English 421
Semantics and Pragmatics
Session Four Notes
Goals/Objectives:
1) To examine the meaning and nature of gradability of adjectives
2) To examine the nature of the order of adjectives
3) To review concepts in the study of adjectives, including entailment, paraphrase, synonyms, and antonyms
4)
 Constructions with Adjectives
Questions/Main Ideas
(Please write these down as
 Gradability
you think of them)
 The comparative forms previously discussed are an aspect of something more general
 Many adjectives (and also adverbs) are gradable
 Constructions with Adjectives
 That is to say, the language has ways of expressing different levels or degrees of the
qualities that they denote
 Here are some examples, with the relevant indicators of gradability in italics:
 Constructions with Adjectives
 1) Cardstock is thicker than paper
 2) Showers will be more frequent tomorrow
 3) He is the rudest person I’ve ever met
 4) They are too rare to stand any chance of survival
 Constructions with Adjectives
 5) Just how patient do you have to be?
 6) The conditions are very harsh
 The adjectives in the examples given are all members of antonym pairs
 They denote regions toward either end of poles or scales
 Constructions with Adjectives
 For instance, there is a scale of thickness, with thick denoting values toward one end, thin
denoting values toward the other end, and a region in between that is neither thick nor thin
 Constructions with Adjectives
 The members of complementary pairs (same-different; right-wrong) are resistant to grading
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For example:
7) *Twins are samer/more same than siblings
8) *That is the rightest answer I have heard today
Constructions with Adjectives
9) *The jury heard evidence that was too false to accept
10) ?They left the door very open
Superlatives (such as best and fastest) and covert superlatives (such as freezing) denote
extreme ends of scales and hence tend toward non-gradability:
Constructions with Adjectives
11) *The other team was bester than ours
12) *In the inner city walking is more faster
13) *The presentation was very excellent
14) ?The hospital kitchen was too spotless
Constructions with Adjectives
Adjectives modifying nouns
How are noun and adjective meanings put together when an adjective modifies a noun as in
green bicycle?
How do you decide on the order of adjectives?
Constructions with Adjectives
Semantics sets have been proposed to account for the usual order of adjectives and for their
co-occurrence:
(a) intensifying adjectives – a real hero, a perfect idiot
Constructions with Adjectives
(b) postdeterminers and limiter adjectives – the fourth student, the only occasion
(c) general adjectives susceptible to subjective measure – careful, naughty, lovely
Constructions with Adjectives
(d) general adjectives susceptible to objective measure, including those denoting size or
shape – wealthy, large, square
(e) adjectives denoting age – young, old, black
(f) adjectives denoting color – red, black
Constructions with Adjectives
(g) denominal adjectives denoting material – a woolen scarf, a metallic substance – and
denoting resemblance to material – metallic voice, silken hair, cat-like stealth
 (h) denominal adjectives denoting provenance or style – a British car, a Parisian dress, a
Guernsey cow
 Entailment
 Let’s review:
 A proposition X entails a proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily from the truth of
X
 You can extend this basic definition in terms of propositions to cover sentences in the
following way
 Entailment
 A sentence expressing proposition X entails a sentence expressing proposition Y if the truth
of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X
 For example: John ate all the pizza (X) entails Someone ate something (Y)
 Entailment
 In other words, it is not possible to think of any circumstances in which sentence X is true
and sentence Y is false
 When it comes to entailment, you must always keep in mind that the truth of sentences (and
propositions) is relative
 Entailment
 To particular sets of circumstances or states of affairs
 Thus when we say, for example, that John killed Bill entails Bill died, we are in fact
envisaging these sentences being uttered in circumstances where both instances of Bill have
the same referent
 Entailment
 And the time indicated by the use of the past tense is related to the same hypothetical time of
utterance
 Obviously Bill died could not be true any time before it was true that John killed Bill
 Entailment
 Look at the following and state whether the statements of entailment are true or false
 1) John cooked an egg entails John boiled an egg
 False
 2) John boiled an egg entails John cooked an egg
 Entailment
 True
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3) I saw a boy entails I saw a person
True
4) John stole a car entails John took a car
True
Entailment
5) His speech disturbed me entails His speech deeply disturbed me
False
6) We’ve just bought a dog entails We’ve just bought something
True
Entailment
7) Henry was chewing a tulip entails Henry was chewing a flower
True
8) Henry was chewing a flower entails Henry was chewing a tulip
False
Paraphrases
A sentence which expresses the same proposition as another sentence is a paraphrase of
that sentence (assuming the same referent for any referring expressions involved)
For example:
Paraphrases
Bachelors prefer red-haired girls is a paraphrase of Girls with red hair are preferred by
unmarried men
Are the following pairs paraphrases of each other (assuming that the people and referring
expressions remain the same?
Paraphrases
9) John is the parent of James
James is the child of John
Yes
10) John is the parent of James
James is the parent of John
No
Paraphrases
11) My father owns this car
This car belongs to my father
 Yes
 12) The fly was on the wall
The wall was under the fly
 No
 Paraphrases
 13) Some countries have no coastline
Not all countries have a coastline
 Yes
 14) Fred sent Mary a new book
Fred sent a new book to Mary
 Yes
 Paraphrases
 15) Jerry took out the garbage
Jerry took the garbage out
 Yes
 16) John sold the book to a grandson of W. B. Yeats
A grandson of W. B. Yeats bought the book from John
 Yes
 Paraphrases
 What must hold to make the previous example an example of paraphrase? In other words,
what are we assuming when we hold that this is a paraphrase?
 We are dealing with the same John and the same grandson of W. B. Yeats and the same
book, etc.
 Synonyms
 Synonymy is the relationship between two words that have the same sense
 In most dialects of English, stubborn and obstinate are synonyms
 Examples of absolute synonyms are hard to find
 Synonyms
 In the following sentences, do the capitalized pairs of words have the same (or very nearly
the same) sense in the ways they are used here:
 7) The thief tried to CONCEAL/HIDE the evidence
 Yes
 Synonyms
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8) I’m going to PURCHASE/BUY a new coat
Yes
9) These tomatoes are LARGE/RIPE
No
10) This is a very LOOSE/SHORT definition
No
Synonyms
11) You have my PROFOUND/DEEP sympathy
Yes
12) It is a very WIDE/BROAD street
Yes
Clearly the notions of synonymy and sense are interdependent
Synonyms
You can’t understand one without understanding the other
In considering the sense of a word, you need to abstract away from any stylistic, social, or
dialectal associations the word may have
Semanticists focus on the cognitive or conceptual meaning of a word
Synonyms
Thus, in How many kids have you got? and How many children have you got?, we would
say that kids and children have the same sense, although they clearly differ in style or
formality
Synonyms
In the following sentences, do the pairs of words in capitals have the same or different sense?
(ignore dialectal, stylistic or social associations)
13) He comes to see us every FALL/AUTUMN
Same
Synonyms
14) Nothing is more precious to us than our FREEDOM/LIBERTY
Same
15) The body was found in the BOOT(BE)/TRUNK(AE) of the car
Same
Synonyms
16) We’ve just bought a new HOUSE/APARTMENT
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Different
17) John got a bullet wound in his HEAD/GUT
Different
Synonyms
18) A BLOKE/CHAP I know has pickled onions for breakfast every morning
Same
Remember that synonymy is a relation between senses, not words
Words can have different senses
Synonyms
The following words share at least one sense in common, but do not share all their senses
For each pair, (a) think of a sentence in which the two words could be used interchangeably
without altering the sense of the sentence; and
Synonyms
(b) give another sentence using one of the words where a different sense is involved
Here’s an example:
19) Deep/profound
(a) You have my deep/profound sympathy
Synonyms
(b) This river is very deep (“This river is very profound” is unacceptable)
20) ripe/mature
21) broad/wide
22) earth soil
24) side/edge
Antonyms
A traditional view of antonymy is that it is simply “oppositeness of meaning.”
This view is not adequate, as words may be opposite in meaning in different ways
Antonyms
What would you say are the opposites of the following words:
25) hot
26) buy
27) lend
28) male
29) dead
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Antonyms
30) lunch
31) liquid
However, hot is not the opposite of cold in the same way as dead is to alive
Complementaries come in pairs and between them exhaust all the relevant possibilities
Antonyms
True and false are complementaries (also called Binary Antonyms)
Are the following pairs complementaries:
32) chalk – cheese
No – if something is not chalk, it is not necessarily cheese
Antonyms
33) same – different
Yes – if two things are the same, they are not different; if they are not the same, the are
different
34) copper – tin
No
35) dead – alive
Yes
Antonyms
36) married – unmarried
Yes
37) love – hate
No – If I don’t love you, I don’t necessarily hate you
Antonyms
Converseness also invokes the notion of oppositeness
Consider the relationship between wife and husband
If A is the husband of B, then B is the wife of A
Wife is the converse of husband, and vice-versa
Antonyms
Other converse pairs include terms denoting kinship relationships, terms describing
professional relationships, and terms denoting relative positions in time and space
Parent and child are converses, because X is the parent of Y describes the same relationship
as Y is the child of X
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Summary/Minute Paper:
Antonyms
Are the following pairs of expressions converses?
38) below – above
Yes
39) grandparent – grandchild
Yes
Antonyms
40) employer – employee
Yes
41) love – hate
No
42) doctor – patient
Yes
Antonyms
43) conceal – reveal
No
44) greater than – less than
Yes