1
CLASS 21, March 23, 2007
LIN 1310B
Introduction to Linguistics
Prof: Nikolay Slavkov
TA: Qinghua Tang
2
Today
• Announcements and Reminders:
-Great job, everyone! Test 2 average: 85.27 (A).
-Test 2 results are posted on the website by last four
digits of your ID number.
-If you have questions about test 2, come see me in
office hours. (You’re welcome to review your
answer sheet, etc.)
-Start reading Chapter 6
• Today’s Lecture:
-Start Semantics
3
Semantics: the study of meaning
• So far we have seen how morphemes combine
together to form words
• We have also seen how words combing together to
form sentences
• We are now ready to start looking into how
utterances are interpreted.
• The study of semantics can be very complex and
can require knowledge from other disciplines such
as logic, mathematics and philosophy
4
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations among words
• Meaning can be defined in different ways. One
way to talk about meaning is by defining the
semantic relations among words.
Consider the following words: Synonyms:
words or
vacation
holidays
expressions
youth
adolescent
that have the
automobile
car
same, or
remember
recall
almost the
same,
purchase
buy
meaning in
big
large
some or all
contexts.
5
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations among words
• Is perfect synonymy possible?
It is considered that perfect synonymy is very rare. It is not
economical for a language to have more than one word for
the same concept, therefore, synonyms often have different
nuances of meaning, and may not be interchangeable in all
contexts.
Consider the words holidays and vacation.
I’m on holidays/vacation.
Christmas holidays vs. Christmas vacation???
Consider youth vs adolescent
He’s a youth. He’s an adolescent.
What adolescent behaviour vs. What youth behaviour???
6
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations among words
dark
light
Antonyms: words
up
down
or phrases that are
opposites with
boy
girl
respect to some
hot
cold
component of their
come
go
meaning.
Consider boy vs girl: what’s similar and what’s
different about their meaning?
What about hot vs cold, up vs down?
7
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations among words
Consider the following:
He’s a bright guy.
This is a bright room.
Polysemy: occurs when
one word has two or
more related meanings.
Homophones:
Now consider the following: words that sound
This is a light bag.
identically but have
There is no light in this room. different, unrelated
meanings. (NB!
I took a loan from the bank.
write and right are
I am sitting on the bank of the river
homophones)
8
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations among words
• Note that polysemy and homophony created what is know
as lexical ambiguity, i.e. a single form has more than one
meaning. Determine if the following sentence is
ambiguous:
Liz bought a pen.
(Ambiguity: pen as a writing instrument vs. a small cage)
How do we resolve lexical ambiguity?
 Usually we have situational or linguistic context.
 Note that so far we’ve only looked up to the level of a
sentence in this course. However, at this point, we see
evidence, that language and communication work beyond
that level.
 Set is one of the most ambiguous lexical items in English.
Can you guess how many meanings are listed for set in the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED)?
…150!!!
http://orbis.uottawa.ca/search
9
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations involving sentences
1. The police chased the burglar.
2. The burglar was chased by the police
3. I gave the book to Mary.
Paraphrases: two
4. I gave Mary the book.
sentences with the
5. Paul bough a car from Sue.
same meaning.
6. Sue sold a car to Paul.
But are the meanings in
Truth conditions: the circumstances these pairs of sentences
under which a sentence can be uttered really the same? What
are the subtle
felicitously. 1 & 2 have the same
differences?
truth conditions; so do 3&4; 5&6.
10
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations involving sentences
1.
2.
3.
4.
The park warden skilled the bear
The bear is dead
Entailment: when the
Prince is a dog
truth of one sentence
guarantees the truth of
Prince is an animal
another sentence. I.e. 1
entails 2; 3 entails 4. But
not vice versa!
11
The nature of meaning:
semantic relations involving sentences
1. John is unemployed.
Contradiction: a
2. John has a job.
relationship in which if
one sentence is true, the
other must be false.
12
What is meaning?
The meaning of meaning is elusive. It can be defined in
many different ways, each having its advantages and
shortcomings.
• Connotation: the set of associations that a word’s use can
evoke.
E.g. winter
associations: snow, bitter cold, short evenings, skating, etc.
=> these make up the word’s connotation.
However, connotation cannot account for the entire meaning
of the word, because winter does not become meaningless
if a year is very mild, etc.
13
What is meaning?
-Denotation: equating a word or phrase with the entity
or entities to which it refers. The denotation of the
word winter corresponds to the season between
autumn and spring (regardless of whether it is cold or
unpleasant). The denotation of the word dog is a set
of canines, etc.
However, phrases like the present king of France are
problematic. Why?
=>because such phrases have no referent, no
denotation.
Another problem is that two different expressions may
have the same referent or denotation:
The leader of the conservative party = Steven Harper
The Prime Minister of Canada = Steven Harper
=>it seems problematic to assume that both these
phrases mean the same thing!
14
What is meaning?
• Extension vs. Intension:
An expression’s extension corresponds to the set of entities
that it refers to in the world.
An expression’s intension is its inherent sense, the concepts
that it evokes.
E.g. woman: a set of real world entities (women) 
extension
woman: notions like ‘female’, ‘human,’ etc. 
intension
Prime Minister: referent, Steven Harper  extension
Prime Minister: notion, the leader of a governing party
intension
15
What is meaning?
• Componential Analysis (Semantic
Decomposition): an approach that tries to
represent a words intension by decomposing
it into smaller semantic units or features.
E.g.
boy
girl
man
woman
+human +human +human +human
+male
-male
+male
-male
-adult
-adult
+adult
+adult
16
What is meaning?
One advantage of Componential Analysis is that it
allows us to group entities into natural classes. A
natural class is a class of elements containing
shared features.
E.g. What are the features that man and woman
share?
[+adult, + human]
What are the features that girl and woman share?
[-male, + human]
17
What is meaning?
How is componential analysis (semantic
decomposition) useful? I.e. what advantages are
there to decomposing words into features???
Consider the verbs marry, argue, buy, etc. What kind
of subject do they take? Can you assign a feature
to these verbs which indicates the kind of subject
that they take?
[+human]
Thus, we have a tool for analysing or describing the
meaning of whole classes of words, not just
individual words.
18
What is meaning?
Are features always useful?
Consider the following:
blue [+colour, +??? blueness???]
In this case, we cannot really decompose
the meaning of this word.
19
What is meaning?
Componential analysis and verb meaning:
-Componential analysis is most successful in
the study of verb meanings.
-Componential analysis does not necessarily
have to work with binary (+/-) features.
-We can just use CAPITALS to represent a
semantic concept.
20
What is meaning?
Consider a typical concept of verb meaning:
GO. This concept is associated with changes.
Manifestations of GO
Positional change:
Harry went from Ottawa to Toronto.
Possessional change:
The money went to my granddaughter.
Identificational change:
I went from being a nice guy to being a cranky old man.
21
What is meaning?
Note that we don’t need to use the verb go but
can still have a manifestation of the concept
GO:
The bird flew to its nest.
The coach gave a new ball to the team.
The caterpillar turned into a butterfly.
Note that the concept GO always involves an entity
undergoing the change (single underline) as well as an
endpoint for the change (double underline)
22
What is meaning?
So we have discovered that the concept GO is
part of the meaning of many different verbs.
Positional GO: fly, crawl, climb, walk
Possessional GO: give, buy, inherity
Identificational GO: become, turn into
23
What is meaning?
• Verb Meaning and Subcategorization
Features of verb meaning can have an impact on what
kind of phrases a verb combines with. Consider the
following data:
throw [NPthe boy][NPa ball] vs. *push [NPthe boy][NPa ball]
toss ballistic motion,
*pull continuous
kick sudden,
*lift application of
fling instantaneous
*haul force without
application of force
and release
release as the
object moves
24
What is meaning?
Let’s try another one…
fax [Helen][the news] vs. *murmur [Helen] [the news]
wire
*mumble
means of
quality of voice
radio communication
*mutter
included in the
included
in
the
phone
*shriek
meaning of the
meaning of the
verb
verb
There is no straightforward explanation as to why
components of verb meaning can influence the type
of complements (subcategorization requirements) of
verbs.
25
Movie about disjunction
• conjunction
and
• disjunction
or
• negation
not
Interestingly, when disjunction is used in
combination with negation, it can have a
conjunctive interpretation. i.e. when or is used
with not, it means and.
E.g. I don’t want a book or a pencil
=I don’t want a book and I don’t want a pencil