this slide is all about semantics

1. THE STUDY OF
MEANING
Semantics

2. What is meaning?
 I went to the store this morning.
 All dogs are animals.
 a. You are too young to drink.
 b. You are not old enough to drink.
 a. Harold spent several years in northern
Tibet.
 b. The unmarried woman is married to a
bachelor.
 My toothbrush is happy.
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3. Referential, social, and affective
meaning
 Referential meaning → One way of defining
meaning is to say that the meaning of a word or
sentence is the person, object, abstract notion,
event, or state to which the word or sentence
makes reference.
 Social meaning →The level of meaning that we
rely on when we identify certain social
characteristics of speakers and situations from the
character of the language used.
 Affective meaning → The emotional connotation
that is attached to words and utterances.
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4. Denotation and connotation
 We can see that meaning is not a simple notion
but a complex combination of several aspects:
referential meaning (the real-word objects or
concepts described by language); social meaning
(what the language users feel about the topics
discussed).
 The referential meaning of a word or sentence is
frequently called denotation in contrast to
connotation which includes social and affective
meaning.
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5. Word meaning, sentence meaning
and utterance meaning
 Content words—principally nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs—have meaning in
that they refer to concrete objects and abstract
concepts; are marked as being characteristics
of particular context and convey information
about the feelings and attitudes of language
users.
 Function words—principally prepositions and
articles that also carry meaning
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6. LEXICON
 The lexicon can be viewed as a compendium of all the words
of a language. The study of words is called lexicology.
 Words are sometimes called as lexical items or lexeme.
 Lexical semantics is primarily concerned with word meanings.
 How do we classify these relationships?
 Hyponymy
 Synonymy
 Antonymy
 Polysemy vs. homonymy
 Extension, such as methaphorical extension vs. Intension
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7. What do we know about the lexical
system in English?
 1. denotation and connotation
 2. Meaning relations among words
a. Syntagmatic relations
She is collecting stamps.
He keeps smiling.
b. Paradigmatic relations ~ lexical relations
synonyms, antonyms, hyponymy, polysemy,
meronymy, etc
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8. Sentences, utterances, and
Propositions
 A sentence is neither a physical event nor
a physical object. It is conceived
abstractly, a string of words put together
by the grammatical rules of language.
 A sentence can be thought of as the ideal
string of words behind the various
realizations in utterances and inscriptions.
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9. SENTENCE MEANING
 It depends on individual words that make it up.
 The meaning of the sentence could be the sum of
the meaning of its words.
 Sentences are not tied to a particular time and
place.
 Sentences are tied by grammatical rules.
 Consider these examples:
 a. It will be great.
 b. They reviewed what they had studied last night.
 c. We are learning Semantics now.
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10. Utterances
 An utterance is any stretch of talk, by one
person, before and after which there is
silence on the part of that person.
 An utterance is the use by a particular
speaker, on a particular occasion, of a
piece of language, such as a sequence of
sentences, or a single phrase, or even a
single word.
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11. Utterance Meaning
 It can be in the form of word, phrase, or
sentence.
 Utterances are tied to a particular time and
place.
 Consider these:
 a. Shut up!
 b. cannot
 c. oops!
 d. next…
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12. Proposition (1)
 It is that part of the meaning of the
utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs.
 True propositions correspond to the facts
but false propositions do not correspond
to facts.
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13. Proposition (2)
The simplest type of
proposition consists of an
argument and a predicate
(what is ‘said’ about the
argument).
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14. Cont’
 In the proposition ‘Pete is tall’, ‘Pete’
is the argument and ‘(is) tall’ is the
predicate. Some predicates need
more than one argument to form a
complete proposition: ‘like’, for
instance, requires two (‘Pete likes
Liz’) and ‘give’ requires three (‘Pete
gave Liz a present’).
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15. Proposition (3)
 Predicates may be described as o ne -
place , two -place or thre e -place
according to the number of
arguments they take. A proposition
has a truth value, that is, it is either
true or false.
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16. Proposition (4)

It is not a linguistic expression, nor is
it tied to any particular linguistic
expression.
 The same proposition may be
expressed by different linguistic
means, and a given sentence may be
used to express different propositions
on different occasions.
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17. Proposition (5)
 The proposition is what is
asserted in a statement, what is
questioned in a question (Is Pe te
he re ? ) and what is denied in a
negation (Pe te is no t he re ).
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18. Proposition (5)
 A proposition is an abstraction that can be
grasped by the mind of an individual person. In
this sense, a proposition is an object of thought
because thoughts are usually to be private,
personal, mental processes, whereas
propositions is accessible to different person:
different individuals can grasp the same
proposition.
 The Monday Club deposed Mrs. Thatcher. Or Mr.
Thatcher was deposed by The Monday Club.
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19. Pragmatics vs. Semantics (1)
 Pragmatics is defined as another
branch of linguistics that is concerned
with meaning.
 Pragmatics and semantics, both, are
concerned with the speaker’s ability
to use the language meaningfully.
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20. Pragmatics vs. Semantics (2)
 Semantics is mainly concerned with the
speaker’s competence to use the
language system in producing meaningful
utterances and processing
(comprehending) utterances produced by
others, the chief focus of pragmatics is a
person’s ability to derive meanings from
specific kinds of speech situations.
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21. Pragmatics vs. Semantics (3)
 Deriving meaning from the speech
situations means to recognize what the
speaker is referring to, to relate new
information to what has gone before, to
interpret what is said from background
knowledge about the speaker and the
topic of discourse, and to infer or to fill in
information that the speaker takes for
granted and does not bother to say.
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22. Examples
 Jim: Would you like to go dancing tomorrow
night?
 Barbara: We have guests coming out of town.
Instead answering yes or nor as the question
demands,
Barbara answers it by no but in implicit way.
 Barry: How did you do on exam?
 Laura: I think I’ll just drop this course.
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23. Summary (1)
 Denotation ~ referential meaning
 Connotation
social meaning and affective meaning
 The term used for written language is
sentence while it is for the oral language is
utterance.
 Sentence must be in a good structure but
utterance can be a chunk of a sentence or a
sentence itself.
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24. Summary (2)
 Proposition can be formed by constructing a
simple sentence which consists of one
argument and one predicate.
 The term argument and predicate is used in
Semantics in which it is different from when
you discuss subject and predicate. Hence, it
helps you to get more understanding in
learning a language. It is to know which is
form and meaning.
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25. References
 Kreidler, Charles W. 1998. Intro ducing Eng lish
Se m antics. Routhledge: London
 Cruse, Alan. 2006. AGlo ssary o f Se m antics
and Prag m atics. Edinburgh University Press
Ltd: Edinburgh
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