Semiotics study of signs and sign systems

Semantics the science of meaning in language; words would be examples of verbal symbols.
Semantics- the study of the meanings of linguistic expressions, either simple or complex, taken in isolation.
It further accounts for the way utterance meaning, i.e. the meaning of an expression used in a concrete
context of utterance, is related to expression meaning.
Relationship between a signifier (a sign) and its signified (the object it represents):
Icon a similarity between a sign and what it represents (e.g., a portrait and its real-life subject);
Index the sign is in a causal relation with its signified (e.g., smoke is an index of fire)
Symbol there is only a conventional link between the sign and its signified (e.g. mourning symbolized by
wearing black or white clothes)

Different levels of linguistic analysis:

Phonology is the study of what sounds a language has and how these sounds combine to form words.
Syntax is the study of how words can be combined into sentences.
Semantics is the study of the meanings of words and sentences.
Meaning is the central notion of linguistic semantics.
As a branch of linguistics, semantics includes word meaning (in some cases morpheme meaning),
sentence meaning, even text and discourse meaning.
Reference the technical term for using an expression for something. When people use I, they refer to
themselves. Referent the entity referred to by an expression.
Expression meaning the meanings of words, phrases and sentences, taken as such, i.e. out of any
particular context, in their general sense, constitute the level of meaning. Expression- just a general term for
words, phrases and sentences. The term expression meaning covers, in particular, word meaning and
sentence meaning. The level of expression meaning constitutes the central subject of linguistic semantics.
It studies the material, or equipment, as it were, that languages provide for communication.
Utterance meaning comes about when a sentence with its meaning is actually used in a concrete context.
First of all, utterance meaning involves reference. In addition to reference, another central notion comes
into play, the notion of truth.
The context of utterance (CoU) the sum of circumstances that bear on reference and truth. The most
important aspects are: the speaker (or producer) of the utterance; the addressee(s) (or recipients) of the
utterance; the time at which the utterance is produced and/or received; the place where the utterance is
produced and/or received; the facts given when the utterance is produced and/or received.
Communicative meaning the speech act level. Unlike expression meaning and utterance meaning,
communicative meaning lies outside the range of semantics. It is of central concern for pragmatics.
Expression meaning the meaning of a simple or complex expression taken in isolation.
Utterance meaning the meaning of an expression when used in a given context of utterance; fixed
reference and truth value (for declarative sentences).
Communicative meaning the meaning of an utterance as a communicative act in a given social setting.

The meanings of words and sentences differ in one important point. Meanings of words must simply be
known and therefore learned. Lexical meanings- meanings stored in our minds. We do not, however, have
ready-made, learned meanings of complete sentences stored in our minds.
Composition- although we usually understand sentences without conscious effort, their meanings must be
derived from our stored linguistic knowledge. Complex expressions whose meanings are not stored in the
lexicon are therefore said to have compositional meaning. The words occur here in particular grammatical
forms. The forms of the words matter directly for their meaning, and consequently for the meaning of the
whole sentence. There are rules for deriving the plural meaning of a noun, the comparative meaning of an
adjective or the simple past tense meaning of a verb, respectively. These rules are part of the apparatus we
use in composition.
The syntactic rules of a language allow the formation of complex expressions from what will be called basic
expressions. (Basic expressions- expressions with a lexical meaning.) The meaning of complex
expressions is determined by semantic mechanism. This mechanism draws on three sources: the lexical
meanings of the basic expressions; the grammatical forms of the basic expressions; the syntactic structure
of the complex expression.
Semantic composition is thought of a so-called bottom-up process. It proceeds from the smallest units to
the larger ones.
The principle of compositionality: the meaning(u) of a complex expression is determined by the lexical
meanings of its components, their grammatical meanings and the syntactic structure of the whole.
Lexical semantics: the investigation of expression meanings stored in the mental lexicon (mouse, sock);
Compositional word semantics: the investigation of the meaning of words that are formed by the rules of
word formation (mousify, mouse food);
Semantics of grammatical forms: the investigation of the meaning contribution of grammatical forms that
can be freely chosen, often understood as including the semantic analysis of function words such as
articles, prepositions and conjunctions;
Sentence semantics: the investigation of the rules that determine how the meanings of the components of a
complex expression interact and combine.
Utterance semantics: the investigation of the mechanisms (e.g., meaning shifts) that determine, on the
basis of the compositionally derived expression meaning, the range of possible utterance meanings.
SEMANTICS the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.
SPEAKER MEANING what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language.
SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as
the equivalent of in the language concerned.
Meanings are concepts.
Concept an idea or a principle that is connected with something abstract
The meaning of a sentence a concept that provides a mental description of a certain kind of situation.
Descriptive meaning/ propositional meaning the part of meaning related to truth and reference.
It makes sense to talk of the potential referents of content words (referent of the noun, referent of the
verb). Adjectives never have a referent of their own, but they always describe the referent of some NP.
The descriptive meaning of a content word a concept of its potential referents

The situation referred to can be defined as the set of the referents of all referring elements of the sentence
and how they are linked. The notion of the situation referred to only makes sense if the sentence is true.
The situations potentially referred to are all those situations that fit the mental description provided by the
meaning of the sentence, i.e. all the situations for which the sentence is true.
The descriptive meaning of a sentence, its proposition, is a concept that provides a mental description of
the kind of situations it potentially refers to.
Denotation the category determined by the meaning of a content word. The denotation of a content word
is the category, or set, of all its potential referents. The denotation of a word is more than the set of all
existing entities of that kind. It includes real referents as well as fictitious ones, usual exemplars and
unusual ones, maybe even exemplars we cannot imagine because they are yet to be invented
The truth conditions of a sentence a the conditions under which it is true. The descriptive meaning of the
sentence is its proposition, and the proposition determines the truth conditions of the sentence.
The grammatical type of the sentence also contributes to its meaning, and this contribution is nondescriptive.
(1) The dog has ruined my blue skirt. (3) Has the dog ruined my blue skirt?

The question describes exactly the same sort of situation. Hence it is considered to have the same
proposition. Yet the total meaning is different: (3) renders a question while (1) renders an assertion.
The semantic contribution of the grammatical sentence type is not part of the proposition.
The meaning contribution of grammatical sentence type is a first example of non-descriptive meaning.
The term social meaning is not to be confused with the communicative meaning of a verbal act. Most
expressions and grammatical forms do not have social meaning, but some do.
(4) a. Ihre Fahrkarte, bitte! Danke.
c. Your ticket, please! Thank you.
An expression or grammatical form has social meaning if and only if its use is governed by the social rules
of conduct or, more generally, rules for handling social interactions.
All languages have phrases with a clear-cut social meaning: phrases of greeting (Hi) or saying good-bye,
phrases of apologizing (sorry), acknowledging (thank you) or answering the phone.
For each such phrase in each language there is a social rule that defines the circumstances under which it
is properly used and what it means.
Expressive meaning - part of the lexical meaning of certain expressions, a semantic quality of words and
phrases independent of the CoU and of the way they are being spoken. Since all expressives serve to
express personal feelings, attitudes or sensations, which are perceptible only to the holder, their correct use
is just a matter of personal judgement.
descriptive meaning

description of referents and situations

agreement with facts

social meaning

indication of social relations and performance of social acts

social rules of conduct

expressive meaning

immediate expression of personal sensations, feelings,

attitudes or evaluations

subjective choice

Connotations considered to be something like a secondary meaning in addition to the primary lexical
meaning, e.g., dirty for pigs.
Euphemisms good or indirect terms for bad or tabooed things, e.g., pass away for die.
Politically correct language, e.g., disabled being replaced by handicapped being replaced by challenged.
A sentence neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is a string of words put together by the
grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought as the ideal string of words behind various
realizations in utterances and inscriptions. It expresses a complete thought. A sentence has a subject
(=the topic) and a predicate (=what is being said about the topic). A combination of words that conform to
the grammatical rules of a language BUT grammatical rules differ from one language to another.
SENTENCE: Notional definition expresses a complete thought;
Logical definition a sentence has a subject (=the topic) and a predicate (=what is being
said about the topic);
Formal definition a string of words;
Grammatical definition a combination of words that conform to the grammatical rules of a
language, BUT grammatical rules differ from one language to another.
An utterance any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on the part of that
person. It is the use by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as a
sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word. Utterances physical events, they die
on the wind.
Utterance meaning the totality of what the speaker intends to convey by making an utterance. Utterances
of non-sentences, e.g. short phrases, or single words, are used by people in communication all the time.
People do not converse wholly in (tokens of) well-formed sentences. But the abstract idea of a sentence is
the basis for understanding even those expressions which are not sentences. In the overwhelming majority
of cases, the meanings of non-sentences can best be analysed by considering them to be abbreviations, or
incomplete versions, of whole sentences.
Sentence constituency a given sentence always consists of the same words, and in the same order. Any
change in the words, or in their order, makes a dierent sentence.
Utterance vs sentence: a string of words put together by the grammatical rules to express a complete
thought. They can be realized in utterances. VS Any stretch of talk/piece of speech by one person. It is used
by one person of a piece of language/some sounds. They are physical events.
A proposition that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some
state of affairs; the notion of a proposition is central to semantics. An abstract notion used to denote:
events, states, actions, processes, persons, etc., i.e. things referred to by expressions in the sentence.
The meanings of whole sentences involve propositions; the notion of a proposition is central to semantics.
The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express dierent propositions.
Thus if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is true, while the other is false,
we can be sure that they express dierent propositions. Propositions are clearly involved in the meanings of
other types of sentences, such as interrogatives and imperatives. Normally, when a speaker utters a simple
declarative sentence, he commits himself to the truth of the corresponding proposition: i.e. he asserts the
proposition. By uttering a simple interrogative or imperative, a speaker can mention a particular
proposition, without asserting its truth. Propositions, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any
particular language.

Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two sentences are perfect
translations of each other. I am cold and Jai froid.
The same proposition accessible to different persons: different individuals can grasp the same
proposition
The relationship between: abstract semantic entities (e.g. propositions);,linguistic entities (e.g. sentences);
actions (e.g. utterances).
State of affairs: An abstract notion used to denote: events, states, actions, processes, persons, etc. ; i.e.
things referred to by expressions in the sentence.

By means of REFERENCE, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are being
talked about. The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things. There are as
many potential referents for the phrase your left ear as there are people in the world with left ears. Thus
some (in fact very many) expressions in a language can have variable reference.
There are cases of expressions which in normal everyday conversation never refer to different things, i.e. in
most everyday situations that one can envisage, have constant reference.
The SENSE of an expression its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in
the language. The first of these semantic relationships that we will mention is the sameness of meaning, an
intuitive concept which we will illustrate by example. The sense of an expression is an abstraction, but it is
helpful to note that it is an abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. When a
person understands fully what is said to him, it is reasonable to say that he grasps the sense of the
expression he hears.
! Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.
Just as there is something grammatically complete about a whole sentence, as opposed to a smaller
expression such as a phrase or a single word, there is something semantically complete about a
proposition, as opposed to the sense of a phrase or single word. One might say, roughly, that a proposition
corresponds to a complete independent thought.

To the extent that perfect translation between languages is possible (and this is a very debatable point), the
same sense can be said to belong to expressions in different languages.
The relationship between reference and utterance not so direct as that between sense and proposition,
but there is a similarity worth pointing out. Both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular
speakers on particular occasions. An act of referring is the picking out of a particular referent by a speaker
in the course of a particular utterance.
Constant reference there are cases of expressions which in normal everyday conversation never refer to
different things, i.e. in most everyday situations that one can envisage, have constant reference. In fact,
there is very little constancy of reference in language. In everyday discourse almost all of the fixing of
reference comes from the context in which expressions are used. Two different expressions can have the
same referent. The classic example is the Morning Star and the Evening Star, both of which normally refer
to the planet Venus.
A referring expression any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone (or a
clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used with a particular referent in mind: Bill Clinton is to
visit Ireland in May.
Referring expressions Some expressions can be used as: referring expressions only; non-referring
expressions; both depending on the kind of sentence they occur in.
Generics collective reading: smth is predicated of the whole class referred to.
Distributed reading smth is predicated of each member of the class
Using an indefinite article a/ an or a number without a definite determiner is an indication that the addressee
need not find a referent in the world.
Indefinite reference The identity of the referent is not germane to the message: that is, nothing hinges on
the individual features of the referent, only the class features indicated are presented as relevant. <....>This
has nothing to do with whether or not either speaker or hearer is in fact able to effect a unique identification
of the referent.
Resolving ambiguities can be resolved by the use of the word certain immediately following the indefinite
article a, as in, for example: Nancy wants to marry a certain Norwegian.
An opaque context a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by the addition of
a referring expression, but where the addition of different referring expressions, even though they refer to
the same thing/person, in a given situation, will yield sentences with different meanings when uttered in a
given situation.
Opaque contexts involve a certain kind of verbs: want, believe, think, wonder about, etc.; Are the reason
for the ambiguity of indefinite NPs (referring or non-referring):
Nancy wants to marry a Norwegian.
An equative sentence one which is used to assert the identity of the referents of two referring
expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent; e.g.: Tony Blair is the
Prime Minister.
The reversal test the order of the two referring expressions can be reversed without loss of acceptability.
E.g.: The largest city in Africa is Cairo vs Cairo is the largest city in Africa.
The reversal test is not a perfect diagnostic: What I need is a pint of Guinness vs A pint of Guinness is what
I need.

Indefinite and definite NPs can be ambiguous between referring and non-referring interpretations, with the
appropriate interpretation being highly dependent on linguistic context and the circumstances of utterance.

My dog bit the postman.

Mrs Wraith is waiting for the downtown bus

Typically such sentences contain one or more referring expressions, plus some other words that
do not form part of any of the referring expressions. It is on these other words that we shall now
concentrate.
Predicator in each case it is possible to discern one word (or part of a word) which carries more
meaning than the others. For instance, write in example (2) carries more specific information than
is and the suffix -ing. If one strips away such less meaningful elements, one is left with a sequence
of words, which, though ungrammatical and inelegant, can still be understood as expressing a
proposition.

The words (in, between, stink, red, genius) we have just isolated from their original
sentences we call the predicators of those sentences.
Notice also that the verb be in its various forms (is, was, are, were, am) is not the predicator
in any example sentence.

The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence the word (sometimes a group of words)
which does not belong to any of the referring expressions and which, of the remainder, makes the
most specific contribution to the meaning of the sentence. Intuitively speaking, the predicator
describes the state or process in which the referring expressions are involved.
The predicators in sentences can be of various parts of speech: adjectives (red, asleep, hungry,
whimsical), verbs (write, stink, place), prepositions (in, between, behind), and nouns (crook,
genius). Despite the obvious syntactic differences between these different types of words,
semantically they all share the property of being able to function as the predicators of sentences.
Words of other parts of speech, such as conjunctions (and, but, or) and articles (the, a), cannot
serve as predicators in sentences.

The semantic analysis of simple declarative sentences reveals two major semantic roles
played by different subparts of the sentence. These are the role of predicator, illustrated
above, and the role(s) of argument(s), played by the referring expression(s).

E.g.:Juan is Argentinian

predicator: Argentinian, argument: Juan

Juan arrested Pablo
predicator: arrest, arguments: Juan, Pablo
Juan took Pablo to Rio
predicator: take, arguments: Juan, Pablo, Rio
The semantic analysis of a sentence into predicator and argument(s) does not correspond in most
cases to the traditional grammatical analysis of a sentence into subject and predicate, although
there is some overlap between the semantic and the grammatical analyses, as can be seen from
the examples above. We shall be concerned almost exclusively with the semantic analysis of
sentences, and so will not make use of the notion grammatical predicate (phrase). But we will use
the term predicate in a semantic sense developed within Logic.

A PREDICATE any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can function as
the predicator of a sentence.
E.g., hungry, in, crook, asleep, hit, show, bottle, wait for, in front of, are all predicates; and, or, but,
not, are not predicates.
The simplest type of proposition consists of two elements, an argument and a predicate. Put
simply, the argument is what the proposition is about, and the predicate is what is attributed to the
argument. Take the proposition expressed by John is tall, where John designates a definite
individual. This proposition has two parts: the individual designated by John, which functions as
argument, and the property designated by is tall, which functions as predicate.
A word, as we use the term, can be ambiguous, i.e. can have more than one sense, but we use
predicate in a way which does not allow a predicate to be ambiguous. A predicate can have only
one sense. Normally, the context in which we use a word will make clear what sense (what
predicate) we have in mind.
E.g.: The word bank has (at least) two senses. Accordingly, we might speak of the
predicates bank1 and bank2.
Similarly, we might distinguish between the predicates man1 (noun) human being, man2
(noun) male adult human being, and man3 (transitive verb) as in The crew manned the
lifeboats.
The term predicate identifies elements in the language system, independently of particular
example sentences. Thus, it would make sense to envisage a list of the predicates of
English, as included, say, in a dictionary.

The term predicator identifies the semantic role played by a particular word (or group of
words) in a particular sentence. One can talk of the predicator in a particular sentence, but
not list the predicators of English.

A simple sentence only has one predicator, although it may well contain more than one
instance of a predicate.

A tall, handsome stranger entered the saloon

This sentence has just one predicator, enter, but the sentence also contains the words tall,
handsome, stranger, and saloon, all of which are predicates, and can function as
predicators in other sentences, e.g. John is tall, He is handsome, He is a stranger, and That
ramshackle building is a saloon.

A simple proposition has only one predicate, but may have more than one argument. So, for
example, in the proposition John likes Mary, the predicate is likes, and John and Mary are
arguments; in the proposition John gave Mary a rose, John, Mary and a rose are
arguments, and gave is the predicate.

DEGREE of a predicate a number indicating the number of arguments it is normally

understood to have in simple sentences.

E.g., asleep is a predicate of degree one (often called a one-place predicate); love (verb) is
a predicate of degree two (a two-place predicate)

A verb that is understood most naturally with just two arguments, one as its subject, and
one as its object, is a two-place predicate. In Martha hit the parrot, hit is a two-place
predicate: it has an argument, Martha, as subject and an argument, the parrot, as direct
object.

There are a few three-place predicates; the verb give is the best example.

In the case of prepositions, nouns, and adjectives, we can also talk of one-, two-, or threeplace predicates.

It is not clear whether there is any theoretical upper limit to the number of arguments a
predicate may take, but the most one is likely to encounter in linguistic semantic discussions
is four, exemplified by Mary paid John 500 for the car.

Arguments: Mary, John, 500 , the car

Predicate: paid (for)

The identity relation the relation found in equative sentences. In English, the identity of the
referents of two different referring expressions is expressed by a form of the verb be.

George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States

The 43rd President of the United States is George W. Bush

The predicates of a language have a completely different function from the referring
expressions. The roles of these two kinds of meaning-bearing element cannot be
exchanged. Thus John is a bachelor makes good sense, but Bachelor is a John makes no
sense at all.

Predicates include words from various parts of speech, e.g. common nouns, adjectives,
prepositions, and verbs .We have distinguished between predicates of different degrees
(one-place, two-place, etc.).

We define the UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance as the particular world, real or
imaginary (or part real, part imaginary), that the speaker assumes he is talking about at the
time.

Example

When an astronomy lecturer, in a serious lecture, states that the Earth revolves around the
Sun, the universe of discourse is, we all assume, the real world (or universe).
When I tell my children a bedtime story and say The dragon set fire to the woods with his
hot breath, the universe of discourse is not the real world but a fictitious world.
Most words mean what they mean regardless of who uses them, and when and where they
are used. This is exactly why words are so useful.
Nevertheless, all languages do contain small sets of words whose meanings vary
systematically according to who uses them, and where and when they are used. These
words are called deictic words: the general phenomenon of their occurrence is called deixis.
The word deixis is from a Greek word meaning pointing.

A DEICTIC word one which takes some element of its meaning from the context or situation
(i.e. the speaker, the addressee, the time and the place) of the utterance in which it is used.

Example

The first person singular pronoun I is deictic. When Ben Heasley says Ive lost the contract,
the word I here refers to Ben Heasley.
When Penny Carter says Ill send you another one, the I here refers to Penny Carter.
Thus, someone referring to a book held by another person would say that book, but the
holder of the book, referring to the same book, would say this book; referring to 8 July on 7
July, one would say tomorrow, but referring to the same day on 9 July, one would say

yesterday; a speaker refers to himself as /, but his hearer, referring to the same person,
would say you.

The reference of certain kinds of expression is determined in relation to features of the

utterance-act: the time, the place, and the participants, i.e. those with the role of speaker or
addressee. This phenomenon is known as deixis and the expressions concerned are called
deictic.

Deixis directly concerned with the relationship between the structure of a language and the
context in which the language is used. It can be defined as the phenomenon whereby features of
context of utterance or speech event are encoded by lexical and/or grammatical means in a
language. Linguistic expressions that are employed typically as deictic expressions or deictics
include (i) demonstratives, (ii) first- and second- person pronouns, (iii) tense markers, (vi) adverbs
of times and space, and (v) motion verbs.
The deictic devices in a language commit a speaker to set up a frame of reference around herself.
<> every language carries an implicit division of the space around the current speaker, a division
of time relative to the act of speaking, and , via pronouns, a shorthand naming system for the
participants involved in the talk.
In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original utterance (the utterance being
reported) may be translated into other, possibly non-deictic, terms in order to preserve the
original reference.

Example

John: Ill meet you here tomorrow.

Margaret (reporting Johns utterance some time later): John said he would meet me there
the next day.
In this example, five adjustments are made in the reported speech, namely: I he, ll ( will)
would, you me, here there, tomorrow the next day

Other languages vary in the number of deictic divisions of space available to the speaker.
We can compare a two-term adverbial distinction between here and there in English with a
three-term aqui here, ahi (just) there, and alli (over) there distinction in Spanish. Spanish
parallels this with a three-term demonstrative system: esto this, eso that (just there) and
aquello that (over there).

There are good reasons for all languages to have deictic terms. A language without such
terms could not serve the communicative needs of its users anything like as well as a real
human language. Deictic expressions bring home very clearly that when we consider
individual sentences from the point of view of their truth, we cannot in many cases consider
them purely abstractly, i.e. simply as strings of words made available by the language
system. The truth of a sentence containing a deictic expression can only be considered in
relation to some hypothetical situation of utterance.

The traditionally called the definite article, and a the indefinite article. But what exactly is
definiteness? An answer can be given in terms of several notions already discussed, in
particular the notion of referring expression, identifying the referent of a referring expression,
and universe of discourse. A new notion is also needed, that of context.
The CONTEXT of an utterance a small subpart of the universe of discourse shared by
speaker and hearer, and includes facts about the topic of the conversation in which the
utterance occurs, and also facts about the situation in which the conversation itself takes place.

If I meet a stranger on a bus and we begin to talk about the weather (and not about anything else),
then facts about the weather (e.g. that it is raining, that it is warmer than yesterday, etc.), facts
about the bus (e.g. that it is crowded), and also obvious facts about the two speakers (e.g. their
sex) are part of the context of utterances in this conversation. Facts not associated with the topic of
the conversation or the situation on the bus (e.g. that England won the World Cup in 1966, or that
kangaroos live in Australia) are not part of the context of this conversation, even though they may
happen to be known to both speakers.
The exact context of any utterance can never be specified with complete certainty. The notion of
context is very flexible (even somewhat vague). Note that facts about times and places very distant
from the time and place of the utterance itself can be part of the context of that utterance, if the
topic of conversation happens to be about these distant times and places.

If some entity (or entities) (i.e. person(s), object(s), place(s), etc.) is/are the ONLY entity (or
entities) of its/their kind in the context of an utterance, then the definite article ( the) is the
appropriate article to use in referring to that entity (or those entities).
Contexts are constructed continuously during the course of a conversation. As a
conversation progresses, items previously unmentioned and not even associated with the
topics so far discussed are mentioned for the first time and then become part of the context
of the following utterance. Eventually, perhaps, things mentioned a long time previously in
the conversation will fade out of the context, but how long it takes for this to happen cannot
be specified exactly.

The appropriateness of the definite article is dependent on the context in which it is used.

When something is introduced for the first time into a conversation, it is appropriate to use
the indefinite article, a. Once something is established in the context of the conversation, it
is appropriate to use the. But the definite article the is not the only word which indicates
definiteness in English.

DEFINITENESS a feature of a noun phrase selected by a speaker to convey his assumption

that the hearer will be able to identify the referent of the noun phrase, usually because it is the
only thing of its kind in the context of the utterance, or because it is unique in the universe of
discourse.

That book is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker assumes the
hearer can tell which book is being referred to.
The personal pronoun she is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker
assumes the hearer can tell which person is being referred to.
The Earth is definite. It is the only thing in a normal universe of discourse known by this
name.

The three main types of definite noun phrase in English are (1) Proper names, e.g. John, Queen
Victoria, (2) personal pronouns, e.g. he, she, it, and (3) phrases introduced by a definite
determiner, such as the, that, this (e.g. the table, this book, those men).

By contrast, expressions like a man, someone, and one are all indefinite.

Definite and indefinite referring expressions may be more or less appropriate in different contexts.
But utterances which differ only in that one contains a definite referring expression where the other
has an indefinite referring expression (provided these expressions have the same referent) do not
differ in truth value. Considered objectively, the referent of a referring expression (e.g. a/the fork) is
in itself neither definite nor indefinite. (Can you tell from close inspection of a fork whether it is a
definite or an indefinite fork?) The definiteness of a referring expression tells us nothing about
the referent itself, but rather relates to the question of whether the referent has been mentioned (or
taken for granted) in the preceding discourse. The definiteness of a referring expression gives the
hearer a clue in identifying its referent.

You know what the world must be like for it to be true, or for it to be false. In other words you
know its TRUTH CONDITIONS. Because of this, a glance out of the window is enough to
tell you whether the statement is true or not.
These windows a metaphor to visualize the fact that:

The truth or falsity of a statement like (e.g.: The window of your friends house in Greece?)
depends on the state of affairs in the world; (It may be helpful to think of each window as a
possible situation or a possible world, in which a particular state of affairs holds).

CONNECTIVES symbols like & which can be used to connect statements and give a
combined truth value

The meaning of a sentence is connected with its truth conditions.

Some sentences always true or false regardless of the state of the world (others depend
on the particular state of affairs).

When more than one statement has to be evaluated, a number of possible combinations
arise, and the overall truth value depends on the combination being considered.

The formula for determining the overall truth value depends on the connectives.

If two expressions have the same meaning, they have the same truth conditions.

If an expression has more than one meaning, then each interpretation has different truth
conditions.

Each individual statement has been treated as a whole without paying attention to its
internal structure.

ATOMIC the basic sentences (represented by P,Q etc. in the truth tables, as if they had no
internal structure.
The meaning of a whole expression depends on the meaning of its parts + the way in which they
are put together.

<> this RELATION can be thought of as the nucleus of the meaning of a sentence. It holds
the sentence together, both:
by telling us what kind of state of affairs is being described, and also
specifying what individuals are required to play a significant role in the situation.
<> if the relation indeed holds between the specified individuals, the statement will be true.

The following sentences describe the state of affairs as being true of only one individual. Although
this can still be thought as a one-place relation <>, it is more usual in this case to call it a
PROPERTY of that individual (snoring is a property of mary, etc.).
(3.4) 1 Mary snores.
2 Transylvania is beautiful.

3 John is a doctor.
The importance of different roles can be illustrated with two-place relations.
E.g., the cat has eaten the goldfish
An eating situation requires two entities, one to play the ROLE of eating, and the other to
play the role pf getting eaten. In English, word order is the main way of telling who eats who.
PROPERTIES also assign roles, though in this case only one; the snoring situation
requires a snorer (a role played by Mary in (3.4)).
There is no generally accepted terminology for classifying roles, though there are several
systems on offer.
Thematic roles:

AGENT the initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition, e.g.:
6.2 David cooked the rashers.
6.3 The fox jumped out of the ditch.
PATIENTthe entity undergoing the effect of some action, often undergoing some change in
state, e.g.:
6.4 Enda cut back these bushes.
6.5 The sun melted the ice.
THEME the entity that is moved by an action, or whose location is described, e.g.:
6.6 Roberto passed the ball wide.
6.7 The book is in the library.
EXPERIENCER the entity which is aware of the action or state described by the predicate but
which is not in control of the action or state, e.g.:
6.8 Kevin felt ill.
6.9 Mary saw the smoke.
6.10 Lorcan heard the door shut.
BENEFICIARY the entity for whose benefit the action was performed, e.g.:
6.11 Robert filled in the form for his grandmother.
6.12 They baked me a cake.
INSTRUMENT the means by which the action is performed or something comes about, e.g.:
6.13 She cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe.

6.14 They signed the treaty with the same pen.

LOCATION the place in which something is situated or takes place, e.g.:
6.15 The monster was hiding under the bed.
6.16 The band played in a marquee.
GOAL the entity towards which something moves either literally as in 6.17 or metaphorically as
in 6.18:
6.17 Sheila handed her licence to the policeman.
6.18 Pat told the joke to his friends.
SOURCE the entity from which something moves either literally as in 6.19 or metaphorically as
in 6.20:
6.19 The plane came back from Kinshasa.
6.20 We got the idea from a French magazine.

Other simple tests suggested by Jackendoff (1990) include predicting that for an ACTOR (X) it will
make sense to ask 6.27 below, and for a PATIENT (Y) that it will be able to occur in the frames in
6.28.
6.27

What did X do?

6.28

a. What happened to Y was

b. What X did to Y was

Some writers have suggested other thematic roles in addition to the ones we have discussed. For
example a role of PERCEPT is sometimes used for the entity which is perceived or experienced,
e.g.:
6.32 a. The general inspected the troops.
b. Did you hear that thunder?
c. That shark frightened the swimmers.
A role of RECIPIENT is sometimes defined, e.g. by Andrews (1985), as a type of GOAL involved in
actions describing changes of possession, e.g.:
6.33 a. He sold me this wreck.
b. He left his fortune to the church.
While these roles, ACTOR, AGENT, PATIENT, EXPERIENCER, THEME, INSTRUMENT, etc.
may seem intuitively clear, in practice it is difficult to know which role to assign to a particular noun
phrase. For example, in a sentence like 6.34 to the lighthouse is clearly a GOAL, and in 6.35 him is
a BENEFICIARY, but in 6.36 is Margarita the GOAL/RECIPIENT, or BENEFICIARY, or both?
Jackendoff (1972) suggested that one entity might fulfil more than one role. In Jackendoff (1990)
the idea that one nominal might fulfil more than one role is elaborated into a theory of tiers of
thematic roles: a thematic tier, which describes spatial relations, and an action tier which describes
ACTOR-PATIENT-type relations. His examples include the following (1990:126-7):
6.38 a. Sue hit

Fred.

THEME

GOAL

(thematic tier)

ACTOR

PATIENT

(action tier)

b. Pete threw
SOURCE

the ball.
THEME

(thematic tier)

ACTOR
c. Bill entered
THEME

PATIENT
the room.
GOAL

(thematic tier)

ACTOR
d. Bill received
GOAL

(action tier)

(action tier)
a letter.
THEME

(thematic tier)
(action tier)

Thus Fred in 6.38a is simultaneously the GOAL and the PATIENT of the action. The gaps in a tier
reflect instances where the nominal has only one thematic role: thus the room in 6.38c has no role
in the action tier. Presumably these tiers would divide thematic roles into two types, perhaps as
follows:
6.39 a. Action tier roles: ACTOR, AGENT, EXPERIENCER, PATIENT, BENEFICIARY,
INSTRUMENT
b. Thematic tier roles: THEME, GOAL, SOURCE, LOCATION
Thematic roles A set of choices which face a speaker seeking to describe a situation
concerns how to portray the roles of any entities involved.

<> there are often restrictions on what kind of thing can fill a given role in a situation. For
example, in an eating situation, the eater must be some sort of life form; and the thing eaten
has to be something concrete (it cant be an abstraction like unity or relativity).
E.g.: *Unity has eaten relativity.

A particular case of role assignment is that some roles may need to be assigned to a whole
statement. In (3.6), for example, the main relation is believe. This holds between a believer (who
must be something like a human being) and the thing believed, which will normally be a statement.
(3.6) Mary believes [that her husband snores].
Logic(in a narrow sense) deals with meanings in a language system, not with actual behavior of
any sort. Logic deals most centrally with PROPOSITIONS.
A system for describing logical thinking contains a notation for representing propositions
unambiguously and rules of inference defining how propositions go together to make up
valid arguments.
Predicate calculus a system for the representation of the internal structure of simple
propositions.

Statements analysed in this way are given a special notation: the name of the relation is written
first, and then the role-fillers are listed in brackets (often abbreviated to single lower-case letters).
The former is known as the PREDICATE and the latter as its ARGUMENTS:
(3.7)
John loves Mary
love (john, mary) or love (j, m)
(predicate = love; arguments = john, mary)

<> the predicate is written as the most basic form of the word (love, rather than loves or
loved). The endings on such words are chiefly grammatical phenomena they do not affect the
relation being described.
In translating between predicate-argument formulas and English, <> certain clues are given by
parts of speech.
Relations often correspond to verbs. At other times they correspond to adjectives or other parts of
speech introduced by the copula (to be).
The argument places filled <> mostly by proper names.
Logic provides a notation for unambiguously representing the essentials of propositions.
Anything that is not a predicator or a referring expression simply omitted from logical notation.
The reasons for eliminating elements such as forms of the verb be, article (a, the), tense markers
(past, present), and certain prepositions partly a matter of serious principle and partly a matter
of convenience. The most serious principle involved is the traditional concentration of logic on
truth.
Articles, a and the, do not affect the truth of the propositions expressed by simple sentences.
Accordingly, they are simply omitted from the relatively basic logical formulae <>. This is an
example of the omission of material from logical formulae on principled grounds.
In the case of some, but not all, prepositions, e.g., at, in, on, under, there are similar principled
reasons for not including them in logical formulae.
Some prepositions contribute substantially to the sense of the sentence they occur in, e.g. Sidney
put his hat ON the table, whereas in other cases, prepositions seem merely to be required by the
grammar of the language when certain verbs and adjectives are used, e.g. present someone WITH
something, or be envious OF someone.
Prepositions like these which appear to make no significant contribution to the logical sense of a
sentence are omitted from the logical formulae representing the proposition concerned.
Prepositions which do make a contribution, on the other hand, must be included in logical formulae
for propositions.
In effect, we treat expressions like look for, look at, look after as single predicates when they
contain prepositions that contribute in an important way to the sense of the sentence. This is
natural, as many such expressions are indeed synonymous with single-word predicates, e.g. seek,
regard, supervise.
<> the relation denoted by a verb like love or eat is a relation in the mathematical sense of the
word. A relation in mathematics can be defined in terms of ordered pairs.
The denotation of a (two-place) relation is simply a set of such pairs.
Thus the relation author_of pairs off Shakespeare with Hamlet, Pasternak with Dr Zhivago and
Kazantzakis with Zorba the Greek.
The whole set of such pairings is the denotation of author_of.
Good examples of ordered pairs occur in elliptical sentences in English, such as the following. For
each sentence give the relation and the ordered pairs of which it holds.

a John wants beer, Bill cider, Mary gin, Sarah lemonade, and Sebastian sherry.
b Maria is studying Turkish, Ali Chinese, Suresh Hausa, Noriko Indonesian and Natasha Arabic.
The denotation of a one-place predicate a property in this case, this can be seen as not a set
of ordered pairs but simply a set of individuals.

Thus to say Rusty is a dog is to say that rusty is a member of the set of dogs.
This chapter has been about the way sentence meanings are composed. The nucleus of its
meaning comprises a relation and one or more roles.

If the relation holds between the specified role-filling entities then the statement is true; if it
does not then it is false.
If the roles are not filled (or not filled appropriately) then the sentence is to a greater or lesser
degree anomalous, and hence difficult or impossible to process.
The chapter has also introduced a useful notation which reflects this way of analysing sentences.
A predicate with its arguments shows some of the internal structure of the sentences.
There have already been some instances where this internal structure shows the relationship
between certain sentences which intuitively seem to be related in meaning, even though their truth
conditions may be different. This grasp of meaning relations is one of the most important semantic
intuitions.
___
Negation
(not)
Conjuction & (and)
Disjunction V (or)
Paraphrase
Contradiction
Implication
(If P, then Q)
Equivalence (mutual implication);
(P if, and only if, Q)

The truth table for negation: "It's not the case that P ", or, more simply, "Not P

The truth table for conjuction: "P and Q "

The truth table for disjunction: "P or Q "

a) Paraphrase --> the same meaning

i P Bill bought this second-hand car from Alex.
ii Q Alex sold this secon-hand car to Bill.
b) Contradiction opposite meaning
i P Marias husband never does the washing up
ii Q Marias husband sometimes does the washing up
c) Implication if the first is true, then the second is true too; If P, then Q
i P Mary has a Burmese cat.

ii Q Mary has a cat.

Is marked as (If P, then Q)
The truth table for implication

Definition in words:
joins two statements P and Q to form a composite statement PQ whose value
is true unless P is true and Q false.
Two sentences P and Q are paraphrases if P implies Q and Q implies P. This relation can
be written P Q (suggesting mutual implication) or

P Q (equivalence)
Contradiction A slightly more complicated relation.
Suggests opposite meaning, but opposite can have different senses.
Different kind of opposites:
A) Marias husband never does the washing up.
B) Marias husband always does the washing up.
C) Marias husband sometimes does the washing up.

A and B can both be true, but it is possible that neither is true. The two lie at two
extremes.
The relation of incompatibility
A and C while both of them cannot be true; one of them must be; the two
complement each other in the same way as P and P complement each other
The relation of contradiction. In traditional logic contraries

Contradiction & incompatibility

Two sentences P and Q are incompatible if
P implies Q and Q implies P
P and Q are contradictory if
P is equivalent to Q
and Q is equivalent to P
Meaning relations In many cases meaning relations between sentences are the result of
relations holding at a lexical level between their component parts
IMPLICATION
1. P Tiny is an alsatian.
2. Q Tiny is a dog.
P implies Q because of a meaning relation between the two predicates alsatian and dog.
The relation between these two word senses cannot be called implication because
implication is a relation between truth values, and predicates do not have truth values (only
statements do).
The corresponding relation between word senses is called HYPONOMY.
Hyponymy
-onym from Greek root meaning name
A is a hyponym of B if it is impossible for an entity to be A without also being B
E.g., alsatian is a hyponym of dog because it is impossible for something to be an alsatian
without also being a dog.
Hyponymy sets
The denotaion of the predicate should be thought of as a set.
While Tiny denotes an individual, alsatian denotes a set of all alsatians, and dog the set
of all dogs.
Sent 1 is true if the individual tiny is a member of the set of alsatians, while 2 is true if he is a
member of the set of dogs.
To say that alsatian is a hyponym of dog is to say that the set of alsatians is a SUBSET of
the set of dogs; it is impossible to be a member of the first without also being a member of
the second.
Venn diagram: A represents the set of alsatians, B the set of dogs and x any random
individual.

1. P Tiny is an alsatian.
2. Q Tiny is a dog.

Here the predicate was a one-place relation (or property), so that its denotation was an
ordinary set of individuals.
For a two-place relation exactly the same holds, except that the set denoted is a set of
orderred pairs.
For a three-place relation it will be a set of orderred triples and so on.
Synonyms can be defined as word forms which have at least one sense in common.
They should also denote the same set.
1. Mary is truthful.
2. Mary is honest.
It is impossible to be truthful without being honest and vice versa. Thus truthfull is a
hyponym of honest and vice versa.
The two word senses denote the same set.
Two sets are equal if and only if each is a subset of the other.
This lexical relation is responsible for the fact that the two sentences Mary is truthful. &
Mary is honest. are paraphrases.

Antonymy
If two words have opposite meanings, they are antonyms.
opposite has at least two different senses (both at the sentential and lexical level)
(4.11) 1. John is happy.
2. John is unhappy
(4.12) 1. Mary is a smoker.

2. Mary is a non-smoker.
In the first case, the sets denoted by happy and unhappy are completely separate (disjoint).
There are no individuals in the intersection between them. However, there may be
individuals that are outside both sets.

In (4.12) each set is the complement of the other: they are disjoint (as before), but this time
together they take up the entire space under consideration, and each individual must be in
one or the other

Two kinds of antonyms:

Incompatible antonyms
Contradictory antonyms

The presence of the word antonym is to serve as a reminder that we are talking about a
lexical relationship and not a sentential one.

Meaning relations
Notice how these lexical relations parallel with sentential ones:
The subset relation corresponding with implication

At the sentential level the relation of implication can be used to characterize a variety
of relations including paraphrase, incompatibility and contradiction. This analysis is based
on truth values.
Similar relations hold between word senses (specifically those of predicates). The relation
of hyponymy corresponds to implication (but holds between word senses, not statements or
truth values.
If the denotations of predicates are regarded as sets, then hyponyms can be interpreted as
subsets. This approach, illustrated by Venn diagrams, is often a useful model to have in
mind when considering word meaning.

Meaning relations

The sense of an expression can be seen as a way of classifying things

The word book, used as the thing you may have in front of you, refers to it as a book ,
i.e. as an instantation of a particular bundle of properties which are shared by other
books, but not by cars or chocolates.
This classification does not mean putting objects into arbitrary pigeon-holes.
The hyponym relation means that an object can be classified at a more general level
or at a more specific level.
Textbook hyponym of book (there can be book ,etc.)

Book can be used to classify more objects than textbook can, but the latter is more

informative.
Objects can be classified in different ways depending on how much info it is desirable
to convey.
The hyponym relation between senses should be distinguished from the relation
between a sense and the individuals which it classifies (its denotation).
The object in front of you is a textbook, and also is a book, in that it instantiates (is
an instance of) these word senses.
A textbook (or more precisely the concept textbook) is a kind of book, in that it is a
species or type of book.
The two different relations are sometimes known by the mnemonics isa and ako
respectively
(the terms come from artificial intelligence)
"isa" signifies "is a".
It acts as a relation between an object and a type, and specifies that the object is a
member of the type.
Fido is a dog signifies that the object Fido is a member of the set of all dogs.
Denotation== instance

"ako" signifies "a kind of".

It acts as a relation between two types of things, and specifies that one is a subset of
the other.
For example, chair ako furniture signifies that the concept of chair is a subconcept of
the concept of furniture, or to put it another way, the set of all chairs is a subset of the
set of all furniture.
These simple relations can be used to build up a semantic network networks by which wor
meaning are related. These relations are responsible for expectations which enable us to draw
certain conclusions.

The notion of resemblance appears to play an important role in how things are classified (book and
reader) The two have no obvious properties in common, but both have a resemblance (a
different resemblance) to the book you are reading

Lexical and encyclopaedic knowledge

This exploits the difference between a lexicon (or mental dictionary) and
an encyclopaedia, which is pretty well entrenched into our culture.
The denotation of a word sense can be modelled as a set.
Typical (prototypical) members of a set
vs

Untypical (non-prototypical/ peripheral) members of a set.

In many cases denotation can be thought of as equivalent to extension (Hurford,
Heasley & Smith 2007:90)

Someone who knows how to use the word cat has an idea of the potential set of objects that can
be referred to as cats, i.e. he has some concept of the set of all cats. (This idea or concept may
only be a vague, or fuzzy, one <...>). This leads us to the notion of the extension of a predicate.
The EXTENSION of a one-place predicate the set of all individuals to (partial) which that
predicate can truthfully be applied. It is the set of things which can POTENTIALLY be referred to
by using an expression whose main element is that predicate.
The original motivation for the idea of extension was to explain the ability of speakers of a
language to group entities having similar characteristics, such as cats or chickens, into distinct
mental categories and to refer to these objects in the world, using linguistic expressions containing
predicates.

In addition, the idea of extension was to explain their ability as hearers to identify the referents of
referring expressions containing predicates, and their ability to make and understand descriptive
statements using predicates, as in Atkins is a cat.
But speakers are in fact only able to do these things in normal situations. The idea of extension is
too ambitious, extending to all situations.
In fact, a speaker does not have a perfectly clear idea of what is a cat and what is not a cat.
A PROTOTYPE of a predicate an object which is held to be very TYPICAL of the kind of object
which can be referred to by an expression containing the predicate. In other words, the prototype
of a predicate can be thought of as the most typical member of the extension of a predicate.
Shared prototypes objects on which there is general agreement that they are typical examples
of the class of objects described by a certain predicate.
In a language community as wide as that of English, there are problems with this idea of prototype,
due to cultural differences between various English speaking communities.
Extension not clear; prototype clear
Some predicates which do not have clearly defined extensions (e.g. colour terms like red and blue)
do in fact have clear prototypes.
Influential research in the 1960s by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay demonstrated that although one
cannot be sure exactly where red shades off into pink or orange, for example, there is general
agreement in the English speech community about the central, focal, or prototypical examples of
red.
The idea of prototype has at least some advantage over that of extension.
But in other cases, such as abstract mass terms (e.g. ambition) there is about as
much difficulty in identifying the prototype of a predicate as there is of identifying its
extension.
Often the untypicality of entities can be traced to their membership of a particular
subset, which is the denotation of a hyponym.
This subset may have its own built-in expectations.
The expectations associated with word senses are often known as default inferences.
They can be studied using a suitably adapted logic called default logic.
The idea is that such an inference holds provided there is no information that it is
incompatible with the conclusion.
If Tweety is a bird, then we infer that Tweety flies provided we do not know that
Tweety is a flightless bird, say a penguin.
In a semantic network, all the properties associated with a concept are automatically
associated also with any concept which stands in an ako relation with it (i.e. all its
hyponyms).
A concept inherits properties from the more general concept of which it is a hyponym; it
also introduces extra properties of it own to that subset.
A concept can be a hyponym of several more general concepts at once.
Coin
a kind of metallic object
a kind of medium exchange
It will inherit from both of these more general concepts. On
the one hand, it has a particular economic value, on the other
hand, it has the properties associated with a metallic object.
Sometimes used interchangeably
A stereotype is related to a prototype but is not the same thing.
The STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL characteristics or features of things to
which the predicate may be applied.
The stereotype of a predicate may often specify a range of possibilities (e.g. the range of colours of
typical cats), but an individual prototype of this predicate will necessarily take some particular
place within this range (e.g. black).

Another important difference between prototype and stereotype is that a speaker may well know a
stereotype for some predicate, such as ghost, witchdoctor, flying saucer, but not actually be
acquainted with any prototypes of it. Stereotypes of expressions for things learnt about at second
hand, through descriptions rather than direct experience, are generally known in this way.

One kind of antonymy occurs when one predicate expresses the same relation as the other but
with arguments reversed the CONVERSE of the relation. Give converses for the following
predicates, and state both sentences as predicate-argument formulas.
a. 12 is twice 6.
b. Tokyo is bigger than London London is smaller than Tokyo.
c. Chomsky was a student of Harris.
d. Elizabeth I succeeded Mary.
e. Belgrade is below Vienna (on the Danube).
Strictly speaking only two-place relations have converses. However some three-place predicates
are related by a similar permutation of their arguments (e.g. John gave the book to Mary vs
Mary received the book from John). Imagine the following scenario: Don Marino hands
Antonio a gun, and Antonio hands Don Marino a thousand dollars. Express this using the
three-place verbs buy, sell, cost and fetch.
The levels of a semantic network do not seem to have the same status.