1.

1 BASIC CONCEPT

SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE. Knowing the meaning of all the words that
make up a language is not sufficient to interpret an utterance, though. We usually need access
to a series of extra-linguistic information about the participants and the context, their
communication intent, the degree of formality of the interactions as well as other elements, like
previous knowledge about a topic, to onvey meaning.

For this reason, linguists usually differentiate between two complementary approaches to the
area of meaning production and interpretation.

The first area is concerned with sentence meaning and is the object of semantics. The second
deals with utterance meaning and is the object of pragmatics (HUTFORD, B; HEASLEY, B &
SMITH, M, 2007; MEYER, 2007)

In order to clarify this, two questions can be addressed

1. What does it mean?

(This question is a request of information and is independent of the participants in a given

interaction and is in the field of Semantics)

2. What do you mean?

This question is a request of information and is dependent of the participants in a given

interaction and is in the field of Pragmatics)

We have outlined the basic concepts of Semantics here. Before we move on to the activities you
shall take a look at the reminders, they summarize the main topics covered in this unit. Make
sure that you understand them. Do go back to the unit, if you have doubts before doing the
activities

1.2 SENTENCES, UTTERANCES AND PROPOSITIONS

An UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which, there is silence on
the part of that person.
An utterance 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 are physical events. Events are ephemeral. Utterances die in the wind. Linguistics
deals with spoken language and we will have a lot to say about utterances in this book. But we
will concentrate even more on another notion, that of sentences.

A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a physical object. A string of words put together by
the grammatical rules of a language. A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words
behind various realizations in utterances and inscriptions pragmatics (HUTFORD, B; HEASLEY, B
& SMITH, M, 2007; MEYER, 2007).

1.3 MEANING AND DICTIONARY

A DICTIONARY can be thought of as a list of the meanings of words, of what words mean.
But...could one make a list of what speakers in general mean?

The answer is NO because speakers may mean different things on different occasions, even
when using the same words, as in the sentence:

"The door is open".

So, it is important to understand two basic definitions: speaker meaning and sentence or word
meaning.

SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means, or wants to convey,

when he uses a piece of language

SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it
counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.

This makes us come to two important definitions in our course. The definitions of sentence and
utterance:

SENTENCES are abstract grammatical elements. Utterances are concrete strings of words.

Semantics is part of our grammatical competence and usually focuses on decontextualized

meaning, while pragmatics focuses on contextualized meaning. So, the study of meaning, or
SEMANTICS, has proven to be one of the more challenging levels of linguistic structure for
linguists to describe. A relatively simple word such as the noun CHAIR, is a term to which the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) assigns 16 different meanings.

Consider one of these 16 meanings as defined in the OED and two other dictionaries:
Ex:

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (OED):A seat for one person (always implying more or less of
comfort and ease); now the common name for the movable four-legged seat with a rest for the
back, which constitutes, in many forms of rudeness or elegance, an ordinary article of
household furniture, and is also used in gardens or wherever it is usual to sit.

MERRIAM-WEBSTER' COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY (MW)

(11TH ED): a seat typically having four legs and a back for one person

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (AHD):

A piece of furniture consisting of a seat, legs, back, and often arms, designed to accommodate
one person.

he three dictionaries agree on two characteristics of a chair: that it seats one person and has a
back. While the OED and MW specify that a chair has four legs, the AHD states simply that it has
legs. The AHD also notes that a chair "often [has] arms", suggesting that arms are optional. The
other two dictionaries say nothing about arms. The OED entry is much more detailed than the
other entries, noting that chairs exhibit "comfort" and "ease", are "moveable", and are regarded
as "household furniture".

Although the definitions in the three dictionaries are similar, there are enough differences to
illustrate the complexity inherent in defining even the simplest notions. For this reason, many
different perspectives for treating meaning have developed within the field of linguistics.
Dictionary definitions fall within the province of lexical semantics, an area of linguistics
concerned with the study of the meaning of individual words. Because dictionaries are intended
as reference guides, they do not provide theoretical statements about the nature of lexical
meaning. However, LEXICOGRAPHERS, those who create dictionaries, have developed
methodologies for discovering the meanings of words and most effectively presenting these
meanings to users of dictionaries.

For this reason, modern lexicographers have abandoned handwritten citation slips created by
thousands of individuals and have turned instead to collecting examples automatically from
very large corpora. For instance, the publisher Harper-Collins created the Collins Word Web as
the source for citation files used to create a number of dictionaries that they have published,
including The Collins English Dictionary (2007). The Collins Word Web is currently 2.5 billion
words in length and contains various kinds of spoken and written English. It is constantly being
updated so that new words entering the language can be detected and included in upcoming

editions of dictionaries.

Advances in software development have also aided in the creation of citation slips. A
CONCORDANCING PROGRAM can be used on any computerized text to very quickly create a
KWIK (keyword in context) concordance. All instances of chair are vertically aligned so that
their use in context can be easily examined. Although only sentence fragments in which chair
occurs can be seen, often, only a limited context is needed to determine the meaning of a word.
If a larger context is desired, most concordancing programs allow for the entire sentence or
surrounding sentences to be viewed.

While lexicographers will need to examine many uses of a word to determine its meaning(s), the
24 instances of chair in Figure 1 begin to reveal it. Three of the examples point to a chair as a
place to sit:

...in his gown, sitting in a chair....

Enter the friar, sitting in a chair....

The back of the chair on which Gennaio is sitting....

One example actually provides a definition of a chair:

A chair consists of four legs, a seat,....

Another contains a few words, "...carved wooden chair....", specifying what a chair is made of.

Other examples indicate that chair is POLYSEMOUS; that is, that it has more than one meaning.
A chair is not simply a concrete object used for sitting, but an abstract noun designating
someone who is the head of something, or who holds some highly esteemed posi a university:

....Gordon Stewart, chair of the Department of History,....

....B. Watson left his academic chair at The Johns Hopkins University....

Of course, more examples beyond would be needed to verify this

meaning of chair. But as lexicographers begin isolating multiple meanings of

words, they can search for other examples to determine how widespread

the meanings are

Words with similar pronunciations but different meanings are

often referred to as HOMONYMS. But deciding whether a given word

has one or more meanings is often difficult to determine. A 'rocking' chair

differs from other chairs because it does not have four legs but two curved

legs that are shaped in a way that permits the chair to move forwards and backwards. A
'computer' chair also moves but typically has four legs with

wheels. A 'beanbag' chair has no legs or arms but a flexible area for sitting

All of these chairs are little more than variations on the traditional

notion of 'chair'. For this reason, no lexicographer is likely to list them in a

dictionary in a separate entry

1.4 ENGLISH LANGUAGE DICTIONARIES

There are many different kinds of dictionaries:

MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES: Monolingual dictionaries are

intended for native speakers and, as a consequence, focus on a single

language (e.g. English, German, French). Some of the more well-known

monolingual English dictionaries include the Oxford English Dictionary,

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, and the American Heritage

Dictionary of the English Language.For non-native speakers, there are

specialized monolingual dictionaries known as learner dictionaries. For

instance, the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Collins

COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary are written specifically for

non-native speakers of English, and, thus, contain simpler definitions than

would be found in a typical monolingual dictionary and a greater emphasis

on vocabulary, such as idioms or phrasal verbs, that give individuals learning

English as an additional language considerable difficulty

BILINGUAL DICTIONARIES: Bilingual dictionaries focus on two

languages and are designed for individuals who are native speakers of a

particular language learning another language as an additional one. For

English speakers, there are English/Spanish dictionaries, English/ltalian

dictionaries, and so forth

UNABRIDGEDIABRIDGED DICTIONARIES: The major dictionary

makers will periodically release large unabridged dictionaries from which

they will produce smaller unabridged dictionaries that contain a subset of

words in the abridged dictionary as well as newer words that have entered

the language since the publication of the unabridged version. For instance,

Webster's Third New International, an unabridged dictionary produced by the G&C Merriam Co.
in Springfield MA, was released in 1961. Since its

the publication, Merriam-Webster has published 11 collegiate dictionaries

which contain fewer entries than Webster's Third. At the same time they

have been updated with newer words than the unabridged version. Because

the Webster name is so closely associated with the 19th century American

lexicographer Noah Webster, many dictionaries have been published

under the Webster's name. However, The G&C Merriam Company is the

only publisher of a Webster dictionary having any connection to Noah

Webster's 1828 dictionary, American Dictionary of the English Language.

Pagina 15
THESAURUSES: These are dictionaries specialized in providing

synonyms for the main entries that they contain. One of the more famous

English Thesauruses is Roget's Thesaurus, published in 1852 and written by

Peter Roget. Because the name of this dictionary was never copyrighted,

many thesauruses contain the name Roget, even though they are not

derivative of the original thesaurus.

SPECIALIZED DICTIONARIES: Many dictionaries focus on

vocabulary specific to a particular occupation or area of interest. Physicians

and lawyers, for instance, can make use of dictionaries that define medical

and legal terms, such as Tabler's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary or Black's

Law Dictionary. Musicians can consult dictionaries of musical terms, such

as the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Scrabble players have

dictionaries specialized in words commonly used in scrabble games. Since

the range of interests is large, so are the number of dictionaries catering to

these interests.

Even though many different kinds of dictionaries exist, most

individuals are probably most familiar with abridged or unabridged

monolingual dictionaries: the primary focus of discussion in this section

The creation of a monolingual dictionary is essentially a two-stage process

determining the meaning of words by studying their use in context, and,

then, crafting definitions of the words that will be appropriate for the

readership of dictionaries.

1.5 LEXICAL SEMANTICS

According to HUTFORD & SMITH (2007), LEXICAL SEMANTICS

has also been studied within linguistics. For instance, one way to describe

the meanings of words in a more general sense is to categorize the various

relationships existing among them: words with similar or identical meanings

are considered SYNONYMS, those with opposite meanings ANTONYMS.

Words with different but overlapping meanings, such as beagle or poodle,

can be said to constitute a SEMANTIC FIELD. Within semantic fields,

certain words will be PROTOTYPES: words more closely associated with

the field than other ones. For instance, speakers of American English will

regard a poodle or German Sheppard as more typical type of dog than a

Norwegian elk hound. Another more controversial way of characterizing

the meaning of words has been done in the area of COMPONENTIAL

ANALYSIS. This involves defining words by breaking them down into their

component parts and assigning them semantic features. On one level, the

words puppy and infant share the feature 'newly born'. These words differ

in that infant has the feature 'human', while puppy does not. However,

Pag16

this area of semantics has proven to be problematic, primarily because it is

difficult to determine exactly what semantic features are needed.

While lexical semantics is concerned with the meaning of

individual words, larger structures, such as sentences, also have meaning.

e ne RC RONIS

In the sentence, The child made a sand castle, the subject of the sentence,

the child, is the AGENT: the person responsible for carrying out the action

in the sentence. The direct object, a sand castle, is the PATIENT, the person
or thing directly affected by the agent's actions. Recent work in frame

semantics has expanded upon work on semantic roles to describe these

roles in terms of the cognitive frames in which they occur. For example,

the sentence The woman bought a clock would be part of the commercial

transaction frame, a frame that includes many elements, in the given

example a buyer (the woman) and something purchased (a clock).

Still, words also have a 'pointing' function. This function is known

as deixis, a word borrowed from Greek that means 'to point' or 'to show'. In

the given example, not only does the word woman means ('an adult female')

but it points, or refers, to a particular woman in the external world. Th

ability of nouns and pronouns to refer is one type of deixis: REFERENTIAL

DEIXİS. Other types include TEMPORAL and SPATIAL deixis. For instance,

the sentence I walked a mile yesterday contains two temporal markers that

anchor this sentence in the past: the past tense marker on the verb walked

and the adverb yesterday. Other time frames are indicated by the present

tense marker in English as well as the two aspect markers (perfective and

progressive). Spatial deixis is indicated by prepositions such as in and on or

demonstratives such as this or that, which situate what is being discussed

either close to the speaker/writer ("This wine is giving me a headache") or

away from him/her ("That person always bothers me").

Finally, language can be used to express the speaker or reader's

perspective on the truth of what is being said, an area of semantics known

as modality. Degrees of certainty can be expressed through modal verbs

such as can or may and adverbs such as perhaps, definitely, or maybe. The
sentence I will help you expresses a high degree of certainty, while the

sentences Perhaps I will help you or I might help you indicate a much lower

degree of certainty.

The various ways that meaning has been studied shows exactly

what is meant by the notion of 'meaning': what philosophers of language

often describe as "what it means to mean" (HUTFORD,&SMITH, 2007;

MEYER, 2007)

1.6 HOW SEMANTICS OPERATES: THE TWO LEVELS

Semantic investigation operates at two levels: word and sentence

level. The first explores the relationships words have with each other within

Pag17

a language system, their sense. That can be defined in terms of SYNONYMY,

ANTONYMY, POLYSEMY, HOMONYMY and HYPONYMY.

As we remember from Saussure's theory, since the relationship

between words and their referents is merely symbolic - they are signs

each word derives a meaning not from the real world but from its existence

within a semantic field of related signs.

At the WORD LEVEL, Componential analysis breaks down the

meaning of a word into components. For example, the components of the

word man would be: +human adult + male. Using these components,

semanticists build grids which define the words of a particular field

according to the presence or absence of a particular component. Of

course, grammatical words such as and, but, for do not lend themselves

to this analysis. But, above all, the elements mentioned could be endlessly
broken down into smaller ones. So this method can be useful as a means of

classification but not as a theory of meaning

At the SENTENCE LEVEL, semanticists are mainly concerned with

the truth value of linguistic expressions.

They often distinguish between analytic and synthetic truth. A

synthetically true statement is true because it is an accurate representation

of reality. An analytically true statement is true because it follows from the

meaning relations within the sentence.

LOGICAL SEMANTICS or TRUTH CONDITIONAL SEMANTICS

draws mainly on propositional logic and is interested above all in the logical

connectives of English

This kind of analysis implies a correspondence between language

and reality, but some semanticists do not believe in this correspondence

and argue that language creates reality.

COGNITIVE SEMANTICS understands language as part of our

general cognitive ability and pays special attention to metaphor pragmatics

(HUTFORD, B; HEASLEY, B & SMITH, M, 2007; MEYER, C. Introducing

English Linguistics . London: Longman. 2007)

1.7 SENSE RELATIONS

ANTONYMY is a sense relation between words which are opposite

in meaning

There are various forms of antonymy.

In GRADABLE ANTONYMS there can be degrees of opposition

(wide/narrow, old/young/, tall/short). In this case the definition changes

according to the REFERENT and there is usually a MARKED (young) and

and UN-MARKED term (old ex. She is 16 years old).

In COMPLEMENTARY ANTONYMS the opposition between the

terms is absolute (alive/dead). RELATIONAL ANTONYMS are not either/or

Pag18

but there is a logical relationship between them (above/below, husband/

wife)

HOMONYMY is a relation between words which have the same

form, but unrelated senses.

HOMONYMS can have the same phonological or graphical

form, or both. If they have the same phonological form, they are called

HOMOPHONES (sight/site

If they have the same graphical form, they are called

HOMOGRAPHS (lead: metal and lead: conduct). Some of them are both

homophonic and homographic (mail).

POLYSEMY is a sense relation in which a word, or lexeme, has

acquired more than one meaning often because of its metaphorical use or

because it can refer to abstract or concrete referents.

Sometimes homonymy is difficult to distinguish from POLYSEMY,

but in fact homonyms are separate lexical items which happen to have the

same form, while in the case of POLYSEMY the same lexical item has taken

up more than one sense. One possibility is to take etymology as a criterion

to distinguish them, but it does not always work (sole), so maybe the best

approach is to look for a common core of meaning (common semes).

An ISOTOPY is formed by repeating one seme. For example, in

"There was a fine ship, carved from solid gold /With azure reaching masts,

on seas unknown", the words "ship, "masts" and "seas all contain the

seme /navigation/ (as well as others) and thus create the isotopy /navigation/.

HYPONYMY is a hierarchical relation between two terms, in

which the sense of one is included in the other [rose (hyponym) /flower

(hypernym)]

CO-HYPONYMS are hyponyms of the same hypernym (rose, lily,

daisy) and are incompatible (a rose cannot be a lily)

There can be various levels of hyponymy (Living things - (Animal)/

Vegetable - Flower - Rose/ Lily/Daisy/ Poppy etc).

19/60

SYNONYMY is a relation between words which have a similar

meaning (mad/insane, main/chief/principal). English is particularly rich in

synonyms because of the influx on it of various languages such as Latin,

French and Anglo-Saxon.

In fact, words are never totally interchangeable, so synonyms

frequently differ stylistically, they belong to different language registers

(mother/mom) or can be combined only with certain other words, that is

they have a collocational range (powerful, mighty, strong)

MULTI-MEANING WORDS

In all languages, words may have multiple meanings. It is very

important to consider the context in each a words is.

Pag19
Examples

Argument:

1. Making an argument-expressing a point of view and su

it with facts and evidence: He presented relevant arguments in favor of the

pporting

new legislation.

2. Harsh discussion: I had an argument with my boyfriend last

night.

AMBIGUITY

Sentences can have different meanings,

depending on how we

interpret them. We usually rely on context and background knowledge

to get rid of ambiguity but, sometimes, meaning must be more clearly

conveyed.

Examples

In the sentence:

"Include Your Children When Baking Cookies", the meaning is

"are children going to take part in the activity" OR "are they going to be

baked together with the cookies"? As we can see, meaning always depends

on context.

LEXICAL AMBIGUITY depends on HOMONYMY (senses not

related) and POLYSEMY (senses related). Some sentences which contain

ambiguous words are ambiguous while others are not, and some sentences

which contain no ambiguous words are AMBIGUOUS while others are not.
We have outlined the basic concepts concerning sense relations.

Before we move on to the activities you shall take a look at the reminders,

they

understand them. Do go back to the unit, if you have doubts before doing

the main topics covered in this unit. Make sure that you

summarize

the activities.

1.8 SEMANTIC FIELD

A SEMANTIC FIELD is an area of meaning containing words with

related senses. According to this theory, meanings of words cluster together

to form fields of meaning, which, in turn, cluster into larger ones (Ex.: veal

chicken/pork - meat food).

Each meaning is defined by the space a word occupies in the field.

The origin of the FIELD THEORY OF SEMANTICS is the lexical

field theory introduced by Jost Trier in the 1930s. For John Lyons (1970)

words related in any sense belonged to the same SEMANTIC FIELD, and

the SEMANTIC FIELD was simply a lexical category, which he described

as a LEXICAL FIELD. So, we can say that SEMANTIC FIELDS translate into

LEXICAL FIELDS.

Pag20

Field theory is very useful in the contrastive analysis of different

languages (wood/glass/ types of kinship). Some words can belong to

different fields (polysemy).

Example:
Cat, feline, moggy, puss, kitten, tom, queen and miaow occupy the

same semantic field.

1.9 METAPHOR

METAPHOR is a process in which one semantic field of reference

is transferred to another.

The new field is generally referred to as TARGET or tenor, the old

one as SOURCE or VEHICLE.

Example:

"Time is RUNNING fast"

A CONVENTIONAL METAPHOR is a metaphor that is commonly

used in everyday language in a culture to give structure to some portion of

that culture's conceptual system. For example

The understanding of time as a resource

Example:

Time is RUNNING out.

The understanding of life as a journey

Example:

It's time to GET ON with your life.

COGNITIVE SEMANTICISTS, instead, do not make this distinction

and consider metaphor sa natural eature lagag and a consequence

of the way we think about the world. (LAKOFF & JOHNSON, 1980)

distinguish 3 types of metaphor:

STRUCTURAL METAPHOR: we map one type of experience

onto another. A structural metaphor is a conventional metaphor in which

one concept is understood and expressed in terms of another structured,

sharply defined concept: A cold person.

An ORIENTATIONAL METAPHOR is a metaphor in which

concepts are spatialy related to each other(Ifieel down), as in the following

ways:

Up or down;

. Front or back;

On or off

Deep or shallow;

Central or peripheral.

An ONTOLOGICAL METAPHOR is a metaphor in which an

abstraction, such as an activity, emotion, or idea, is represented as something

concrete, such as an object, substance, container, or person.

Pag21

Conclusão

English, like most languages, has a number of different DIALECTS.

Just as the pronunciation of English VARIES from one dialect to another, so

there are also DIFFERENCES in the basic semantic facts from one dialect

of English to another.