The meaning of language
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So far we have considered language from a
structural perspective, with relatively little
concern for meaning.
But (obviously) words, phrases and sentences
mean something.
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Why does a certain set of words mean
something and a similar set mean something
very different?
When do two different sentences mean the
same thing?
How can one sentence mean more than one
thing?
What is meaning?
Is a word’s meaning simply its dictionary
definition?
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In our society, many people feel that the
dictionary definition of a word more
accurately represents a word’s meaning than
an individual speaker’s understanding of the
word.
But descriptivists arrive at their definitions by
studying the ways speakers of the language
use different words.
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A word’s meaning is determined by the
people who use that word, not by a dictionary.
Also, dictionary definitions are circular:
For the same reason, the meaning of a word
in your mental lexicon can’t just be a string
of other words: clearly there must be
something more to the meanings of a
language’s words.
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This will mean the end of my career.
I mean to help if I can
Wear your uniform properly! This means you.
His losing his job means that he will have to
look for a new one.
Black Label means fine whisky.
Those clouds mean rain.
She doesn’t mean what she said.
The Linguistics teacher is mean!
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What else is there?
One possibility is that a word’s meaning
includes a mental image: when you hear tree,
for example, an image (or smell, or whatever)
of a tree comes to mind.
Note that a mental image can’t be all there is
to meaning, either, as each individual’s
mental image of a given thing is likely to be
different.
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Write down the first example of each of the
following things that comes to mind.
bird
vegetable
fruit
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Any analysis of a given word must take
into account this tendency (which is
cultural) to choose a typical or ideal
example of the kind of thing.
Any word, however, can be used to
represent a wide range of things, any one
of which may or may not be typical.
◦ Even though your mental image of bird may be,
say, a chicken, the word is of course equally
applicable to ostriches and penguins.
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Where would you draw the line between an
arm chair and a sofa?
1
2
4
3
5
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So, we need more for a word’s meaning than
simply a definition and a mental image.
Language is used to talk about things in the
world, and many words seem to stand for (or
refer to) actual objects or relations in the
world.
Denotation vs. Connotation
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It seems reasonable, then, to consider the
actual thing a word refers to, its referent, as
one aspect of the word’s meaning.
Note that words can also refer to things that
don’t exist in the real world, like Santa Claus,
Harry Potter, unicorns etc.
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Reference
◦ Words always refer to a specific object in the real
world.
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Joe who is a funny guy is my friend.
The funny guy.
The
funny
My friend.
guy
That guy.
Joe
That guy
My
friend
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Consider the fact that these two sentences
mean the same thing:
Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton.
The winner of the 1992 U.S. presidential
election is married to Hillary Clinton.
So Bill Clinton and the winner of the 1992 U.S.
presidential election both refer to the same
thing.
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Sense (connotation)
If reference were meaning alone there would
be some problems:
Hobbits, unicorns, of, by, will, may
Two expressions that refer to same object,
but different meaning
Prime minister & Abhisit
Sense but no referent
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Meaning is provided by a community of
language speakers, not by some special
authority like a dictionary or grammar book.
The meaning of a word or expression is not
just a definition composed of more words in
the same language, since ultimately the
meaning of some words would have to be
known in order to understand the
definitions.
3. The meaning of a word or expression is
not just a mental image, since mental
images seem to vary from person to
person more than meaning does.
4. The meaning of a word involves more
than just the actual thing the word
refers to, since not all expressions have
real-world referents, and substituting
expressions with identical referents can
change meaning.
Two central features of idioms:
1. The meaning of the idiomatic expression cannot
be deduced by examining the meanings of its
parts.
2. The expression is fixed both grammatically and
lexically.
For example:
Shut up= ‘stop talking’
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Synonyms
Expressions that have the same meaning.
Sign in the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park:
Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plaque,
molest, worry, harass, bother, tease the
animals.
Transmit
Recuperate
Descend
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Antonyms
Opposites of a word
Complementary:
Alive/dead
present/absent
fail/pass
Gradable pairs:
Small/big
hot/cold fast/slow happy/sad
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Creating antonyms by affixing:
Likely/unlikely
Able/ unable
Smoker/nonsmoker
Tolerant/intolerant
Exceptions:
Add ‘in’ to following words and explain the
meaning:
Flammable
valuable
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Homonyms (homophones)
Different meaning but same pronunciation
To, too, two
Homonyms can create ambiguity:
I’ll meet you by the bank.
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Hyponymy
◦ scarlet, vermilion, carmine, and crimson are all
hyponyms of red (their hypernym), which is, in turn,
a hyponym of color.
◦ What are these hyponyms and
what is their hypernym?
Zeroing in on “meaning”
The assassin killed Kennedy.
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What can you say about what happened? What
kind of people were involved?
This kind of information, for example that
assassin means a human, a murderer, and a
killer of important people, are examples of
the semantic features of a word.
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Relating words by looking at commonalities.
Big vs. Red
Semantic property: “about size”
Semantic property: “about color”
Buy vs. sell
Semantic property: “change in possession”
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1)
2)
Quick exercise:
Determine a common semantic property
among the following words:
Hen
aunt
maiden
Doctor
bachelor
widow
woman
grandmother
dean
parent
girl
professor teenager
baby
child
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One way of representing meaning is with
semantic features. This is a device we use
to indicate the presence or absence of
semantic properties.
For example, woman would appear as
[+female, +human, -young, …]
while girl would be [+young]
and man would be [-female].
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Concept of Semantic features
Man
Boy
Bachelor
Woman
Girl
[+MALE], [+ADULT], [+HUMAN]
[+MALE], [+YOUNG], [+HUMAN]
[+MALE], [+UNMARRIED], [+HUMAN]
[+FEMALE], [+ADULT], [+HUMAN]
[+FEMALE], [+YOUNG], [+HUMAN]
mother
PARENT
ADULT
woman
father
bachelor
boy
MALE
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For the most part no two words have exactly
the same meaning; additional semantic
properties make for increasingly finer
distinctions.
For example, what semantic property
distinguishes between “slap” and “hit”?
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Incorrect “matching” of the semantic features
of different elements of a sentence can result
in ungrammatical (but syntactically sound)
sentences:
The man [-female] was pregnant [+female].
I sawed [+solid] the water [-solid].
The ideas [-living] are sleeping [+living].
The importance of context
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is concerned with the interpretation of
meaning in context.
2 contexts:
Linguistic context (discourse)
Situational context (anything non-linguistic)
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Within discourse, preceding sentence often
affect the meaning of following sentences.
Reference/meaning of pronouns often
depends on prior discourse.
Prior discourse often disambiguates words
like bank.
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Sometimes homonyms and ambiguous structures cause
confusion:
What do they mean!?
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR
CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT
Outside a secondhand shop: WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE
ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?
Outside a disco: SMARTS IS THE MOST EXCLUSIVE DISCO IN
TOWN. EVERYONE WELCOME
Notice in a dry cleaner's window: ANYONE LEAVING THEIR
GARMENTS HERE FOR MORE THAN 30 DAYS WILL BE DISPOSED OF
Spotted in a safari park: ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR
Notice in a field: THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE
FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES
Spotted in a toilet in a London office block: TOILET OUT OF
ORDER. PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW
Holding texts together
Cohesion
Grammatical
Reference
Substitution
Lexical
Ellipsis
Repetition
Synonyms
Superordinates
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Reference
Using referring
expressions to refer to
referents in the
context.
Commonly used
reference: pronouns
Substitution
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made of ticky-tacky
And they all just look the same.
(Reynolds, 1963)
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Substitution
Similar function as pronouns
Using a word to substitute for its referent
Ellipsis
Omitting words and phrases mentioned
earlier
Purpose to avoid repetition
Martin loves his wife, and so do I.
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Repetition
Repeated words/phrases to exploit its
stylistic effect
◦ “Little boxes”
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Synonyms
To avoid repetition another word with the
same meaning is used.
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At 75 cm across and capable of cracking
open a coconut with its claws, the landdwelling coconut crab is your beach lounger’s
worst nightmare. Fortunately for the
sunbather, the world’s largest terrestrial
arthropod has been confined to tropical
islands across the Pacific and Indian oceans
only.
 (adapted from Cutting, 2002)
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Superordinates
Similar to hyponomy
The great white shark can
grow up to 8m long. It is one
of the more dangerous
predators in the sea.
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…is the nonlinguistic environment in which
discourse happens and includes speakers,
hearers, any others present, their beliefs,
physical environment, subject of
conversation, time of day etc.
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…is the nonlinguistic environment in which
discourse happens and includes speakers,
hearers, any others present, their beliefs,
physical environment, subject of
conversation, time of day etc.
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Pronouns can be used to replace NPs from
prior discourse.
Prior linguistic context plays important role
when interpreting the pronoun.
It seems that the man loves the woman.
Many people think he loves her.
What does her refer to?
When a pronoun is coreferential, it is bound.
Could it refer to another person?
Many people think he loves her!
Many people think he loves her.
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When a pronoun refers to an object not
explicitly mentioned in the discourse, it is
free or unbound.
Quick exercise:
State for each pronoun whether it is free, bound,
or both.
1. Example: John finds himself in love with her.
Himself= bound; her=free
2. John said that he loved her.
3. Louise said to herself in the mirror: “she’s so
ugly.”
4. The fact that he finds her pretty pleases Maria.
5. It seems that she and he will never stop arguing
with them.
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The reference of some words entirely rely on
situational context of the utterance.
First- and second-person pronouns (I, me,
you, yours etc) are always deictic.
Third-person pronouns are deictic if they are
free. If they are bound, their reference is
known from linguistic context.
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Following expressions are deictic:
Now
then
tomorrow
this time
that time
seven days ago
2 years from now
Last week
Next April
here
There
This place
This city
This farm
Those buildings
Over there
These
mountains
This country
Quick exercise
 Determine any deictic expressions
1. I saw her standing there.
2. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far
away.
3. Copper conducts electricity
4. The toilet is to your right.
5. He will graduate in the coming year.
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Presuppositions are implicit assumptions about
the world or background belief relating to an
utterance. They must be mutually known or
assumed by the speaker and addressee for the
utterance to be considered appropriate in context
Do you want to do it again?
◦ Implies that she has done it before.
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David wants more beer.
◦ He drank some beer already.
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The lecturer told the students to stop chatting.
◦ The students were chatting.
Quick exercise
 What are the presuppositions of following
utterances.
1. Maria regretted not having accepted
Martin’s wedding proposal.
2. Christopher swore to himself that he would
pass the exam this time.
3. To quit smoking is so easy! I’ve done it a
hundred times.
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Find the 4 presuppositions that can be
inferred from this utterance:
John regrets that he stopped doing linguistics
before he left MUIC.
John stopped doing linguistics before he left
MUIC.
John was doing linguistics before he left
MUIC.
John left MUIC.
John had been at MUIC.
Often speakers infer or conclude based on
not only what has been said but on what the
speakers intentions are.
1. It’s quite warm in here. (Situation: you are in
the classroom.)
2. Can you pass me a tissue? (you are in the
canteen)
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Quick exercise:
Each of the sentences has at least one implicature. What is it?
Statement
Situation
It’s getting late.
You and your friends are at a
night club and it’s 4 a.m.
Most of the food is gone.
You arrived at a cocktail party
late.
The restaurants are open until
midnight.
It’s 10p.m. and you didn’t
have dinner yet.
If you weren’t so fat this
wouldn’t hurt so badly.
Someone is standing on your
toe.
John or Mary made a mistake.
You’re their boss and looking
at some work they have done.
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Performative sentences
Language can be used to do things. It can be used to
make promises, bets, issue warnings, offer
congratulations.
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
warn you; I have a big brother.
bet you that ManU will win.
challenge you to a match.
fine you 100000Baht for possession of drugs.
nominate Abbhisit for a Nobel prize.
promise I will improve.
resign!
pronounce you husband and wife
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In performative sentences, the speaker is
always the subject.
Performative sentences are always in present
tense.
A test to determine if a sentence contains a
performative verb is to begin the sentence
with I hereby. Only performative sentences
sound right when this is done:
I hereby declare war on you.
*I hereby know you.
Quick exercise:
 Determine which of the following sentences are
performative. Use ‘hereby’
1. I testify that she is innocent.
2. I know that she is innocent.
3. He bet her 1000Baht that the yellow shirt would
win.
4. I teach the class.
5. I dismiss the class.
6. I resign from this lousy job.
7. I resigned from this lousy job.
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