課程名稱： 語言學概論 任課教師： 孟智君
課程性質： 院考試課 學 分： 4
教 材： 《新編簡明英語語言學教程》
Chapter 5. Semantics
1. What is Semantics?
▲Semantics is the study of language meaning.
▲Meaning is central to the study of communication. Then, what is meaning?
*Scholars under different scientific backgrounds have different understandings of languages meaning.
2. Some views concerning the study of meaning
2.1 Naming Theory (Plato)
▲Words are names or labels for things.
▲Limitations of naming theory:
⑴Applicable to nouns only.
Plato
(427 ~ 347BC)
⑵There are nouns which denote things that do not exist in the real world, e.g. ghost, dragon, unicorn (獨角獸), phoenix (鳳凰).
⑶There are nouns that do not refer to physical objects but abstract notions, e.g. joy, impulse, hatred.
2.2 Conceptualist view
▲The conceptualist view (概念論) holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i.e. between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.
▲Semantic Triangle (語義三角) by Ogden and Richards
| Thought / Reference / Concept | |||
Word Phrase / Sentence Object in the world of experience
⑴The Symbol or Form refers to the linguistic elements (words and phrases).
⑵The Referent (所指) refers to the object in the world of experience.
⑶Thought or Reference (指稱) refers to concept.
→The symbol or word signifies things by virtue of the concept associated with the form of the word in the minds of the speaker of the language, and the concept looked at from this point of view is the meaning of the word.
→The main point of the triangle: the word is not the thing.
2.3 Contextualism (by Bloomfield)
▲Meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context — elements closely linked with language behavior.
▲Two types of contexts are recognized:
⑴Situational context (場景語境) — spatiotemporal situation
⑵Linguistic context (語言語境) — the probability of a word’s co-occurrence or collocation.
E.g. “black” in black hair, black coffee, or black sheep differs in meaning;
“The president of the United States” can mean either the president or presidency in different situation.
2.4 Behaviorism
▲Behaviorists attempted to define meaning as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.
*This view of meaning proposed by Bloomfield can be illustrated by the story of Jack and Jill:
| Jill | Jack | |||||||||||
| S | r | s | R | |||||||||
3. Lexical meaning
3.1 Sense and Reference
▲Sense and reference are both concerned with the study of word meaning. They are two related but different aspects of meaning.
▲Sense (意義) — the inherent (內在的) meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de-contextualized. It is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are interested in.
▲Reference (指稱) — what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.
Note: Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations; on the other hand, there are also occasions, when linguistic forms with the same reference might differ in sense, e.g. the morning star and the evening star, rising sun in the morning and the sunset at dusk.
3.2 Major sense relations between words
▲Synonymy (同義現象) refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning. Words that are close in meaning are called synonyms (同義詞).
⑴Dialectal synonyms (方言同義詞) — synonyms used in different regional dialects, e.g. Britain English and American English, which often say the same thing but using different words.
| British English | American English |
| autumn | fall |
| luggage | baggage |
| lorry | truck |
| petrol | gasoline |
| flat | apartment |
| windscreen | windshield |
| torch | flashlight |
⑵Stylistic synonyms (文體同義詞) — synonyms differing in style, Here are some examples:
| informality | formality | ||||||||||||
| old man | daddy | dad | father | male parent | |||||||||
| start | begin | commence | |||||||||||
| kid | child | offspring | |||||||||||
| kick the bucket | pop off | die | pass away | decease | |||||||||
⑷Collocational synonyms (搭配同義詞), e.g. accuse…of, charge…with, rebuke…for.
⑸Semantically different synonyms (語義上存在差異的同義詞), e.g. amaze, astound.
▲Antonymy (反義現象) is used for the oppositeness of meaning. Worlds that are opposite in meaning are antonyms (反義詞). Antonyms do not contrast each other only on a single dimension; oppositeness can be found on different dimensions. Different kinds of antonyms have been recognized.
Intermediate forms
⑴Gradable antonyms (級差反義詞)
*There are often intermediate forms between the two members of a pair, e.g. old-young, hot-cold, tall-short. They are mainly adjectives.
→Three characteristics:
Gradable antonyms
①They are gradable. The members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other.
They can be modified by “very”.
They may have comparative and superlative degrees.
Sometimes the intermediate degrees may be lexicalized. E.g. medium (for the size neither big nor small)
②Antonyms of this kind are graded against different norms (標準).
There is no absolute criterion by which we may say something is good or bad, long or short, big or small.
Their criterion varies with the object described, e.g.
A big car is much smaller than a small plane.
A microcomputer is giant by the standard of microorganism (微生物).
③One member of the pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term.
In “How old are you?” the word old is used to cover both old and young.
The characteristic is also reflected in the corresponding nouns, such as length, height, width, breadth and depth.
⑵Complementary antonyms (互補反義詞)
*The members of a pair in this type are complementary to each other, i.e. they divide up the whole of a semantic field completely, e.g. alive and dead, male and female, present and absent, innocent and guilty, girl and boy, hit and miss (a target).
→Characteristics:
Complementary antonyms
①Not only the assertion of one means the denial of the other, the denial of one member of the pair implies the assertion of the other.
②There is no intermediate ground between the two.
③It is a question of two term choice yes or no; not a multiple choice, a choice between more or less.
④The adjectives of this type cannot be modified by the word very. We cannot say very alive/very dead.
⑶Relational opposites (關係反義詞)
*Relational opposites are converse antonyms. The members of a pair exhibit the reversal of the relationship between two entities, e.g. husband and wife, father and son, doctor and patient, buy and sell, let and rent, employer and employee, give and receive, above and below.
They do not constitute a positive-negative opposition. It is the same relationship seen from two different angles, e.g.
Y sells something to X. / X buys something from Y.
Y is the child of X. / X is the parent of Y.
Note: With gradable or complementary antonyms, one can say “X is good”, or “X is male”, without presupposing Y, i.e. it is a matter of X only, which has nothing to do with Y, but with relational opposites, there are always two sides.
*If there is a buyer, there must also be a seller.
*A parent must have a child. Without a child, one can not be a parent.
*If X is above Y, there must be both X and Y. without Y, one cannot talk about the aboveness of X.
▲Polysemy (多義現象) — The same one word may have more than one meaning.
E.g. The word “table” may mean:
⑴a piece of furniture
⑵all the people seated at a table
⑶the food that is put on a table
⑷a thin flat piece of stone, metal, wood, etc.
⑸orderly arrangement of facts, figures, etc.
⑹part of a machine-tool (機床) on which the work is put to be operated on
⑺a level area, a plateau (高原)
▲Homonymy (同音／形異義) is the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, e.g. different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both.
⑴Homophone (同音異義詞) — when two words are identical in sound, e.g. rain and reign, night and knight
⑵Homograph (同形異義詞) — when two words are identical in spelling, e.g. tear (n.) and tear (v.), lead (n.) and lead (v.)
⑶Complete Homonym (完全同音／形異義詞) — when two words are identical in both sound and spelling, e.g. ball, bank, watch, scale, fast
Note: A polysemic word is the result of the evolution of the primary meaning of the word (the etymology (詞源學) of the word), while complete homonyms are often brought into being by coincidence.
▲Hyponymy (上下義關係) — the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word
⑴Superordinate (上坐標詞) — the word which is more general in meaning
⑵Hyponyms (下義詞) — the word which is more specific in meaning
⑶Co-hyponyms (並列下義詞) — hyponyms of the same superordinate (地位)
Here are some examples:
| Superordinate: | flower |
| Hyponyms: | rose, tulip, carnation, lily, morning glory, peony, narcissus, … |
| Superordinate: | furniture |
| Hyponyms: | bed, table, desk, dresser, wardrobe, settee, sofa, … |
| Superordinate: | animal |
| Hyponyms: | dog, cat, tiger, lion, wolf, elephant, fox, bear, … |
4. Sense relations between sentences
4.1 Truth conditions
▲Truth conditions (真值條件) — the conditions under which a sentence, or a proposition (命題) expressed by it, is true
E.g. The sentence I have red hair is true under the condition that the speaker has, in fact, red hair.
▲Truth value (真值) — A very important property of a sentence is that it has truth value. It is either true or false.
4.2 Sense relations between sentences
| X | Y | |
| synonymous | true | true |
| false | false |
⑴X is synonymous with Y.
①X: He was a bachelor all his life.
Y: He never got married all his life.
②X: The boy killed the cat.
Y: The cat was killed by the boy.
→If X is true, Y is true; if X is false, Y is false.
| X | Y | |
| inconsistent | true | false |
| false | true |
⑵X is inconsistent with Y.
①X: He is single.
Y: He has a wife.
②X: This is my first visit to Beijing.
Y: I have been to Beijing twice.
→If X is true, Y is false; if X is false, Y is true.
| X | Y | ||
| entailment | true | → | true |
| false | → | t / f | |
| t / f | ← | true | |
| false | ← | false |
⑶X entails Y. (Y is an entailment of X.)
①X: John married a blond heiress.
Y: John married a blond.
②X: Marry has been to Beijing.
Y: Marry has been to China.
→Entailment (蘊含) is a relation of inclusion. If X entails Y, then the meaning of Y is included by X.
→If X is true, Y is necessarily true; if X is false, Y may be true or false.
If Y is true, X may be true or false; if Y is false, X is false.
| X | Y | ||
| prerequisite | true | → | true |
| false | → | true | |
| t / f | ← | true | |
| none | ← | false |
⑷X presupposes Y. (Y is a prerequisite of X.)
①X: His bike needs repairing.
Y: He has a bike.
②X: Paul has given up smoking.
Y: Paul once smoked.
→If X is true, Y must be true; If X is false, Y is still true.
If Y is true, X is either true or false; if Y is false, no truth value can be said about X.
⑸X is a contradiction.
①X: My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor.
②X: The orphan’s parents are pretty well-off.
→When X is a contradiction, it is invariably (總是) false.
⑹X is semantically anomalous (X語義破格).
①X: The man is pregnant.
②X: The table has bad intentions.
③X: Sincerity shakes hands with the black apple.
→When X is semantically anomalous, it is absurd in the sense that it presupposes a contradiction.
5. Analysis of meaning
▲Componential Analysis (成份分析) — a way to analyze lexical meaning
▲Predication Analysis (述謂結構分析) — a way to analyze sentence meaning
5.1 Componential analysis
*That is a way to analyze lexical meaning. The approach is based on the belief that the meaning of a word can be dissected (分割) into meaning components, called semantic features (語義特徵).
Plus (＋) and minus (－) signs are used to indicate whether a certain semantic feature is present or absent in the meaning of a word, and these feature symbols are usually written in capitalized letters.
Analysis:
①man:［＋HUMAN, ＋ADULT, ＋ANIMATE, ＋MALE］
②boy:［＋HUMAN, －ADULT, ＋ANIMATE, ＋MALE］
③woman:［＋HUMAN, ＋ADULT, ＋ANIMATE,－MALE］
④girl:［＋HUMAN, －ADULT, ＋ANIMATE,－MALE］
5.2 Predication analysis
▲Two points about sentence meaning:
⑴The meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components, i.e. the meaning of a sentence is not to be worked out by adding up all the meanings of its component words.
E.g. The dog bites the man.
The man bites the dog.
*The components of the above sentences are exactly the same, but they are semantically different.
⑵There are two aspects to sentence meaning: grammatical meaning and semantic meaning.
★The grammatical meaning of a sentence refers to its grammaticality (語法性), i.e., its grammatical well-formedness.
E.g. He gave the book me. *not grammatically well-formed
The grammatical meaning of a sentence is governed by the grammatical rules of the language.
★Whether a sentence is semantically meaningful is governed by rules called selectional restrictions (constraints on what lexical items can go with what others 選擇).
Note: Violating the selectional restrictions means containing words which are not supposed to go together.
E.g. Green clouds are sleeping furiously.
Sincerity shook hands with the black apple.
▲Predication analysis — a way to analyze sentence meaning (by British G. Leech)
▲Predication (述謂結構) — the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence
*A predication consists of argument(s) and predicate.
▲An argument (變元) is a logical participant in a predication, largely identical with the nominal elements in a sentence.
▲A predicate (謂詞) is something said about an argument or it states the logical relation linking the arguments in a sentence.
Analysis: Tom smokes.
*argument: TOM
*predicate: SMOKE
*predication: TOM (SMOKE)
Note: The grammatical form of the sentence does not affect the semantic predication of the sentence, so all the following sentences should be said to have the same predication.
| Tom smokes. | → | TOM (SMOKE) |
| Tom is smoking. | ||
| Tom has been smoking. | ||
| Tom, smoke! | ||
| Dose Tom smoke? | ||
| Tom does not smoke. |
▲According to the number of arguments contained in a predication, we may classify the predications into the following types:
⑴One-place predication (一位述謂結構): smoke, grow, rise, run, …
⑵Two-place predication (二位述謂結構): like, love, save, bite, beat,…
⑶Three-place predication (三位述謂結構): give, sent, promise, call, …
…
⑷No-place predication (空位述謂結構): It is hot.
E.g.
①Tom smokes. *TOM (SMOKE)
②The tree grows well. *TREE (GROW)
③The kids like apples. *KID (LIKE) APPLE
④I sent him a letter. *I (SEND) HIM LETTER
⑤It is cold. * (BE COLD)
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