Unit 7: Semantics

1. Give a definition of the term “semantics”.

2. What does the “indeterminacy of linguistic meaning” refer to? Which are the main
difficulties that we face in determining the meaning of words?
3. Which two different kinds of meaning are mentioned by the author? Which branch
of linguistics studies each of them?
4. What does Saussure’s view of the sound–meaning relationship of words consist in?
Explain.
5. How are the concepts of signification and reference different from each other?
6. What does Prototype Theory make reference to?
7. Explain the difference between synthetic and analytic truth.
8. Which are the two main types of senses? Explain.
9. Mention the principal associative processes that affect word meaning and explain
them.
10. Which are the two main different ways in which words may be related?
11. Explain and exemplify the different lexical relations that exist between words.
12. How can the meaning of words be affected in the course of time? Explain.
13. Explain and exemplify the different semantic relations between sentences.
1. The study of sense is the concern of semantics; semantics is primarily concerned
with grammatical competence, with meaning as a product of the linguistic system; with
the meaning of words and sentences.
2. The indeterminacy of linguistic meaning refers to the impossibility of determining,
absolutely, what a given string of words actually means.
The main difficulties we face in determining the meaning of words are the way in which
words change their meaning over time, so that we cannot always be sure, e.g when
reading a text from the past, what the words meant in their original context.
3. The two kinds of meaning mentioned are: the general level of meaning, which is
available to all of us, called the sentence meaning, or sense, of the string. The fuller,
contextual meaning, which we get from knowing all the circumstances in which it is
uttered, we can call its utterance meaning, or force. The study of sense is the
concern of semantics, while the study of force, on the other hand, is the concern of
pragmatics.
4. Saussure’s view of the sound–meaning relationship of words consist in that, once
sounds acquire meaning, they become transformed; they acquire what he calls value.
In order for sounds to acquire meaning, we have to consider children when, at some
point in their lives experiment with making up a language. They invent nonsense
words, in a sense imitating their first encounter with words, before they could assign
any meaning to them.
The relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is not a natural one;
words are not facts of nature like rocks and trees, but cultural objects, products of the
human brain. The relationship between what we can call the sound image of a word
and what it represents is symbolic. The knowledge of these symbolic relationships is
part of our grammatical competence as speakers of the language.
5. Saussure refers to the ‘sense’ as the signified, whilst the sound image he terms as
the signifier. This is because, for Saussure, words are signs: their relationship to the
outside world is symbolic. The signifier acts as a label, not for and object but a concept.
The point Saussure makes is that there is no direct relation between the sound of a
word and the object(s) it refers to: it is the signifier and signified together, that is, the
complete sign, which refers to the outside world. e.g. before you can identify something
called /tri:/ you must already know what one is, i.e. you must possess the concept
‘tree’. As for the objects themselves which one uses the sign to refer to, Saussure calls
these referents. So words have to kinds of semantic meaning: first, they signify one or
more senses, or signifieds, that is, they have signification, and second, they refer to
things or activities in the outside world, so they have reference.

6. Sense is really an abstraction from reference. When we look up words in the

dictionary, such as tree, what we are looking for are the defining features of tree, that
is, essential characteristics, that is why most dictionaries restrict their definitions of
trees, dogs, and so forth, to prototypes. Prototype theory has been very influential in
helping to account for how the mind stores and processes the senses of words. It does
so by concentrating on typical usages. e.g. if we were asked for the sense of bird, we
should probably base our answer on a robin or sparrow (central member of the
species) rather than on an ostrich or a penguin (which are more marginal).

We can distinguish two types of reference: general (I like trees) and specific (this is a
tree).The more reference knowledge someone had, the richer the sense of a particular
term would be. Reference knowledge is fuller and more resistant to systematic analysis
than sense knowledge, but we rely on it to determine whether statements are
acceptable or not. (‘dogs have three heads’ would be rejected bc it violates the
syntetic truth.

7. Something is synthetically true if it reflects a fact about the real world.

Consequently, such truths are contingent, that is, they are not absolute. If, for example
we came across a rare breed of dogs with three heads the statement dogs have three
heads would no longer be untrue. But under no circumstances could the statement
dogs are cats be true. This violates an analytic truth, or ‘truth by the very nature of
language’. The problem with dogs are cats is that the senses are in opposition to each
other.

8. Conceptual sense and associative sense.

(i) Conceptual sense: it denotes the stable semantic features of a word. If, for
example, you had to say what the words woman and man meant. The items of
information (‘human, adult, male/female’) or semantic features, serve to categorise the
terms woman and man, as well as to distinguish them from related terms.
woman: [ + human + adult + female]
man: [ + human + adult + male]
girl: [ + human – adult + female]
boy: [ + human – adult + male]
bull: [ - human + adult + male]
Semantic feature analysis attempts to account for the conceptual sense of a word
according to the presence or absence of a specific feature in the word’s profile. It works
very well for words with a high lexical content and allows us to map a certain level of
sense onto words with some degree of accuracy. We are identifying a kind of core
meaning which is resistant to changes of time or culture; the conceptual sense of a
word is not dependent on its reference: it is what the word can be said to denote.
However, a word may have more than one conceptual sense: the noun flight, for
example, can have the senses of a ‘series of steps’, ‘a journey by air’, ‘a unit of the air
force’, ‘the power of flying’ and ‘a digression’.

(ii) Associative sense: the associative meaning that words acquire from different
social and cultural context. Here are the principal associative processes which affect
the meaning of words.
 (a) Connotation

What a word ‘connotes’ is much less stable and more indeterminate than what it
‘denotes’. We are talking about the kinds of values and attitudes invoked by a word
apart from its core meaning. Clearly, these are more culturally dependent and more
likely to change over time. Let´s consider the connotations attached to man and
woman in:

He is a real man She is a real woman

‘brave’, ‘resilient’, ‘strong’, ‘lack of sentiment’ ‘attractive’, ‘shapely’, ‘sexually

mature’

(said connotations are based on extra qualities that could be guessed, with no limit to
what there might be inferred as the connotative meaning is more open-ended that
conceptual)
 (b) Collocation

Consider the adjective ‘clear’; if looked up in a dictionary, at least ten different

meanings would list depending on the linguistic context in which it is used (clear
conscience, clear sky, clear case) In each instance, the meaning of clear is slightly
different; clear conscience means ‘without guilt’, whereas clear in clear case means
‘unmistakable’.

All these examples have the meaning ‘free from’, whether free from complications (a
clear case), free from guilt (a clear conscience) or free from clouds (a clear sky). The
difference between them come from the words clear is put up with, or collocates with.
‘Collocate’ is a verb meaning ‘to go with’, and one way by which we know the meaning
of a word is by knowing ‘the company it keeps’.

Words such as strong, powerful and mighty seem interchangeable in terms of their
conceptual sense, and yet they are clearly not so when we come to think of their uses
with other words:

Strong tea; powerful / mighty tea would be considered comical.

Strong language (implies use of swearing), vs powerful language (implies use of

persuasive rhetorical devices).

We could say that, in order to know the meaning of a word in the language, we need to
know its collocational range, that is, all the linguistic contexts in which it can occur.

(c) Stylistic variation

One of the consequences of the way in which English has developed over the past
1500 years has been the emergence of different registers, or styles, of English. This
has been due to the influx of new words from other languages such as Latin and
French, and to the variety of social needs which English has had to fulfill.
Larceny (French) used in law; theft (Anglo-Saxon) used colloquially.
Haemorhaging (Greek) or laceration (Latin) used in medical field; bleeding and wound
(Anglo-Saxon).

In all these cases, there is no real difference in conceptual sense between the terms
used. The differences have to do with levels of formality.

steed = poetic in style; would be appropriate in a literary work about knights of the
round table.

horse = least marked bc it can be used in any context, thus we can refer to it as the
normative term.
nag = slang; normally used only in colloquial English.

gee-gee = belongs to the nursery; used with children.

(d) Reflection

Because a word can have more than one conceptual sense, it is often difficult when
using a word with a particular sense, to keep the other one(s) out of our minds. When
we talk about nuclear family, e.g., we mean the small tightly knit family of mother,
father, and children, but it is difficult to keep the other sense of nuclear to do with the
discovery of atomic energy, as in nuclear age. Senses reflect each other, and this is
part of the meaning of which individual words are capable
10) We’ve seen that, according to Saussure, words are signs consisting of a sound
image (signifier) and a sense image (signified). The complete sign is used to refer to
the outside world in some way; this constitutes its ‘reference’. Some signs have a
strong reference – nouns and verbs – whilst some only have a weak reference –
conjunctions and prepositions. This being said, there are two principal ways in which
they may be related. First the sound images may be the same, or similar. There are a
lot of words in English which sound the same but which have a totally different and
unrelated sense. The technical term for them is homophones, for example vain/vein,
air/heir, whether/weather. In other instances, words are similar, but not identical, in
sound; this feature of language is called rhyme, for example brick/sick, basket/casket.

The second way of in which signs may be related is in terms of their senses (here the
concept of semantic space is so useful). Each sign occupies a certain amount of
territory in the linguistic system. The total extent of this territory is referred to by
Saussure as the sign’s ‘value’. The senses of words, both conceptual and associative,
are constantly adjusting to the presence of new words or the absence of old ones.

Old English - mete = food

Old Norse - foda = food

11) Relations between words can be of two types: sense relations and non-sense
relations.
Sense relations
1. Synonymy: it can only exist in the linguistic system as similarity not sameness
of meaning. The concept of semantic space prohibits two words having exactly
the same meaning, and if words in the same semantic field were examined, we
would find small differences, that serve to distinguish items from one another.

(i) die; pass away

(ii) chap; bloke
(iii) hide; conceal
(iv) stubborn; obstinate
(v) broad; wide
(vi) royal; regal

All these words are examples of what we call ‘close’ synonymy, where their individual
senses almost, but not quite, overlap. Many words, however, exhibit ‘loose’ synonymy;
they overlap in one of their conceptual senses but not in others. E.g. mature, adult and
ripe all share the sense of ‘in peak condition’, but differ in other senses. Similarly,
loose, inexact, free, vague and relaxed overlap in some senses and not in others.

2. Antonymy: two words that are exactly opposite in meaning.

(i) wide; narrow

(ii) old; young
(iii) married; single
(iv) alive; dead
(v) buy; sell
(vi) lend; borrow

3. Polysemy: the capacity for words to bear more than one sense, both
conceptually and associatively. They can belong to more than one semantic
field. The word mad, as well as having the sense ‘insane’, can also signify
‘angry’. In addition to belonging to the semantic field of madness, it is also a
member of the field of anger; it has synonymous relations with irate and furios.

(i) occupation: what line are you in?

(ii) row of characters: indent a line.
(iii) queue: form a line.
(iv) telephone conversation: give someone a line.
(v) rope: throw someone a line.
(vi) policy: adhere to a line.
(vii)
4. Hyponymy: the linguistic relationship which exists between the inclusive
category and the subset of a word. The words demented, insane, loony are
members of the field of madness: their sense overlaps with that of mad. There
are also many varieties of madness (e.g. schizophrenia, psychopathy,
paranoia). These are not synonyms for being mad, but subordinate types
included within the term mad. In other words, mad is a general category that
has within it a subset of more specific terms.

Hyponymy is a hierarchical relationship; someone who is schizophrenic is mad, but

someone who is mad doesn’t have to be schizophrenic. The term mad is the
superordinate category of which the term schizophrenic is a hyponym.
Hyponymic relationships can be further extended; mad belongs within the larger
field of mental states, including terms like optimistic, pessimistic, mad and sane. So
mad is itself a hyponym hierarchically subordinate to a superordinate category.
 5. Incompatibility: It is a type of sense relation in which there is a relationship of
exclusion of meaning between words that are mutually exclusive members of
the same field. We can see this feature more clearly in some fields than in
others. E.g field of hospital personnel (doctor, nurse, orderly, matron, sister, and
so on). All of these occupy their own semantic space, they all have their own
satellite of synonymous terms. In the case of doctor we have physician, leech,
medic, sawbones and quack. But they have their own clearly defined
boundaries; part of the meaning of doctor is ‘not nurse, matron, etc’. As with
antonymy, the senses are defined against one another, although not with the
same sharpness of opposition. We can say that words which are mutually
exclusive members of the same field exhibit incompatibility.

Non-sense Relations

1. Homophones
Homophones are words which sound alike but are written differently and have different
meanings.
Examples: vain/vein, air/heir, whether/weather

2. Homographs
Homographs are words that are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and
different meanings.
Examples: lead /lid/ in ‘Does this road lead to town?’ and lead /led/ in ‘Lead is a
heavy metal’, wind /wind/ ‘air movement’ and wind /waind/ ‘to turn’

3. Homonymy
Homonyms are words that are written in the same way and sound alike but which have
different meanings. These different words have accidentally come to have exactly the
same form.
Examples: bank (of a river) and bank (financial institution),
bat (flying creature) and bat (piece of equipment used in sports)

4. Metonymy
Type of relationship between words in which we refer to something by the name of
something else. Words are related based simply on a close connection in everyday
experience. That close connection can be based, among others, on:
 a container/ content relation (bottle/coke, can/juice)
  a whole/ part relation (car/wheels, house/roof)
 a representative/symbol relationship (king/crown, the president/ the white
house).

It is our familiarity with metonymy that makes ‘He drank the whole bottle’ easy to
understand although it sounds absurd literally (i.e. He drank the liquid, not the glass
object). We also accept ‘The White House announced that …’ without being puzzled
that a building appears to be talking. Many examples of metonymy are highly
conventionalized and easy to interpret such as when you talk about ‘filling the car’,
‘answering the door’, ‘giving someone a hand’ or ‘needing some wheels’.

12) Words do not have an absolute sense, that is, their signification varies across
cultures and across time. Conceptual sense is the most stable sense, but even here
there are a variety of ways in which the meaning, or signification, of a word may alter
with the passage of time, and changing cultural context.

Words can be subject to extension, that is, they can grow larger in meaning (virtue
originally signified a quality which only men could possess, but now is gender free in its
signification). Words can also experience the opposite process, limitation, which
involves the loss of one or more senses (miser, which at one time had as one of its
meaning ‘wretch’). Other processes involve pejoration, whereby a term acquires a
pejorative meaning, and its contrary, amelioration. Finally, transference is one of the
most common ways by which new senses are created, and, as such, is described as a
productive process. It involves terms being transferred from one setting to another so
avoiding the need for entirely new words. E.g. all the terms used to refer to railways
(track, rail and switch) started their existence elsewhere. A track is a small path; a rail
is a piece of wooden fencing; and a switch is a long slender twig or branch.

PROCESSES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE

A) Extension or generalization: process whereby words grow larger in

meaning; they acquire a more general meaning, i.e. a word that is
referred to normally or exclusively comes to be referred broadly or
inclusively.
For example, the verb ‘go’ is a verb of motion that seems as general as
possible in meaning, but until the late 17 th century it meant ‘walk’. Also,
the word ‘virtue’ comes from Latin ‘vit’, thus ‘virtue’ first meant
‘manliness’, a quality which only men could possess but now is gender
free in signification.

B) Limitation or specialization: Process that involves the loss of one or

more senses. The word acquires a more specialized meaning.
For example, the older meaning of ‘meat’ was ‘food’ in general, and now
it refers to ‘the flesh of animals’; or the case of the word ‘starve’, which
used to mean ‘die’ in OE and came to mean ‘die from hunger’.

C) Elevation or amelioration: Process that involves the rising of meaning of

a word in a scale of values. Thus, a word which once was used to refer
to something bad, or to something ‘neutral’, comes to refer to something
good. It acquires a positive meaning. For example, the institution of
chivalry brought about the elevation of ‘knight’ which used to mean
 ‘youth’ to a term denoting rank or position: ‘a man of noble birth who
serves his king or lord in battle’.

D) Pejoration or degradation: Process whereby a term acquires a pejorative

meaning. For example, the word ‘villain’ used to mean ‘farm laborer’ and
now it means ‘a person who harms after people or break the law’, or the
word ‘gossip’, which originally meant a ‘god-relative’ without any of the
pejorative sense of a ‘trivial-talker’ that it has today.

E) Transference: It is one of the most common ways in which new senses

are created. It involves terms being transferred from one setting to
another so as to avoid the need for entirely new words (trail, switch, rail).
- Metaphorical transference: process by which most nouns are capable
of both a literal and a metaphoric meaning. Prime examples are parts of
the body, such as eye (eye of the needle), leg (leg of the table), hand
(hands of the clock) and foot (the foot of the bed).
Since a metaphor is an expression that ordinarily designates one
concept (its literal meaning), it is used to designate another concept,
creating an implicit comparison.

13) Sentences have meaning that can be analyzed in terms of their relation to other
meanings. We consider three relations – paraphrase, entailment, and contradiction.

Paraphrase: two sentences that can have the same meaning are said to be
paraphrases of each other. The following pairs of sentences provide examples of
paraphrase.

1. a. The police chased the burglar.

b. The burglar was chased by the police.

2. a. I gave the summons to Erin.

b. I gave Erin the summons.

3. a. It is unfortunate that the team lost.

b. Unfortunately, the team lost.

Entailment: a relation in which the truth of one sentence necessarily implies the truth
of another (examples above). The entailment relation in the previous examples is
mutual; in other cases, entailment is assymetrical:

4. a. The park wardens killed the bear.

b. The bear is dead.

5. a. Robin is a man.
b. Robin is human.

Contradiction

Sometimes, if one sentence is true, then another sentence must be false:

6. a. Charles is a bachelor.
b. Charles is married,

If it is true that Charles is a bachelor, then it cannot be true that he is married. When
two sentences cannot both be true, we say there is a contradiction.