The document discusses linguistic knowledge regarding sentence meaning, outlining concepts such as truth-conditional semantics, compositional semantics, and different forms of ambiguity in language. It explains how meaning is constructed through semantic rules and highlights various lexical relations, including synonyms, antonyms, polysemy, and idioms. Additionally, it covers the role of semantic features in comprehension and the classification of verbs based on their argument structure.

1. Prepared by: Sarah Mae Faith Zamora
Based on the book An Introduction to Language by Victoria
Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams

2. What speakers know about sentence meaning
Linguistic knowledge permits us to determine:
• Whether a sentence is true or false
• When one sentence implies the truth
or falseness of another
• Whether a sentence has multiple
meanings

3. Truth-conditional Semantics
> by formulating semantic rules that build the meaning of a
sentence from the meanings of its words and the way the words
combine syntactically
Truth Value
>judging sentences as either true or false
Compositional Semantics
> calculates the truth value of a sentence by composing, or
putting together, the meanings of smaller units

4. Compositional Semantics
• looks at the meanings of sentences and longer
utterances
TRUTH
Ex. Jack swims.
* You do not need to actually know whether a sentence is
true or false to know its meaning. Knowing the meaning
tells you how to determine the truth value.

5. A restricted number of sentences are indeed always
true regardless of the circumstances. They are called
TAUTOLOGIES.
Some sentences are always false. These are called
CONTRADICTIONS.
ENTAILMENT – when one sentence entails another if
whenever the first sentence is true the second is also
true in all conceivable circumstances.
Two sentences are SYNONYMOUS if they entail each
other.
Two sentences are CONTRADICTORY if one entails the
negation of the other

6. AMBIGUITY
Our semantic knowledge tells us when words or phrases
(including sentences) have more than one meaning: that is,
when they are ambiguous.
Ex. The boy saw the man with the telescope.
* The sentence is structurally ambiguous because it is
associated with two different phrase structures, each
corresponding to a different meaning.

7. LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
 arises when at least one word in a phrase has more
than one meaning
Ex. This will make you smart
* The sentence is ambiguous because of the two
meanings of the word smart: ‘clever’ and ‘feel a
burning sensation.’.

8. PRINCIPLE OF COMPOSITIONALITY
 notion that the meaning of an expression is
composed of the meanings of its parts and how
they are combined structurally

9. COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS
To manage a system effectively, you might focus
on the interactions of the parts rather than their
behavior taken separately.
(RUSSELL L. ACKOFF)
* Grammar contains semantic rules
that combine the meanings
of words into meaningful
phrases and sentences

10. SEMANTIC RULES
• Jack (proper name) swims (its referent)
*Semanticists think that the best way to define predicates s
(verbs, adjectives and common nouns) is in terms of the
individuals that those predicates successfully describe
Word Meanings
Jack refers to (or means) the individual Jack
swims refers to (or means) the set of individuals that swim

11. When Compositionality Goes Awry
• The meaning of an expression is not always obvious, even to
a native speaker of the language. Meanings may be obscured
in many ways, or at least may require some imagination or
special knowledge to be apprehended.
ANOMALY
METAPHORS
IDIOMS

12. ANOMALY
 Ex. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
(semantically anomalous)
 Dark green leaves rustle furiously.
* Other English “sentences” make no sense at all
because they include “words” that have no meaning;
they are interpretable. They can be interpreted only if
some meaning for each nonsense word can be
dreamt up.

13. Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”
 is probably the most famous poem in which most
of the content words have no meaning—they do
not exist in the lexicon of the language
(semantically anomalous)
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought

14. Breaking the rules creates the desired imagery.
Ex. A grief ago ( a phrase by Dylan Thomas)
Ago is ordinarily used with words specified by some
temporal semantic feature:
a week ago *a table ago
an hour ago but not *a dream ago
a month ago *a mother ago

15. The fact that we are able to understand, or at least interpret,
anomalous expressions, and at the same time recognize their
anomalous nature, demonstrates our knowledge of the
semantic system and semantic properties of the language

16. METAPHORS
 Our doubts are traitors. (William Shakespeare)
 Walls have ears. (from Don Quixote)
 The night has a thousand eyes and the day but one.
(Bourdillon’s Light )

17. METAPHORS
 When what appears to be an anomaly is nevertheless
understood in terms of a meaningful concept, the
expression becomes a metaphor
 Technically, metaphors are anomalous, but the nature
of the anomaly creates the salient meanings that
metaphors usually have.

18. METAPHORS
 may have a literal meaning as well as their
metaphorical meaning, so in some sense they are
ambiguous
* Metaphorical use of language is language creativity
at its highest.

19. IDIOMS
 typically start out as metaphors that catch on and are
repeated so often that they become fixtures in the
language. Such expressions are called idioms, or
idiomatic phrases, as in these English examples:
sell down the river
rake over the coals
snap out of it
give a piece of your mind

20. IDIOMS
 Like metaphors, idioms can break the rules on combining
semantic properties.
Example
He ate his hat.
Eat your heart out.
* Idioms, grammatically as well as semantically, have
special characteristics. They must be entered into the
lexicon or mental dictionary as single items with their
meanings specified, and speakers must learn the special
restrictions on their use in sentences

21. LEXICAL SEMANTICS
> studies the meanings and relations of words
* The meaning of words is part of linguistic
knowledge. Our mental storehouse of
information about words and morphemes is
what we have been calling the LEXICON

22. Theories of Word Meaning
Reference
The meaning of a word or expression is its reference;
its association with the object it refers to.

23. Theories of Word Meaning ...
Reference

24. Theories of Word Meaning ...
Reference
Ex. Lois Lane is in love with Superman.

25. Sense
 This suggests the fact that speakers know the
meanings of many words that have no real-world
referents.
Ex. hobbits, unicorns and Harry Potter
* These additional elements of meaning are often
termed sense.

26. Lexical Relations
Words are semantically related to one another in a
variety of ways.
* Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plague, molest,
worry, badger, harry, harass, heckle, persecute, irk,
bullyrag, vex, disquiet, grate, beset, bother, tease,
nettle, tantalize, or ruffle the animals
Ex. A sign in the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park states:
SYNONYMS are words or expressions that have the
same meaning in some or all contexts.

27. Lexical Relations
• Complementary Pairs
ex. alive/dead present/absent awake or asleep
Kinds of Antonyms
ANTONYMS are words that are opposite in meaning
• Gradable Pairs
ex. big/small hot/cold fast/slow
• Relational Opposites
ex. give/receive buy/sell teacher/pupil

28.  In English there are several ways to form antonyms by
adding:
Un –
likely/unlikely able/unable fortunate/unfortunate
Non –
entity/nonentity conformist/nonconformist
In –
tolerant/intolerant discreet/indiscreet decent/indecent
Antonyms ..

29. • HOMONYMS - words that have different meanings but
are pronounced the same and may or may not be spelled
the same, homographs when spelled the same.
Ex. Bear and Bare
• POLYSEMY word that has multiple meanings that are
related conceptually or historically
Ex. Diamond (referring to a jewel and also to a
baseball field)
Other lexical relations ..

30. • HYPONYMY- the relationship between the more general
term and the more specific instances of it
Ex. color – red
feline – lion
SEMANTIC FEATURES
If it is true that words have meanings, why don’t we throw
away words and keep just the meanings?
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Other lexical relations ..

31.  Decomposing the meanings of words into semantic
features can clarify how certain words relate to other
words.
 Semantic features are among the conceptual elements
that are part of the meanings of words and sentences.
Consider, for example, the sentence:
The assassin killed Thwacklehurst.
SEMANTIC FEATURES

32. • One source of such evidence is the speech errors, or
“slips of the tongue,” that we all produce.
 Semantic features are among the conceptual elements
that are part of the meanings of words and sentences.
Evidence for SEMANTIC FEATURES
Intended Utterance
bridge of the nose
when my gums bled
he came too late
Actual Utterance (Error)
bridge of the neck
when my tongues bled
he came too early

33. Semantic Features and Grammar

34. • “Female” is a semantic feature, sometimes indicated by
the suffix -ess, that makes up part of the meaning of
nouns, such as:
SEMANTIC FEATURES of Nouns
tigress hen aunt maiden
doe mare debutante widow
ewe vixen girl woman

35. • “Cause” is a feature of verbs such as darken, kill, uglify,
and so on
darken cause to become dark
kill cause to die
uglify cause to become ugly
SEMANTIC FEATURES of Verbs
SEMANTIC FEATURES of Nouns
• Count nouns can be enumerated and pluralized—one
potato, two potatoes.
• Mass nouns cannot be enumerated or pluralized such as
rice, water, and milk

36. • “Go” is a feature of verbs that mean a change in location
or possession, such as swim, crawl, throw
The baby crawled under the table.
The boy threw the ball over the fence.
Eventives
Ex. Mary was kissed by John. ---- Oysters were eaten by John.
Statives
Ex. ?Mary is known by John. ------ ?Oysters are liked by John.
SEMANTIC FEATURES of Verbs

37. Negation
a particularly interesting component of the meaning of some
verbs. Expressions such as ever, anymore, have a red cent, and many more
are ungrammatical in certain simple affirmative sentences, but grammatical
in corresponding negative ones.
*Mary will ever smile ---- Mary will not ever smile
Negative polarity items are expressions that require a negative element
such as “not” elsewhere in the sentence
Ex. John thinks that he’ll ever fly a plane again.
John doubts that he’ll ever fly a plane again.

38. Argument Structure
Intransitive verbs have one argument: the subject; transitive
verbs have two arguments: the subject and direct object;
ditransitive verbs have three arguments: the subject,
THEMATIC ROLES
1. The boy rolled a red ball.
agent theme
Thematic roles express the kind of relation that holds between
the arguments of the verb and the type of situation that the
verb describes.

39. THEMATIC ROLES
Professor Snape awakened Harry Potter with his wand.
source experiencer instrument
source - where the action originates
instrument - the means used to accomplish the action; and
experiencer - one receiving sensory input:

40. Prepared by: Sarah Mae Faith Zamora & Helen Rhose Go