Semantics and pragmatics
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Focuses on the literal meanings of words,
phrases and sentences;
concerned with how grammatical processes
build complex meanings out of simpler ones
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Focuses on the use of language in particular
situations;
aims to explain how factors outside of
language contribute to both literal meaning
and nonliteral meanings which speakers
communicate using language
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To understand semantic meaning, we have to
bring together 3 main components:
1) the context in which a sentence is used,
2) the meanings of the words in the
sentence,
3) the morphological and syntactic structure
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Semantics
lexicon
grammar
Semantic meaning
Pragmatics
Speaker’s meaning
Context
of use
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Sense – ‘meaning’ without reference to the
specific real object in the world (e.g. house
‘dwelling’)
Reference is ‘meaning’ tied to a specific
instance (e.g. ‘the red house’ and ‘the house
at the end of the block’ do not have the same
meaning in terms of sense, but they could
refer to the same house)
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Some argue that proper names have only
reference and no sense. Do you agree?
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It is possible that proper nouns have
reference but no sense, like Spain.
There are also noun phrases that have sense
but no reference, e.g. The present king of
France is bald.
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The most fundamental semantic concepts
describe how words, phrases, and sentences
relate to each other and to the world
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Synonymous words have (more or less) the
same meaning.
Some linguists argue that no two words have
exactly the same meaning, as they may differ
in connotation (e.g. slender, slim, skinny)
Or in their typical contexts of use (e.g. buy,
purchase)
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A word is polysemous if it has more than one
closely related meaning (e.g. wood ‘a piece of
a tree’, ‘a group of trees’)
In a dictionary, polysemous words are often
listed as one head word, with several different
senses (e.g. bear: 2 entries: 1.a ‘to move
while holding up and supporting’; 2. ‘to give
birth to’, 3. ‘to suport the weight of’; 1.b ‘to
hold in the mind’; bear n. ‘a big shaggy
animal’
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It is often difficult to distinguish vagueness
from polysemy
Polysemous words have multiple different,
but related, meanings; vagueness, in
contrast, describes a single general meaning
which becomes more specific in a particular
context of use
Since it involves more than one meaning,
polysemy is a kind of ambiguity, but
vagueness is not
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Words which are pronounced ad possibly
spelled in the same way (homographs), but
with different meanings, e.g. to, too, two; bat
(animal), bat (stick)
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Heteronymous words have the same graphic
form (homographs), but have a different
phonetic form, i.e. pronounced differently
and have a different meaning (e.g. bass
‘musical instrument’/bass ‘fish’)
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Words whose meanings are specific instances
of a more general word: e.g. red, blue, and
yellow are hyponyms of color; bed, sofa, table
and chair – hyponyms of furniture
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Antonyms – words that are closely related;
they have properties in common, such as
grammatical class and lexical field, but they
oppose each other in one aspect of meaning
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1. complementary when the presence of one
implies the absence of the other, e.g.
alive/dead, present/absent
2. gradable: e.g. rich/poor, happy/sad,
short/long
3. relational opposites: the existence of one
implies the existence of its converse, e.g.
buyer/seller, husband/wife.
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1. odd/even
2. polite/rude
3. short/long
4. pass/fail
5. good/bad
6. moral/immoral
7. asleep/awake
8. mother/daughter
9. black/white
10. winner/loser
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For each of the categories below, provide
examples:
1. synonymy
2. polysemy
3. homonymy
4. heteronymy
5. hyponymy
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Note down the synonyms of your classmates.
For each decide whether they are exact
synonyms, i.e. whether they can easily be
substituted for each other
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Grammar (morphology and syntax) generates
new words, phrases and sentences
This gives us a potentially infinite number of
words, phrases and sentences that can have
meaning
In order to explain how an infinite number of
pieces of language can be meaningful, and
how we, as language users, can figure out the
meanings of new ones, semanticists apply the
Principle of Compositionality
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The semantic meaning of any unit of
language is determined by the semantic
meanings of its parts along with the way they
are put together
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Mary liked you – the meaning is determined
by
(a) the meanings of the individual morphemes
that make it up (Mary, like, “past”, you)
B) the morphological and syntactic structures
of the sentence
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Does not apply only to sentences
It implies that the meaning of the verb phrase
liked you is determined by the meanings of
its parts and the grammatical structure of the
VP, and the meaning of the word liked is
determined by the meanings of the two
morphemes that make it up (like and –ed)
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Compositional semantics (or formal
semantics) – concerned how the Principle of
Compositionality applies
Formal semanticists study the variety of
grammatical patterns which occur in
individual languages and across the
languages of the world
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Chomsky: established relationships between
syntax, semantics and phonology
Syntax: 2 components:
1. the base component: the phrase structure
rules and their hierarchical relationships,
modeled by the deep structure trees;
generates the deep structure;
2. the transformational component, which
consists of the transformational rules;
generates surface structures
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Syntax draws information from the lexicon
and “feeds” both PF and LF
PF
LF
Synta
x
Lexicon
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Deep structures provide the input to the
semantic component which describes their
meaning, while surface structures provide the
input to the phonological component, which
describes their sounds
Meaning is generated both by the syntax and
through the words which attach to nodes of
the trees
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In addition to the categorial rules, the base
component also consists of a lexicon, in
essence our mental dictionary which contains
all of the information (morphosyntactic,
phonological and semantic) related to the
vocabulary items of a language
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The semantic information contained in the
lexicon is represented in terms of semantic
features, which are arrived at through
componential analysis
Breaks down the lexical item into its smaller
semantic components, which are then listed
through feature notation, which includes the
semantic and phonological features
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The entry for ‘boy’ has the syntactic features:
(+Noun), (+Count), (+Common) and it
consists of semantic features such as (+)
human, which subsumes other semantic
features such as (+Animate)
Boy +HUMAN –ADULT +MALE
Girl +HUMAN –ADULT –MALE
Man +HUMAN + ADULT +MALE
Woman +HUMAN +ADULT -MALE
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The categorial rules generate a string of slots
to be filled with items from the lexicon via
lexical insertion rules.
Each slot - associated with a set of features
which indicate which kind of item can be
filled in
By combining these features with those
features in the lexicon, the lexical insertion
rules generate such sentences as The boy
laughed, but not such sentences as The chalk
lauged.
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Semantic roles which noun phrases play in
relationship to the verb of the clause
Verb has the central role in the clause, and it
assigns roles to participants depending on
the type of the predicate (e.g.The boy kicked
the ball)
The boy – doer of the action: agent
The ball – the receiver of the action and is
changed by it: the theme
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Agent/Causer: Instigator of some action.
(John killed Harry)
Theme (inanimate) or Patient (animate): Entity
undergoing the effect of some action.
(John killed Harry)
Experiencer: Entity experiencing some
psychological state.
(John felt happy)
Recipient (animate): Entity receiving sth.
(John sent a letter to Mary)
Goal (inanimate): Entity towards which something
moves.
(John sent the letter to the post-office)
(Radford 1997: 326)
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Possible worlds help explain the semantics of
modals because they provide a way of talking
about alternative possibilities
The ability to imagine alternative ways that
the world could be – alternative possible
worlds – an essential part of the human
capacity to use language
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Epistemic modals involve reference to facts
that we know (I must have left my keys in the
car)
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Deontic modals (Guests should leave their
keys in the car);
Modals which are about rules, right and
wrong, obligations etc. are known as deontic
modals
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Semantics can play a role in the interpretation of
legislation
Case (direct and indirect causation): Raymond
Moskal, who lived in Pennsylvania, would buy
used automobiles, set back the milometers, send
the inaccurate mileage readings to Virginia along
with other required information, and receive new
titles from Virginia with the incorrect mileage. He
would then sell the cars for inflated prices to
unsuspecting customers. He was prosecuted and
convicted for violating a statute that prohibits the
interstate transportation of ‘falsely made’
securities. In short, Moskal got real titles that
contained false information.
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Legislation:
Whoever, with unlawful or fraudulent intent,
transports in interstate or foreign commerce
any falsely made, forged, altered, or
counterfeited securities or tax stamps,
knowing the same to have been falsely made,
forged, altered, or counterfeited…Shall be
fined under this title or imprisoned not more
than ten years, or both. (18 USC &2314
(2001)
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The US Supreme Court agreed that Moskal
could be punished under this law, but Justice
Scalia dissented for two reasons based on the
meaning of the phrase falsely made.
One reason had to do with the historical
meaning of the phrase falsely made in legal
documents and the other had to do with its
ordinary meaning.
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Justice Scalia showed that in the 100 years up
to 1939, when the statute was written, legal
documents had used falsely made to mean
‘forged’ or ‘counterfeit’
Thus, it seems that the meaning of this
crucial phrase had changed, at least within
the world of law, between the time the law
was written and the time it was applied to
Moskal’
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Scalia’s other argument was that the phrase
falsely made, in its ordinary meaning,
includes only things that are counterfeit, not
real documents that are made to contain false
information
Solan concluded that Scalia’s ordinary
meaning argument is wrong
He shows that falsely made typically means
‘made to include false information’ as in
“(When falsely made, this accusation (child
abuse) can be enormously destructive”
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In other words, a falsely made accusation
means that the accusation contained false
information, and Solan assumes by analogy
that a falsely made car title would be a car
title containing false information
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Do you agree with Justice Scalia or the
majority?
How convincing do you find Scalia’s historical
argument?
Do you think that Solan is correct that falsely
made means the same thing when applied to
an accusation and when applied to a
document? Is a falsely made car title a
counterfeit car title or a car title containing
false information?
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What do you think of Solan’s strategy of
looking at a database of newspaper columns
to determine the ordinary meaning of a
controversial phrase?
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Two main branches: lexical semantics and
compositional semantics
Lexical semantics: Meaning of words
Compositional semantics focuses on the
process of building up more complex
meanings from simpler ones
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The study of meaning in use
Provides tools to help us understand the
meaning in a given social context, including
the effect that language has on those
involved in the speech situation
Semantics – the study of meaning outside of
its contextualized use with a focus on the
literal meaning of words and phrases
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Semantics – concerns with what language
says
Pragmatics – concerned with what language
can do
Semantics – sense
Pragmatics – force
Semantics: words or lexemes are central to
the study
Pragmatics: events or potential events are of
main interest
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We often think that the role of language is to
explain, inform, describe, and say sth about
the world
Language – also used to do things, such as
promise, bet, request, threaten, warn,
apologize, swear (in court), etc.
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J.L. Austin, How to do Things with Words
(1955)
"It was for too long the assumption of
philosophers that the business of a
'statement' can only be to 'describe' some
state of affairs, or to 'state some fact', which
it must do either truly or falsely.„
Wittgenstein: „Don't ask for the meaning, ask
for the use." - language as a vehicle for social
activity
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Austin suggested that most utterances are
created not to ‘describe’, but to perform
action
His approach was not of „What do sentences
mean?” but „What kind of act do we perform
when we utter a sentence?”
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Austin emphasized the contexts in which
utterances take place and suggested that
they should be defined as felicitous or not,
rather than false or true
Felicity conditions: describe all the
circumstantial properties of an utterance
which are relevant to its successful
accomplishment
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Austin questioned the truth value of
statements, a view which centered on the
conditions of an utterance that can be
declared true or false
Austin examined performatives: sentences
that are used to do things, rather than
declare or state sth
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Performatives: „I now pronounce you man and
wife”
Only certain people in certain conditions can
do this kind of pronouncing; if the conditions
are right, then a change has taken place
through the uttering the words
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A) I promise to visit tomorrow
B) She promised to visit tomorrow
Sentences which perform actions –
performatives (A); other sentences (B) –
constatives
A good test of whether a sentence is a
performative is whether you can insert the
word hereby before the verb (I hereby
promise; *I hereby walk)
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Syntactic markers of a performative
utterance:
1) the subject is in the 1st person
2) the verb is in the simple present tense
3) the indirect object is ‘you’
4) it is possible to insert the adverb ‘hereby’
5) the sentence is not negative
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Make a list of performative utterances
What conditions must be present for the new
state of affairs to come about?
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Speech acts which in themselves constitute
an action: illocutinary force
Illocutionary force - ability of the utterance to
carry out an act
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Austin pointed out that even constatives
perform actions of a sort; B performs the
action of reporting
The distinction between performatives and
constatives may not be as important as the
idea that all sentences can be used to
perform actions
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Locutionary act: the act of saying sth
Illocutionary act: the act of doing sth by
saying sth
Perlocutionary act: the act of achieving sth by
saying sth
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Scenario 1:(in an elevator, 3 people, A and B
know each other, C is smoking:
A (to B): Ahem, did I ever tell you that I am
allergic to cigarette smoke?
Scenario 2: (A is filling in a form for a dating
service): A (writing on form): I am allergic to
cigarette smoke
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John Searle: direct ad indirect speech acts
"In indirect speech acts the speaker
communicates to the hearer more than he
actually says by way of relying on their
mutually shared background information,
both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together
with the general powers of rationality and
inference on the part of the hearer”
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There are speech acts which are so
fundamental to communication that they are
captured through the mood of our utterance:
Indicative mood: giving information
Interrogative mood: request for information
Imperative mood: command to do sth
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The mood of each utterance signals its
illocutionary force
Context – key in explaining what people are
trying to do with the language they use
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1. Would you mind handing me the salt?
2. Go ahead, try it. See where that’ll get you!
3. Honey, the phone’s ringing!
4. I have always wanted to have a pair of
earrings just like those.
5. I’m sure I must look awful.
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The function of the legal language – usually
seen as directive: used to impose obligations
or to confer rights, to command or empower:
mandatory and discretionary law
Law uses language as a tool, an instrument
for achieving things in the world; linguistics –
language as an object of study
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In the communication process, whenever acts
become formalised, they involve rules and
conventions, or ‘shared group commitments’,
which seem to correspond to J. Austin’s
felicity conditions and allow to recognise
whether the act is valid or not
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H.L.A. Hart commented on linguistic speech
acts and pointed to their correspondence with
formal legal acts such as the transfer of
property or making of a will
Suggested that performative utterances
should be called operative utterances,
evoking the analogy with what lawyers called
‘operative words’ in legal language
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Acts in law presuppose that the performer, in
order to perform the act, needs to be able to
exercise their legal power
These powers, e.g. to enter a contract, to
make a will, or even to enact a law,
presuppose ‘power conferring rules’ which
stipulate which persons and under which
conditions can perform the act
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The interpretation of any legal document
requires analysis of a relevant intention which
has been incorporated into the text
The notion of intentionality relates to the
problem of implicitness and explicitness in
language
Grice’s conversational implicatures (1975)
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Imagine you overhear the following
conversation:
A: Are John and Mary back together again?
B: I saw a red Porche parked outside 1128
Green Street last night…and it was still there
this morning!
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Grice is not telling us what to do, but rather
providing an explanation for how we behave
in communicative situations ad how we
assume other people behave
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In order to help us understand how context
works in deciphering meaning in a given
situation, we can look to Grice’s Cooperative
Principle, which explains how people act in
conversation: ‘Make your conversational
contribution such as is required, at the stage
at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose
or direction of the talk exchange in which you
are engaged’
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In the exchange above, we might assume that
B’s response is providing A with the
information requested.
We can make the connection between the
question and the answer by relying on
presupposition: B presupposes that A also
knows the following:
John has a red Porche
Mary lives at 1128 Green Street
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Cooperative Principle:
Quantity
Relevance
Quality
Manner
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Quantity:
Maxim 1. Make your contribution as
informative as is required
Maxim 2. Do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
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Relevance:
Maxim 1. Be relevant.
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Quality:
Maxim 1: Do not say what you believe to be
false.
Maxim 2. Do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence.
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Manner:
Maxim 1:
Maxim 2.
Maxim 3.
Maxim 4.
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief.
Be orderly.
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When we break any of the sub-principles, we
create an instance of conversational
implicature:
A: I heard you did well on the exam
B: Yes, and pigs fly.
Flouting the maxim of quality, as I am telling
an obvious untruth
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Observing the maxims
Violating one or more maxims (e.g. lying)
Opting out (e.g. refusing to answer a direct
question)
Not fulfilling one maxim because of a clash
with another
Flouting a maxim in order to make a
conversational implicature
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1. The speaker deliberately flouts a
conversational maxim to convey additional
meaning not expressed literally, e.g. a speaker
responds to the question: „How did you like the
guest speaker?” with the following utterance:
„Well, I’m sure he was speaking English”.
If the speaker is assumed to be following the
cooperative principle in spite of flouting the
Maxim of Quantity, the utterance must have an
additional nonliteral meaning, such as: „The
content of the speech was confusing.”
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2. The speaker’s desire to fulfil two conflicting
maxims results in his flouting one maxim to
invoke the other, e.g. when he responds to the
question „Where is John?” by saying: He’s either
in the cafeteria or in his office
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The Maxim of Quantity and the Maxim of Quality
are in conflict: a cooperative speaker doesn’t
want to be ambiguous but also doesn’t want to
give false information by giving a specific answer
in spite of his uncertaity. By flouting the Maxim
of Quantity, he invokes the Maxim of Quality
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A. How’s your work coming along?
B. It sure is sunny outside.
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words and phrases that cannot be fully
understood without additional contextual
information
Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is
fixed but their denotational meaning varies
depending on time and/or place.
Words or phrases that require contextual
information to convey any meaning – e.g.,
English pronouns – deictic
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Person
Place
Time
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The center of the deictic system
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The most salient English examples are the
adverbs“here” and “there” and the
demonstratives “this” and “that”, e.g.:
I enjoy living in this city
Here is where we will place the statue
She was sitting over there
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Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with
the various times involved in and referred to
in an utterance.
This includes time adverbs, e.g. "now",
"then", "soon", etc. and also different tenses
Example: tomorrow denotes the consecutive
next day after every day. The "tomorrow" of a
day last year was a different day from the
"tomorrow" of a day next week.
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Discourse
Social
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concerns the social information that is encoded
within various expressions, such as relative social
status and familiarity.
Two major forms of it are the so-called T–V
distinctions and honorifics.
T–V distinctions, named for the Latin “tu” and “vos” the name given to the phenomenon when a language
has two different second-person pronouns.
The varying usage of these pronouns indicates
something about formality, familiarity, and/or
solidarity between the interactants, e.g. the T form
might be used when speaking to a friend or social
equal, whereas the V form would be used speaking to
a stranger or social superior - common in European
languages
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Discourse deixis, also referred to as text
deixis, refers to the use of expressions within
an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse
that contains the utterance — including the
utterance itself: e.g. This is a great story
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An anaphoric reference refers to something
within a text that has been previously identified,
e.g. "Susan dropped the plate. It shattered loudly"
the word "it" refers to the phrase "the plate".
A cataphoric reference refers to something within
a text that has not yet been identified, e.g. in "He
was very cold. David promptly put on his coat"
the identity of the "he" is unknown until the
individual is also referred to as "David".
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A. Do you see that baby girl over there? She is
cute.
When a word or phrase picks up its meaning
from some other piece of language nearby,
the relationship between the two – anaphora
A word which gets its meaning in this way –
an anaphor, and the piece of language which
gives the anaphor its meaning – its
antecedent
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Presupposition - when a speaker’s choice of
words shows that he is taking sth for granted
E.g.: John stopped crying at noon – makes
sense if it is assumed that John was crying
just before noon.
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an implicit assumption about the world or
background belief relating to an utterance
whose truth is taken for granted, e.g.:
Jane no longer writes fiction.
◦ Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.
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Have you stopped eating meat?
◦ Presupposition: you had once eaten meat.
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Have you talked to Hans?
◦ Presupposition: Hans exists.
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A presupposition must be mutually known or
assumed by the speaker and addressee for
the utterance to be considered appropriate in
context.
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Presuppositions – often understood in terms
of the notion of common ground
The common ground – a set of propositions
which the participants in a conversation
mutually assume
The common ground - a major part of the
context of use, and helps us make explicit
the role of presupposition
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Indexicality and presupposition – aspects of
pragmatics which have to do with the
relationship between context of use and
semantic meaning
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Cultural assumptions can be crucial in
determining speaker’s meaning
Example: if two Chinese people are looking at the
dessert display in a French restaurant, and one
says to the other, “That tart is not too sweet”, she
intends this comment as praise of the tart. She
might intend to implicate that her dinner partner
should order the tart. This meaning arises, in
part, from the fact that it is common knowledge
among Chinese people that most of them find
western desserts too sweet. Among some other
groups, the same comment could be interpreted
as a criticism, rather than a compliment
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The cultural specificity of the speaker’s
meaning is not a fact about the Chinese
language
The implicature could arise regardless of the
language they are speaking
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Pragmatics – about how the context of use
contributes to meaning, both semantic
meaning and speaker’s meaning
Core topics: indexicality, presupposition,
implicature, speech acts