unlike hyponyms) lack transitivity, e.g.:
hole is a meronym of button, and button is a meronym of shirt, but we wouldn’t want to

say that hole is a meronym of shirt (*A shirt has holes).

Member-collection: relationship between the word for a unit and the usual word for a

collection of the unit. E.g., ship/fleet, tree/forest, bird/flock, etc.

Portion-mass: relation between a mass noun and the usual unit of measurement or

division. E.g., drop of liquid, grain of salt, sheet of paper, lump of coal, strand of hair,

etc.

Derivational relations: there are two derivational relations: in causative verbs and

agentive nouns

Agentive nouns: most are derived from verbs and they end in the written forms -er or -

or. These nouns have the meaning “the entity who/which performs the action of the verb”

Chapter 7

Semantics: concerned with meaning, it is the study of conventional, linguistic meaning

Pragmatics: concerned with meaning, it is the study of how we use linguistic knowledge

in context (hearers have to combine semantic knowledge with other types of knowledge

and make inferences in order to interpret a speaker’s meaning).

Deixis: pragmatic aspects of meaning (elements of language that are contextually bound)

Spatial/time/textual/person/social deixis
Short-hands: much of reference involves reliance on context, together with some

calculation on the part of the speaker. E.g., I’m looking for the new wolf (where wolf is a

short-hand for “the new book by Tom Wolfe”)

Metonymy: rhetorical device, it is when we identify the referent by something associated

with it. E.g., Have you cleared this deal with the top floor?

Synecdoche: rhetorical device, it is a form of reference where the part stands for the

whole. E.g., It’s good to see some new faces in here

Knowledge as context: deictic context, discourse context and background/common-

sense context

Anaphora: special sub-type of coreference, a referential relation between expression

where they both refer to the same entity.

Grice’s maxims of conversational cooperation

The conversational principles that Grice proposed are not rules nor are they moral

principles. The best way to interpret a maxims Do X! is to translate it into a descriptive

statement: the hearer seems to assume that the speaker is doing X in communicating.

Grice’s four maxims:

1) The Maxim of Quality

Try to make your contribution one that is true, i.e.

a) Do not say what you believe is false

b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

2) The Maxim of Quantity

 a) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes

of the exchange)

b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

3) The Maxim of Relevance (Relation)

Make your contributions relevant

4) The maxim of Manner

Be perspicuous, and specifically:

1) Avoid ambiguity

2) Avoid obscurity

3) Be brief

4) Be orderly

These maxims can be viewed as follows: the listener will assume, unless there is

evidence to the contrary, that a speaker will have calculated her utterance along a number

of parameters: she will tell the truth, try to estimate what her audience knows, and

package her material accordingly, have some idea of the current topic, and give some

thought to her audience being able to understand her.

Grice distinguished between the speaker secretly breaking the Maxims, e.g. by lying,

which he termed violating; and overtly breaking them for some linguistic effect, which

he called flouting.

Chapter 8
As hearers, part of understanding the meaning of an utterance is knowing whether we

have been asked a question, invited to do something, etc. Such functions of language are

called speech acts.

Two important characteristics of speech acts are: interactivity and context-dependence

Interactivity: communicating functions involves the speaker in a coordinated activity

with other language users.

Context-dependence: It has two aspects: a) many speech acts rely on social conventions

to support them (e.g. judge saying “I sentence you to…”, etc.). b) local content of a

speech act. An utterance may signal one speech act in one situation and another

elsewhere. (e.g. if I see someone with a watch I can say, can you tell me the time? the

question then, turns into a request).

Sentence types (words in brackets are the speech acts): declarative (assertions),

interrogative (questions), imperative (orders), optative (wishes). This is only in literal

use, because interrogatives can be used for other speech acts than asking questions, and

the same is true to a greater or lesser degree of the other sentence’s types.

Felicity conditions: Austin’s name for the enabling conditions for a performative

utterance (for example, naming a ship requires appropriate social conventions. They can

generally be emphasized by inserting the adverb hereby, “I hereby declare…). If the

conditions are met the utterances are called felicitous and if they are not, they are called

infelicitous.

Explicit performatives: a) they tend to begin with a first-person verb in a form we could

describe as simple present; b) the verb belong to a special class describing verbal

activities (promise, warn, sentence, name, bet, pronouns, etc.); c) they can be generally

emphasized by inserting the adverb hereby.

Implicit performatives: An utterance’s ability to be expanded to an explicit

performative identifies it as a performative utterance. Example: Come up and see me

sometime can be expanded to I (hereby) invite you to come up and see me sometime.

All utterances have a speech act force that has led to a widespread view that there are two

basic parts to meaning: the conventional meaning of the sentence (often described as a

proposition) and the speaker’s intended speech act.

Three facets of a speech act

Locutionary act: the speaker says something. The act of saying something that makes

sense in a language (follow the rules of pronunciation and grammar).

Illocutionary act: the speaker signals an associated speech act. The action intended by

the speaker. The uses to which language can be put in society.

Perlocutionary act: the speech act causes an effect on her listeners or the participants. It

is concerned with what follows an utterance: the effect or “take-up” of an illocutionary

act.

Sentence type: conventional matching between a grammatical form and a speech act.

Chapter 11

Cognitive semantics is the rejection of what is termed objectivist semantics: basic

metaphysical belief that categories exist in objective reality, together with their properties

and relations, independently of consciousness. Associated with this is the view that the

symbols of language are meaningful because they are associated with these objective

categories.
What is meaning? (In cognitive semantics literature): meaning is based on

conventionalized conceptual structures. Thus, semantic structure, along with other

cognitive domains, reflect the mental categories which people have formed from their

experience of growing up and acting in the word. A number of conceptual structures and

processes are identified but special attention is often given to metaphor.

Metaphor

Viewed as the most important form of figurative language use, and is usually seen as

reaching its most sophisticated forms in literary or poetic language.

A metaphor is somewhat like a simile (e.g. reading that essay was like wading through

mud) in that it involves the identification of resemblances, but that metaphor goes further

by causing a transference, where properties are transferred form one concept to another.

Two concepts involved in a metaphor:

1) Target domain (or tenor): the starting-point or described concept

2) Source domain (or vehicle): the comparison concept or the analogy

Two traditional positions on the role of metaphor in language:

1) Classical view: it is viewed as a rhetorical device to be used at certain times to gain

certain effects. This view portrays metaphor as something outside normal language and

which requires special forms of interpretation from listeners or readers. In this view

metaphor is often seen as a departure from literal language, detected as anomalous by the

hearer, who then has to employ some strategies to construct the speaker’s intended

meaning.

2) Romantic view: metaphor is integral to language and thought as a way of

experiencing the world. It is evidence of the role of the imagination in conceptualizing

and reasoning and it follows that all language is metaphorical. In particular, there is no

distinction between literal and figurative language.

Features of metaphor

1) Conventionality: raises the issue of the novelty of the metaphor.

Dead metaphor: the original sentence meaning is bypassed and the sentence acquires a

new literal meaning identical with the former metaphorical meaning. This is a shift from

the metaphorical utterance…to the literal utterance (they ceased to be metaphors because

they became fossilized or dead and pass into literal language). This is not accepted by

cognitive semanticists because they point out that even familiar metaphors can be given

new life, thus showing that they retain their metaphorical status.

2) Systematicity: refers to the way that a metaphor does not just set up a single point of

comparison: features of the source and target domain are joined so that the metaphor may

be extended, or have its own internal logic (for example the development of suns viewed

metaphorically as children growing up)

3) Asymmetry: refers to the way that metaphors are directional. They do not set up a

symmetrical comparison between two concepts, establishing points of similarity. Instead,

they provoke the listener to transfer features from the source to the target. (Example,

LIFE IS A JOURNEY is asymmetrical and the mapping does not work the other way

around. We usually take lives as journeys but we do not take journeys as lives).

4) Abstraction: related to asymmetry. It has often been noted that a typical metaphor

uses a more concrete source to describe a more abstract target. Example: LIFE IS A

JOURNEY, the common, everyday experience of physically moving about the earth is

used to characterize the mysterious (and unreported) process of birth and death, and
perhaps equally mysterious processes of ageing, organizing a career, etc. This is not a

necessary feature of metaphors: the source and target may be equally concrete or

abstract.

The metaphorical viewing of the mental in terms of the physical (hold a though, for

example) is an important influence in the historical development of polysemy and of

cognate words in related languages.

Image schemas: proposed as experientially based conceptual construct by which we

characterize, for example, spatial relations, and which can be metaphorically extended

across a range of domains, typically shifting from the external and concrete to the

internal and abstract. Such schemas are seen as the building blocks of metaphor, allowing

us to conceive of emotional states as containers, evidence as compulsion, or purposes as

paths.

Kreidler

Chapter 3

Reference: the relation between a language expression such as this door, both doors, the

dog, another dog and whatever the expression pertains to in a particular situation of

language use, including what a speaker may imagine. The way speakers and hearers use

an expression successfully.

Denotation: the potential of a word like door or dog to enter into such language

expressions. The knowledge that speakers and hearers have that make the use of an
expression successful. The objective relationship between a linguistic form and its

referent.

Meaning is more than denotation. People not only talk and write to describe things and

events and characteristics; they also express their opinions, favorable and unfavorable.

Language furnishes the means for expressing a wide range of attitudes; this aspect of

meaning is called connotation. Another aspect is sense relations: the meaning of any

expression varies with context, what other expressions it occurs with and what

expressions it contrasts with.

A denotation identifies the central aspect of word meaning, which everybody generally

agrees about. Connotation refers to the personal aspect of meaning, the emotional

associations that the word arouses. Connotations vary according to the experience of

individuals but, because people do have common experiences, some words have shared

connotations. The personal associations produced by words.

Sense relations

Meaning is more than denotation and connotation. What a word means depends in part

on its associations with other words, the relational aspect. Lexemes do not merely ‘have’

meanings; they contribute meanings to the utterances in which they occur, and what

meanings they contribute depends on what other lexemes they are associated with in

these utterances. The meaning that a lexeme has because of these relationships is the

sense of that lexeme.

First, there is the relation of the lexeme with other lexemes with which it occurs in the

same phrases or sentences, in the way that arbitrary can co-occur with judge, happy with

child or with accident, sit with chair, read with book or newspaper. These are
syntagmatic relations, the mutual association of two or more words in a sequence (not

necessarily right next to one another) so that the meaning of each is affected by the

other(s) and together their meanings contribute to the meaning of the larger unit, the

phrase or sentence.

Another kind of relation is contrastive. Instead of saying the judge was arbitrary, for

instance, we can say the judge was cautious or careless, or busy or irritable, and so on

with numerous other possible descriptors. This is a paradigmatic relation, a relation of

choice. We choose from among a number of possible words that can fill the same blank:

the words may be similar in meaning or have little in common but each is different from

the others.

Since we are used to a writing system that goes from left to right, we may think of

syntagmatic relations as horizontal and paradigmatic relations as vertical. A compound

expression, such as book and newspaper, cautious but arbitrary, read or write puts two

lexemes that are paradigmatically related into a syntagmatic relationship.

As children, we learn vocabulary first through specific associations with specific things,

actions, and characteristics (reference) and as we learn to recognize different instances of

the ‘same’ thing, the ‘same’ event, and so on, we generalize (denotation). Slowly we

learn from other members of our speech community and from our personal experiences

what associations are favorable and which are not (connotation). And we acquire an

implicit knowledge of how lexemes are associated with other lexemes (sense relations).

A referring expression is a piece of language that is used AS IF it is linked to something

outside language, some living or dead entity or concept or group of entities or concepts.

The entity to which the referring expression is linked is its referent.

A lexeme is a minimal unit that can take part in referring or predicating. All the lexemes

of a language constitute the lexicon of the language, and all the lexemes that you know

make up your personal lexicon.

Homonym: pronunciation and spelling identical but meanings are unrelated (bank:

financial institution, and bank: the edge of a stream). Pronunciation is identical but

spelling different (steak/stake).

Homographs: two words that have different pronunciation but the same spelling: bow,

rhyming with go (referring to an instrument for shooting arrows) and bow, rhyming with

cow (indicating a bending of the body as a form of respectful greeting).

The denotation is the relation to phenomena outside of language, including imaginary

phenomena; the connotation is the cluster of attitudes that the lexeme may evoke; the

sense is its various potential relations to other lexemes with which it occurs in utterances.

Chapter 7

A referring expression is a piece of language, a noun phrase, that is used in an utterance

and is linked to something outside language, some living or dead or imaginary entity or

concept or group of entities or concepts. That ‘something’ is the referent, not necessarily

physical nor necessarily ‘real.’

Primary referring expressions are the ones that refer directly to their referents
Secondary referring expressions are headed by pronouns and they refer indirectly: their

referents can only be determined from primary referring expressions in the context in

which they are used. (anaphora)

The extension of a lexeme is the set of entities which it denotes. The extension of dog

includes all collies, dalmatians, dachshunds, mongrels, etc., etc. that have ever lived or

will ever live and every fictitious creature that is accepted as being a dog.

The intension of any lexeme is the set of properties shared by all members of the

extension. Thus everything that is denoted by lake must be a body of water of a certain

size surrounded by land, and everything denoted by island is a body of land surrounded

by water.

Extensions has to do with reference and this referent can change. Intension doesn’t

change.

A prototype is an object or referent that is considered typical of the whole set. Thus, if

you encounter the lexeme door in isolation and immediately think of a door swinging on

hinges rather than one that slides or rotates, that kind of door is, for you, the prototype of

all doors. But not everybody is likely to have the same prototype for a particular set.

Deixis vs anaphora

The difference between deixis and anaphora is fairly plain, even though some function

words can be used in both functions. If someone says, for example, “She wants to leave

now” and nods in Lucy’s direction and/or Lucy is the only person present to whom she

can refer, she is used deictically. On the other hand, in the utterance “Lucy has been here

for over an hour and she wants to leave now,” the word is used anaphorically.